“Britain called Tuesday for the Bush administration to release five British residents held at Guantanamo Bay — a policy reversal that suggests new Prime Minister Gordon Brown is pursuing a tougher line with the U.S. than his predecessor.” During his time as Prime Minister, Tony Blair rarely intervened in Guantanamo cases.
“A federal judge yesterday rejected New York City’s efforts to prevent the release of nearly 2,000 pages of raw intelligence reports and other documents detailing the Police Department’s covert surveillance of protest groups and individual activists before the Republican National Convention in 2004.”
Four Republican presidential candidates have now agreed to participate in the CNN/YouTube debate. Former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani, who has “questioned the debate format, has made a number of public statements indicating he is open to participating.” Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney “appears less convinced.”
26: Number of U.S. troops killed in Iraq in the last week, beginning a “wave” of violence after a “relatively low death toll in July.”
The new law expanding the Bush administration’s spying powers “gives Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell and Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales responsibility for creating the broad procedures determining whose telephone calls and e-mails are collected. It also gives McConnell and Gonzales the role of assessing compliance with those procedures.”
“Iraq’s political crisis worsened Monday as five more ministers announced a boycott of Cabinet meetings leaving the embattled prime minister’s unity government with no members affiliated with Sunni political factions.”
Today in Singapore, Al Gore lambasted the misinformation campaign led by the world’s leading carbon polluters. “There has been an organized campaign, financed to the tune of about $10 million a year from some of the largest carbon polluters, to create the impression that there is disagreement in the scientific community,” said Gore. “In actuality, there is very little disagreement.”
And finally: “Imminent rail strikes may be threatening to bring Germany to a standstill,” but “one German train made an unscheduled halt for an entirely different reason — to replace a broken beer keg tap.” A special train ferrying soccer fans to Hamburg faced the “alarming prospect of a beer-less journey” and stopped a Wuppertal station. A “taxi rushed to fetch a replacement for the crucial instrument. Twenty-five minutes later, the new tap had arrived and the train could continue on its way.”
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