WASHINGTON — Global warming might be considered a threat to wipe out species and cause disastrous droughts around the world, but it wasn’t strong enough to break a partisan standoff in the U.S. Senate. Senate Republicans blocked major legislation Friday that aimed to combat global warming, prompting Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., to pull it from consideration. The debate over the legislation, which would have capped emissions of greenhouse gases, never really got off the ground. Leaders of both parties said they wanted a full debate, but as is often the case in Washington, they couldn’t agree on how to conduct it. Still, the legislation’s proponents celebrated the vote as the most support the Senate has ever shown for caps on emissions. They also voiced confidence in the legislation’s prospects next year with a new president, likely new faces in the Senate and more time to address the concerns of opponents. ‘This is moving in the direction that history needs it to move,’ said Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., one of the bill’s authors. Supporters needed 60 votes to end a Republican filibuster, but picked up only 48. Another six senators who did not vote sent […]
About 1 in 11 American mortgages were past due or in foreclosure at the end of March, according to a report released on Thursday, a figure that is rising fast as home prices fall and the job market weakens. The first three months of 2008 marked the worst quarter for American homeowners in nearly three decades, according to the report, issued by the Mortgage Bankers Association. The rate of new foreclosures and past-due payments surged to their highest level since 1979, when the group first started collecting the data. All told, about 8.8 percent of home loans were past due or in foreclosure, or about 4.8 million loans. That is up from 7.9 percent at the end of December. (About a third of American homeowners do not have mortgages.) Delinquency and foreclosure rates started rising from historically low levels in late 2006 and have picked up speed in nearly every quarter since. Analysts say at first past due mortgages represented mostly high-risk loans made to borrowers with blemished, or subprime, credit. Now, as the economy has weakened and home prices have fallen in many parts of the country, homeowners with better loans are also falling behind. […]
Just as Internet video is starting to take off, one of the nation’s largest broadband providers is experimenting with a pricing plan that could make it very expensive. Last week Time Warner Cable started testing a $29.99 a month plan in Beaumont, Texas that gives users only 5 gigabytes of data to download or upload. Users who pay $54.90 a month have their service capped at 40 gigabytes. Trouble is, a single standard definition movie takes up between one and two gigabytes and a high-definition movie could eat up as much as eight gigabytes. That means that users who pay about $30 a month could be restricted to two or three movies a month and those willing to pay about $55 would be limited to just a few high-definition movies such as the ones you can now download to Apple TV. Users who go over their limit will pay $1 for each additional gigabyte which could amount to between $1 and $8 for each movie you watch in addition to whatever you’re paying to rent or buy the movie itself. For my new weekly Tech Talk radio feature Time-Warner Cable spokesperson Alex Dudley told me that ‘the […]
RIYADH, Saudi Arabia — Saudi Arabia’s king urged a gathering of Muslim scholars Wednesday to open religious dialogue with Christians and Jews. But politics intruded as a senior Iranian figure said the Islamic world should stand up to the U.S. and its ‘international arrogance.’ King Abdullah spoke at the start of a three-day conference of Islamic scholars, clerics and other figures in the holy city of Mecca called to get Muslims on the same page before the kingdom launches a landmark initiative for talks with adherents of other monotheistic faiths. The tone was one of reconciliation between Islam’s two main branches, Sunni and Shiite. Abdullah, one of Sunni Islam’s most prominent figures, entered the hall with Shiite Iranian politician Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, who later sat at the king’s left in a gesture of unity. But while Rafsanjani spoke warmly of his host, he also highlighted the political divide between their nations by delivering pointed criticism of America, a Saudi ally. He accused the U.S. of greedily trying to control the region’s oil and said Muslims should resist it. Saudi Arabia has presented its dialogue proposal as a strictly religious initiative _ an opportunity to ease tensions […]
A secret deal being negotiated in Baghdad would perpetuate the American military occupation of Iraq indefinitely, regardless of the outcome of the US presidential election in November. The terms of the impending deal, details of which have been leaked to The Independent, are likely to have an explosive political effect in Iraq. Iraqi officials fear that the accord, under which US troops would occupy permanent bases, conduct military operations, arrest Iraqis and enjoy immunity from Iraqi law, will destabilise Iraq’s position in the Middle East and lay the basis for unending conflict in their country. But the accord also threatens to provoke a political crisis in the US. President Bush wants to push it through by the end of next month so he can declare a military victory and claim his 2003 invasion has been vindicated. But by perpetuating the US presence in Iraq, the long-term settlement would undercut pledges by the Democratic presidential nominee, Barack Obama, to withdraw US troops if he is elected president in November. The timing of the agreement would also boost the Republican candidate, John McCain, who has claimed the United States is on the verge of victory in Iraq – a […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
