Tag: Docudharma Times

George Bush Thinks

U.S. National Forests Are Best Used

For Housing Sub-Divisions  

Israel launches assault across Gaza’s borders



Chris McGreal in Jerusalem

guardian.co.uk, Sunday 4 January 2009 01.03 GMT

Israel last night dramatically escalated its war with Hamas, sending troops and tanks pouring over Gaza’s borders in a move designed to reoccupy parts of the northern Gaza Strip. Amid reports of fierce clashes inside Gaza, columns of military vehicles and what the army said was “a sizeable number of troops” moved across the border at several points, backed by an intense air and artillery bombardment.

The move followed the failure of a week-long air force offensive, which has claimed more than 460 Palestinian lives, to halt the Hamas rockets. More than 30 hit Israel yesterday, wounding three people. Israel’s defence minister, Ehud Barak, said his country was a peace-loving nation but Hamas had given it no choice and brought the assault on the Palestinian people. “Now is the time to do what needs to be done,” he said. “It won’t be easy. It won’t be short. I don’t want to delude anyone.” The government in Jerusalem ordered the call-up of tens of thousands of reservists, suggesting the operation will be expanded further. The army said it expected to be in Gaza “for many long days”.

Beijing strikes at dissidents

Clampdown on Charter 08’s call for democracy also aims to gag parents of tainted milk children and Sichuan quake victims

David Stanway in Shanghai

The Observer, Sunday 4 January 2009

China has launched a tough countrywide crackdown on a new network of political activists, writers and lawyers who have supported a bold new manifesto that presses for the end of one-party rule.

The group of 300 or so people had all signed Charter 08, which called for democracy and the rule of law in China and was named after the famous Charter 77 dissident group formed in cold war Czechoslovakia.

Charter 08 has been hailed as the most significant act of public dissent against China’s Communist party since the Tiananmen Square pro-democracy protests were brutally crushed in 1989. It was posted online on 10 December, the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It condemned recent economic modernisation efforts as having “stripped people of their rights”, and called for political reform and a new liberal, democratic constitution.

USA

Security Agencies Alter Strategies, Add Backup for Inauguration Week



By Mary Beth Sheridan

Washington Post Staff Writer

Sunday, January 4, 2009; Page A01

Authorities are organizing what appears to be the largest security operation ever for an inauguration, bringing in thousands of extra police, agents and troops to handle crowds as President-elect Barack Obama is sworn in.

Security officials are bracing not just for the ceremony and parade Jan. 20 but also for at least 70 concerts, balls and other events surrounding the inauguration. Those include the welcome celebration featuring Obama on Jan. 18 at the Lincoln Memorial, which could draw 500,000 people, according to the D.C. mayor’s office.

GM Loosens Credit Standards

For Car Loans

Just Another Credit Crisis On The Horizon

Israel prepares to send in the tanks



By Kim Sengupta in Jerusalem and Anne Penketh

Saturday, 3 January 2009

Israel appears poised to extend its week-long assault on Gaza by launching a ground assault, amid renewed reports last night that troops and armour were preparing to move into the besieged Palestinian territory.

As more than 300 foreign passport holders were allowed to leave Gaza after the border was temporarily opened, Israeli officials warned that a ground offensive was needed to break the military power of Hamas, which has continued to carry out rocket attacks despite pulverising air strikes.

‘What happens in war happens’

In 2004, photographs of abuses at Abu Ghraib shocked the world. Seven people were charged, but the face of the scandal will always be Lynndie England, the 21-year-old private grinning at the camera. Emma Brockes meets her



Emma Brockes

The Guardian, Saturday 3 January 2009

The road to Fort Ashby, West Virginia, runs through Mineral County, an area of freezing grey farmland and barrack-style bungalows, where the sign outside the bar – “Hunters welcome” – has an unnerving effect on the passing non-hunter. In Cindy’s coffee shop, customers speculate on the whereabouts of a lost cow and tell a weird Republican joke about the noise a chicken makes when its head is cut off: “Barack-Obama!, Barack-Obama!” Lynndie England has lived in Fort Ashby since she was two, but when she appears, suddenly, in the car park, her outline is crooked with self-consciousness. She grew her hair for a while, but people recognised her anyway, so she cut it short again.

The last time journalists came to Fort Ashby in any number, they upset residents by portraying it as “a giant trailer park”. There are two bars, two banks, a fire station, a school and a bookshop – the woman who runs the latter says, “I’ve no sympathy for what she did, but people behave differently in war than they do in their chairs at home, watching it on TV.”

USA

Obama’s View on Power Over Detainees Will Be Tested Early



By ADAM LIPTAK

Published: January 2, 2009

WASHINGTON – Just a month after President-elect Barack Obama takes office, he must tell the Supreme Court where he stands on one of the most aggressive legal claims made by the Bush administration – that the president may order the military to seize legal residents of the United States and hold them indefinitely without charging them with a crime. The new administration’s brief, which is due Feb. 20, has the potential to hearten or infuriate Mr. Obama’s supporters, many of whom are looking to him for stark disavowals of the Bush administration’s legal positions on the detention and interrogation of so-called enemy combatants held at Navy facilities on the American mainland or at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

Reflecting On The Bush Legacy?

Here’s Some Reflections: Incompetent: Abusive: Destroyers Of The Constitution And The Bill Of Rights

Reflect On That  

War and peace: Israel’s military and political options

Six days after launching Operation Cast Lead, Tel Aviv ponders whether to send the tanks in or seek a settlement with Hamas

Ian Black, Middle East editor

The Guardian, Friday 2 January 2009

Six days into Operation Cast Lead against Hamas in the Gaza Strip Israeli leaders are considering a range of military and political options that depend on what happens in a fast-moving situation with many variables they do not control. Developments on the ground, international diplomatic activity and Arab reactions will determine what happens next. Echoing the 2006 war against Hezbollah in Lebanon, there is Israeli confusion and disagreement over tactics, strategy and what will constitute a victory. But Ehud Olmert, the prime minister, said yesterday he did not want a long war. The main scenarios are these:

Continuing air attacks

After more than 500 bombing missions by aircraft and helicopters with a claimed 95% success rate, high-value Palestinian targets are running out. Israeli claims of “surgical strikes” will be measured against credible reports of civilian casualties.

Climate scientists: it’s time for ‘Plan B’

Poll of international experts by The Independent reveals consensus that CO2 cuts have failed – and their growing support for technological intervention

By Steve Connor, Science Editor and Chris Green

Friday, 2 January 2009

An emergency “Plan B” using the latest technology is needed to save the world from dangerous climate change, according to a poll of leading scientists carried out by The Independent. The collective international failure to curb the growing emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere has meant that an alternative to merely curbing emissions may become necessary.

The plan would involve highly controversial proposals to lower global temperatures artificially through daringly ambitious schemes that either reduce sunlight levels by man-made means or take CO2 out of the air. This “geoengineering” approach – including schemes such as fertilising the oceans with iron to stimulate algal blooms – would have been dismissed as a distraction a few years ago but is now being seen by the majority of scientists we surveyed as a viable emergency backup plan that could save the planet from the worst effects of climate change, at least until deep cuts are made in CO2 emissions.

USA

Steel Industry, in Slump, Looks to U.S. Stimulus



By LOUIS UCHITELLE

Published: January 1, 2009

The steel industry, having entered the recession in the best of health, is emerging as a leading indicator of what lies ahead. As steel production goes – and it is now in collapse – so will go the national economy.

That maxim once applied to Detroit’s Big Three car companies, when they dominated American manufacturing. Now they are losing ground in good times and bad, and steel has replaced autos as the industry to watch for an early sign that a severe recession is beginning to lift.

The industry itself is turning to government for orders that, until the September collapse, had come from manufacturers and builders.

HAPPY NEW YEAR

Israel rejects ceasefire move as divisions emerge in leadership

• More troops mass on border

• Hamas rockets land 25 miles into Israel

Rory McCarthy in Jerusalem

The Guardian, Thursday 1 January 2009

Israel rejected any temporary halt to its five-day bombing campaign in Gaza yesterday and continued to hit targets in the Palestinian territory amid the first signs of disagreement over strategy among Israel’s leaders.

Israeli troops and tank crews gathered in larger numbers on the Gaza border ready for a new stage in the fighting. A possible invasion by Israeli forces could range from limited ground incursions to a much larger land invasion of Gaza, home to 1.5 million Palestinians. Another call-up of reservists has been approved, bringing the total to 9,000.

Israel widened its buffer zone under military authority around Gaza to a radius of 25 miles after the reach of Hamas rockets extended to the town of Be’er Sheva

Britain ready to take in Guantánamo prisoners

Deal will help Obama to close down terror jail



From The Times

January 1, 2009

Sam Coates, Tim Reid and Richard Ford

Britain is preparing to receive foreign terror suspects from Guantánamo Bay so that Barack Obama can shut it down, The Times has learnt.

Government sources say that Britain now supports moves to rehouse the detainees, despite previous refusals to help President Bush.

A Downing Street official said that a process to deal with the detainees was being put in place and that decisions “would be for the Home Secretary to decide on a case-by-case basis”.

The issue is the subject of intense negotiations within Whitehall. The Foreign Office appears much keener on the idea than other departments, which will have to deal with the suspects’ immigration status and whether they will need special housing and cash benefits. Having foreign terror suspects with no links to the UK housed here inevitably will provoke controversy.

USA

New Sentencing Guidelines For Crack, New Challenges



By Del Quentin Wilber

Washington Post Staff Writer

Thursday, January 1, 2009; Page A01

Michael D. Thompson, a former crack cocaine dealer, thought he deserved a break.

Sentenced in 2000 to 15 years and eight months in prison, Thompson asked a federal judge in the District to release him, arguing that he had received an unfair sentence and has turned his life around behind bars, earning a general equivalency diploma and completing a commercial driving course.

Federal prosecutors said that was a terrible idea. Citing Thompson’s criminal past and prison disciplinary record, which includes threatening a prison official with a knife, prosecutors argued in court papers that the 37-year-old poses a danger to the community and should complete his sentence.

U.S. Media Outlets Leave Iraq

I Guess The Mtv War Has Become Boring

While People And Soldiers Still Die  

Now Israel declares ‘war to the bitter end’

International outcry grows as death toll from continued assault on Gaza reaches 320

By Donald Macintyre in Jerusalem

Tuesday, 30 December 2008

Israel’s defence Minister, Ehud Barak, warned yesterday that his country was engaged in “a war to the bitter end” with Hamas as a third day of fierce bombing brought the estimated Gaza death toll to 320. Two Israelis were killed in retaliatory rocket barrages last night as Hamas struck deep inside Israeli territory.

Mr Barak’s declaration to the Knesset – the Israeli parliament – came as Israel continued its comprehensive bombardment of Hamas targets after overnight aerial attacks that devastated large parts of the Interior Ministry and the Islamic University.

Amid signs of increased international restiveness about the Palestinian death toll, Mr Barak insisted that “we have nothing against Gaza residents” but added: “We are engaged in an all-out war against Hamas and its proxies. This operation will expand and deepen as much as needed.”

Bush has successfully defended anti-terrorism policies

Domestic surveillance, rounding up Muslim men after Sept. 11, harsh interrogations — the administration has beat back nearly all legal challenges to its controversial programs.

By David G. Savage

December 30, 2008

Reporting from Washington — Second in a series of occasional reports on President Bush’s legacy.

George W. Bush will end his presidency in retreat, forced to compromise on several fronts. Free-market economics have given way to massive government bailouts, and an assertive, unilateral foreign policy has yielded to one more attuned to world opinion. But in his defense of the war on terrorism, Bush has succeeded in beating back nearly all legal challenges — including those to some of his most controversial policies.Among them are a domestic surveillance program to intercept international phone calls, the rounding up of Muslim men for questioning after the Sept. 11 attacks, the holding of suspects in military custody in this country without filing charges, harsh interrogations — some have called it torture — of suspects arrested abroad, and the detention of foreign captives at a military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

USA

Black Workers in Auto Plants Losing Ground



By MARY M. CHAPMAN

Published: December 29, 2008

DETROIT – Since millions of African-Americans began leaving Southern farms for Northern factories nearly a century ago in what is still known as the Great Migration, the destinies of many of them have been entwined with the auto industry’s.

The car companies were hardly multiracial utopias, but they, especially Ford, employed blacks when many industries would not. Through the decades, the automakers and their higher wage scales provided a route to the middle class for many blacks, especially those with limited education, and their children.

Now, with Detroit reeling, many blacks find their economic well-being threatened.

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.

As 2008 Draws To A Close The

Wars Continue

Israelis Say Strikes Against Hamas Will Continue



By TAGHREED EL-KHODARY and ETHAN BRONNER

Published: December 28, 2008

GAZA – Waves of Israeli airstrikes destroyed Hamas security facilities in Gaza on Saturday in a crushing response to the group’s rocket fire, killing more than 225 – the highest one-day toll in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in decades.

Israeli military officials said the airstrikes, which went on into the night, were the start of what could be days or even months of an effort to force Hamas to end its rocket barrages into southern Israel. The operation could include ground forces, a senior Israeli security official said.

Palestinian officials said that most of the dead were security officers for Hamas, including two senior commanders, and that at least 600 people had been wounded in the attacks.

Rupert Cornwell: Never have hopes been higher – and never has the job been tougher

On 20 January, Barack Obama will become President of the United States. His preparation has been faultless. Soon, we will learn if all the optimism is justified

Sunday, 28 December 2008

Barack Obama had it right. Postpone the first candidates’ debate, John McCain was urging last September at the height of the presidential campaign, as the White House convened an urgent summit on its bank bailout plan, a day or two before the two White House rivals were to lock horns at the University of Mississippi.

The financial collapse, McCain argued, rendered everything else superfluous. But the Democrat was unmoved: “It’s going to be part of the president’s job to deal with more than one thing at a time.” Those words of Obama are contender for 2008’s understatement of the year. Never has an incoming President been confronted by as daunting an array of problems as the untried former Senator from Illinois.

USA

Silver Lining of Subprime Slips Away in Calif. Suburb



By Karl Vick

Washington Post Staff Writer

Sunday, December 28, 2008; Page A02

STOCKTON, Calif. — Venice Circle is a loop lined with taupe homes and green lawns, a clear sign that drivers have left the freeway south of town and entered Weston Ranch, a 21st-century Levittown. The subdivision sprang up in asparagus fields 80 miles east and a world away from the urban settings buyers were delighted to escape: gritty, violent east Oakland, and grittier, deadlier Richmond nearby.

This bedroom community is populated overwhelmingly by minority families, who were lifted by a wave of easy credit over the Altamont Pass and into dream homes.

Sometimes It Makes You Wonder

What Bush Is Thinking

No You Don’t

Abduction Illuminates Criminality In Mexico

U.S. Expert’s Case An Embarrassment

By William Booth

Washington Post Foreign Service

Saturday, December 27, 2008; Page A01

SALTILLO, Mexico — They ordered the goat. That’s what the kitchen is famous for at the upscale La Principal restaurant in Saltillo, a prosperous manufacturing city in the high desert of northern Mexico. And so it was only natural that Felix Batista, an American expert in corporate security, and his new friends decided to get it. But Batista never finished his meal.

Instead, after a series of quick cellphone calls and whispered conversations, Batista excused himself from the table. On his way out, he gave the well-heeled businessmen he was meeting with his laptop, shoulder bag and a contact.

“If I’m not back,” he told his companions, according to one of them, “call these numbers.”

Like Many States, Ohio Reaches for A Lifeline

Official Says Stimulus Is ‘Essential to the Salvation of America’

By Peter Slevin

Washington Post Staff Writer

Saturday, December 27, 2008; Page A0

COLUMBUS, Ohio — As the economy sputters and tax revenue plummets, governors and mayors across the United States are lining up to ask President-elect Barack Obama and the new Congress for hundreds of billions of dollars to plug holes in their budgets, arguing that services will suffer and joblessness will rise if Washington does not come to the rescue.

In Ohio, which has shed 100,000 jobs in the past year, Gov.  Ted Strickland (D) and his budget team spend a lot of time delivering bad news to constituents and plotting ways to wring money from the federal government.

USA

Pardon would have cleared way for scammer to re-enter real estate biz



BY ERIK GERMAN | erik.german@newsday.com

December 27, 2008

The presidential pardon Isaac Toussie came close to receiving would have cleared the way for the man who orchestrated a housing scam in Suffolk to legally re-enter the real estate industry in New York State.

Toussie pleaded guilty in 2001 to using false documents to have mortgages insured by the Department of Housing and Urban Development. In 2002, he pleaded guilty to mail fraud, admitting that he persuaded officials in Suffolk to overpay for land. He was sentenced in 2003 to 5 months in prison and 5 months of home detention for both cases.

Like any felon, Toussie, 37, can’t legally vote or serve on juries. State law also bars him from holding a long list of state-issued licenses, including those for private investigators, public notaries, and those issued to brokers and sellers of real estate.

The pardon that President George W. Bush awarded on Dec. 23 – and rescinded on Christmas Eve – would have allowed Toussie to ask New York’s Department of State to give back his real estate license.

Remember That It Isn’t

Only America That Is Effected

By The Economic Meltdown

Firms Charge Thousands To Modify Mortgages

Nonprofits Offer Service For Free, Advocates Say

By Renae Merle

Washington Post Staff Writer

Friday, December 26, 2008; Page A01

A growing industry has emerged to take advantage of the unprecedented wave of foreclosures, charging distressed homeowners for help negotiating better loan terms — a service provided for free or for a nominal fee by many nonprofits.

Such companies charge $500 to $2,500 or more and are drawing the ire of consumer advocates, regulators and lenders, who say many are just the latest version of foreclosure rescue scams and can make it more difficult for homeowners to get help.

“You don’t need to go out and hire someone to help you,” said Michael Gross, managing director of mortgage servicing for Bank of America.

In a Teeming French City, Safe Harbor at the Movies



By STEVEN ERLANGER

Published: December 25, 2008

MARSEILLE, France – Marseille prides itself on being a port city, a rough melting pot of differences rather like its signature dish, bouillabaisse, which combines various fish, some very expensive and some considered just a cut above trash.

Some of the toughest districts in France’s second-largest city are in the hills above L’Estaque, which inspired Braque and Cézanne. But poverty is high, drug use is common and resentments run deep.

Samia Ghali, 40, is the new Socialist mayor of these districts, or arrondissements, with nearly 100,000 constituents. Of Algerian descent herself – like roughly a quarter of Marseille’s 826,700 people – she is consumed by the economic crisis washing over France and its poor, and she is convinced that these neighborhoods are going to burn.

USA

Expansion of Clinics Shapes a Bush Legacy



By KEVIN SACK

Published: December 25, 2008

NASHVILLE – Although the number of uninsured and the cost of coverage have ballooned under his watch, President Bush leaves office with a health care legacy in bricks and mortar: he has doubled federal financing for community health centers, enabling the creation or expansion of 1,297 clinics in medically underserved areas.

For those in poor urban neighborhoods and isolated rural areas, including Indian reservations, the clinics are often the only dependable providers of basic services like prenatal care, childhood immunizations, asthma treatments, cancer screenings and tests for sexually transmitted diseases.

As a crucial component of the health safety net, they are lauded as a cost-effective alternative to hospital emergency rooms, where the uninsured and underinsured often seek care.

MERRY  

CHRISTMAS

Coal Ash Spill Revives Issue of Its Hazards



By SHAILA DEWAN

Published: December 24, 2008

KINGSTON, Tenn. – What may be the nation’s largest spill of coal ash lay thick and largely untouched over hundreds of acres of land and waterways Wednesday after a dam broke this week, as officials and environmentalists argued over its potential toxicity.

Federal studies have long shown coal ash to contain significant quantities of heavy metals like arsenic, lead and selenium, which can cause cancer and neurological problems. But with no official word on the dangers of the sludge in Tennessee, displaced residents spent Christmas Eve worried about their health and their property, and wondering what to do.

Thousands of candidates may complicate Iraq’s provincial elections



By Mohammed al Dulaimy | McClatchy Newspapers

BAGHDAD – Iraqi voters next month will see 14,500 candidates vie for 440 open seats on provincial councils, an outpouring of interest in a new phase of Iraqi self-government that could make for a baffling ballot.

The Jan. 31 poll will be the first in a series of votes in Iraq next year that include elections in the semi-autonomous Kurdish region, a national referendum on the new U.S.-Iraq security pact and nationwide parliamentary elections.

The provincial council elections will bring new blood into local governing bodies that were filled by political blocs in Iraq’s 2005 elections. They’ll also give national parties a local toehold to advance their agendas

USA

Army Officials Say Many More Active-Duty Troops Are Needed



By Ann Scott Tyson

Washington Post Staff Writer

Thursday, December 25, 2008; Page A04

The Army needs to add at least 30,000 active-duty soldiers to its ranks to fulfill its responsibilities around the world without becoming stretched dangerously thin, senior Army officials warn.

“You can’t do what we’ve been tasked to do with the number of people we have,” Undersecretary of the Army Nelson Ford said in an interview last week. “You can see a point where it’s going to be very difficult to cope.”

Already, the Army lacks a strategic reserve of brigades trained and ready for major combat, officials said, and units being deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan are receiving new soldiers at the last minute, meaning they have insufficient time to train together before crossing into the war zone.

There Should Be Investigations

No One Is Above The Law  

Clinton Moves to Widen Role of State Dept.



By MARK LANDLER and HELENE COOPER

Published: December 22, 2008

WASHINGTON – Even before taking office, Hillary Rodham Clinton is seeking to build a more powerful State Department, with a bigger budget, high-profile special envoys to trouble spots and an expanded role in dealing with global economic issues at a time of crisis.

Mrs. Clinton is recruiting Jacob J. Lew, the budget director under President Bill Clinton, as one of two deputies, according to people close to the Obama transition team. Mr. Lew’s focus, they said, will be on increasing the share of financing that goes to the diplomatic corps. He and James B. Steinberg, a deputy national security adviser in the Clinton administration, are to be Mrs. Clinton’s chief lieutenants.

Nominations of deputy secretaries, like Mrs. Clinton’s, would be subject to confirmation by the Senate.

European Countries May Take Detainees

Under Bush, Nations Refused to Resettle Guantanamo Prisoners

By Peter Finn

Washington Post Staff Writer

Tuesday, December 23, 2008; Page A01

European nations have begun intensive discussions both within and among their governments on whether to resettle detainees from the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, as a significant overture to the incoming Obama administration, according to senior European officials and U.S. diplomats.

The willingness to consider accepting prisoners who cannot be returned to their home countries, because of fears they may be tortured there, represents a major change in attitude on the part of European governments. Repeated requests from the Bush administration that European allies accept some Guantanamo Bay detainees received only refusals.

USA

America’s stop-and-go energy plan

Today’s cheaper gas is no reason to lose focus on reducing oil imports, activists and executives say.

By Jim Tankersley

December 23, 2008

Reporting from Washington — Breaking America’s foreign-oil addiction was all the rage on Capitol Hill when gas cost $4 a gallon. Now that it’s under $2 and falling, history suggests that the enthusiasm for alternative fuels and more efficient cars will subside. It did that in the mid-1970s and again in the 1980s and 1990s.

But this time could be different.

A sense of urgency may still remain, according to congressional leaders and environmental groups, because of a confluence of factors including broad anxiety over global warming, enthusiasm for green elements in economic stimulus packages and President-elect Barack Obama’s repeated vows to act.

And in any case, few consumers are convinced that low gas prices will last.

While  Average Wokers

Lose Their Jobs

Wall Street Executives Get Their Bonus’s  

More Firms Cut Labor Costs Without Layoffs



By MATT RICHTEL

Published: December 21, 2008

Even as layoffs are reaching historic levels, some employers have found an alternative to slashing their work force. They’re nipping and tucking it instead.

A growing number of employers, hoping to avoid or limit layoffs, are introducing four-day workweeks, unpaid vacations and voluntary or enforced furloughs, along with wage freezes, pension cuts and flexible work schedules. These employers are still cutting labor costs, but hanging onto the labor.

And in some cases, workers are even buying in. Witness the unusual suggestion made in early December by the chairman of the faculty senate at Brandeis University, who proposed that the school’s 300 professors and instructors give up 1 percent of their pay.

Toyota to make first loss in 67 years

From Times Online

December 22, 2008

Leo Lewis, Asia Business Correspondent

Profits at Toyota Motor, the Japanese motor giant, are set to dive into the red for the first time since 1941 as exports screech to a halt and margins are hammered by the soaring yen.

Toyota’s full year loss – unprecedented since the company stopped making looms and turned its hand to car making – is expected to reverberate throughout Japan.

Toyota’s president, Katsuaki Watanabe, said today: “The change that has hit the world economy is of a critical scale that comes once in a hundred years.”

It is the second time in less than two months that the carmaker has lowered its profit forecast and emerges as Japan’s Ministry of Finance revealed a 26.7 per cent annual fall in exports had contributed to the country’s first November trade deficit in 28 years, totalling Y223 billion.

USA

Senate openings pose quandaries for governors

Blagojevich isn’t the only one charged with filling a spot: In Delaware, New York and Colorado, governors face political pressure and strategic considerations as they choose among would-be senators.

By Robin Abcarian

December 22, 2008

I’m going to keep this Senate option for me a real possibility, you know, and therefore I can drive a hard bargain. And if I don’t get what I want . . . then I’ll just take the Senate seat myself.”

— Illinois Gov. Rod R. Blagojevich, as quoted in his federal corruption complaint.

Rod R. Blagojevich may have gotten carried away by the heady opportunity to appoint a United States senator. But he is not the only chief executive of a state to face that exquisite quandary this season. With the elevation of Illinois’ junior senator (Barack Obama) and Delaware’s senior senator (Joe Biden) to the executive branch, plus the Cabinet appointments of senators from New York (Hillary Rodham Clinton) and Colorado (Ken Salazar), four states will be getting new senators untouched by the grinding process of raising millions of dollars and seeking votes.