Good Morning! - Morning Headlines

Morning headlines brought to you by

Carolyn Kay
MakeThemAccountable.com

Top Stories

Commanders in Iraq See 'Surge' Continuing
The Pentagon announced yesterday that 35,000 soldiers in 10 Army combat brigades will begin deploying to Iraq in August as replacements, making it possible to sustain the increase of U.S. troops there until at least the end of this year. U.S. commanders in Iraq are increasingly convinced that heightened troop levels, announced by President Bush in January, will need to last into the spring of 2008. The military has said it would assess in September how well its counterinsurgency strategy, intended to pacify Baghdad and other parts of Iraq, is working… "What I am trying to do is to get until April so we can decide whether to keep it going or not," (Lt. Gen. Raymond T. Odierno) said in an interview in Baghdad last week. (Emphasis added.)

Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi can make bipartisan history on Iraq
George Washington must be banging his fist in heaven at the damage inflicted from home on American troops in Iraq. Enough. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) can change American history by standing hard for 60-to-90-day funding for the war, requiring a new vote by August, and leading a landmark new policy supporting troops and vets.

Action Alert: Contact your senators and congressman today, to urge them to fight the continuation of this never-ending war.

Pablo on Politics

The World

Suicide truck bomber kills 19 in Iraq
BAGHDAD - A suicide truck bomb ripped through the Interior Ministry in the relatively peaceful Kurdish city of Irbil on Wednesday morning, killing at least 19 people and wounding 80, officials said.

Sunnis give al-Maliki one week to rein in Shiite militias
Both Sunni and Shiite political factions are threatening to withdraw from the already weak government of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, a prospect that threatens the political accommodations needed to calm Iraq's sectarian warfare.

Iran accepts nuclear talks compromise
Iran on Tuesday accepted a compromise on the agenda text of a global conference meant to strengthen the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, in a surprise turn dictated by pressure from other nations seeking to dislodge the meeting from a week of deadlock.

Iran 'seeking conflict by proxy in Afghanistan': Britain
LONDON (AFP) - British Defence Secretary Des Browne said there were signs that Iran was helping the Taliban fight coalition forces in Afghanistan.

Power Sharing Begins in Northern Ireland
BELFAST, Northern Ireland, May 8 — Paying tribute to the thousands of victims in one of Europe’s bloodiest sectarian conflicts, the leaders of Northern Ireland on Tuesday drew a formal line under decades of hostility and strife, re-establishing a power-sharing local authority of once implacable foes.
This is the miracle of my lifetime, friends. In the 1960s, we didn’t dare to dream that this would ever happen. And what made it happen is many years of diplomacy, many years of church groups bringing teenagers from both sides together for several weeks during the summer, showing them the humanity of the “other”. It did not happen due to bullying. It did not happen due to pre-emptive attacks on defenseless people. —Caro

Clinton Group Makes Cheap AIDS Drug Deal
Former President Bill Clinton's foundation has reached a deal with drug companies that will slash the price of critical AIDS treatments for patients in low and middle income nations. France and 19 other nations will pool money to fund the project.

The Nation

Pelosi threat to sue Bush over Iraq bill
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) is threatening to take President Bush to court if he issues a signing statement as a way of sidestepping a carefully crafted compromise Iraq war spending bill.

Ignoring Their Advice
A television commercial in the works by VoteVets.org, challenging the notion that President Bush listens to commanders on the ground, will feature Maj. Gens. John Batiste and Paul Eaton. Batiste and Eaton were those very commanders on the ground, and their words will inform voters in districts and states represented by Republicans that, indeed, Bush did not heed their advice about the right strategy for Iraq. These words, from the non-political military, will be hard to forget.

Top Security Chiefs Leaving in Droves
Top members of President Bush's national security team are leaving in one of the earliest waves of departures from a second-term Administration As rancor in the nation rises over handling of the war in Iraq, at least 20 senior aides have either retired or resigned from important posts at the White House, Pentagon and State Department in the past six months. Some have left for lucrative positions in the private sector. Some have gone to academic or charitable institutions.

Bush won't give up military option on Iran: Rice
DUBAI (Reuters) - U.S. President George W. Bush will keep a military option on the table as he seeks a diplomatic solution to the standoff with Iran over its nuclear plans, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said. "The American president will not abandon the military option and I believe that we do not want him to do so," Rice said in an interview with Al Arabiya television, part of which was broadcast on Tuesday.

Tenet-Bush Pre-9/11 'Small Talk'
In late August 2001, when aggressive presidential action might have changed the course of U.S. history, CIA Director George Tenet made a special trip to Crawford, Texas, to get George W. Bush to focus on an imminent threat of a spectacular al-Qaeda attack only to have the conversation descend into meaningless small talk.

Israeli airport security methods studied
BEN GURION AIRPORT, Israel - With the heavy summer travel season looming, airport directors from U.S. cities on Tuesday studied Israel's airline passenger screening system, known as one of the world's toughest and most effective.
I’ve been saying for years we should do this. When was the last time an Israeli airplane was hijacked? It’s been many, many years. —Caro

Media

Permanent link to MTA daily media news

Majority of Iraqi Lawmakers Now Reject Occupation
On Tuesday, without note in the U.S. media, more than half of the members of Iraq's parliament rejected the continuing occupation of their country. 144 lawmakers signed onto a legislative petition calling on the United States to set a timetable for withdrawal, according to Nassar Al-Rubaie, a spokesman for the Al Sadr movement, the nationalist Shia group that sponsored the petition.

Old media turns combative against new media
LAS VEGAS (Reuters) - Leading media executives took a combative tone against Internet companies on Tuesday, suggesting that Big Media increasingly considers new content distributors like Google Inc. to be more foe than friend. At a panel discussion on the second day of the 56th annual National Cable & Telecommunications Association conference, top executives said talk of the demise of traditional media in the digital age was overblown.

"60 Minutes" gets ratings by sticking to its journalistic guns
"60 Minutes," which critic David Zurawik calls "one of television's longest running and most staid programs," is having a bang-up year, drawing a weekly audience of 13.5 million viewers. "Above all else, '60 Minutes' is still a hard news show," says author and j-prof Philip M. Seib. "They haven't sold out the way that some of these other newsmagazines have, with their emphasis on sex."

Locked Out: The Lack of Gender and Ethnic Diversity on Cable News Continues
During the recent controversy over former radio and television host Don Imus' remarks about the Rutgers women's basketball team, some cable-news viewers may have noticed something unusual: the presence of significantly more African-Americans… (W)hy do they provide such diversity only when issues of race are in the news cycle? Do cable-news producers view the guests added to the lineup during the Imus controversy as qualified to talk only about issues of race, and not other issues of national and political significance?

AP ran false headline on story reporting baseless GOP allegations against Pelosi
An Associated Press article bore the headline "GOP says water bill benefits Pelosi's husband's property," but the article itself reported that "Republicans are accusing House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of including a provision in a water redevelopment bill that could benefit property her husband owns in San Francisco" -- not alleging that it does benefit her husband's property. The article also noted that Republicans "offered no evidence of benefit to Paul Pelosi's real estate holdings" -- raising the question of why AP thought it merited publishing at all.

Wash. Post, NY Times, AP reported Boehner's new timeline for Iraq progress without noting his previous one
In their May 8 reports on the Iraq war funding debate, The Washington Post, the Associated Press, and The New York Times all cited House Minority Leader John Boehner's (R-OH) May 6 statement that members of Congress will want to see results from President Bush's troop increase by September or October, without noting that, in January, Boehner set a similar timeline regarding the war's progress -- for a period of time that has already passed. On the January 23 edition of CNN Newsroom, Boehner said of Bush's troop escalation plan: "I think it will be rather clear in the next 60 to 90 days as to whether this plan is going to work," adding that "we need to have close oversight, so that we just don't look up 60 or 90 days from now and realize that this plan is not working."

Technology & Science

Comcast CEO shows off super quick modem
LAS VEGAS - Comcast Corp. Chief Executive Brian Roberts dazzled a cable industry audience Tuesday, showing off for the first time in public new technology that enabled a data download speed of 150 megabits per second, or roughly 25 times faster than today's standard cable modems.

Yahoo personalizes online travel planning
SAN FRANCISCO (AFP) - Yahoo launched a new personalized version of its travel planning website on Wednesday that merges online community, bargain hunting, and Internet mapping technology.

Internet encyclopedia to list all 1.8 mln species
BONN, Germany (Reuters) - From apples to zebras, all 1.8 million known plant and animal species will be listed in an Internet-based "Encyclopedia of Life" under a $100 million project, scientists said on Tuesday.

Chimps Deserve Human Rights, Group Says
VIENNA, Austria (AP) - In some ways, Hiasl is like any other Viennese: He indulges a weakness for pastry, likes to paint and enjoys chilling out watching TV. But he doesn't care for coffee, and he isn't actually a person - at least not yet. In a case that could set a global legal precedent for granting basic rights to apes, animal rights advocates are seeking to get the 26-year-old male chimpanzee legally declared a "person.''

Environment

U.N. raises doubts on biofuels
ROME - Biofuels like ethanol can help reduce global warming and create jobs for the rural poor, but the benefits may be offset by serious environmental problems and increased food prices for the hungry, the U.N. said Tuesday in its first major report on bioenergy.

Former weed may fill world's fuel tanks
From China to Brazil, countries have begun setting aside tens of thousands of acres for the cultivation of jatropha a plant many experts say is the most promising source for biodiesel. At the same time, companies from Europe and India have begun buying up land throughout Africa to establish jatropha plantations.
Weeds for fuel, yes. Food for fuel, no. —Caro

Solar Boat Crosses Atlantic
BASEL, Switzerland - A Swiss-built solar vessel completed the first sun-powered crossing of the Atlantic Tuesday when it arrived at its final destination in New York, the group behind the project said.
Dubbed "sun21," the catamaran reached North Cove Marina after a journey of over 8,000 miles from Chipiona, Spain, to the Caribbean island of Martinique and then along the U.S. East Coast to New York.

Group Hails Bill on Everglades Cleanup
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) - Environmentalists are hailing a new bill to expand Everglades cleanup by extending the effort to the northern reaches of the ecosystem. A bill lawmakers sent last week to Gov. Charlie Crist doubles the amount of money going into Everglades cleanup, up to $200 million from the $100 million the program has received yearly since state and federal officials pledged in 2000 to try to reverse decades of pollution-caused problems in the River of Grass.
I am really liking this guy Charlie Crist. —Caro

For more headlines, visit MakeThemAccountable.com.