Aug
29
White House hopeful Barack Obama says the U.S is facing one of its periodic defining moments as he vowed to mend the economy and restore the nation’s moral leadership.
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In his acceptance speech at Denver he said we meet at one of those defining moments when our nation is at war, our economy is in turmoil, and the American promise has been threatened once more.
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Aug
29
Russia says the U.S is provoking the conflict in Georgia for domestic election purposes.
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In an interview with CNN, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said the U.S citizens were in the area during the conflict over south Ossetia and were taking direct orders from their leaders. At the United Nations, Russia and Georgia traded harsh words during an open Security Council meeting.The council also refused to approve a request from representatives of two Georgian breakaway regions, which Russia has recognized as independent states, to address the council.Speaking in Washington, white house spokesperson said the U.S may scrap a civil nuclear pact with Moscow and consider sanctions as punishment for its military action in Georgia.She said the U.S is consulting in its international partners, such as France, Germany and all the other NATO countries in this connection. In Tbilisi, the Georgian parliament approved a resolution calling on the government to cut diplomatic ties with Russia. It called on the government of President Mikheil Saakashvili to declare Russian military forces in Georgia illegal and occupying forces.
Aug
29
Prime Minister Syed Yousuf Raza Gilani says a strategy is being evolved to improve health care system in the country.
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Addressing a function organized by Pakistan pharmaceutical manufacturers association in Lahore he emphasized to focus on local raw material to provide drugs to the people on affordable rates. The Prime Minister stressed the need for taking steps to fight hepatitis as eighteen percent population of the country is suffering from this disease.
Aug
27
The U.S. secretary of state Condoleezza Rice says Israel’s settlement building in the West Bank is not conducive to creating an environment for negotiations.
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Rice reiterated the U.S. position in separate talks with Israeli foreign minister Tzipi Livni and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. She said anything that undermines confidence between the parties ought to be avoided. Rice also discussed with Abbas for the first time new ideas that could move peace talks forward. Her visit coincided with the release of a report by an Israeli watchdog group saying construction of housing for Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank had nearly doubled since last year.
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Aug
6
The government says it is committed to bringing back all its nationals detained abroad and it will continue to make efforts in this respect.
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This was stated by a foreign office spokesman in Islamabad while commenting on Dr. Aafia Siddiqui’s detention. He said that Pakistan embassy in Washington is seeking consular access to Dr. Aafia Siddiqui who was taken in u.s. Custody from afghan authorities on July 18 in afghan city of Ghazni and was transferred to U.S. Meanwhile, Dr. Aafia Siddiqui who is accused of links with Al-Qaeda appeared in a New York court on charges of attempting to kill U.S. agents and military officers while in afghan custody last month.
Jul
21
BOSTON - An activist group hoping to pressure the Roman Catholic church into dropping its long-standing prohibition barring women from the priesthood says it ordained three women on Sunday.
Church officials did not recognize the ordination, and the Vatican has previously warned that women taking part in ordination ceremonies will be excommunicated.
The group known as Roman Catholic Womenpriests held the ceremony at the Church of the Covenant, a Protestant Church in Boston.
The group said the three women - Gloria Carpeneto of Baltimore, Judy Lee of Fort Myers, Fla., and Gabriella Velardi Ward of New York City - are responding to a heartfelt call to serve the church as priests.
A fourth woman, Mary Ann McCarthy Schoettly of Newton, N.J., was ordained as a deacon, the group said.
The Archdiocese of Boston issued a statement decrying the ceremony.
“Catholics who attempt to confer a sacred order on a woman, and the women who attempt to receive a sacred order, are by their own actions separating themselves from the church,” the archdiocese said.
The group says the women who are ordained remain loyal members of the church and will act as priests whether they are excommunicated or not.
Sunday’s ordination ceremony was performed by two women the group describes as bishops - Ida Raming of Struttgart, Germany, and Dana Reynolds from California.
The ceremony “is not in compliance with their man-made rules, but it’s certainly in compliance with the Roman Catholic ordination rituals because our bishops were ordained by all-male Roman Catholic bishops who are in good standing with the church,” as provided by the church’s ordination rituals, said Bridget Mary Meehan, the group’s spokeswoman.
The group, which was formed in 2002, has conducted similar ceremonies in the U.S. and other parts of the world.
In March, the archbishop of St. Louis excommunicated three women - two Americans and a South African who were part of the Womenpriests movement - for participating in a woman’s ordination.
Pope Benedict XVI, like his predecessor, Pope John Paul II, has rebuffed calls to change traditional church teachings on the requirement that priests be male.
Catholics who are excommunicated cannot receive sacraments. The penalty can be lifted if those who have been punished are sincerely repentant.
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Jul
18
San Francisco most walkable U.S. city, website says
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NEW YORK (Reuters) - San Francisco, New York and Boston are the United States’ most walkable cities, according to new rankings from a website that evaluates how easy it is to live in the nation’s cities and neighborhoods without a car.
Walkscore.com, which uses an algorithm to identify those neighborhoods boasting the most amenities per person, published its ranking on Thursday and deemed San Francisco the most walkable city, with a “Walk Score” of 86 out of 100.
The ultimate goal is to see the site’s scores included in property listings, said Mike Mathieu, founder of the company that created the site’s software.
“What we see is someone calling up a broker and saying ‘I want three bedrooms, two baths, a walkability score of 85, what’ve you got?”‘ Mathieu said.
Type an address, and the site generates a map showing the nearby grocery stores, cafes, movie theaters, schools and parks.
New York received a score of 83, Boston a score of 79.
Scores greater than 70 indicate neighborhoods where it’s possible to get by without owning a car, while scores greater than 90 qualify communities as a “Walker’s Paradise.”
(Reporting by Helen Chernikoff)
Jul
16
NATO says it had abandoned an afghan outpost days after it was stormed by militants who killed nine US soldiers.
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Afghan officials said the soldiers pulled out of the outpost in Wanat village in northeastern Kunar province on Tuesday. NATO spokesman in Afghanistan, confirmed that they have vacated the combat outpost at Wanat saying all these kinds of outposts are temporary. Fifteen u.s. and four afghan soldiers were wounded in Sunday’s fighting, in which militants breached the outpost.
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Jun
3
WASHINGTON - Hillary Rodham Clinton told colleagues Tuesday she would consider joining Barack Obama as his running mate, and advisers said she was withholding a formal departure from the race partly to use her remaining leverage to press for a spot on the ticket.
On a conference call with other New York lawmakers, Clinton, a New York senator, said she was willing to become Obama’s vice presidential nominee if it would help Democrats win the White House, according to several participants in the call.
Clinton’s remarks came in response to a question from Democratic Rep. Nydia Velazquez, who said she believed the best way for Obama to win key voting blocs, including Hispanics, would be for him to choose Clinton as his running mate.
“I am open to it,” Clinton replied, if it would help the party’s prospects in November. Her direct quote was described by two lawmakers who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak for Clinton.
Clinton also told colleagues the delegate math was not there for her to overtake Obama, but that she wanted to take time to determine how to leave the race in a way that would best help Democrats.
“I deserve some time to get this right,” she said, even as the other lawmakers forcefully argued for her to press Obama to choose her as his running mate.
Joseph Crowley, a Queens Democrat who participated in the call, said her answer “left open the possibility that she would do anything that she can to contribute toward a Democratic victory in November. There was no hedging on that. Whatever she can do to contribute, she was willing to do.”
Another person on the call, Rep. Jose Serrano of New York City, said her answer was “just what I was hoping to hear. … Of course she was interested in being president, but she’s just as interested in making sure Democrats get elected in November.”
Rep. Charles Rangel, a devoted booster of Clinton who helped pave the way for her successful Senate campaign, said he spoke to her Tuesday and got much the same answer.
“She’s run a great campaign and even though she’ll be a great senator, she has a lot of followers that obviously Obama doesn’t have, and clearly the numbers are against her and so I think they bring all parts of the Democratic Party together and then some,” Rangel said.
Aides to the Illinois senator said he and Clinton had not spoken about the prospects of her joining the ticket.
Obama effectively sewed up the 2,118 delegates needed to win the nomination Tuesday, based on a tally of pledged delegates, superdelegates who have declared their preference, and another 18 superdelegates who have confirmed their intentions to The Associated Press. It also included five delegates Obama was guaranteed as long as he gained 15 percent of the vote in South Dakota and Montana later in the day.
Word of Clinton’s vice presidential musings came as she prepared to deliver a televised address to supporters on the final night of the epic primary season. She was working out final details of the speech at her Chappaqua, N.Y., home with her husband, former President Bill Clinton, their daughter Chelsea, and close aides.
Earlier, on NBC’s “Today Show,” Clinton campaign chairman Terry McAuliffe said that once Obama gets the majority of convention delegates, “I think Hillary Clinton will congratulate him and call him the nominee.”
Clinton will pledge to continue to speak out on issues like health care. But for all intents and purposes, two senior officials said, her campaign is over.
Most campaign staff will be let go and will be paid through June 15, said the officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to divulge her plans.
The advisers said Clinton has made a strategic decision to not formally end her campaign, giving her leverage to negotiate with Obama on various matters including a possible vice presidential nomination for her. She also wants to press him on issues he should focus on in the fall, such as health care.
Universal health care, Clinton’s signature issue as first lady in the 1990s, was a point of dispute between Obama and the New York senator during their epic nomination fight.
Other names have been floated as possible running mates for Obama, including New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards, and governors including Janet Napolitano of Arizona, Kathleen Sebelius of Kansas and Tim Kaine of Virginia. Also mentioned are foreign policy experts including former Georgia Sen. Sam Nunn, Connecticut Sen. Chris Dodd and Delaware Sen. Joe Biden, and other senators such as Missouri’s Claire McCaskill and Virginia’s Jim Webb.
Obama could also look outside the party to people such as anti-war Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel of Nebraska or independent New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg. Or he could look to one of his prominent supporters such as former Sen. Tom Daschle of South Dakota or try to bring on a Clinton supporter, such as Indiana’s Sen. Evan Bayh or retired Gen. Wesley Clark
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May
8
US envoy says toll from Myanmar cyclone might reach 100,000
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YANGON, Myanmar - Hungry people swarmed the few open shops and fistfights broke out over food and water in Myanmar’s swamped Irrawaddy delta Wednesday as a top U.S. diplomat warned that the death toll from a devastating cyclone could top 100,000.
The minutes of a U.N. aid meeting obtained by The Associated Press, meanwhile, revealed the military junta’s visa restrictions were hampering international relief efforts.
Only a handful of U.N. aid workers had been let into the impoverished Southeast Asian country, which the government has kept isolated for five decades to maintain its iron-fisted control. The U.S. and other countries rushed supplies to the region, but most of it was being held outside Myanmar while awaiting the junta’s permission to deliver it.
Entire villages in the Irrawaddy delta were still submerged from Saturday’s storm, and bloated corpses could be seen stuck in the mangroves. Some survivors stripped clothes off the dead. People wailed as they described the horror of the torrent swept ashore by the cyclone.
“I don’t know what happened to my wife and young children,” said Phan Maung, 55, who held onto a coconut tree until the water level dropped. By then his family was gone.
A spokesman for the U.N. Children’s Fund said its staff in Myanmar reported seeing many people huddled in rude shelters and children who had lost their parents.
“There’s widespread devastation. Buildings and health centers are flattened and bloated dead animals are floating around, which is an alarm for spreading disease. These are massive and horrific scenes,” Patrick McCormick said at UNICEF offices in New York.
Myanmar’s state media said Cyclone Nargis killed at least 22,980 people and left 42,119 missing.
American diplomat Shari Villarosa, who heads the U.S. Embassy in Yangon, said the number of dead could eventually exceed 100,000 because safe food and water were scarce and unsanitary conditions widespread.
The situation is “increasingly horrendous,” she said in a telephone call to reporters. “There is a very real risk of disease outbreaks.”
Myanmar’s state television Thursday showed Prime Minister Lt. Gen. Thein Sein distributing food packages to the sick and injured in the delta and soldiers dropping food over villages. The date of the distributions was not given.
A few shops reopened Wednesday in the Irrawaddy delta, but they were quickly overwhelmed by desperate people, said Paul Risley, a spokesman for the U.N. World Food Program in Bangkok, Thailand, quoting his agency’s workers in the area.
“Fistfights are breaking out,” he said.
A Yangon resident who returned to the city from the delta area said people were drinking coconut water because there was no safe drinking water. He said many people were on boats using blankets as sails.
Local aid groups distributed rice porridge, which people collected in dirty plastic shopping bags, he said. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he feared getting into trouble with authorities for talking to a foreign news agency.
U.N. officials estimated some 1 million people had been left homeless in Myanmar, which also is known as Burma.
Some aid workers said heavily flooded areas were accessible only by boat, with helicopters unable to find dry spots for landing relief supplies.
“Basically the entire lower delta region is under water,” said Richard Horsey, the Thailand-based spokesman for the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Aid.
“Teams are talking about bodies floating around in the water,” he said. This is “a major, major disaster we’re dealing with.”
International assistance began trickling in Wednesday with the first shipments of medicine, clothing and food. But the junta, which normally restricts access by foreign officials and groups, was slow to give permission for workers to enter.
“Visas are still a problem. It is not clear when it will be sorted out,” said the minutes of a meeting of the U.N. task force coordinating relief for Myanmar in Bangkok.
McCormick, the UNICEF spokesman, said the agency had 130 people in Myanmar but needed to get more in.
“We’re hopeful they will start fast-tracking visas for humanitarian personnel,” he said. “The government clearly weren’t prepared and needs to step up to the plate. We can’t work in a vacuum, and we need the host government to work with us and to eventually take over.”
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon urged the junta to speed the arrival of aid workers and relief supplies “in every way possible.”
As they wrangled with Myanmar officials over visas, aid groups struggled to deliver supplies.
“Most urgent need is food and water,” said Andrew Kirkwood, head of Save the Children in Yangon. “Many people are getting sick. The whole place is under salt water and there is nothing to drink. They can’t use tablets to purify salt water.”
State television said Myanmar would accept aid from any country. It also said planes flew in Wednesday with tents from Japan, medicine and clothing from Bangladesh and India, packets of noodles from Thailand and dried bacon from China.
The first U.N. flights, carrying 45 metric tons of high energy biscuits, were due to arrive early Thursday.
Some aid workers told the AP that the government wanted emergency supplies to be distributed by relief workers already in place, rather than through foreign staff brought into Myanmar.
President Bush said the U.S. was ready to deliver aid and was prepared to use Navy ships and aircraft to help search for the dead and missing. But it wasn’t known if the junta, which regularly accuses Washington of trying to subvert its rule, would accept an American military operation in its territory.
Three Navy warships participating in an exercise in the Gulf of Thailand were standing by. A U.S. Air Force C-130 cargo plane also landed in Thailand and another was on the way, Air Force spokeswoman Megan Orton said at the Pentagon.
In Yangon, many angry residents complained that the military regime had given vague and incorrect information about the approaching storm and provided no instructions on how to cope when it struck.
Officials in India said they had warned Myanmar about the cyclone two days before it roared into the low-lying Irrawaddy delta. B.P. Yadav, spokesman for the Indian Meteorological Department, said the agency spotted the developing storm on April 28 and gave regular updates to all countries in its path.
Myanmar told the World Meteorological Organization in Geneva that it warned people in newspapers, television and radio broadcasts of the impending storm, said Dieter Schiessl, director of the WMO’s disaster risk reduction unit.
Jim Andrews, a senior meteorologist at AccuWeather, said satellite photos showed flooding of similar magnitude to that of Hurricane Katrina. “It’s a similar kind of land to New Orleans … an intricate network of tidal creeks and openings that allow easy access for a powerful storm surge to penetrate right into populated land,” he said.
State television quoted a government official, Gen. Tha Aye, as reassuring people the situation was “returning to normal.”
But residents of Yangon faced doubled prices for rice, charcoal, bottled water and cooking oil.
At a suburban market, a fishmonger shouted to shoppers: “Come, come the fish is very fresh.” But an angry woman snapped: “Even if the fish is fresh, I have no water to cook it!”
Most residents of Yangon rely on wells with electric pumps for water, and power had been restored to only a small part of the city.
The cyclone came a week before a referendum on a proposed constitution backed by the junta. State radio said Saturday’s vote would be delayed in areas affected by the storm, but balloting would proceed elsewhere.
A top U.S. envoy to Southeast Asia said the junta should be focusing on helping cyclone victims.
“It’s a huge crisis and it just seems odd to me that the government would go ahead with the referendum in this circumstance,” said Scot Marciel, the U.S. ambassador to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.
This week, first lady Laura Bush called the referendum a sham, and she also criticized the junta’s handling of the storm. “We know already that they are very inept,” she said.
The comments drew rebukes even from some Myanmar exiles, who normally are strongly critical of the ruling generals.
Aye Chan Naing, editor of the Democratic Voice of Burma, a Myanmar opposition media operation based in Norway, said it wasn’t the right time to be chastising the junta.
“Everybody knows what kind of regime they are, so there is no question about that. The question right now is how to get the aid into the country,” he said. “So the best way is to use a diplomatic way and to have an open dialogue and keep talking until they agree.”
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