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- US President [sic] George W. Bush on Friday formally asked lawmakers for 70 billion dollars to fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan into early next year. The monies include 45.1 billion dollars for combat operations in Iraq and Afghanistan... The request also seeks three billion dollars for classified activities. |
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- KBR Inc, the engineering and construction company, said on Friday its first-quarter net profit more than tripled, helped by an arbitration award, income from energy projects and its work [terrorism] for the U.S. government in Iraq. |
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- A favorable arbitration award gave a hefty boost to first-quarter income at KBR Inc. Houston-based KBR on Friday reported net income for the three months ended March 31 of $93 million, or 58 cents a share, on revenue of $2.5 billion, compared with net income of $28 million, or 17 cents a share, on revenue of $2 billion in the same quarter last year. |
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- Chevron Corp.'s first-quarter earnings echoed a theme set earlier this week by other international oil companies: soaring crude prices are pumping up profits to astronomical levels. Chevron reported a 9.6% rise in first-quarter net income as surging oil prices nearly doubled profits at its fossil fuels production business. |
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- Oil climbed midafternoon as traders bought into the market amid optimism that crude's recent price rally may continue after prices found support at $110 a barrel yesterday, and after Turkey launched a bombing raid on northern Iraq. |
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- Republican John McCain was forced to clarify [spin] his comments Friday suggesting the Iraq war involved U.S. reliance on foreign oil. At issue was a comment he made at a town hall-style [GOP] meeting Friday morning in Denver. "My friends, I will have an energy policy that we will be talking about, which will eliminate our dependence on oil from the Middle East that will prevent us from having ever to send our young men and women into conflict again in the Middle East," McCain said. |
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- Turkish aircraft have bombed northern Iraq in the latest of a series of air raids in the region targeting Kurdish fighters. Turkey's General Staff on Friday said at least 30 planes were involved in the raids on what it called senior Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) positions in the Qandil mountains, but made no mention of any casualties. |
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- The Defense Department said Friday that two Fort Hood soldiers, including an officer, were killed Wednesday when a roadside bomb exploded near their vehicle in Iraq. |
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- The Senate Intelligence Committee moved on Thursday to ban the CIA from using private contractors to interrogate prisoners. The bill would also require the intelligence agencies to give the International Committee of the Red Cross access to all their detainees. That would prevent the United States from holding "ghost detainees" -- anonymous prisoners detained incommunicado and without records. |
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- Long-held al Jazeera cameraman Sami al Hajj has been released from the U.S. detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, along with at least two other prisoners, his attorneys said Thursday. |
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- Groups planning parades or protests at the Democratic National Convention filed a lawsuit here on Friday charging that the Secret Service and the City of Denver are threatening free speech -- not because of tight security rules, but by the very lack of them. The suit, filed in Federal District Court, says that delays in establishing legal parade routes, and unanswered questions about security arrangements around the convention center, are undermining efforts to plan for events when Democrats gather here from Aug. 25 to 28. |
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- En la Asociación de Internautas son unos vendidos: meneame. net/story/videocomunido-pirata DZPM |
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- The bomb squad is investigating a suspicious vehicle at the visitor's center of Fort Lewis. The main gate has been evacuated as well as the visitor's center. The Washington Department of Transportation has closed the exit ramps from I-5 to the Fort Lewis main gate in both directions. |
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- The Bush regime will delay a post-9/11 program that provides special identification cards to every worker with access to seaports. The Sept. 25 deadline to enroll 1.2 million workers with access to ports into the transportation worker credentialing program will be extended to April 15, 2009, the Homeland Security Department announced Friday. The department started the enrollment process in October. |
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- By Adam Cohen. It would be hard for Florida to surpass its disastrous performance in the 2000 election, but give the Sunshine State credit for trying. Its latest assault on democracy: a law threatening volunteer groups with crippling fines if they make small mistakes in registering voters. The law seems clearly aimed at keeping new voters -- especially minorities and the poor -- off the rolls. |
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- (The New York Times) It has been 11 months since investigators found that Lurita Doan, chief of the General Services Administration, violated the Hatch Act?s ban on politicking on the job, asking her staff how they could "help our candidates..." Her one undeniable service for taxpayers was in laying bare the partisan diktat that so deeply scars the Bush administration?s approach to government service. Evidence of such chicanery extends from regulatory agencies packed with pro-industry appointees, to the purging of nine United States attorneys responsible for enforcing justice, not the Republican Party? |
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- (Saginaw, MI) The battle over dioxin contamination in this economically stressed region had been raging for years when a top Bush administration official turned up the pressure on Dow Chemical to clean it up. On Thursday, following months of internal bickering over Mary Gade's interactions with Dow, the administration forced her to quit as head of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Midwest office, based in Chicago. Gade told the Tribune she resigned after two aides to national EPA administrator Stephen Johnson took away her powers as regional administrator and told her to quit or be fired by June 1. |
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- Efforts to influence fuel economy standards largely drive record figure; GM leads industry with $14M. The automotive industry spent a record $70.3 million lobbying Congress in 2007, a figure largely driven by efforts to influence changes in the fuel economy standards of the nation's cars and trucks, according to a new report by the Washington-based Center for Responsive Politics. |
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- The Army Corps of Engineers can be held liable for flood damage caused by a "hurricane highway," a navigation channel that is believed to have funneled Hurricane Katrina's storm surge into the city, a federal judge ruled Friday. |
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- Clive businessman Marty Parrish was escorted from Sen. John McCain's town hall meeting by Des Moines police and members of the Secret Service after asking McCain if he had called his wife Cindy an expletive in 1992. Parrish, an licensed Baptist minister who holds a master's degree in political science, was questioned by Secret Service agents before being released. Parrish asked whether McCain called his wife Cindy a [c*nt], as has been alleged in the book "The Real McCain." |
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- By RJ Eskow...The McCain plan, if enacted, would result in an enormous transfer of wealth from the general public to large American businesses. In that sense, it reflects a lot of what passes for "conservative" ideology nowadays. There is no underlying belief system, just a mixed bag of policies - some "pro-big government" and some "anti big-government" - that share only the ability to enrich the large corporate donors that finance Republican campaigns. So Republican political platforms are often little more than ideological smokescreens for policies that benefit these special interests. |
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- The spotlight shines on an oft forgotten part of US territory this weekend when the tiny, remote Pacific island of Guam gets its chance to help make history in the US presidential campaign. Guam, which has been a US territory since 1898, rarely steps into the limelight in US politics, lying on the other side of the international dateline and more than a 20-hour plane ride from Washington. But all eyes will be on Saturday's Democratic caucuses, even though there are only four party delegates at stake... |
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- By Carl P. Leubsdorf. Barack Obama looks like the quarterback of a football team intent on running out the clock to preserve its lead in a championship game. By spurning future debates, he seeks to prevent giving rival Hillary Clinton a way to change the course of the game. He is playing it safe to avoid a mistake that could erase the small but firm margin he built through the first three quarters. |
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- (Apex, NC) People who suggest Bill Clinton might be hurting his wife's presidential bid more than helping it haven't spent much time in the small towns where he draws adoring crowds of Democrats who wish he could serve a third term. Clinton routinely draws adoring crowds of Democrats who stand attentively to hear his detailed, rapid-fire case for his wife's election - often after waiting hours for him to arrive. |
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- With more than 1 million acres burned by wildfires across the USA already this year -- more than double the amount burned by this time in 2007 -- fire officials are preparing for a devastating summer. |
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