Republican Stimulus: Tax Cut’s Tax Cut’s
Tax Cut’s Screw The Middle Class
Obama’s Stimulus: Fix Infrastructure Create Jobs
Help The Middle Class
Economic Crisis Fuels Unrest in E. Europe
Shaky Governments Face Growing Anger
By Philip P. Pan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, January 26, 2009; Page A01
RIGA, Latvia — On a frigid evening this month, more than 10,000 people gathered outside a 13th-century cathedral in this Baltic capital to protest the government’s handling of Latvia’s economic crisis and demand early elections. The demonstration was one of the largest here since the mass rallies against Soviet rule in the late 1980s, and a sign of both the public’s frustration and its faith in the political system.
But at the end of the night, as the crowd dispersed, the protest turned into a riot. Hundreds of angry young people, many drunk and recently unemployed, rampaged through the historic Old Town, smashing shop windows, throwing rocks and eggs at police, even prying cobblestones from the streets to lob at the Parliament building.
Gaza family recounts day of horror
Hours after the ground incursion began, two were killed in a swirl of mixed messages and flying bullets.
By Ashraf Khalil
January 26, 2009
Reporting from Gaza City — There were 14 of them huddled under the stairs. Israeli shells and airstrikes had long since shattered every window of the Helw family’s three-story home. But underneath the concrete staircase, they said, they felt relatively safe — until the soldiers came early in the morning on Jan. 4.
There was pounding on the courtyard door, they recalled last week, and voices in accented Arabic shouted, “Who’s in there?”
As the troops burst inside, family members said Fuad Helw, 55, jumped up with his arms in the air.
“We all put our hands up and yelled, ‘We’re women and children. We’re not the resistance,’ ” recalled Sherine Helw, Fuad’s daughter-in-law.
The soldiers opened fire on Fuad, said Sherine, and he died in front of his family.
There are no independent accounts of what happened that day, when Israeli tanks rolled into the Zeitoun neighborhood on the outskirts of Gaza City at the beginning of the land offensive. The Israeli army, which staged its offensive after years of rocket attacks against southern Israel emanating from the Gaza Strip, refuses to discuss individual charges in detail.
USA
Obama’s Order Is Likely to Tighten Auto Standards
By JOHN M. BRODER and PETER BAKER
Published: January 25, 2009
WASHINGTON – President Obama will direct federal regulators on Monday to move swiftly on an application by California and 13 other states to set strict automobile emission and fuel efficiency standards, two administration officials said Sunday.
The directive makes good on an Obama campaign pledge and signifies a sharp reversal of Bush administration policy. Granting California and the other states the right to regulate tailpipe emissions would be one of the most emphatic actions Mr. Obama could take to quickly put his stamp on environmental policy.
Mr. Obama’s presidential memorandum will order the Environmental Protection Agency to reconsider the Bush administration’s past rejection of the California application. While it stops short of flatly ordering the Bush decision reversed, the agency’s regulators are now widely expected to do so after completing a formal review process.
