SYDNEY, Australia — Conservative Prime Minister John Howard suffered a humiliating defeat Saturday at the hands of the left-leaning opposition, whose leader has promised to immediately sign the Kyoto Protocol on global warming and withdraw Australia’s combat troops from Iraq. Labor Party head Kevin Rudd’s pledges on global warming and Iraq move Australia sharply away from policies that had made Howard one of President Bush’s staunchest allies. Rudd has named global warming as his top priority, and his signing of the Kyoto Protocol will leave the U.S. as the only industrialized country not to have joined it. Rudd said he would withdraw Australia’s 550 combat troops from Iraq, leaving twice that number in mostly security roles. Howard had said all the troops will stay as long as needed. (AP) Australian Prime Minister John Howard, center, leaves the stage with his wife Janette, and son… Full Image Official figures from the Australian Electoral Commission showed Labor far in front after more than 70 percent of the ballots had been counted – with 53 percent of the vote compared to 46.7 percent for Howard’s coalition. Using those figures, an Australian Broadcasting Corp. analysis showed that Labor would […]
WASHINGTON — With American military successes outpacing political gains in Iraq, the Bush administration has lowered its expectation of quickly achieving major steps toward unifying the country, including passage of a long-stymied plan to share oil revenues and holding regional elections. Instead, administration officials say they are focusing their immediate efforts on several more limited but achievable goals in the hope of convincing Iraqis, foreign governments and Americans that progress is being made toward the political breakthroughs that the military campaign of the past 10 months was supposed to promote. The short-term American targets include passage of a $48 billion Iraqi budget, something the Iraqis say they are on their way to doing anyway; renewing the United Nations mandate that authorizes an American presence in the country, which the Iraqis have done repeatedly before; and passing legislation to allow thousands of Baath Party members from Saddam Hussein’s era to rejoin the government. A senior Bush administration official described that goal as largely symbolic since rehirings have been quietly taking place already. Bush administration officials have not abandoned their larger goals and emphasize the importance of reaching them eventually. They say that even modest steps, taken soon, could […]
CARACAS, Venezuela — Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez says oil would shoot to $200 a barrel if the US invaded Iran. He and Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad are ‘united like a single fist,’ Mr. Chávez said earlier this week. Does Chávez, with or without Iran’s help, have the power to push oil to $200 a barrel? Can he ‘tip the world into a recession’ as an opinion piece in the Los Angeles Times asserted last week? Venezuela is the fourth-largest supplier of oil to the US. But despite a concern among some economists that high oil prices will provoke recession, many analysts say that Chávez alone has minimal impact on the how high the price of oil goes. And even as he looks to export oil elsewhere and reduce his dependence on the US, where half of Venezuela’s production is sold, it’s a swap he won’t be able to carry out soon. ‘Between those two countries, Venezuela is way more dependent on the US than the US is on Venezuela,’ says Roger Tissot, director for Latin America country strategies at PFC Energy, a consulting group. Chávez’s latest threats came during the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) […]
NEW YORK — When Domenico Colombo saw that his monthly mortgage payment was about to balloon by 30 percent, he had a clear picture of how bad it could get. His payment was scheduled to surge by an extra $1,500 in December. With his daughter headed to college next fall and tuition to be paid, he feared ending up like so many neighbors in Ft. Lauderdale, Fla., who defaulted on their mortgages and whose homes are now in foreclosure and sporting ‘For Sale’ signs. Colombo did manage to renegotiate a new fixed interest rate loan with his bank, and now believes he’ll be OK — but the future is less certain for the rest of us. In the months ahead, millions of other adjustable-rate mortgages like Colombo’s will reset, giving them a higher interest rate as required by the loan agreements and leaving many homeowners unable to make their payments. Soaring mortgage default rates this year already have shaken major financial institutions and the fallout from more of them, some experts say, could spread from those already battered banks into the general economy. The worst-case scenario is anyone’s guess, but some believe it could become […]
When the new American Embassy in Baghdad entered the planning stage, more than three years ago, U.S. officials inside the Green Zone were still insisting that great progress was being made in the construction of a new Iraq. I remember a surreal press conference in which a U.S. spokesman named Dan Senor, full of governmental conceits, described the marvelous developments he personally had observed during a recent sortie (under heavy escort) into the city. His idea now was to set the press straight on realities outside the Green Zone gates. Senor was well groomed and precocious, fresh into the world, and he had acquired a taste for appearing on TV. The assembled reporters were by contrast a disheveled and unwashed lot, but they included serious people of deep experience, many of whom lived fully exposed to Iraq, and knew that society there was unraveling fast. Some realized already that the war had been lost, though such were the attitudes of the citizenry back home that they could not yet even imply this in print. Now they listened to Senor as they increasingly did, setting aside their professional skepticism for attitudes closer to fascination and wonder. Senor’s view of Baghdad […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
