A senator is proposing a modest step to improve the efficiency of food aid donations from the United States, but the plan falls short of the Bush administration’s vision for reform. The US would spend -million over four years on pilot projects to vet aid donations that use crops purchased in developing countries.
Sudan and seven other sub-Saharan African countries are among the 10 nations in the world most vulnerable to violent internal conflict and deteriorating conditions, according to a private survey. In the third annual ”failed state” index, Sudan was judged most at risk of failure.
From the steamy to the bizarre and the downright embarrassing, the marathon grind of the 2008 White House campaign is rich with missteps, mirth and melodies. When a racy brunette in a steamy video declares a crush on Democratic hopeful Barack Obama, it’s clear that the hoopla surrounding this election is like nothing that came before.
They range from surgeons and scholars to illiterate refugees from some of the world’s worst hellholes — a dizzyingly varied stream of African immigrants to the United States. More than one million strong and growing, they are enlivening American cities and altering how the nation confronts its racial identity.
A convicted double murderer in Texas is holding a joke contest on the internet so he can use the winning entry as his last words when he is sentenced to die by lethal injection on June 26. Convicted of murdering two neighbours in 1991, Patrick Knight has spent the past 16 years on death row in Texas.
Everyone looks forward to summertime — but computers hate it. That’s because along with summertime comes a computer’s worst enemy: heat. Too much heat can cause hard drives to fail prematurely and entire systems to become slower and less stable.
Libya, citing cost and liability concerns, has informed the United States of plans to back out of a contract to destroy its mustard gas stocks as promised under a landmark 2003 agreement, United States officials said. The State Department played down the development and insisted Tripoli remains committed to getting rid of its chemical weapons agents.
A White House-backed Bill to revamp United States immigration laws stalled in the US Senate on Thursday, handing President George Bush a major legislative setback. The sharply divided Senate refused to limit debate on the fragile compromise hammered out by a bipartisan group of senators and the White House.
Former White House aide Lewis ”Scooter” Libby was sentenced on Tuesday to 30 months in prison for perjury and obstruction in a case which also put a glaring spotlight on the flawed United States case for waging war against Iraq. Libby, formerly one of the most trusted aides to US Vice-President Dick Cheney, was convicted in March for lying to federal investigators.
United States Democratic Representative William Jefferson, accused of hiding 000 of intended bribes in his freezer, was charged on Monday with soliciting bribes and paying off a Nigerian official. Jefferson (63) a member of Congress since 199, faces a maximum of 235 years in prison if convicted.
United States President George Bush said on Thursday he would urge major industrialised nations at a summit next week to join a new global framework for fighting climate change after the Kyoto Protocol lapses. ”The US will work with other nations to establish a new framework on greenhouse-gas emissions for when the Kyoto Protocol expires in 2012,” he said.
President George Bush has chosen Robert Zoellick, a former United States trade representative, to replace Paul Wolfowitz as president of the World Bank, a senior official said on Tuesday. Bush plans to announce his selection on Wednesday and expects the bank’s board to accept it, the administration official said.
The United States slapped fresh sanctions on Sudan over the Darfur conflict on Tuesday as it seeks a tough new United Nations Security Council resolution to punish Khartoum. US President George Bush expressed frustration with the Sudanese government over the plight of Darfur civilians.
The United States plans to slap fresh sanctions on Sudan over the Darfur conflict on Tuesday and seek a tough new United Nations Security Council resolution punishing Khartoum, top US officials said. China, one of Sudan’s main allies, criticised the sanctions even before they were officially announced by President George Bush.
The United States will slap fresh sanctions on Sudan over the Darfur conflict on Tuesday and seek a tough new United Nations Security Council resolution punishing Khartoum, top US officials said late on Monday. The Darfur conflict has cost at least 200Â 000 lives and forced more than two million people from their homes, according to the United Nations.
United States President George Bush on Thursday warned of heavy fighting and bloodshed to come in the next ”critical” weeks and months in Iraq, and told Iran it faces tougher sanctions over its nuclear defiance. In a White House news conference, Bush also said that US forces would pull out of Iraq if asked to do so by the Baghdad government.
The United States House of Representatives passed legislation on Tuesday to combat the criminal use of internet spyware and other scams aimed at stealing personal information from computer users. Spyware, said the Bill’s Democratic sponsor, Representative Zoe Lofgren, ”is one of the biggest threats to consumers on the internet”.
A day after Paul Wolfowitz resigned as World Bank president under an ethics cloud, the United States faced the tough task of healing rifts with Europeans and satisfying calls that his successor be picked on merit, not just nationality. Wolfowitz’s resignation on Thursday followed pressure by European opponents.
Paul Wolfowitz resigned as World Bank president, ending turmoil over his leadership, but the next battle loomed for the United States over how and if it should continue to appoint the head of the institution. Wolfowitz’s resignation on Thursday, forced by his handling of a high-paying promotion for his partner, takes effect on June 30.
A wildfire raged across the north-eastern American state of New Jersey on Wednesday, forcing thousands of people to evacuate in the latest in a series of such blazes to strike the United States this month. The fire was ignited when an F-16 jet fighter on a routine training mission dropped a flare on dry pinelands.
Jerry Falwell, the outspoken evangelical Christian leader who became a strong but divisive right-wing force in United States politics, died on Tuesday aged 73, an official at his Liberty University said. Falwell was found unconscious late on Tuesday morning in his office at the university in his hometown of Lynchburg, Virginia.
World Bank president Paul Wolfowitz implored the lender’s board on Tuesday to keep his job, promising changes in his management style in the wake of a damaging favouritism scandal. The board of executive directors is to continue deliberations on his fate on Wednesday.
United States astronomers on Tuesday presented the most solid proof yet of the existence of dark matter, a mysterious substance believed to make up more than a quarter of the universe. Astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope spotted a ring of dark matter in a galaxy cluster about five billion light years away from Earth.
Nola Ochs wanted to study history, but the 95-year-old Kansas woman made it herself when she graduated from university, becoming the world’s oldest recipient to date of a bachelor’s degree. Ochs lived the life of a farm housewife for years in Jetmore, Kansas, and began taking university correspondence courses at the age of 67.
World Bank president Paul Wolfowitz broke bank rules in arranging a hefty compensation package for his girlfriend, a situation that has caused a ”crisis in the leadership” at the institution, according to a report released by a special bank panel. Wolfowitz described the report’s findings on Monday as ”unfair and unwarranted”.
A majority of countries on the World Bank board believe Paul Wolfowitz should resign as president of the World Bank, bank board sources from rich and developing nations said on Friday. ”It is now very clear that a majority of members think Mr Wolfowitz must resign,” said one board source from a developing country.
United States President George Bush was readying his veto pen again after US lawmakers voted to fund the Iraq combat in phases of just a few months, the latest twist in the political feud over control of the unpopular war. The legislation now moves to the more closely divided Senate.
Senior United States Democrats on Wednesday urged President George Bush to help end the ”historic crisis” over Paul Wolfowitz’s leadership of the World Bank as the bank’s board delayed a decision over his fate until next week. The 24-nation board said it had agreed to delay until Friday the deadline for Wolfowitz to respond to a bank panel report.
Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II had the last laugh over United States President George Bush on Tuesday a day after the gaffe-prone Bush nearly put her age at well over 200 years. The queen hosted a return banquet for Bush and his wife Laura at the British embassy and, as she rose to give her toast, a mischievous grin came over her face.
More than 100 United States lawmakers sent China’s President Hu Jintao a letter on Wednesday warning of ”disaster” for the 2008 Olympic Games if Beijing fails to do more to stop carnage in Chinese ally Sudan’s Darfur region. The United Nations says around 200Â 000 people have died and more than two million have been made homeless since conflict flared in Darfur in 2003.
The World Bank has never fired its president in its more than 60-year history. That could change this week. The bank’s board of shareholder nations will meet as soon as Tuesday, possibly followed by a second meeting, to decide whether Paul Wolfowitz will be forced out or given the chance to negotiate his departure.
United States President George Bush welcomed Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II and her husband to the White House on Monday, in what will become the first formal British royal visit with a US leader in 16 years. The monarch and Prince Philip were to be greeted on the south lawn of the White House with a 21-gun salute.