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News you might have missed

 

"Drunken frat boy drives country into ditch. News at eleven."

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(AP) Jun. 22, 2006 The Republican-controlled Senate smothered a proposed election-year increase in the minimum wage Wednesday, rejecting Democratic claims that it was past time to boost the $5.15 hourly pay floor that has been in effect for nearly a decade. The 52-46 vote was eight short of the 60 needed for approval under budget rules and came one day after House Republican leaders made clear they do not intend to allow a vote on the issue, fearing it might pass. The Senate vote marked the ninth time since 1997 that Democrats there have proposed _ and Republicans have blocked _ a stand-alone increase in the minimum wage. The debate fell along predictable lines. Pretty much the same lines as last time. On Jan. 1, 2003, they took a raise of $4,700. On Jan. 1, 2002, they took a raise of $4,900. On Jan. 1, 2001, they took a raise of $3,800. On Jan. 1, 2000, they took a raise of $4,600. On Jan. 1, 1998, they took a raise of $3,100. That comes to six raises totaling $24,500 since January 1998. Congressional pay increases are automatic. The Republican controlled congress enacted this in 1998, and you did nothing to stop them.
"I am going to give what might be regarded as a rather un-UN speech. Some of the themes -- that the United Nations is misunderstood and does much more than its critics allow -- are probably not surprising. But my underlying message, which is a warning about the serious consequences of a decades-long tendency by US Administrations of both parties to engage only fitfully with the UN, is not one a sitting United Nations official would normally make to an audience like this. ... the prevailing practice of seeking to use the UN almost by stealth as a diplomatic tool while failing to stand up for it against its domestic critics is simply not sustainable."
China in accord with Russia on Iran Thu Mar 23, 2006 4:19 AM ET BEIJING (Reuters) - China said on 3/23/06, that Beijing and Moscow are in accord on Iran's nuclear standoff with the West. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Wednesday criticized a draft U.N. Security Council statement aimed at pressuring Iran to stop enriching uranium. A spokesman for China's Foreign Ministry, Qin Gang, said President Hu Jintao and Putin discussed Iran during Russian President Vladimir Putin's two-day visit. Russia, backed by China, wants to delete large sections of the draft statement the Security Council has been studying for nearly two weeks as a first reaction to Iran's nuclear research, which the West believes is a cover for bomb-making. Iran insists it wants only to produce electric power. Both nations fear that involvement by the 15-member council, which can impose sanctions, could escalate and lead to punitive measures including possibly military action. Qin said on 3/21/06 China supported a Russian compromise proposal that would allow Iran to use nuclear fuel enriched in an internationally monitored plant on Russian soil, easing fears that Tehran could divert atomic material to develop weapons.

Ever hear of BRIC?

It is a military and economic alliance between Brazil, Russia, India, China. They've been participating in joint military exercises since 2003.
Sudhir Chadda, http://www.indiadaily.com, January 04, 2005 Russian President Putin has nationalized the Yukos oil company the largest oil producer of Russia. uh oh As China, India and Brazil, their oil appetite will make them glued to Russia and each other, Venezuela, well influenced by Brazil, will provide additional oil assets to BRIC. Minority interests in Yukos will be sold to China and India. uh oh China has already secured Venezuelan oil assets. India is eagerly looking for oil assets central Asia, These countries cannot depend upon middle-east oil because of instability and unreliable characteristics of oil supply. India and China are concerned that the Western nations will try to choke oil supply. Putin by offering the Yukos oil assets to Asian giants have finally glued the BRIC alliance where they can publicly come together as a group. Comforting. In a recently published report (2003), Goldman Sachs has forecast that Brazil, India and China together with Russia (a group called "BRIC"), will grow to outstrip the currently dominant members of the global economy, G-6, (US, Britain, France, Japan, Germany and Italy) within half a century. It estimates that BRIC will eventually overtake the economic output of G-6. China itself is likely to be bigger than any of the current members of G-6.

 

Court is told Guantanamo Bay Briton was MI5 spy, By Daniel McGrory,
THE British Foreign and Commonwealth Office has been forced into an embarrassing change of heart over its refusal to press for the release of a British resident held at Guantanamo Bay after the High Court was told yesterday that he had links to MI5. Bisher al-Rawi, 37, says that he was working for British Intelligence when he was picked up by the CIA during a trip to Africa. WoW The US Government has said that as foreign nationals the men have no legal right to the assistance they are demanding. Mr al-Rawi, an Iraqi national, and his Jordanian business partner, Jamil el-Banna, who was granted refugee status in 2000, were picked up in Gambia three years ago and accused of trying to set up an al-Qaeda terrorist training camp. Both men claim that they were asked by British Intelligence to infiltrate an organisation run by a London-based radical cleric, Abu Qatada. Timothy Otty, who is appearing for the detainees, said that documents from a security service agent, "Witness A", established that there were "communications" relating to the two men before their arrest in November 2002, between the British and US security services. 
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From the "I can't believe he said that" Department....


Vladimir Putin quoted Franklin Delano Roosevelt?


By Steven Thomma
Knight Ridder Newspapers April 2006.- It's not just the way he's doing his job.
Americans apparently don't like President Bush personally much anymore, either.
it's about time
A drop in his personal popularity, as measured by several public polls, has shadowed
the decline in Bush's job-approval ratings. "When he loses likeability, the president
loses the benefit of the doubt," said Dennis Goldford, a political scientist at Drake
University in Iowa. "That makes it much harder for him to steer."
"The American people like this president," White House political guru Karl Rove said
last week. Rove said he based his confidence on a private poll done for the Republican
National Committee that showed Bush's personal approval rating higher than 60 percent,
far above his job approval. "The polls I believe are the polls that get run through
the RNC," Rove said. "I look at the polls all the time."
The Republican National Committee wouldn't release a copy of the poll. Spokeswoman
Tracey Schmitt said she couldn't explain why public polls show a decline in Bush's
personal popularity except to say that, "you can ask a poll question four different
ways and get four different answers." ain't that the truth
Six public polls in recent weeks showed the opposite of Rove's account - that Bush's
personal approval ratings have dropped since he was re-elected in 2004: Gallup for USA
Today, CBS and the New York Times, even John Zogby
showed that only 29 percent had a favorable opinion of Bush.
Gallup, found drops in the number of people who think that Bush is honest and trustworthy,
that he shares their values and that he cares about people like them. 


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During a private two-hour meeting in the Oval Office on Jan. 31, 2003, President Bush made clear to Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain that he was determined to invade Iraq without the second resolution, or even if international arms inspectors failed to find unconventional weapons, said a confidential memo about the meeting written by David Manning, Mr. Blair's top foreign policy adviser.
"The start date for the military campaign was now penciled in for 10 March," Mr. Manning wrote, paraphrasing the president. "This was when the bombing would begin."
 Five days after the Bush-Blair meeting, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell was scheduled to appear before the United Nations to present the American evidence that Iraq posed a threat to world security by hiding unconventional weapons.
The so-called Downing Street memo written in July 2002, showed that some senior British officials had been concerned that the United States was determined to invade Iraq, and that the "intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy" by the Bush administration to fit its desire to go to war.		

"Saddam Hussein is a homicidal dictator who is addicted to weapons of mass destruction." -- George W. Bush, Cincinnati, Ohio, October, 2002

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