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TOP STORIES
Gates
wants war crimes trials moved to U.S.
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-gates30mar30,1,3058610.story?coll=la-headlines-nation
Defense Secretary
Robert Gates said Thursday that he has been pressing the Bush administration to
move war crimes trials of suspected terrorists from Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to courts in the U.S. because the military tribunals may appear tainted in the eye of the
international community. No matter how open the trials are under a new law,
Gates said they may not be deemed credible by the outside world because of
previous military practices at Guantanamo, which included interrogation
techniques that allowed physical coercion. "My own view is that because of
things that happened earlier at Guantanamo, there is a taint about it,"
Gates testified to a House Appropriations subcommittee. "I felt that no
matter how transparent, no matter how open the trials, if they took place at Guantanamo, in the international community they would lack credibility." Gates
repeated his support for closing the prison and has expressed concern before
that past abuses there have harmed America's reputation abroad. But his
comments come at an awkward time, with the trials resuming this week after a
year-long hiatus.
RELATED: Gates Signals Willingness to Close Prison
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/30/washington/30gitmo.html
More
Than 100 Killed in Baghdad, Nearby Town
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/29/AR2007032900385.html
Bombs tore through
crowds of after-work shoppers in Baghdad and a town north of the capital on
Thursday in an onslaught of violence that killed more than 100 people,
according to Iraqi government and hospital officials. Both areas -- a bazaar in
the eastern Baghdad neighborhood of Shaab and the farming town of Khalis in Diyala province -- are populated predominantly by Shiites, and Iraqi government
officials quickly blamed the Sunni insurgent group al-Qaeda in Iraq. The attacks followed two violent days of bombings and reprisal killings in the
northern city of Tall Afar and threatened to increase the likelihood of a
resurgence of open sectarian warfare despite the heightened U.S. military presence in Iraq.
RELATED: 132 Iraqis killed in wave of bombings
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-iraq30mar30,0,2857428.story?coll=la-home-headlines
RELATED: More Than 100
Are Killed in Iraq as a Wave of Sectarian Attacks Shows No Sign of Letting Up
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/30/world/middleeast/30iraq.html?ref=world
Panel
Asks Rove for Information on '08 Election Presentation
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/29/AR2007032901962.html
The House Oversight
and Government Reform Committee sought more information yesterday about a
presentation by a White House aide given to political appointees at the General
Services Administration that discussed targeting 20 Democratic congressional
candidates in the next election. In a letter to White House political affairs
director Karl Rove, the committee chairman, Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.),
asked about the Jan. 26 videoconference by Rove deputy J. Scott Jennings, which
was directed to the chief of the GSA and as many as 40 agency officials
stationed around the country.
Report
Faults Interior Appointee
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/29/AR2007032902003.html
A senior Bush
political appointee at the Interior Department has repeatedly altered
scientific field reports to minimize protections for imperiled species and
disclosed confidential information to private groups seeking to affect policy
decisions, the department's inspector general concluded. The investigator's
report on Julie A. MacDonald, deputy assistant secretary for fish and wildlife
and parks -- which was triggered by an anonymous complaint from a Fish and
Wildlife Service employee and expanded in October after a Washington Post
article about MacDonald -- said she frequently sought to reshape the agency's
scientific reports in an effort to ease the impact of agency decisions on
private landowners. Inspector General Earl E. Devaney referred the case to
Interior's top officials for "potential administrative action," according
to the document, which was reported yesterday in the New York Times.
Today’s complete national news
Colorado
65
Tornadoes Sweep Through Six States, Killing Four People
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/30/us/30tornado.html?ref=us
Four people were
killed in Colorado, Oklahoma and Texas after 65 tornadoes swept through six
states on Wednesday, officials said yesterday. Two people died when a tornado
swirled through their rural neighborhood near Elmwood, Okla., a state emergency
official, Dixie Parker, said. They were identified as Vance and Barbra
Woodbury, a husband and wife. The authorities spread into Beaver County on Wednesday, warning residents to take shelter and to offer assistance, Mrs. Parker
said. “There was no house left,” she said. “It was demolished, and we found
them in the field. One was still alive, the husband. He passed away just before
the ambulance got there.” The tornado appeared to have cut through their house,
as the closest neighbors had just uprooted trees, Mrs. Parker said. Tornadoes
also struck Illinois, Kansas and Nebraska, said Patrick Slattery of the
National Weather Service, with some regions pummeled by large hailstones and
heavy snowfall. “It was a big storm, a big system,” Mr. Slattery said. “The
majority of these were almost in a straight north-south line along the
Kansas-Nebraska border. The effects stretched from Colorado and Wyoming, with blowing snow.”
RELATED: A perfect storm for spawning tornadoes
http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/local/article/0,1299,DRMN_15_5453022,00.html
RELATED: Tornado
leaves heartache
http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/local/article/0,1299,DRMN_15_5453024,00.html
RELATED: Former Gov.
Romer praises resilience of his hometown
http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/local/article/0,1299,DRMN_15_5452855,00.html
RELATED: Hit hard in
past, Limon sending aid, water
http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/local/article/0,1299,DRMN_15_5452859,00.html
RELATED: Musgrave
calls for National Guard troops
http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/local/article/0,1299,DRMN_15_5450993,00.html
RELATED: Holly
tornado: total destruction
http://www.denverpost.com/newsheadlines/ci_5552519
RELATED: Tornado takes
the life of mom flung into tree
http://www.denverpost.com/newsheadlines/ci_5552520
RELATED: Stories of
survival amid rain of rubble
http://www.denverpost.com/newsheadlines/ci_5552736
RELATED: No warning
sounds
http://www.gazette.com/onset?id=20679&template=article.html
RELATED: Nature's
nightmare
http://pueblochieftain.com/metro/1175264942/1
RELATED: Townspeople
begin cleanup, tally blessings
http://pueblochieftain.com/metro/1175264942/4
RELATED: Governor
stunned by tornado's power, destruction
http://pueblochieftain.com/metro/1175264942/5
Immigration
reform sputters
http://www.denverpost.com/newsheadlines/ci_5552038
A renewed
congressional drive to pass immigration reform hit a roadblock Thursday when
lawmakers split along party lines on a White House proposal. Republicans either
defended the Bush administration's ideas or called them starting points for
discussion. Democrats said parts of the proposal were unworkable, including
high costs to apply for permanent residency, and a temporary-worker program
that would not allow workers to bring their families. Those party-line
differences came less than a day after a bipartisan group of senators, including
Colorado Democrat Ken Salazar, met to start work on a new immigration bill.
"I do not want a comprehensive immigration reform proposal that's not
going to be workable," Salazar said. "When we create conditions that
are so onerous, it won't solve the problem." The differences underscored
how controversial and difficult it still may be to pass legislation, even
though the Democratic- controlled Congress and the Bush administration want
immigration reform.
Groups
blast plan to purge voter rolls
http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/local/article/0,1299,DRMN_15_5452854,00.html
A plan to remove more
than 117,000 Denver voters from active voter files because they didn't cast
ballots in November or January is coming under fire. Four nonprofits are urging
the Denver Election Commission not to "scrub" voter files because
voters listed as "inactive" won't receive a ballot in the mail for
the May 1 municipal election. The groups are calling on the City Council to
pass an ordinance allowing the commission to use voter files that predate the
troubled November election. "Scrubbing the voter list based on a faulty
election has the potential of disenfranchising thousands of voters who may wish
to participate in upcoming elections, including the presidential election in
2008," the groups said Thursday. At a minimum, the groups said, the
commission should mail an additional notice to voters who are in "inactive"
status. "We are following the law," said Alton Dillard, spokesman for
the commission.
New
law protects hospital whistle-blowers
http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/government/article/0,2777,DRMN_23906_5452084,00.html
Gov. Bill Ritter took
action Thursday to make patient safety a top priority. As health-care workers
cheered and hooted during a Capitol ceremony, Ritter signed the Health Care
Worker Whistle-Blower Protection Bill and an executive order creating a task
force to study nurse staffing levels. After years of fierce battles between
hospitals and nurses over staff-to-patient ratios, Ritter praised all sides for
"sitting down and hammering out differences" to better serve
patients. "The common ground here: Providing the best possible health care
and consumer information to the people of Colorado, while also protecting the
interests of our health care workers and our hospitals," Ritter said. It
took five years to pass House Bill 1133. It provides whistle-blower protection
to nurses and other health-care workers who until now could be legally fired
for reporting patient-safety concerns, said Rep. Morgan Carroll, who sponsored
the bill with fellow Aurora Democrat Sen. Bob Hagedorn.
RELATED: Protecting health workers
http://www.denverpost.com/newsheadlines/ci_5552509
Today’s complete Colorado news
Today’s complete daily news: http://media.progressnowaction.org/digest/033007.htm
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