Lou Dobbs reported today that "Dubai Ports World" officials have tried to silence him and get CNN to suppress his reports.

Mark Dennis, spokesman for Dubai Ports World said: "CNN won't shut up Lou Dobbs." They are refusing to give any more interviews to CNN or allow them to video tape their operations overseas. To CNN's credit they have refused to comply with their demands.

Scotland on Sunday has obtained remarkable details of one of the most memorably bizarre episodes of the Bush presidency: the day he crashed into a Scottish police constable while cycling in the grounds of Gleneagles Hotel. The incident, which will do little to improve Bush's accident-prone reputation, began when he took to two wheels for a spot of early-evening exercise during last year's G8 summit at the Perthshire resort.

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It was "about 1800 hours on Wednesday, 6 July, 2005" that a detachment of Strathclyde police constables, in "Level 2 public order dress [anti-riot gear]," formed a protective line at the gate at the hotel's rear entrance, in case demonstrators penetrated the biggest-ever security operation on Scottish soil. The official police incident report states: "[The unit] was requested to cover the road junction on the Auchterarder to Braco Road as the President of the USA, George Bush, was cycling through." The report goes on: "[At] about 1800 hours the President approached the junction at speed on the bicycle. The road was damp at the time. As the President passed the junction at speed he raised his left arm from the handlebars to wave to the police officers present while shouting 'thanks, you guys, for coming'.

"As he did this he lost control of the cycle, falling to the ground, causing both himself and his bicycle to strike [the officer] on the lower legs. [The officer] fell to the ground, striking his head. The President continued along the ground for approximately five metres, causing himself a number of abrasions. The officers... then assisted both injured parties."

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At hospital, a doctor examined the constable and diagnosed damage to his ankle ligaments and issued him with crutches. The cause was officially recorded as: "Hit by moving/falling object." [Editor's note: that "moving/falling object" being President Bush]

From Egypt to Afghanistan, when terrorists and gangsters need a place to meet, to relax, maybe to invest, they head to Dubai, a bustling city-state on the Persian Gulf. The Middle East's unquestioned financial capital, Dubai is the showcase of the United Arab Emirates, an oil-rich federation of sheikdoms. Forty years ago, Dubai was a backwater; today, it hosts dozens of banks and one of the world's busiest ports; its free-trade zones are crammed with thousands of companies. Construction is everywhere--skyscrapers, malls, hotels, and, soon, the world's tallest building.

But Dubai also serves as the region's criminal crossroads, a hub for smuggling, money laundering, and underground banking. There are Russian and Indian mobsters, Iranian arms traffickers, and Arab jihadists. Funds for the 9/11 hijackers and African embassy bombers were transferred through the city. It was the heart of Pakistani scientist A. Q. Khan's black market in nuclear technology and other proliferation cases. Half of all applications to buy U.S. military equipment from Dubai are from bogus front companies, officials say. "Iran," adds one U.S. official, "is building a bomb through Dubai." Last year, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents thwarted the shipment of 3,000 U.S. military night-vision goggles by an Iranian pair based in Dubai. Moving goods undetected is not hard. Dhows--rickety wooden boats that have plowed the Arabian Sea for centuries--move along the city center, uninspected, down the aptly named Smuggler's Creek.

U.A.E. rulers have taken terrorism seriously since 9/11, but Washington has a half-dozen extradition requests that they refuse to honor. The list includes people accused of rape, murder, and arms trafficking, and the last fugitive of the BCCI banking scandal. The country has put money laundering controls on the books but has made few cases. Interior Minister Sheik Saif bin Zayed Al Nahyan told U.S. News the U.A.E. has made great strides in cracking down, but he insists that the real problems lie elsewhere. "We are a neutral country, like Switzerland," he says. "Give us the evidence, and we will do something about it. Don't blame others." Not everyone agrees. "All roads lead to Dubai," says former treasury agent John Cassara, author of Hide and Seek, a forthcoming book on terrorism finance. Cassara tried explaining U.S. concerns about Dubai to a local businessman but got only a puzzled look: "Mr. John, money laundering? But that's what we do. "

The oil-rich United Arab Emirates is a major investor in The Carlyle Group, the private equity investment firm where President Bush's father once served as senior adviser and is a who's who of former high-level government officials. Just last year, Dubai International Capital, a government-backed buyout firm, invested in an $8 billion Carlyle fund.

Another family connection, the president's brother, Neil Bush, has reportedly received funding for his educational software company from the UAE investors. A call to his company was not returned.

Then there is the cabinet connection. Treasury Secretary John Snow was chairman of railroad company CSX/. After he left the company for the White House, CSX sold its international port operations to Dubai Ports World for more than a billion dollars.

In Connecticut today, Snow told reporters he had no knowledge of that CSX sale. "I learned of this transaction probably the same way members of the Senate did, by reading about it in the newspapers."

Another administration connection, President Bush chose a Dubai Ports World executive to head the U.S. Maritime Administration. David Sanborn, the former director of Dubai Ports' European and Latin American operations, he was tapped just last month to lead the agency that oversees U.S. port operations.

The president on Tuesday defended his administration's earlier approval of the sale of London-based Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Co. to Dubai Ports World, despite concerns in Congress it could increase the possibility of terrorism at American ports.

The pending sale ? expected to be finalized in early March ? puts Dubai Ports in charge of major shipping operations in New York, New Jersey, Baltimore, New Orleans, Miami and Philadelphia. "If there was any chance that this transaction would jeopardize the security of the United States, it would not go forward," Bush said.

"It sends a terrible signal to friends around the world that it's OK for a company from one country to manage the port, but not a country that plays by the rules and has got a good track record from another part of the world," Bush said.

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Bush sought to quiet a political storm that has united Republican governors and Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist of Tennessee with liberal Democrats, including New York's two Democratic senators, Hillary Rodham Clinton and Charles Schumer. Frist said Tuesday, before Bush's comments, that he would introduce legislation to put the sale on hold if the White House did not delay the takeover. He said the deal raised "serious questions regarding the safety and security of our homeland.

House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., asked the president for a moratorium on the sale until it could be studied further. "We must not allow the possibility of compromising our national security due to lack of review or oversight by the federal government," Hastert said.

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Bush said that protesting lawmakers should understand his approval of the deal was final. "They ought to listen to what I have to say about this," the president said. "They'll look at the facts and understand the consequences of what they're going to do. But if they pass a law, I'll deal with it with a veto."

Elected officials from New York and New Jersey are vowing to block a controversial plan that many say places our ports at risk. The Bush Administration is allowing an Arab company to assume control of several major ports including several in this area.

Governor Pataki wants the Port Authority to explore the state's legal options as the federal government goes ahead with plans to let a Saudi Arabian based company take over six major U.S. ports, including one in New York and one in New Jersey.

Senator Charles Schumer and Long Island Congressman Peter King are expected to announce emergency legislation to try and put a stop to this. Critics do point out that two of "9/11" hijackers did come from the United Arab Emirates. Rep. Peter King, (R) New York: "I'm confident, certainly very hopeful that if we speak loudly enough and really focus on this issue, we can get the contract delayed, get it frozen, get it held."

The port deal is said to be worth seven billion dollars.

The space travel agency, Space Adventures, has announced plans to develop a commercial "Spaceport" in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) to take tourists on sub-orbital flights. The proposed facility in Ras al-Khaimah, the most northern of the seven emirates that form the UAE, would be the first of several such spaceports under a global development project budgeted at more than 250 million dollars.

Other potential locations have been identified in Asia, specifically Singapore, and North America. The company said it had already received clearance from the UAE authorities to operate sub-orbital space flights in their air space. "The close proximity to Dubai, one of the worlds leading luxury tourist destinations, makes (Ras al-Khaimah) a choice location for Spaceflight operations," said space adventures president and CEO, Eric Anderson yesterday. "Suborbital flights will offer millions of people the opportunity to experience the greatest adventure available, space travel," Anderson said.

Currently the only operating space tourism agency, space adventures first made its name by sending US millionaire Dennis Tito into space in 2001. Since then, two other ultra-wealthy tourists have made similar trips, South African mark Shuttle worth in 2002 and last year another American millionaire businessman, Greg Olsen, who paid 20 million dollars to spend eight days aboard the international space station.

The purpose of the bill would be to block the $6.8 billion sale of a British shipping company to Dubai Ports World, a port operator controlled by the government of Dubai, part of the United Arab Emirates. The British company, Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation, operates the cruise ship terminal on the West Side of Manhattan and has a half-interest in the Port Newark Container Terminal, the third-largest cargo terminal in New York harbor. "I just don't believe that our ports should be handed over to foreign governments," Mr. Menendez said in an interview. Especially not to Dubai, he added, because it has a "serious and dubious history" as a transit point for terrorism.

Echoing other lawmakers in Washington who criticized the federal approval of the deal this week, Mr. Menendez cited reports that two of the Sept. 11 hijackers were from the United Arab Emirates and that some of the money that financed the attacks flowed through banks there. That bipartisan group of critics included Senator Charles E. Schumer, a Democrat, and Representative Peter T. King, a Republican from Long Island. But senior administration officials reiterated their support for the transaction and their favorable relations with the United Arab Emirates. The Dubai purchase passed a review by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, a panel composed of the leaders of 12 federal agencies and headed by the treasury secretary, John W. Snow.

Mr. Snow and Condoleezza Rice, the secretary of state, said yesterday that the committee had determined that the transfer would not compromise security. Ms. Rice, who is scheduled to visit the United Arab Emirates next week, described one of them, Abu Dhabi, as "a very good friend" of the United States, according to Bloomberg News.

"Yet, a few weeks ago, when I - a NASA climate scientist - tried to talk to the media about these issues following a lecture I had given calling for prompt reductions in the emission of greenhouse gases, the NASA public affairs team - staffed by political appointees from the Bush administration - tried to stop me doing so. I was not happy with that, and I ignored the restrictions. The first line of NASA's mission is to understand and protect the planet."

"This new satellite data is a remarkable advance. We are seeing for the first time the detailed behaviour of the ice streams that are draining the Greenland ice sheet. They show that Greenland seems to be losing at least 200 cubic kilometres of ice a year. It is different from even two years ago, when people still said the ice sheet was in balance. Hundreds of cubic kilometres sounds like a lot of ice. But this is just the beginning. Once a sheet starts to disintegrate, it can reach a tipping point beyond which break-up is explosively rapid. The issue is how close we are getting to that tipping point. The summer of 2005 broke all records for melting in Greenland. So we may be on the edge."

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How far can it go? The last time the world was three degrees warmer than today - which is what we expect later this century - sea levels were 25m higher. So that is what we can look forward to if we don't act soon. None of the current climate and ice models predict this. But I prefer the evidence from the Earth's history and my own eyes. I think sea-level rise is going to be the big issue soon, more even than warming itself.

It's hard to say what the world will be like if this happens. It would be another planet. You could imagine great armadas of icebergs breaking off Greenland and melting as they float south. And, of course, huge areas being flooded.

How long have we got? We have to stabilise emissions of carbon dioxide within a decade, or temperatures will warm by more than one degree. That will be warmer than it has been for half a million years, and many things could become unstoppable. If we are to stop that, we cannot wait for new technologies like capturing emissions from burning coal. We have to act with what we have. This decade, that means focusing on energy efficiency and renewable sources of energy that do not burn carbon. We don't have much time left.

Peter Banko, the hospital administrator at Christus Spohn Hospital Corpus Christi-Memorial, said Harry Whittington had the heart attack early Tuesday while being evaluated.

He said there was an irregularity in the heartbeat caused by a birdshot pellet, and doctors performed a cardiac catheterization. Whittington expressed a desire to leave the hospital, but Banko said he would probably stay for another week. Whittington, a prominent Republican attorney from Austin, was accidentally sprayed with shotgun pellets when Cheney was aiming for a quail Saturday. Whittington had initially been placed in intensive care. He had been moved to a "step-down unit" Monday after doctors decided to leave several birdshot pellets lodged in his skin rather than try to remove them.

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The wildlife department issued a report Monday that found the main factor contributing to the accident was a "hunter's judgment factor." No other secondary factors were found to have played a role.

The shooting was first reported by the Corpus Christi Caller-Times. The vice president's office did not disclose the accident until nearly 24 hours after it happened. Armstrong said she was watching from a car while Cheney, Whittington and another hunter got out of the vehicle to shoot at a covey of quail. Whittington shot a bird and went to look for it in the tall grass, while Cheney and the third hunter walked to another spot and discovered a second covey. Whittington "came up from behind the vice president and the other hunter and didn't signal them or indicate to them or announce himself," Armstrong said. "The vice president didn't see him," she continued. "The covey flushed and the vice president picked out a bird and was following it and shot. And by god, Harry was in the line of fire and got peppered pretty good."

The French satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo reprinted cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad on Wednesday and published one of its own, further angering Muslim groups.

The weekly's front page carried the new cartoon depicting the Prophet Mohammad burying his face in his hands and saying: "It's hard to be loved by fools." President Jacques Chirac condemned "overt provocations" which could enflame passions. "Anything that can hurt the convictions of someone else, in particular religious convictions, should be avoided," Chirac said.

Moderate Muslims, while condemning the cartoons, have expressed fears that radicals are hijacking the debate over the boundary between media freedom and religious respect.

In countries including Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, Muslims are boycotting Danish goods, and, in the Gaza Strip, Palestinian militants threatened to kidnap Westerners if governments don't apologize for the actions of newspapers in their countries. Iran cut trade relations with Denmark when President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Feb. 4 issued a decree calling on the Trade Ministry to terminate economic agreements with all Western countries where the cartoons were published.

• The Pakistan Medical Association is now refusing to prescribe any drugs from firms based in European countries where the Mohammed cartoons were published. The Association will boycott drugs from from Denmark, Norway, Switzerland, Germany and France to protest the "blasphemous" drawings. That means no Tamiflu for Pakistanis -- Tamiflu is made by Roche in Switzerland. Roche also manufactures the breast cancer drug Herceptin, the HIV drugs Fortovase and Invirase, the Cystic Fybrosis drug Pulmozyme and the acne drug Accutane -- just to name a few. Hey, what a great idea -- make sure your own people don't get their cancer drugs just to spite a bunch of Danish cartoonists.
• In India riots broke out over the cartoons. The riot police used tear gas and water cannons to quell the protest -- four students were injured.
• Four are dead in Kabul where 2,000 armed protesters tried to break into a U.S. army base outside Bagram, the largest U.S. base in Afghanistan. They must not have gotten the sniveling memo from the U.S. State Department condemning the cartoons.
• British Muslim cleric Omar Bakri Mohammed has declared that the Danish cartoonists should be tried under Islamic law and then (after it's proven that they committed the crime of blasphemy) they should be executed. He noted with dismay that this did not appear to be legal under British law. Bummer.
• Meanwhile, American Muslims peacefully protested against the Philadelphia Inquirer for reprinting the cartoons; they also have threatened a boycott of the newspaper if the newspaper does not apologize. The demonstrators carried signs that said, "Freedom of Speech, Not Irresponsible Speech," "No to Hate" and "Islam=Nonviolence." Not a death threat or burning effigy in sight so far, just civilized, non-violent protests -- the way citizens of enlightened nations tend to do.

Publication of the cartoons in Spain, Italy, France, Germany and the Netherlands triggered condemnation in the Muslim and Arab world, where consumers turned their anger on Danish companies.

Arla, the dairy company based in Denmark, where the cartoons were first published, admitted on Thursday its sales in some Middle East countries had fallen to zero. Carrefour, the French retailer, said it had removed Danish products from shelves in its Middle East operations.

Other Danish companies targeted in the boycott include Lego, the toymaker, and Novo Nordisk, the pharmaceuticals company.

As popular protests spread, the leaders of Egypt and Afghanistan warned the cartoons had offended millions of Muslims and could be exploited by terrorists in their war against the west.

Meanwhile, a Jordanian gossip tabloid defiantly published three of the cartoons that have triggered outrage in the Arab and Muslim world.

"Muslims of the world, be reasonable," said the editor-in-chief of the weekly independent newspaper Al-Shihan in an editorial alongside the cartoons, including the one showing the Muslim religion's founder wearing a bomb-shaped turban.

RAW STORY has acquired a letter from CIA leak Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald to Vice President Dick Cheney's former Chief of Staff, I. Lewis Libby, who was indicted for allegedly obstructing justice and other charges for his role in the outing of CIA agent Valerie Plame.

In the letter, Fitzgerald admits that he has been told some emails from the President and Vice President's offices have been deleted, though he cautions that "no pertinent evidence has been destroyed."

"In an abundance of caution," he writes, "we advise you that we have learned that not all email of the Office of the Vice President and the Executive Office of the President for certain time periods in 2003 was preserved through the normal achiving process on the White House computer system."

The New York Daily News' James Meek reported this morning that "CIA leak prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald collected 10,000 pages of documents - including the most sensitive terrorism memos in the U.S. government - from Vice President Cheney's office, he said in court papers released yesterday.

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Meek added: "Fitzgerald, who is fighting Libby's request, said in a letter to Libby's lawyers that many e-mails from Cheney's office at the time of the Plame leak in 2003 have been deleted contrary to White House policy."