An Iraqi government official urged international forces Monday to stay while the situation in the country remains volatile, even though Iraqi troops were assuming a greater role."I do believe there is no option for the international community to cut and run," Deputy Prime Minister Barham Saleh told reporters after meeting Prime Minister Tony Blair."We need to be realist but not defeatist. We need to understand that there is a need of utmost urgency to deal with many of the problems of Iraq, but we must not give in to panic," he said.Saleh expressed concern about what he described as the increasing acrimony in the debate being held about Iraq in the United States and Europe."There is too much of a pessimistic tone to this debate — even, I would say in certain circles, a defeatist tone," he told the British Broadcasting Corp., before meeting Blair....
http://www.usatoday.com
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Editor - 08:08:00 10-23-06
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 Columnist to pay $34,000 in deal with government |
Columnist Armstrong Williams has reached a settlement with prosecutors regarding payments he received by the Education Department to promote President Bush's agenda.Under the settlement, Williams admits no wrongdoing but will have to pay $34,000. The deal was reached last week by Williams, the Education Department and its subcontractor, Ketchum Communications."The department is happy to see this matter come to a close," Katherine McLane, a spokeswoman for Education Secretary Margaret Spellings, said Sunday. "One of the first steps Secretary Spellings took when she came to office is to establish guidelines to prevent future occurrences of this type of situation."A message left at Williams' office was not immediately returned Sunday....
http://www.cnn.com/2006/EDUCATION/10/23/education.investigation.ap/index.html?eref=rss_us
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Editor - 08:05:00 10-23-06
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| Losses increase 30-fold at Ford |
Struggling US car firm Ford has seen its third quarter losses widen dramatically, hit by the expense of its ongoing cost-cutting plan. Ford said its loss in the three months until the end of September totalled $5.8bn (£3bn), almost 30 times higher they were at this time last year. Leaving out the provision for its cost cuts - including 45,000 redundancies - the loss shortened to $1.2bn. Ford added that an error meant it had to restate all earnings since 2001. The carmaker said the accounting mistake had been caused by certain transactions in its consumer credit division being wrongly reported. Its turnover during the third quarter was down 6% on a year earlier to $32.6bn. ...
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/6077234.stm
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Editor - 08:03:00 10-23-06
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| Islamists recapture Somali town |
The town of Bur Hakaba in central Somalia is again under Islamist control after pro-government forces withdrew. Government fighters, reportedly backed by Ethiopian troops, took the town on Saturday before withdrawing. The town lies on the main road from the government base in Baidoa to the capital, Mogadishu and also changed hands earlier this month. The Islamist group controls most of southern Somalia after a rapid advance earlier this year. In Mogadishu, Islamist leaders have again criticised Ethiopia's government during speeches to mark the Eid festival at the end of the holy month of Ramadan. "We moved away from Bur Hakaba because we managed to restore security," government commander Said Hirsi Dhere told the AFP news agency. ...
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/6077540.stm
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Editor - 08:02:00 10-23-06
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| Gitmo interrogations spark battle over tactics The inside story of criminal investigators who tried to stop abuse |
Speaking publicly for the first time, senior U.S. law enforcement investigators say they waged a long but futile battle inside the Pentagon to stop coercive and degrading treatment of detainees by intelligence interrogators at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Their account indicates that the struggle over U.S. interrogation techniques began much earlier than previously known, with separate teams of law enforcement and intelligence interrogators battling over the best way to accomplish two missions: prevent future attacks and punish the terrorists. In extensive interviews with MSNBC.com, former leaders of the Defense Department’s Criminal Investigation Task Force said they repeatedly warned senior Pentagon officials beginning in early 2002 that the harsh interrogation techniques used by a separate intelligence team would not produce reliable information, could constitute war crimes, and would embarrass the nation when they became public knowledge....
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15361458/
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Editor - 07:59:00 10-23-06
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| Part of China’s Yellow River turns red Officials are testing sewage outflow, and hope it’s just dyed water |
A half-mile section of China's Yellow River turned "red and smelly" after an unknown discharge was poured into it from a sewage pipe, state media said Monday. The incident in Lanzhou, a city of 2 million people in western Gansu province, follows a string of industrial accidents that have poisoned major rivers in China over the last year, forcing several cities to shut down their water systems. It wasn't immediately clear what was tainting the section of the Yellow River, which is a drinking water source for millions. Environmental protection officials took samples and were trying to determine whether the sewage was toxic, the official Xinhua news agency said. "Residents were alarmed to see a sewage pipe pouring red water into the country's second longest river" on Sunday afternoon, the agency said.Kang Mingke, an official with the city's environment protection bureau, said there were no chemical plants located nearby, according to Xinhua....
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15386631/
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Editor - 07:55:00 10-23-06
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