London — US economist Joseph Stiglitz has said that US President George Bush was ‘wrong’ in estimating the total money which would be spent on Iraq war, and that it (Iraq war) could cost the US two trillion dollars. According to him, this amount could have run America’s health care system for years or wipe out poverty in Somalia. Nobel Prize winner Stiglitz said that factors such as ongoing medical care for troops and reconstruction in Iraq ‘had not been addressed’ while calculating the total money that would be spent on the war. The Columbia University professor said every severely brain damaged soldier costs four million dollars. ‘For this group alone there will be a cost of 35billion dollars,’ The Mirror quoted the 63-year old professor as saying. The US had hoped Iraqi oil revenues would help it ‘break even’, as the Gulf War of 1991 almost made a profit for America, said the report.
DUBLIN, Ireland — In what Dublin Archbishop Diarmuid Martin calls an effort to actively ‘right past wrongs,’ the Archdiocese of Dublin has published a report admitting that 102 of its priests – some 3.5 percent of its total – have been suspected of sexually or physically abusing young people since 1940. The report is the largest such admission of abuse in Ireland, which has been particularly hard-hit by the scandals since their surfacing in 1994. It comes ahead of a government-appointed commission which is scheduled to be formed to investigate the improprieties later this month. The church’s findings are based on a two-year long study of some 2,800 priests who have worked within the archdiocese over the past 66 years. The report stated that eight priests have received criminal convictions while another 32 have been sued by alleged victims. In addition, 40 claims remain unsettled and the archdiocese has positively identified 350 more victims whose cases have yet to be settled. It also cited some 40 more victims who may have been abused but as of the report date, remain unidentified. According to the archdiocese, Dublin area priests were informed of the updated findings during a […]
The world lacks the means to produce enough oil to meet rising projections of demand for fuel over the next decade, according to Christophe de Margerie, head of exploration for Total and heir presumptive to the leadership of the French energy multinational. The world is mistakenly focusing on oil reserves when the problem is capacity to produce oil, M de Margerie said in an interview with The Times. Forecasters, such as the International Energy Agency (IEA), have failed to consider the speed at which new resources can be brought into production, he believes. ‘Numbers like 120 million barrels per day will never be reached, never,’ he said. The IEA predicted in its World Energy Outlook that global demand for crude oil would reach 121 million barrels per day by 2030, of which more than half would be supplied by Opec. The agency predicted that more than $3 trillion (£1.72 trillion) of investment in wells, pipelines and refineries would be needed to raise output to such levels. However, Total’s exploration chief reckons the output rise is impossible, given available resources and geopolitical constraints on gaining access to reserves in Opec countries. M de Margerie argued that […]
NEW YORK — With warnings about global warming reaching a fever pitch in recent weeks–Vanity Fair is about to come out with a story featuring George Clooney and Julia Roberts on its cover–Americans are more convinced than ever that the Earth is being affected, but they have still not grown urgently concerned about it, according to a Gallup poll released today. Only one in three predict global warming will pose a serious threat in their lifetimes. Contrary to what one might expect, Gallup found that while public concern is higher than in 2004, they are ‘no higher than it has been at several points in the past.’ In fact, Americans are more worried about water pollution, air pollution, and toxic waste than global warming. This comes despite the fact that a record number of Americans, 58%, believe climate change as a result of global warming has already begun, and is the result of man-made operations, not natural cycles. Gallup found that only 36% of Americans say they worry a great deal about ‘the greenhouse effect’ or global warming. The percentage saying global warming will ‘pose a serious threat to you or your way of life in […]
The political crisis to form a new government is deepening; meanwhile the tension among sectarian groups is escalating. According to BBC News, at least 40 people have been killed in an apparent double suicide bomb attack on a Shia mosque in the Iraqi capital Baghdad on April 7th. One blast occurred inside the mosque while the second bomber was said to have struck outside the building, BBC News Agency reported. The attack came a day after a car bomb killed at least 10 people near the sacred Imam Ali shrine in Najaf. The attack on the shrine in Samarra, north of Baghdad, set off a wave of violence between Iraq’s Shia and Sunni communities. Bahadir Dincer, Middle East expert of Journal of Turkish Weekly, argued that the delay in forming a government is mostly responsible for the increasing sectarian violence. He pointed out that latest bloody attack to Shia mosque proves that Iraq is at the edge of civil war. These everlasting attacks also support the idea that there are groups who are not in favor of national unity of Iraq and want to break out a civil war in Iraq. On the other hand, […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
