Iraq’s military is drawing up plans to cope with any quick U.S. military pullout, the defense minister said Monday, as a senior American official warned that the Bush administration may reconsider its support if Iraqi leaders don’t make major reforms by fall. The U.S. official did not say what actions could be taken by the White House, but his comments reflected the administration’s need to show results in Iraq - as an answer to pressure by the Democrats in Congress seeking to set timetables on the U.S. military presence. Several mortar shells hit the U.S.-controlled Green Zone, one striking the Iraqi parliament building but causing no casualties - the latest in near daily barrages on the nerve center of the U.S. mission and Iraqi government that underline the country’s tenuous security. At least 58 Iraqis were killed by attacks or found dead across Iraq, including seven people ambushed on a bus northeast of Baghdad, police said. The dead included 24 men whose bullet-riddled bodies were found across Baghdad, apparent victims of sectarian death squads. British troops clashed with Shiite Muslim gunmen in the southern city of Basra. Britain’s military said one British soldier and a civilian […]
WASHINGTON — For many years, the political struggle over abortion was often framed as a starkly binary choice: the interest of the woman, advocated by supporters of abortion rights, versus the interest of the fetus, advocated by opponents of abortion. But last month’s Supreme Court decision upholding the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act marked a milestone for a different argument advanced by anti-abortion leaders, one they are increasingly making in state legislatures around the country. They say that abortion, as a rule, is not in the best interest of the woman; that women are often misled or ill-informed about its risks to their own physical or emotional health; and that the interests of the pregnant woman and the fetus are, in fact, the same. The majority opinion in the court’s 5-to-4 decision explicitly acknowledged this argument, galvanizing anti-abortion forces and setting the stage for an intensifying battle over new abortion restrictions in the states. This ferment adds to the widespread recognition that abortion politics are changing, in ways that are, as yet, unclear, if not contradictory. Even as the anti-abortion forces relish their biggest victory in the Supreme Court in nearly 20 years, they face the possibility of […]
The Chinese Government has agreed to buy a $US3 billion ($A3.64 billion) stake in New York-based buy-out firm Blackstone Group, the first step in the diversification of its overseas investments. The State Investment Co will buy an undisclosed number of non-voting Blackstone shares at 95.5 per cent of the price set in its planned initial public offering. The stake would be reduced if necessary to keep it below 10 per cent after the IPO, the Government and Blackstone said in a statement. China, the largest holder of US Government debt behind Japan, is creating the investment company to buy potentially more lucrative assets such as private equity. Foreign exchange reserves, swelled by export revenue, rose by a record $US136 billion in the first quarter to $US1.2 trillion, the most in the world, according to China’s central bank. Most of it is invested in sovereign debt. ‘With all the money that has flowed to China and the cash they have built up, they are looking for ways to put it to work,’ said Colin Blaydon, director of the Centre for Private Equity and Entrepreneurship at Dartmouth College’s Tuck School of Business in New Hampshire. ‘They […]
Kabul – More than 70 000 Afghans who were in Iran illegally have been returned in the past month, the United Nations said on Monday, as talks were under way between the neighbours over the controversial deportations. The number of unregistered Afghans being expelled had eased off over the past week, the UN said. The talks in Iran were to focus on how the deportations were carried out and also the treatment of deportees, it said. There have been reports of returnees being separated from their families in the drive to get them out. Tehran has said it wanted one million Afghans repatriated by next March. The 70 000 who have been sent back started returning from April 21. Afghanistan has asked its neighbour to halt the returns, saying it does not have the capacity to accommodate a large number of people at once. ‘We are concerned about the way the deportations are taking place,’ said Nader Farhad, a UN refugee agency information officer in Kabul. Returning families ‘It is important with such a large number of people, it should take place in a gradual and orderly manner.’ Anger in Afghanistan […]
The Senate’s compromise immigration bill offers something for everyone to hate, including presidential candidates forced to confront the divisive issue. Unlike the war in Iraq, which separates lawmakers mainly along party lines, immigration fractures Republican and Democratic ranks from within: splitting business interests from social conservatives, dividing labor from Hispanic groups. ‘The issue is fraught with danger,’ said John Anzalone, a Democratic pollster. ‘It’s one where it’s tough to please everybody within your base or coalition.’ For that reason, perhaps, the only major candidate who embraced the bipartisan proposal announced Thursday was Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), who helped negotiate the agreement. However, McCain’s decision to step off the campaign trail and appear at a Capitol Hill news conference with Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) raised some GOP eyebrows. ‘The American people want solutions to major problems,’ said John Weaver, a McCain strategist. ‘He’s running for president to do the tough things, and he’s doing them now.’ New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, a Democrat, also praised the bill. ‘This legislation makes a good start toward re-securing our southern border,’ he said Friday. But, like other Democratic candidates, he expressed concern about a temporary worker […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
