Overnight News Digest is the Yamanote Line of News.
When Foreigners Buy Factories: 2 Towns, 2 Outcomes HOLLAND, Mich. — Four years ago, a low-slung factory on the fringes of town here was stagnating and shedding workers. Then Siemens, the German industrial giant, bought the plant and folded it into a global enterprise. Today, the factory is shipping wastewater treatment equipment to Asia and the Middle East and employing twice as many workers.
"Globalization has been good for Holland," said David J. Spyker, once the plant manager and now vice president of a Siemens unit with operations around the world.
About 60 miles to the northeast, such talk provokes contemptuous snickers. Two years have passed since a Swedish multinational shut down what had been the largest refrigerator factory in the country, a sprawling complex along the Flat River in Greenville.
Major Stock Markets in Asia Tumble TOKYO — Major Asian stock markets fell sharply in early trading on Monday as pessimism continued to spread despite the Fed’s dramatic moves over the weekend, sending Tokyo’s benchmark index to a three-year low.
The markets responded negatively to the purchase of Bear Stearns over the weekend by JPMorgan Chase. The acquisition, backed by the Federal Reserve, underscored the severity of the credit crisis in the United States and the weakness of the American economy.
In Tokyo, the region’s largest stock exchange, the benchmark Nikkei 225 index was trading at an almost three-year low. By midday, the index dropped 4.2 percent to 11,726.99, falling below 12,000 for the first time since August 2005.
Elsewhere in Asia, South Korea’s benchmark Kospi index was also down 2.4 percent. Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 index fell 2.4 percent, and in New Zealand, the NZX 50 index dropped 1.9 percent.
Her son, Dana Ahmed Abdul Rahman, has been in prison for a year and a half. She doesn't know why. She doesn't know when he'll be released. All she has is the photo — and memories of her first visit with him, 50 days after he was hauled away in the middle of the night by the Asayish, the U.S.-backed Kurdish government's security intelligence agency.
"They'd tortured him," Fatah, 60, said, fingering her black dress spotted with blue and white flowers. "His face was as black as my dress."
Separatists watch Kosovo gain independence Kosovo has declared its long- awaited independence from Serbia, prompting celebrations in its capital Pristina but outrage in Belgrade and Moscow.
The declaration of independence was read out at an extraordinary session of Kosovo's parliament by Prime Minister Hashim Thaci, initiating what is being seen as a test case for separatist conflicts across the world.
While cautiously welcomed by major European powers, the ceremony was instantly denounced in Serbia and its staunch ally Russia.
"For the citizens of Serbia, for Serbia, there is no and will never be a fake state of Kosovo on its territory," said Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica.
Overnight News Digest is brought to by: Nasushiobara
11 Killed in Suicide Attack in Sri Lanka COLOMBO, Sri Lanka (Reuters) — A suicide bomber suspected of being part of the Tamil Tigers attacked a packed railroad station in the Sri Lankan capital, Colombo, on Sunday, killing 11 people and wounding 92, the military said.
The blast came hours after a crude bomb went off in a zoo in the capital, wounding four visitors. The attacks came on the eve of the country’s celebration of its 60th anniversary of independence from Britain, its former colonial ruler.
The government accused the rebel Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam of responsibility for both attacks. The rebels are fighting for an independent state in the northern and eastern parts of the island in a new and increasingly violent chapter of a 25-year civil war.
Overnight News Digest is brought to by: Moss Burger
Health Care for Responders To 9/11 Remains Piecemeal Plan for Processing Center On Hold, Funding Uncertain
NEW YORK -- As President George W. Bush gives his State of the Union speech Monday, there will be one man in the audience who plans to sit quietly and watch, his very presence a form of protest.
Joseph Libretti, 51, is sick. He has been diagnosed with chronic lung disease since volunteering after Sept. 11, 2001, to cut through steel to remove bodies from the gritty, smoking pile of detritus of the World Trade Center. Now, too weak to return to his job as an ironworker, he mostly keeps close to his Pennsylvania home.
Overnight News Digest is powered by: Mike "Who needs the Constitution" Huckabee.
Pentagon Weighs Top Iraq General as Chief of NATO WASHINGTON — The Pentagon is considering Gen. David H. Petraeus for the top NATO command later this year, a move that would give the general, the top American commander in Iraq, a high-level post during the next administration but that has raised concerns about the practice of rotating war commanders.
A senior Pentagon official said that it was weighing "a next assignment for Petraeus" and that the NATO post was a possibility. "He deserves one and that has also always been a highly prestigious position," the official said. "So he is a candidate for that job, but there have been no final decisions and nothing on the timing."
Huckabee casts Romney campaign as 'dishonest' DES MOINES -- The tone of the already nasty Republican campaign for the presidential nomination took an even sharper edge this morning as former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee accused rival Mitt Romney of waging a "dishonest" campaign.
"Mitt Romney is running a very desperate and, frankly, a dishonest campaign," Huckabee said on NBC's morning "Meet the Press" program, four days ahead of Iowa balloting that will be the first of the 2008 presidential race. "He's attacked me. . . . When Mitt Romney went after the integrity of John McCain, he stepped across a line."
On the Democratic side, New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton accused her two top rivals of accepting campaign contributions from people connected with lobbyists while claiming to eschew money from lobbyists and political action committees.
Dan Glaister in Los Angeles
Monday December 24, 2007
The Guardian
The US vice-president, Dick Cheney, was behind a controversial decision to block California's attempt to impose tough emission limits on car manufacturers, according to insiders at the government Environmental Protection Agency.
Staff at the agency, which announced last week that California's proposed limits were redundant, said the agency's chief went against their expert advice after car executives met Cheney, and a Chrysler executive delivered a letter to the EPA saying why the state should not be allowed to regulate greenhouse gases.
While many American's believe that the Bush administration is the first to advocate torture or cruel and in human punishment they are not. As the title tells you America's involvement in the torture, death, kidnapping or illegal imprisonment of another countries citizens has been going on since the 1950's starting with the CIA sponsored coup in Guatemala which was just the first act. Americas full involvement in these practices began in 1962 when the Colombian government sought assistance from the Kennedy administration in helping it to "control" the peasantry. Thus; with this one commitment the United States would become a traveler on the toturers road.
