U.S. Set to Begin a Vast Expansion of DNA Sampling

U.S. Set to Begin a Vast Expansion of DNA Sampling

By JULIA PRESTON

The Justice Department is completing rules to allow the collection of DNA from most people arrested or detained by federal authorities, a vast expansion of DNA gathering that will include hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants, by far the largest group affected.

The new forensic DNA sampling was authorized by Congress in a little-noticed amendment to a January 2006 renewal of the Violence Against Women Act, which provides protections and assistance for victims of sexual crimes. The amendment permits DNA collecting from anyone under criminal arrest by federal authorities, and also from illegal immigrants detained by federal agents.

Over the last year, the Justice Department has been conducting an internal review and consulting with other agencies to prepare regulations to carry out the law.

The goal, justice officials said, is to make the practice of DNA sampling as routine as fingerprinting for anyone detained by federal agents, including illegal immigrants. Until now, federal authorities have taken DNA samples only from convicted felons.

The law has strong support from crime victims’ organizations and some women’s groups, who say it will help law enforcement identify sexual predators and also detect dangerous criminals among illegal immigrants.

“Obviously, the bigger the DNA database, the better,” said Lynn Parrish, the spokeswoman for the Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network, based in Washington. “If this had been implemented years ago, it could have prevented many crimes. Rapists are generalists. They don’t just rape, they also murder.”

Peter Neufeld, a lawyer who is a co-director of the Innocence Project, which has exonerated dozens of prison inmates using DNA evidence, said the government was overreaching by seeking to apply DNA sampling as universally as fingerprinting.

“Whereas fingerprints merely identify the person who left them,” Mr. Neufeld said, “DNA profiles have the potential to reveal our physical diseases and mental disorders. It becomes intrusive when the government begins to mine our most intimate matters.”

Immigration lawyers said they did not learn of the measure when it passed last year and were dismayed by its sweeping scope.

“This has taken us by storm,” said Deborah Notkin, a lawyer who was president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association last year. “It’s so broad, it’s scary. It is a terrible thing to do because people are sometimes detained erroneously in the immigration system.”

Immigration lawyers noted that most immigration violations, including those committed when people enter the country illegally, are civil, not criminal, offenses. They warned that the new law would make it difficult for immigrants to remove their DNA profiles from the federal database, even if they were never found to have committed any serious violation or crime.

Under the new law, DNA samples would be taken from any illegal immigrants who are detained and would normally be fingerprinted, justice officials said. Last year federal customs, Border Patrol and immigration agents detained more than 1.2 million immigrants, the majority of them at the border with Mexico. About 238,000 of those immigrants were detained in immigration enforcement investigations. A great majority of all immigration detainees were fingerprinted, immigration officials said. About 102,000 people were arrested on federal charges not related to immigration in 2005.

While the proposed rules have not been finished, justice officials said they were certain to bring a huge new workload for the F.B.I. laboratory that logs, analyzes and stores federal DNA samples. Federal Bureau of Investigation officials said they anticipated an increase ranging from 250,000 to as many as 1 million samples a year.

The laboratory currently receives about 96,000 samples a year, said Robert Fram, chief of the agency’s Scientific Analysis Section.

DNA would not be taken from legal immigrants who are stopped briefly by the authorities, justice officials said, or from legal residents who are detained on noncriminal immigration violations.

“What this does is move the DNA collection to the arrest stage,” said Erik Ablin, a Justice Department spokesman. “The general approach,” he said, “is to bring the collection of DNA samples into alignment with current federal fingerprint collection practices.” He said the department was “moving forward aggressively” to issue proposed regulations.

The 2006 amendment was sponsored by two border state Republicans, Senator Jon Kyl of Arizona and Senator John Cornyn of Texas. In an interview, Mr. Kyl said the measure was broadly drawn to encompass illegal immigrants as well as Americans arrested for federal crimes. He said that 13 percent of illegal immigrants detained in Arizona last year had criminal records.

“Some of these are very bad people,” Mr. Kyl said. “The number of sexual assaults committed by illegal immigrants is astonishing. Right now there is a fingerprint system in use, but it is not as thorough as it could be.”

Ms. Parrish, of the rape victims’ organization, pointed to the case of Angel Resendiz, a Mexican immigrant who was known as the Railroad Killer. Starting in 1997, Mr. Resendiz committed at least 15 murders and numerous rapes in the United States. Over the years of his rampage, Mr. Resendiz was deported 17 times. He was executed in Texas in June.

“That was 17 missed opportunities to collect his DNA,” Ms. Parrish said. “If he had been identified as the perpetrator of the first rapes, it would have prevented later ones.”

Immigration lawyers said the DNA sampling could tar illegal immigrants with a criminal stigma, even though most of them have never committed any criminal offense.

“To equate somebody with a possible immigration violation in the same category as a suspected sex offender is an outrage,” said David Leopold, an immigration lawyer who practices in Cleveland.

Forensic DNA is culled either from a tiny blood sample taken from a fingertip (the F.B.I.’s preferred method) or from a swab of the inside of the mouth. Federal samples are logged into the F.B.I.’s laboratory, analyzed and transformed into profiles that can be read by computer. The profiles are loaded into a database called the National DNA Index System.

The F.B.I. also loads DNA profiles from local and state police into the federal database and runs searches. Only seven states now collect DNA from suspects when they are arrested; of those, only two states are authorized by their laws to send those samples to the federal database.

Mr. Neufeld, of the Innocence Project, said his group supported broad DNA collection from convicted criminals. But, he said, “There is no demonstrable nexus between being detained for an immigration matter and the likelihood you are going to commit some serious violent crime.”

The DNA amendment has divided women’s groups that are usually unified supporters of the Violence Against Women Act, which was adopted in 1994.

“We were stunned by the extraordinary, broad sweep of this amendment,” said Lisalyn Jacobs, vice president for government relations at Legal Momentum, a law group founded by the National Organization for Women. Ms. Jacobs recalled that the amendment had been adopted by a voice vote with little debate. She said many lawmakers eager to renew the act, which enjoys solid bipartisan support, appeared unaware of the scope of the DNA amendment.

“The pervasive problems of profiling in the United States will only be exacerbated by such a system,” Ms. Jacobs said, because Latino and other immigrants will be greatly over-represented in the database. She noted that the law required a court order to remove a profile from the system.

Many groups warned that the measure would compound already severe backlogs in the F.B.I.’s DNA processing. Mr. Fram of the F.B.I. said there had been an enormous increase in the samples coming to the databank since it started to operate in 1998, but no new resources for the bureau’s laboratory. Currently about 150,000 DNA samples from convicted criminals are waiting to be processed and loaded into the national database, Mr. Fram said.

He said the laboratory had added robot technology to speed the processing. But in the “worst case scenario,” where the laboratory receives one million new samples a year, Mr. Fram said, “there is going to be a bottleneck.”

Police chief Beheading plot being used as distraction from Blair woes

UK Daily
The senior policeman leading the investigation into an alleged plot to behead a Muslim British soldier believes the inquiry has been "hijacked" by the Government.

Assistant Chief Constable David Shaw was "seething" when he discovered Whitehall officials leaked sensitive details of Operation Gamble to the media in an apparent attempt to divert attention from the problems engulfing Tony Blair.
And he is said to be increasingly frustrated that the anonymous briefings may be impeding his officers' efforts to gather evidence.

A source close to Mr Shaw said: "He is angry that while he had played a straight bat there are others in Government departments who, without asking him, briefed the media about his inquiry."

Last Wednesday morning, only a few hours after the dawn arrests of nine men in Birmingham, Mr Shaw watched despairingly as details of the operation he hoped would remain secret flashed up on TV.

The source said: "He said through gritted teeth, "I haven't said any of those things - it has all come from London."

At one point, to the bewilderment of senior officers, details of the operation were being broadcast while one of the suspects had still to be found.

Mr Shaw never intended for the public to know, at least not yet, the existence of the alleged beheading plot, fearing the huge publicity would only further inflame Birmingham's Muslim communities at a time when he needs their assistance.

Following the leaks, senior officers were sent to try to pacify community leaders and explain that the police were not to blame.

Mr Shaw, a married father of two, is a highly espected figure among the city's ethnic minorities and is understood to be dismayed at the rancour in the Muslim community that the interference from Whitehall has produced.

The source said: "He feels the inquiry has been hijacked by those who don't have to live - as he does - with the direct consequences of what they say publicly.

"To my knowledge, he hasn't speculated as to what motivated these people to brief the media but it's really rather obvious that there are various agendas at work here."

Mr Shaw had released only scant information about the arrests, not operational details.

But the unofficial release of lurid detail about an alleged beheading plot - and an accompanying account of how two soldiers were used as "live bait" to try to flush out the suspects - dramatically raised the interest in the story.

Conveniently for the Government, it replaced the prisons crisis as the story of the week - and took the sting out of the cash-for-honours row that saw Tony Blair questioned by police for a second time.

Mr Shaw felt it necessary to spell out his discomfort in a news conference on Friday.

Referring to Birmingham, he said: "I am acutely aware that members of the community are confused and bewildered by what is being said by the media."

The Home Office said: "We have only released factual statements on the matter and the Secretary of State and the Attorney General have reminded media not to do anything that would prejudice the operation."

Top secret army cell recruiting Iraqi insurgent double agents

telegraph uk
Deep inside the heart of the "Green Zone", the heavily fortified administrative compound in Baghdad, lies one of the most carefully guarded secrets of the war in Iraq. It is a cell from a small and anonymous British Army unit that goes by the deliberately meaningless name of the Joint Support Group (JSG), and it has proved to be one of the Coalition's most effective and deadly weapons in the fight against terror.
Its members - servicemen and women of all ranks recruited from all three of the Armed Forces - are trained to turn hardened terrorists into coalition spies using methods developed on the mean streets of Ulster during the Troubles, when the Army managed to infiltrate the IRA at almost every level. Since war broke out in Iraq in 2003, they have been responsible for running dozens of Iraqi double agents.

Working alongside the Special Air Service and the American Delta Force as part of the Baghdad-based counter-terrorist unit known as Task Force Black, they have supplied intelligence that has saved hundreds of lives and resulted in some of the most notable successes against the myriad terror groups fighting in Iraq. Only last week, intelligence from the JSG is understood to have led to a series of successful operations against Sunni militia groups in southern Baghdad.

Information obtained by the unit is also understood to have inspired one of the most successful operations carried out by Task Force Black, in November 2005, when SAS snipers shot dead three suicide bombers.

The killing of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq up until his death in June last year, followed intelligence obtained by the JSG, as did the rescue of the kidnapped peace campaigner, Norman Kember.
"The JSG is the coalition's secret weapon," revealed one defence source. "Their job is to recruit and run covert human intelligence sources or agents - we never use the term informer. The Americans are in awe of the unit because they have nothing like them within their military."

During the Troubles, the JSG operated under the cover name of the Force Research Unit (FRU), which between the early 1980s and the late 1990s managed to penetrate the very heart of the IRA. By targeting and then "turning" members of the paramilitary organisation with a variety of "inducements" ranging from blackmail to bribes, the FRU operators developed agents at virtually every command level within the IRA.

The unit was renamed following the Stevens Inquiry into allegations of collusion between the security forces and protestant paramilitary groups, and, until relatively recently continued to work exclusively in Northern Ireland.

The JSG recruits men and women of any rank from all three services up to the age of 42. Volunteers attend a two week pre-selection course where those not in possession of the unique set of skills required to handle agents successfully are weeded out.

Candidates who get through pre-selection then spend the next four months at the Intelligence Corps headquarters at Chicksands, Bedfordshire, being taught driving and close-quarter battle skills - operators must be capable of using a wide variety of weapons but must be expert shots with a pistol.

But most important of all, -volunteers must be able to befriend people they may actually despise, win their trust and persuade them to become agents, which in some cases will mean getting them to inform on friends and relatives. Those who eventually pass the course can expect to be posted to Baghdad, Basra and Afghanistan.

Sources have told The Sunday Telegraph that in Baghdad intelligence is obtained in a variety of ways. Some of it comes through phone calls to a confidential hot-line where callers can either talk to a member of the JSG or arrange a meeting inside the "Green Zone". It is too dangerous for operators to meet agents at a secret rendezvous in other parts of the city.

With so many Iraqis entering the zone every day, those who want to pass on information can do so with a certain amount of anonymity. But a risk still remains. All potential agents are warned that anyone suspected of being a coalition spy will be tortured before being murdered. If he is married, his wife will be gang-raped in front of their children, who will in all probability also be murdered, they are told. Despite the risks, JSG operators deal with dozens of Iraqis every week who are -prepared, for a variety of reasons, to become informers.

"Some Iraqis come to us because they are simply fed up with the violence," said one source. "They may have had -members of their families -murdered, tortured or kidnapped. Unlike much of the middle class which has already fled the country, they may be too poor to leave and so they come to us to see if they can make a difference.

"They may have a little bit of information or detailed knowledge of a planned attack. We also have to deal with terrorists and that presents us with a difficulty. We are happy for them to pass us information but it is made absolutely clear to them that as a member of a terrorist group they are criminals and they should cease all activity immediately - we have had cases where Shia or Sunni men have provided us with information and as part of the debriefing process we have discovered that they are terrorists themselves. We warn them that they are running the risk of being killed or captured and that they should get themselves into a position within the organisation where they will not be directly involved in murder."

To senior American officers in Baghdad, the JSG is playing a vital role in the most important theatre of the war on terror.

"In many respects, Afghanistan is a side issue and that is something the Americans understand better than British politicians," said a source. "Ask any senior officer in Baghdad, given a choice, which war would they be prepared to lose and they will say the war in Afghanistan.

"In many respects the war in Iraq has redefined insurgent warfare. Think of the very worst of Northern Ireland combined with the very worst of the Balkans and you are coming close to life on a daily basis in Baghdad. The situation is chaotic and bordering on being hopeless. The Iraqis have absolutely no faith in their army or police force because they are all or nearly all linked to militias.

"Only the coalition forces can bring real security - if the war is lost chaos will reign and the whole of the region will be dragged into a bloody and catastrophic ethnic war."

Iraq report pessimistic over US role

guardian

The US has little control of events in Iraq and there is a strong possibility of further deterioration, an intelligence assessment was expected to say today.

The long-awaited National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq expressed uncertainty about the capacity of Iraqi leaders to transcend sectarian interests and fight extremists, establish effective national institutions and end corruption.

A two-page version is to be made public today, after the 90-page classified NIE was presented to the US president, George Bush, yesterday.

According to the Washington Post, the document emphasises that although al-Qaida actions remains a problem, they have been surpassed by sectarian violence as the primary source of conflict and the most immediate threat to US goals. Iran, which the administration has accused of supplying and directing insurgents, is mentioned but is not a focus.

The NIE has been a source of controversy in the past. In October 2002, the NIE concluded - wrongly as it turned out - that Saddam Hussein had chemical and biological weapons and was "reconstituting" his nuclear weapons programme. The document provided the case of going to war in Iraq.

The intelligence assessment, which provides projections for the next 18 months, comes amid growing opposition to Mr Bush's Iraq policies from Congress, now under Democratic control after the November midterm elections.

The Senate is expected to debate a resolution next week, which was put forward by senior Democrats and Republicans who oppose Mr Bush's plan to send another 21,500 troops to Iraq. Although the resolution would not be binding, its passage would be an embarrassment for the White House.

Even among the US military, there is disagreement on the Mr Bush's troop "surge". The outgoing top US general in Iraq, George Casey, yesterday said Mr Bush has ordered more troops than needed to quell violence in Baghdad.

Gen Casey, who is in line to become the chief of staff of the army, said he had asked for two brigades - 7,000 troops - of additional forces rather than the five brigades that his successor, General David Petraeus, is now seeking.

"I did not want to bring one more American soldier into Iraq than was necessary to accomplish the mission," Gen Casey said.

He has said in the past that increasing the number of US troops would raise tension between Iraqis and American soldiers.

He added, however, that he understood how Gen Petraeus might want the full complement of 21,500 additional troops. They could "either reinforce success, maintain momentum or put more forces in a place where the plans are not working," he told a senate confirmation hearing yesterday.

The Iraqi government is also unenthusiastic about the US troop increase. At his November meeting with Mr Bush in Amman, Jordan, the prime minister Nuri al-Maliki, presented the Americans with an Iraqi security plan that involved increased deployment of Iraqi troops in Baghdad. But according to White House officials, the US found the Iraqi plan "deficient" and concluded that American troops were needed.

Gen Casey yesterday acknowledged that Mr Maliki was not enthusiastic about the American troop increase. "He leans toward not wanting to have to bring in more coalition forces."

Britain 'moving towards a police state'

telegraph
One of Birmingham’s most senior Muslims has said that Britain is “moving towards a police state”, but he appealed for his co-religionists to stay calm in the wake of the arrest of nine men in an alleged kidnap plot.

Dr Mohammad Naseem, the chairman of Birmingham Central Mosque, said it was vital that Muslims in the city did not panic or become angry despite growing scepticism about the intelligence which led to the arrests on Wednesday.

Senior Birmingham Muslim says that Britain is moving towards a police state
Dr Naseem, chairman of Birmingham Central Mosque, said it was vital that Muslims in the city did not become angry

Dr Naseem’s call came after Islamic religious leaders nationwide urged Muslims to co-operate with police investigating the alleged plot to kidnap, torture and behead a British Muslim soldier.

Dr Naseem said that although it was “not a time to panic or get angry”, he disagreed with the manner of the arrests and the use of laws on the detention and questioning of suspects.

“This unfortunate country is moving towards a police state - the laws being passed are wrong and against the traditions of this country,” Dr Naseem said.

About 4,000 worshippers are expected to attend Friday prayers this afternoon at the Central Mosque, one of Europe’s largest.

The Muslim Council of Britain, the largest Muslim umbrella group, said “very serious allegations” had been made, and the police must be helped to complete their investigations.

A senior member of the council warned that the public glare of the media would damage the wider Muslim community even if the police raids later proved to be baseless.

“There is so much adverse publicity ,” he said. “There have been a number of cases where the police have moved in and nothing has been found. But by then the damage has been done.”

Massoud Shadjareh, chairman of the London-based Islamic Human Rights Commission, said there was huge concern that the public formed impressions of Muslims from such “snap shots” as the Birmingham arrests.

West Midlands police held a public relations exercise in the area, distributing thousands of leaflets reassuring Muslims that they were not targeting communities or faiths, but suspected criminals.

Muslim groups point out that more than half of the 1,100 people arrested as terrorism suspects over the past five years have been released without charge.

Putin Frowns on U.S. Missiles in Europe

washington post

MOSCOW -- President Vladimir Putin on Thursday scoffed at Washington's claims that possible deployment of U.S. missile defense sites in central Europe was intended to counter threats posed by Iran and said that Russia would take countermeasures.

U.S. officials have said that proposed missile defense sites in Poland and the Czech Republic will be designed to intercept missiles planned by Iran that would be capable of reaching eastern Europe and will not affect Russia's security. But Putin said the Kremlin didn't trust that claim.

President Vladimir Putin seen before his meeting with Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov in the Kremlin in Moscow, Wednesday, Jan. 31, 2007. Putin on Wednesday warned of a threat of extremism and ethnic and religious intolerance in the months before parliamentary elections and ordered law enforcement agencies to do more to protect the nation's secrets.

President Vladimir Putin seen before his meeting with Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov in the Kremlin in Moscow, Wednesday, Jan. 31, 2007. Putin on Wednesday warned of a threat of extremism and ethnic and religious intolerance in the months before parliamentary elections and ordered law enforcement agencies to do more to protect the nation's secrets.

"Our military experts don't believe that the missile defense systems to be deployed in eastern Europe are intended to counter the threat from Iran or some terrorists," Putin said at his annual news conference, adding that Iran only has missiles which aren't capable of reaching Europe.

"We consider such claims unfounded, and, naturally, that directly concerns us and will cause a relevant reaction. That reaction will be asymmetrical, but it will be highly efficient," Putin said.

Putin said that Russia's latest Topol-M intercontinental ballistic missiles were capable of penetrating missile defenses and added that more effective weapons systems are being developed.

"We will have next-generation systems immune to any prospective missile defense," Putin said. He said that while missile defense systems under development will only be capable of tackling ballistic missiles, the new weapons will be capable of changing the altitude and direction of their flight on their way to target.

"Missile defense systems are helpless against that," Putin said.

He rejected allegations that the planned deployment of U.S. missile defense sites in Europe could be a response to Russia's growing defense spending, saying the U.S. move had been planned long before growing oil revenues gave Russia a chance to increase its defense spending. He said Moscow's military budget is still 25 times smaller than Washington's defense spending.

Thousands in Mexico City Protest Rising Food Prices

new york times

MEXICO CITY, Jan. 31 — Tens of thousands of workers and farmers filled this city’s central square on Wednesday to protest spiraling food prices, ratcheting up the volume over a problem that has dogged President Felipe Calderón in his first weeks in office.

Left-wing parties joined the unions and peasant organizations that had called the protest. The protesters, some of whom handed out ears of corn, marched up Mexico City’s main avenue to the Zócalo, the site of protests through much of the summer and fall against Mr. Calderón’s election.

The high cost of tortillas and other food staples has consumed politics here over the past few weeks, posing a stubborn challenge to Mr. Calderón as he seeks to project an image as a take-charge leader. It has spilled into the ever-simmering debate here over the country’s commitment to free-market economics.

As marchers gathered at dusk in the city’s main square, a former television personality, Verónica Velasco, read a statement condemning the government’s policies. “While other countries are looking for alternatives to neoliberal policies, in Mexico, the government has lagged behind and insisted in applying a model that, after a quarter century, has shown its inefficiency and inequality,” the statement said.

As night fell, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, the leftist candidate who narrowly lost to Mr. Calderón in July, spoke to the crowd.

City officials would not give an estimate of the size of the protest.

To opponents of Mr. Calderón’s government, the spike in the price of tortillas is further proof that the free-market policies he has pledged to continue benefit the wealthy at the expense of the poor. The high prices are new ammunition for those who have previously pressed to renegotiate the agricultural chapter of the North American Free Trade Agreement to provide more protection for Mexican farmers, and for Mexico to end its dependence on imports of American corn and recover what nationalists call food sovereignty.

Mr. Calderón barely won a bitterly contested election in July against a leftist opponent who promised to roll back some of those policies. Aware that he would have to win over part of the population that has yet to see the benefits of free trade, Mr. Calderón quickly announced a series of social programs once he took office.

He also cracked down on the drug trade, establishing an image as a decisive executive. He ordered the army into several cities to fight drug violence and summarily extradited 11 drug trafficking suspects to the United States.

But the tortilla price spiral appeared to come as a surprise. Although Mr. Calderón moved quickly, announcing a pact on Jan. 18 to freeze prices, the problem has not been resolved.

Even with the pact, the news reports focused on the fact that the price ceiling for the tortillas of about 35 cents a pound was about 40 percent higher than the price three months earlier and contrasted that with the 4 percent increase in the minimum wage, which is still less than $5 a day.

But because fewer than 10 percent of tortilla producers signed on to the agreement, the government had little power over those who did not. In some areas, prices have risen to 45 cents a pound. There is little more that Mr. Calderón can do to contain prices without huge expenditures for subsidies. Most analysts agree that the main cause of the increase has been a spike in corn prices in the United States, as the demand for corn to produce ethanol has jumped.

But the uneven structure of Mexico’s corn and tortilla industry here has also generated accusations — none of them proved — of hoarding and profiteering. Mexico’s corn flour industry is controlled by just two companies, Grupo Maseca, also known as Gruma, and Minsa. Under the pact, Gruma agreed to keep prices for corn flour at 21 cents a pound. The government has promised to crack down on profiteers.

Ken Shwedel, an agricultural economist in Mexico City for the Dutch agribusiness bank Rabobank, said prices were likely to remain high in the United States, which supplies about 25 percent of Mexico’s corn.

“This is the first time you’ve got a real agricultural shock to the economy,” he said. “The market economy isn’t as benevolent as a state-run economy. The market is characterized by fluctuations. You have to live with it and know how to deal with it.”

The marchers clearly directed their blame at the government. “When they get involved in something as elemental as tortillas, well that’s just irresponsible,” said Francisco Ruiz, 48, a telephone worker.

Carola Ortega, 64, a member of a peasant group, said: “We’re here because the government always takes advantage of the poor. First it was tortillas, but we’re not stupid; if tortillas go up, everything else does too.”

Some analysts argue that the opposition has merely seized on a convenient issue and that the controversy will blow over.

“For the unions, it is about much more than tortillas,” said Vidal Romero, a political scientist at the Autonomous Technological Institute of Mexico, a Mexico City university. “They want to make it clear to the president that they still have strength and not let the government do what it wants.”

For the left, the tortilla issue is a new rallying cry after months of postelectoral protests. Mr. Romero said the left hoped to use the march to position itself as the main opposition force to Mr. Calderón’s presidency. “They want to draw oxygen from it,” he said.

Putin hopes Russia-Iran contact will reassure West

reuters

MOSCOW - Russian President Vladimir Putin said today he hoped a visit by Russia’s Security Council Secretary Igor Ivanov to Tehran this month would help Iran reassure the West that it does not seek nuclear weapons.

“We hope that (Ivanov’s) visit to Iran will help us align our positions and will help convince our Iranian partners to take decisions that would improve the situation in a healthy way...and remove all suspicions in the international community about Iran’s alleged plans to create nuclear weapons,” Putin said during an annual news conference.

Western powers fear Iran’s nuclear enrichment programme will be used for atomic bombs and the UN Security Council passed a resolution in December imposing limited sanctions on Iran for refusing to suspend the programme.

Iran says it has a right to develop its civilian nuclear sector and last month said it was pressing ahead with a plan to install 3 000 atomic centrifuges. Russia is building Iran’s first nuclear power plant in Bushehr.

Last month, Russia angered the US by delivering new anti-aircraft missile systems to Iran and said it would consider more requests from Tehran for defensive weapons.

Murdered spy had no reason to run, Putin says

guardian

The murdered former spy Alexander Litvinenko did not possess any secrets and had no reason to flee Russia, the country's president, Vladimir Putin, said today.

Facing more than 1,200 journalists at an annual televised press conference in the Kremlin's Round Hall, Mr Putin fielded questions on the deaths of the former KGB officer and the investigative journalist Anna Politkovskaya.

During the three and a half hour conference, he expressed mistrust over US proposals to site anti-missile systems in eastern Europe, rejecting the idea that these would only target possible missiles from Iran.

He also insisted Russia was not using its huge energy resources as a political weapon and rejected suggestions that he might try to orchestrate a succession as his second - and constitutionally final - term in office draws to a close.

Mr Litvinenko, in a statement made shortly before his death, accused Mr Putin of being involved in a plot to poison him. However, the Russian president said there had been no reason for Mr Litvinenko to flee to Britain, where he settled in 2000.

The former spy had complained of official harassment in Russia after making allegations about misconduct by the Russian security services.

"There was no need to flee anywhere. He did not carry any secrets at all," Mr Putin was quoted as saying by Reuters. "Whatever negative comments he had about his old job, he had already said everything. There could be nothing new in his words."

Mr Putin rejected suggestions Mr Litvinenko had been killed as part of a plot to discredit the Kremlin.

"Openly speaking, I don't believe in the conspiracy thesis," he said, also refusing to speculate on how Mr Litvinenko had ingested the radioactive poison that killed him.

The Russian president threatened unspecified but retaliatory measures against any US positioning of anti-missile defences in eastern Europe.

Washington has proposed putting a radar station in the Czech Republic and a battery of rockets in Poland. The Pentagon says the equipment is intended to detect and shoot down hostile missiles, which it says could come from Iran.

However, Mr Putin said: "Our specialists don't think that anti-missile systems in eastern Europe are aimed against terrorists or Iran. Can you really fight terrorists with ballistic missiles?"

When questioned about energy, he said Russia was simply trying to ensure it received a fair price for its oil and gas.

Last month, shipments of Russian oil to western Europe were interrupted for several days in a dispute over prices with Belarus, through which a Russian pipeline passes.

Gas supplies were also reduced in early 2006 when Moscow was locked in a similar disagreement with Ukraine.

However, Mr Putin denied any political motives. "We are always told that Russia is using its ... economic resources to achieve its foreign policy aims," he said. "This is not the case."

He said Moscow wanted to charge market prices after years of providing energy to ex-Soviet neighbours at subsidised tariffs.

"Russia has always met, and will continue to meet, its obligations to supply its customers, but we are not obliged to subsidise other countries' economies on an enormous scale," he added.

Mr Putin stressed that he would not nominate a designated successor ahead of the presidential elections scheduled to take place in March 2008.

"There will be no successor. There will be candidates for the post of president," he said. "The authorities' goal is to ensure the elections are held democratically."

Guantanamo conditions 'like a Nazi camp'

AAP
Accused terrorist David Hicks' US lawyer has described conditions at Guantanamo Bay, where he has been held for five years, as "like a Nazi concentration camp".

The 31-year-old father of two met his lawyers inside the newly-created Camp Six at the US military prison in Cuba.

The Adelaide-born Muslim convert showed signs of mental deterioration, his Australian-based lawyer David McLeod said after the meeting.

"He shows all the signs of someone who has been kept in isolation for a very long time," Mr McLeod said.

"He's not in very good shape, the conditions are pretty ordinary."

Hicks has been detained by the US military without trial since he was captured with Taliban forces in Afghanistan in December 2001. He was sent to Guantanamo Bay the following month.

"He continues to be locked up 22 hours a day," Mr McLeod said.

"He has seen the sun three times since he has been at Camp Six in early December.

"He has no privacy whatsoever in Camp Six - his toilet paper is rationed, he hasn't been able to comb his hair since going there because he's not provided with a comb or brush.

"The guards can see into his cell 24 hours a day.

"I won't go into his condition in more detail than that.

"We have just had some time with him and we are seeing him again tomorrow.

"But suffice to say, he's not in good shape."

A US lawyer, Sabin Willett, has visited Camp Six, where Hicks was moved last month, and filed an emergency motion in the US Court of Appeals criticising the conditions.

In an affidavit to the court, Mr Willett described the conditions as like a "Nazi concentration camp - a place where, when they take you in, you never come out".

In his affidavit, Mr Willett said Camp Six detainees are held in solid metal cells with no natural light or air and detailed other alleged human rights violations.

"We put those things very quickly to David and he confirmed each and every allegation of the nature of Camp Six," Mr McLeod said.

"Those observations in those articles are totally consistent with what David is putting up with."

US prosecutors are expected to within weeks lay fresh charges against Hicks, who is accused of training with al-Qaeda.

He pleaded not guilty to charges of conspiracy, attempted murder by an unprivileged belligerent and aiding the enemy before a US military commission in August 2004.

But the charges were dropped last year when the US Supreme Court ruled the military commissions designed to prosecute Hicks and other Guantanamo detainees were unlawful.

The US announced its new rules for the commissions on January 18.

UPDATE 2-"Hoax" triggers Boston security scare

BOSTON, Jan 31 (Reuters) - Police were investigating an apparent security hoax in Boston on Wednesday involving at least five suspicious devices in separate locations across the city which were later found to be fake bombs.

The discoveries triggered a city-wide security scare that led the U.S. Coast Guard to close the Charles River that feeds from the Atlantic Ocean into the city and caused authorities to shut down major bridges and several roads.

"Based on the information we have, it appears to be a hoax," said Gov. Deval Patrick's spokesman, Jose Martinez.

The packages looked roughly similar, according to police and local media. Most contained wires emerging from a plastic casing. Four were found hours after officials blew up the first suspicious package below a highway in the morning.

They were discovered near the New England Medical Center, the Longfellow Bridge that connects Boston with Cambridge, the Boston University Bridge and at the intersection of Stuart and Columbus streets in central Boston.

"All were found not to be explosive devices," Boston Police Department spokesman Eddie Chrispin said.

There were reports of a sixth device found in the city of Somerville close to Boston.

Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority spokesman Joe Pesaturo said one of the train system's busiest lines had been stopped, while the U.S. Coast Guard said it had closed Boston's Charles River amid the alert. (Additional reporting by Svea Herbst and Scott Malone)

Miller: Libby reveals CIA agent earlier than confessed

BEIJING, Jan. 31 (Xinhuanet) -- A U.S. star journalist testified Tuesday in Washington that former vice presidential aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby identified Valerie Plame, a CIA operative, to her on two occasions.

Judith Miller, the journalist, said her two meetings with Libby came on June 23 and July 8, 2003 -- earlier than the dates Libby told FBI investigators, according to media reports Wednesday.

Miller said Libby mentioned Plame, wife of a prominent Iraq war critic, as a CIA employee "in the face-to-face meetings."

Libby, then Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, however, told the FBI and a grand jury that he heard Plame's CIA job for the first time from NBC's Tim Russert on July 10, 2003.

But five U.S. government officials have also testified that Libby discussed Plame and her CIA job with them before the date he gave to the FBI.

Libby resigned after he was charged with lying to investigators in the case.

Libby is not accused of leaking Plame's job but of perjury and obstruction of the investigation into how her name was leaked. The discrepancy over when Libby learned about Plame is a major element in the charges on which he is being tried.

Miller, The New York Times' star journalist until she resigned in late 2005, has spent 85 days in jail because of resisting court orders to disclose who told her about Plame's identity. Citing confidentiality, she resisted revealing her source and was released from jail last year.

The media said the Plame case goes to the heart of criticism that the White House deliberately twisted intelligence about Iraq's purported weapons programs in order to justify the Iraq war.

Plame's husband Joseph Wilson challenged the administration assertions that Iraq had tried to buy uranium in Africa for a nuclear weapons program, saying he had investigated the claim for the CIA on a visit to Niger and found no evidence, and went public on July 6, 2003.

Millions of US funds wasted in Iraq

timesonline
Millions of dollars intended for the rebuilding of Iraq have been squandered amid continuing incompetence, corruption and a deteriorating security situation, American government auditors have revealed.

A damning report by Stuart Bowen, the US special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction, described a string of misguided and expensive initiatives that have failed to deliver any real benefit for the country, among them the construction of a police camp in Baghdad that cost $43.8 million (£22.4 million) but has never been used.

The facility, built near Adnan Palace by the US contractor, DynCorp International, was even extended by the Iraqi Interior Ministry — to the tune of an Olympic-size swimming pool and $4.2 million (£2.1 million) of improvements — without proper American approval.

Today's report also included revelations that $36 million (£18 million) was spent by US officials on armoured vehicles, body armour and communications equipment that cannot be accounted for because invoices were vague and there is no back-up documentation.

Mr Bowen's study, which comes as President Bush is preparing to ask Congress to approve a further $1.2 billion (£612 million) in aid for Iraq, also asks serious questions of the Iraqi Government's ability to manage funds given to it. At the end of 2006, Iraqi officials had failed to spend billions of dollars specifically budgeted for capital projects since 2003, the report said.

Iraqi prisons and police forces have also struggled to function amid the serious sectarian violence that has cost tens of thousands of lives in the country in the last year, the audit said, observing that the US has "spent billions in this area, with limited success to date".

"The security situation continues to deteriorate, hindering progress in all reconstruction sectors, and threatening the overall reconstruction effort," the 579-page report adds.

Speaking from Iraq today Stephen Farrell, The Times' Middle East Correspondent, said Iraqi people would not be in the slightest bit surprised by the findings.

"Certainly among Iraqis there is — and has been almost from day one since the US-led invasion — a perception that reconstruction was badly handled and inadequately financed, and what money did pour into the country disappeared at an alarming rate, both by corruption among Iraqis, or due to the US contractors who were responsible for managing it," he told the Times Online.

"We started to hear claims of corruption really early on in this war, and that has never stopped.

"Whatever they thought about the necessity for the war to remove Saddam Hussein, you won't find a single Iraqi who thinks that the reconstruction has been well-handled."

Mr Bowen’s office is responsible for overseeing the use, and potential misuse, of US funds for Iraq’s reconstruction. Today's audit is the latest of his quarterly reports to the US Congress on how the cash is being spent.

Warrants Issued in Germany Kidnapping

BERLIN (AP) - German prosecutors said Wednesday that they have issued arrest warrants for 13 suspected CIA agents who allegedly abducted a German citizen in an apparent anti-terrorist operation gone wrong.

It was Washington's second European ally to seek the arrest of purported CIA agents for spiriting away a terrorism suspect. Italian prosecutors want to question 25 agents and one other American in the alleged kidnapping of an Egyptian cleric suspected of terrorism.

Munich prosecutor Christian Schmidt-Sommerfeld told The Associated Press that warrants in the latest case were issued in the last few days. He said the unidentified agents were sought on suspicion of wrongfully imprisoning Khaled al-Masri and causing him serious bodily harm.

Al-Masri, a German citizen of Lebanese descent, says he was detained in December 2003 at the Serbian-Macedonian border and then flown by the CIA to a jail in Afghanistan, where he was abused. He says he was let go in Albania five months later and told he had been seized in a case of mistaken identity.

Rights activists have seized on al-Masri's story and other cases to demand that the U.S. stop ``extraordinary rendition'' - moving terrorism suspects to third countries where they could face torture. Some European governments have been accused of winking at the practice.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and other U.S. officials have declined to address al-Masri's case. However, German Chancellor Angela Merkel has said the Bush administration acknowledged making a mistake with al-Masri.

Germany's government refused to comment on the arrest warrants, as did the CIA. The State Department's deputy spokesman, Tom Casey, said only that the U.S. would review the allegations.

NDR television released a list of 11 men and two women reportedly named in the warrants. It said three had been contacted by its reporters and had refused comment.

The prosecutor's office refused to confirm the list, while revealing the suspects' real names weren't known.

``The personal details contained in the arrest warrants are, according to our current knowledge, aliases of CIA agents,'' Schmidt-Sommerfeld said in a statement. ``Further investigation will, among other things, concentrate on trying to determine the clear identities of the suspects.''

Al-Masri's attorney, Manfred Gnjidic, said the issuing of the arrest warrants was ``a very important step in the rehabilitation'' of his client. ``It shows us that we were right in putting our trust in the German authorities and the German prosecutors,'' he told reporters.

Prosecutors were led to the suspects after receiving a list in December 2005 of possible people involved in al-Masri's detention compiled by a Spanish journalist from sources within Spain's Civil Guard, a paramilitary police unit, Schmidt-Sommerfeld said.

He said Spanish authorities then provided help and prosecutors were able to pursue an investigation against ``concrete persons.''

Schmidt-Sommerfeld said tips were also received from others, including prosecutors in Milan, Italy, and Dick Marty, a Swiss senator who led a Council of Europe inquiry into purported CIA ``extraordinary rendition'' flights. The prosecutor did not give any details on the tips.

The CIA agents are suspected of flying aboard a Boeing 737 from the Spanish island of Palma de Mallorca in January 2004 to pick up al-Masri from Macedonian authorities, another prosecutor, August Stern, said.

ARD television said last year investigators were working from passport photocopies made by a hotel where the suspects stayed, but Stern said he could not confirm that or other details.

The Justice Department has declined to provide Munich prosecutors assistance, citing legal proceedings involving al-Masri in the United States.

Al-Masri has asked a federal appeals court in Richmond, Va., to reinstate a lawsuit against the CIA seeking compensation. A judge dismissed the suit last May, ruling that a trial could harm national security by revealing details about CIA activities.

The German government has said it learned of the case only after al-Masri's release. In late 2005, Interior Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble said the then-U.S. ambassador to Germany had told his predecessor, Otto Schily, about it May 31, 2004.

Schaeuble said Ambassador Dan Coats provided no details of al-Masri's treatment, but told Schily that ``one had apologized to him (al-Masri) and agreed (on) confidentiality and paid him a sum of money.''

Gnjidic, al-Masri's lawyer, has said his client denies receiving either an apology or money.

Welch: Interference in science "stunning" - Boston.com

Welch: Interference in science "stunning" - Boston.com

January 31, 2007

BURLINGTON, Vt. --U.S. Rep. Peter Welch says it was a "stunning personal experience" to hear federal scientists say they had been stymied from talking about climate change.

"There was a story about a scientist who got authorized to speak at a conference. He was prohibited from using the phrase 'global warming.' He was allowed to say 'global,' and he could say 'warming,' but he couldn't put them next to each other. It became a charade," Welch said.

The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, on which Welch serves, is holding hearings on the administration's handling of the global warming issue. The panel's chairman, Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., said the administration appeared to want "to mislead the public by injecting doubt into the science of global warming."

Welch said he had read about scientists being muzzled, but, "It's a stunning personal experience to hear directly from scientists whose life work has been compromised, who live in fear of retaliation or compromised careers if they adhere to their code of ethics as scientists."

The comments came as two advocacy groups -- the Government Accountability Project and the Union of Concerned Scientists -- shared findings with the committee from a survey of about 300 government scientists.

The survey found nearly half the scientists had seen or experienced pressure to delete words like "global warming" from written material. About 40 percent said thad had seen changes to materials that changed their scientific meanings.

The White House maintains it was trying to bring balance to reports on global warming.

U.K. Terror Police Arrest 8 Over Alleged Kidnap Plot

Jan. 31 (Bloomberg) -- U.K. police arrested eight people in anti-terrorist raids on homes in Birmingham, central England, after uncovering a plot to kidnap a Muslim soldier.

Police searched 12 locations in the city, the second largest in the U.K., and sealed buildings including an Islamic bookshop. The alleged plot involved abducting a serving British soldier in his 20s and possibly beheading him, two people with knowledge of the investigation said.

``A major counter-terrorism operation took place today, the home secretary has been fully briefed on the operation and is receiving regular updates as developments occur,'' Home Office spokesman Stuart Green said by telephone of the briefing given to John Reid.

U.K. police have arrested more than 1,000 people under the Terrorism Act 2000 since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in the U.S. Since then Prime Minister Tony Blair's decision to take part in U.S.-led military campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan has angered some of the country's 2 million Muslims.

Police have carried out several high-profile counter- terrorism operations since the first successful al-Qaeda inspired attack in the country on July 7, 2005. In that attack four British Muslims blew themselves up on London's transport network killing 52 people. Police arrested five men on suspicion of terrorist offenses in raids in the towns of Manchester and Halifax on Jan. 23. The trial of six men accused of trying to launch another attack on London's transport system on July 21, 2005, is currently underway.

Arrest Scenes

``Kidnapping is a fairly common tool in the terrorist arsenal and provides high visibility for extended periods of time,'' said security analyst Bob Ayers, associate fellow of foreign policy think tank Chatham House, a foreign policy institute in London, who spent 30 years in intelligence with the U.S. Army and Defense Intelligence Agency. ``Something happened to cause the police to carry out the raids when they did. Either they were getting ready to launch their plot or the police were about to be compromised.'' Police would probably have had the group under surveillance for some time, he said.

Today's raids were at 12 addresses in the Sparkhill, Washwood Heath, Kingstanding and Edgbaston areas of Birmingham. All are being searched. One raid involved armed police. The city has a 14 percent Muslim population and 11 percent of its residents are of Pakistani descent, according to a 2001 census of the U.K. population.

Terrorism Act

The eight suspects were detained under the Terrorism Act 2000 on suspicion of the commission, preparation or instigation of acts of terrorism, West Midlands Police said. The operation was ``nationwide,'' though police gave no details of activity elsewhere.

``I haven't seen any terrorist activity there at all and I'm quite shocked,'' Saqib Hussain, who lives next to the Islamic bookshop that was sealed off, told the British Broadcasting Corporation.

The kidnapping of a soldier would be a new tactic for terrorists in the U.K. In 2004 Ken Bigley, a British civil engineer, was kidnapped and beheaded in Iraq by a group led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Zarqawi died in a U.S. air strike in 2006.

The Home Office rates the terrorist threat to the U.K. as ``severe,'' the second highest level, meaning that an attack is highly likely. Elizabeth Manningham-Buller, head of the domestic intelligence agency MI5, said in November that the country may be facing as many as 30 terror plots.

Intelligence Agencies

In August, 2006 intelligence agencies said they foiled an alleged plot to use liquids in carry-on luggage to bomb U.S.- bound flights from the U.K. Seventeen people arrested in raids across the U.K. were charged in connection with the allegations.

Following the July 7, 2005 attacks in London the U.K. government made the integration of the country's Muslims a priority. Sky News said the arrested men were British born of Pakistani origin, while one was Pakistani.

A study published Jan. 29 by the Policy Exchange, a consultant on government policies, said that by emphasizing the differences between Muslims and other Britons the government had actually made tensions ``worse not better.''

The think tank's survey of 1,003 British Muslims showed the interest of young Muslims in religion was more politicized than it had been for their parents. Three quarters of 16- to 24-year- olds questioned said they would prefer Muslim women to wear a veil. Among the 55-year-olds and above, only 28 percent favored it.

The survey showed that younger rather than older Muslims were more likely to prefer living under the Islamic legal framework, or Sharia, and favored Islamic schools over non- religious state schools.

Freudian Slip On 911 x 2

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EA5AmFpQlJA http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k0v0_HDwg84

NRC: Stopping Aircraft Threat To Nuke Plants Impractical

'Active Protection' From Airborne Attack Military Responsibility
aeronews
Based in part on public comments obtained in November 2005, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission on Monday said protecting a nuclear power plant from a 9/11-style attack using an airliner is impractical given the scope of its responsibility.

The announcement came as the agency published the executive summary for a defense plan 15 months in the making. Specific details of the plan are considered secret by the US government, but in its statement the NRC said, "The active protection against airborne threats is addressed by other federal organizations, including the military."

Instead of devising ways to protect plants from attack -- such as the so-called "beamhenge" approach which would surround a vulnerable structure with a lattice-like barrier made from large, steel beams -- the NRC says plant operators should focus on limiting the public's exposure to radioactive material in the event of an attack using protection measures and evacuation plans already in place.

"This rule is an important piece, but only one piece, of a broader effort to enhance nuclear power plant security," said NRC Chairman Dale Klein. "Overall we are taking a multi-faceted approach to security enhancements in this post 9/11 threat environment, and looking at how best to secure existing nuclear power plants and how to incorporate security enhancements into design features of new reactors that may be built in coming years."

Predictably, the NRC is already under fire from critics of the plan, some of whom are saying the agency didn't fully account for the real-world threats of a terrorist attack.

Michele Boyd of Public Citizen's Energy Program, a nuclear industry watchdog group, told Business Week, "Rather than requiring measures to prevent a plane crash from damaging vulnerable parts of a nuclear plant ... the government is relying on post-crash measures and evacuation plans."

Those in favor of more active measures, such as US Senator Barbara Boxer of California, suggest the NRC should put plans in place to "defend against large, attacking forces and commercial aircraft."

The NRC argues it must plan for a "reasonable" response from the civilian security forces in place around most civilian nuclear facilities. As such, its security plan assumes a relatively small, lightly-armed attacking force. But critics say the plan doesn't even account for terrorist use of easily obtained, powerful weapons such as rocket-propelled grenades.

The NRC concluded its statement with, "The NRC remains an active partner with other federal and state/local authorities in constant surveillance of the threat environment and will adjust regulatory actions or requirements if necessary."

UN report confirms climate change is happening now

national post
The United Nations' scientific brain trust is poised to say that climate change, once a theoretical future scare story, is real, urgent and warming our air and water right now.

The update from the International Panel on Climate Change, expected Friday, will say it's practically certain the recent instances of unusually warm weather around the world are not natural glitches, but changes caused by human pollution.

Since the panel's last update (in 2001), science journals have been bursting with new measurements and examples of real warming in many places.

The global temperature has warmed up by an average of 0.6 to 0.7 degrees, says Matthew Bramley, director for climate change of the Pembina Institute, a Canadian climate group.

That's measured from pre-industrial times, but most of the increase has happened in the past few decades, he says.

If the increase reaches two degrees, he warns, that's when major and disruptive changes in weather patterns will likely occur.

''When you say one degree or two degrees (of warmer average temperatures) - it doesn't mean much to many people,'' he says. ''It's important to understand that five degrees (Celsius) was enough to make the difference between our climate today and Ottawa having kilometres-thickness of ice'' during the last Ice Age.

The IPCC's scientists are meeting in Paris this week to negotiate final wording of their new assessment of the ''basic science'' behind Earth's climate. In April, they'll announce what specific effects they foresee.

James Bruce, a veteran climate scientist from Ottawa who has worked in a variety of IPCC positions, said a review of the scientific findings in recent years points to several areas where the update is likely to focus.

The biggest change: The scientists who used mathematical models of what might happen a few years ago are now staring at actual measurements showing global warming that's well underway.

The University of East Anglia in England, a specialized climate studies centre, says the 12 warmest years on record have been in the past 13 years.

It also forecasts that 2007 will be a record-setter, 0.54 degrees above the long-term (1961-1990) average of 14.0 degrees worldwide. The hottest year so far was 1998.

''They've got far more evidence of trends in climactic factors and responses (of air and water) that point to the increasing strength of the warming than they ever did before,'' . Bruce said.

Among the findings:

* The oceans are warming with surprising speed.

The warming so far is just a fraction of a degree, but over the whole Earth this translates into a large amount of stored heat.

* The ''mid-latitudes'' - areas between the Arctic and the tropics, like southern Canada, Europe and the United States - are seeing increased incidents of violent weather, especially heavy rainstorms.

* The Gulf Stream is expected to weaken ''in the next little while.'' ''There is some evidence that it's already weakening a little,'' Bruce said.

For now, the Gulf Stream is what keeps Britain warmer than Labrador. The two are about the same distance north, but a cold Arctic current runs past Labrador while Britain gets warm water.

* There's a shift in where the greatest emissions are coming from. And the big source now lies in making electricity.

* Much of the warming has come near the Poles, raising the prospect of melting ice, which could sharply raise sea levels around the world and flood coastlines.

Media Wants Waco-Style Massacre

American Free Press
The circumstances surrounding the Browns, a New Hampshire couple convicted of federal income tax evasion, could turn on a dime.

Recently AFP interviewed Ed Brown, a Plainfield home owner who grew up in the Roxbury slums of Boston. He and Mrs. Brown, who is a dentist, are self-made people who worked hard for their lot in life, only to see it swept away by a government that takes in gargantuan sums of money via taxes on the domestic populace to pay enormous interest on the national debt (which cannot be repaid), much of which is due to America‚s endless military conflicts.

When AFP contacted Brown recently, he was living everyday life as best he can at the house he built on their 110 acres. His wife, who he said is in a state of arrest wearing an electronic ankle bracelet—is staying with a son in a neighboring state.

“The dental business died a week ago Tuesday,” Brown told AFP. “My wife's a prisoner—like she's a flight risk!”

The two are supposed to be sentenced April 24, having each been convicted Jan. 18 in federal court in Concord for not paying income taxes since 1996. The government claims the Browns owe some $625,000.

“Everybody should say, ‘show me the law and I'll pay the tax,' ” Brown told AFP. That is what he told federal authorities who can't seem to produce a copy of a law requiring payment of the federal income tax.

Filmmaker Aaron Russo's America: From Freedom to Fascism documentary interviews a number of former IRS agents and other authoritative people who say that the powers that be, when asked to provide a copy of the law, such as an enabling statute, that requires U.S. workers to pay federal income tax on their wages, come up empty-handed.

Russo concluded that if the federal income tax applies to anyone or anything, it applies to corporate capital gains, not the incomes of individuals, and that the IRS doesn't even define income.

The proverbial “tax man” came down on the Browns just as they had considered selling their home and acreage so they could live in a warmer climate. Notably, their property is across the road from 500 acres owned by Supreme Court Justice Steven Breyer.

But making the best of the winter weather, individuals and families with children have been over to Brown's place lately for sledding and skating—before and since the tax trouble began. Life still seems more or less normal, though Brown suspects that federal agents may eventually storm the house and arrest him, perhaps after the publicity on his and his wife's plight calms down.

As of Jan. 25, he said the publicity was still significant, with TV news crews continuing to pay attention. He also told AFP that while he has always paid the 54 other kinds of taxes levied on Americans—with property taxes hitting $14,000 a year on their home and $18,000 a year on their office building for the former dental business—he won't budge on the federal income tax.

For one thing, as already noted, no one can produce a copy of the law that requires payment of an unapportioned tax on the labor of Americans. Moreover, there are due-process issues whereby U.S. District Court Judge Steven McAuliffe apparently disallowed the Browns from bringing forth any evidence or witnesses they needed for defending themselves in court. Also, the issue of federal jurisdiction, or the lack thereof, comes into play, Brown pointed out.

Addressing some conventional media reports that characterized his home as a virtual fortress, or “compound” with a “lookout tower,” Brown replied, “It's a deck, for crying out loud—an octagon-shaped compass deck.”

Just below the elevated deck on the large, well-built house—which has solar-power capability and was off the grid from 1990 to 2003—is a reading room.

“We're very mainstream, middle-class people,” said Brown, who noted that media reports suggesting he's “holed up” in his house are off base.

Some areas of the house have been boarded up to keep out blowing snow, so he is not “barricading” himself in the house, he explained.

The Union Leader seems also to have played the “antigovernment” card, even though many American patriots make a careful distinction by saying they are anti-corruption of government, not anti-government.

Notably, the Associated Press article in The Union Leader couldn't resist the highly charged word “compound,” which conceivably could create a bunker mentality in the minds of readers and may quell public outrage if federal agents ever decide to forcibly enter Brown's home to arrest him. As the article claimed:

“A jury decided that the Browns plotted to hide their income and avoid taxes on Elaine Brown's income of $1.9 million between 1996 and 2003. Over 10 years, they also used $215,890 of postal money orders broken into increments just below the reporting threshold to pay for their hilltop compound and for Elaine Brown's dental offices.”

U.S. marshals said on a couple occasions they had no plans to forcibly enter Brown's property and arrest him, though national media sources quoted marshals as saying that they “have to decide how to seize the Browns' assets, possibly including their home.”

Citing a new twist in this case, a recent issue of The Boston Globe noted that federal agents “seized more than 30 weapons from the Brown house in May.”

Brown commented by telling AFP, “They stole $15,000 worth of my guns and turned them over to a gun shop.”

Brown was still at home on Jan. 25, preferring only to comment off the record about the situation.