Saturday, July 19, 2008

Search: in N.Y. man claims Subway baked knife into sandwich

NEW YORK (Reuters) - A New York man claimed in a lawsuit filed on Wednesday that he found a knife with a 7-inch (18-cm) blade baked into the bread of his foot-long "Cold Cut Trio" Subway sandwich.

John Agnesini, 26, a magazine designer, said he had already taken a few bites from the sandwich in late June when he spotted the knife jutting out from the bread's crust. The lawsuit, filed in Manhattan state court, seeks $1 million.

"If I didn't look at it, I don't know what would have happened," said Agnesini. "That's the last thing you think about a sandwich you eat all the time."

A colleague telephoned the chain to complain, but Subway never apologized, he said.

Subway spokesman Kevin Kane said in a statement the company was investigating.

"At Subway restaurants, we take food safety and customer comments very seriously. We are aware of the complaint made and are investigating the facts alleged. As a pending legal matter, we cannot discuss this matter further," said Kane.

The case was filed on public health grounds, but Agnesini's lawyer, Yetta Kurland, also said she was looking into whether the June incident may have been intentional or malicious.

(Reporting by Edith Honan, editing by Michelle Nichols and Cynthia Osterman)

Original here

Children are paying the price of injustice


"I feel like I'm still in prison", said Muhammad, as he described life after spending nearly five months in an Israeli jail. He sat nervously in his lounge as he answered questions about his ordeal, his baby-smooth face and teenager's awkward gait in stark contrast to the severe punishment meted out to him as though he were a hardened, adult criminal.

In February, Muhammad was snatched by a four-man squad of Israeli special forces while playing with friends near the security wall, a mile away from his home. He was subjected to a vicious beating by the men, who punched him repeatedly and smashed him across the face with the butt of a gun in broad daylight. "No one said a word to me during [the attack]", recalled Muhammad, whose description of the assault bore marked similarities to Rodney King's ordeal.

The difference, however, is that Muhammad is just 14 years old, yet was deemed a sufficient enough threat by the soldiers that he needed to be beaten to the point of almost losing consciousness. His crime? Allegedly throwing stones at the separation wall; something Muhammad strenuously denies.

Whereas Israeli youths are treated as children in the eyes of the law until they turn 18, Palestinians are not accorded such humane treatment, and can be imprisoned from the tender age of just 12. Since September 2000 Israel has arrested and detained almost 6000 children, with 700 under-18s arrested in 2007 alone.

Gerard Horton of DCI, an NGO which has taken up Muhammad's case, pointed to the IDF's flagrant violations of children's rights as yet another example of Israel thumbing its nose at international law. "These abuses have been well documented for many years, yet our pleas for intervention have fallen on deaf ears", he said. "The lack of will by the international community to uphold the rule of law when it comes to the Occupied Territories is deeply disturbing."

After his violent treatment at the hands of the troops, Muhammad was taken to a police station for interrogation, where he was duped into signing a confession. "A man showed me a piece of paper in Hebrew [a language Muhammad doesn't speak] and told me if I signed it I would be released, so I did", he said. "Immediately he told me that I had just signed a confession, and that I should now expect a prison sentence".

After receiving medical treatment for his wounds, which required an overnight stay in hospital, Muhammad was transferred to another jail until his court case in front of a military judge. He was not permitted to see a lawyer until five minutes before his trial, and throughout his entire ordeal (including his four and a half month prison term) was not allowed to see any member of his family.

His parents were sick with worry, according to his mother. "There was no official contact", she said. "The only news we received were two calls from Muhammad on phones smuggled into the jail, and then an update from a released prisoner who told us when Muhammad was due to be let out of prison".

Wheelchair-bound, his mother explained how Muhammad's absence affected family life at home. "He is my firstborn, and used to help me around the house all the time", she explained. "[On top of that], we were constantly worried about what had happened to our son, since we had no way of getting in touch with him".

She described the changes that had come over Muhammad since his traumatic experience. "He has been affected in two ways", she said. "He has lost an academic year of his studies, and also suffered greatly psychologically". The family filed a complaint against the army, "but no action was taken in response", she said flatly.

When he heard this, Gerard offered to send a DCI lawyer to follow up the complaint, but the chances of achieving anything significant on behalf of Muhammad and his parents are slim. The authorities have a history of treating criticism of their military policies as water off a duck's back, leaving Gerard and his team incredibly frustrated at their lack of ability to bring the perpetrators to justice.

All that they can do is to document the abuses and beg for intervention by the international community, but – as witnessed by the EU's recent upgrading of relations with Israel – their plaintive appeals appear to be in vain. As DCI's June bulletin states, "The EU professes support for human rights principles… [and yet has turned] a blind eye to grave human rights abuses for economic and political expediency".

Israeli officials have flexed their political muscles before when accused of mistreatment of Palestinian detainees, including forcing Canada to remove Israel from a torture blacklist earlier this year. Against this backdrop, DCI and the other human rights groups working in the area face an uphill struggle to rid the occupied territories of such abuses.

While Muhammad tried to put a brave face on what happened to him in the name of Israeli justice, his mother was more realistic about the prospects for her family, as well as her community at large. "The Israelis do all of this to put pressure on us, in order to show that the army controls the Palestinians, and also to try to force us to leave – but whatever they do to us, we will remain here", she said defiantly.

In the meantime, the silence of the outside world is deafening. With every passing week, and with every diplomatic door being opened for Israel, the authorities become more and more immune to the criticism on ground-level from the likes of DCI and their peers, and it is children such as Muhammad who pay the price.

Soldiers savagely beating a pre-pubescent youth would send shockwaves throughout any civilised country, but – when it comes to the occupied territories – such an attack is treated as just another day in the office.

Original here

How China's taking over Africa, and why the West should be VERY worried

On June 5, 1873, in a letter to The Times, Sir Francis Galton, the cousin of Charles Darwin and a distinguished African explorer in his own right, outlined a daring (if by today's standards utterly offensive) new method to 'tame' and colonise what was then known as the Dark Continent.

'My proposal is to make the encouragement of Chinese settlements of Africa a part of our national policy, in the belief that the Chinese immigrants would not only maintain their position, but that they would multiply and their descendants supplant the inferior Negro race,' wrote Galton.

'I should expect that the African seaboard, now sparsely occupied by lazy, palavering savages, might in a few years be tenanted by industrious, order-loving Chinese, living either as a semidetached dependency of China, or else in perfect freedom under their own law.'

Close relations: Chinese President Hu Jintao accompanies Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe to a ceremony in the Great Hall of the People in Beijing

Despite an outcry in Parliament and heated debate in the august salons of the Royal Geographic Society, Galton insisted that 'the history of the world tells the tale of the continual displacement of populations, each by a worthier successor, and humanity gains thereby'.

A controversial figure, Galton was also the pioneer of eugenics, the theory that was used by Hitler to try to fulfil his mad dreams of a German Master Race.

Eventually, Galton's grand resettlement plans fizzled out because there were much more exciting things going on in Africa.

But that was more than 100 years ago, and with legendary explorers such as Livingstone, Speke and Burton still battling to find the source of the Nile - and new discoveries of exotic species of birds and animals featuring regularly on newspaper front pages - vast swathes of the continent had not even been 'discovered'.

Yet Sir Francis Galton, it now appears, was ahead of his time. His vision is coming true - if not in the way he imagined. An astonishing invasion of Africa is now under way.

In the greatest movement of people the world has ever seen, China is secretly working to turn the entire continent into a new colony.

Reminiscent of the West's imperial push in the 18th and 19th centuries - but on a much more dramatic, determined scale - China's rulers believe Africa can become a 'satellite' state, solving its own problems of over-population and shortage of natural resources at a stroke.

With little fanfare, a staggering 750,000 Chinese have settled in Africa over the past decade. More are on the way.

The strategy has been carefully devised by officials in Beijing, where one expert has estimated that China will eventually need to send 300 million people to Africa to solve the problems of over-population and pollution.

The plans appear on track. Across Africa, the red flag of China is flying. Lucrative deals are being struck to buy its commodities - oil, platinum, gold and minerals. New embassies and air routes are opening up. The continent's new Chinese elite can be seen everywhere, shopping at their own expensive boutiques, driving Mercedes and BMW limousines, sending their children to exclusive private schools.

The pot-holed roads are cluttered with Chinese buses, taking people to markets filled with cheap Chinese goods. More than a thousand miles of new Chinese railroads are crisscrossing the continent, carrying billions of tons of illegally-logged timber, diamonds and gold.

New horizons? Mugabe has said: 'We must turn from the West and face the East'

The trains are linked to ports dotted around the coast, waiting to carry the goods back to Beijing after unloading cargoes of cheap toys made in China.

Confucius Institutes (state-funded Chinese 'cultural centres') have sprung up throughout Africa, as far afield as the tiny land-locked countries of Burundi and Rwanda, teaching baffled local people how to do business in Mandarin and Cantonese.

Massive dams are being built, flooding nature reserves. The land is scarred with giant Chinese mines, with 'slave' labourers paid less than £1 a day to extract ore and minerals.

Pristine forests are being destroyed, with China taking up to 70 per cent of all timber from Africa.

All over this great continent, the Chinese presence is swelling into a flood. Angola has its own 'Chinatown', as do great African cities such as Dar es Salaam and Nairobi.

Exclusive, gated compounds, serving only Chinese food, and where no blacks are allowed, are being built all over the continent. 'African cloths' sold in markets on the continent are now almost always imported, bearing the legend: 'Made in China'.

From Nigeria in the north, to Equatorial Guinea, Gabon and Angola in the west, across Chad and Sudan in the east, and south through Zambia, Zimbabwe and Mozambique, China has seized a vice-like grip on a continent which officials have decided is crucial to the superpower's long-term survival.

'The Chinese are all over the place,' says Trevor Ncube, a prominent African businessman with publishing interests around the continent. 'If the British were our masters yesterday, the Chinese have taken their place.'

Likened to one race deciding to adopt a new home on another planet, Beijing has launched its so-called 'One China In Africa' policy because of crippling pressure on its own natural resources in a country where the population has almost trebled from 500 million to 1.3 billion in 50 years.

China is hungry - for land, food and energy. While accounting for a fifth of the world's population, its oil consumption has risen 35-fold in the past decade and Africa is now providing a third of it; imports of steel, copper and aluminium have also shot up, with Beijing devouring 80 per cent of world supplies.

Enlarge President Robert Mugabe leaving the eleventh ordinary session of the assembly of the African Union heads of State and government in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt

President Robert Mugabe leaving the eleventh ordinary session of the assembly of the African Union heads of State and government in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt

Fuelling its own boom at home, China is also desperate for new markets to sell goods. And Africa, with non-existent health and safety rules to protect against shoddy and dangerous goods, is the perfect destination.

The result of China's demand for raw materials and its sales of products to Africa is that turnover in trade between Africa and China has risen from £5million annually a decade ago to £6billion today.

However, there is a lethal price to pay. There is a sinister aspect to this invasion. Chinese-made war planes roar through the African sky, bombing opponents. Chinese-made assault rifles and grenades are being used to fuel countless murderous civil wars, often over the materials the Chinese are desperate to buy.

Take, for example, Zimbabwe. Recently, a giant container ship from China was due to deliver its cargo of three million rounds of AK-47 ammunition, 3,000 rocket-propelled grenades and 1,500 mortars to President Robert Mugabe's regime.

After an international outcry, the vessel, the An Yue Jiang, was forced to return to China, despite Beijing's insistence that the arms consignment was a 'normal commercial deal'.

Indeed, the 77-ton arms shipment would have been small beer - a fraction of China's help to Mugabe. He already has high-tech, Chinese-built helicopter gunships and fighter jets to use against his people.

Ever since the U.S. and Britain imposed sanctions in 2003, Mugabe has courted the Chinese, offering mining concessions for arms and currency.

While flying regularly to Beijing as a high-ranking guest, the 84-year-old dictator rants at 'small dots' such as Britain and America.

He can afford to. Mugabe is orchestrating his campaign of terror from a 25-bedroom, pagoda-style mansion built by the Chinese. Much of his estimated £1billion fortune is believed to have been siphoned off from Chinese 'loans'.

The imposing grey building of ZANU-PF, his ruling party, was paid for and built by the Chinese. Mugabe received £200 million last year alone from China, enabling him to buy loyalty from the army.

In another disturbing illustration of the warm relations between China and the ageing dictator, a platoon of the China People's Liberation Army has been out on the streets of Mutare, a city near the border with Mozambique, which voted against the president in the recent, disputed election.

Almost 30 years ago, Britain pulled out of Zimbabwe - as it had done already out of the rest of Africa, in the wake of Harold Macmillan's 'wind of change' speech. Today, Mugabe says: 'We have turned East, where the sun rises, and given our backs to the West, where the sun sets.'

Despite Britain's commendable colonial legacy of a network of roads, railways and schools, the British are now being shunned.

According to one veteran diplomat: 'China is easier to do business with because it doesn't care about human rights in Africa - just as it doesn't care about them in its own country. All the Chinese care about is money.'

Nowhere is that more true than Sudan. Branded 'Africa's Killing Fields', the massive oil-rich East African state is in the throes of the genocide and slaughter of hundreds of thousands of black, non-Arab peasants in southern Sudan.

In effect, through its supplies of arms and support, China has been accused of underwriting a humanitarian scandal. The atrocities in Sudan have been described by the U.S. as 'the worst human rights crisis in the world today'.

Mugabe has received hundreds of millions of pounds from Chinese sources

The government in Khartoum has helped the feared Janjaweed militia to rape, murder and burn to death more than 350,000 people.

The Chinese - who now buy half of all Sudan's oil - have happily provided armoured vehicles, aircraft and millions of bullets and grenades in return for lucrative deals. Indeed, an estimated £1billion of Chinese cash has been spent on weapons.

According to Human Rights First, a leading human rights advocacy organisation, Chinese-made AK-47 assault rifles, grenade launchers and ammunition for rifles and heavy machine guns are continuing to flow into Darfur, which is dotted with giant refugee camps, each containing hundreds of thousands of people.

Between 2003 and 2006, China sold Sudan $55 million worth of small arms, flouting a United Nations weapons embargo.

With new warnings that the cycle of killing is intensifying, an estimated two thirds of the non-Arab population has lost at least one member of their families in Darfur.

Although two million people have been uprooted from their homes in the conflict, China has repeatedly thwarted United Nations denunciations of the Sudanese regime.

While the Sudanese slaughter has attracted worldwide condemnation, prompting Hollywood film-maker Steven Spielberg to quit as artistic director of the Beijing Olympics, few parts of Africa are now untouched by China.

In Congo, more than £2billion has been 'loaned' to the government. In Angola, £3 billion has been paid in exchange for oil. In Nigeria, more than £5billion has been handed over.

In Equatorial Guinea, where the president publicly hung his predecessor from a cage suspended in a theatre before having him shot, Chinese firms are helping the dictator build an entirely new capital, full of gleaming skyscrapers and, of course, Chinese restaurants.

After battling for years against the white colonial powers of Britain, France, Belgium and Germany, post-independence African leaders are happy to do business with China for a straightforward reason: cash.

With western loans linked to an insistence on democratic reforms and the need for 'transparency' in using the money (diplomatic language for rules to ensure dictators do not pocket millions), the Chinese have proved much more relaxed about what their billions are used for.

Certainly, little of it reaches the continent's impoverished 800 million people. Much of it goes straight into the pockets of dictators. In Africa, corruption is a multi-billion pound industry and many experts believe that China is fuelling the cancer.

The Chinese are contemptuous of such criticism. To them, Africa is about pragmatism, not human rights. 'Business is business,' says Chinese Deputy Foreign Minister Zhou Wenzhong, adding that Beijing should not interfere in 'internal' affairs. 'We try to separate politics from business.'

While the bounty has, not surprisingly, been welcomed by African dictators, the people of Africa are less impressed. At a market in Zimbabwe recently, where Chinese goods were on sale at nearly every stall, one woman told me she would not waste her money on 'Zing-Zong' products.

'They go Zing when they work, and then they quickly go Zong and break,' she said. 'They are a waste of money. But there's nothing else. China is the only country that will do business with us.'

There have also been riots in Zambia, Angola and Congo over the flood of Chinese immigrant workers. The Chinese do not use African labour where possible, saying black Africans are lazy and unskilled.

In Angola, the government has agreed that 70 per cent of tendered public works must go to Chinese firms, most of which do not employ Angolans.

As well as enticing hundreds of thousands to settle in Africa, they have even shipped Chinese prisoners to produce the goods cheaply.

In Kenya, for example, only ten textile factories are still producing, compared with 200 factories five years ago, as China undercuts locals in the production of 'African' souvenirs.

Where will it all end? As far as Beijing is concerned, it will stop only when Africa no longer has any minerals or oil to be extracted from the continent.

A century after Sir Francis Galton outlined his vision for Africa, the Chinese are here to stay. More will come.

The people of this bewitching, beautiful continent, where humankind first emerged from the Great Rift Valley, desperately need progress. The Chinese are not here for that.

They are here for plunder. After centuries of pain and war, Africa deserves better.

Original here

Americans die in Iraq from 'electrocution,' shocks reported by troops 'almost daily'

Among the seemingly innumerable scandal-worthy stories which have so marked the war in Iraq is one growing tragedy which has been largely ignored: shoddy electrical work by U.S. contractors at military bases leading to numerous electrical fires, troops receiving painful shocks, and even death by electrocution.

In January 2008, Staff Sgt. Ryan Maseth, a 24-year-old weapons expert, was electrocuted while showering in Baghdad's green zone. According to a criminal investigation by the Army, an electrical water pump on the building's roof shorted out from not being properly grounded when installed. On March 19 his parents sued the contractor, KBR Inc., for Sgt. Maseth's death.

According to the Pittsburgh-Post Gazette:

"The Defense Contract Management Agency, we believe, authorized [the contractor] to the tune of millions of dollars to make the repairs. And they never made the repairs," Mr. Cavanaugh said. "And we don't know why. A simple repair -- just ground the building -- and Ryan would be alive today."

On July 1, New York Times Investigative Reporter James Risen, author of the 2006 book "State of War: The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration," took up the subject. According to Risen, General David Petraeus stated to Congress that 13 Americans had been electrocuted since the invasion of Iraq: 12 soldiers and one contractor.

As recently as July 11, KBR Inc. electricians told a Senate panel tasked to investigate the deaths that their employer used inexperienced, non-English speaking workers to install electrical systems. Many experienced contractors, they claimed, were dismissed after raising cautions over the work.

According to the Associated Press:

"Time and again we heard, `This is not the states, OSHA doesn't apply here. If you don't like it you can go home,'" said Debbie Crawford, a journeyman electrician with 30 years experience.

Army Times reports that the shoddy wiring and electrical risks have brought about the deaths of 11 service members and two U.S. civilians.

However, a follow-up report by James Risen in the New York Times on July 18 states that the problem is far worse than General Petraeus stated, and the military has known about the systemic problems since 2004.

Since the invasion, over 283 electrical fires on US bases have been reported, along with two deaths in 2006 at a base in Tikrit, the death of Sgt. Maseth, and innumerable painful shocks dealt to Americans.

A log of complaints compiled early in 2008 found soldiers living in just one Baghdad building complex were complaining of painful electrical shocks 'on an almost daily basis.'

In public statements, Pentagon officials have not addressed the scope of the hazards, instead mostly focusing on the circumstances surrounding the death of Sergeant Maseth, who lived near Pittsburgh.

But the internal documents, including dozens of memos, e-mail messages and reports from the Army, the Defense Contract Management Agency and other agencies, show that electrical problems were widely recognized as a major safety threat among Pentagon contracting experts. It is impossible to determine the exact number of the resulting deaths and injuries because no single document tallies them up. (The records were compiled for Congressional and Pentagon investigators and obtained independently by The Times.)

The 2007 safety survey was ordered by the top official in Iraq for the Defense Contract Management Agency, which oversees contractors, after the October 2006 electrical fire that killed two soldiers near Tikrit. Paul Dickinson, a Pentagon safety specialist who wrote the report, confirmed its findings, but did not elaborate.

Original here

More Births Last Year Than During Baby Boom

The latest data from the U.S. Census Bureau show a fact I find startling: More babies were born in 2007 than even during the height of the baby boom.

The figures, printed in USA Today, are preliminary, but show a 4.32 million-baby tally for 2007, more than the 4.30 million babies born in 1957.

Experts quoted in the story say it still only amounts to a "boomlet" because the trend in increased births is only growing at a single-digit pace. And the 2.1-child per woman average means that the U.S. isn't doing much more than replacing its population.

Still, 4.32 million new children in the country is a reminder that we have to provide for a new and growing generation. Daily, we're reminded about dwindling supplies of oil and even water, the consequences of a deteriorating climate, as extreme weather takes its toll, and record-high food prices.

blue marble

Population is the biggest environmental issue that is spoken about the least. No one wants to be told they shouldn't have children. For good reason: It's part of being human. But the growing world population puts a huge strain on natural resources, and the standard of living we've become accustomed to is made possible only because we've pumped up finite fossil fuels to fuel our economy. We've run down that account, and unwittingly bought a climate crisis in the process.

Gloom-and-doom prophets have been warning of impending crisis from overpopulation for decades, and we've arguably averted crisis through technological innovation in most every case. The question remains, however: What is the Earth's carrying capacity?

The next time you hear a scientist talk about the state of the planet as he or she envisions it at the end of the 21st century, remember that many of the 4.3 million babies born last year are likely to live in that world.

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Executive Order: Blocking Property of Certain Persons Who Threaten Stabilization Efforts in Iraq

By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, including the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, as amended (50 U.S.C. 1701 et seq.)(IEEPA), the National Emergencies Act (50 U.S.C. 1601 et seq.)(NEA), and section 301 of title 3, United States Code,

I, GEORGE W. BUSH, President of the United States of America, find that, due to the unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States posed by acts of violence threatening the peace and stability of Iraq and undermining efforts to promote economic reconstruction and political reform in Iraq and to provide humanitarian assistance to the Iraqi people, it is in the interests of the United States to take additional steps with respect to the national emergency declared in Executive Order 13303 of May 22, 2003, and expanded in Executive Order 13315 of August 28, 2003, and relied upon for additional steps taken in Executive Order 13350 of July 29, 2004, and Executive Order 13364 of November 29, 2004. I hereby order:

Section 1. (a) Except to the extent provided in section 203(b)(1), (3), and (4) of IEEPA (50 U.S.C. 1702(b)(1), (3), and (4)), or in regulations, orders, directives, or licenses that may be issued pursuant to this order, and notwithstanding any contract entered into or any license or permit granted prior to the date of this order, all property and interests in property of the following persons, that are in the United States, that hereafter come within the United States, or that are or hereafter come within the possession or control of United States persons, are blocked and may not be transferred, paid, exported, withdrawn, or otherwise dealt in: any person determined by the Secretary of the Treasury, in consultation with the Secretary of State and the Secretary of Defense,

(i) to have committed, or to pose a significant risk of committing, an act or acts of violence that have the purpose or effect of:

(A) threatening the peace or stability of Iraq or the Government of Iraq; or

(B) undermining efforts to promote economic reconstruction and political reform in Iraq or to provide humanitarian assistance to the Iraqi people;

(ii) to have materially assisted, sponsored, or provided financial, material, logistical, or technical support for, or goods or services in support of, such an act or acts of violence or any person whose property and interests in property are blocked pursuant to this order; or

(iii) to be owned or controlled by, or to have acted or purported to act for or on behalf of, directly or indirectly, any person whose property and interests in property are blocked pursuant to this order.

(b) The prohibitions in subsection (a) of this section include, but are not limited to, (i) the making of any contribution or provision of funds, goods, or services by, to, or for the benefit of any person whose property and interests in property are blocked pursuant to this order, and (ii) the receipt of any contribution or provision of funds, goods, or services from any such person.

Sec. 2. (a) Any transaction by a United States person or within the United States that evades or avoids, has the purpose of evading or avoiding, or attempts to violate any of the prohibitions set forth in this order is prohibited.

(b) Any conspiracy formed to violate any of the prohibitions set forth in this order is prohibited.

Sec. 3. For purposes of this order:

(a) the term "person" means an individual or entity;

(b) the term "entity" means a partnership, association, trust, joint venture, corporation, group, subgroup, or other organization; and

(c) the term "United States person" means any United States citizen, permanent resident alien, entity organized under the laws of the United States or any jurisdiction within the United States (including foreign branches), or any person in the United States.

Sec. 4. I hereby determine that the making of donations of the type specified in section 203(b)(2) of IEEPA (50 U.S.C. 1702(b)(2)) by, to, or for the benefit of, any person whose property and interests in property are blocked pursuant to this order would seriously impair my ability to deal with the national emergency declared in Executive Order 13303 and expanded in Executive Order 13315, and I hereby prohibit such donations as provided by section 1 of this order.

Sec. 5. For those persons whose property and interests in property are blocked pursuant to this order who might have a constitutional presence in the United States, I find that, because of the ability to transfer funds or other assets instantaneously, prior notice to such persons of measures to be taken pursuant to this order would render these measures ineffectual. I therefore determine that for these measures to be effective in addressing the national emergency declared in Executive Order 13303 and expanded in Executive Order 13315, there need be no prior notice of a listing or determination made pursuant to section 1(a) of this order.

Sec. 6. The Secretary of the Treasury, in consultation with the Secretary of State and the Secretary of Defense, is hereby authorized to take such actions, including the promulgation of rules and regulations, and to employ all powers granted to the President by IEEPA as may be necessary to carry out the purposes of this order. The Secretary of the Treasury may redelegate any of these functions to other officers and agencies of the United States Government, consistent with applicable law. All agencies of the United States Government are hereby directed to take all appropriate measures within their authority to carry out the provisions of this order and, where appropriate, to advise the Secretary of the Treasury in a timely manner of the measures taken.

Sec. 7. Nothing in this order is intended to affect the continued effectiveness of any rules, regulations, orders, licenses, or other forms of administrative action issued, taken, or continued in effect heretofore or hereafter under 31 C.F.R. chapter V, except as expressly terminated, modified, or suspended by or pursuant to this order.

Sec. 8. This order is not intended to, and does not, create any right, benefit, or privilege, substantive or procedural, enforceable at law or in equity by any party against the United States, its departments, agencies, instrumentalities, or entities, its officers or employees, or any other person.

Original here