President George W. Bush’s approval rating have plummeted to and all time low according to a Fox Opinion Dynamics poll. The Bush poll numbers dropped across the board – and is losing support among his base as only 66 percent of Republicans approve which is down from 84 percent a year ago. ‘It seems clear that many Republicans, while they may still like and support George Bush, are growing uneasy with what may happen to their candidates — and the policies they support — in the November elections,’ said John Gorman, chairman of the polling company Opinion Dynamics. Among the 57 percent of those polled who disapprove of Bush’s performance, almost half, 48 percent, gave the Iraq War as the major reason. That was followed by ‘doing a bad job’ at 24 percent, disagreement on issues, 22 percent, and the economy and jobs, 17 percent. Among Democrats, 11 percent approve today, while 14 percent approved last April. ‘This unease about the direction of the party is now showing up as an erosion of the near unanimous support Bush has enjoyed among the Republican rank-and-file for the last six years, Gorman added.
LOS ANGELES — U.S. Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman said Sunday that prices paid at the pump for gasoline could stay high for two or three years, in an interview on NBC’s ‘Meet the Press.’ ‘Suppliers have lost control of the market,’ Bodman told NBC’s Tim Russert, when asked what the reason for the latest spike in U.S. gas prices. ‘Therefore demand exceeds supply.’ And this has happened, he said, because ‘suppliers are unable to make the kind of demands to make the flows equal to the demands. We’ve got demands coming from China, India the U.S…. all of this is good because economies are growing…but demand is also causing the kind of price spikes we’ve had.’ A second major factor for higher gasoline prices is the seasonal shift from winter to summer gasoline grades, which has resulted in some ‘dislocations’ that have caused some prices spikes, he said. ‘All of that is adding to the situation we now have. I expect the latter to settle down over a month or two, but clearly, we’re going to have a number of years, 2 or 3 years, before suppliers are in a position to meet demands of those who […]
HONG KONG — The state-controlled Catholic church in China elevated one of its top officials from priest to bishop on Sunday, despite objections from the Vatican. There are two hierarchies of bishops in China, one selected by the underground church loyal to Rome and the other selected by the Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association, which Mao created to control the church in China. The new bishop, Ma Yinglin, 40, is a top official of the patriotic association and the secretary general of its Council of Chinese Bishops. He will lead the diocese of Kunming, in southwestern China. Pope Benedict XVI has placed a priority on reaching an understanding with mainland China that would allow greater religious freedom for the country’s Roman Catholics. But China, which has had informal contacts with the Vatican in recent years on ways to restore ties, has objected to giving the Vatican a say in the selection of bishops for dioceses. Cardinal Joseph Zen Ze-kiun, who grew up in Shanghai and was appointed by Benedict this spring, is an intermediary in efforts to restore diplomatic relations between Beijing and the Vatican. On Saturday, he warned the state-controlled church in a statement that […]
Paul Pregont has just mushed his team of huskies across miles of Arctic wasteland. It is 45 degrees below zero, but important clues about the effects of global warming may be locked inside the ice under his feet. Pregont is the point man in a NASA-sponsored foot patrol aimed at measuring water resources in the far north. The stakes involved in this research could be enormous. Roughly 70 percent of the water supply in western states comes from melting snow pack, experts say, while the Himalayas feed rivers that supply water to over a half billion people. ‘In recent years, snow cover has been declining in many areas of the globe,’ says Jim Foster, a physical scientist at the NASA hydrological sciences branch in Maryland. ‘It has become ever more important to accurately measure the amount of snow in large watersheds.’ NASA has been monitoring the Arctic snow cap using satellites since the late ’80s, measuring cloud formations to soil moisture from miles above the Earth’s surface. But the shape and size of the snow crystals can scatter their sensors and distort the readings, and now the U.S. space agency is making a concerted push to collect […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
