International | Assassination Ring Linked to Cheney | Published by Iran Cultural And Press Institute Iran Daily | "After 9/11, I haven"t written about this yet, but the Central Intelligence Agency was very deeply involved in domestic activities against people they thought to be enemies of the state. Without any legal authority for it. They haven’t been called on it yet," The New Yorker’s journalist said in his latest article: Former Vice President Dick Cheney personally ran an "executive assassination ring." | |
Russian destroyer heads home after Somali anti-piracy mission | RIA Novosti | March 17, 2009: VLADIVOSTOK, March 17 (RIA Novosti) - Russia's Admiral Vinogradov destroyer and the Boris Butoma tanker have completed their anti-piracy mission around the Horn of Africa and are on their way home, Russia's Pacific Fleet press service said on Tuesday. | |
Russia's Medvedev claims NATO expanding to Russian borders | RIA Novosti | March 17, 2009: MOSCOW, March 17 (RIA Novosti) - Russian President Dmitry Medvedev on Tuesday during a Defense Ministry meeting claimed that NATO is continuing its attempts to broaden its military infrastructure towards Russia's borders. | |
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Turkey Trade With Lira | Iran Daily | March 17, 2009: Turkey’s Foreign Trade Minister Kursad Tuzmen said Ankara will soon begin trading with Iran in Turkish currency, the lira. Down Page | |
Cuba and the Bahamas Sign Cooperation Agreement | ACN | March 17, 2009: HAVANA, Cuba, March 17 (acn) Cuba and the Bahamas on Monday signed an Agreement for Bilateral Cooperation in Nassau, the capital of this neighboring Caribbean nation. The accord is aimed at promoting trade and investments, technical information exchanges and joint cooperation programs. It also establishes the creation of a Cuba-Bahamas Joint Commission for technical cooperation that will assess, on a yearly basis, the progress and implementation of the Agreement. | |
Bush refuses to criticize Obama in Canada | ROB GILLIES AP | March 17, 2009: CALGARY, Alberta (AP) -- Former President George W. Bush said he won't criticize President Barack Obama because Obama "deserves my silence," and said he plans to write a book about the 12 toughest decisions he made in office. Bush declined to critique the Obama administration Tuesday in his first speech since leaving office. Former Vice President Dick Cheney has said that Obama's decisions are threatening America's safety. | |
On Africa trip, pope says condoms won't solve AIDS | VICTOR L. SIMPSON AP | 3/17/2009: YAOUNDE, Cameroon (AP) -- Pope Benedict XVI said condoms are not the answer to the AIDS epidemic in Africa and can make the problem worse, setting off criticism Tuesday as he began a weeklong trip to the continent where some 22 million people are living with HIV. | |
Army puts Madagascar opposition leader in charge | LOVASA RABARY-RAKOTONDRAVONY AP | March 17, 2009: ANTANANARIVO, Madagascar (AP) -- Madagascar's top generals handed over control of this Indian Ocean island nation to the opposition leader on Tuesday, hours after the president himself stepped down and tried to put the military in charge. | |
Dozens arrested in Mafia raids in south | AKI | 3/17/2009: Caserta, 17 March (AKI) - Italian police arrested have alleged mafia boss Antonio Farina and 27 others with alleged links to the Neopolitan Camorra in raids conducted in Maddaloni, in the southern province of Caserta. | |
US preparing integrated plan on Mexico drug war | David Morgan Reuters | March 17, 2009: WASHINGTON, March 17 (Reuters) - The U.S. government is working on an integrated plan to address Mexico's escalating war with drug traffickers and could complete work on the initiative as early as this week, a top U.S. military official said on Tuesday. | |
US increases pressure on Sudan after expulsions | Sue Pleming Reuters | March 17, 2009: WASHINGTON, March 17 (Reuters) - Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir will be responsible for "every single death" caused by the expulsion of 13 foreign aid groups from Sudan, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said on Tuesday. "This is a horrendous situation that is going to cause untold misery and suffering for the people of Darfur, particularly those in the refugee camps," Clinton said of Sudan's decision to expel the aid groups earlier this month. | |
Darfur peacekeeper killed in ambush - spokesman | Andrew Heavens Reuters | March 17, 2009: KHARTOUM, March 17 (Reuters) - Eight gunmen attacked a group of international peacekeepers on patrol in Sudan's Darfur region on Tuesday, killing one in what the force's spokesman described as a "cold-blooded ambush." | |
Why are the White House fountains green? | Brisbane Times | March 18, 2009 (It's tomorrow there): WASHINGTON - The White House has gone green for St Patrick's Day. The water in the fountains on the north and south lawns of the White House has been dyed green to mark the national holiday of Ireland. O'bama celebrates St Paddy's Day! | |
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The giant Ponzi scheme that is Florida | Neil Macdonald CBC | March 12, 2009: A few years ago, the St. Petersburg Times sent reporters out to investigate grouper, the succulent, meaty fish drawn from the Gulf of Mexico. They bought the fish at restaurants around the Tampa Bay area and had it tested at a DNA laboratory. Most of it was something else. | |
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Islamic courts start hearing cases in NW Pakistan | Zhang Xiang Xinhua | March 17, 2009: ISLAMABAD, March 17 (Xinhua) -- Islamic courts on Tuesday started to function in northwestern Pakistan's Swat valley. Qazis, or judges, started presiding over courts in the whole Swat valley to pacify the armed Taliban fighters, who fought fierce battle against the security forces over the past 18 months, the News Network International news agency quoted Commissioner Syed Muhammad Javed as saying. | |
Chinese Vice Premier Hui urges local government support for spring farm work | Xinhua | March 17, 2009: JINAN, March 17 (Xinhua) -- Chinese Vice Premier Hui Liangyu on Tuesday urged local governments to support spring ploughing work to promote grain production. Speaking at a national meeting held by the State Council (Cabinet) in Jinan, capital city of eastern China's Shandong Province, on Monday and Tuesday, Hui called for great efforts to support the harvest of summer grain and oil crops. | |
Threat to secular Balochistan? | Malik Siraj Akbar Dawn | March 9, 2009: Nothing embarrasses and irks Pakistani spymasters more than the issue of Talibanisation in Quetta. Over the years, Afghan President Hamid Karzai has repeatedly protested against the alleged protection provided by Islamabad to Mullah Omar, the one-eyed spiritual cleric and reclusive leader of the Afghan Taliban. As Pakistan’s internationally acclaimed journalist, Ahmed Rashid, laments in his book Descent into Chaos, "Today, seven years after 9/11, Mullah Omar and the original Afghan Taliban Shura still live in Balochistan province." | |
'Most Express Sympathy for the Censorship' | Spiegel | March 17, 2009: The firing of a magazine editor in Turkey over her intention to put a story about Darwin's evolution theory on the cover has generated a flood of criticism. SPIEGEL ONLINE spoke with the editor about just how conservative Turkish society has become. No issue divides Turks more than the country's alleged creeping Islamization. Early last week, the Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey (Tubitak) sparked an international controversy after it prevented the publication of a cover story about Charles Darwin's evolution theory in Bilim ve Teknik (Science and Technology), one of the country's leading science journals. The publication's editor-in-chief, 41-year-old Cigdem Atakuman, claims she was fired as a result of the incident. | |
Education Spat Comes at Sensitive Time in Cyprus Talks | Spiegel | March 17, 2009: Negotiations on the reunification of Cyprus have been going well for six months, but a spat over school books within the Greek-Cypriot community shows the extent to which hostilities can quickly bubble up to the surface. A bizarre spat over school books has revealed just how deep the divisions are between the two communities on the Mediterranean island of Cyprus. With talks on a possible reunification at a sensitive point, a row over school books has shown that the old enmities on the island persist. | |
Obama uses campaign-style tactics to bolster economic strategy | Peter Nicholas and Janet Hook, Washington The Age | March 18, 2009: FACED with growing scepticism over aspects of his economic agenda, US President Barack Obama has launched a campaign-style offensive to bolster congressional supporters and marginalise Republican opponents. Millions of campaign supporters are receiving emails urging them to call members of Congress. Groups allied with the White House are running ads scorning the President's foes. States that were closely fought in the 2008 election are again being visited by Mr Obama. | |
China voices concern over Korean peninsula | International The News | March 18, 2009: BEIJING: China voiced its concern on Tuesday over what it said was an increasingly uncertain situation on the Korean peninsula, where close ally North Korea is pushing ahead with plans for a rocket launch. China’s foreign ministry made its strongest public comments on the recent spike in tensions surrounding North Korea shortly after the isolated nation’s premier, Kim Yong-Il, landed in Beijing for a five-day visit. | |
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National | Coast Guard reports on NFL players search | UPI | March 17, 2009: TAMPA, Fla., March 17 (UPI) -- Problems with a C-130 search plane and malfunctioning radar did not delay the U.S. Coast Guard search for two missing NFL players, a report said Tuesday. | |
Livid Democrats demand AIG return bailout bonuses | LAURIE KELLMAN AP | Mar 17, 2009: WASHINGTON (AP) -- Talking tougher by the hour, livid Democrats confronted beleaguered insurance giant AIG with an ultimatum Tuesday: Give back href="65 million in post-bailout bonuses or watch Congress tax it away with emergency legislation. Republicans declared the Democrats were hardly blameless, accusing them of standing by while the bonus deal was cemented and suggesting that Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner could and should have done more. | |
Sara Jane Olson released from prison | UPI | March 17, 2009: MADERA, Calif., March 17 (UPI) -- Former 1970s militant Sara Jane Olson was released from prison in California Tuesday and is free to serve her probation in Minnesota | |
New England pastor houses child killer, riles town | TRAVIS ANDERSEN AP | March 17, 2009: CHICHESTER, N.H. (AP) -- A pastor in this quiet, picturesque New England town thought he was doing the Christian thing when he took in a convicted child killer who had served his time but had nowhere to go. But some neighbors of the Rev. David Pinckney vehemently disagree, one even threatening to burn his house down after officials could find no one else willing to take 60-year-old Raymond Guay. | |
Petland is accused of scheme to sell sick puppies | LISA CORNWELL AP | 3/17/2009: CINCINNATI (AP) -- An animal protection group has accused the Petland Inc. pet store chain of scheming to sell sick puppies bred in filthy conditions to thousands of unsuspecting people. | |
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Owners skulking away from "underwater" U.S. home | Lisa Baertlein Reuters | March 17, 2009: LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Ron Barnard is throwing in the towel. Like a growing number of the 8.3 million American homeowners who owe more on mortgages than their homes are worth, he's ready to just walk away. | |
Hearst prints final Seattle PI | Gina Keating Reuters | Mar 17, 2009: LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - The Hearst Corp plans to roll out the final print edition of its ailing Seattle Post-Intelligencer on Tuesday then move it online, ending speculation about the fate of the 146-year-old newspaper as crumbling advertising and the Internet wallop the industry. | |
Science | Where Does Consciousness Come From? | ScienceDaily | March 17, 2009: Consciousness arises as an emergent property of the human mind. Yet basic questions about the precise timing, location and dynamics of the neural event(s) allowing conscious access to information are not clearly and unequivocally determined. | |
Hearts Of Galaxies Close In For Cosmic Train Wrec | ScienceDaily | March 17, 2009: A new image from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope offers a rare view of an imminent collision between the cores of two merging galaxies, each powered by a black hole with millions of times the mass of the sun. The galactic cores are in a single, tangled galaxy called NGC 6240, located 400-million light years away in the constellation Ophiuchus. Millions of years ago, each core was the dense center of its own galaxy before the two galaxies collided and ripped each other apart. Now, these cores are approaching each other at tremendous speeds and preparing for the final cataclysmic collision. They will crash into each other in a few million years, a relatively short period on a galactic timescale. | |
Fossil of 'ultimate predator' unearthed in Arctic | Andy Coghlan NewScientist | 17 March 2009 : Fossil remains of a huge and fearsome marine predator, dubbed "Predator X", have been discovered in Svalbard, a remote Arctic archipelago. About 15 metres long and weighing 45 tonnes, the creature is a new species of pliosaur, and ruled the Jurassic seas some 147 million years ago. | |
Gravity may venture where matter fears to tread | Marcus Chown NewScientist | 16 March 2009: THERE is nothing certain in this world, US founding father Benjamin Franklin once wrote, except death and taxes. As a scientist, he might have added a third inescapable force: gravity, the unseen hand that keeps our feet on the ground. | |
Watery asteroids may explain why life is 'left-handed' | Hazel Muir NewScientist | March 17, 2009: Soggy rocks hurtling through the solar system gave life on Earth an addiction to left-handed proteins, according to a new study. The research suggests that water on asteroids amplified left-handed amino acid molecules, making them dominate over their right-handed mirror images. | |