David Drake

A senior al-Qaeda leader in Afghanistan, Abu Laith al-Libi, has been killed, Western counter-terrorism officials have told the BBC.

News of his death emerged on a website used by Islamist groups. Ekhlaas.org said he had "fallen as a martyr".

There is speculation that he was killed by a US missile strike in the North Waziristan area of Pakistan this week.

A dozen militants were reported killed in the attack. US intelligence agencies said they were checking the reports.

[...]

Libi has appeared in a number of al-Qaeda videos. In November he appeared alongside al-Qaeda second-in-command Ayman al-Zawahri.

[...]

He is thought to be one of al-Qaeda's most senior field commanders in Afghanistan, and to have directed a number of recent suicide bomb attacks in the east of the country.

Pub patio heaters are set to be banned - because European MPs believe they are not environmentally friendly.

Smokers face being left in the cold and breweries with a bill for millions of pounds if the Euro MPs vote to ban the heaters.

They were today expected to back a resolution calling for a timetable to be drawn up for the heaters to be removed. The ruling could spell ruin for hundreds of pubs across the West Midlands and Staffordshire.

Wolverhampton-based Banks’s brewer Marston’s spent £20 million alone bringing in outdoor heaters and special patio areas outside pubs to counter the smoking ban which came into force last July.

The Euro MPs want to ban gas heaters.

Euro MPs are set to debate the possible banning of patio heaters.

The debate follows pressure from Friends Of The Earth to ban heaters which claims patio heaters have a direct impact on climate change, wasting energy and causing environmental damage.

Friends Of The Earth says estimates by the Energy Saving Trust point to a standard patio heater emitting heat output of 12.5 kilowatts produces 34.8kg of C02 before the fuel runs out after 13 hours.

It calculates this is the equivalent to the energy required to produce 5,200 cups of tea or 400 cups for every hour of operation

Lib Dem MEP Fiona Hall has compiled a report on energy efficiency which "urges the Commission to establish timetables for the withdrawal from the market of all the least energy-efficient items of equipment, appliances and other energy-using products, such as patio heaters".

Because of its low energy efficiency, the European Union is considering banning patio heaters across the 27-member bloc. The EU Parliament is expected to pass a resolution on Wednesday that will put in place minimum benchmarks for energy efficiency on appliances including air-conditioning units, television decoder boxes and light bulbs.

If the resolution is approved, it may also result to the abolition of stand-by functions on electrical appliances.

Rudy Giuliani told supporters he is abandoning his bid for president and backing Republican rival and longtime friend John McCain.

Rep. Peter King, a New York Republican and adviser to Giuliani, said the former mayor called him to tell him of his plan.

"I expect him to be fairly active for McCain. There is a real friendship and respect between the two," he said. A similar call took place between Giuliani and New York Senate Majority Leader Joe Bruno, the lawmaker said in a statement.

Once the Republican presidential front-runner, the former New York mayor suffered a debilitating defeat in Tuesday's Florida primary.

[...]

"I'm proud that we chose to stay positive and to run a campaign of ideas in an era of personal attacks, negative ads and cynical spin," Giuliani said as supporters with tight smiles crowded behind him. "You don't always win, but you can always try to do it right, and you did."

Democrat John Edwards has left the race for the White House - without backing any of his rivals - after failing to win a single party nomination contest.

Mr Edwards, 54, announced the end to his second White House bid on a visit to New Orleans.

Edwards told a crowd of Minnesota supporters last night that he'll continue to work for the poor and middle class if they go out and caucus for him next Tuesday. Edwards brought his populist message to a St. Paul union hall, hoping to convince enough Democrats in Minnesota to choose him over the other candidates in the race.

The National Weather Service has issued blizzard warnings for Iowa for this evening and wind chill advisories through Wednesday morning.

[...]

I-35 is closed as you enter the border of Minnesota from Iowa and is closed all the way north to Owatonna [and] that section of I-35 through Minnesota will remain closed until further notice.

Sen. Hillary Clinton, in an about-face, said on Friday she wants the Democratic Party delegates in two states that were barred by the national party to be reinstated and counted in the race to determine the party's U.S. presidential nominee.

In those states, Michigan and Florida, Clinton could stake claim to nearly all the delegates to the nominating convention in question -- more than 350.

She was the only candidate on the Democratic ballot in Michigan and holds a strong lead in Florida, which holds its contest on Tuesday.

The national party eliminated the delegates from Michigan and Florida because the states broke party rules by holding primary voting contests before February 5. But just four days before Florida's primary, Clinton said she wants the delegates reinstated.

"I know other campaigns have tried to downplay the significance of these two states," Clinton told reporters. "I think that is not a good strategy for Democrats or any of us who cares about the outcome of this election."

To become the Democratic nominee in the November election, a candidate must collect a majority of more than 2,000 delegates by competing in state contests around the nation.

Because Michigan and Florida violated the rules, all the major Democratic candidates pledged not to campaign there before their primaries.

Clinton said she did not think she was violating that agreement.

"I think it's important we send a message to the people of Michigan and Florida that Democrats care about their lives and their futures, and I will certainly do everything I can to be a good president for them," she said.

In Michigan, Clinton won the primary after the other major candidates pulled their names from the ballot. Polls show she holds a strong lead in Florida, where all the candidates are on the ballot.

A spokesman for her chief rival, Sen. Barack Obama, accused Clinton of changing course.

Just when it appeared that the identity of the Republicans’ presidential nominee would not be known for some time — perhaps not until the convention — the Democrats are the ones who may be headed for a brokered convention.

The Clintons are bracing for such a possibility. They hinted as much when they suggested, within moments of their 2:1 defeat in the South Carolina primary, that they might request that the convention seat delegates from Florida and Michigan, even though all candidates had agreed to abide by the national party’s decision not to. (This was supposed to have been the price these states were supposed to pay for advancing the dates of their primaries.)

The Clintons were clearly signaling to Barack Obama that, in the event he continues to accrue sufficient delegates necessary to deny Hillary a majority, they will seek to deny Obama the nomination with the votes of these phantom delegations, plus those of “super-delegates.” (The latter, of course, are party “big shots,” who are named to state delegations after the others have been selected by party voters.) All of a sudden, it is 1968 all over again, but with some ironic and delicious twists.

[Clinton] was seen as devoid of modest political courage, a blurrer of differences with the Republican opposition party and anything but the decisive transforming leader he promised to be was he to win the election.

He proceeded, instead, to take credit for developments with which he had very little to do with such as the economic growth propelled by the huge technology dot.com boom.

Bragging about millions of jobs his Administration created, he neglected to note that incomes stagnated for 80% of the workers in the country and ended in 2000, under the level of 1973, adjusted for inflation.

A brainy White House assistant to Mr. Clinton told me in 1997 that the only real achievement his boss could take credit for was passage of legislation allowing 12 weeks family leave, without pay.

There are changes both the Clinton Administration actively championed that further entrenched corporate power over our economy and government during the decade. He pushed through Congress the NAFTA and the World Trade Organization (WTO) agreements that represented the greatest surrender in our history of local, state and national sovereignty to an autocratic, secretive system of transnational governance. This system subordinated workers, consumers and the environment to the supremacy of globalized commerce.

That was just for starters. Between 1996 and 2000, he drove legislation through Congress that concentrated more power in the hands of giant agribusiness, large telecommunications companies and the biggest jackpot - opening the doors to gigantic mergers in the financial industry. The latter so-called "financial modernization law" sowed the permissive seeds for taking vast financial risks with other peoples' money (ie. pensioners and investors) that is now shaking the economy to recession.

The man who pulled off this demolition of regulatory experience from the lessons of the Great Depression was Clinton's Treasury Secretary, Robert Rubin, who went to work for Citigroup - the main pusher of this oligopolistic coup just before the bill passed and made himself $40 million for a few months of consulting in that same year.

Bill Clinton's presidential resume was full of favors for the rich and powerful. Corporate welfare subsidies, handouts and giveaways flourished, including subsidizing the Big Three Auto companies for a phony research partnership while indicating there would be no new fuel efficiency regulations while he was President.

His regulatory agencies were anesthetized. The veteran watchdog for Public Citizen of the Food and Drug Administration, Dr. Sidney Wolfe, said that safety was the worst under Clinton in his twenty nine years of oversight.

[...]

By reappointing avid Republican Alan Greenspan, chairman of the Federal Reserve, Mr. Clinton assured no attention would be paid to the visible precursors of what is now the sub-prime mortgage crisis.

[...]

To justify his invasion of Iraq, Bush regularly referred in 2002-2003 to Clinton's bombing of Iraq and making "regime change" explicit U.S. policy.

But it was Clinton's insistence on UN-backed economic sanctions in contrast to just military embargos, against Iraq, during his term in office. These sanctions on civilians, a task force of leading American physicians estimated, took half a million Iraqi childrens' lives.

[...]

It has always been all about him, Now he sees another admission ticket to the White House through his wife, Hillary Clinton.

[...]

It's small wonder that the editors of Fortune Magazine headlined an article last June with the title, "Who Business is Betting On?" Their answer, of course, was Hillary Clinton.

By Ofer Aderet

The German Green Party in Saxony and Hesse has an unusual poster for their municipal election campaign - an image of a cat that resembles Adolf Hitler with the tagline "you can't always recognize Nazis at first glance."

At the center of the elections, which took place Sunday, was a debate over the treatment of immigrants. The Green Party used the picture of the cat to condemn the extreme-right parties in Germany and their xenophobic policies.

The poster was released as public debate over the question of immigrants heated up following a series of violent attacks by young immigrants on older German citizens.

The use of the cat was bemoaned by the Web site www.catsthatlooklikehitler.com on the grounds that the Green Party used photo manipulation to produce their "Adolf Kitler" rather of one of the site's many authentic "Kitler" cats.

A judge revoked the $2 million bond Monday for indicted businessman Antoin "Tony" Rezko, who has raised thousands of dollars for Barack Obama and Illinois politicians.

U.S. District Judge Amy J. St. Eve said she grew concerned after learning Rezko received $3.5 million from a company in Lebanon; he had claimed that he had no income. St. Eve said she feared Rezko could be a flight risk.

Fully 54.3 percent of those responding said they would vote against seeking EU membership, while 34.6 percent said they would vote in favour of EU membership. Just over 11 percent said they were undecided.

The parts include screws, steel thread, plates, splints and other material that can be re-used to patch up broken bones or slipped hips.

'We're talking about relatively expensive material here and have therefore struck a deal with a Dutch company who collects the pieces after cremation,' said cemetery manager, Aksel Stigaard from Holstebro.

..the European Commission needs to take some leadership and set a timetable for all new buildings around Europe to be zero-carbon," said Philip Sellwood, chief executive of Britain's Energy Saving Trust (EST), an ENR member.

...liberal lion Edward Kennedy snubbed the Clintons and backed Barack Obama as the inspirational heir to his slain brother, John F. Kennedy.

In a stinging rebuff to Obama's White House rival Hillary Clinton, the Massachusetts senator said it was time for new leadership, with new ideas, to "turn the page on the old politics of misrepresentation and distortion."

"And in Barack Obama, I see not just the audacity, but the possibility of hope for the America that is yet to be," the 75-year-old patriarch of the tragedy-scarred clan told a raucous rally at Washington's American University.

"I know that he's ready to be president on day one. And when he raises his hand on Inauguration Day, at that very moment, we will lift the spirits of our nation and begin to restore America's standing in the world."

John Cina never asked for a new road in front of his hobby farm in Eagan (Minnesota), or for a new water and sewage extension. [Cina, a retired Minneapolis school teacher is] facing a $77,000 special tax assessment to pay for both services, which he insists he doesn't need [and brings him no benefit].

"The city wanted to build a road to Mary Jo Copeland's home (for children), so a road was built through my property [and] now we have a road leading to a dead end that serves their properties - and they haven't even built anything yet."[said Cina].

For St. Paul's last VFW hall, it's closing time.

On one recent afternoon, 84-year-old Gordon Kirk, commander of VFW Post 8854, was the only veteran in the place.

[...]

Minnesota is losing about six VFW posts a year and now has 268 - down by one-third from the peak.

The exceptions are VFW clubs that successfully recruit veterans of Vietnam and the Middle East conflicts, and the American Legion posts.

[...]

"The recent smoking ban hurt the [VFW] clubs, as did changing attitudes about drinking."

[...]

The closing of the last St. Paul VFW hall upsets Zenus Bell, who has volunteered to work in the post kitchen up to 20 hours a week for the past 10 years.

"There are some old men who come here, and this is all they have," said Bell, wiping a counter-top.

[Bell said], "These men deserve more. They get no grants, no nothing. They fight for their country and they have nothing?"

Landslide margins among black voters fueled Barack Obama to his win Saturday in South Carolina's Democratic presidential primary, allowing him to overcome the edge that Hillary Rodham Clinton and John Edwards had among whites.

[...]

Clinton and Edwards split the white vote about equally, with each getting nearly four in 10 of their votes and Obama getting about a quarter. Obama got more than a third of the white vote in the year's first contest in Iowa, where nearly all the voters were white — enough for him to win in that state.

Returns from 24% of the state's precincts showed Mr Obama winning 53%, Mrs Clinton on 27% and Mr Edwards on 19%.

Christian Brando, eldest son of the late actor Marlon Brando, has died in Los Angeles, aged 49.

He had reportedly been in a coma and on a ventilator, and died of complications arising from pneumonia.

"His body was totally compromised," said his former wife, Deborah. "He'd lived so hard."

After a few minor acting roles, he hit the headlines in 1990, when he shot dead his half-sister's boyfriend, for which he served five years in jail.

In 2005, he pleaded guilty to abusing his then-wife Deborah and was placed on probation, and ordered to undergo drug and alcohol rehabilitation.

Christian Brando also figured in the murder trial of Hollywood actor Robert Blake, whose wife was shot to death in 2001.

He invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination on the stand when a lawyer for Blake, who was eventually acquitted, suggested that Brando had been the killer.

[...]

But he will be best remembered for the 1990 death of Dag Drollet, boyfriend of his half-sister Cheyenne, at the Brando family's estate.

He said in court that he had accidentally shot Mr Drollet as they struggled for a gun during an argument over whether the boyfriend had beaten his pregnant girlfriend.

Pleading guilty to manslaughter, he spent five years in prison.

Cheyenne committed suicide in 1995 at the age of 25.

Marlon Brando, star of On The Waterfront and The Godfather, died in 2004 at the age of 80.

A day after Rep. Keith Ellison visited the Guantanamo Bay military prison, he said conditions there have become more humane than the harsh images of razor wire and guard dogs seen around the world.

[...]

Ellison, a Minneapolis Democrat, said Friday he was ''pleasantly surprised'' to find out that the 275 detainees had access to doctors, 5,000 calories a day and as much as 12 hours of daily recreation. He said conditions were comparable to Minnesota's maximum-security state prison in Oak Park Heights.

[...]

Ellison said [speaking at the University of Minnesota Law School] "[I] [d]idn't see those thumbscrews, didn't see blood on the floor, didn't see howling and screaming of people. What I did see is a whole lot of people who have no process to change the condition that they're in.'' (That's because they're terrorists or would-be terrorists, Keithy. - Drake)

The trip made Ellison reconsider his conviction that the prison should be closed.

[...]

''I was pleasantly surprised, favorably impressed with the conditions,'' he said.

In August a jury convicted Padilla, Hassoun and Jayyousi of aiding a US-based Al-Qaeda cell that supplied recruits and funding to Islamic extremists abroad, and conspiring to murder, kidnap and maim people in Afghanistan, Chechnya, Bosnia and other countries from 1993 to 2001.

[...]

The prosecutors said the former Chicago gang member and Muslim convert traveled abroad to train as a "jihad" fighter, and filled out, under an alias, an application to receive "violent jihad training" while in Afghanistan in July 2000.

US authorities justified his detention without charge saying he was an "enemy combatant" who allegedly planned to explode a radioactive bomb in the country.

With only a day left before Saturday’s S.C. Democratic presidential primary, the former U.S. senator from North Carolina and S.C. native is making a move, tracking polls suggest.

While still in third, Edwards’ poll numbers have been rising since Monday’s Myrtle Beach debate.

One new poll says Edwards is threatening U.S. Sen. Hillary Clinton of New York for second place in South Carolina. However, no poll finds him threatening the S.C. leader, U.S. Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois.

[...]

... a less favorable poll for Edwards — from McClatchy/MSNBC, released Thursday — showed Obama favored by 38 percent of S.C. voters, Clinton at 30 percent and Edwards at 19 percent. An Ebony/Jet magazine poll was similar. It has Obama at 37 percent, Clinton at 27 percent and Edwards at 15 percent.

[...]

According to the latest Reuters/C-SPAN/Zogby poll, Edwards has gained 4 percentage points since Wednesday and is the choice of 19 percent of likely voters. Obama maintains the S.C. lead at 39 percent but his lead is down 4 percentage points over Clinton from a day earlier.

[...]

Zogby poll also found Obama’s support among black voters has slipped by 9 points, to 56 percent. Edwards’ support among African-Americans, previously negligible, had risen to 5 percent.

[...]

Edwards also is up in a SurveyUSA Election Poll taken Tuesday and Wednesday.

He claimed 22 percent of the vote, up 7 percentage points from a week ago. Obama continued to lead at 45 percent, unchanged from last week, and Clinton tallied 29 percent, down 7 percentage points.

In Japan, vending machines distribute beer. In the future, public booths will aid in the act of suicide. And now, in Los Angeles, marijuana comes from an ATM.

The proper acronym is AVM, Anytime Vending Machine. L.A. is now home to two 24-hour pot AVMs, one on Melrose and another on La Cienega. But don't head for the 5 just yet. You're still required to jump through all the regulatory hoops -- the doc's OK, namely.

Starting on Monday, people who have medical conditions such as glaucoma, cancer, and the deadly not-stoned-enough virus can start getting their fat buds from special "AVMs."

These electronic drug dealers won't be out on the street next to a Pepsi machine, of course. No, they'll be "housed in standalone rooms, abutting two dispensaries and protected by round-the-clock security guards." To use them, you'll need to go with a prescription in hand, get fingerprinted and get a prepaid credit card that's loaded up with your dosage and what strain of weed you want. Yeah, no joke, the pharmacists in LA give you a choice between OG Kush and Granddaddy Purple.

"The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."

According to the Tenth Amendment, the federal government of the United States has the power to regulate only matters specifically delegated to it by the Constitution. Other powers are reserved to the States, or to the people. The Commerce Clause is one of those few powers specifically delegated to the federal government and thus its interpretation is very important in determining the scope of federal legislative power.

[...]

Most recently, the Commerce Clause was cited in the 2005 decision Gonzales v. Raich. In this case, a California woman sued the Drug Enforcement Administration after her medical marijuana crop was seized and destroyed by Federal agents. Medical marijuana was explicitly made legal under California state law by Proposition 215; however, marijuana is prohibited at the federal level by the Controlled Substances Act. Even though the woman grew the marijuana strictly for her own consumption and never sold any, the Supreme Court stated that growing one's own marijuana affects the interstate market of marijuana, citing the Wickard v. Filburn decision. It therefore ruled that this practice may be regulated by the federal government under the penumbra of the Commerce Clause.

In 1995, Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist delivered the opinion of the Court in United States v. Lopez (later clarified by United States v. Morrison). There, the Court ruled that Congress had the power to regulate only

* the channels of commerce,
* the instrumentalities of commerce, and
* action that substantially affects interstate commerce

Thus the federal government did not have the power to regulate relatively unrelated things such as the possession of firearms near schools, as in the Lopez case. This was the first time in 60 years, since the conflict with President Franklin Roosevelt in 1936-37, that the Court had overturned a putative regulation on interstate commerce because it exceeded Congress's commerce power. Justice Clarence Thomas, in a separate concurring opinion, argued that allowing Congress to regulate intrastate, noncommercial activity under the Commerce Clause would confer on Congress a general “police power” over the Nation.

The Court found in Seminole Tribe v. Florida, 517 U.S. 44 (1996) that, unlike the Fourteenth Amendment, the Commerce Clause does not give the federal government the power to abrogate the sovereign immunity of the states.

Many described the Rehnquist Court's commerce clause cases as a doctrine of "new federalism". The outer limits of that doctrine were delineated by Gonzales v. Raich (2005), in which Justices Scalia and Kennedy departed from their previous positions as parts of the Lopez and Morrison majorities to uphold a federal law regarding marijuana. The court found the federal law valid, although the marijuana in question had been grown and consumed within a single state, and had never entered interstate commerce.

CLEVELAND (AP) — Democrat Dennis Kucinich is abandoning his second, long-shot bid for the White House as he faces a tough fight to hold onto his other job — U.S. congressman.

In an interview with Cleveland's Plain Dealer, the six-term House member said he was quitting the race and would make a formal announcement on Friday.

"I will be announcing that I'm transiting out of the presidential campaign," Kucinich said. "I'm making that announcement tomorrow about a new direction."

Kucinich has received little support in his presidential bid; he got 1 percent of the vote in the New Hampshire primary and was shut out in the Iowa caucuses. He did have a devoted following.

Kucinich, 61, is facing four challengers in the Democratic congressional primary March 4, and earlier this week he made an urgent appeal on his Web site for funds for his re-election. Rival Joe Cimperman has been critical of Kucinich for focusing too much time outside of his district while campaigning for president.

[...]

Kucinich said he will not endorse another Democrat in the primary.

Kucinich made the announcement Wednesday at the kick-off of his campaign for a seventh term to represent the 10th Congressional District, which includes Cleveland.

[...]

...his second bid for the White House has drawn four opponents in the Congressional primary, he singled out just one: Cleveland Councilman Joe Cimperman.

Kucinich did not name him but referred to Cimperman, who's quickly raised $226,000 for his campaign, as a candidate representing corporate interests.

"Visualize millions of dollars pouring in to squash my efforts," Kucinich said. He also complained that Cimperman visited his home Wednesday morning.

As part of a campaign stunt promoted the night before, Cimperman delivered a "Welcome Home" basket containing sausages and maps of Cuyahoga County. Kucinich wasn't home, but his wife, Elizabeth, greeted Cimperman at the door. She refused to accept the basket from what she called "people who are wrapped up with Washington special interests."

Franken was at Carleton College, where the late Paul Wellstone was a professor, for a student rally related to a special election in state Senate District 25. After the rally, some students crowded around to take photos with the "Saturday Night Live" alum, author, satirist and celebrity.

[...]

Franken apparently had more fun than senior history major Peter Fritz.

According to Fritz, things started out fine with him taking photos of fellow Carls with Franken. Then Franken's curiosity was raised about why Fritz didn't want to be in a pic.

He's a conservative, another Carl yelled out by way of explanation.

At that point, Franken reportedly began peppering Fritz with questions about supporting President Bush and former President Ronald Reagan's tax increases. Fritz told me that he got tense and, as he does in those situations, started chewing the inside of his mouth, a gesture he said was mimicked by Franken; Fritz said he also thought that Franken mocked his style of speech.

An aide eventually interrupted Franken's act by announcing to the candidate that it was time to go.

Fritz told me Monday that he then stuck out his hand to shake Franken's. "Well, at least it's nice to meet you," the GOPer said he told Franken, who reportedly replied, I can't say the same.

There was no handshake, Fritz said.

[...]

Fritz [said] Wednesday that he was stunned by Franken's behavior: "I usually expect politicians to, at least, pretend as though, even in that kind of interaction, that they can convince me or have some kind of reasonable dialogue -- the whole Minnesota Nice thing, at least."

Fritz's version of the encounter was backed up by Pablo Kenney, prez of the Carleton Dems.