The US has formally handed over power in Iraq, two days ahead of schedule.

At a low-key ceremony in Baghdad, US administrator Paul Bremer transferred sovereignty to an Iraqi judge, before leaving the country by plane.

Iraq's interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, who also took part in the ceremony in the heavily-guarded Green Zone, said it was "a historic day".

In a more colourful ceremony hours later, Mr Allawi and his cabinet ministers were officially sworn in.

June 15 - The first survey of Iraqis sponsored by the U.S. Coalition Provisional Authority after the Abu Ghraib prison scandal shows that most say they would feel safer if Coalition forces left immediately, without even waiting for elections scheduled for next year. An overwhelming majority, about 80 percent, also say they have "no confidence" in either the U.S. civilian authorities or Coalition forces.

Sixty-seven percent of those surveyed also said they believed violent attacks have increased around the country because "people have lost faith in the Coalition forces."

Bush Tells Troops 'Life Is Better' in Iraq as Handover Nears
By DAVID E. SANGER

Published: June 17, 2004

MacDILL AIR FORCE BASE, Fla., June 16 - Two weeks before the handover of sovereignty to a new Iraqi government, President Bush told thousands of American troops here and around the world on Wednesday that "a democratic, free Iraq is on the way" and insisted that despite the daily toll of the insurgency the country's economy was growing and "life is better."

Mr. Bush's speech here at the headquarters of the United States Central Command, which oversees operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, came only a day after a poll of Iraqis commissioned by the American-led Coalition Provisional Authority painted a very different picture, one in which the occupation is overwhelmingly unpopular and sentiment is rising for American troops to leave the country.

Yet to the cheers of troops here, and others connected via a video link in Bagram, Afghanistan, and a hangar at the Baghdad airport, Mr. Bush insisted that over the long run Iraqis would be grateful for the occupation, which he likened to the American reconstruction of postwar Germany. After the handover of power on June 30, he said, American troops will take on the role of "supporting" Iraqi forces, and he insisted it would become clear that the insurgents were "not fighting foreign forces, they're fighting the Iraqi people."

    
    

Last February, two Army counterintelligence agents showed up at the University of Texas law school and demanded to see the roster from a conference on Islamic law held a few days earlier. Their reason: they were trying to track down students who the agents claimed had been asking "suspicious" questions. "I felt like I was in 'Law & Order'," said one student after being grilled by one of the agents. The incident provoked a brief campus uproar, and the Army later admitted the agents had exceeded their authority. But if the Pentagon has its way, the Army may not have to make such amends in the future. Without any public hearing or debate, NEWSWEEK has learned, Defense officials recently slipped a provision into a bill before Congress that could vastly expand the Pentagon's ability to gather intelligence inside the United States, including recruiting citizens as informants.

    
    

A man who lost his brother to an unknown serial killer has bankrolled a November ballot measure that would force everyone arrested for a felony in California to provide a DNA sample.

Although backers of the measure say such a greatly expanded DNA database could clear up thousands of unsolved crimes, civil rights activists argue it would give the government access to too much information about too many people.

"DNA is not like a fingerprint, since getting it is more invasive and it holds information beyond mere identification,'' said Tania Simoncelli, a science and technology fellow for the American Civil Liberties Union. "Storing it permanently for future criminal investigations doesn't comply with the Constitution.''

    

LOUISVILLE, Ky., June 8 -- Reversing itself, the Army said Tuesday that a G.I. was discharged partly because of a head injury he suffered while posing as an uncooperative detainee during a training exercise at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

The Army had previously said Specialist Sean Baker's medical discharge in April was unrelated to the injury he received last year at the detention center, where the United States holds suspected terrorists.

    

Today many Americans celebrate a ''strong'' leader who, like Woodrow Wilson, never wavers, never apologizes, never admits a mistake, never changes his mind, a leader with a firm ''Christian'' faith in his own righteousness. These Americans are delighted that he ignores the rest of the world and punishes the World Trade Center terrorism in Iraq. Mr. Bush is our kind of guy.

He is not another Hitler. Yet there is a certain parallelism. They have in common a demagogic appeal to the worst side of a country's heritage in a crisis. Bush is doubtless sincere in his vision of what is best for America. So too was Hitler. The crew around the president -- Donald Rumsfeld, John Ashcroft, Karl Rove, the ''neo-cons'' like Paul Wolfowitz -- are not as crazy perhaps as Himmler and Goering and Goebbels. Yet like them, they are practitioners of the Big Lie -- weapons of mass destruction, Iraq democracy, only a few ''bad apples.''

    

NEW YORK, June 7 (Reuters) - In today's America, prisoners are held incommunicado for years, newspapers can't photograph soldiers' coffins returned from Iraq and the government can secretly track the books citizens read and the movies they watch.

But civil liberties can erode much further before Americans will say enough is enough, say experts in social history and political behavior.

Fear struck by the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks helped launch the curtailment of civil liberties in the name of national security, and that fear keeps Americans willing to trade away rights for safety, they say.

    

Many voters not yet back on rolls

BY GARY FINEOUT
Miami Herald

TALLAHASSEE - With less than six months to go before the presidential election, thousands of Florida voters who may have been improperly removed from the voter rolls in 2000 have yet to have their eligibility restored.

Records obtained by The Herald show that just 33 of 67 counties have responded to a request by state election officials to check whether or not nearly 20,000 voters should be reinstated as required under a legal settlement reached between the state, the NAACP and other groups nearly two years ago.

Some of the counties that have failed to respond to the state include many of Florida's largest, including Broward, Miami-Dade, Orange and Palm Beach.

    

Quietly Florida Admits 2000 Election Fraud
By The Associated Press
April 26, 2002 | Filed at 10:17 p.m. ET

MIAMI (AP) -- A federal judge has approved a settlement between Leon County and civil rights groups that sued over widespread voting problems in the 2000 presidential election in Florida.

The state and six other counties remain in the case brought by the NAACP and four other groups who sued in a dispute that grew out of the long-uncertain results of Florida's vote for president.

    

U.S.'s Ashcroft Won't Release or Discuss Torture Memo (Update2)

June 8 (Bloomberg) -- U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft, warned that he might be risking a contempt citation from Congress, told lawmakers he won't release or discuss memoranda that news reports say offered justification for torturing suspected terrorists.

Democratic members of the Senate Judiciary Committee asked Ashcroft about reports in the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post and the New York Times that the Justice Department advised the White House in 2002 and 2003 that it might not be bound by U.S. and international laws prohibiting torture. Ashcroft said he wouldn't reveal advice he gave to President George W. Bush or discuss it with Congress.

"The president has a right to hear advice from his attorney general, in confidence,'' Ashcroft said. He also refused to answer whether he personally believes torture can be justified under certain circumstances.

    

President George W. Bush's increasingly erratic behavior and wide mood swings has the halls of the West Wing buzzing lately as aides privately express growing concern over their leader's state of mind.

In meetings with top aides and administration officials, the President goes from quoting the Bible in one breath to obscene tantrums against the media, Democrats and others that he classifies as "enemies of the state."

Worried White House aides paint a portrait of a man on the edge, increasingly wary of those who disagree with him and paranoid of a public that no longer trusts his policies in Iraq or at home.

"It reminds me of the Nixon days," says a longtime GOP political consultant with contacts in the White House. "Everybody is an enemy; everybody is out to get him. That's the mood over there."

In interviews with a number of White House staffers who were willing to talk off the record, a picture of an administration under siege has emerged, led by a man who declares his decisions to be "God's will" and then tells aides to "f*** over" anyone they consider to be an opponent of the administration.

    

It was a skinny pair of stereo wires that got 21-year-old Joe Previtera charged with two felonies. A week ago on Wednesday, the Boston College student poked his head through a gauzy shawl, donned a black pointy hood, and ascended a milk crate positioned to the right of the Armed Forces Recruitment Center's Tremont Street entrance. He extended his arms like a tired scarecrow; stereo wires dangled from his fingers onto the ground below. Without those wires, the Westwood native could have been mistaken for an eyeless Klansman dipped in black, or maybe even the Wicked Witch of the West swallowed by her hat shorn of its brim. But those snaky cords made the costume's import clear: Previtera was a dead ringer for one of Abu Ghraib's Iraqi prisoners -- specifically, the faceless man who'd allegedly been forced to balance on a cardboard box lest he be electrocuted.

Enron Traders Laughed About Stealing From 'Grandmothers'

HOUSTON -- Enron Corp. traders openly discussed manipulating the California power market and joked about stealing from grandmothers during the Western energy crisis in 2000-2001, according to transcripts of telephone calls filed with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.

The transcripts, some littered with profanity, were filed by a public utility district near Seattle.
...
John Forney, a former top trader in Enron's defunct Western trading operation based in Portland, Ore., is slated to stand trial on charges of wire fraud and conspiracy. Two other former Portland traders, Timothy Belden and Jeffrey Richter, have pleaded guilty to one count of wire fraud and are helping prosecutors.

Rep. Jay Inslee, D-Wash., said that in light of the tapes he'd introduce an amendment next week that would compel FERC to compensate West Coast ratepayers for years of price-gouging by Enron. Washington Gov. Gary Locke said he was outraged by the tapes.

"If true, these tapes are proof of what many of us have been saying all along -- that energy interests deliberately manipulated prices," Locke said.

Energy merchants regularly tape trader conversations to keep a record of transactions.

    

ACLU battles FBI over ISP customer data
Lawsuit challenges right to gather information secretly
The Associated Press
Updated: 7:07 p.m. ET April 28, 2004

WASHINGTON - The American Civil Liberties Union is challenging the FBI's use of expanded powers to compel Internet service providers to turn over information about their customers or subscribers.

A lawsuit challenging secret FBI national security letters was filed April 6 in U.S. District Court in New York but not made public until Wednesday because of its extraordinary sensitivity.

The FBI can issue national security letters, or NSLs, without a judge's approval in terrorism and espionage cases. They require telephone companies, Internet service providers, banks, credit bureaus and other businesses to produce highly personal records about their customers or subscribers.