NEW YORK (Talon News) — Elements of the 4th Infantry Division performed three separate house raids in Saddam Hussein’s hometown of Tikrit Sunday, acting on intelligence that the deposed dictator’s security chief, and possibly Saddam himself, had been there. Officials later determined that the security chief had left the area the day before.

The raids were focused on capturing the new security chief who remains unnamed by American military officials. He is number 4 on America’s most-wanted list and replaced the previous security chief, Saddam loyalist Abid Hamid Mahmud al-Tikriti, who was arrested June 17.

Al-Tikriti was the only other member of Saddam’s inner circle aside from Qusay Hussein who may have had knowledge of the fugitive dictator’s location. Qusay was killed July 22 along with his brother Uday in a firefight with American forces.

Intelligence on the security chief’s location originated with a raid performed in Tikrit Thursday that resulted in the arrest of several suspects believed to be Saddam’s bodyguards.

“We missed him by 24 hours,” said Lt. Col. Steve Russell, leader of the operation that included hundreds of soldiers backed up by Bradley fighting vehicles and Apache helicopters.

“The noose is tightening around these guys,” Brigade Commander Col. James Hickey told the Associated Press. “They’re running out of places to hide, and it’s becoming difficult for them to move because we’re everywhere.”

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Richard B. Myers said that Saddam was on the run, and that if he is still in Iraq, the United States will get him.

“He is so busy surviving he is having no impact on the security situation here,” Myers told reporters in Baghdad Sunday.

Myers is wrapping up a brief trip to Iraq meant to gauge the “pulse” of coalition operations in the country, according to the American Forces Press Service. He met with American commanders and troops in the infamous triangle bound by Baghdad, Tikrit, and Ar Ramadi which is a stronghold for remnants of the Baathist regime.

The area is “the heart of the heaviest resistance in the country,” Myers said, adding that it is the scene of the coalition’s “biggest challenges and also some of the greatest success.”

About 80 percent of the attacks against coalition forces take place in this region.

In other news, theories that the deaths of Uday and Qusay Hussein would stem the tide of violence against coalition forces have been disproved so far, with five U.S. deaths over the weekend.

Three soldiers from the 4th Infantry Division were killed Saturday in a grenade attack, and an additional 4 were wounded. The attack took place while they were guarding the Ba’qubah Children’s Hospital in northeast Baghdad.

Another soldier from the 3rd Infantry Division was killed Saturday when his convoy came under fire near Abu Ghuraib. Two more were wounded in that attack.

One member of the 1st Marines Expeditionary Force was killed Sunday in a grenade attack in northern Babil province.

Several Iraqis were killed in a raid on a home in the Mansour district of Baghdad Sunday, but American military officials would not comment on what they called an ongoing operation.

“It seems the Americans came thinking Saddam Hussein was inside my house,” Prince Rabiah Muhammed al-Habib told the AP. Al-Habib is considered an influential Iraqi tribal leader.

Copyright

NEW YORK (Talon News) — Elements of the 4th Infantry Division performed three separate house raids in Saddam Hussein’s hometown of Tikrit Sunday, acting on intelligence that the deposed dictator’s security chief, and possibly Saddam himself, had been there. Officials later determined that the security chief had left the area the day before.

The raids were focused on capturing the new security chief who remains unnamed by American military officials. He is number 4 on America’s most-wanted list and replaced the previous security chief, Saddam loyalist Abid Hamid Mahmud al-Tikriti, who was arrested June 17.

Al-Tikriti was the only other member of Saddam’s inner circle aside from Qusay Hussein who may have had knowledge of the fugitive dictator’s location. Qusay was killed July 22 along with his brother Uday in a firefight with American forces.

Intelligence on the security chief’s location originated with a raid performed in Tikrit Thursday that resulted in the arrest of several suspects believed to be Saddam’s bodyguards.

“We missed him by 24 hours,” said Lt. Col. Steve Russell, leader of the operation that included hundreds of soldiers backed up by Bradley fighting vehicles and Apache helicopters.

“The noose is tightening around these guys,” Brigade Commander Col. James Hickey told the Associated Press. “They’re running out of places to hide, and it’s becoming difficult for them to move because we’re everywhere.”

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Richard B. Myers said that Saddam was on the run, and that if he is still in Iraq, the United States will get him.

“He is so busy surviving he is having no impact on the security situation here,” Myers told reporters in Baghdad Sunday.

Myers is wrapping up a brief trip to Iraq meant to gauge the “pulse” of coalition operations in the country, according to the American Forces Press Service. He met with American commanders and troops in the infamous triangle bound by Baghdad, Tikrit, and Ar Ramadi which is a stronghold for remnants of the Baathist regime.

The area is “the heart of the heaviest resistance in the country,” Myers said, adding that it is the scene of the coalition’s “biggest challenges and also some of the greatest success.”

About 80 percent of the attacks against coalition forces take place in this region.

In other news, theories that the deaths of Uday and Qusay Hussein would stem the tide of violence against coalition forces have been disproved so far, with five U.S. deaths over the weekend.

Three soldiers from the 4th Infantry Division were killed Saturday in a grenade attack, and an additional 4 were wounded. The attack took place while they were guarding the Ba’qubah Children’s Hospital in northeast Baghdad.

Another soldier from the 3rd Infantry Division was killed Saturday when his convoy came under fire near Abu Ghuraib. Two more were wounded in that attack.

One member of the 1st Marines Expeditionary Force was killed Sunday in a grenade attack in northern Babil province.

Several Iraqis were killed in a raid on a home in the Mansour district of Baghdad Sunday, but American military officials would not comment on what they called an ongoing operation.

“It seems the Americans came thinking Saddam Hussein was inside my house,” Prince Rabiah Muhammed al-Habib told the AP. Al-Habib is considered an influential Iraqi tribal leader.

Copyright

NEW YORK (Talon News) — Elements of the 4th Infantry Division performed three separate house raids in Saddam Hussein’s hometown of Tikrit Sunday, acting on intelligence that the deposed dictator’s security chief, and possibly Saddam himself, had been there. Officials later determined that the security chief had left the area the day before.

The raids were focused on capturing the new security chief who remains unnamed by American military officials. He is number 4 on America’s most-wanted list and replaced the previous security chief, Saddam loyalist Abid Hamid Mahmud al-Tikriti, who was arrested June 17.

Al-Tikriti was the only other member of Saddam’s inner circle aside from Qusay Hussein who may have had knowledge of the fugitive dictator’s location. Qusay was killed July 22 along with his brother Uday in a firefight with American forces.

Intelligence on the security chief’s location originated with a raid performed in Tikrit Thursday that resulted in the arrest of several suspects believed to be Saddam’s bodyguards.

“We missed him by 24 hours,” said Lt. Col. Steve Russell, leader of the operation that included hundreds of soldiers backed up by Bradley fighting vehicles and Apache helicopters.

“The noose is tightening around these guys,” Brigade Commander Col. James Hickey told the Associated Press. “They’re running out of places to hide, and it’s becoming difficult for them to move because we’re everywhere.”

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Richard B. Myers said that Saddam was on the run, and that if he is still in Iraq, the United States will get him.

“He is so busy surviving he is having no impact on the security situation here,” Myers told reporters in Baghdad Sunday.

Myers is wrapping up a brief trip to Iraq meant to gauge the “pulse” of coalition operations in the country, according to the American Forces Press Service. He met with American commanders and troops in the infamous triangle bound by Baghdad, Tikrit, and Ar Ramadi which is a stronghold for remnants of the Baathist regime.

The area is “the heart of the heaviest resistance in the country,” Myers said, adding that it is the scene of the coalition’s “biggest challenges and also some of the greatest success.”

About 80 percent of the attacks against coalition forces take place in this region.

In other news, theories that the deaths of Uday and Qusay Hussein would stem the tide of violence against coalition forces have been disproved so far, with five U.S. deaths over the weekend.

Three soldiers from the 4th Infantry Division were killed Saturday in a grenade attack, and an additional 4 were wounded. The attack took place while they were guarding the Ba’qubah Children’s Hospital in northeast Baghdad.

Another soldier from the 3rd Infantry Division was killed Saturday when his convoy came under fire near Abu Ghuraib. Two more were wounded in that attack.

One member of the 1st Marines Expeditionary Force was killed Sunday in a grenade attack in northern Babil province.

Several Iraqis were killed in a raid on a home in the Mansour district of Baghdad Sunday, but American military officials would not comment on what they called an ongoing operation.

“It seems the Americans came thinking Saddam Hussein was inside my house,” Prince Rabiah Muhammed al-Habib told the AP. Al-Habib is considered an influential Iraqi tribal leader.

Copyright

LOS ANGELES (UPI) — The Senate will begin debating comprehensive energy legislation next week in a plan that would make the federal government more accommodating to the development of domestic energy supplies.

Although the Bush administration declared a natural gas “crisis” earlier this summer, the Senate is expected to take a pass on trying to address short-term price issues and focus on clearing the way for the development of new supply sources of that will head off potentially disastrous shortages in coming years.

“This is comprehensive legislation that balances conservation, production, and incentives,” Sen. Larry Craig, R-Idaho, said at a news conference this week. “It recognizes the simple fact that this country must get back into the business of producing more energy in all forms.”

The energy bill has been criticized by some environmental and taxpayer advocates as a “giveaway” to the large energy companies that are among the White House’s blood brothers.

The legislation largely reflects the administration’s basic premise that current conservation and alternative energy technologies are just not enough to offset a projected 1.5-percent growth in U.S. energy demand over the next 22 years.

Periodic fluctuations in the supply of gasoline, natural gas and electricity can be offset to an extent by conservation. Making certain that chronic shortages, the administration and the energy industry contend, will require greater access to resources on federal lands and an easier means of getting new pipelines and power transmission lines built.

“Because we cannot control supplies simply by turning a natural gas faucet, the only way to deliver new domestic supply is for all of us to work cooperatively to make available some of the vast potential natural gas reserves on non-park government lands,” Red Cavaney, president of the American Petroleum Institute, said in a letter last week that updated the House of Representatives on the nation’s natural gas situation.

The letter continued, “Given the years necessary to acquire needed leases and permits … policy changes are needed now so the supply-and-demand imbalance does not become more pressing in the future.”

The simmering debate over energy in recent months has been focused on Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Reserve, where sizable reserves of oil could keep West Coast refineries humming for years. When it comes to natural gas, the Lower 48 offers even more promise due to its proximity to the key Midwest market and the growing states’ populations of the West.

The bill contains a number of steps aimed at greasing the skids for increased gas production on lands that are under varying degrees of federal environmental protection.

A major provision calls for creation of the Office of Federal Energy Permit Coordination, an agency that would be under the authority of the executive branch and would assist various federal agencies with the process of granting permits for energy projects on federal land.

There is also a plan under which the Agriculture and Interior departments would designate so-called utility corridors, or tracts of land in the West where pipe and power lines would be built to connect producing regions with their markets.

The Interior Department would also be given the solemn tasks of inventorying energy reserves on federal lands and reviewing regulatory policies covering oil and gas drilling and its effects on privately owned lands.

The Interior Department is actually a prominent player in the Bush energy policy since it is a major landowner in the West and steward of vast tracts of protected wildlife habitat.

That situation is a seeming conflict of interest to some environmentalists despite industry and administration insistence that nature and energy production can co-exist.

One such organization, the Natural Resources Defense Council, this week filed a Freedom of Information Act request seeking details of the Rocky Mountain Energy Council.

The RMEC was formed by the Bush administration with the goal of developing what a White House news release termed “a more effective management strategy for energy development and energy policy issues on federal and state public lands in the Rocky Mountains.”

“The responsibility of the Council will be to address and resolve issues affecting the environmentally responsible development of the valuable public energy resources that are needed for the energy security, economic stimulation, and social well-being of the American public,” the release said.

The Natural Resources Defense Council said Thursday that the RMEC appears to actually be quite hostile to the environmental community and also barred the media and public from its initial meeting in Denver earlier this month.

Just because the administration is careful to publicly salute the need for environmental protection in energy development, it doesn’t mean that the environmental community and their friends in Congress will take them at their word, and that could mean that next week’s energy debate in the Senate will proceed cautiously with an eye to devilish detail.

Copyright 2003 by United Press International. All rights reserved.

LOS ANGELES (UPI) — The Senate will begin debating comprehensive energy legislation next week in a plan that would make the federal government more accommodating to the development of domestic energy supplies.

Although the Bush administration declared a natural gas “crisis” earlier this summer, the Senate is expected to take a pass on trying to address short-term price issues and focus on clearing the way for the development of new supply sources of that will head off potentially disastrous shortages in coming years.

“This is comprehensive legislation that balances conservation, production, and incentives,” Sen. Larry Craig, R-Idaho, said at a news conference this week. “It recognizes the simple fact that this country must get back into the business of producing more energy in all forms.”

The energy bill has been criticized by some environmental and taxpayer advocates as a “giveaway” to the large energy companies that are among the White House’s blood brothers.

The legislation largely reflects the administration’s basic premise that current conservation and alternative energy technologies are just not enough to offset a projected 1.5-percent growth in U.S. energy demand over the next 22 years.

Periodic fluctuations in the supply of gasoline, natural gas and electricity can be offset to an extent by conservation. Making certain that chronic shortages, the administration and the energy industry contend, will require greater access to resources on federal lands and an easier means of getting new pipelines and power transmission lines built.

“Because we cannot control supplies simply by turning a natural gas faucet, the only way to deliver new domestic supply is for all of us to work cooperatively to make available some of the vast potential natural gas reserves on non-park government lands,” Red Cavaney, president of the American Petroleum Institute, said in a letter last week that updated the House of Representatives on the nation’s natural gas situation.

The letter continued, “Given the years necessary to acquire needed leases and permits … policy changes are needed now so the supply-and-demand imbalance does not become more pressing in the future.”

The simmering debate over energy in recent months has been focused on Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Reserve, where sizable reserves of oil could keep West Coast refineries humming for years. When it comes to natural gas, the Lower 48 offers even more promise due to its proximity to the key Midwest market and the growing states’ populations of the West.

The bill contains a number of steps aimed at greasing the skids for increased gas production on lands that are under varying degrees of federal environmental protection.

A major provision calls for creation of the Office of Federal Energy Permit Coordination, an agency that would be under the authority of the executive branch and would assist various federal agencies with the process of granting permits for energy projects on federal land.

There is also a plan under which the Agriculture and Interior departments would designate so-called utility corridors, or tracts of land in the West where pipe and power lines would be built to connect producing regions with their markets.

The Interior Department would also be given the solemn tasks of inventorying energy reserves on federal lands and reviewing regulatory policies covering oil and gas drilling and its effects on privately owned lands.

The Interior Department is actually a prominent player in the Bush energy policy since it is a major landowner in the West and steward of vast tracts of protected wildlife habitat.

That situation is a seeming conflict of interest to some environmentalists despite industry and administration insistence that nature and energy production can co-exist.

One such organization, the Natural Resources Defense Council, this week filed a Freedom of Information Act request seeking details of the Rocky Mountain Energy Council.

The RMEC was formed by the Bush administration with the goal of developing what a White House news release termed “a more effective management strategy for energy development and energy policy issues on federal and state public lands in the Rocky Mountains.”

“The responsibility of the Council will be to address and resolve issues affecting the environmentally responsible development of the valuable public energy resources that are needed for the energy security, economic stimulation, and social well-being of the American public,” the release said.

The Natural Resources Defense Council said Thursday that the RMEC appears to actually be quite hostile to the environmental community and also barred the media and public from its initial meeting in Denver earlier this month.

Just because the administration is careful to publicly salute the need for environmental protection in energy development, it doesn’t mean that the environmental community and their friends in Congress will take them at their word, and that could mean that next week’s energy debate in the Senate will proceed cautiously with an eye to devilish detail.

Copyright 2003 by United Press International. All rights reserved.

NEW YORK (UPI) — The American Museum of Natural History’s delectable new exhibition, “Chocolate,” is fun for the whole family and educational, too, especially for chocoholics who want to know more about their favorite sweet.

Lovers of chocolate today think of it as a solid, usually in the form of candy, but for 90 percent of its history it was consumed in liquid form as a bitter, spicy drink. It wasn’t combined with sugar to make it a sweet drink until it was imported into Spain in the form of beans from Mexico in the 16th century.

This is just one of the highlights in the romantic history of the cacao (generally called cocoa) bean, a member of the botanical genus Theobroma, meaning “food for the gods.” It is a story delightfully told through the display of more than 200 objects in free-standing exhibit stations, some of them interactive; several videos showing processing of the bean; photos; posters, and wall murals.

On view through Sept. 7, “Chocolate” touches on botany, ecology, anthropology, economics, conservation, and popular culture in a painless way pitched to the intellectual level of grade school students. The show is on a national tour developed by The Field Museum in Chicago, and all textual material is in English and Spanish.

The exhibit opens with a display of archaeological items, such as painted clay Maya pots used for ceremonial consumption of chocolate whipped into a froth, and ends on a note of fantasy — an upended chocolate box of giant proportions containing a mixture of assorted chocolates and video monitors showing chocolate lovers talking about their beloved bean. Pouffe seating is provided in front of the exhibit in the form of chocolate bonbons in their frilled wrappings.

Elsewhere the viewer learns that cacao beans come from yellow pods the size of pineapples that spring from the trunk of an evergreen tree. Each pod holds 30 to 50 beans, enough to make seven l.5-ounce milk chocolate bars. Although the tree originated in Central America, less than 2 percent of cacao comes from that region today, with Africa accounting for more than 50 percent of production.

Cacao is so important to the current economy of Ghana that some wealthy chocolate kings choose to be buried in wooden coffins shaped and painted like cacao pods, one of which is among the most popular displays in the show. The coffin-maker, Kane Kwei, has attached his sculptured pod to a three-foot-high tree trunk bearing smaller pods to make it more realistic.

Almost as exotic is the lengths to which European porcelain manufacturers went to turn out attractive hot chocolate services once the craze for the seductive drink hit its peak in the 18th century with 2,000 public chocolate house open for business in London alone. There is a splendid display of delicate Meissen ware from Germany including a 20-piece chocolate set designed for travelers and examples of silver chocolate pots.

The European market for cacao and the sugar to sweeten it played a large role in the demand for African and native Indian slave labor to work the plantations of the Americas and the Caribbean, resulting in protests about inhuman working conditions from even a man like British chocolate-maker William Cadbury who expressed his concerns in a letter included in the exhibit. Cadbury’s introduced the first box of chocolates in 1868 and later the first Valentine’s Day candy box.

A Dutch chemist, Coenraad van Houten, invented in 1828 the cocoa press for cheap extraction of cocoa butter, the basis of most chocolate products. The show includes a plethora of chocolate products including tins of Dutch powdered chocolate along with early Swiss milk chocolate bars using the Nestle brothers’ creation, powdered milk, and products churned out by Rodolph Lindt. America’s contribution to chocolate culture is represented by the products of Pennsylvania confectioner Milton S. Hershey and such concoctions as Ovaltine and Cocoa-Crush beverages.

Today there are nearly 40,000 kinds of chocolate sold in the United States and prices for raw cocao are posted daily by the Coffee, Sugar, and Cocoa Exchange in New York on a running ticker, also on display. The marketing of products is well documented with examples of packaging for foods that contain chocolate such as cake mixes and hot mole sauce, a specialty of Mexico.

Utensils associated with chocolate culture are found throughout the show. There are many examples of molinillos, the traditional wooden stirring sticks used to whip chocolate, tiny 18th century porcelain spoons to stir chocolate drinks, novelty molds to shape chocolate into Santa Clauses and Easter bunnies, and machetes for cutting pods from trees along with baskets for collecting them and mats for drying them.

Chocolate was considered so important to the diet and happiness of U.S. military personnel in World War II that nearly all the chocolate produced for the four war years was earmarked for the military, and even today in Iraq American Army D-rations include three four-ounce chocolate bars. And, yes, chocolate has been into space. It went as dietary rations aboard the space shuttle Columbia.

Having feasted on a plethora of information and display, the visitor to “Chocolate” can visit the show’s gift shop and stock up on chocolate in many commercial forms, books about the subject, T-shirts, and other souvenirs. Or they can visit a small caf

NEW YORK (UPI) — The American Museum of Natural History’s delectable new exhibition, “Chocolate,” is fun for the whole family and educational, too, especially for chocoholics who want to know more about their favorite sweet.

Lovers of chocolate today think of it as a solid, usually in the form of candy, but for 90 percent of its history it was consumed in liquid form as a bitter, spicy drink. It wasn’t combined with sugar to make it a sweet drink until it was imported into Spain in the form of beans from Mexico in the 16th century.

This is just one of the highlights in the romantic history of the cacao (generally called cocoa) bean, a member of the botanical genus Theobroma, meaning “food for the gods.” It is a story delightfully told through the display of more than 200 objects in free-standing exhibit stations, some of them interactive; several videos showing processing of the bean; photos; posters, and wall murals.

On view through Sept. 7, “Chocolate” touches on botany, ecology, anthropology, economics, conservation, and popular culture in a painless way pitched to the intellectual level of grade school students. The show is on a national tour developed by The Field Museum in Chicago, and all textual material is in English and Spanish.

The exhibit opens with a display of archaeological items, such as painted clay Maya pots used for ceremonial consumption of chocolate whipped into a froth, and ends on a note of fantasy — an upended chocolate box of giant proportions containing a mixture of assorted chocolates and video monitors showing chocolate lovers talking about their beloved bean. Pouffe seating is provided in front of the exhibit in the form of chocolate bonbons in their frilled wrappings.

Elsewhere the viewer learns that cacao beans come from yellow pods the size of pineapples that spring from the trunk of an evergreen tree. Each pod holds 30 to 50 beans, enough to make seven l.5-ounce milk chocolate bars. Although the tree originated in Central America, less than 2 percent of cacao comes from that region today, with Africa accounting for more than 50 percent of production.

Cacao is so important to the current economy of Ghana that some wealthy chocolate kings choose to be buried in wooden coffins shaped and painted like cacao pods, one of which is among the most popular displays in the show. The coffin-maker, Kane Kwei, has attached his sculptured pod to a three-foot-high tree trunk bearing smaller pods to make it more realistic.

Almost as exotic is the lengths to which European porcelain manufacturers went to turn out attractive hot chocolate services once the craze for the seductive drink hit its peak in the 18th century with 2,000 public chocolate house open for business in London alone. There is a splendid display of delicate Meissen ware from Germany including a 20-piece chocolate set designed for travelers and examples of silver chocolate pots.

The European market for cacao and the sugar to sweeten it played a large role in the demand for African and native Indian slave labor to work the plantations of the Americas and the Caribbean, resulting in protests about inhuman working conditions from even a man like British chocolate-maker William Cadbury who expressed his concerns in a letter included in the exhibit. Cadbury’s introduced the first box of chocolates in 1868 and later the first Valentine’s Day candy box.

A Dutch chemist, Coenraad van Houten, invented in 1828 the cocoa press for cheap extraction of cocoa butter, the basis of most chocolate products. The show includes a plethora of chocolate products including tins of Dutch powdered chocolate along with early Swiss milk chocolate bars using the Nestle brothers’ creation, powdered milk, and products churned out by Rodolph Lindt. America’s contribution to chocolate culture is represented by the products of Pennsylvania confectioner Milton S. Hershey and such concoctions as Ovaltine and Cocoa-Crush beverages.

Today there are nearly 40,000 kinds of chocolate sold in the United States and prices for raw cocao are posted daily by the Coffee, Sugar, and Cocoa Exchange in New York on a running ticker, also on display. The marketing of products is well documented with examples of packaging for foods that contain chocolate such as cake mixes and hot mole sauce, a specialty of Mexico.

Utensils associated with chocolate culture are found throughout the show. There are many examples of molinillos, the traditional wooden stirring sticks used to whip chocolate, tiny 18th century porcelain spoons to stir chocolate drinks, novelty molds to shape chocolate into Santa Clauses and Easter bunnies, and machetes for cutting pods from trees along with baskets for collecting them and mats for drying them.

Chocolate was considered so important to the diet and happiness of U.S. military personnel in World War II that nearly all the chocolate produced for the four war years was earmarked for the military, and even today in Iraq American Army D-rations include three four-ounce chocolate bars. And, yes, chocolate has been into space. It went as dietary rations aboard the space shuttle Columbia.

Having feasted on a plethora of information and display, the visitor to “Chocolate” can visit the show’s gift shop and stock up on chocolate in many commercial forms, books about the subject, T-shirts, and other souvenirs. Or they can visit a small caf