Scientist Report 22 Mile Long Undersea Gulf Oil Plume

Read more

FEMA: US evacuations may be required for Earl

(RAW STORY)   FEMA says US evacuations may be required if Category 4 Hurricane Earl tracks toward coast

Federal officials urged U.S. residents to prepare for possible evacuations and islanders in the Turks and Caicos braced for high winds Tuesday as powerful Hurricane Earl howled over open seas toward the East Coast of the U.S.

The Category 4 hurricane, with winds of 135 mph (215 kilometers), was expected to remain over the open ocean before turning north and running parallel to the U.S. coast, potentially reaching the North Carolina coastal region by late Thursday or early Friday. It was projected then to curve back out to sea, perhaps swiping New England or far-eastern Canada.

“We can’t totally rule out a very close approach to either of the Cape Hatteras areas or Cape Cod and southern New England as the storm progresses further,” said Bill Read, director of the U.S. National Hurricane Center in Miami.

Earl delivered a glancing blow to several small Caribbean islands on Monday, tearing roofs off of homes and cutting electricity to people in Anguilla, Antigua, and St. Maarten. Cruise ships were diverted and flights canceled across the region. But there were no reports of death or injury.

In Providenciales in the Turks and Caicos, a British territory, Benson Capron was among several fishermen tying their boats to trees lining a beach.

“I hear it is going to pass, but I will not take any chances,” Capron said. “Today I will not go out to fish.”

Forecasters said it was too early to say what effect Earl would have in the U.S., but warned it could at least kick up dangerous rip currents. A surfer died in Florida and a Maryland swimmer had been missing since Saturday in waves spawned by former Hurricane Danielle, which weakened to a tropical storm Monday far out in the north Atlantic.

Craig Fugate, administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, said evacuations may be necessary along the eastern seaboard later this week if the storm does not veer away from the coast as expected.

“Today is the day to make sure you have your plan completed and your supplies in place,” Fugate said.

The storm’s center passed just north of the British Virgin Islands on Monday afternoon. Despite a few lost fishing boats and several uprooted trees in Tortola and Anegada, there were no reports of major damage or injuries, said Sharleen DaBreo, disaster management agency director.

By midday Tuesday, Earl’s center was about 205 miles (335 kilometers) east of Grand Turk island as it headed west-northwest at 14 mph (22 kph), according to the hurricane center. Hurricane strength winds extended up to 70 miles (110 kilometers) from the center, it said.

Tropical storm conditions were expected to spread into the Turks and Caicos by Tuesday afternoon.

Close on Earl’s heels, Tropical Storm Fiona formed Monday afternoon in the open Atlantic. The storm, with maximum winds of 40 mph (65 kph), was projected to pass just north of the Leeward Islands by Wednesday and stay farther out in the Atlantic than Earl’s northward path. Fiona was not expected to reach hurricane strength over the next several days.

Residents were cleaning up debris and assessing damage Tuesday on islands across the northeastern Caribbean.

In Puerto Rico, nearly 187,000 people were without power and another 60,000 without water, Gov. Luis Fortuno said. More than a dozen roads along the north coast remained closed as crews removed trees and downed power lines.

In St. Maarten, sand and debris littered the streets, and winds knocked down trees and electricity poles and damaged roofs. But police spokesman Ricardo Henson said there was no extensive damage to property.

In Antigua, at least one home was destroyed but there were no reports of serious injuries. Governor General Dame Louise Agnetha Lake-Tack declared Monday a public holiday to keep islanders off the road and give them a chance to clean up.

___

Associated Press Writers Vivian Tyson in Providenciales, Turks and Caicos; Ben Fox in Fajardo, Puerto Rico; Anika Kentish in St. John’s, Antigua; Judy Fitzpatrick in Philipsburg, St. Maarten; and David McFadden, Mike Melia and Danica Coto in San Juan and contributed to this report.

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2010/0831/fema-evacuations-required-earl/

Bush White House willfully left Plamegate leaker’s emails unrestored: watchdog

(RAW STORY)   Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington might not really be composed of superheroes but many agree that — through the years — CREW has done a kickass job exposing corruption by both Democrats and Republicans, despite often being derided as partisan.

“Top aides to President George W. Bush seemed unconcerned amid multiple warnings as early as 2002 that the White House risked losing millions of e-mails that federal law required them to preserve, according to an extensive review of records set for release Monday,” Ed O’Keefe reported for The Washington Post Sunday night.

The review, conducted by the nonprofit watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, follows a settlement reached last December between President Obama’s administration, CREW and the National Security Archive, a George Washington University research institute. The groups sued the Bush White House in 2007, alleging it violated federal law by not preserving millions of e-mails sent between 2003 and 2005.

The settlement resulted in the restoration of 94 days worth of e-mail and the release of documents detailing when the Bush White House learned of the missing e-mails and how it responded. The restored e-mails are part of the National Archives and Records Administration’s historic record of the Bush administration, but presidential historians and others seeking information in the coming decades about the major decisions of Bush’s presidency likely will be starved of key details, including messages sent between White House officials and drafts of final policy decisions, according to CREW.

“The net effect of this is we’ve probably lost some truly valuable records that would have provided insight” into the administration’s decision-making process on several policy issues, said CREW Chief Counsel Anne L. Weismann, who led the review.

The cover for the report (pdf link), “THE UNTOLD STORY OF THE BUSH WHITE HOUSE EMAILS,” sports an illustration of a CREW member — perhaps Executive Director Melanie Sloan — garbed like a superhero as she attempts to bring the missing emails to the light.

A CREW press release states,

Just how far did the Bush White House go to hide its actions from the American people? A new report released today by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), “The Untold Story of the Bush White House Emails,” attempts to answer the question by providing a wealth of details regarding the Bush White House’s failure to prevent millions of emails from vanishing forever.

….

“A democratic system of government requires transparency,” said Melanie Sloan, CREW’s Executive Director. “But the Bush administration prided itself on keeping secrets from the American people, ignoring federal records laws requiring White House emails be preserved for future generations.” Sloan continued, “Emails that might shed light on our nation’s recent history – including records created in the lead up to the U.S. war in Iraq – have been wiped away.”
…

“Sadly, the American people will never know the full truth of just what went on inside the Bush White House as decisions affecting all of our lives were made,” said Ms. Sloan. “Despite repeated warnings that information was being lost, Bush administration officials repeatedly and willfully turned a blind eye to the problem.”

At TPMMuckraker, Rachel Sladja notes, “The 54-page report reads like an IT horror story, with staffers manually saving each email through Outlook and using four different tools to search for emails to answer a subpoena in the Valerie Plame leak investigation.”

“The report also notes that, when trying to recover emails related to the Plame investigation, the White House did not attempt to restore Scooter Libby’s mailbox even though he was at the center of the investigation,” Sladja adds.

The executive summary of the report notes,

Missing emails included emails from the Office of the Vice President for a critical period in the fall of 2003 that were sought by the Department of Justice as part of its investigation into the leak of Valerie Plame Wilson’s covert CIA identity.
Files that should have contained these emails also were missing from backup tapes for that period and in its efforts to restore those emails from individual users’ mailboxes, the Bush White House excluded the mailbox of I. Lewis Libby from those being restored.

More relevant passages from the report follow:

Other documents provide tantalizing tidbits of information that suggest more nefarious conduct. Why, for example, in attempting to recover missing emails from backup tapes to respond to the special counsel’s document subpoenas did the White House not restore email from the mailbox of Scooter Libby?

….

As OA began to investigate the missing email problem in October 2005, it made an additional and deeply troubling discovery: the archives contained little or no email from the OVP for an important group of days in September and October 2003. While any missing email should have been cause for concern, this discovery set off alarm bells at the White House. DOJ, as part of its investigation into the leak of Valerie Plame Wilson’s covert CIA identity, had served the White House with several subpoenas and document requests for OVP emails for the September and October 2003 time-frame. In the absence of any preserved OVP emails for those days, the White House’s responses clearly were incomplete. In addition, the discovery coincided with the end of Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald’s investigation into the leak. A federal grand jury indicted I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby on five counts of perjury and obstruction of justice on October 25, 2005. His defense team soon began demanding that the special counsel turn over documents, including emails, received from the White House.116 Faced with these issues, OA launched a specific investigation into the extent of the problem with missing OVP emails.

….

OA devised a three-step plan to try to recover the OVP email from September 30 through October 6, 2003, a vital period because it immediately followed DOJ’s request for documents.

First, OA would try to recover the missing emails from PST files on the backup tapes.125 If that failed, OA would restore the Journal mailboxes and try to retrieve the emails from them.126 The last resort would be to restore the mailboxes of individual OVP employees.127 The plan was presented to and approved by the White House Counsel’s Office.128

….

It appears, however, OA did not restore and search Scooter Libby’s mailbox, even though he was a central focus of the leak investigation. Mr. Libby’s mailbox, with 1,649 emails, was among the individual mailboxes on the backup tapes OA estimated would take weeks to restore.134 The backup tapes also included mailboxes belonging to non-OVP employees.135 To ensure restoration of the correct mailboxes, OA asked human resources for a list of OVP employees dating back to October 2003.136 Apparently and inexplicably that list did not contain Mr. Libby’s name.137 OA then asked the OVP to validate the list.138 In response, the OVP “reviewed and confirmed” the list, a process that resulted in Mr. Libby’s continuing exclusion.139
Thus, neither the list of OVP users whose mailboxes were to be restored140 nor the final list of restored mailboxes validated by the OVP included Mr. Libby.141

Beyond this, the documents do not indicate why OA apparently did not search and restore Mr. Libby’s mailbox. Perhaps Mr. Libby was not listed as an OVP employee because he was considered an employee of the White House Office. Yet, as a January 23, 2004 email from the vice president’s counsel to Mr. Libby notes, he had a“unique status” as a commissioned officer of the president in WHO, but one who principally served the vice president.142 Given Mr. Libby’s function of serving the vice president, his title in October 2003 of Chief of Staff to the Vice President, and his indictment two months earlier as a result of the special counsel’s investigation, the apparent failure of the Bush White House to restore and search his mailbox is both inexplicable and deeply disturbing.

The Post also reports,

The Administration Office later proposed a plan to fully restore the missing e-mails in 2005, but White House counsel Harriet E. Miers rejected the plan, according to the report. Miers did not return requests for comment.

….

Scott Stanzel, a former Bush spokesman, said CREW is a liberal group that “likes to sue for sport and for years has tried to create a spooky conspiracy out of standard IT issues.”

“Nearly two years after President Bush left office, their interest in launching partisan attacks through misleading press releases has not waned,” Stanzel said. “The Bush Administration has complied with the Presidential Records Act requirements and this matter is closed, yet CREW’s tiresome effort to score political points continues.”

Although the Bush administration has been a frequent target of CREW’s efforts, the organization was also critical of several government-funded projects constructed in the district of former Rep. John P. Murtha (D-Pa.), has called for the resignation of embattled Rep. Charles B. Rangel (D-N.Y.) and has accused South Carolina Democratic Senate candidate Alvin M. Greene of violating election laws.

Sloan has been representing Plame and former Ambassador Joe Wilson in their — so far — unsuccessful efforts to sue over the leak. Plame and Wilson have campaigned for Democrats, so this is one reason why many conservatives defending the Bush administration in the Plamegate controversy have been blasting CREW as partisan.

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2010/0830/bush-white-house-willfully-left-plamegate-leakers-emails-unrestored-watchdog/

Gates Foundation ties with Monsanto under fire from activists

(SeattleTimes)   For two years, local activists on a shoestring budget have been trying to document connections between the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Monsanto, the company vilified by some for its heavy involvement in genetic engineering of crops.

Try as they might, their work got little attention. Read more

BP Investigation Blocked By Senate

(YouTube)

Read more

Former embed reporter held in cabbie slashing

(MILITARY TIMES)   WASHINGTON — The college student accused of slashing a New York cab driver showed no signs he might have trouble coping with the experience of traveling with combat troops in Afghanistan, the military said Friday.

Michael Enright, a student and freelance journalist who embedded with Marines in southern Afghanistan’s restive Helmand Province in April, is accused of slashing the face and neck of an immigrant cab driver this week in Manhattan after asking if he was Muslim.

READ THE FULL ARTICLE HERE

Harvard University fund sells all Israel holdings

(GLOBES)   In another blow to Israeli shares, the Harvard Management Company notified the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on Friday that it had sold all its holdings in Israeli companies during the second quarter of 2010. No reason for the sale was mentioned. The Harvard Management Company manages Harvard University’s endowment.

Harvard Management Company stated in its 13-F Form that it sold 483,590 shares in Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd. (Nasdaq: TEVA; TASE: TEVA) for $30.5 million; 52,360 shares in NICE Systems Ltd. (Nasdaq: NICE; TASE: NICE) for $1.67 million; 102,940 shares in Check Point Software Technologies Ltd. (Nasdaq: CHKP) for $3.6 million; 32,400 shares in Cellcom Israel Ltd. (NYSE:CEL; TASE:CEL) for $1.1 million, and 80,000 Partner Communications Ltd. (Nasdaq: PTNR; TASE: PTNR) shares for $1.8 million.

Harvard Management Company’s 13-F Form shows some interesting investments. Its two largest holdings, each worth $295 million, are in iShares ETFs, one on Chinese equities, and the other on emerging markets. Harvard also owns $181 million in a Brazilian ETF.

Published by Globes [online], Israel business news – www.globes-online.com – on August 15, 2010

http://www.globes.co.il/serveen/globes/docview.asp?did=1000581912

State Department Says Blackwater Broke Laws, But Company Not Barred From Receiving Government Contracts

(TRUTHOUT)   The company formerly known as Blackwater violated U.S. export control laws nearly 300 times, ranging from attempts to do business in Sudan while that country was under U.S. sanctions to training an Afghan border patrol official who was a native of Iran, the State Department said Monday.

The alleged violations were spelled out in documents released Monday by the State Department as part of a $42 million settlement with Blackwater that will allow the company, now known as Xe Services LLC, to continue receiving U.S. government contracts.

The agreement appears to spell the end of a three-and-a-half-year, multi-agency federal probe into Xe Services’ unauthorized exports of defense technologies and services. While elements of the case were presented to a federal grand jury, the company and its currently serving officers have avoided criminal prosecution.

The State Department said Monday that Xe Services’ alleged violations, while widespread, “did not involve sensitive technologies or cause a known harm to national security.” Additionally, it said, they took place while Xe “was providing services in support of U.S. government programs and military operations abroad.”

Under the agreement with the U.S. government, the Moyock, N.C., company was levied a $42 million fine, but Xe is allowed to use $12 million of that to strengthen the company’s export control compliance programs. Xe won’t be barred from further U.S. government contracts, and a government policy of denying most of the firm’s export control applications, in place since December 2008, will be lifted.

Mark Corallo, a spokesman for Blackwater founder Erik Prince, didn’t immediately return a phone call seeking comment. Prince recently moved to the United Arab Emirates, and has put Xe Services up for sale.

McClatchy first reported in June that Xe Services and the U.S. government were negotiating a multimillion-dollar fine to settle allegations that it violated laws regulating the export of defense equipment and know-how overseas. The article detailed Blackwater’s extensive efforts to secure business in southern Sudan at a time when the country was under U.S. sanctions for its sponsorship of terrorism.

A 41-page State Department document released Monday provides some new details about Blackwater’s Sudan plans and provides a peek into the secretive company’s training of foreign military personnel around the globe.

For example, an October 2006 Blackwater proposal to the south Sudanese government called for the company to provide military training to individuals who held citizenship in both Sudan and neighboring Uganda, but “would be deemed Ugandans for training purposes.” Blackwater obtained Ugandan passports for the prospective trainees from the south Sudanese government.

At the time, Sudan was under U.S. sanctions, but Uganda wasn’t.

Most of the 288 violations of export control laws cited in the document involve Blackwater providing unauthorized military or security training to foreign nationals or failing to vet adequately the backgrounds of those it was training. The concern is that U.S. enemies could benefit inadvertently from such training.

Persons trained by Blackwater under a U.S. government contract to train the Afghan Border Police included “one (who) was born in Pakistan and the other in Iran, a proscribed country,” the document says.

Blackwater provided military training to security forces in almost every corner of the globe, often without proper authorization from the U.S. government, the documents show. Countries that received those services included Azerbaijan, Canada, Japan, Jordan, Kuwait, Niger, the Philippines and Taiwan.

Blackwater also violated firearms regulations on numerous occasions, the documents allege. In one case, it diverted weapons intended for use in supporting U.S. military operations in Iraq to the company’s private contracts in that country.

The company “did not fully cooperate” during the first 18 months of the State Department investigation, which began in February 2007, and made several false statements to the government that it later revised, the documents said.

http://www.truth-out.org/state-department-says-blackwater-broke-laws-but-company-not-barred-from-receiving-government-contrac?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter

Wikileaks’ Assange: Pentagon may be behind rape claims

(RAW STORY)   Wikileaks founder Julian Assange said in an interview published on Sunday that he believes the Pentagon could be behind a rape accusation against him that was later dropped by Swedish prosecutors.

The country’s prosecution service meanwhile justified the chaotic situation when authorities first issued an arrest warrant for the Australian whistleblower late on Friday night but then withdrew it the following day.

The Aftonbladet newspaper quoted Assange, 39, as saying he did not know who was “hiding behind” the claims, which came amid a stand-off with Washington over the website’s publication of secret Afghan war documents.

Assange said he was shocked by the allegations against him and that he had never had sexual relations with anybody in a way that was not consensual, the tabloid said.

But he said that he had been warned previously that groups such as the Pentagon “could use dirty tricks” to destroy Wikileaks — adding that he had been particularly warned against being entrapped by sexual scandals.

Assange told Aftonbladet that despite the lifting of the warrant, his enemies would still use the claims to damage Wikileaks, which is set to publish thousands more secret papers about the war in Afghanistan in coming weeks.

He refused to give more details about the two women whose claims sparked the furor, saying that it would impinge on their privacy.

Prosecutors said Saturday that Assange was now “not suspected of rape” and was no longer wanted for questioning on the charge, but added that an investigation into a separate molestation charge remained open.

Assange, Wikileaks website and his aides have strongly denied all the claims.

He had been in Sweden earlier this month giving a press conference on the upcoming release of the last batch of Afghanistan documents, but he generally remains on the move around the world staying with supporters.

The Swedish prosecutor’s office issued a statement on Sunday defending its actions.

It said that chief prosecutor Eva Finne, who was responsible for withdrawing the arrest warrant, had “more information available to decide on Saturday than the duty prosecutor on Friday evening.”

“A decision regarding restrictive measures, such as this, must always be reevaluated in a preliminary inquiry,” the statement added.

The spokeswoman for the prosecutor’s office, Karin Rosander, told AFP late Saturday that the procedure followed was normal and would have been launched automatically by the duty prosecutor in serious cases such as rape.

In an interview in the Expressen newspaper, which broke the story, duty prosecutor Maria Haljebo Kjellstrand said that she “did not regret her decision”.

The two women who originally made the claims did not make an official complaint and it was the police who took the decision to inform the prosecutors office, she said.

“I received a report from the police which seemed to me to be sufficient to arrest him. On Friday evening I got a call from the police describing what the women said. The information I received was convincing enough for me to take my decision,” Hljebo Kjellstrand was quoted as saying.

WikiLeaks has already released nearly 77,000 secret papers about the war against the Taliban and Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, sparking charges that it had endangered the lives of informants and others named therein.

The website says it had repeatedly asked the Pentagon for help analyzing the remaining documents, and Assange has said he wants to avoid publishing the “names of innocent parties that are under reasonable threat”.

http://rawstory.com/rs/2010/0822/wikileaks-pentagon-rape-claims/

Gulf claims chief takes credit for rule that protects BP from spill lawsuits

(RAW STORY)   The new administrator for damage claims from Gulf oil spill victims said Sunday it was his idea, not BP’s, to require that anyone who receives a final settlement from the $20 billion compensation fund give up the right to sue the oil giant.

But Ken Feinberg told reporters that he has not yet decided whether the no-sue requirement will extend to other companies that may be responsible for the worst offshore oil spill in U.S. history.

He insisted that payouts from the claims facility he will run will be more generous than those from any court. Feinberg also ran the government compensation fund created after the 9/11 attacks, and there was a similar no-sue provision.

“It is not in your interest to tie up you and the courts in years of uncertain protracted litigation when there is an alternative that has been created,” Feinberg said.

He added, “I take the position, if I don’t find you eligible, no court will find you eligible.”

Any individual or business that receives a short-term emergency payment — one to six months — from the oil spill claims facility that launches Monday will still be able to sue BP.

Hundreds of lawsuits have already been filed by spill victims.

Feinberg said BP, which had been handling claims up until this point, has paid out roughly $375 million in claims since the April 20 rig explosion on the Gulf of Mexico that killed 11 workers and spewed 206 million gallons of oil from BP’s runaway undersea well.

The latest guidelines for the victims compensation fund say the nearer you are geographically to the oil spill and the more closely you depend on the Gulf of Mexico’s natural resources, the better chance you have of getting a share of the money.

Feinberg said that the most “problematic” claims will be from people who work in the tourism business, especially hotels.

“I’m going to have to draw some tough lines,” Feinberg said.

The new claims facility run by Feinberg will take over from BP the processing of claims by individuals and businesses. If a person filed a claim with BP that has not been resolved yet, they must file a new claim form with Feinberg, but any supporting documentation they previously submitted will be automatically forwarded.

If a person received money from BP, they can get up to six additional months of compensation from the new claims facility. If they got nothing from BP, they can refile their claim with the new facility and have it reviewed again.

Feinberg, who was picked by President Barack Obama to operate the oil spill fund, said that in the next few weeks he would release details on how much he is being paid for his work. He declined a request by an Associated Press reporter on Sunday to declare how much he has been paid to date.

A temporary cap placed on the runaway well in mid-July has kept any more oil from spewing. The final sealing of the well should take place after Labor Day. Engineers are preparing to first remove the failed blowout preventer — a key piece of evidence — and replace it with another one. After that, they will complete the drilling of a relief well, then will plug the runaway well for good by pumping mud and cement into the bottom.

Mochila insert follows…

But Ken Feinberg told reporters that he has not yet decided whether the no-sue requirement will extend to other companies that may be responsible for the worst offshore oil spill in U.S. history.

He insisted that payouts from the claims facility he will run will be more generous than those from any court. Feinberg also ran the government compensation fund created after the 9/11 attacks, and there was a similar no-sue provision.

“It is not in your interest to tie up you and the courts in years of uncertain protracted litigation when there is an alternative that has been created,” Feinberg said.

He added, “I take the position, if I don’t find you eligible, no court will find you eligible.”

Any individual or business that receives a short-term emergency payment — one to six months — from the oil spill claims facility that launches Monday will still be able to sue BP.

Hundreds of lawsuits have already been filed by spill victims.

Feinberg said BP, which had been handling claims up until this point, has paid out roughly $375 million in claims since the April 20 rig explosion on the Gulf of Mexico that killed 11 workers and spewed 206 million gallons of oil from BP’s runaway undersea well.

The latest guidelines for the victims compensation fund say the nearer you are geographically to the oil spill and the more closely you depend on the Gulf of Mexico’s natural resources, the better chance you have of getting a share of the money.

Feinberg said that the most “problematic” claims will be from people who work in the tourism business, especially hotels.

“I’m going to have to draw some tough lines,” Feinberg said.

The new claims facility run by Feinberg will take over from BP the processing of claims by individuals and businesses. If a person filed a claim with BP that has not been resolved yet, they must file a new claim form with Feinberg, but any supporting documentation they previously submitted will be automatically forwarded.

If a person received money from BP, they can get up to six additional months of compensation from the new claims facility. If they got nothing from BP, they can refile their claim with the new facility and have it reviewed again.

Feinberg, who was picked by President Barack Obama to operate the oil spill fund, said that in the next few weeks he would release details on how much he is being paid for his work. He declined a request by an Associated Press reporter on Sunday to declare how much he has been paid to date.

A temporary cap placed on the runaway well in mid-July has kept any more oil from spewing. The final sealing of the well should take place after Labor Day. Engineers are preparing to first remove the failed blowout preventer — a key piece of evidence — and replace it with another one. After that, they will complete the drilling of a relief well, then will plug the runaway well for good by pumping mud and cement into the bottom.

http://rawstory.com/rs/2010/0822/gulf-claims-chief-rule-protect-bp-spill-lawsuits-idea/

Next Page »