http://freeinternetpress.com Free Internet Press :: Uncensored News For Real People Newspaper en-us Copyright (c)2008, FreeInternetPress.com editor@freeinternetpress.com 60 http://freeinternetpress.com/freeinternetpress_sm.gif http://freeinternetpress.com 140 20 http://freeinternetpress.com/story.php?sid=16646 Hezbollah on Saturday began withdrawing gunmen from Beirut and handed control of the streets to the Lebanese army, after seizing much of the city in gun battles with supporters of the U.S.-backed government. Hezbollah, a political group backed by Iran and Syria with a guerrilla army, said it was ending its armed presence in Beirut after the army overturned government measures against the group. Hezbollah took over much of Beirut on Friday after fighters loyal to the group routed gunmen loyal to the anti-Damascus governing coalition. Four days of fighting which killed 37 people erupted after the government said it was taking action against Hezbollah's military communications network and sacked the head of security at Beirut airport, who is close to the group. http://freeinternetpress.com/story.php?sid=16646 http://freeinternetpress.com/story.php?sid=16645 While Myanmar's military regime Friday restricted the rush of international aid offered to help hungry and homeless cyclone survivors, the government was exporting tons of rice through its main port. Four of the five berths at the port of Thilawa for oceangoing container vessels were empty, but a crane was loading large white sacks into the hold of a freighter. The sacks were filled with rice destined for Bangladesh, said the drivers of at least 10 transport trucks waiting to deliver several tons more of rice to the docks. The regime has a monopoly on rice exports and said this week that it planned to meet commitments to sell rice, whose price has reached record highs on the world market, to countries such as Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, even though Myanmar's main rice-producing region suffered the worst damage from the cyclone, which hit a week ago. The storm caused massive destruction in the Irrawaddy River delta, where farmers are now desperate for food. As rice was loaded onto the freighter, people in nearby villages said authorities had handed out rations of rotting rice, apparently from ruined stocks in the port's massive warehouse. The storm soaked about 40% of the stored rice, worth millions of dollars, said the chief driver, who requested anonymity to avoid problems with government officials. http://freeinternetpress.com/story.php?sid=16645 http://freeinternetpress.com/story.php?sid=16644 Barack Obama all but erased Hillary Rodham Clinton's once-imposing lead among national convention superdelegates on Friday and won fresh labor backing as elements of the Democratic Party began coalescing around the Illinois senator for the fall campaign. Obama picked up the backing of nine superdelegates, including Rep. Donald Payne, of New Jersey, a member of the Congressional Black Caucus who had been a Clinton supporter. In addition, the American Federation of Government Employees announced its support for Obama. The union claims about 600,000 members who work in the federal and Washington, D.C., governments. Obama, who won a convincing victory in the North Carolina primary and lost Indiana narrowly on Tuesday, has been steadily gaining strength in the days since. http://freeinternetpress.com/story.php?sid=16644 http://freeinternetpress.com/story.php?sid=16643 There's a fight brewing around sandboxes nationwide. But the combatants don't wear Pull-Ups. Instead, they sport BlackBerrys and picket signs and talk of portfolios and payouts. The subject of the dispute is Bain Capital Partners' buyout of Bright Horizons Family Solutions, the largest provider of employer-sponsored child care in the nation and the Washington, D.C., region. Bright Horizons shareholders approved Bain's bid Wednesday. Parents wondering how the deal may affect them are getting two answers. The Service Employees International Union, which also protested the Carlyle Group's buyout of the Manor Care  nursing home chain, suspects Bain's acquisition of Bright Horizons will have a negative impact on the quality of the care the chain provides for more than 70,000 children. Recent buyouts in some industries have resulted in layoffs as the new owners streamlined operations. The union says Bright Horizons will be under pressure to cut costs because as part of the $1.3 billion deal, it will take on $850 million of debt. http://freeinternetpress.com/story.php?sid=16643 http://freeinternetpress.com/story.php?sid=16642 California's peregrine falcons, once driven to the edge of extinction by the pesticide DDT, now are contaminated with record-high levels of other toxic chemicals that may threaten them again. State scientists have found that peregrines in Long Beach, Los Angeles and San Francisco contain the highest levels of flame retardants found in any living organism worldwide. The findings parallel studies that have detected high concentrations of the chemicals, known as polybrominated diphenyl ethers, or PBDEs, in human breast milk, particularly in California women. The compounds, which mimic thyroid hormones and can damage developing nervous systems, have spread to wildlife and people worldwide, working their way up food webs. http://freeinternetpress.com/story.php?sid=16642 http://freeinternetpress.com/story.php?sid=16641 Zimbabwean opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai announced Saturday that he would soon return to his country to participate in a presidential runoff election despite a surge in political violence against his supporters. Tsvangirai called on southern African regional leaders to ensure that the campaign for the runoff, which has not yet been scheduled, be free of violence and overseen by a reformed electoral commission and international observers. He stopped short of saying that his participation depended on these conditions. "We will contest the runoff, and the people will finally prevail," Tsvangirai said at a news conference in Pretoria, the capital of South Africa, where he has been based for the past month. "The people have spoken before, and the people will speak again. I am ready, and the people are ready for the final round." The announcement reversed weeks of vows by the opposition to boycott any new election against President Robert Mugabe amid the worst state-sponsored political violence in Zimbabwe in many years. http://freeinternetpress.com/story.php?sid=16641 http://freeinternetpress.com/story.php?sid=16640 Undaunted by widespread skepticism, New Mexico's effort to build the world's first commercial spaceport is nearly on schedule to open in late 2010. Its intended prime tenant, Virgin Galactic, says the startup will also be ready for business by then, with more than 275 customers who have already paid $35 million total to book seats on spaceships that would launch from the high desert site and fly to the edge of space. Many hurdles remain - including environmental approvals and certifying the space-worthiness of Virgin Galactic's radical White Knight Two and SpaceShipTwo - but the project got a major boost last month when voters in a second New Mexico county approved a sales tax increase to help pay for the spaceport. New Mexico officials are gleeful that they were able to persuade residents of Sierra County, a large and sparsely populated area with an average age of 55, to vote 2 to 1 for the tax increase. "The space business is a very, very difficult one, and you never know what lies ahead," said Kelly O'Donnell, chair of New Mexico's Spaceport Authority, which was conceived in 1990. "But we're moving ahead just as we hoped." http://freeinternetpress.com/story.php?sid=16640 http://freeinternetpress.com/story.php?sid=16639 When Aashish Sharma graduated from law school two years ago, his father had visions of seeing him argue in an Indian court and eventually become an honorable judge. Instead, Sharma, 25, now sits all day in front of a computer in a plush, air-conditioned suburban office doing litigation research and drafting legal contracts for U.S. companies and law firms. He is part of a booming, new outsourcing industry in India that employs thousands of English-speaking lawyers such as him to do legal work at a small fraction of the cost of hiring American lawyers. "It is much better than going to court in India and dealing with all kinds of rough people. Working in legal outsourcing is a happy career move for me, although my father does not fully understand what I am doing here after my education in Indian law," said Sharma, who began working in February for an outsourcing company called Quatrro. "I am getting valuable exposure to the American judicial system, corporate law and their way of working." Legal process outsourcing is being called the next big thing in Indian business. It marks India's climb up the chain of outsourcing jobs - from low-end, back-office service functions in call centers to high-value, skilled legal work. http://freeinternetpress.com/story.php?sid=16639 http://freeinternetpress.com/story.php?sid=16638   The estimated population of the world will pass 6,666,666,666 today. No doubt an interesting number for people everywhere (not referring to any religion connotations). 5,555,555,555 was passed about 14 years ago.   You may not realize that only a 80 years ago, the population of the Earth was only around 2 billion. This shows how the population of the world has increased at an alarming rate in recent times. Although the growth rate is almost half what it was at its peak in 1963, when it was 2.2%. http://freeinternetpress.com/story.php?sid=16638 http://freeinternetpress.com/story.php?sid=16637 The Shiite Muslim militia Hezbollah handily took over much of the Lebanese capital today in a dramatic escalation of the movement's months-long confrontation with the government and its supporters, said security officials. Lebanon's security forces, which received more than $270 million in U.S. aid last year, mostly stood by as Hezbollah swept through West Beirut and pushed back fighters from a pro-government Sunni militia. The troops protected government buildings but avoided the clashes. At least 10 people had been killed, according to Lebanese security officials. The clashes followed days of intense fighting between Hezbollah and Sunni fighters loyal to the pro-government Future movement. The combat was sparked by a government decision Tuesday to outlaw Hezbollah's fiber-optic communications network and remove an ally as head of security at the country's sole international airport. http://freeinternetpress.com/story.php?sid=16637 http://freeinternetpress.com/story.php?sid=16636 A federal judge in New York intends next week to review one of the Bush administration's most controversial legal opinions related to detainee interrogations, to decide if it has appropriately been withheld from public view. U.S. District Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein, of the Southern District of New York, said in an order yesterday that on Monday he intends to review an Aug. 1, 2002, memo on specific CIA interrogation techniques, marking an unusual review outside the executive branch. The 2002 memo from the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel accompanied a broader document on the definition of torture that has already been released publicly and disavowed by the administration. The second, still-classified memo focuses on the specific interrogation techniques that were deemed legally permissible at the CIA, according to court documents and intelligence officials. The memo was authored by then-OLC deputy John C. Yoo and includes discussion of waterboarding, a type of simulated drowning that the CIA has acknowledged using on three al-Qaeda suspects in its custody, officials have said. http://freeinternetpress.com/story.php?sid=16636 http://freeinternetpress.com/story.php?sid=16635 The United Nations suspended relief supplies to Myanmar on Friday after the military government seized the food and equipment it had already sent into the country and turned away two aid workers but said it would resume the aid flights on Saturday. “All the food aid and equipment that we managed to get in has been confiscated,” said Paul Risley, of the U.N.'s World Food Program, in Bangkok. The program said it would send in two relief flights as planned on Saturday, while negotiations continued with the government about the distribution of supplies. Myanmar has only allowed a handful of flights in the last two days after blocking most international aid - including necessities like food, water, medicine and blankets and tents. http://freeinternetpress.com/story.php?sid=16635 http://freeinternetpress.com/story.php?sid=16634 Domestic demand for imports fell in March by the most since 2001, the latest indication that the economic slowdown has forced Americans to rein in their spending habits, the government reported on Friday. Americans shied away from buying imported automobiles, which fell 9.3 percent in March, and oil, which dropped 8.9 percent. It was the second consecutive month that crude oil imports had declined. Declines were reported in a variety of other consumer goods ranging from clothing to toys and furniture. At the same time, exports decreased for the first time in 12 months, a troubling sign for American businesses struggling with a pullback among domestic consumers. Foreign purchases have helped prop up the American economy amid the current slowdown. For the month, the Commerce Department reported, the trade deficit narrowed to $58.2 billion from a downwardly revised $61.7 billion in February. The 5.7 percent decrease was more than economists had expected. http://freeinternetpress.com/story.php?sid=16634 http://freeinternetpress.com/story.php?sid=16633 The United States and Russia have expelled five diplomats and military attaches from each other's countries in moves reminiscent of the tit-for-tat exchanges of the Cold War, U.S. officials said Thursday. The most recent expulsions, ordered by Russia on April 28, were of two American military attaches at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow. They were preceded by the expulsion of a Russian diplomat from Washington on April 22, the expulsion of a U.S. diplomat from Moscow on April 14 and the expulsion of a New York-based Russian diplomat on Nov. 6. The U.S. State Department said Russia's most recent action was "not justified" but that it would comply with the order. Spokesman Sean McCormack said the United States was treating them as separate incidents and that Washington considered the matter closed. "We're not making any particular connection between the expulsion of these two individuals and any previous steps that we might have taken," said McCormack. "As far as we're concerned, we don't intend to take any further actions." http://freeinternetpress.com/story.php?sid=16633 http://freeinternetpress.com/story.php?sid=16632 Sen. John McCain championed legislation that will let an Arizona rancher trade remote grassland and ponderosa pine forest here for acres of valuable federally owned property that is ready for development, a land swap that now stands to directly benefit one of his top presidential campaign fundraisers. Initially reluctant to support the swap, the Arizona Republican became a key figure in pushing the deal through Congress after the rancher and his partners hired lobbyists that included McCain's 1992 Senate campaign manager, two of his former Senate staff members (one of whom has returned as his chief of staff), and an Arizona insider who was a major McCain donor and is now bundling campaign checks. When McCain's legislation passed in November 2005, the ranch owner gave the job of building as many as 12,000 homes to SunCor Development, a firm in Tempe, Arizona, run by Steven A. Betts, a longtime McCain supporter who has raised more than $100,000 for the presumptive Republican nominee. Betts said he and McCain never discussed the deal. The Audubon Society described the exchange as the largest in Arizona history. The swap involved more than 55,000 acres of land in all, including rare expanses of desert woodland and pronghorn antelope habitat. The deal had support from many local officials and the Arizona Republic newspaper for its expansion of the Prescott National Forest; but it brought an outcry from some Arizona environmentalists when it was proposed in 2002, partly because it went through Congress rather than a process that allowed more citizen input. http://freeinternetpress.com/story.php?sid=16632 http://freeinternetpress.com/story.php?sid=16631 He has made millions as a title insurance executive, landlord and real estate developer in this college town, where the economy, despite trouble nationwide, is still growing nicely. Now, as a United States senator, with the mortgage mess fueling a national economic slowdown, Richard C. Shelby has more say over the revamping of housing finance laws than almost anyone else in Congress. Shelby, 74, does not run a key Congressional committee. Instead, as the ranking Republican on the Senate Banking Committee, he is using his clout and the Democrats’ slim majority in the Senate to help determine what gets in, or almost as important, what is left out, of legislation. He will soon play a major role in deciding the fate of one such bill, to help struggling homeowners, that the House passed, 266 to 154, on Thursday. Over the years, his critics say, Shelby’s ties to the mortgage industry and the Alabama real estate market, and the generous campaign donations he receives from financial services companies, have distorted his perspective and led him to delay critical legislative remedies. Indeed, Shelby’s legislative and business worlds have often intersected. For instance, while on the Banking Committee, he financed an apartment complex he owns in Tuscaloosa with a $5 million loan from Freddie Mac, the same government-sponsored mortgage company whose regulation his committee is reshaping. http://freeinternetpress.com/story.php?sid=16631 http://freeinternetpress.com/story.php?sid=16630 Counterfeit products are a routine threat for the electronics industry. However, the more sinister specter of an electronic Trojan horse, lurking in the circuitry of a computer or a network router and allowing attackers clandestine access or control, was raised again recently by the F.B.I. and the Pentagon. The new law enforcement and national security concerns were prompted by Operation Cisco Raider, which has led to 15 criminal cases involving counterfeit products bought in part by military agencies, military contractors and electric power companies in the United States. Over the two-year operation, 36 search warrants have been executed, resulting in the discovery of 3,500 counterfeit Cisco network components with an estimated retail value of more than $3.5 million, the F.B.I. said in a statement. The F.B.I. is still not certain whether the ring’s actions were for profit or part of a state-sponsored intelligence effort. The potential threat, according to the F.B.I. agents who gave a briefing at the Office of Management and Budget on Jan. 11, includes the remote jamming of supposedly secure computer networks and gaining access to supposedly highly secure systems. Contents of the briefing were contained in a PowerPoint presentation leaked to a Web site, Above Top Secret. A Cisco spokesman said that the company had investigated the counterfeit gear seized by law enforcement agencies and had not found any secret back door. http://freeinternetpress.com/story.php?sid=16630 http://freeinternetpress.com/story.php?sid=16629 The fortunes of American International Group (A.I.G.), one of the world’s biggest insurance companies, rise and fall on precise calculations of risk. Last quarter, those calculations went seriously awry. In the worst three months of the company’s 89-year history, A.I.G. lost $7.81 billion, primarily from bad investments in complex financial instruments. The loss of $3.09 a share, reported after the market’s close Thursday, was four times worse than Wall Street analysts had expected. The venerable insurer now joins the ranks of other industry giants that have suffered huge losses because of the recent tumult in the financial markets. This is the first time A.I.G. has lost money in two consecutive quarters. To shore up its finances, the company will seek to raise $12.5 billion by selling new stock and fixed-income securities. Despite the painful quarter, the company plans to raise its dividend by 10 percent - half its usual increase - which will cost an additional $202 million on an annualized basis. Shares of the company closed at $44.15, down 93 cents, or 2 percent. In after-hours trading, A.I.G. shares fell another 7 percent, and the ratings agencies Standard & Poor’s and Fitch lowered the company’s credit ratings. http://freeinternetpress.com/story.php?sid=16629 http://freeinternetpress.com/story.php?sid=16628 Nevada health officials said Thursday that they had identified 77 new cases of hepatitis C among patients treated at a Las Vegas endoscopy practice, in one of the country’s largest outbreaks of the liver disease.  The officials had previously identified seven cases of the disease linked to the gastroenterology practice, one of the largest in southern Nevada, and a single case in one of the practice’s sister clinics. The infections were caused, they said, by the reuse of anesthesia syringes among multiple patients. The practice had not received a full inspection since 2001, although state policies dictate that ambulatory surgical centers be reviewed every three years. The licensing agency has blamed the delay on insufficient financing for inspectors. “This is a very large outbreak and a very serious illness,” said Brian Labus, the senior epidemiologist for the Southern Nevada Health District. http://freeinternetpress.com/story.php?sid=16628 http://freeinternetpress.com/story.php?sid=16627 So long, salmon. Steve Wilson is refitting his 51-foot troller to fish for the future. No longer will he cast for the conflicted symbol of Northwest abundance and bitterness. No more fishing for a myth. His new pursuit? “Prawns,” said Wilson, nearly bursting out laughing because, here in Salmon Nation, he could not quite believe things had come to this. “It’s what you call a ‘developmental fishery.’ We don’t know if we’ll make any money in it, but we figured we could either go broke sitting still or we could go broke working.” With most of Oregon and California's commercial salmon fishery shut down because of sharp declines in the number of the fish returning to the Sacramento River to spawn, Wilson and many other fishermen are looking for almost any alternative, trying to diversify along with the rest of the regional economy. In some cases, they are investing money they received from the federal government because of a partial shutdown of salmon fishing in 2006. This year, the governors of the three West Coast states, citing what they say will be a $290 million economic loss, have asked Congress to again provide disaster relief. http://freeinternetpress.com/story.php?sid=16627 http://freeinternetpress.com/story.php?sid=16626 When the Pentagon announced in March that Maj. Gen. Jay W. Hood would become the senior American officer based in Pakistan, it reflected the military’s aim to put a crisis-tested veteran in a critical job at a pivotal time in the fight against al-Qaeda and the Taliban in Pakistan’s tribal areas. Nearly two months later, the military has quietly canceled the assignment of General Hood, a 33-year Army veteran who was excoriated in the Pakistani news media for one of his previous jobs: commander of the United States prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. During General Hood’s command from 2004 to 2006, military authorities force-fed with tubes detainees who were engaging in hunger strikes at the Guantanamo prison, a step they justified as necessary to prevent the prisoners from committing suicide to protest their indefinite confinement. Also during General Hood’s tenure, reports that an American guard may have desecrated a Koran stirred wide protests in the Islamic world. The decision to withdraw General Hood’s assignment has not been announced, but it appears to reflect the widening shadow that the military prison at Guantanamo is casting over American foreign policy. While the United States considers Pakistan a close ally in its counterterrorism efforts, the accounts by Pakistanis who have returned to Pakistan after being held at Guantanamo Bay have added to anti-American sentiment in the country. http://freeinternetpress.com/story.php?sid=16626 http://freeinternetpress.com/story.php?sid=16625 Faced with a national outcry over the high price of gasoline and soaring profits for energy companies, the oil and gas industry is waging an unusually pricey campaign to burnish its image. The American Petroleum Institute (API), the industry's main lobby, has embarked on a multiyear, multimedia, multimillion-dollar campaign, which includes advertising in the nation's largest newspapers, news conferences in many state capitals and trips for bloggers out to drilling platforms at sea. The intended audience is elected officials and the public, with an emphasis on the latter. The industry is trying to convince voters - who, in turn, will make the case to their members of Congress - that rising energy prices are not the producers' fault and that government efforts to punish the industry, especially with higher taxes, would only make pricing problems worse. "We decided that if we didn't do something to help people understand the basics of our industry, we'd be on the losing end as far as the eye could see," said Red Cavaney, the institute's president. http://freeinternetpress.com/story.php?sid=16625 http://freeinternetpress.com/story.php?sid=16624 Oil rose to a fresh record near $125 a barrel on Friday, as a strong performance over the last week and a surge in heating oil futures convinced investment funds to push prices higher. Funds were keen to shift their money into the oil market after seeing U.S. crude rise about 13 percent since the start of the month. U.S. crude for June delivery rose as far as $124.70, surpassing the previous record of $124.61 hit on Thursday. By 1:25 a.m. EDT (0525 GMT), the June crude contract was $124.55 a barrel on the Globex electronic trading platform, up 86 cents, or 0.7 percent. http://freeinternetpress.com/story.php?sid=16624 http://freeinternetpress.com/story.php?sid=16623 Intellpuke: This commentary was written by Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank and appeared in the Washington Post edition for Friday, May 9, 2008. It was already shaping up to be a difficult year for congressional Republicans. Now, on the cusp of Mother's Day, comes this: A majority of the House Republicans have voted against motherhood. On Wednesday afternoon, the House had just voted, 412 to 0, to pass H. Res. 1113, "Celebrating the role of mothers in the United States and supporting the goals and ideals of Mother's Day," when Rep. Todd Tiahrt (R-Kansas), rose in protest. "Mr. Speaker, I move to reconsider the vote," he announced. Rep. Kathy Castor (D-Florida), who has two young daughters, moved to table Tiahrt's request, setting up a re-vote. This time, 178 Republicans cast their votes against mothers. http://freeinternetpress.com/story.php?sid=16623 http://freeinternetpress.com/story.php?sid=16622 Did Senator John McCain not vote for George W. Bush in 2000? That question has kicked up a minor ruckus in political circles this week as Arianna Huffington and the McCain campaign have traded he-said, she-said barbs. On her Huffington Post Web site on Monday, Ms. Huffington, the liberal blogger, said she had heard McCain say at a Los Angeles dinner party shortly after the 2000 election that he had not voted for the president he has now publicly embraced in his own quest for the White House. The McCain campaign swiftly quashed the account and said Ms. Huffington had a book to promote and would make anything up. http://freeinternetpress.com/story.php?sid=16622 http://freeinternetpress.com/story.php?sid=16621 Who can forget the classic line uttered by Commodore Perry during the War of 1812's Battle of Lake Erie: "We have met the enemy and they are ours!" Perry, then age 28, kicked serious British naval butt in that decisive victory. Nearly two centuries later, the famed comic strip creator Walt Kelly twisted that line for the benefit of his seminal character, the possum Pogo. On an Earth Day poster in 1971, Pogo, looking at a polluted stream proclaimed, "We have met the enemy and he is us!" The same line was also used in a cartoon to lampoon the Nixon Administration, so the creator's use was to point a critical finger at things government, in Kelly's opinion, was doing wrong. You, dear Reader, are probably asking, Why are we going through this lesson? Because of headlines like the ones found in many IT publications this week: Feds look to local law enforcement to help stop terrorists. Gee, what a revelation! Let me tell you a story about what happened here in Florida that had direct bearing on 9/11, could have even stopped 9/11, and still is not taken as seriously as it should. http://freeinternetpress.com/story.php?sid=16621 http://freeinternetpress.com/story.php?sid=16620 As talk swirled this morning over when Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton should end her quest for the Democratic presidential nomination, her campaign chairman predicted the party would have a presumptive nominee in June and, if it's not Clinton, she would campaign for Sen. Barack Obama. The comments by Terry McAuliffe seemed aimed at persuading superdelegates and Democratic Party leaders that Clinton would not hurt party unity by pressing her campaign through the final June 3 primaries in Montana and South Dakota. "She can win the states we need to win in the general election," McAuliffe said on NBC's "Today" show. "Until there is a nominee with the number of necessary delegates, why should she get out?" Here in Charleston, West Virginia, Clinton told several hundred supporters in the marble-lined dome of the state Capitol that pressure is growing from party leaders and pundits for her to drop out of the race. "Some folks say, 'You've got end this before you get to West Virginia'," she said. "I think we want to keep this going so the people of West Virginia's voices are heard." http://freeinternetpress.com/story.php?sid=16620 http://freeinternetpress.com/story.php?sid=16619 The leader of Hezbollah said Thursday that the pro-West government had declared war on his Shiite group by outlawing the militants' telecommunications network as a second day of fighting erupted between Sunni and Shiite gunmen in religiously mixed areas of the country. Explosions and ferocious bursts of gunfire shook central Beirut as rival groups fired weapons at each other after the televised speech by Hassan Nasrallah, the Hezbollah chief. There were no confirmed reports of casualties in the capital, though one woman injured in an overnight clash west of the capital died. Panicked civilians scurried for cover or stocked up on basic supplies. Opposition gunmen blocked roads to the country's sole international airport while government supporters blocked the main highway to Damascus, the capital of Syria. Nasrallah, head of Lebanon's Iranian and Syrian-backed opposition, warned that the Lebanese cabinet's decision to declare the group's secret fiber-optic network illegal put the government squarely in the camp of Hezbollah's enemies, Israel and the United States, which consider the Shiite militia and political party a terrorist organization. http://freeinternetpress.com/story.php?sid=16619 http://freeinternetpress.com/story.php?sid=16618 Stoned on speed, Elvis Presley arrived at the White House wearing a purple velvet suit and bearing gifts for President Richard Nixon - a Colt .45 pistol and some silver bullets. It was Dec. 21, 1970, and Elvis had a mission: He wanted Nixon to give him a federal narcotics agent's badge so he could carry dope and guns wherever he went. Nixon didn't give Elvis the badge, but he did pose for pictures with the King of Rock-and-Roll. Nineteen years later, newspapers reported that the Elvis-Nixon photos were the most requested pictures in the federal government's vast photo collection, and Tom Blanton responded the same way he responds to so many other interesting news stories: He filed a Freedom of Information Act request. "When the president meets with anybody, there's a whole paper trail, so we filed a FOIA request and got the entire file released," says Blanton, who is the director of the National Security Archive, a private research group devoted to prying documents out of the federal government's files and making them public. http://freeinternetpress.com/story.php?sid=16618 http://freeinternetpress.com/story.php?sid=16617 Gunmen killed the head of Mexico's federal police force early Thursday in a brazen hit against the man who had become the public face of the country's war on drug cartels. Edgar Eusebio Millan Gomez was shot as he was entering his apartment building in the Colonia Guerrero neighborhood, a poor section of Mexico City that associates say he chose because it was close to law enforcement offices. The killing of such a high-ranking official in Mexico's capital - a veteran officer protected round-the-clock by bodyguards - seemed to suggest that almost no one is immune from the violence that has swept Mexico in recent months. Millan Gomez was hit by at least nine bullets and died at the hospital, said a police spokesman. One suspect was arrested and was being questioned by police. http://freeinternetpress.com/story.php?sid=16617