Tag: Six In The Morning

US president signs controversial defence bill

 Barack Obama signs into law new provisions regarding counterterrorism and fresh sanctions against Iran.

Last Modified: 01 Jan 2012 04:44

Barack Obama, the US president, has signed a wide-ranging defence bill into law, putting into place new provisions that regulate the detention, interrogation and prosecution of those suspected of terrorism, as well as imposing fresh sanctions on Iran.

In a statement accompanying his signature to the $662bn bill, Obama said that he was signing it despite having “serious reservations” about the provisions relating to terrorism, contending that politicians in the US congress were attempting to restrict the ability of counterterrorism officials to protect the country.

 Pope calls for worshipers to remember ‘essence’ of Christmas

 

By the CNN Wire Staff

December 25, 2011

Pope Benedict XVI presided over Midnight Mass on Christmas Eve, delivering a homily that focused on the “essence” of the holiday rather than the “commercial celebration” it has become.

“Today Christmas has become a commercial celebration, whose bright lights hide the mystery of God’s humility, which in turn calls us to humility and simplicity,” the pope said after recalling the story of Christmas. “Let us ask the Lord to help us see through the superficial glitter of this season, and to discover behind it the child in the stable in Bethlehem, so as to find true joy and true light.”

‘The war is over’: Last US soldiers leave Iraq

The last American troops crossed the border from Iraq into Kuwait early Sunday, ending the U.S. military presence there after nearly nine years.  

By NBC News, msnbc.com staff and news services

As the last convoy left Iraq at daybreak Sunday, soldiers whooped, bumped fists and embraced each other in a burst of joy and relief, The Associated Press reported.

NBC News’ Richard Engel tweeted from the border: “The gate to #iraq is closed. Soldier just told me, ‘that’s it, the war is over.'”

The final column of around 100 mostly U.S. military MRAP armored vehicles carrying 500 U.S. troops trundled through the night along an empty highway, across the southern Iraq desert to the Kuwaiti border.

UN climate conference approves landmark deal

New accord will put all countries under the same legal requirements to control greenhouse gases by 2020 at the latest.

Last Modified: 11 Dec 2011

The president of a United Nations climate conference in South Africa has announced agreement on a programme mapping out a new course by all nations to fight climate change over the coming decades.

The 194-party conference agreed on Sunday to start negotiations on a new accord that would put all countries under the same legal regime to enforce their commitments to control greenhouse gases. Approved by 2015, it would take effect by 2020 at the latest.

However, key components of the accord remain to be hammered out, and observers say the task will be arduous. Thorny issues include the still-undefined legal status of the accord and apportioning cuts on emissions among rich and poor countries.

In Gaza, lives shaped by drones

 

By Scott Wilson, Sunday, December 4

GAZA CITY – The buzz began near midnight on a cool evening last month, a dull distant purr that within moments swelled into the rattling sound of an outboard motor common on the fishing boats working just offshore.

At a busy downtown traffic circle not far from the dormant port, a pickup truck full of police pulled up abruptly. The half-dozen men spilled into the streets.

“Inside, inside,” the officers, all of them bearded in the style favored by the Hamas movement that runs Gaza, urged passersby. Then, pointing to the sky, one muttered, “Zenana, zenana.”

Mexico seeks to fill drug war gap with focus on dirty money

The evolving anti-laundering campaign could change the tone of the Mexican government’s battle by striking at the heart of the cartels’ financial empire, analysts say.

By Ken Ellingwood and Tracy Wilkinson, Los Angeles Times

November 27, 2011

Reporting from Mexico City– Tainted drug money runs like whispered rumors all over Mexico’s economy – in gleaming high-rises in beach resorts such as Cancun, in bustling casinos in Monterrey, in skyscrapers and restaurants in Mexico City that sit empty for months. It seeps into the construction sector, the night-life industry, even political campaigns.

Piles of greenbacks, enough to fill dump trucks, are transformed into gold watches, showrooms full of Hummers, aviation schools, yachts, thoroughbred horses and warehouses full of imported fabric.

Around the Fukushima plant, a world left behind

 

By Chico Harlan, Published: November 20

Namie, JAPAN – Eight months ago, people left this place in haste. Families raced from their homes without closing the front doors. They left half-finished wine bottles on their kitchen tables and sneakers in their foyers. They jumped in their cars without taking pets and left cows hitched to milking stanchions.

Now the land stands empty, frozen in time, virtually untouched since the March 11 disaster that created a wasteland in the 12-mile circle of farmland that surrounds the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.

Occupy Oakland and News Media Coexist Uneasily

 

By SHOSHANA WALTER

Published: November 12, 2011

Immediately after a man was shot to death Thursday afternoon near the Occupy Oakland encampment, Randy Davis, a cameraman for KGO-TV, turned his lens on a group of protesters helping the victim. Then part of the crowd turned on him.

Protesters formed a chain around the victim. About a dozen men – some shouting, “No cameras!” and “No media!” – punched Mr. Davis in the head and pushed him to the ledge overlooking a BART station stairwell before other protesters intervened, witnesses said.

The attack, one of at least two against journalists that night, highlighted the growing tensions between Occupy Oakland and the news media after a week of largely negative coverage of problems at the encampment.

Rise of an economic superpower: What does China want?

 Other countries unnerved, despite Beijing’s efforts to assuage their fears

By Peter Ford

Staff writer

It had been billed as a friendly exhibition game in basketball-crazy Beijing, between the Georgetown University Hoyas from Washington, D.C., and the Chinese Army’s Bayi Rockets. But after some blatantly biased Chinese refereeing and unashamedly aggressive play by Bayi, it ended in a bench-clearing brawl, with Chinese fans in the Olympic stadium throwing chairs and bottles of water at the Americans.

Some foreigners in the crowd that hot night in August were tempted to see the melee as nothing less than a metaphor for China’s role in the world today: contempt for the rules and fair play, crowned by a resort to brute strength in pursuit of narrow self-interest.

Protesters, police clash in Denver, face off in Nashville

 Incidents come amid a week of police crackdowns around the country

msnbc.com news services

DENVER – The simmering tension near the Colorado Capitol escalated dramatically Saturday with more than a dozen arrests and authorities firing rounds of pellets filled with pepper spray at supporters of the Occupy Wall Street movement.

The clash came as Occupy Wall Street protesters and state officials in Tennessee squared off for a third consecutive night, even though a local judge has refused to jail demonstrators who have been arrested.

In Denver, officers in riot gear moved late in the day into a park where protesters were attempting to establish an encampment, hauling off demonstrators just hours after a standoff at the Capitol steps degenerated into a fight that ended in a cloud of Mace and pepper spray.

Occupy Chicago: At least 100 anti-Wall Street protesters arrested in Grant Park

 Some demonstrators waiting to be taken into custody shout ‘take me next!’ to police officers

msnbc.com staff and news service reports

CHICAGO – At least 100 anti-Wall Street demonstrators were arrested early Sunday after defying police orders to clear out of a downtown Chicago park, authorities said.

Occupy Chicago spokesman Joshua Kaunert vowed after the arrests that the demonstrators would be coming back.

“We’re not going anywhere. There are still plenty of us,” Kaunert told The Associated Press after police carried out the arrests for more than hour.

Protests go global, rampage, tear gas in Rome

Minority of violent demonstrators stretch into evening, hours after tens of thousands of people join global ‘day of rage’ against bankers, politicians

msnbc.com staff and news service reports

 Hundreds of hooded, masked protesters rampaged through Rome in some of the worst violence in the Italian capital for years Saturday, torching cars and breaking windows during a larger peaceful protest against elites blamed for economic downturn.

Police repeatedly fired tear gas and water cannon in attempts to disperse them but the clashes with a minority of violent demonstrators stretched into the evening, hours after tens of thousands of people in Rome joined a global “day of rage” against bankers and politicians.