 The struggle to entice Army soldiers and Marines to stay in the military, after four years of war in Iraq, has ballooned into a $1 billion campaign, with bonuses soaring nearly sixfold since 2003. The size and number of bonuses have grown as officials scrambled to meet the steady demand for troops on the battlefields in Iraq and Afghanistan and reverse sporadic shortfalls in the number of National Guard and Reserve soldiers willing to sign on for multiple tours. Besides underscoring the extraordinary steps the Pentagon must take to maintain fighting forces, the rise in costs for re-enlistment incentives is putting strains on the defense budget, already strapped by the massive costs of waging war and equipping and caring for a modern military. The bonuses can range from a few thousand dollars to as much as $150,000 for very senior special forces soldiers who re-enlist for six years. All told, the Army and Marines spent $1.03 billion for re-enlistment payments last year, ...
http://www.msnbc.msn.com
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Editor - 22:30:00 04-11-07
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 20 Shia gunmen die in British Basra fightback |
British forces have hit back at Iraqi insurgents who killed six colleagues last week, by launching an operation in which they shot dead more than 20 gunmen of Basra's rogue militias. The attack began when a battalion-size force was sent into one of the southern city's toughest terrorist strongholds, three miles from where four soldiers, including two women, were blown up in their Warrior armoured vehicle.An armoured force of 400 troops from the 2Bn The Rifles and 2Bn The Duke of Lancaster's Regiment, both of which suffered fatalities last week, entered the Shia Flats area on the western outskirts of Basra to search for hidden weapons.The district is notorious as one of the most dangerous in southern Iraq. "We wanted to make quite clear there's nowhere in Basra we cannot go," a British commander told The Daily Telegraph yesterday. "We are prepared to be there in daylight and take whatever comes our way. We are not being bombed out or intimidated."...
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml;jsessionid=3R5NCZSBLUIIJQFIQMGSFFWAVCBQWIV0?xml=/news/2007/04/12/wiraq12.xml
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Editor - 22:27:00 04-11-07
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| White House to Congress: Avoid Iran |
The White House said Wednesday it would be "unproductive and unhelpful" for Democratic leaders of Congress to visit Iran. The criticism came a day after House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Tom Lantos (news, bio, voting record) told reporters in San Francisco he has been trying for 10 years to obtain a visa to visit with leaders in Tehran."Speaking for myself, I'm ready to go," said Lantos, D-Calif. "And knowing the speaker, I think she might be."However, a spokesman for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (news, bio, voting record) said she had had no intention of going to Iran.Pelosi, standing next to Lantos at a press conference, said that while she finds Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's remarks "to be so repulsive that they're outside the circle of civilized human behavior," the willingness of Lantos — a Hungarian-born survivor of the Holocaust — to meet with Ahmadinejad "speaks volumes about the importance of dialogue."...
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070411/ap_on_go_pr_wh/us_iran_2
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Editor - 22:16:00 04-11-07
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| Pope Praises Progress Gained by Science but Stresses That Evolution Not Finally Proven |
Benedict XVI, in his first extended reflections on evolution published as pope, says that Darwin's theory cannot be finally proven and that science has unnecessarily narrowed humanity's view of creation. In a new book, "Creation and Evolution," published Wednesday in German, the pope praised progress gained by science, but cautioned that evolution raises philosophical questions science alone cannot answer. "The question is not to either make a decision for a creationism that fundamentally excludes science, or for an evolutionary theory that covers over its own gaps and does not want to see the questions that reach beyond the methodological possibilities of natural science," the pope said. He stopped short of endorsing intelligent design, but said scientific and philosophical reason must work together in a way that does not exclude faith. ...
http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory?id=3031553
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Editor - 15:06:00 04-11-07
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| Early Earth Was Purple, Study Suggests |
The earliest life on Earth might have been just as purple as it is green today, a scientist claims. Ancient microbes might have used a molecule other than chlorophyll to harness the Sun’s rays, one that gave the organisms a violet hue. Chlorophyll, the main photosynthetic pigment of plants, absorbs mainly blue and red wavelengths from the Sun and reflects green ones, and it is this reflected light that gives plants their leafy color. This fact puzzles some biologists because the sun transmits most of its energy in the green part of the visible spectrum. “Why would chlorophyll have this dip in the area that has the most energy?” said Shil DasSarma, a microbial geneticist at the University of Maryland.After all, evolution has tweaked the human eye to be most sensitive to green light (which is why images from night-vision goggles are tinted green). So why is photosynthesis not fine-tuned the same way?...
http://news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/20070410/sc_livescience/earlyearthwaspurplestudysuggests
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Editor - 14:25:00 04-11-07
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| Citigroup plans 17,000 job cuts |
America's largest financial firm, Citigroup, has announced plans to cut 17,000 jobs, more than half overseas. The cuts, which will reduce its 327,000-strong workforce by 5%, are part of efforts to reduce costs. Citigroup hopes to make savings of $2.1bn (£1bn) in 2007, rising to $4.6bn in 2009, in order to revive profits. On top of the job cuts, 9,500 positions will be "moved to lower-cost locations, both domestically and internationally", said chief executive Charles Prince. 'Cuts start today' The job cuts are designed to reduce Citigroup's operating costs, which soared by 15% last year to $52bn, while its annual revenues rose just 7%. Citigroup's chief operating officer, Robert Druskin, who led the three-month review into how to trim costs, said most of the job cuts would be completed by the end of this year....
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/6545163.stm
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Editor - 14:00:00 04-11-07
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