Tag: Open Thread

Weekend News Digest is an Open Thread

1 Weak end to 2007 expected for carmakers

By DEE-ANN DURBIN, AP Auto Writer

Sat Dec 29, 10:57 AM ET

The Morning News is an Open Thread

1 Delaware River current halts crossing

By REBECCA SANTANA, Associated Press Writer

2 hours, 6 minutes ago

Let’s Open Our Presents

Headlines For December 25: A School in Georgia as a Laboratory for Getting Along: Alaskans Weigh the Cost of Gold: Court curbs insurers’ ability to rescind medical policies: Italy seeks Condor plot suspects: At Christmas, Iraqi Christians Ask for Forgiveness, and for Peace

USA

A School in Georgia as a Laboratory for Getting Along

DECATUR, Ga. – Parents at an elementary school here gathered last Thursday afternoon with a holiday mission: to prepare boxes of food for needy families fleeing some of the world’s horrific civil wars.

The community effort to help refugees resembled countless others at this time of year, with an exception. The recipients were not many thousands of miles away. They were students in the school and their families.

More than half the 380 students at this unusual school outside Atlanta are refugees from some 40 countries, many torn by war. The other students come from low-income families in Decatur, and from middle- and upper-middle-class families in the area who want to expose their children to other cultures. Together they form an eclectic community of Buddhists, Christians, Hindus, Jews and Muslims, well-off and poor, of established local families and new arrivals who collectively speak about 50 languages.

Alaskans Weigh the Cost of Gold

Mine Could Imperil Salmon, Way of Life

NONDALTON, Alaska — The gold mine proposed for this stunning open country might be the largest in North America. It would involve building the biggest dam in the world at the headwaters of the world’s largest sockeye salmon fishery, which it would risk obliterating.

Epic even by Alaskan standards, the planned Pebble Mine has divided a state normally enthusiastic about extracting whatever value can be found in its wide-open spaces. It is an ambivalence that has upended traditional politics, divided families and come to rest at kitchen tables like the one 75-year-old Olga Balluta sat beside one autumn afternoon, listing her favorite foods.

Christmas Eve Open Thread

Warnings Unheeded On Guards In Iraq : When Shielding Money Clashes With the Free Will of the Elderly : Huckabee campaigning for 23% sales tax: Village wins £158m in El Gordo lottery: In one Iraqi village, a taste of what might be

U.S. Officials See Waste in Billions Sent to Pakistan

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan – After the United States has spent more than $5 billion in a largely failed effort to bolster the Pakistani military effort against Al Qaeda and the Taliban, some American officials now acknowledge that there were too few controls over the money. The strategy to improve the Pakistani military, they said, needs to be completely revamped.

In interviews in Islamabad and Washington, Bush administration and military officials said they believed that much of the American money was not making its way to frontline Pakistani units. Money has been diverted to help finance weapons systems designed to counter India, not Al Qaeda or the Taliban, the officials said, adding that the United States has paid tens of millions of dollars in inflated Pakistani reimbursement claims for fuel, ammunition and other costs.

USA

Warnings Unheeded On Guards In Iraq

Despite Shootings, Security Companies Expanded Presence

The U.S. government disregarded numerous warnings over the past two years about the risks of using Blackwater Worldwide and other private security firms in Iraq, expanding their presence even after a series of shooting incidents showed that the firms were operating with little regulation or oversight, according to government officials, private security firms and documents.

The warnings were conveyed in letters and memorandums from defense and legal experts and in high-level discussions between U.S. and Iraqi officials. They reflected growing concern about the lack of control over the tens of thousands of private guards in Iraq, the largest private security force ever employed by the United States in wartime.

When Shielding Money Clashes With the Free Will of the Elderly

Eight years ago, when Robert J. Pyle was 73 years old, he had about $500,000 in the bank and owned a house in Northern California worth about $650,000. He was looking forward to a comfortable retirement.

Today, at 81, he has lost everything. Mr. Pyle, a retired aerospace engineer, now lives in his stepdaughter’s tiny, mountainside home in a room not much larger than his bed.

By his own admission, Mr. Pyle willingly made every decision that led to his financial problems. He gave away large sums to people he thought were friends, and then, in need of money, sold his house at a deep discount to the first person who offered to buy it.

Weekend News Digest is an Open Thread

1 Turkish aircraft in fresh raid in Iraq, says Kurdish official

AFP

27 minutes ago

This is an Open Thread: Read Then Go Shopping

Republicans opt for new worldview: McCain,Obama gain in N.H. poll: Democrats Make Bush School Act an Election Issue: In a Force for Iraqi Calm, Seeds of Conflict: 10 Years Later, Chiapas Massacre Still Haunts Mexico: Stakes High For U.S. and Argentina in Cash Scandal

USA

Republicans opt for new worldview

The candidates try to distance themselves from the president’s foreign policies but try to not alienate Bush loyalists.

WASHINGTON — Last week, after Republican presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee criticized the Bush administration for an “arrogant bunker mentality” toward the world, rival Mitt Romney rose to George W. Bush’s defense. “Mike Huckabee owes the president an apology,” Romney said.

But Romney too has criticized the Bush administration, saying the occupation of Iraq was “underplanned, understaffed [and] under-managed,” resulting in “a mess.”

Other GOP candidates have also found things to dislike in Bush’s foreign policy: Former New York Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani has dismissed the president’s campaign for democracy in the Muslim world as naive and opposed his drive to establish a Palestinian state. Sen. John McCain of Arizona thinks Bush hasn’t sent enough troops to Iraq and has been too easy on Russian President Vladimir V. Putin.

McCain closing gap with Romney

In N.H. poll, Obama inches ahead of Clinton

Senator John McCain of Arizona, whose bid for the Republican presidential nomination was all but dead this summer, has made a dramatic recovery in the Granite State 2 1/2 weeks before the 2008 vote, pulling within 3 percentage points of front-runner Mitt Romney, a new Boston Globe poll indicates.

McCain, the darling of New Hampshire voters in the 2000 primary, has the support of 25 percent of likely Republican voters, compared with 28 percent for Romney. Former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani has slid into third place, with 14 percent. A Globe poll of New Hampshire voters last month had Romney at 32 percent, Giuliani at 20 percent, and McCain at 17 percent.

Among Democratic voters, Senator Barack Obama of Illinois has opened up a narrow lead over Senator Hillary Clinton of New York, 30 percent to 28 percent. That, too, represents a major shift from last month’s Globe poll, which had Clinton with a 14-point advantage. Former senator John Edwards of North Carolina remained a steady third at 14 percent.

This is an Open Thread: Our Door Is Always Open

9/11 Panel Study Finds That C.I.A. Withheld Tapes: FBI Prepares Vast Database Of Biometrics: Romney backpedals on statements – again: Ruthless, shadowy – and a U.S. ally: U.S. convoys struggle to adjust to policy change

USA

9/11 Panel Study Finds That C.I.A. Withheld Tapes

WASHINGTON – A review of classified documents by former members of the Sept. 11 commission shows that the panel made repeated and detailed requests to the Central Intelligence Agency in 2003 and 2004 for documents and other information about the interrogation of operatives of Al Qaeda, and were told by a top C.I.A. official that the agency had “produced or made available for review” everything that had been requested.

The review was conducted earlier this month after the disclosure that in November 2005, the C.I.A. destroyed videotapes documenting the interrogations of two Qaeda operatives.

FBI Prepares Vast Database Of Biometrics

$1 Billion Project to Include Images of Irises and Faces

CLARKSBURG, W. Va. — The FBI is embarking on a $1 billion effort to build the world’s largest computer database of peoples’ physical characteristics, a project that would give the government unprecedented abilities to identify individuals in the United States and abroad.

Digital images of faces, fingerprints and palm patterns are already flowing into FBI systems in a climate-controlled, secure basement here. Next month, the FBI intends to award a 10-year contract that would significantly expand the amount and kinds of biometric information it receives. And in the coming years, law enforcement authorities around the world will be able to rely on iris patterns, face-shape data, scars and perhaps even the unique ways people walk and talk, to solve crimes and identify criminals and terrorists. The FBI will also retain, upon request by employers, the fingerprints of employees who have undergone criminal background checks so the employers can be notified if employees have brushes with the law.

This is an Open Thread: Sorry Were Open/Yes Were Closed

Spending Bills Still Stuffed With Earmarks : Bush remains thorn in Democrats’ side : Scientists Weigh Stem Cells’ Role as Cancer Cause :Torture chamber found in Iraq

USA

Spending Bills Still Stuffed With Earmarks

Democrats Had Vowed To Curtail Pet Projects

By Elizabeth Williamson

Washington Post Staff Writer

Friday, December 21, 2007; Page A01

Twice in the past two years, Alaska lawmakers lost congressional earmarks to build two “bridges to nowhere” costing hundreds of millions of dollars after Congress was embarrassed by public complaints over the pet projects hidden in annual spending bills.

This year, Rep. Don Young and Sen. Ted Stevens, who are Alaska Republicans, found another way to move cash to their state: Stevens secured more than $20 million for an “expeditionary craft” that will connect Anchorage with the windblown rural peninsula of Matanuska-Susitna Borough.

Now what Alaska has, budget watchdogs contend, is a ferry to nowhere.

Bush remains thorn in Democrats’ side

By Janet Hook, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

7:14 PM PST, December 20, 2007

WASHINGTON — Just more than a year ago, a chastened President Bush acknowledged that his party had taken a “thumping” in the congressional elections, and he greeted the new Democratic majority at the weakest point of his presidency.

But since then, Democrats in Congress have taken a thumping of their own as Bush has curbed their budget demands, blocked a cherished children’s health initiative, stalled the drive to withdraw troops from Iraq and stymied all efforts to raise taxes.

Rather than turn tail for his last two years in the White House, Bush has used every remaining weapon in his depleted arsenal — the veto, executive orders, the loyalty of Republicans in Congress — to keep Democrats from getting their way. He has struck a combative pose, dashing hopes that he would be more accommodating in the wake of his party’s drubbing in the 2006 mid-term voting.