Tag: The Morning News

The widower of slain former premier Benazir Bhutto said he had no interest in working with Musharraf’s defeated backers, but said he would join forces with other groups opposed to the key figure in US anti-terror efforts.

“We will form a government of national consensus which will take along every democratic force,” Asif Ali Zardari told a news conference a day after the parliamentary elections.

Disbanding parliament would prompt new elections within 60 days and further undermine Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s shaky government, which is limping along with nearly half of the 40 Cabinet posts vacant.

The disarray undermines the purpose of last year’s U.S. troop “surge” – to bring down violence enough to allow the Iraqi government and parliament to focus on measures to reconcile differences among minority Sunnis and Kurds and the majority Shiites. Violence is down dramatically, but political progress languishes.

Ramos-Horta, a Nobel Peace laureate, was injured in the stomach but in stable condition, while Prime Minister Xanana Gusmao escaped the attack on his motorcade unhurt.

Army spokesman Maj. Domingos da Camara said notorious rebel leader Alfredo Reinado was killed in the attack against the home of Ramos-Horta, while one of the president’s guards also died.

The indications of a likely slowdown reflect concern by U.S. commanders that the improvement in security in Iraq since June – to a degree few had predicted when President Bush ordered five more Army brigades to Iraq a year ago – is tenuous and could be reversed if the extra troops come out too soon.

One of those extra brigades left in December and the other four are due to come out by July, leaving 15 brigades, or roughly 130,000 to 135,000 troops – the same number as before Bush sent the reinforcements.

The death, however, has not changed the Pentagon’s mind about its plans to spend more than $22 billion to buy thousands of the mine-resistant, ambush-protected vehicles, known by the acronym MRAP, for the Army and Marine Corps to use in Iraq and Afghanistan, said Pentagon Press Secretary Geoff Morrell.

“That attack has not … caused anyone to question the vehicle’s lifesaving capacity,” Morrell said. “To the contrary, the attack reaffirms their survivability.”

Investors dumped stocks after an overnight sell-off in U.S. markets and on news that Citigroup Inc. had lost nearly $10 billion in the fourth quarter as it wrote down bad mortgage assets. Weak U.S. retail sales figures also added to the gloom, sending the Dow Jones industrial average down 277 points, or 2.2 percent.

“The moves on Wall Street signal fears that the U.S. is going into recession,” said Rommel Macapagal, chairman of Westlink Global Equities in Manila, Philippines, where the market sank 2.7 percent.

Weather was spring-like and participation brisk, although it remained to be seen whether New Hampshire would match the record-busting turnout of the Iowa caucuses won by Obama and Republican Mike Huckabee only five days earlier. Republicans, their national race for the nomination tangled, watched a New Hampshire contest unfold between McCain and Romney at the top of their field, polls indicating McCain had an edge but no clear-cut advantage.

Supporters mobbed an upbeat McCain at a Nashua polling station, making it hard for him to reach voters as they filed inside. Noting he outpolled rivals in two tiny northern hamlets that voted before the rest of the state, McCain cracked: “It has all the earmarks of a landslide, with the Dixville Notch vote.” Romney boldly predicted: “The Republicans will vote for me. The independents will get behind me.”

In Christmas 1776, some 2,400 soldiers, 200 horses and 18 cannons ferried across the cold Delaware River.

The Continental soldiers, many ill-prepared for the cold weather and poorly trained compared to the troops they were about to face, then marched eight miles down river in blizzard-like conditions.

They soundly beat the German mercenary soldiers based there, capturing 1,000 prisoners, killing 30 troops and only losing two Continental soldiers – and both of them froze to death.

Turkey’s President Abdullah Gul said the army was “doing what is necessary in the fight against terrorism,” while Rice said the United States, Iraq and Turkey shared a “common interest” in stopping rebel activities.

Annoyance over Washington’s perceived approval of the Turkish action created a diplomatic incident, with the president of Iraq’s autonomous Kurdish region reportedly refusing to meet Rice in Baghdad.

Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., called the committee’s 90-minute session with Hayden “a useful and not yet complete hearing” and vowed the committee would get to the bottom of the matter. Among lingering questions: Who authorized destruction of the tapes, and why Congress wasn’t told about it?

Hayden told reporters afterward that he had “a chance to lay out the narrative, the history of why the tapes were destroyed” and the process that led to that decision. But since the tapes were made under one of his predecessors, George Tenet, and destroyed under another, Porter Goss, he wasn’t able to completely answer all questions, he said.

But in recent months, the king of currencies has taken it on the chin. Since August the dollar has shrunk about 6 percent in value, measured against an assortment of its fellows. Perhaps more important, it may be losing cachet overseas: Tourists can no longer pay in dollars to enter the Taj Mahal and other Indian national landmarks, for instance.

Is the dollar set to lose its top status and the national financial advantages that entails? It has swooned and recovered before, most notably in the 1970s and late 1980s.

But there’s a difference this time. The dollar has a credible rival: the euro.

With nearly two months left in the year, the annual toll is now 853 – three more than the previous worst of 850 in 2004.

But the grim milestone comes as the Pentagon points toward other encouraging signs as well – growing security in Baghdad and other former militant strongholds that could help consolidate the gains against extremists.