 Leftist Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega, who took power earlier this month, said Monday that he was slashing his salary and those of Cabinet members. In a news conference, Ortega said he would earn a monthly salary of $3,200 while Cabinet members would earn no more than $3,000. Former President Enrique Bolanos earned about $10,000 while some Cabinet members earned more than $5,000. Several presidents across Latin America have cut their salaries recently in response to criticism they earn excessive amounts while millions of their citizens live in poverty. President Felipe Calderon of Mexico cut his salary by 10 percent after taking power in December. His predecessor, Vicente Fox, made about $245,000 a year in 2006. ...
http://abcnews.go.com
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Editor - 19:45:00 01-22-07
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 Vatican divided as cardinal says patients should have right to die · Doctors should be protected says Martini · Euthanasia case debated in Italian parliament |
The Vatican's rigid opposition to euthanasia has come under fire from within its own ranks after it denied a religious funeral to a paralysed man who had asked to be removed from a life-saving respirator. Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini, the influential former archbishop of Milan, said on Sunday that terminally ill patients should be given the right to refuse treatments and that the doctors who assist them should be protected by law. On December 20 a doctor in Rome unplugged the respirator which for many years had kept alive Piergiorgio Welby, who had muscular dystrophy. Although the Vatican has agreed that protracted treatments for the terminally ill can be ended by doctors if no cure is possible, the Vicariate of Rome denied Welby's family permission to hold a Catholic funeral, claiming Welby's "desire to end his life, expressed frequently and publicly, is contrary to Catholic doctrine"....
http://www.guardian.co.uk/pope/story/0,,1996334,00.html
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Editor - 19:16:00 01-22-07
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| Bookkeeper Charged With Stealing $6.9 Million Bought Real Estate, Talking Trees, Feds Say |
A bookkeeper for a construction materials company embezzled $6.9 million and used the money to go on a shopping spree that included a 104-acre ranch and a half-dozen talking trees like those in "The Wizard of Oz," federal authorities said Monday. Prosecutors say Angela Buckborough Platt also bought eight show horses; a fleet of motor vehicles including a 1964 Ford Thunderbird; a house on five acres in Rhode Island; Hollywood-grade cinematic props to decorate her home for Halloween; and a life-size ceramic statue of Al Capone. Samantha Martin, a spokeswoman for the U.S. attorney's office, said that when friends or relatives asked Platt about her wealth, she told them that she was the CEO of a corporation or that she and her husband had won the lottery. Platt, 43, of Wyoming, Pa., was charged Monday with one count of interstate transportation of stolen property. She has agreed to plead guilty in a deal subject to court approval, Martin said. ...
http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory?id=2814512
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Editor - 19:01:00 01-22-07
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| Attacks Leave 137 Dead Across Iraq |
A homicide bomber crashed his car into a central Baghdad market crowded with Shiites just seconds after another car bomb tore through the stalls where vendors were hawking DVDs and used clothing, leaving 88 dead Monday in the bloodiest attack in two months. The bombings, along with a double bombing that killed 12 people in the town of Khalis, battered Shiites during one of their holiest festivals. The attacks were the latest in a renewed campaign of insurgent violence in advance of a U.S.-Iraqi security operation. In all, 137 people were killed or found dead across Iraq, including a teacher who was gunned down as she was on her way to work at a girls' school in a mainly Sunni area of Baghdad. The toll also included the bullet-riddled bodies of at least 30 people, apparent victims of death squads largely run by Shiite militias. ...
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,245418,00.html
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Editor - 18:50:00 01-22-07
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| Rare Snowstorm Surprises Arizona |
A rare snowstorm that surprised Arizona with more than a foot of snow in parts left the state Monday, giving children as far south as Tucson a chance to play in the snow. One of the strongest of the winter, Sunday's storm came as part of a wave of storms that brought snow, ice and strong winds to the Plains region, and also to the Southwest, including Texas and New Mexico. The harsh, frigid conditions were blamed for at least 11 traffic fatalities in the Plains over the weekend. In Colorado, crews looking for a missing snowshoer found a body in a creek southwest of Denver on Monday, but authorities had not determined whether it was the missing man. In Arizona, more than a foot of snow fell in Forest Lakes, Pinetop and at the Sunrise Ski Resort, among other places in the northern part of the state. Between 1 and 3 inches fell in Flagstaff, said Robert Bohlin, meteorologist with the National Weather Service. Southern New Mexico picked up 9 inches on snow on Sunday and Monday....
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uslatest/story/0,,-6364258,00.html
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Editor - 18:43:00 01-22-07
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| Report Has 'Smoking Gun' on Climate |
Human-caused global warming is here - visible in the air, water and melting ice - and is destined to get much worse in the future, an authoritative global scientific report will warn next week. ``The smoking gun is definitely lying on the table as we speak,'' said top U.S. climate scientist Jerry Mahlman, who reviewed all 1,600 pages of the first segment of a giant four-part report. ``The evidence ... is compelling.'' Andrew Weaver, a Canadian climate scientist and study co-author, went even further: ``This isn't a smoking gun; climate is a batallion of intergalactic smoking missiles.'' The first phase of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is being released in Paris next week. This segment, written by more than 600 scientists and reviewed by another 600 experts and edited by bureaucrats from 154 countries, includes ``a significantly expanded discussion of observation on the climate,''...
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uslatest/story/0,,-6364246,00.html
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Editor - 18:41:00 01-22-07
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