The new agreement covering the U.S. military presence in Iraq, which appears to end immunity from local law for private security contractors, could affect companies the U.S. is likely to rely on as it reduces its forces there. The broad deal, which had been negotiated for months, removes immunity for armed security guards protecting U.S. officials and facilities, as well as contractors involved in the U.S. military’s massive supply chain. With contractors falling under the jurisdiction of Iraqi courts, it could become harder for them to recruit new workers and could drive up costs as insurance rates and wages rise to offset the risk of landing in a local jail. The agreement, which could be approved by Iraq’s parliament next week, would replace an expiring United Nations mandate covering U.S. forces. The new arrangement would go into effect Jan. 1, about a month before Iraqi provincial elections are set to take place. Iraq’s Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is pushing for Iraqi lawmakers to approve the deal over opposition from Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr. View Full Image Iraq Associated Press Iraqis at a Baghdad cafe watch Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki call for support for the security […]
LOS ANGELES — In Los Angeles today, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger welcomed hundreds of attendees from more than 50 states, provinces and countries to the Governors’ Global Climate Summit. At the end of their two-day meeting, participants are expected to sign a declaration outlining their plans for turning climate goals into action. The summit has already led to a signed agreement between U.S. governors and governors from Brazil and Indonesia to reduce forestry-related greenhouse gas emissions. It is the first state-to-state, sub-national agreement focused on reducing emissions from deforestation and land degradation. ‘Tropical deforestation accounts for 20 percent of all human-caused carbon emissions in the world, and the governors signing these MOUs with us manage more than 60 percent of the world’s tropical forest lands,’ Governor Schwarzenegger said. ‘With this agreement, we are focusing our collective efforts on the problem and requiring our states to jointly develop rules, incentives and tools to ensure reduced emissions from deforestation and land degradation,’ Schwarzenegger said. ‘We are also sending a strong message that this issue should be front and center during negotiations for the next global agreement on climate change.’ Clearing the Amazon rainforest in the Middle Land, State of Para, […]
Somali pirates struck again yesterday, seizing an Iranian cargo ship holding 30,000 tonnes of grain, as the world’s governments and navies pronounced themselves powerless against this new threat to global trade. Admiral Michael Mullen, the US military chief, pronounced himself stunned by the pirates’ reach after their capture of the supertanker Sirius Star and its $100 million (£70 million) cargo. Commanders from the US Fifth Fleet and from Nato warships in the area said that they would not intervene to retake the vessel. The Foreign Minister of Saudi Arabia, the owner of the ship, condemned the hijacking as an ‘outrageous act’ that required international action. ‘Piracy, like terrorism, is a disease which is against everybody, and everybody must address it together,’ Prince Saud al-Faisal said. Arab diplomats would meet in Cairo on Thursday to discuss what could be done in response, Yemeni officials said. Analysts said, however, that the seizure of the Sirius Star exposed the use of foreign warships as ‘a sticking plaster’ that would not solve the problem. ‘Maritime security operations in that area are addressing the symptoms not the causes,’ said Jason Alderwick, a maritime defence analyst at the International Institute for Strategic […]
Infants conceived with techniques commonly used in fertility clinics are two to four times more likely to have certain birth defects than are infants conceived naturally, a new study has found. The findings applied to single births only, not to twins or other multiples. The defects included heart problems, cleft lip, cleft palate and abnormalities in the esophagus or rectum. But those conditions are rare to begin with, generally occurring no more than once in 700 births, so the overall risk was still low, even after the fertility treatments. Cleft lip, for instance, typically occurs in 1 in 950 births in the United States, and the study found that the risk about doubled, to approximately 1 in 425, among infants conceived with the fertility treatments. The procedures that increased the risk were so-called assisted reproductive techniques, like in vitro fertilization, which require doctors and technicians to work with eggs and sperm outside the body. The study did not include women who only took fertility drugs and did not have procedures performed. ‘I think it is important for couples to consider the fact that there may be a risk for birth defects,’ said Jennita Reefhuis, an epidemiologist at […]
Gulf War illness, dismissed by some as a psychosomatic disorder, is a very real illness that affects at least 25 percent of the 700,000 U.S. veterans who took part in the 1991 Gulf War. It’s likely cause was exposure to toxic chemicals that included pesticides that were often overused during the war, as well as a drug given to U.S. troops to protect them from nerve gas, a frequent weapon of choice of former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein. And no effective treatments have been devised for the disorder. Those are three key conclusions of a Congressionally mandated landmark report released Monday by a federal panel of scientific experts and veterans. ‘It is very clear that Gulf War illness is a real condition that was not caused by combat stress or other psychological factors,’ said Lea Steele, scientific director of the Research Advisory Committee on Gulf War Veterans’ Illnesses, which issued the report, and an associate professor at Kansas State University. ‘This is something we need to take seriously,’ Steele said. ‘These folks were injured in wartime service, much as people who were shot with bullets or hit with bombs.’ The committee presented the 450-page […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
