One of America's closest allies says the war on terrorism fails to address its root causes. Experts agreed with Afghan President Hamid Karzai, saying Friday the major military offensive against the Taliban will not fix Afghanistan's larger crises a lack of reconstruction and jobs, a booming drug trade, and a weak government. "You won't win unless you can convince people that progress is being made," said Marvin Weinbaum, a former State Department analyst now a scholar at the Washington-based Middle East Institute. "One of the things we recognize is that we have failed to improve on the development side, especially in the south. In the areas with the greatest need, we have not gotten the reconstruction that was necessary." On Thursday, a clearly frustrated Karzai criticized the coalition's anti-terror campaign, deploring the deaths of hundreds of Afghans and appealing for more help for his government. The coalition has killed hundreds, mostly Taliban militants, since May... http://abcnews.go.com censor News |
Editor - 15:02:00 06-23-06 |
US defends secret money tracking |
US Treasury Secretary John Snow has defended a secret programme which has been tracking international money transactions for nearly five years. "This programme is an effective weapon in the larger war on terror," he said. The scheme, which has sifted huge amounts of data from an international banking consortium, was revealed by the New York Times newspaper on Friday. The US treasury says the programme was strictly confined to the records of suspected foreign terrorists. Although there is no direct connection, the programme has echoes of a recently revealed US surveillance programme in which millions of international and domestic phone calls and e-mails were monitored, correspondents say. They say that although the US government insists it acted on a firm legal footing, this programme is likely to elicit similar charges of enfringement of civil liberties. ... http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/5110282.stm
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Editor - 14:59:00 06-23-06 |
Global Millionaires Swell To 8.7M Middle East Saw 10% More; Wealthy Pour Cash Into Emerging Markets |
The increasing ease of becoming a millionaire became clear Tuesday, with the announcement that the ranks of world millionaires had swelled to 8.7 million last year, half a million more than the population of New York City. Millionaires also invested more aggressively, pouring cash into emerging markets and pulling it out of fixed income holdings, as their wealth reached $33.3 trillion, more than double U.S. economic output, a study by Merrill Lynch and consultancy Capgemini found. The red-hot Middle East saw nearly 10 percent growth in millionaires, the world's fastest rate, with record oil revenues and soaring stock markets pushing 300,000 people over the million-dollar mark. ... http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/06/20/business/main1733648.shtml?source=RSS&attr=World_1733648
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Editor - 14:56:00 06-23-06 |
Study finds Americans' social contacts are shrinking as they focus on bonds of nuclear family |
Nearly one in every four Americans has no close confidant, according to a study that found that the average person's circle of close friends has shrunk considerably in the last two decades.The study, published Friday in the American Sociological Review, found that Americans' social contacts are focusing less on neighbors and more "on the very strong bonds of the nuclear family.""The evidence shows that Americans have fewer confidants and those ties are also more family-based than they used to be," said Lynn Smith-Lovin, a sociology professor at Duke University and one of the study's authors.Possible causes of the shrinking circle of close contacts include an increase in work hours and the influence of Internet communication, the authors said.The study is based on face-to-face interviews of 1,467 people conducted in 2004, compared with a similar number of interviews conducted in 1985.... http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/06/23/ap/national/mainD8IE2VPO3.shtml
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Editor - 14:51:00 06-23-06 |
Idaho WWII Prison Camp Controversy Flares Park Service, internees and their descendants argue over what to call Idaho WWII prison camp now |
The National Park Service wants Congress to remove the word "internment" from the name of a national park commemorating a World War II prison camp for Japanese-Americans.In a management plan for the Minidoka Internment National Monument finalized this week, the Park Service says the term legally means imprisonment of civilian enemy aliens during wartime and does not accurately reflect the government's forced relocation of thousands of U.S. citizens of Japanese descent.The agency wants the name changed to Minidoka National Historic Site, which would match with the only similar prison camp under its protection, California's Manzanar National Historic Site.Monument superintendent Neil King and the leader of a group of Minidoka internees and their descendants said former camp residents have been divided over the name.... http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/06/23/ap/national/mainD8IE3O701.shtml
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Editor - 14:49:00 06-23-06 |
Curfew imposed on Baghdad streets after intense fighting between insurgents and U.S., Iraqi forces |
Iraq's government imposed a state of emergency on Baghdad and ordered everyone off the streets on Friday after U.S. and Iraqi forces battled insurgents armed with rocket-propelled grenades, hand grenades and rifles near the heavily fortified Green Zone.The military announced the deaths of five more U.S. troops in a deadly week for American forces that included the discovery of the brutalized bodies of two kidnapped soldiers.Iraqi and U.S. military forces clashed with heavily armed attackers throughout the morning Friday in the alleys and doorways along Haifa Street and within earshot of the Green Zone, which houses the U.S. and British embassies and Iraqi government headquarters.Four Iraqi soldiers and three policemen were wounded before the area was sealed and searched house-to-house for insurgent attackers, police Lt. Maitham Abdul Razzaq said. U.S. and Iraqi forces also engaged in firefights with insurgents in the dangerous Dora neighborhood in south Baghdad.... http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/06/23/ap/world/mainD8IE3T4O2.shtml
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Editor - 14:42:00 06-23-06 |
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