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  • 17:12 - 30.07.2010 News >> Latest

     Hamas Probe Leads to American FirmsAmerican investigators, cooperating in a probe of the assassination of a Palestinian leader in Dubai, have identified a handful of U.S.-based companies believed to have been used to transfer money to suspects in the case.Read Article    

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  • 16:55 - 30.07.2010 News >> Latest

     Al Gore will not be prosecuted over masseuse allegations Al Gore, the former Vice President, will not be prosecuted over allegations by a masseuse that he groped and assaulted her in his Oregon hotel room in 2006, the county prosecutor has confirmed. Read Article    

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  • 16:48 - 30.07.2010 News >> Latest

     Facebook rage of Wikileaks suspect Bradley Manning Exclusive: Prime suspect in Afghan war leaks rages against US Army.  Read Article     

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  • 11:04 - 29.07.2010 News >> Latest

     Arizona immigration law blocked by judge in temporary victory for Obama Ruling marks success for Obama administration to maintain federal control of immigration policy  Read Article    

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  • 10:52 - 29.07.2010 News >> Latest

     Britain to be the biggest country in Europe by 2050 Official forecast predicts that Britain's population will swell from 62.2 million to 77 million - an increase of 24 per cent - overtaking both France and Germany. Read Article    

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  • 04:46 - 29.07.2010 News >> Latest

     Drug Use, Poor Discipline Afflict Afghan ArmyThe U.S. strategy for leaving Afghanistan is heavily dependent on building capable Afghan military and police forces that can take over, but U.S. soldiers complain of a trigger-happy attitude, general carelessness and the use of drugs within those forces. Read Article    

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  • 04:28 - 29.07.2010 News >> Latest

      Taxes: A Defining IssueBarack Obama knows taxes define worldview. The GOP should offer voters an alternative.Read Opinion 

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  • 03:51 - 29.07.2010 News >> Latest

     Ruling Against Arizona Is a Warning for Other StatesBy JULIA PRESTON A federal judge in Arizona on Wednesday broadly vindicated the Obama administration’s high-stakes move to challenge that state’s tough immigration law and to assert the primary authority of the federal government over state lawmakers in immigration matters. The ruling by Judge Susan R. Bolton, in a lawsuit against Arizona brought on July 6 by the Justice Department, blocked central provisions of the law from taking effect while she finishes hearing the case. But in taking the forceful step of holding up a statute even before it was put into practice, Judge Bolton previewed her opinions on the case, indicating that the federal government was likely to win in the end on the main points. The decision by Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. to throw the federal government’s weight against Arizona, on an issue that has aroused passions among state residents, has irritated many state governors, and nine states filed papers supporting Arizona in the court case. But Judge Bolton found that the law was on the side of the Justice Department in its argument that many provisions of the Arizona statute would interfere with federal law and policy. Gov. Jan Brewer said the state would appeal the decision. Although Judge Bolton’s ruling is not final, it seems likely to halt, at least temporarily, an expanding movement by states to combat illegal immigration by making it a state crime to be an immigrant without legal documents and by imposing new requirements on state and local police officers to enforce immigration law. “This is a warning to any other jurisdiction” considering a…

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  • 20:05 - 28.07.2010 News >> Latest

     Al Gore questioned over sexual assault allegations Police question former vice-president over claims by masseuse. Read Article   

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  • 19:36 - 28.07.2010 News >> Latest

     Clooney's girlfriend named in sex and drugs scandal Elisabetta Canalis named in scandal involving high-class prostitutes Read Article    

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Syndicate
Telegraph/UK: Obama's Optimism tonight will be " Reaganesque ".

Barack Obama to lift America with upbeat message on economy

President Barack Obama will set aside his gloomy warnings of a deepening crisis to present a "Reaganesque" claim that American ingenuity can turn the economy around.

 
Barack Obama will deliver an upbeat message on the US economy
Barack Obama will deliver an upbeat message on the US economy Photo: REUTERS

In a televised address to a joint session of both houses of Congress, Mr Obama will attempt to reassure jittery markets and fearful Americans that his record $787 billion economic stimulus package would work.

Robert Gibbs, Mr Obama's press secretary, said he would emulate President Ronald Reagan, still revered for his sunny, upbeat manner that helped boost American spirits after to gloom of the 1970s.

He said: "This speech ends on a very high note when he talks about how we've dealt with big challenges before in this country and that there are much brighter days ahead for the American people."

Mr Obama is expected to tell Americans in the 50-minte speech that they had faced "far greater challenges than the ones we face now, but we as Americans always meet those challenges. But in the Reaganesque words, there are always better days ahead".

Since he signed the stimulus bill into law last week, Mr Obama has attempted to promote "fiscal responsibility" and vowed to cut the runaway annual deficit from the $1.3 trillion (pounds 907 billion) he inherited to $533 million by the end of his term in 2013.

But the terrible economic news has continued. The US stock market plunged to its lowest level in 12 years on Monday amid indications the Obama administration was preparing to take up to a 40 per cent stake in Citigroup, until recently the world's largest bank.

In a speech being billed as a 'State of the Union Address' in all but name, Mr Obama was facing the tricky balancing act of speaking realistically without further undermining economic confidence.

David Axelrod, a senior White House adviser, told MSNBC: "The president has the theory that you treat Americans like adults and tell them where we are and where we need to go."

Mr Obama will send a budget proposal for next year to Congress on Thursday. It will contain a fiscal spending and income forecast for the next 10 years, including funding for an ambitious overhaul of the American health system.

He intends to cut the deficit in half by cutting funding for the Iraq war, eliminating government waste and increasing taxes from 2011 for households earning more than $250,000 a year.

Mr Axelrod acknowledged that there might be a risk of taking on too much at once. But he added: "I think the bigger concern is to not be aggressive at a time when a tepid approach could really consign us to a long-term economic catastrophe. We believe the times demand vigour and aggressive action, and so we're having to do a lot of things at once."

 

 

 
Telegraph/UK: 4 US Soldiers killed by 2 dressed as Iraqi Police.

US soldiers 'shot by Iraqi policemen' in Mosul

Four US soldiers and their Iraqi interpreter were shot dead by gunmen wearing Iraqi police uniforms in the main northern city of Mosul on Tuesday, according to an interior ministry official.

 

"Four US soldiers and their Iraqi interpreter were killed by two Iraqi policemen who opened fire at them in the Dawasa district of Mosul and then fled," the official told AFP, declining to be named.

The shootings came as 12 Iraqi police officers were arrested in Baghdad in connection with a string of kidnappings and killings, including the 2006 shooting of Maysoon al-Hashemi, the sister of Tariq al-Hashemi, one of Iraq's two vice-presidents.

The Mosul incident took place during a US army visit to the headquarters of the Iraqi police in charge of protecting the city's bridges, officials said.

It was the third such fatal shooting involving US soldiers in just over a year in Mosul, one of the country's most restive cities.

In November of last year, an Iraqi soldier killed two US soldiers in the city before being shot dead himself. But US and Iraqi officials differed sharply on what actually happened.

Iraqi officials said the soldier opened fire after an altercation with the Americans during a joint patrol in the city, but US officials insisted it was an unprovoked shooting inside an Iraqi army compound.

Mohammed al-Askari, Iraq's defence ministry spokesman, said at the time that the shooting took place during a joint patrol to inspect security procedures in Mosul, which the US army has identified as al-Qaeda's last urban bastion in Iraq.

An official in the Iraqi interior ministry claimed that a US soldier slapped an Iraqi soldier during the patrol.

A similar incident took place in Mosul in Jan 2007, when an Iraqi soldier opened fire on American troops during the erection of a combat outpost in the city, killing two US soldiers, according to Iraqi officials.

US and Iraqi forces operate together throughout the country, and the United States has long said that the training of Iraqi troops and police is a central part of its military strategy.

 

 

 
Guardian/UK: George Clooney gets promise from Obama.

Barack Obama to appoint senior Darfur envoy, says campaigner George Clooney

Hollywood actor hails 'huge policy step' on Sudan conflict after conversations with president and Joe Biden

George Clooney leaving the White House

George Clooney leaving the White House. Photograph: Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP

The Barack Obama administration is preparing to appoint a "full-time, high-level" envoy to address the conflict in Darfur, according to the actor George Clooney, who met the president and Joe Biden in Washington on Monday to lobby them on the issue.

Clooney said Obama and the vice-president had told him the envoy would report directly to the White House, and would be appointed following a foreign policy review currently taking place "at the senior-most levels". "They assured me, and wanted to assure the rest – whoever else is listening – this is high on their agenda," he said. "This is a huge policy step for us."

Clooney has campaigned for several years for greater US activism to end the conflict between rebels and Sudanese authorities in Darfur, which may have claimed 300,000 lives and displaced 2.7 million people, according to United Nations estimates. The international criminal court is due to decide next week whether to issue an arrest warrant for the Sudanese president, Omar al-Bashir, on war crimes charges.

"This isn't about needing American dollars. I understand that it's a very difficult time," Clooney said after his scheduled meeting with Biden and a separate, impromptu encounter with Obama. "It's not about needing American troops. It's about needing what we do best – what we have done best since the start of this country – which is good, robust diplomacy all across the world."

The actor, who missed Sunday night's Oscars ceremony for his White House appointment, is a UN messenger for peace, although this did not prevent the UN from revoking his security escort on a visit this month to eastern Chad, where he was touring refugee camps in the company of the New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof. "If the UN is too craven to protect its own goodwill ambassadors – because they might criticise genocide – it's not surprising that it and the international community fail to protect hundreds of thousands of voiceless Darfuris," Kristof wrote.

Elizabeth Alexander, a Biden spokeswoman, said: "The vice-president informed Mr Clooney about the administration's ongoing review of Sudan policy and welcomed his observations from his trip, [and] thanked Mr Clooney for his work on this issue, which he believes is an important contribution to the public's understanding of the conflict in Darfur."

The actor brought with him to the White House 250,000 postcards signed by Americans urging more US action on Darfur. "I think somehow we should all know that these people are hanging on by the skin of their teeth," he told CNN.

 

 

 
Telegraph/UK is LOL as Al Gore removes claims from slideshow

Al Gore has been forced to drop some of his most outlandish claims. But what about the rest?



"Real science? Keep it to yourself, thanks." (Photo: Simone Bruzzoni)


News from our friends over at Planet Gore:


Last week wasn't just a disaster for the Obama administration. Al Gore's hysteria took it on the chin, too.


As Ed notes below, Andrew Revkin reports today that Al Gore is pulling one among the numerous demonstrably false (as opposed to the merely deceptive and misleading) claims made in his slide show — this one about accelerating natural-disaster trends, a claim immediately debunked by Roger Pielke Jr. after Gore made the claim in his recent speech to the American Association for the Advancement of Science.


Embarassingly, Gore also used bogus numbers as the basis for an op-ed in the Financial Times coinciding with his talk, co-authored by United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon. No word whether the FT is also pulling that peice. Their argument, that vastly greater numbers of jobs exist in the wind-energy industry than in the coal industry, was soon enough debunked by the Christian Science Monitor — if accidentally so, as CSMspecifically dismissed the claim as made on Fortune's blog (now corrected) — with further help from Pielke Jr.


In their piece demanding more taxpayer-funded green pork, Gore/Ban falsely state that:


Globally, with 2.3m people employed in the renewable energy sector, there are already more jobs there than directly in the oil and gas industries. In the US, there are now more jobs in the wind industry than in the entire coal industry.


As Pielke said, the key to the "bogus comparison" is that the very same wind energy report from which such claims are derived makes clear that "those 85,000 jobs in wind power are as 'varied as turbine component manufacturing, construction and installation of wind turbines, wind turbine operations and maintenance, legal and marketing services, and more.' The 81,000 coal jobs counted by the Department of Energy are only miners. Their figure excludes those who haul the coal around the country, as well as those who work in coal power plants."


What an embarrassment for that sanctimonious lardbutt yank. LOL.

 

 

 
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