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Obama releases earmark requests

WASHINGTON (CNN) — Sen. Barack Obama made public his requests for so-called earmarks Thursday, hours after Sen. John McCain challenged him and Sen. Hillary Clinton on the spending measures.

The Senate is expected to vote Thursday on a measure to ban congressional earmarks for one year.

Earmarks are pet projects added onto often unrelated government spending bills.

McCain earlier urged his Democratic rivals to reveal the earmarks they’ve asked for and turn back the money that hasn’t been spent yet.

The Obama camp then joined McCain in calling for Clinton to release her requests.

The Clinton campaign was asked about earmarks on a press call Thursday afternoon before Obama released his requests.

The campaign deferred questioning to Clinton’s Senate office. CNN is awaiting a response.

McCain, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, and the Democratic candidates are all interrupting their campaign schedules to make Thursday’s vote.

The three White House hopefuls support the moratorium, even though key senators on both sides oppose it and aides predict it will fail. Watch the battle over the earmark ban

McCain, who has refused to request spending for projects in his home state of Arizona, has long been a vocal critic of earmarks.

Clinton and Obama announced this week they favor the ban, despite their own use of earmarks.

McCain said the Democratic presidential candidates are late to the anti-earmarks position, saying both have requested earmarks using taxpayer dollars that are absolutely outrageously wasted. Watch what McCain says about their earmarks

I think they should ask that those earmarks that they asked for and obtained — the money that hasn’t been spent yet — ask them to turn that money back to the Treasury, McCain said.

Obama’s press office questioned why Clinton has not released her earmarks, saying If Sen. Clinton will not agree to join Sen. Obama in releasing her earmark requests, voters should ask why she doesn’t believe they have the right to know [how] she wants to spend their tax dollars.

Clinton grabbed $342 million worth of earmarks last year, ranking her 10th highest on the list of senators, according to the budget watchdog group Taxpayers for Common Sense.

The senator is proud of the investments in New York she has secured, according to her spokesman Philippe Reines. But she believes the one-year ban will allow a hard look at how more sunlight and transparency can be brought to this process, Reines added.

Obama in fiscal year 2008 secured $98 million in funding for Illinois projects, according to the Taxpayers for Common Sense.

According to information released Thursday by the Obama camp, the Illinois senator had 138 earmark requests for the 2007 fiscal year.

His total requested funding was about $330 million. His average request was about $2.4 million, with the largest request being $62 million intended to modify a Boeing 747 aircraft to capture infrared images of the earth.

Clinton’s total earmark requests from fiscal year 2007 have not yet been released.

In a statement this week, Obama complained that earmarks are doled out based on a lawmaker’s seniority, not the merit of a project, and that many of the projects fail to address the real needs of our country.

Earmark opponents pushed for the ban after watching Congress approve an increasing number of special projects in recent years.

Last year, Congress approved 12,884 earmarks. While the budget watchdog group said that figure is down from an all-time high in 2005, it still represents more than $18 billion in spending.

Opponents of earmarks argue that special projects not only waste money but also can lead to corruption, pointing to former Rep. Randy Duke Cunningham, R-California. Now imprisoned, Cunningham received bribes in return for earmarks related to defense contracts.

Defenders of earmarks, such as Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nevada, say earmarks — or congressionally directed spending as they prefer to call them — are an important congressional prerogative that ensure home-state needs aren’t overlooked by Washington bureaucrats. Reid also has blamed Republicans for the explosion of earmarks when they controlled Congress.

He said Democrats went a long way in correcting the system with a bill last year that required lawmakers to put their name on the earmarks they request and to promise they have no financial stake in the projects.

The earmark ban, offered by Sen. Jim DeMint, R-South Carolina, will be voted on as an amendment to the 2009 budget resolution.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-California, is weighing a similar proposal and is expected to announce this week whether the House of Representatives also will institute a one-year ban.
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Kidnapped archbishop found dead in Iraq

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) — A Christian archbishop kidnapped in northern Iraq last month has been found dead, according to a Nineveh province official.

Chaldean Catholic Archbishop Paul Faraj Rahho’s body was found Thursday near the town of Mosul, where he and three companions were ambushed by gunmen on February 29.

The archbishop’s driver and two security guards were killed during the attack. Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki had ordered security services to make it a priority to find and free the archbishop.

Nineveh Deputy Gov. Khasro Goran, in Mosul, told CNN that the kidnappers had been in touch with the church and the relatives and wanted to be a paid a ransom for the archbishop’s release. The contacts ended a few days ago. Watch site where archbishop was kidnapped

The apparent kidnappers had contacted relatives on Thursday and told them the body was in the eastern part of town. Relatives and authorities went to the location and found the body, which had gunshot wounds.

The kidnapping had been condemned by the Vatican, Jordan’s Prince Hassan, and the United Nations, among others. The archbishop was abducted during a push by Iraqi and U.S. troops against al Qaeda in Iraq insurgents in Mosul.

Christians are a tiny fraction of Iraq’s population, but insurgents have targeted their religious sites and leaders in recent years.

Chaldean is a form of Aramaic, spoken at the time of Jesus. The Chaldeans converted to Christianity in the first century A.D., and the Chaldean branch of Christianity has been in Iraq since then. It is part of the Roman Catholic Church.

In Baghdad on Thursday, at least 15 people died and 65 others were wounded when a parked car bomb detonated in a busy commercial area, the Interior Ministry said. Watch wreckage from Baghdad car bomb

The bomb went off in a parking lot in the Bab al-Shurj commercial area, where many DVD and CD stores sell PC games and movies.

Also Thursday, a correspondent for al-Mowaten (The Citizen), a Baghdad newspaper, was killed in a drive-by shooting, an official with the Ministry of Interior told CNN.

The official said the correspondent, Qassim Abdul-Hussein al-Iqabi, was driving in the Karrada district in central Baghdad when he was killed.

A soldier was killed and 10 people were injured near Kirkuk when a suicide car bomb struck an Iraqi army checkpoint in the town of Rashad, a Kirkuk police official told CNN.

Another two people were killed and seven wounded when a bomb exploded at the office of a local anti-insurgent group in Zab, 60 kilometers (37 miles) southwest of Kirkuk.

Six of those wounded were members of the Awakening Council. Such groups are predominantly Sunni and oppose al Qaeda in Iraq. They are backed by the United States.

U.S. troops killed an Iraqi girl when they fired a warning shot near a woman who they thought was acting suspiciously along a dangerous stretch of road north of Baghdad, the military said Thursday.

The troops were clearing out roadside bombs in an area of Diyala province that has been the site of several attacks in the past, Maj. Brad Leighton told CNN.

They noticed a woman who appeared to be signaling to someone while the soldiers were in the area, the military said.

The soldiers fired a warning shot into a berm. Later, they found a young girl, about 10 years old, behind the berm with a bullet wound, Leighton said.

The girl died en route to a medical facility.

Iraq has seen an escalation in suicide bombings involving women. But, said Leighton, they [U.S. soldiers] appeared to be more concerned that the woman was signaling to someone with IEDs [roadside bombs] near the road.

On Monday, three U.S. troops and an interpreter were killed in a roadside bombing in eastern Diyala province.

American troops have been hunting down and fighting militants in the area for months.

Five other U.S. soldiers were killed that day in a Baghdad suicide attack, and Iraqi authorities arrested four suspects in the capital Wednesday they believe were involved, according to the U.S. military.

Our resolve to protect the Iraqi people and to bring these murderers to justice is unwavering, Col. Allen Batschelet, the chief of staff for the U.S.-led coalition’s Baghdad division, said in a written statement.

Another three Americans were wounded in Monday’s bombing in Baghdad’s upscale Mansour district. It was the deadliest attack on U.S. troops in the capital since June 28.

U.S. troop deaths in Iraq have declined since last summer, but insurgent attacks resulting in multiple fatalities have flared up from time to time.

Maj. Mark Cheadle, a U.S. military spokesman, told CNN that the decrease in attacks has given authorities more time to investigate who is responsible for the attacks.

We have apprehended suspects in a greater number of instances than we make known because often their capture leads us to other high profile suspects, Cheadle said. Part of the reason why we released the news of the suspects’ detention in this incident was because this was a particularly horrific attack.

He credited Iraqi police for the arrests, along with Iraqi citizens who are sick of this violence and want to see an end to it.
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Chad: Rebels crossing from Sudan

ABECHE, Chad (CNN) — The government of Chad issued a communique Thursday that said rebels from Sudan had crossed into Chad.

The communique, sent out from the capital N’Djamena, does not offer any other details. Chad is still recovering from a failed attempt last month by rebels to overthrow President Idriss Deby’s regime.

The fighting forced thousands to flee the capital, most of them going to the Cameroonian city of Kousseri, just across the river from N’Djamena.

President Idiss Deby was in Dakar, Senegal, to sign a peace treaty with his Sudanese counterpart Omar Hassan al-Bashir. But al-Bashir failed to attend their meeting on Wednesday because he reportedly had a headache, news media reported.

The recent tensions between Chad’s government and rebels is seen as a proxy war over Darfur.

Sudan’s government believes Chad is backing rebels in the volatile Sudanese region of Darfur where more than 200,000 people have died since 2003 and 2.5 million people have been forced into refugee camps.

Chad’s government believes Sudan is supporting the rebels that moved on the capital of N’Djamena in Ferbruary.

Chad is no stranger to civil wars and invasions since its 1960 independence from France. Deby seized power in a rebel uprising in 1990, and the latest assault on N’Djamena follows a failed rebellion in 2006.

In May that year, rebels got within a mile of N’Djamena before government forces halted them, reportedly with the help of French troops garrisoned there; Deby, denied such aid. His government later gave a top ministerial post to a leader of the rebels

The recent discovery of oil has only stepped up power struggles in the largely desert country.
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Southwest grounds 44 planes

(CNN) — Southwest Airlines was inspecting 44 planes Wednesday after an ambiguity related to required testing was found during a review of records, the airline said.

Earlier this week, Southwest placed three employees on administrative leave and began conducting an internal investigation into the allegations that it flew planes without proper inspections.

The House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, which initiated an investigation months ago, issued a statement on Southwest’s decision.

This action by Southwest Airlines raises serious questions about whether [the Federal Aviation Administration] adequately followed up on the discovery a year ago that Southwest had failed to make required inspections, the statement said.

The FAA should have immediately undertaken a review of the airline’s records.

Had such a review been conducted, FAA would have found or prevented the ‘ambiguity’ in Southwest’s maintenance, which Southwest has discovered after its own review of its records this week, the committee statement said.

The 44 planes included five that were already out of service for scheduled maintenance checks plus one that was already retired, the company said in a news release Wednesday afternoon. Watch what’s to be expected

Taking the other 38 planes out of service for inspection resulted in the cancellation of approximately 4 percent of today’s Southwest flights, the release said.

Due to good weather conditions, the decision caused minimal schedule disruptions and the airline is running more than 90 percent on time, it said.

By midafternoon, it said, a portion of the aircraft have been inspected, cleared, and returned to service. The airline expects to have all of these aircraft inspected by early this evening.

It said other such service interruptions could occur in coming days because of the ongoing internal review of Southwest’s maintenance programs, policies, and procedures.

Linda Rutherford, another Southwest spokeswoman, said the inspections take 90 minutes.

Southwest Airlines CEO Gary Kelly said in a statement released Tuesday: Upon learning last month of an investigation with respect to our handling of this inspection and an airworthiness directive, I immediately ordered an independent and comprehensive investigation by outside counsel.

Southwest did not say whether the inspections were of the plane’s fuselages or rudders, both of which were mentioned in a CNN exclusive investigation released last week.

According to detailed congressional documents obtained by CNN, Southwest Airlines flew some planes in violation of mandatory safety checks.

Last week the Federal Aviation Administration initiated actions to seek a $10.2 million civil penalty against the airline for allegedly operating 46 airplanes without conducting mandatory checks for fuselage cracking.

The amount of the proposed penalty reflects the serious nature of those deliberate violations, the FAA said in a statement.

The FAA has said Southwest operated 46 Boeing 737s on nearly 60,000 flights between June 2006 and March 2007 while failing to comply with an FAA directive requiring repeated inspections of fuselage areas to detect fatigue cracking.

The FAA also alleges that after Southwest discovered it had failed to comply, it continued to operate the same planes on an additional 1,451 flights in March 2007. The airline later found that six of the 46 planes had fatigue cracks, the FAA said.

Documents provided to CNN show that another 70 Southwest jets were allowed to fly past the deadline for the mandatory rudder inspections. Those documents also say that 47 planes — one more than reported by the FAA — flew without their mandatory fuselage inspections.

In some cases, according to the documents the FAA provided to congressional investigators, the planes flew for 30 months past government inspection deadlines and should have grounded them until the inspections could be completed.

The documents were prepared by two FAA safety inspectors who have requested whistle-blower status from the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee. Both inspectors have been subpoenaed to testify before the committee.

Rep. James Oberstar, D-Minnesota, who heads the committee and who has called the situation one of the worst safety violations he has ever seen, is scheduled to hold a hearing April 3 to ask why the airline may have allegedly put its passengers in danger.

The whistle-blowers say FAA managers knew about the lapse in safety at Southwest, but decided to allow the airline to conduct the safety checks on a slower schedule because taking aircraft out of service would have disrupted Southwest Airlines’ flight schedule.

I am concerned with some of our findings as to our controls over procedures within our maintenance airworthiness directive and regulatory compliance processes, Kelly said Tuesday. I have insisted that we have the appropriate maintenance organizational and governance structure in place to ensure that the right decisions are being made.

In addition to putting three employees on administrative leave, Southwest has hired a consultant to review its maintenance program controls and is working closely with the FAA on its current audit of the fleet.

These are important and necessary steps, Kelly said. We have been a safe company. I believe we are a safe company. I am committed to making sure we become safer still.

The mandatory checks for fuselage cracks were required after the cabin of an Aloha Airlines 737 tore apart in midair in 1988, killing a flight attendant. The incident was blamed on cracks in the fuselage that grew wider as the plane underwent pressure changes during flight.

Southwest Airlines has never had a catastrophic crash.
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Indian police stop Tibetan marchers

DEHRA, India (CNN) — Authorities broke up a march Thursday by 100 Tibetan exiles who had planned to trek from the northern Indian city of Dharamsala to Tibet’s border in a protest at China’s rule over their homeland.

Video from the scene showed Indian officers dragging the marchers into police vans, sometimes as many as four officers per protester. Once inside the vehicles, the protesters furiously banged on windows and continued to chant, Free Tibet!

The protesters, who planned to reach the border for a confrontation with Chinese authorities just before the Beijing Olympics begins in August, were only three days and 75 km into the march when police stopped the march.

The protesters wanted to capitalize on the massive event to spread their anti-China message.

As long as the issue of Tibet is not resolved, we will resist China occupation, said Tsewang Rigzin, president of the Tibetan Youth Congress and one of the march organizers.

The Indian government, which sponsors 130,000 Tibetan exiles, had said it would enforce an order that bans the marchers from leaving the Dharmsala district, which is home to the Tibetan exile government and the Dalai Lama.

Rigzin said his group is acting independently of the government or the Dalai Lama.

What we are saying is that we are Tibetan, and we belong to Tibet and we need to go back to our country, he said. It’s as simple as that.

Protesters gathered near the Chinese Embassy in New Delhi on Wednesday, where one Tibetan woman shouted: Stop genocide in Tibet. We want complete independence. No Olympics in China until Tibet is free. … There are no human rights in Tibet.

Karma Dorjee, a translator for Washington-based Radio Free Asia, told CNN the situation inside Tibet is intense, according to RFA reporters based there.

In the capital of Tibet, Lhasa, there are so many restrictions imposed by the Chinese — there are police everywhere, he said.

Several hundred monks clashed with Chinese police near the Tibetan capital, Lhasa, on Tuesday, according to RFA. RFA is a private, nonprofit corporation that broadcasts in several East Asian languages to people without access to independent media.

It was the second day of protests by monks on the 49th anniversary of a failed uprising against Beijing that forced the Dalai Lama into exile. He now lives in northern India.

The protests coincided with other demonstrations by Tibetan exiles in New Delhi, India and Katmandu, Nepal.

A U.S. State Department report released Tuesday characterized China’s human rights record as one of the most repressive in the world and cited tightening controls over religious freedom in Tibet.
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