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Cuba and Venezuela, along with relatives of those killed in anti-Castro attacks, are protesting a US district court ruling that releases from jail Luis Posada Carriles, a Cuban exile militant and former CIA operative.
Mr. Posada, who is wanted by authorities in Havana and Caracas for the 1976 bombing of a civilian Cuban airliner, was detained in Florida in May 2005 for entering the United States illegally. Last Friday, US district Judge Kathleen Cardone ruled that Posada, who is currently held in a New Mexico jail, should be freed on bonds totaling $350,000 until his trial, which is scheduled for May 11. The Guardian reports that Posada's release was moved forward after Judge Cardone refused to "reverse her earlier ruling granting his request for bail."
Cuban president Fidel Castro slammed the ruling. In an editorial appearing on the front page of Granma, the official newspaper of the Cuban Communist Party, Mr. Castro labelled Posada a "monster," and accused the White House of interfering with the trial.
It was President Bush himself who at every moment evaded the criminal and terrorist nature of the defendant. He was protected by being charged with a simple violation of immigration paperwork. The response is brutal. The United States government and its most representative institutions decided beforehand on the monster's freedom.
Venezuela also criticized the decision. In an interview with Democracy Now!, a syndicated American radio program, Venezuelan ambassador Bernardo Alvarez Herrera called the ruling an "emblematic figure of the double standard in the fight against terrorism". In his September 20 remarks at the United Nations General Assembly, Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez called Posada "biggest terrorist of this continent." Venezuela has asked that Posada be extradited, but a US federal court denied the request, claiming that Posada could be tortured in Venezuela.
In a press conference organized by the National Committee to Free the Cuban Five, named for a group of Cubans convicted of spying for Castro in the United States, Livio di Celmo, the brother of an Italian businessman killed in 1997, in a wave of bombings that Posada has admitted to organizing, accused the United States of exercising a double standard.
Luis Posada Carriles is a terrorist and the United States Government has refused to define him so. I think that the American people should know the extent by which there has been ambiguity in the war on terrorism. This is an insult to my brother and to the victims of terrorism and it should be exposed to all.
US government officials, including Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff, have moved to keep Posada behind bars. But Judge Cardone has rejected the government's requests to reconsider Posada's release, which, according to The Miami Herald, places the Justice Department "at a crossroads."
"We're weighing our options on whether to appeal," Justice Department spokesman Dean Boyd said Wednesday.
Ms. Cardone ruled that despite accusations of a violent history, the current federal charges against a "frail" Posada, 79, solely deal with how he allegedly lied about sneaking into the country two years ago on his naturalization application.
Posada's lawyer, Arturo Hernandez, said he is ready to fight the government, whether it appeals the judge's decision or tries to enforce a prior immigration detention order upon his release on bond.
"We have every confidence that within a reasonably short period of time Mr. Posada will be released pursuant to the court's order," Hernandez said.
Posada has spent almost five decades violently opposing communism in Latin America. The CIA trained him for the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion, although his squadron never saw combat. After the failed invasion, he moved to Venezuela, where he was naturalized as a citizen. In October 1976, days after the mid-air bombing of a Cuban airliner over Barbados that killed all 73 on board, Posada was arrested in Venezuela and charged with planning the attack. Posada denies the charge, but declassified CIA and FBI documents indicate that he had advance knowledge of the bombing, as did the US government. He escaped from a Venezuelan prison in 1985.
Posada then went to El Salvador to assist Lt. Col. Oliver North's illegal support of right-wing guerillas in Nicaragua. In 1990, Posada surfaced in Guatemala, where he survived an attack by three gunmen, then disappeared again.
In 1998, he admitted to The New York Times that he organized a wave of bombings of Cuban hotels and nightclubs in an attempt to discourage tourism to the island. One of those bombings killed Fabio Di Celmo, an Italian businessman.
Posada turned up in Panama in 2000, where he was arrested for attempting to assassinate Cuban president Fidel Castro, who was visiting for a summit. He was pardoned and released in 2004.
In last Friday's ruling (PDF), the judge said that, despite Posada's controversial history, he is "now older and more frail" and has ample ties to the Cuban-American community, making it less likely that he will flee.
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(CBS) CHICAGO A bird appears to have flown into and damaged the engine of Vice President Dick Cheney's plane as it arrived in Chicago Friday morning.
The plane landed safely, and no one was hurt.
Mechanics inspected the plane to see if repairs were necessary and if the plane could return to Washington. It was able to depart safely at 12:30 p.m.
Cheney arrived in Chicago to speak to a conservative think tank at the Ritz-Carlton.
In the speech, the vice president delivered a scathing report card on the Democrat-controlled Congress that marks its important 100-day milestone this weekend.
Cheney rebuked lawmakers for trying to tie funding for the war in Iraq to a timetable for withdrawal. He called such a move unacceptable and said it's the president's sole duty to direct military operations. He also said the country doesn't need 535 secretaries of state -- a crack at House Speaker Nancy Pelosi who recently traveled to Syria.
Cheney also chastised Congress over its spending policies, saying it had already earned its place in the "big-spending hall of fame."
The vice president made his comments during an appearance today in Chicago, where he spoke at the Heritage Foundation's Annual Leadership Conference.
Like the vice president, members of the Heritage Foundation favor a strong military and a commitment to the War in Iraq.
Cheney earlier told a local radio station that the person appointed to a new war czar post will coordinate several government organizations involved in rebuilding both Iraq and Afghanistan. He says the czar will "ride roughshod if necessary over the bureaucracy to make sure we get the job done."
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- An Iranian representative in Iraq will meet with five Iranians being detained by U.S. forces, the Iranian state-run Islamic Republic News Agency said Wednesday.
The meeting would take place "thanks to the efforts of Iran's diplomats in Baghdad, the assistance of Iraqi officials and the U.N. representative Ashraf Ghazi," the agency reported, saying the information came from an Iranian source in Baghdad.
A U.S. military official said Washington was considering Tehran's request to allow Iranian representatives access to the five detained Iranians, whom U.S. forces captured in January during a military raid in northern Iraq.
"The request has been made, but nothing has been approved," the official told CNN on Wednesday. It has "gone to Washington for consideration."
The five detainees are suspected of having connections to Iran's Revolutionary Guards' Quds Force, which the United States accuses of providing weapons and funding to Shiite militas in Iraq, the U.S. military said.
The men were detained January 11 in Irbil, an Iraqi Kurdish city near the Iranian border. Iran complained to the United Nations that the raid was in "clear violation of international conventions" because it took place at an Iranian consulate.
The United States maintains its forces raided an Iranian liaison office that does not have the same diplomatic status as a consulate.
The Geneva Conventions state that embassies and foreign missions are immune from searches, arrests and detentions.
It was not clear whether negotations about the five Iranians were connected to Iran's detention of 15 British sailors and marines. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad announced Wednesday that the Britons would be granted amnesty and freed. (Full story)
On Tuesday, Iraqi Deputy Foreign Minister Labid Abawi said his ministry was continuing to push for the release of the five Iranians.
Meanwhile, Abawi said that a top Iranian diplomat seized by gunmen in Baghdad two months ago was released Tuesday.
Jalal Sharafi, deputy secretary of the Iranian Embassy in Baghdad, arrived in Tehran a few hours after his release, according to Iran's semiofficial FARS news agency.
Sharafi was abducted February 4 in front of a branch of the Iranian state-owned Bank Melli in central Baghdad.
According to Iran's Students News Agency, Sharafi's kidnappers were wearing uniforms similar to those of Iraqi security forces.
Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Mohammad Ali Hosseini had said those responsible for the kidnapping "acted under U.S. supervision."
The United States has denied any role in the kidnapping. Spokesman Lt. Col. Christopher Garver on Tuesday said the U.S. military did not have any role in finding or releasing Sharafi, but would have provided assistance if it had been requested.
CNN's Shirzad Bozorgmehr and Jennifer Deaton contributed to this report.
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By John Wagner and Ovetta Wiggins
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, March 29, 2007; B01
Maryland is poised to become the first state to agree to bypass the electoral college and effectively elect U.S. presidents by national popular vote under legislation moving briskly toward the desk of Gov. Martin O'Malley (D).
But the bill comes with a big caveat: It would not take effect until enough other states agree to do the same. "It's a long way from home," said Senate President Thomas Mike V. Miller Jr. (D-Calvert). "I don't know if it will happen in my lifetime."
The bill, which the Senate approved 29 to 17 yesterday, would award the state's 10 electoral votes to the presidential candidate who wins the most votes nationwide -- not statewide. A similar bill was approved yesterday by a House committee and is expected to come before the full chamber today, and O'Malley signaled his backing.
Supporters of the measure, being championed by a national nonprofit group, say deciding elections by popular vote would give candidates reason to campaign nationwide and not concentrate their efforts in "battleground" states, such as Florida and Ohio, that have dominated recent elections.
Moreover, the supporters argue, such a system would prevent rare occasions, such as President Bush's 2000 victory over Al Gore, in which a candidate who wins the popular vote does not prevail in the electoral college, a fixture in U.S. elections since the nation's founding.
"Maryland could lead a national movement to popular election of a president," said Sen. Jamie B. Raskin (D-Montgomery), a freshman lawmaker leading the charge, after the hearing.
But even some of those who voted for the measure had doubts about how soon enough other states would come on board. The agreement would not take effect until states that cumulatively hold 270 electoral votes -- the number needed to win a presidential election -- sign on.
California lawmakers passed a version of the bill last year, but it was vetoed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R). This year, lawmakers in one chamber of the Arkansas, Hawaii and Colorado legislatures have approved such a measure, but it has not yet made it through the other chamber, according to National Popular Vote Inc., the California-based group pushing the idea.
Ryan O'Donnell, a spokesman for the group, said lawmakers in Maryland have been receptive because it is "the classic spectator state" in presidential politics.
"I think Maryland voters are tired of being ignored, and lawmakers are reacting to that," O'Donnell said.
O'Malley spokesman Rick Abbruzzese said the governor would sign the bill if it reached his desk. "He supports it, because every voter counts, and every vote should count equally," Abbruzzese said.
In another bid to become more relevant in presidential elections, Maryland lawmakers have passed legislation to move the state's 2008 primary to Feb. 12 from March 4.
Past talk about electing presidents by a national popular vote has centered on amending the U.S. Constitution, a cumbersome process that could take years. In theory, the nonprofit group's plan could be adopted more quickly.
Under the proposal, the electoral college would continue to exist but would function far differently.
Most states currently award all their electoral votes -- a number equal to the size of a state's congressional delegation -- to the candidate who wins the most votes in the state.
The proposal calls on states to award their electoral votes to the candidate with the highest vote count nationally. If enough states do that, the candidate with the most votes nationally would be guaranteed to win the election.
In addition to 2000, there have been three occasions when the winner of the popular vote did not prevail: 1824, 1876 and 1888.
Some lawmakers argued yesterday that a popular-vote plan could become unwieldy if the national count is close.
Sen. Michael G. Lenett (D-Montgomery) predicted "mass chaos" if a national recount were necessary. "While the electoral college is not flawless, the alternative might be worse," he said.
Lenett also said the system proposed could just switch the target for candidates from closely divided states to large cities with many voters -- a scenario that would not necessarily empower Maryland.
Lenett was among three Democrats who joined all 14 of the Senate's Republicans in voting against the measure.
Sen. Andrew P. Harris (R-Baltimore County) told his colleagues that they were moving too hastily. "Sometimes it's good being the first on the bandwagon, sometimes it's not."
The Senate vote sparked almost immediate action from the House Ways and Means Committee, which had been holding the bill until the other chamber acted. The panel voted along party lines to send the bill to the floor.
House Speaker Michael E. Busch (D-Anne Arundel) said the legislation would pass by the end of the week. "It obviously gives Maryland more of a voice in a national election," he said. "The last couple of elections, the candidates have concentrated all their efforts in the two or three states that are going to decide the election."
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TOKYO, March 29 (Reuters) - The dollar edged up on Thursday, extending a rebound against the yen from the prior session after Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said the central bank feels inflation is a threat to the economy.
Wednesday's data showing a surprisingly tepid pick-up in U.S. durable goods orders in February helped to compound worries about the health of the U.S. economy as investors look for the Fed to start cutting rates as early as June.
Bernanke told Congress the troubles in the housing market have clouded the outlook but the Fed feels price pressures present a bigger risk.
Bernanke also said the Fed did not change its policy stance after dropping a reference in its post-meeting statement last week about possible future monetary tightening.
"This would seem to imply that the Fed's tightening bias is still intact, and the future direction for Fed policy is going to remain data-dependent," said Sue Trinh, senior currency strategist at RBC Capital Markets in Sydney.
Rumours of an outbreak of conflict between the United States and Iran, later denied, initially prompted investors to cut back on risky positions on Wednesday by selling stocks and unwinding carry trades in high-yielding currencies funded with the low-yielding yen.
The dollar climbed to 117.09 yen <JPY=>, up 0.25 percent from late New York trade and recovering from a low of 116.38 yen hit on Wednesday. Traders said they expected dollar buying from Japanese importers to provide some support.
The euro slipped slightly to $1.3305 <EUR=> but edged up against the yen to 155.80 yen <EURJPY=R> from a low of 155.52 yen struck the previous session.
The Australian and New Zealand dollars recovered after tumbling more than 1 percent against the yen on Wednesday.
Financial markets and the Fed have been at odds over the outlook for the economy and rates, with investors expecting the Fed to cut rates twice before the end of the year even as U.S. central bankers stress that they are worried about inflation.
Market players are keeping an eye on developments in Iran as the country, already under U.N. sanctions for its nuclear programme, displayed some of the 15 British sailors in custody on television, saying they had trespassed into Iranian waters.
Britain says the military personnel were in Iraqi waters.
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P&G won a $19m (£9.7m) lawsuit against four distributors of rival Amway over rumours tying it to Satanism.
The court concluded a 12-year lawsuit in P&G's favour, after it ruled that the four had spread a false accusation that P&G subsidised Satanic cults.
The case is one of several unfair competition suits P&G has brought refuting the Satanism slurs.
According to P&G, the four distributors had passed on to customers the notion that its logo - featuring a bearded man looking over a field of 13 stars - was a symbol of Satan.
"This is about protecting our reputation," said Jim Johnson, P&G's chief legal officer.
For its part, Amway pointed out that it had successfully defended itself in an earlier case connected with the rumours and brought by P&G.
It had also, it said, done everything it could to get the rumour retracted.
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By Kevin KrolickiMon Mar 19, 11:48 AM ET
With bidding stalled on some of the least desirable residences in Detroit's collapsing housing market, even the fast-talking auctioneer was feeling the stress.
"Folks, the ground underneath the house goes with it. You do know that, right?" he offered.
After selling house after house in the Motor City for less than the $29,000 it costs to buy the average new car, the auctioneer tried a new line: "The lumber in the house is worth more than that!"
As Detroit reels from job losses in the U.S. auto industry, the depressed city has emerged as a boomtown in one area: foreclosed property.
It also stands as a case study in the economic pain from a housing bust as analysts consider whether a developing crisis in mortgages to high-risk borrowers will trigger a slowdown in the broader U.S. economy.
The rising cost of mortgage financing for Detroit borrowers with weak credit has added to the downdraft from a slumping local economy to send home values plunging faster than many investors anticipated a few months ago.
At a weekend sale of about 300 Detroit-area houses by Texas-based auction firm Hudson & Marshall, the mood was marked more by fear than greed.
"These people are investors and they know the difficulty of finding financing. They know the difficulty of finding good tenants. They're cautious," said realtor Stanley Wegrzynowicz, who attended the auction.
HOW LOW IS LOW?
The city, which has lost more than half its population in the past 30 years and struggled with rising crime, failing schools and other social problems, largely missed out on the housing boom that swept much of the country in recent years.
Prices have gained less than 2 percent per year in the five years since 2001, when the auto industry entered a renewed slump.
Steve Izairi, 32, who re-financed his own house in suburban Dearborn and sold his restaurant to begin buying rental properties in Detroit two years, was concerned that houses he thought were bargains at $70,000 two years ago were now selling for just $35,000.
At least 16 Detroit houses up for sale on Sunday sold for $30,000 or less.
A boarded-up bungalow on the city's west side brought $1,300. A four-bedroom house near the original Motown recording studio sold for $7,000.
"You can't buy a used car for that," said Izairi. "It's a gamble, and you have to wonder how low it's going to get."
Detroit, where unemployment runs near 14 percent and a third of the population lives in poverty, leads the nation in new foreclosure filings, according to tracking service RealtyTrac.
With large swaths of the city now abandoned, banks are reclaiming and reselling Detroit homes from buyers who can no longer afford payments at seven times the national rate.
Michigan was the only state to see home prices fall in 2006. The national average price rose almost 6 percent but prices slipped 0.4 percent here, according to a federal study.
The state's jobless rate of 7.1 percent in January was also the second highest in the nation, behind only Mississippi.
HOW MUCH CAN YOU BUY FOR $1 MILLION?
Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick was greeted with applause when he announced last week that two condominiums in the city's revitalizing downtown sold for over $1 million each.
But investors, including some from out of state, proved far more cautious at Sunday's auction.
In the most spirited bidding of the day, a sprawling, four-bedroom mansion from Detroit's boom days with an ornate stone entrance fetched just $135,000.
Dave Webb, principal at Hudson & Marshall, said Michigan had become a "heavy volume" market for his auction firm in recent years, although bigger-money deals were waiting in California, a market he said was ready for the first such auctions of repossessed property in years.
"These people that are buying have got to look at holding on for five to seven years," he said. "The key is holding power."
Even with the steep discounts on Detroit-area properties, some buyers handed over their deposits with a wince.
"I'm not sure it's congratulations," said Kirk Neal, a 55-year-old auto body shop worker who bought a ranch in the suburb of Oak Park for $34,000. "My wife is going to kill me."
Realtor Ron Walraven had a three-bedroom house in the suburb of Bloomfield Hills that had listed for $525,000 sell for just $130,000 at the auction.
"Once we've seen the last person leave Michigan, then I think we'll be able to say we've seen the bottom," he said.
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Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner's move to dump Cuyahoga County's elections board has thrown the county's elections process into greater turmoil, stalling a search for a new elections chief, slowing preparations for the May primary and possibly creating a leadership vacuum 18 months before the 2008 presidential vote.
Brunner, a Democrat elected in November, called each of the four board members Sunday and asked them to resign, a move that could mire election officials in legal fights when they also are dealing with elections, questions about the reliability of their electronic voting machines and the training of poll workers.
In an interview Monday, Brunner said she will fire the two Republicans and two Democrats if they don't resign by the end of business Wednesday.
Her call for the resignations also set off a war of words between GOP boss Bob Bennett, the board chairman, and Democrat Bill Mason, the county prosecutor.
Brunner said she made the decision after a Cuyahoga County judge last week sentenced two elections workers to 18 months in prison for rigging a recount of the 2004 presidential election.
"I'm not saying the board gave orders, but when you have a problem that serious on top of everything else that has occurred, you have an accountability problem," she said. "It has to do with public confidence and perception."
The elections board has long been perceived as dysfunctional. It has gone through three directors since 2000, wrestled with thefts of cell phones and money by workers and repeatedly struggled to produce accurate and timely vote counts. The problems peaked last May, when the board failed to deliver vote tallies for almost a week after the primary.
Bennett said he and Republican Sally Florkiewicz are not leaving. The two Democrats, Loree Soggs and Edward Coaxum, also are unwilling to go. Each board member receives $22,000 a year and credit toward a public pension.
Brunner said Ohio law allows her to summarily fire board members for neglect of duty. If the board members don't resign, she plans to file a complaint Thursday with the Cuyahoga board, spelling out the charges against them. She would then schedule a public hearing at which they can defend themselves.
"There will be a litany of things in the complaint," Brunner said. "I'm not really sure they want this."
Elections board members, still in charge, are without the top three employees who run the day-to-day operations.
The board members last month forced Director Michael Vu and deputy Gwen Dillingham to resign over the voting problems in the May primary. Elections coordinator Jacqueline Maiden, one of two employees sentenced last week, was fired by the board after her conviction.
Board turmoil has caused other employees to leave, and several important positions, including finance director and poll worker manager, are filled with interim appointees. The board appointed administrator Jane Platten interim director last month.
Bennett, in a news conference Monday in Columbus, accused Brunner of hitting "the wrong target in her attempt to make corrections in Cuyahoga County."
Bennett said the one to blame, particularly the recent conviction of employees, is Mason's office, which legally represents the board and advises it on election procedures.
Bennett said that better legal oversight of the recount procedures could have prevented the indictment of the two employees.
Brunner rejected that notion.
"The board is the one responsible for conducting an election, not the prosecutor's office," she said.
Bennett said he plans to file a complaint with the Ohio Supreme Court against the assistant county prosecutor assigned to the board, Reno Oradini, and possibly Mason. The Ohio Supreme Court reviews the conduct of lawyers.
Bennett said he will discuss his complaints against Mason's office during Wednesday's elections board meeting.
Mason, however, isn't waiting to hear more. He fired his own salvo Monday, accusing Bennett of "looking for a scapegoat," when "he should look in the mirror."
"Bennett's arrogance is boundless," he said in a prepared statement. "A judge and a jury rejected his phony excuses and found them guilty of rigging election results.
"Someone should tell him that he is not above the law. His mismanagement as president of the Board of Elections has created an environment that has permitted this illegal conduct to occur."
In the meantime, the process to find a new director and deputy director has stalled. The committee created to find top candidates reported Monday that it will withhold the names of finalists for director rather than give them to the board Wednesday.
"The opinion of the committee is that given the state of controversy at the board, there is nothing served by throwing the applicants into the political fire," committee chairman Bill Wilkins said.
Wilkins said he will tell the applicants that the process has slowed "until the picture clears a little bit."
Plain Dealer Columbus Bureau Chief Mark Rollenhagen contributed to this report.
To reach these Plain Dealer reporters:
mnaymik@plaind.com, 216-999-4849
jmazzolini@plaind.com, 216-999-4563
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James Hansen, the Nasa scientist who first warned the US government about global warming, yesterday delivered a withering critique of the way the White House has "interfered" with climate scientists at the space agency.
Dr Hansen, the director of Nasa's Goddard Institute of Space Studies in New York, said that the space agency's budget for studying the Earth's climate has been slashed and that its scientists have been systematically gagged about speaking of their concerns.
In detailed written testimony delivered yesterday to the US House of Representatives, Dr Hansen said that there had been creeping politicisation of climate change with the effect that the American public has been left confused about the science of global warming.
"During my career I have noticed an increasing politicisation of public affairs at headquarters level, with a notable effect on communication from scientists to the public," Dr Hansen writes in his testimony. "Interference with communication of science to the public has been greater during the current administration than at any time in my career," he says. "In my more than three decades in government, I have never seen anything approaching the degree to which information flow from scientists to the public has been screened and controlled as it has now.
Political appointees within the public affairs office at Nasa headquarters were accused by Dr Hansen of interfering in scientific statements and of blocking reports that link rising temperatures or melting sea ice with global warming. He says instructions and reprimands were often made orally so that there was no paper or electronic record of the interference, which allowed press relations personnel to dismiss gagging allegations as hearsay.
"My suggestion for getting at the truth is to question the relevant participants under oath, including the then Nasa associate administrator for earth sciences, who surely is aware of who in the White House was receiving and reviewing press releases that related to climate change," Dr Hansen says.
When Dr Hansen gave a lecture to the American Geophysical Union about the record global temperatures in 1995, the White House called Nasa headquarters to complain of the resulting media attention. "The upshot was a new explicit set of constraints on me, including the requirement that any media interviews be approved beforehand and that headquarters have the right of first refusal on all interviews," he says.
"It became clear that the new constraints on my communications were going to be a real impediment when I was forced to take down from our website our routine posting of updated global temperature analysis."
Since then, Nasa has slashed its budget for the study of earth sciences.
"The impact is to confuse the public about the reality of global warming, and about whether that warming can be reliably attributed to human-made greenhouse gases," he says.
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By Douwe Miedema
GENEVA (Reuters) - Many major rivers in the world are at risk of drying out because of climate change and dam construction, which could affect fresh water supplies and marine life, the global nature protection body WWF said on Tuesday.
In a report ahead of the March 22 'World Water Day', the Swiss-based group identified 10 rivers, including the Nile, the Rio Grande and the Danube, as some of the worst victims of poor planning and inadequate protection.
"Rivers regularly no longer reach the sea, like the Indus in Pakistan, the Nile in Africa and the Rio Grande ... There are millions of people whose livelihoods are at risk," said Jamie Pittock, director of WWF's global freshwater program.
Rivers are the world's main source of fresh water, and about half of the available supply is already being used up, he said.
Dams have destroyed habitats and cut rivers off from their flood plains, while climate change could alter the rules by which rivers have lived by for thousands of years, the report said.
Fish populations, the top source of protein and overall life support for hundreds of thousands of communities worldwide, are also being threatened, the report found.
WWF urged governments to strike agreements on ways to better manage shared water resources in order to minimize damage.
"All the rivers in the report symbolize the freshwater crisis signaled for years, but the alarm is falling on deaf ears," Pittock said.
Other rivers on the warning list were the Yangtze, Mekong, Salween and Ganges, in Asia, the Rio Plata in South America and Australia's Murray-Darling, WWF said.
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Republican officials operating at the behest of the White House have begun seeking a possible successor to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, whose support among GOP lawmakers on Capitol Hill has collapsed, according to party sources familiar with the discussions.
Among the names floated Monday by administration officials are Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff and White House anti-terrorism coordinator Frances Townsend. Former Deputy Attorney General Larry Thompson is a White House prospect. So is former solicitor general Theodore B. Olson, but sources were unsure whether he would want the job.
Republican sources also disclosed that it is now a virtual certainty that Deputy Attorney General Paul J. McNulty, whose incomplete and inaccurate congressional testimony about the prosecutors helped precipitate the crisis, will also resign shortly. Officials were debating whether Gonzales and McNulty should depart at the same time or whether McNulty should go a day or two after Gonzales. Still known as "The Judge" for his service on the Texas Supreme Court, Gonzales is one of the few remaining original Texans who came to Washington with President Bush.
In a sign of Republican despair, GOP political strategists on Capitol Hill said that it is too late for Gonzales' departure to head off a full-scale Democratic investigation into the motives and timing behind the firing of eight U.S. attorneys.
"Democrats smell blood in the water, and (Gonzales') resignation won't stop them," said a well-connected Republican Senate aide. "And on our side, no one's going to defend him. All we can do is warn Democrats against overreaching."
A main reason Gonzales is finding few friends even among Republicans is that he has long been regarded with suspicion by conservatives who have questioned his ideological purity. In the past, these conservatives warned the White House against nominating him for the Supreme Court. Now they're using the controversy over the firing of eight federal prosecutors to take out their pent-up frustrations with how he has handled his leadership at Justice and how the White House has treated Congress.
Complaints range from his handling of immigration cases to his alleged ceding of power in the department to career officials instead of movement conservatives.
Without embracing Gonzales, Republicans pointed out that presidents are free to replace U.S. attorneys at will. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Texas) noted on MSNBC that some of those who were replaced "haven't whined or complained about it" and added, "I think that there's a lot of politics, but I don't think it's just on one side."
But officials on Capitol Hill said that after the Justice Department failed to turn over a batch of e-mails about the prosecutors on Friday as expected, Republican senators became less likely to defend Gonzales or the White House. They feared the delay signaled more damaging information was in the pipeline.
"We have a crisis where there doesn't need to be one, and now Democrats have an issue where they can open up the subpoena floodgates," said an exasperated Republican aide. "Once these investigations start, there always ends up being a lot of messy collateral damage."
Now the White House is girding for a confirmation battle at the same time it is coping with Democrats' threats to subpoena aides to Bush, including senior adviser Karl Rove.
Among the contenders to replace Gonzales, Chertoff is a former U.S. circuit judge for the Third Circuit Court of Appeals, based in Philadelphia. Before that, he was confirmed by the Senate in 2003 as assistant attorney general for the criminal division.
Under this scenario, Chertoff's successor at the Department of Homeland Security might be Townsend, who now works in the White House as assistant to the president for homeland security and counterterrorism. Townsend held senior Justice Department posts under Attorney General Janet Reno during the Clinton administration and is also a potential nominee for attorney general.
Republican sources said other widely respected Republican lawyers have been considered for attorney general, although some of them may not be interested in taking the job. These names include:
--Former Sen. Fred Thompson of Tennessee, the "Law & Order" star who is now considering seeking the Republican presidential nomination.
--Olson, who was Bush's first solicitor general and now is a partner at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher in Washington.
--Larry Thompson, who has been general counsel of PepsiCo Inc. since leaving his first-term job as deputy to Attorney General John Ashcroft.
--Retired federal judge Laurence H. Silberman, who was named by Bush to be co-chairman of the Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction.
--George J. Terwilliger III, a former deputy attorney general and acting attorney general who was a leader of Bush's legal team during the Florida election recount.
Asked if Gonzales will stay, White House Press Secretary Tony Snow said Monday: "We hope so. He has the confidence of the president." But Snow also revealed that the president had not talked to Gonzales since a conversation the two had when Bush was in Mexico last week.
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