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(07/07/08 7:01pm)
A suicide attacker detonated explosives near a police station in Pakistan’s capital on Sunday, killing more than 10 police officers, officials said. The blast occurred in a kiosk in front of the police station, said Naeem Iqbal, a police spokesman. Television footage showed wounded security forces being taken away and ambulances rushing to the area. The blast came as thousands of Islamists were gathered not far away to mark the one-year anniversary of a deadly military crackdown on a radical mosque. It was not clear whether the events were linked.
(07/07/08 7:00pm)
Iran indicated Saturday that it has no plans to meet a key Western demand that it stop enriching uranium, a day after Tehran sent the European Union a response to an international offer of incentives for halting enrichment. The content of that response has not been made public and European officials declined to comment on it Saturday, but there was caution about the prospects of progress. “It was not something that made us jump up and down for joy,” said one European official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the information was confidential. “We are in a holding mode until we get a chance to look at it more closely.”
(07/07/08 6:58pm)
President Bush said Sunday he does not feel the need to boycott the opening ceremonies of the Beijing Olympics to state his opposition to China’s human rights record. Skipping the event would be an “affront” to the Chinese people, he said. Bush spoke at a news conference with Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda, who announced that he also plans to attend the ceremonies. Other world leaders have decided not to go as a rebuke to China’s violent crackdown on anti-government protests in Tibet.
(07/07/08 6:57pm)
WASHINGTON – Democrats bent on showing they can govern and Republicans anxious about a sour re-election climate are pushing a pared-down summer agenda in Congress. Lawmakers want to try to save homeowners from foreclosure, avert Medicare cuts and give the government power to spy on suspected terrorists.\nGasoline prices have emerged as a chief concern among voters. But lawmakers probably will not put aside their partisan blame-fest and compromise on an energy measure that could offer some relief, either immediately or down the road.\nThe Senate planned to return Monday and the House on Tuesday. Their abbreviated election-year calendar leaves little time to cut deals. Lawmakers will scatter again in August for their annual monthlong break and the two parties’ presidential conventions.\nWith their attention turning increasingly to re-election campaigns, not to mention the White House race, members of Congress will be away from Washington much of the fall.\n“There just isn’t much sand left in the top of the hourglass,” said Stephen Hess, a Brookings Institution congressional scholar. “They’ve done whatever heavy lifting they’re capable of doing.”\nIn the time that remains, leaders intend to act on an array of politically appealing legislation. Examples include banning lead in toys and approving an ambitious global health initiative – a $50 billion program to combat AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis in Africa and elsewhere.\nThe annual measure renewing Pentagon programs could be completed, and a catchall spending measure to pay for government programs through year’s end is a must-pass item.\nThe promise of a new president and prospects for a different Congress next year have sapped lawmakers’ incentive to engage in major debates this year. Majority Democrats hoping to dominate both sides of Pennsylvania Avenue in 2009 have little reason to compromise on their priorities.\n“Whose interest is it to settle anything now?” Hess said.\nStill, leaders will try for votes on some issues provoking partisan tensions: energy measures; a second economic rescue bill; extending expiring tax cuts; saving tens of millions of people from a tax increase averaging $2,300 due to the alternative minimum tax.\nThe two parties have battled over gas prices for months. Democrats are pushing for more conservation and energy alternatives while Republicans favor more domestic energy production, including oil drilling on federal lands and waters now off-limits because of environmental concerns. More votes are expected in July.\nRepublicans have been hostile to Democrats’ calls for a second economic relief measure on top of the one that sent rebates of $600 to $1,200 to most wage earners this year. Congress and President Bush took a half-step in that direction last month, enacting a 13-week extension of unemployment benefits averaging $300 a week for up to 4 million jobless workers.\nTax legislation is ensnared in a dispute between Democrats who insist on pairing any extension of expiring tax cuts with tax increases elsewhere to prevent a rise in the deficit, and Republicans who oppose such increases. Action could wait until September.\nThe housing rescue is designed to help hundreds of thousands of homeowners buckling under subprime mortgage payments avoid foreclosure and get new, cheaper loans. This could be the last major compromise to be signed by Bush this year.\nIt has drawn broad support in the Senate, where test-votes show it has enough backing to override a veto. A procedural vote was expected Monday, and the measure is expected to pass the Senate as early as week’s end.\nFirst, though, lawmakers have to break a logjam over Republican Sen. John Ensign’s bid to add $8 billion worth of renewable energy tax breaks. Then leaders have to resolve disputes among Democrats and with the White House about important details.\nThe measure includes a plan for the Federal Housing Administration to insure up to $300 billion in new, more affordable fixed-rate loans for borrowers otherwise considered too financially strapped to qualify. The proposal also would overhaul the FHA and tighten rules for government-sponsored mortgage companies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.\n“I think we can get us a bill,” Bush said recently. “But it’s going to require less politics and more focus on keeping our minds on who we need to help, and that’s the homeowner.”\nDemocrats are divided on how high to place limits on the loans FHA can insure and those two companies can buy. The House proposed a roughly $730,000 cap and the Senate embraced a $625,000 ceiling.\nLeaders are tussling with the White House over including at least $3.9 billion in grants for buying, fixing up and reselling foreclosed properties. This is an idea that Democrats say is critical to battling blight and Bush calls a government bailout for lenders who helped cause the housing crisis.\nThe terrorist surveillance legislation faces fewer obstacles. It is expected to win approval Tuesday for Bush’s signature.\nNext, Senate leaders plan to reprise a bill preventing a 10.6 percent cut in Medicare payments to doctors. It passed the House overwhelmingly in defiance of Bush’s threat to veto it, but fell just one vote short of the 60 it needed to advance in the Senate.\nBush and Senate Republicans do not like offsetting cuts to insurance companies that use Medicare money to offer private health care coverage to about 20 percent of older people. The lower fees to doctors went into effect Tuesday. Medicare officials are holding off processing new claims, hoping Congress will act within the next couple of weeks to restore the higher payments.
(07/03/08 3:52pm)
Florida on Tuesday carried out its first execution since a botched lethal injection procedure prompted the state to revamp the way it conducts capital punishment. Mark Dean Schwab, who was convicted of kidnapping, raping and killing an 11-year-old boy, died at 6:15 p.m. The execution was the initial test of Florida’s new lethal injection procedure, which was instituted after Angel Diaz was executed in December 2006. Needles to inject the deadly chemicals into Diaz missed their mark and he suffered burns and extreme pain, triggering a state investigation and \na moratorium.
(07/03/08 3:50pm)
Weary crews battling wildfires across northern and central California are going to get help from the National Guard, the first time the military has been called to ground-based firefighting duty since 1977. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on Tuesday ordered 200 guardsmen to report for fire training to begin assisting on the fire lines early next week. The extra hands are expected to boost the nearly 19,000 personnel currently fighting the fires. “I think that they all are doing a great job, but the danger is that our firefighters get stretched thin,” the governor said. “A lot of them are working overtime, and they are staying up there for more than 12 hours, sometimes 24 hours, 36 hours. So we have to be very careful that they get enough sleep and they get enough rest.”
(07/03/08 3:49pm)
A Palestinian man plowed an enormous construction vehicle into cars, buses and pedestrians on a busy street in Jerusalem on Wednesday, killing at least three people and wounding at least 45 before he was shot dead by security officers. The violence, the first major attack in Jerusalem since March, wreaked havoc in the heart of downtown. Hundreds of people fled in panic through the streets as medics treated the wounded. Three Palestinian militant groups took responsibility for the attack, but the claims could not be independently verified. The attack took place in front of a building housing the offices of The Associated Press and other media outlets.
(07/03/08 3:47pm)
China’s Communist Party boss in Tibet delivered a fresh attack on the Dalai Lama Wednesday, even as envoys of the region’s exiled leader met with Chinese officials for more talks toward easing tensions following anti-government riots. The official Tibet Daily quoted hard-liner Zhang Qingli as saying that supporters of the Dalai Lama were behind the violence that began with deadly rioting in the Tibetan capital of Lhasa March 14 and quickly spread to sections of Tibet in western China. “The March 14 incident was a seriously violent criminal incident by the Dalai clique. The organized and orchestrated incident was created by Tibetan separatists after long-term preparation, with the support and instigation of Western hostile forces,” Zhang was quoted as saying.
(07/03/08 3:46pm)
President Bush said Wednesday it has been a “tough month” in Afghanistan, where more U.S. and NATO troops died during the past two months than in Iraq. He said he was weighing whether to send more troops. The president told a Rose Garden news conference that one reason for the rising deaths “is that our troops are taking the fight to a tough enemy ... of course there is going to be resistance.” It has also been a “tough month for the Taliban,” he said.
(07/03/08 3:45pm)
WASHINGTON – No matter who is elected president in November, his foreign policy team will have to deal with one of the most frustrating realities in Iraq: the slow pace with which the government in Baghdad operates.\nIraq’s political and military success is considered vital to U.S. interests, whether troops stay or leave. And while the Iraqi government has made measurable progress in recent months, the pace at which it’s done so has been achingly slow.\nThe White House sees the progress in a particularly positive light, declaring in a new assessment to Congress that Iraq’s efforts on 15 of 18 benchmarks are “satisfactory” – almost twice of what it determined to be the case a year ago. The May 2008 report card, obtained by The Associated Press, determines that only two of the benchmarks – enacting and implementing laws to disarm militias and distribute oil revenues – are unsatisfactory.\nIn the past 12 months, since the White House released its first formal assessment of Iraq’s military and political progress, Baghdad politicians have reached several new agreements seen as critical to easing sectarian tensions.\nThey have passed, for example, legislation that grants amnesty for some prisoners and allows former members of Saddam Hussein’s political party to recover lost jobs or pensions. They also determined that provincial elections would be held by Oct. 1.\nBut for every small step forward, Iraq has several more giant steps to take before victory can be declared on any one issue.\nAmnesty requests are backlogged, and in question is whether the new law will speed the release of those in U.S. custody. It also remains unclear just how many former Baath members will be able to return to their jobs. And while Oct. 1 had been identified as an election day, Baghdad hasn’t been able to agree on the rules, possibly delaying the event by several weeks.\nLikewise, militias and sectarian interests among Iraq’s leaders still play a central role in the conflict. And U.S. military officials say they are unsure violence levels will stay down as troop levels return to 142,000 after a major buildup last year.\nIn the May progress report, one benchmark was deemed to have brought mixed results. The Iraqi army has made satisfactory progress on the goal of fairly enforcing the law, while the nation’s police force remains plagued by sectarianism, according to the administration assessment.\nOverall, militia control has declined and Baghdad’s security forces have “demonstrated its willingness and effectiveness to use these authorities to pursue extremists in all provinces, regardless of population or extremist demographics,” as illustrated by recent operations, the White House concludes.\nRep. Mike McIntyre, D-N.C., who requested the administration’s updated assessment, scoffed at the May report, which he says uses the false standard of determining whether progress on a goal is “satisfactory” versus whether the benchmark has been met. He estimates that only a few of the 18 benchmarks have been fully achieved.\nDemocrats also say more solid progress could have been made had the administration starting pulling troops out sooner.\n“We’ve tried repeatedly to get the administration to shift responsibility to the Iraqi leaders for their own future, since there is broad consensus that there is no military solution and only a political settlement among the Iraqis can end the conflict,” said Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan, the Democratic chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee.\n“The administration, however, has repeatedly missed opportunities to shift this burden to the Iraqis and appears willing to do so again,” Levin said.\nBut whether the next president will be much more successful in forcing the Iraqi government to reach a lasting political settlement remains to be seen.\nWhether the new administration starts pulling troops out of Iraq right away, as Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama has promised, or refuses to set a timetable, per Republican John McCain’s suggestion, most agree that a functional democracy in Iraq could still be years away because of the complexities of the issues involved and the deeply rooted distrust among the nation’s sectarian groups.\n“Iraq has the potential to develop into a stable, secure multi-ethnic, multi-sectarian democracy under the rule of law,” Ryan Crocker, U.S. ambassador to Iraq said in April when he last testified before Congress. “Whether it realizes that potential is ultimately up to the Iraqi people.”
(06/23/08 1:49pm)
Floodwaters breached two levees in western Illinois on Wednesday and threatened more Mississippi River towns in Missouri after inundating much of Iowa for the past week. The breaches 45 miles south of Gulfport flooded farmland near the hamlet of Meyer and south of there in the Indian Graves levee district, Adams County Emergency Management Agency spokeswoman Julie Shepard said. Meyer, a town of 40 to 50 people, had to be evacuated, and authorities patrolled the town Wednesday morning to make sure no one was left behind, she said. Officials monitored levees in other Mississippi River towns in Illinois and Missouri in hopes that they would hold.
(06/23/08 1:48pm)
Medical examinations of former terrorism suspects held by the U.S. military at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, found evidence of torture and other abuse that resulted in serious injuries and mental disorders, according to a human rights group. In the most extensive medical study of former U.S. detainees published so far, Physicians for Human Rights had doctors and mental health professionals examine 11 former prisoners. The group alleges finding evidence of U.S. torture and war crimes and accuses U.S. military health professionals of allowing the abuse of detainees, denying them medical care and providing confidential medical information to interrogators that they then exploited.
(06/23/08 1:47pm)
Afghan and Canadian forces moved into villages outside Kandahar on Wednesday to root out Taliban militants, killing at least 36 insurgents, while an explosion elsewhere killed four British soldiers, officials said. Troops in Arghandab district just outside of Kandahar, southern Afghanistan’s largest city, exchanged fire with militants during “a few minor contacts,” NATO spokesman Mark Laity said. The Afghan Defense Ministry said more than 20 Taliban fighters had been killed in Tabin, a village in Arghandab, while 16 fighters were killed in Khohak, also in Arghandab.
(06/23/08 1:46pm)
Israel and Hamas pledged to start a cease-fire Thursday in a bid to end a year of fighting that has killed more than 400 Palestinians and seven Israelis. The deal comes as Israel also urged Lebanon to open peace talks. The cease-fire is expected to be followed next week by an Israeli easing of its blockade of Gaza, Israeli government spokesman Mark Regev said. Talks to release an Israeli soldier held by Hamas will then intensify, Regev said. Egypt, which brokered the talks, announced a six-month agreement on Tuesday, saying it would begin Thursday at 6 a.m. Hamas confirmed the deal shortly afterward, but there was no official confirmation from Israel until Wednesday.
(06/23/08 1:44pm)
WASHINGTON – A House panel put off a vote Wednesday on extending Congress’ ban on offshore drilling, even as President Bush was poised to publicly renew his call for lawmakers to open U.S. coastal waters to oil and gas development.\nDrilling for oil and gas off nearly all the American coastline has been banned over the past quarter-century, in part to protect tourism and to lessen the chances of beach-blackening spills. Now, $4-a-gallon gasoline prices are a part of people’s daily lives and motorists are clamoring for something to be done about the record price of oil, much of it produced in foreign countries.\nIn response, Bush was to call again Wednesday for exploration, arguing that it’s high time to battle high prices with increased domestic production. He planned to ask Congress to lift the drilling moratoria that have been in effect since 1981 in more than 80 percent of the country’s Outer Continental Shelf and to let states help to decide where to allow drilling.\n“The president believes Congress shouldn’t waste any more time,” White House press secretary Dana Perino told The Associated Press on Tuesday. “He will explicitly call on Congress to ... pass legislation lifting the congressional ban on safe, environmentally friendly offshore oil drilling.”\nKeith Hennessey, the director of the president’s economic council, said that Bush will lift a parallel executive order banning offshore drilling if Congress does likewise with the law. Asked why Bush doesn’t act first and lift the ban, Hennessey said: “He thinks that probably the most productive way to work with this Congress is to try to do it tandem.”\nBush, in a Rose Garden statement, will also call on Congress to make it easier for oil refineries to be expanded.\nEven a quick change in law is expected to have no immediate effect on oil supply. The impact, Hennessey said, “is definitely measured in years.” But he said that allowing a greater oil supply in future years could trigger the market to use more supply now and reduce the price of oil.\nFor their part, some lawmakers had their own plan: legislation that would continue the ban into late 2009, and which had been scheduled to be considered Wednesday by the House Appropriations Committee. But the session was postponed because the committee was focusing on disaster relief measures involving the Midwest flooding.\nCongressional Democrats, joined by some GOP lawmakers from coastal states, have opposed lifting the prohibition that has barred energy companies from waters along both the East and West coasts and in the eastern Gulf of Mexico for 27 years.\nOn Monday, GOP presidential candidate John McCain made lifting the federal ban on offshore oil and gas development a key part of his energy plan. McCain said states should be allowed to pursue energy exploration in waters near their coasts and get some of the royalty revenue.\nSen. Barack Obama, the Democratic candidate for president, opposes lifting the ban on offshore drilling and says that allowing exploration now wouldn’t affect gasoline prices for at least five years.\nMcCain called for reform of the laws governing the oil futures trading market, and drew a standing ovation from his audience Wednesday when he repeated his day-old support for an end to the federal moratorium on offshore oil drilling. He favors allowing states to decide whether to explore offshore waters.\nThat drew a rebuttal from Obama, who said his opponent had switched positions from when he first ran for president in 2000. “I think he continues to find himself being pushed further and further to the right in ways that in my mind don’t show a lot of leadership,” he said.\nObama also said there is “no way that allowing offshore drilling would lower gas prices right now. At best you are looking at five years or more down the road.”\nNew Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, energy secretary during the Clinton administration, called it “another bad idea.”\n“It’s going to take 10 years to fully get that oil out of the ocean. It’s a fragile ecosystem,” he said on CBS’s “The Early Show.”\n“You know this president, all he wants to do is drill, drill, drill. There is very little on conservation, on fuel efficiency for vehicles. Just last week the Congress failed to pass a solar tax credit – give more incentives to renewable energy, solar and wind. A one-track mind – drill, drill, drill – that’s not going to work,” Richardson said.\nThe 574 million acres of federal coastal water that are off-limits are believed to hold nearly 18 billion barrels of undiscovered, recoverable oil and 77 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, according to the Interior Department. The country uses about 7.6 billion barrels of oil and 21 trillion cubic feet of natural gas each year.
(06/12/08 3:16pm)
For the first time, U.S. life expectancy has surpassed 78 years, the government reported Wednesday. The increase is due mainly to falling mortality rates in almost all the leading causes of death, federal health officials said. The average life expectancy for babies born in 2006 was about four months greater than for children born in 2005. However, the United States continues to lag behind about 30 other countries in estimated life span, according to World Health Organization data. Japan is No. 1 on the list, with a life expectancy of 83 for children born in 2006. Switzerland and Australia were also near the top of the list.
(06/12/08 3:14pm)
Saved by Senate Republicans, big oil companies dodged an attempt Tuesday to slap them with a windfall profits tax and take away billions of dollars in tax breaks in response to the record gasoline prices that have the nation fuming. GOP senators shoved aside the Democratic proposal, arguing that punishing Big Oil won’t do a thing to lower the $4-a-gallon price of gasoline that is sending economic waves across the country. High prices at the pump are threatening everything from summer vacations to Meals on Wheels deliveries to the elderly.
(06/12/08 3:13pm)
Online forums where thousands of child-porn images have been posted have been stricken from three Internet providers, including two of the nation’s five largest, New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo announced Tuesday. Verizon, Time Warner Cable and Sprint agreed with Cuomo to block access to child pornography disseminated through newsgroups and user groups, a hard-to-regulate sector of the Internet designed to bring together users with like interests.
(06/12/08 3:10pm)
U.S.-led coalition forces along the volatile Afghan border launched an airstrike that killed 11 Pakistani paramilitary troops, Pakistan’s army said Wednesday. The military condemned it as an act of aggression within Pakistan’s border that “hit at the very basis of cooperation” in the war on terrorism. The coalition said it used artillery and aerial drones against attackers who opened fire on forces operating inside Afghanistan. It said coalition forces did not enter Pakistan.
(06/12/08 3:09pm)
The Energy Department said motorists can expect gasoline prices to remain close to $4 a gallon through next year. Oil prices should remain well above $100 a barrel through 2009, said Guy Caruso, head of the department’s Energy Information Administration. Caruso told a House hearing in Washington gasoline prices are expected to peak at $4.15 a gallon in August, but won’t go down much. The agency projects gasoline averaging $3.92 a gallon through 2009.