Supporters of a multimillion-dollar "healthy marriage" program are stepping up their efforts to get it into this year's must-pass budget bill. "Tragically, government spends hundreds of billions of dollars each year to pick up the pieces when marriage fails, yet does virtually nothing to preserve or strengthen marriage," Sen. Rick Santorum, Pennsylvania Republican, said in a letter sent Thursday to Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, Tennessee Republican, and Senate Finance Committee Chairman Charles E. Grassley, Iowa Republican. "The healthy marriage initiative represents a bold departure from this pattern of failed policy," said the letter, which was signed by Republican Sens. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, Elizabeth Dole of North Carolina, Jim Talent of Missouri, Saxby Chambliss of Georgia, Sam Brownback of Kansas, Jim DeMint of South Carolina, Mel Martinez of Florida and David Vitter of Louisiana. ...
http://www.washtimes.com
censor News |
Editor - 09:19:00 12-11-05
|
 Frist sees deal on bill to ban torture by US |
The U.S. Congress will reach an agreement with the White House on a defense bill that would ban the torture and inhumane treatment of detainees, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist said on Sunday. Frist said on Fox News Sunday that negotiators were discussing the issue of "degrading" suspects.The amendment, pushed by Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain (news, bio, voting record), had passed the Senate with a 90-9 majority, but the White House fiercely opposed it. Vice President Dick Cheney led an unsuccessful bid to exempt the CIA from the torture ban, saying it would hinder the war on terrorism."I think there will be clarification of what we mean, how aggressive can one be to get information?" said Frist, who did not specify what would be banned....
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20051211/pl_nm/security_torture_congress_dc
full News |
Editor - 09:15:00 12-11-05
|
| Iranian Foreign Minister Offers U.S. Chance to Bid for Construction on Nuclear Power Plant |
Iran on Sunday offered the United States a share in building a new nuclear power plant in an apparent effort to curb U.S. opposition to its atomic program. "America can take part in international bidding for the construction of Iran's nuclear power plant if they observe the basic standards and quality," Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi said at a news conference. Asefi was apparently talking about a 360-megawatt light water nuclear power plant in southwestern Iran, which the head of the country's top atomic organization announced plans to build on Saturday. Iran also wants to produce 2,000 megawatts of electricity by building nuclear power plants with foreign help in southern Iran. ...
http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory?id=1394985&CMP=OTC-RSSFeeds0312
full News |
Editor - 09:13:00 12-11-05
|
| Total, Chevron Oil Depot Explodes North of London |
The U.K.'s fifth-largest oil depot, a facility owned by Total SA and Chevron Corp., exploded north of London, injuring 39 people and sending a pall of smoke across southeast England. Police said the blasts were accidental. The first blast occurred just after 6 a.m. local time at the Buncefield depot near the town of Hemel Hempstead about 20 miles outside of London, where afternoon television broadcasts showed fires still raging. Two of the people injured were ``seriously'' hurt, Howard Borkett-Jones, medical director of West Hertfordshire Hospitals Trust, said at a televised briefing. ``All indications at this stage are that this was an accident,'' police Chief Constable Frank Whiteley told a press conference. ``There is nothing to suggest that there will be a fuel shortage.'' ...
http://quote.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000087&sid=av.ESyhdbXL0&refer=home
full News |
Editor - 09:09:00 12-11-05
|
| Drowned city cuts its poor adrift |
Miss Mildred's piano lies where the water knocked it down three months ago, amid ruined photographs and clothes. Her favourite chair is jammed in a corner; the wooden tiles of her tiny clapboard house muddy and peeled loose. There is nothing to salvage from a thrifty, industrious life, so she has come to see her home in New Orleans' devastated Ninth Ward for one last time.'I don't have anything to come home to. No food, no water or electricity,' said the 74-year-old, whose family has been scattered. 'I can't afford to live in the French Quarter and there is nowhere else to rent. I have three more years on the mortgage to pay for this.' She will not sell the property, she says, but she also will not return. And Mildred W Franklin is angry. In a city where the wealthy areas are buzzing with reconstruction, her neighbourhood, one of the worst affected, is silent and ghostly. 'They want us to be disgusted. They don't want us to return.'...
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,1664630,00.html
full News |
Editor - 20:27:00 12-10-05
|
| MI6 and CIA 'sent student to Morocco to be tortured' |
An Ethiopian student who lived in London claims that he was brutally tortured with the involvement of British and US intelligence agencies.Binyam Mohammed, 27, says he spent nearly three years in the CIA's network of 'black sites'. In Morocco he claims he underwent the strappado torture of being hung for hours from his wrists, and scalpel cuts to his chest and penis and that a CIA officer was a regular interrogator.After his capture in Pakistan, Mohammed says British officials warned him that he would be sent to a country where torture was used. Moroccans also asked him detailed questions about his seven years in London, which his lawyers believe came from British sources.Western agencies believed that he was part of a plot to buy uranium in Asia, bring it to the US and build a 'dirty bomb' in league with Jose Padilla, a US citizen. Mohammed signed a confession but told his lawyer, Clive Stafford Smith, he had never met Padilla, or anyone in al-Qaeda. ...
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,1664612,00.html
full News |
Editor - 20:08:00 12-10-05
|
|
| post The Good, The Bad and The Ugly |
|
|
