Overnight News Digest: Bribes, affairs...look, al Qaeda!
Thu May 08, 2008 at 09:00:54 PM PDT
Welcome to the OND, Magnifico's series. All emphasis and tips are mine.
Top Stories
Iraqi officials are reporting the capture of the leader of al Qaeda in Iraq, Abu Ayyub al-Masri. He had been in control of the Iraqi al Qaeda since 2006, following the death of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. It remains to be seen if this is the real Abu Ayyub al-Masri.
UN aide is arriving in Myanmar following a devastating cyclone on Saturday, but US aide is being denied entry into the country...while lack of safe food and water may bring the death toll from the storm and its aftermath to over 100,000. Almost 23,000 were confirmed dead, with an additional 42,000 still missing. The US food and supplies are now stuck in Thailand, with additional aide off the coast.
World
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert defended himself at a late night press conference at his home against allegations that he received bribes from an American businessman, Morris Talansky of Long Island. Olmert insists the money was campaign funds, legitimately raised and spent. Police say he received hundreds of thousands of dollars since 1990, but it is unclear what Olmert might have done in return for the money, if it was indeed bribes.
Hours after being sworn in as Russia’s new President, Dmitry Medvedev nominated former president Vladimir Putin to be his Prime Minister. The nomination was confirmed in the lower house, which is dominated by Putin’s political party, United Russia.
Mr Putin, a 55-year-old former KGB agent, was barred by the constitution from running for a third consecutive presidential term in the March elections.
The question of who wields the real power in the Kremlin will continue to fascinate, puzzle and perplex, the BBC's James Rodgers in Moscow says.
The leader of Mexico's police force was assassinated outside his home, a significant blow to anti-drug efforts in the country.
Edgar Eusebio Millán Gómez, the public face of Mexico's offensive against drug cartels, became the highest-ranking law enforcement official to be killed since the launch of the effort 17 months ago. The assassination could give new confidence to drug cartels blamed for 6,000 killings in the past 2 1/2 years, and embolden other anti-government groups in this violence-plagued nation.
"This could have a snowball effect, even leading to the risk of ungovernability," Luís Astorga, a Mexico City-based sociologist and drug expert, said in an interview. "It indicates terrible things, a level of weakness in our institutions -- they can't even protect themselves."
The continued political unrest in Zimbabwe is taking its toll on the most vulnerable, as schools have closed and orphanages are going underfunded.
Teachers have been upbraided by the ruling party for allegedly siding with the opposition during the nation’s disputed March elections, in which they served as poll monitors. More than 2,700 of them have fled or been evicted from classrooms, the teachers’ union says. Dozens of schools have closed, the union says, and 121 are being used as bases for the ruling party’s youth militias as they harass and beat opponents in the countryside.
Beyond that, the United Nations Children’s Fund says that more than half the 55 nonprofit groups it recently surveyed have partly or fully suspended aid for orphans in Zimbabwe.
Lebanon may be headed towards another civil war, as gunfights followed what appeared to be inflammatory comments by the leaders of both Sunni central government and the Shi'ite Hezbollah. Although the government has refused to rescind its original comments, it did offer direct talks to resolve the conflict, calling Hezbollah's reaction the result of a "big misunderstanding".
A total of 32 children have died in China from hand, foot, and mouth disease, while the number of reported cases has grown to nearly 25,000. A virus called enterovirus 71 is responsible for the deadly version of a typically mild disease.
Hand, foot and mouth disease spreads through contact with saliva, feces, fluid secreted from blisters or mucus from the nose and throat. There is no vaccine or specific treatment, but most children affected by the disease typically recover quickly without problems.
It is unrelated to the foot and mouth disease that affects livestock.
USA
After food prices increased at the highest rate in almost 20 years and are expected to rise at a similar rate next year, Congress has started to question all those governmental incentives for biofuel production
At hearings Tuesday and Wednesday, a bipartisan chorus in the Senate and House called for rethinking ethanol policy. The corn lobby is pushing back, but even ethanol supporters acknowledge that some tinkering may be needed.
...
Generous subsidies for production, tariffs on imports and mandates for ethanol use have increased the size of the corn crop. One-fourth of corn grown domestically went toward fuel production, not food, last year.
The price of a corn bushel has almost tripled over the last two years. High profits lure farmers to replant wheat and soybean fields with corn, leading to higher prices.
Representative Vito Fossella (R-NY) has admitted to having a child as a result of an extra-marital affair. No word yet if he is retiring, but the odds of him being re-elected (already the only Republican Representative from New York City) seem fairly slim now.
Fossella's private life came under scrutiny after he was arrested in the Virginia suburbs of Washington for allegedly driving drunk. Police said they stopped him after he drove through a red light.
When Fossella was pulled over, police said he told officers that he was going to see his daughter in the area. That prompted questions about who the daughter was.
"I have had a relationship with Laura Fay, with whom I have a 3-year-old daughter," Fossella said in his statement. It was Fay who got him out of jail after the arrest. She is a former Air Force lieutenant colonel and worked for a time as a liaison to Congress.
...
Fossella said he had no immediate plans to resign. The disclosures are a crushing blow to the career of a lawmaker once seen as a potential candidate for mayor of New York City. He faced a surprisingly tough re-election challenge in 2006, and Democrats have been hoping to unseat him this year.
Help me out, who are we running against this guy?
An August mine collapse in Utah is attracting Congressional attention, as numerous staff members at the Mine may have withheld information from federal investigators.
The chairman [of the Congressional investigation], Representative George Miller, Democrat of California, accused the company of concealing the extent of an earlier collapse in the mine that involved the same high-risk technique, retreat mining, that was being used when the disaster began.
Mr. Miller said that if federal mine officials had known the extent of that earlier collapse, they would not have allowed the company to continue using the method, in which miners remove coal from the pillars that hold up the tunnels.
Bottom Stories
An enormous sinkhole in Daisetta, Texas seems to be stabilizing, but it has already reached 900 feet long and 260 feet deep. Early reports that it was a gateway to Hell opening up to bring President Bush back seem to have been premature.
Cindy McCain, wife of Maverick John, swears she will never release her tax returns. Not now, not even if John is elected President. Never.
"My husband and I have been married 28 years, and we have filed separate tax returns for 28 years,'' said Cindy McCain, whose family made its money in beer. "This is a privacy issue.... I'm not the candidate.''
Both Obamas and both Clintons have all released their tax returns. What is she hiding?
Not a typical bottom story, but still very interesting:
A study of the psychological profiles across the United States has found geographical centers of various traits. The results might not surprise some of you, but the personality maps are still worth examining.
By the numbers
Bush has about 256 days left to finish what he started (whatever that is). I, on the other hand, have 11 days to finish what I've started, because that's how many days of school are left until our summer break.
The Operations in Iraq have cost $518,002,000,000, as the race to one trillion dollars of war continues.
In the same time, the national debt has soared from $6,400,000,000,000 to $9,362,700,000,000, an increase of almost three trillion dollars.
Have a good one.
Tags: Overnight News Digest (all tags) :: Previous Tag Versions
Permalink | 74 comments