One Bush Accomplishment
Doing Nothing And Liking It
Israel considers ground attack as it mobilises more troops
Olmert: fighting in Gaza will be ‘long and painful’
Rory McCarthy Jerusalem
The Guardian, Monday 29 December 2008
Israel’s cabinet yesterday approved the call-up of thousands of reservists as the military deployed tanks close to the border with Gaza while pressing on with air strikes, suggesting a major ground invasion was being considered to follow the biggest single day of conflict in Gaza since the 1967 war.Ehud Olmert, Israel’s prime minister, reportedly told a cabinet meeting the fighting in Gaza would be “long, painful and difficult”. After two days of air raids, more than 290 Palestinians have been killed, and more than 600 injured. Gaza’s hospitals, already short of supplies, had corpses lying on their floors as the morgues filled up.
In an attempt to escape the mayhem, hundreds of Gazans broke through the border fence with Egypt at Rafah, where Palestinian gunmen and Egyptian border guards traded gunfire, killing one Egyptian and one Palestinian.
Study: Murders among black youths on rise
The number killed in gun crimes has jumped 40 percent since 2000
Associated Press
WASHINGTON – The number of young black men and teenagers who either killed or were killed in shootings has risen at an alarming rate since 2000, a new study shows.The study, to be released Monday by criminologists at Northeastern University in Boston, comes as FBI data is showing that murders have leveled off nationwide.
Not so for black teens, the youngest of whom saw dramatic increases in shooting deaths, the Northeastern report concluded.
Last year, for example, 426 black males between the ages of 14 and 17 were killed in gun crimes, the study shows. That marked a 40 percent increase from 2000.
USA
Veterans of ’90s Bank Bailout See Opportunity in Current One
By ERIC LIPTON and DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK
Published: December 28, 2008
WASHINGTON – A tight-knit group of former senior government officials who were central players in the savings and loan bailout of the 1990s are seeking to capitalize on the latest economic meltdown, enjoying a surge in new business in their work now as private lawyers, investors and lobbyists.
With $700 billion in bailout money up for grabs, and billions of dollars worth of bad debt or failed bank assets most likely headed for sale or auction, these former officials are helping their clients get a piece of the bailout money or the chance to buy, at fire-sale prices, some of the bank assets taken over by the federal government.
