The Morning News is an Open Thread
From Yahoo News Top Stories
1 US boosts oversight for Iraq contractors
By MATTHEW LEE and ANNE GEARAN, Associated Press Writers
14 minutes ago
| WASHINGTON – Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Tuesday ordered new measures to improve government oversight of private guards who protect U.S. diplomats in Iraq, including tighter rules of engagement and a board to investigate any future killings.
The steps, recommended by an independent review panel she created after last month’s deadly Baghdad shooting involving Blackwater USA, would also require contractors to undergo training intended to make them more sensitive to Iraqi culture and language. The changes to rules of engagement would bring the State Department closer to military rules. |
2 Senate reverses Bush’s budget cuts
By ANDREW TAYLOR, Associated Press Writer
7 minutes ago
| WASHINGTON – Senate Democrats on Tuesday reversed President Bush’s cuts to education, health research and grants to local communities as they gird for Bush’s first-ever veto of a regular appropriations bill.
By a 75-19 vote, the Senate gave bipartisan approval to a huge health and education spending bill that will likely be the first of the fiscal 2008 spending bills Democrats will ship to the White House to start a veto battle involving the budget for almost every domestic agency. It promises to be a protracted battle, and Bush has a decided advantage, but Democrats have seized on the massive health and education measure as the best measure with which to challenge Bush and his GOP allies in Congress. The measure totals over $600 billion and reverses a raft of cuts sought by Bush to health research, special education and funding for grants to community groups that help the poor, among others. |
3 White House edits CDC climate testimony
By H. JOSEF HEBERT, Associated Press Writer
27 minutes ago
| WASHINGTON – The White House severely edited congressional testimony given Tuesday by the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on the impact of climate change on health, removing specific scientific references to potential health risks, according to two sources familiar with the documents.
Dr. Julie Gerberding, director of the Atlanta-based CDC, the government’s premier disease monitoring agency, told a Senate hearing that climate change “is anticipated to have a broad range of impacts on the health of Americans.” But her prepared testimony was devoted almost entirely to the CDC’s preparation, with few details on what effects climate change could have on the spread of disease. Only during questioning did she describe some specific diseases that likely would be affected, again without elaboration. |
4 NATO under pressure for more Afghan troops
By Mark John, Reuters
2 hours, 55 minutes ago
| BRUSSELS (Reuters) – The United States will lead pressure on European allies to supply more troops and equipment to fight Taliban insurgents in Afghanistan at NATO talks on Wednesday but could come away frustrated, alliance sources said.
Defense chiefs will however reaffirm their commitment to maintaining a 17,000-strong peace force in the breakaway Serb province of Kosovo amid uncertainty over its future. They could also discuss NATO member Turkey’s threat of incursions into northern Iraq to crush Kurdish separatists. |
5 Poll shows global opposition to Iran – and U.S.
Reuters
2 hours, 42 minutes ago
| BRUSSELS (Reuters) – Iran is the country most people around the world would like see having less power, followed closely by the United States, a new opinion poll showed on Wednesday.
The survey, which polled 57,000 people from 52 countries, showed 39 percent of respondents wanted to see the influence of Iran diminished, compared with 37 percent for the United States. Only 14 percent of people taking part in the poll wanted Iran to have more power while 26 percent thought more U.S. influence would make the world a better place. |
6 Iraq PM orders crackdown on PKK
by Ammar Karim, AFP
Tue Oct 23, 4:18 PM ET
| BAGHDAD (AFP) – Iraq’s prime minister ordered a crackdown Tuesday on Kurdish PKK rebels, saying Iraq will no longer tolerate the “terrorist” group on its soil, amid Turkish threats of a military incursion.
“The PKK is a bad terrorist organisation and we have taken a decision to close its offices and not allow them to work on Iraqi soil,” Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki said after he met visiting Turkish Foreign Minister Ali Babacan. “We are putting all our efforts to eliminate their terrorist activities that threaten Iraq and Turkey,” said Maliki, who has been under pressure from Ankara and Washington to act against the Iraq-based rebels attacking Turkey. |
7 Myanmar bows to world pressure over UN envoy visit
by Gerard Aziakou, AFP
Tue Oct 23, 4:33 PM ET
| UNITED NATIONS (AFP) – Bowing to international pressure, Myanmar’s rulers on Tuesday agreed to bring forward to early November a return visit by UN mediator Ibrahim Gambari.
The move came a day after the military junta cleared the first visit in four years by the United Nations’ top human rights official. Gambari, currently on a six-nation Asian tour, “expects to visit Myanmar in the first week of November as the Myanmar government agreed to bring forward his standing invitation to the country,” UN spokeswoman Michele Montas said. |
8 In world first, European physicists snap elusive neutrino particles
AFP
Tue Oct 23, 2:42 PM ET
| PARIS (AFP) – European physicists said Tuesday they had sent an elusive particle known as a neutrino on a 730-kilometer (456-mile) trip under the Earth’s crust and taken a snapshot of the instant it slammed into lab detectors.
The journey from the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Switzerland to an underground laboratory at San Grasso, central Italy, took about 2.4 milliseconds, with the particle travelling close to the speed of light, France’s National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) said. … Neutrinos are elementary particles that lack an electrical charge and do not appear to interact with mass, as they can travel through ordinary matter almost effortlessly. Trillions of them pass through each of our bodies every day. |
9 US shuttle blasts off on key space station mission
by Jean-Louis Santini, AFP
Tue Oct 23, 4:22 PM ET
| CAPE CANAVERAL, United States (AFP) – US space shuttle Discovery blasted off successfully Tuesday on an ambitious, complex mission to the International Space Station, key to future manned flights to Mars.
The launch went ahead at 11:38 am (1538 GMT) despite safety concerns voiced by a team of independent NASA engineers, and the discovery of a chunk of ice outside the craft. The shuttle took off on schedule carrying seven astronauts, led by Commander Pam Melroy, 46, who is only the second woman to head a shuttle team since the start of the program in 1981. |
From Yahoo News Most Popular, Most Recommended
10 Government may waste anthrax vaccine
By EILEEN SULLIVAN, Associated Press Writer
46 minutes ago
| WASHINGTON – The government stands to waste $100 million a year if two federal agencies cannot agree to coordinate the use of a vaccine for the deadly anthrax bacterial disease.
The departments of Defense and Health and Human Services each purchase the anthrax vaccine, BioThrax. But much of the vaccine purchased for HHS goes unused, according to government investigators. Currently the Strategic National Stockpile has more than 520,000 doses of the vaccine – worth $12 million – that have already expired, according to a Government Accountability Office report obtained by The Associated Press before its release at a hearing Tuesday before the Senate homeland security committee. |
11 Comcast admits delaying some traffic
By PETER SVENSSON, AP Technology Writer
2 hours, 38 minutes ago
| NEW YORK – Comcast Corp. on Tuesday acknowledged “delaying” some subscriber Internet traffic, but said any roadblocks it puts up are temporary and intended to improve surfing for other users.
The statement was a response to an Associated Press report last week that detailed how the nation’s largest cable company was interfering with file sharing by some of its Internet subscribers. The AP also found that Comcast’s computers masqueraded as those of its users to interrupt file-sharing connections. Internet watchdog groups denounced Comcast’s actions, calling it an example of the kind of abuse that could be curbed with so-called “Net Neutrality” legislation. It would require Internet providers to treat all traffic equally – as has largely been the case historically. |
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12 Wis. man finds 3.92-ct white diamond
Associated Press
Tue Oct 23, 5:25 PM ET
| MURFREESBORO, Ark. – A Wisconsin man digging at an Arkansas diamond park with his fiancee Tuesday found a 3.92-carat white stone, but the rock will go into his collection because his betrothed already has a ring and a setting.
Eric Blake, 32, of Appleton, Wis., spotted the stone along a trail at the Crater of Diamonds State Park when he set down a 70-pound bucket of mud that he was carrying to a wash basin. “I put the bucket down to switch hands. I looked down and there it was,” Blake said. Blake found a 1.49-carat stone Monday. The larger one is big enough to fashion into jewelry but Blake hadn’t decided whether he will have it placed into a setting. “I only found it an hour ago,” he said. |
13 Painting found in trash could fetch $1M
By ULA ILNYTZKY, Associated Press Writer
Tue Oct 23, 4:18 PM ET
| NEW YORK – A painting stolen 20 years ago was found lying in trash along a street, and now it could fetch up to $1 million at auction.
Elizabeth Gibson didn’t know anything about the brightly colored abstract work she spotted on her morning walk four years ago on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. Sotheby’s auction house will be selling the work next month for the now-widowed original owner. “I would say it was an appointment with destiny,” Gibson said in a telephone interview Tuesday. “I just knew it meant something. … It was extremely powerful, and even though I didn’t understand it. I knew it had power.” |
From Yahoo News Most Popular, Most Emailed
14 Japan revises history texts
By Takehiko Kambayashi, The Christian Science Monitor
Tue Oct 23, 4:00 AM ET
| Zamami, Japan – On the eve of the American invasion of this subtropical island 62 years ago, Haruko Miyahira heard her elder brother, Seishu, tell their father about an order from the Japanese military.
“My brother, who was then deputy mayor, told our father that US troops were about to land on the island, and said to him, ‘We were ordered from the military to kill ourselves. Let’s die together with good grace!'” Ms. Miyahira recalls. Many older islanders like Miyahira recall the warnings from the Imperial Army that American soldiers, closing in on Japan at the end of World War II, would treat captured women and men brutally. Civilians were told to kill themselves rather than surrender. Then, they were each given two grenades and instructed to hurl one at the Americans and blow themselves up with the other. |
From Yahoo News World
15 Guards who died for Bhutto are mourned
By PAISLEY DODDS, Associated Press Writer
Tue Oct 23, 3:12 PM ET
| KARACHI, Pakistan – Blotting tears with tattered and dusty head scarves, mothers of dozens of bodyguards killed protecting Benazir Bhutto cling to the belief that their sons died for Pakistan.
Their sons vanished in a blinding light without being able to say goodbye. Some mothers didn’t know their sons had decided to protect Bhutto’s return from exile until they saw their charred bodies. “If I would have known what he was doing, I would have stopped him,” said Sugra Bai Agria, whose 27-year-old son, Abdul, was among 136 people killed in last week’s suicide bombing. “But his sacrifice won’t be forgotten.” |
16 Iran, EU see further nuclear talks by end-Nov
By Robin Pomeroy and Phil Stewart, Reuters
Tue Oct 23, 4:39 PM ET
| ROME (Reuters) – Iranian negotiators and the EU hope for more talks on Iran’s nuclear program in coming weeks after a “constructive” meeting on Tuesday, despite a warning by Iran’s president that his country would not retreat “one iota.”
The first meeting with Western diplomats for Iran’s newly-appointed chief negotiator Saeed Jalili was overshadowed by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s rejection of calls to suspend uranium enrichment — the key demand of the U.N. Security Council. Iran’s refusal to halt work that can be used to make fuel for power plants or, if it wants, material for warheads, has prompted two sets of U.N. Security Council sanctions. The West fears Iran’s nuclear program could be aimed at making bombs. |
17 Women peace laureates appeal for Myanmar action
By Jeremy Lovell, Reuters
Tue Oct 23, 6:16 PM ET
| LONDON (Reuters) – Six female Nobel Peace laureates called on the world to keep up pressure on Myanmar’s military junta to restore liberty and democracy in the country.
The seventh living female Peace Prize winner — Aung San Suu Kyi — is in detention in Myanmar, where she has spent nearly 12 of the last 18 years in prison or under house arrest. The call comes weeks after the junta’s bloody suppression of pro-democracy demonstrations led by Buddhist monks. “Since Burmese monks courageously took to the streets in September to call for democracy, the Burmese regime has enforced a vicious crackdown on peaceful demonstrators and democratic opposition leaders,” the six wrote in a letter in Wednesday’s edition of the Guardian newspaper, using the country’s former name. |
18 Pakistan’s Bhutto gets another death threat
By Simon Cameron-Moore, Reuters
Tue Oct 23, 11:00 AM ET
| KARACHI (Reuters) – Pakistani opposition leader Benazir Bhutto received a death threat from a “friend of al Qaeda” on Tuesday, four days after 139 people were killed in an assassination attempt by one or more suicide bombers.
No arrests have been made since last Friday’s attack in Karachi, which government officials swiftly blamed on Islamist militants operating out of tribal areas that have become hotbeds of support for the Taliban and al Qaeda. Police were unsure whether there were two suicide bombers or one, and had yet to confirm whether the photograph released of a severed head belonged to a suicide bomber, Karachi police chief Azhar Farooqui told Reuters. |
19 New look for teddy bears as Chinese toy plants retool after recalls
By Tim Johnson, McClatchy Newspapers
Tue Oct 23, 10:23 AM ET
| SHANGHAI, China – Coming soon to a toy store near you: plush teddy bears with altered noses.
Reeling from global recalls, China’s toy factories are scrambling to ensure the safety of their products, down to the venerable teddy bear. Mostly gone are the old-style black vinyl or plastic noses, which contained chemicals. Now, the noses on most stuffed playthings coming out of China’s factories in this pre-holiday season are stitched or embroidered. |
20 Global warming in Chile threatens industry, water supplies
By Jack Chang, McClatchy Newspapers
Tue Oct 23, 10:24 AM ET
| SAN JOSE DE MAIPO, Chile – With a population of 16 million people, Chile doesn’t produce much of the greenhouse gases that cause global warming. But it’s paying the price.
Giant glaciers are disappearing. Mudslides are becoming more common. Snow no longer falls in the spring, replaced instead by tepid rains. Last May, an entire lake in southern Chile disappeared practically overnight after the Tempano Glacier, which had acted as a dam, melted and destabilized. “Without a doubt, global warming is the cause,” said Gino Casassa , a researcher at the nonprofit Center of Scientific Studies and a member of the Nobel Peace Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. “The only question now is what will be the effects for Chile over the next decades.” |
21 Turkey’s War Drums Grow Louder
By PELIN TURGUT/ISTANBUL, Time Magazine
Tue Oct 23, 3:25 AM ET
| Dozens of Turkish military trucks rumbled towards the Iraqi border as Turks across the country took to the streets to demand retaliation for an attack by Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) separatists based in north Iraq that killed 12 Turkish soldiers. It was the third large-scale attack in recent weeks. Eight Turkish soldiers are still missing after the incident. Sunday’s attack may well prove the last straw for Turkey’s hawkish military – NATO’s second largest army after the U.S. – which has been readying to cross the border into north Iraq in pursuit of the PKK for several months. Public outrage over a mounting death toll finally led Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan to approve an incursion last week. Meanwhile, U.S. and Iraqi diplomats are trying frantically to come up with a non-military solution. |
22 The Demise of an India Nuke Deal
By ISHAAN THAROOR, Time Magazine
Tue Oct 23, 3:25 PM ET
| A controversial nuclear deal between India and the United States that required leaders of both countries to confront domestic opposition appears to have failed on the Indian side. Talks between the ruling party of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and the communist allies on whom his coalition depends to stay in power failed on Monday to overcome the leftists’ opposition that will effectively neuter the deal. The Prime Minister, who has staked his reputation on the deal that promised to bring energy-starved India back into the legitimate international trade in civilian nuclear fuel and technology despite the country’s nuclear-weapons program and its failure to adopt the Non-Proliferation Treaty, appears to have accepted defeat: Last week, a subdued Singh shrugged that that while disappointing, “it would not be the end of life” if the deal failed to win Indian approval. Perhaps, but it could spell the end of his political viability. |
23 Cutting a Deal with Mahdi Militants
By DARRIN MORTENSON/HASWAH, Time Magazine
Tue Oct 23, 5:40 PM ET
| The soldiers joke darkly when they talk about what was left of Iskandariyah’s mayor after he was blown up by a powerful roadside bomb called an EFP earlier this month. They have to. The details are so horrible that one either laughs or cries, or falls into that numb, silent stupor known to combat-hardened troops as the thousand-yard stare. They know EFPs are often aimed at them.
The troops perk up and start speaking more soberly, though, when they discuss the recent breakthrough following that ugly assassination, a breakthrough that has left the local chapter of their Mahdi Army enemy reeling and has local U.S. Army soldiers feeling like they’ve turned a corner in an pivotal area of south-central Iraq. Last week, after two Sunni men were gunned down by Shi’ite militants in the sectarian hotspot of Haswah, near the city of Iskandariyah, Sunni members of a citizens’ paramilitary group led Iraqi and U.S. military officials to the main Haswah mosque, where they told officials that the gunmen were celebrating their recent kill. With permission from the highest echelon of the U.S. command and Iraqi government in Baghdad, a specially trained Iraqi Army unit raided the mosque while U.S. forces stood by with additional firepower. The Iraqi soldiers returned with a booty no one had expected: several local commanders of the Jaish al Mahdi, including the top commander in the region, who came in at number two on the Army’s most wanted list. |
24 India’s Great Chess Hope
By SIMON ROBINSON/DELHI, Time Magazine
Tue Oct 23, 5:40 PM ET
| As anyone who has ever driven in this country knows, Indians are a competitive bunch. So why, then, with a billion-plus people, does the country lag so far behind on the sports field? Sure, India remains a major cricket power, and you wouldn’t count it out of any men’s field hockey tournament. But Indians have won just three medals at the last three summer Olympics, two bronze and one silver. Compare that to the medal haul over the same period of their neighbor and fierce rival, China: 172 medals, including 76 gold. “It’s one of the things that nags Indians – why we’re so bad at sports,” says Viswanathan Anand, the number one-ranked chess player in the world and the winner last month of the World Chess Championship in Mexico City. “Kind of a mystery.” |
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25 Airlines say government wants to wield “meat ax” on JFK flights
By John Crawley, Reuters
Tue Oct 23, 5:02 PM ET
| WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Prospects of airlines voluntarily agreeing to significantly cut their schedules to reduce New York flight delays diminished on Tuesday with carriers angrily rejecting the government’s chief proposal.
James May, the chief executive of the industry’s trade group, the Air Transport Association, said the Transportation Department opened a conference on airline scheduling practices with airline executives earlier in the day by proposing a 30 percent reduction in flights for next summer at delay plagued John F. Kennedy airport. “Scheduling a meeting is a perfectly appropriate approach but not when done with a meat ax,” May told reporters. |
26 CIA agent who helped kill Che Guevara to sell icon’s hair
by Kristine Hughes, AFP
Tue Oct 23, 5:59 PM ET
| DALLAS, United States (AFP) – One of the men who tracked down and killed Ernesto “Che” Guevara is selling a dozen strands of the iconic revolutionary’s hair at auction on Thursday.
The sale has generated protests from both Guevara’s widow and supporters around the world. The lock of hair and other artifacts, including photos of Che’s dead body and fingerprints taken post-mortem, are being offered with a minimum bid level of 100,000 dollars. |
27 Doubts About a New Armored Vehicle
By MARK THOMPSON/WASHINGTON, Time Magazine
Tue Oct 23, 2:05 PM ET
| Late each weekday afternoon, the Pentagon issues a list of all the contracts it has awarded that day. Last Thursday, well down on the roster, was a trio of contracts to three companies for more than $1 billion to buy 2,400 Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles for U.S. troops in Iraq. There is no doubt such heavy-duty vehicles are needed. Improvised-explosive devices account for more than half the U.S. fatalities in Iraq; and the characteristic V-shaped hulls of these vehicles are engineered to deflect blasts from roadside bombs away from the troops within. So the push is on to get the MRAPs to Iraq as quickly as possible. The 2,400 the Marines bought Thursday will be delivered by April – at the speed of light, in Pentagon contracting terms.
The U.S. military is currently paying about $130,000 apiece in shipping costs to get the MRAPs (stickered at $800,000 each) to Iraq via commercial and military cargo planes. There are already nearly 500 MRAPs in Iraq, with a goal of 1,500 by year’s end. Currently, about 10 a day are being shipped. “We continue to get as many to theater as rapidly as we can so that optimally every Marine, some day, will be riding… in an MRAP-type of vehicle,” Marine General James Conway said last Monday. “To date, we have lost no Marines or sailors in the al Anbar province to underbody explosions when they were riding in the MRAP.” But the push to encase as many U.S. troops as possible in MRAPs is raising some vexing questions. Because there are so many suppliers and different designs, the Pentagon is buying 16 different kinds of MRAPs, each with its own requirements for maintenance, training and spare parts. The MRAPs, up to five times as heavy as the Humvees they are replacing, gulp a lot more fuel – fuel that gets to them inside thin-skinned tanker trucks that must travel Iraq’s IED-laden roads. |
28 Alabama Picks a Bible Textbook
By DAVID VAN BIEMA, Time Magazine
Tue Oct 23, 2:20 PM ET
| Alabama has became the first state in the union to approve a textbook for a course about the Bible in its public schools, and its surprisingly uncontroversial decision may prove to be a model for others.
According to Dr. Anita Buckley Commander, the Alabama Director of Classroom Improvement, there was no opposition to the October 11 vote by the state Board of Education to include The Bible and Its Influence on the state’s list of accepted textbooks. The Board held a hearing on the issue and no-one showed up; the book was approved by a vote of 8-0. The textbook is a product of the Bible Literacy Project, founded and run by Chuck Stetson, a conservative Christian New York-based equity fund executive. Assessing scripture and its subsequent influence on literature, art, philosophy and political culture, it was specifically designed to avoid the Constitution’s church-state barriers. Although the text, which has been on the market for two years, is now taught in 163 schools in 35 states, no state had previously endorsed it. |
From Yahoo News Politics
29 Mormon Romney finds Christian support
By GLEN JOHNSON, Associated Press Writer
43 minutes ago
| GREENVILLE, S.C. – Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign has been embraced in a most unlikely place: at Bob Jones University, the influential Christian college that teaches that his Mormon church is a cult.
In early voting South Carolina, Romney has picked up support among the evangelicals and social conservatives who are a political force. Last week, Romney won the endorsements of Bob Jones III and Robert Taylor, the founder’s grandson and a top dean respectively here at Bob Jones University. |
30 Thompson proposes immigration crackdown
By BRENDAN FARRINGTON and LIBBY QUAID, Associated Press Writers
Tue Oct 23, 6:55 PM ET
| NAPLES, Fla. – Republican Fred Thompson said Tuesday the government should yank federal dollars from cities and states that don’t report illegal immigrants.
In his first major policy proposal, Thompson challenged presidential rivals Rudy Giuliani and Mitt Romney by criticizing “sanctuary cities” where city workers are barred from reporting suspected illegal immigrants who enroll their children in school or seek hospital treatment. “Taxpayer money should not be provided to illegal immigrants,” Thompson said at a round-table discussion that included Collier County, Fla., sheriff Don Hunter. |
31 Presidential candidate wives talk
By BETH FOUHY, Associated Press Writer
Tue Oct 23, 7:41 PM ET
| NEW YORK – The wives of five 2008 presidential hopefuls on Tuesday traded tales of juggling their kids, marriages and self-esteem in the maelstrom of a national campaign.
Republicans Cindy McCain, Jeri Thompson and Ann Romney joined Democrats Michelle Obama and Elizabeth Edwards at the California Women’s Conference, an annual gathering in Long Beach hosted by Maria Shriver, the state’s first lady. Shriver, a former television news anchor, moderated the panel. Political differences scarcely were mentioned during the hourlong discussion as they described how they keep up a grueling schedule of campaign appearances while trying to preserve time with their children and protect their husbands from overzealous handlers. |
32 Giuliani keeps conservative nature vague
By SARA KUGLER, Associated Press Writer
1 hour, 17 minutes ago
| CONCORD, N.H. – Republican Rudy Giuliani declined Tuesday to tell a voter where he agrees and disagrees with conservative members of his party, saying it’s about more than “just an ideology.”
The former New York City mayor, who has made conservative Republicans nervous with some of his more liberal views – his support of abortion rights and gun control, for example – was asked pointedly at a town-hall-style meeting to outline where his views align with conservatives. Giuliani chuckled, took a deep breath and then told the questioner it was up to him to figure that out. |
33 Clinton says would cede some presidential powers
Reuters
Tue Oct 23, 5:19 PM ET
| WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton accused President George W. Bush in an interview published on Tuesday of a “power grab” and said she would cede some executive powers if elected.
Clinton was not specific on what powers Bush had assumed or what she would give back in the text of an interview published on the American section of British newspaper The Guardian’s Web site. Bush, in the months after the September 11 attacks, secretly authorized the National Security Agency to monitor phone calls and e-mails between people in the United States and suspected terrorists abroad. |
34 Senate passes health funds that Bush opposes
By Richard Cowan, Reuters
2 hours, 43 minutes ago
| WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The Senate on Tuesday ignored a veto threat and easily passed legislation that would spend more than President George W. Bush wants this year for social programs including health care, education and job training.
By a veto-proof margin of 75-19, the Senate passed the bill that would cost $606 billion in the fiscal year that started Oct 1. Of that total, $152 billion funds programs that Congress tinkers with each year. The rest of the money largely pays for federal retirement and health-care programs for the poor and elderly that the government is obligated to pay, unless lawmakers take on the difficult and unpopular task of reforming them. |
35 Bush: Missile shield is meant to deter Iran
By Matt Spetalnick, Reuters
Tue Oct 23, 1:29 PM ET
| WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President George W. Bush said on Tuesday a planned missile shield in Europe is vital to protect against an “emerging Iranian threat” as he pressed an escalating U.S.-led campaign against Tehran.
Laying out his position in the clearest terms so far, Bush used a policy speech at the National Defense University to hammer home the theme that Iran poses a grave danger because of its simultaneous pursuit of nuclear and missile technologies. Bush’s latest verbal salvo followed his stark warning last week that a nuclear-armed Iran could lead to World War Three, a remark that drew criticism from political opponents at home who accuse him of stoking tensions with Tehran. |
36 Iran nuclear standoff roils U.S. campaign
By Steve Holland, Reuters
Tue Oct 23, 1:44 PM ET
| WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Iran’s nuclear program and its role in Iraq are roiling the U.S. presidential campaign with Democrats squabbling over tactics and Republicans warning of the possibility of military force.
All the major candidates from both parties have said an Iran with nuclear weapons is unacceptable and have pointedly kept the military option on the table out of concern for Israel’s security and to prevent a regional war. And they are all insisting that diplomacy be exhausted and sanctions pursued before any military strikes are considered. The difference lies in emphasis. |
37 House panel OKs giving ships to Turkey
Reuters
Tue Oct 23, 6:46 PM ET
| WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A U.S. congressional committee agreed to give Turkey several decommissioned U.S. military ships on Tuesday, but the legislator who sponsored the plan denied it was intended to temper Ankara’s anger over U.S. legislation on Armenian genocide.
On a voice vote, the House Foreign Affairs committee approved the package worth $485 million for Turkey, which was infuriated by the same panel’s vote on October 10 to label as genocide the 1915 massacres of Armenians by Ottoman Turks. Amid the outcry from Turkey, which recalled its ambassador, U.S. support for the Armenian genocide resolution has faltered, and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said last week it was uncertain whether it would come to the floor for a vote. |
38 Bush: Europe need for missile shield is ‘urgent’
by Olivier Knox, AFP
Tue Oct 23, 4:34 PM ET
| WASHINGTON (AFP) – President George W. Bush on Tuesday warned that Europe urgently needs a US missile defense system to blunt a growing threat from Iran, despite vocal opposition from Russia.
In a speech to the US National Defense University, Bush said the world may have less than a decade before arch-foe Tehran possesses rockets able to reach the United States and strike any country in Europe, perhaps by 2015. “Today we have no way to defend Europe against the emerging Iranian threat. And so we must deploy a missile defense system there that can,” he said. “The need for missile defense in Europe is real, and I believe it is urgent.” |
From Yahoo News Business
39 Chrysler contract rejected by Indiana plants
By Kevin Krolicki, Reuters
1 hour, 58 minutes ago
| DETROIT (Reuters) – Two Chrysler LLC plants in Indiana voted on Tuesday to reject a proposed contract for the No. 3 U.S. automaker, marking the latest and most serious setback to a tentative four-year deal negotiated by the United Auto Workers union.
The pair of votes by the two Indiana UAW locals, which represent more than 4,000 workers, push the vote against the contract to a slight majority, according to a plant-by-plant tally of votes in the closely watched ratification battle. About a third of Chrysler’s UAW-represented workers at plants in Michigan and Illinois will vote on the proposed contract on Wednesday and Friday. Local officials in both states have been prominent in a grassroots campaign to kill the deal and send union negotiators back to the bargaining table. |
40 Brazil warns WTO talks in ‘extremely dangerous’ phase
by Patrick Baert and Aude Marcovitch, AFP
Tue Oct 23, 2:08 PM ET
| GENEVA (AFP) – Global trade talks aimed at liberalising markets and stimulating growth in developing countries are in an “extremely dangerous” phase, Brazil’s ambassador to the World Trade Organisation (WTO) said on Tuesday.
WTO director general Pascal Lamy has repeatedly stressed his view that a deal between the 151 members is “do-able” by next year but Brazil’s Clodoaldo Hugueney told AFP that “the situation is currently extremely dangerous.” Brazil’s booming economy has made it a key player in trade negotiations and along with India, it is one of the highest-profile developing countries in the WTO. |
From Yahoo News Science
41 Large dinosaur footprints found in Australia
By Tan Ee Lyn, Reuters
Tue Oct 23, 5:23 AM ET
| HONG KONG (Reuters) – Large, carnivorous dinosaurs roamed southern Australia 115 million years ago, when the continent was joined to the Antarctica, and were padded with body fat to survive temperatures as low as minus 30 degrees Celsius.
Standing about 12-feet tall, these hardy creatures inhabited the area close to the South Pole for at least 10 million years during the Cretaceous period, an expert said. Palaeontologists from Australia and the United States came by their findings after uncovering three separate fossil footprints measuring about 14 inches long, each with at least two or three partial toes. |
42 First Malaysian in space tells of bumpy ride back
By Chris Baldwin, Reuters
Tue Oct 23, 11:57 AM ET
| STAR CITY, Russia (Reuters) – Malaysia’s first man in space said on Tuesday the gravitational force on his return to earth was “like a big elephant on my chest” after a computer glitch made his re-entry steeper than planned.
Dr. Sheikh Muszaphar Shukor, an orthopedic surgeon and university lecturer from Kuala Lumpur, touched down in Kazakhstan with two Russian cosmonauts on Sunday, about 200 km (120 miles) off course after a so-called “ballistic” descent. That meant the capsule followed a much steeper and shorter trajectory to earth, causing more spin, a bumpier ride and much greater gravitational strain on its occupants. |
43 Government scientist calls for badger cull
By Andrew Hough, Reuters
Tue Oct 23, 6:10 AM ET
| LONDON (Reuters) – Badgers need to be culled to tackle tuberculosis (TB) in cattle, the government’s Chief Scientific Adviser said on Tuesday, in a reversal of the existing official position.
Sir David King indicated that plans to start a cull would be approved within months. King, who will give evidence to the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs select committee on Wednesday, supported badger culls in areas which had a “high and persistent” incidence of TB in cattle. |
Do we need steenkin Badgers? I’m a reliable publisher of crap, I’m like Jann Wenner that way. Frankly I find the less news I read the saner I am.
