DAVENPORT, Iowa: Sen. Barack Obama said Sunday he was not greatly offended by the Fox News chief’s word play about his name that led Nevada Democrats to cancel a presidential debate hosted with the network. Fox’s Roger Ailes made a remark last week about the similarities between the Illinois senator’s name and al-Qaida leader Osama Bin Laden. ‘I didn’t take great offense at the joke,’ Obama said in an Associated Press interview while campaigning in Iowa. ‘I have been called worse.’ At a Radio & Television News Directors Association Foundation event in Washington on Thursday, Ailes said, ‘And it is true that Barack Obama is on the move. I don’t know if it’s true that President (George W.) Bush called (Pakistani President Pervez) Musharraf and said, ‘Why can’t we catch this guy?” according to a transcript provided by Fox. Bin Laden is believed to be hiding in Afghanistan or the country’s lawless border region with Pakistan. The Nevada Democratic Party announced Friday it had canceled an August debate, to be co-hosted by Fox News Channel, and cited Ailes’ comment. Ailes went too far, the state’s Democratic Party chairman, Tom Collins, and Democratic Sen. Harry […]
WASHINGTON — The harmful effects of global warming on daily life are already showing up, and within a couple of decades hundreds of millions of people won’t have enough water, top scientists will say next month at a meeting in Belgium. At the same time, tens of millions of others will be flooded out of their homes each year as the Earth reels from rising temperatures and sea levels, according to portions of a draft of an international scientific report obtained by The Associated Press. Tropical diseases like malaria will spread. By 2050, polar bears will mostly be found in zoos, their habitats gone. Pests like fire ants will thrive. For a time, food will be plentiful because of the longer growing season in northern regions. But by 2080, hundreds of millions of people could face starvation, according to the report, which is still being revised. The draft document by the authoritative Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change focuses on global warming’s effects and is the second in a series of four being issued this year. Written and reviewed by more than 1,000 scientists from dozens of countries, it still must be edited by government officials. […]
During a Monday hearing to investigate widely publicized problems at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center, lawmakers and Army officials placed partial blame on a public-private job competition that sapped the facility of workers, and on uncertainty about the slated closure of the center in the ongoing Base Realignment and Closure process. Several lawmakers questioned whether it had been a mistake to outsource base operations support through a competition conducted under the Office of Management and Budget’s Circular A-76 rules. The Walter Reed competition began in January 2000 and went through numerous protests and appeals. The contractor selected to perform the work, Cape Canaveral, Fla.-based IAP Worldwide Services, finally took over operations on Feb. 4 of this year. ‘We certainly could have done it better, and maybe we shouldn’t have done it at all,’ said Lt. Gen. Kevin Kiley, the head of the Army Medical Command and Walter Reed’s commander from 2002 to 2004, in response to a question from Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif. Maj. Gen. George Weightman, who was fired last week from his command of the center after holding the position for just more than six months, testified that over the course of the extended […]
JERUSALEM — A killer bacteria resistant to antibiotics is sowing panic across Israel as it sweeps through hospitals, leaving scores dead and afflicting hundreds more. Five hundred people in more than 10 hospitals have been struck down with the lethal Klebsiella bacteria strain in the past six months, with 30 percent of cases ending in death, senior health ministry official Yair Amikam told AFP. Battling to cope, the health ministry is demanding an extra half a billion dollars to improve hospital infrastructure and for hundreds of new beds, as doctors raise alarm bells of a wildfire epidemic failing decisive action. ‘There were 500 cases in the last six months, 30 percent of which end in fatality. All of them are old patients suffering from many kinds of illness and this is not the only reason that caused death,’ Amikam said. News of the bug first broke this week and has since dominated the print and electronic media in the Jewish state. ‘Bacteria Epidemic Feared’, warned one headline. ‘Resistance Bacteria Rampant – and Health Ministry Has No Data’, screamed another. The health ministry initially kept the outbreak secret to avoid mass panic in a country […]
ANCHORENA PARK, Uruguay — President Bush approved 8,200 more U.S. troops for Iraq and Afghanistan on top of reinforcements already ordered to those two countries, the White House said Saturday, a move that comes amid a fiery debate in Washington over the Iraq war. The president agreed to send 4,700 troops to Iraq in addition to the 21,500 he ordered to go in January, mainly to provide support for those combat forces and to handle more anticipated Iraqi prisoners. He also decided to send a 3,500-member brigade to Afghanistan to accelerate training of local forces, doubling his previous troop increase to fight a resurgent Taliban. Although officials had foreshadowed the additional forces for Iraq in recent days, the latest troop increase in Afghanistan had not been known and will bring U.S. forces there to an all-time high. The deployments underscore the challenges facing the United States in both countries and further stretch an already strained military. In Iraq particularly, the moves could fuel suspicions that a troop increase initially described as a temporary ‘surge’ may grow larger and last longer than predicted. Bush did not comment on his decision during the second day of a six-day […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
