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/ 19 December 2006
Violent attacks in Iraq have soared to the highest level on record, the Pentagon said in a quarterly report, describing Moqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army militia as the single largest threat to stability. The report, released just hours after former CIA chief Robert Gates was sworn in on Monday as the new defence secretary, said there was an average of 959 attacks per week between August 12 and November 10.
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/ 18 December 2006
Former CIA director Robert Gates was officially sworn in as United States secretary of defence on Monday, replacing embattled Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld, who was under fire for his handling of the Iraq war. Gates was sworn in at 7.03am local time by White House Chief of Staff Joshua Bolten in the chief of staff’s office, a White House spokesperson said.
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/ 14 December 2006
United States President George Bush says the enemy in Iraq is ”far from being defeated”, but he vows not to be rushed into adjusting his strategy and is giving little indication that he intends to veer sharply from the direction his war policies have taken. ”We’re not going to give up,” Bush said at the Pentagon on Wednesday.
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/ 13 December 2006
The global economy has reached a potentially dangerous ”turning point” with the United States at risk of recession if the housing market crashes, the World Bank warned on Wednesday. In a report called Global Economic Prospects, the bank also said globalisation is an unprecedented opportunity for developing nations.
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/ 13 December 2006
The United States Federal Reserve kept interest rates unchanged on Tuesday for the fourth straight time as worries about inflation continued to trump concerns about the slowing economy. At its final meeting of 2006, the central bank left its target for the federal funds rate at 5,25%.
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/ 13 December 2006
Jeane J Kirkpatrick, a political science professor whose support for Ronald Reagan conservatism catapulted her into the post of United States ambassador to the United Nations, has died at 80. She was the first woman to hold the post. Initially a liberal Democrat, Kirkpatrick championed human rights, opposed Soviet Union communism and supported Israel.
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/ 11 December 2006
United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan took a sharp farewell swipe at United States foreign policy on Monday, implying America had ditched core principles in its battle against global terrorism. In a striking speech, Annan also implied Bush administration policies had harmed his country’s reputation as a global human rights leader.
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/ 9 December 2006
Republican leaders in the United States Congress broke no rules but were negligent in their handling of a scandal involving a fellow lawmaker’s advances toward male aides, an ethics committee said. The House of Representatives’ ethics committee issued its findings on Friday after an investigation into the SMS sex scandal surrounding Republican Mark Foley.
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/ 9 December 2006
President George Bush and South African President Thabo Mbeki are asking for a stronger international push to make Sudan let the United Nations strengthen a peacekeeping force in the that country’s Darfur region. Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir has refused to allow the dispatch of thousands of UN troops to Darfur to boost 7 000 African peacekeepers already there.
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/ 7 December 2006
Most internet users already know it: spam is on the rise again as the senders of unwanted e-mail advertisements find new ways to circumvent filtering systems. A study released last month by the security firm Postini found that unwanted messages now account for 91% of all e-mail, and over the past 12 months the daily volume of spam rose by 120%.
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/ 6 December 2006
United States troops should begin withdrawing from combat and Washington should launch a diplomatic and political push to halt a ”grave and deteriorating” crisis in Iraq, a high-level panel studying the war said on Wednesday. US President George Bush said he would take the highly anticipated report ”very seriously”.
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/ 6 December 2006
An influential bipartisan panel is expected to recommend on Wednesday that United States forces withdraw from combat over the next year and focus on training Iraqis, offering President George Bush the outlines of an exit strategy from the unpopular war.
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/ 5 December 2006
United States defence secretary nominee Robert Gates admitted on Tuesday the US is not winning the war in Iraq, and said he was open to all options to stop the conflict spiralling into regional chaos. Gates also cautioned against any attack on Iran expect as an ”absolute last resort” and also came out against a strike on Syria.
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/ 2 December 2006
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About 1,2-million people in countries hard hit by HIV/Aids are receiving life-extending drugs thanks to two major United States and international funds, double from a year ago, but many millions more need help, the funds said on Friday. The figures were announced on World Aids Day as activists around the world turned a spotlight on the scourge of Aids and pleaded for more action
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/ 2 December 2006
The United States Supreme Court stepped into a dispute over free speech rights on Friday involving a suspended high school student and his banner that proclaimed ”Bong Hits 4 Jesus”. Justices agreed to hear the appeal by the Juneau, Alaska, school board and principal Deborah Morse of a lower court ruling that allowed the student’s civil rights lawsuit to proceed.
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/ 29 November 2006
The prestigious United States journal Science will tighten safeguards to
prevent a repeat of the 2005 episode when it was forced to retract fraudulent stem-cell research by a South Korean scientist, the magazine’s editor said. Editor Donald Kennedy said on Tuesday that he accepted the conclusions of a panel looking into the fiasco and vowed to elaborate new rules to prevent such fraud.
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/ 29 November 2006
The Central African Republic this week cleared its arrears to the World Bank, thanks to a loan by the French government and a grant by the World Bank, that will restore its ties with international donors, a senior bank official said on Tuesday. The move comes as the former French colony tries to resurrect ties with the international community after years of political and economic instability.
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/ 29 November 2006
Over White House objections, the New York Times and other United States news outlets have adopted the term ”civil war” for the fighting in Iraq, reflecting a growing consensus that sectarian violence has engulfed the country. After NBC News’s widely publicised decision on Monday to brand the conflict a civil war, several prominent newspapers, including the Los Angeles Times, pointed to their use of the phrase.
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/ 27 November 2006
Humpback whales have a type of brain cell seen only in humans, the great apes, and other cetaceans such as dolphins, researchers reported on Monday. This might mean such whales are more intelligent than they have been given credit for, and suggests the basis for complex brains either evolved more than once, or have gone unused by most species of animals.
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/ 23 November 2006
The battle of the bulge has become a new rallying cry for several United States politicians who have made their personal fight against obesity central to their politics. At a time of no-holds-barred negative campaigning, analysts said the public often is looking for a positive, feel-good political message.
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/ 23 November 2006
A Russian cosmonaut-turned-golfer took his game out of this world on Wednesday, knocking a ball from the International Space Station in a publicity stunt for a Canadian golf club manufacturer. Aired live on Nasa television, Mikhail Tyurin whacked the ball during a space walk outside the station after struggling to get into position with the help of a United States astronaut.
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/ 21 November 2006
Almost two-thirds of South African black women entrepreneurs — more than one million business owners overall — have no access to credit or loans and represent a lucrative new market, a World Bank study found on Tuesday. About 38% of black South African women are formally banked compared with 44% of black men.
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/ 21 November 2006
Scientists have found a way to use the cotton plant, long a source of fibre for clothing but inedible by humans, to feed potentially half a billion people a year. Plant biotechnologist Keerti Rathore and colleagues reported on Monday they have genetically altered the plant to reduce the levels of the toxic chemical gossypol.
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/ 18 November 2006
The United States federal government gave the beauty industry a long-sought push-up late on Friday as it lifted a 14-year-old ban on women’s silicone breast implants. In an official announcement, the Food and Drug Administration said it had granted permission to two California companies to resume marketing their silicone-gel breast implants to women aged 22 and older.
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/ 17 November 2006
Top United States officials on Friday mourned the death of Nobel prize-winning economist Milton Friedman, whose ideas helped power a conservative policy revolution in the 1980s. Friedman died of heart failure on Thursday at the age of 94 in San Francisco, California, near Stanford University where he taught most recently, friends and associates said.
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/ 16 November 2006
"Jagshemash!!!" Kazakhstan is belatedly turning the joke on Borat, using the blundering fictional reporter as an unlikely prop to "make benefit" its tourism industry. Embracing the maxim "if you can’t beat them, join them", a Kazakhstan-based tour company has pounced on Borat’s conquest of Hollywood to lure Americans keen to find out what the country is really like.
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/ 13 November 2006
First there was On Bullshit, a slim philosophical treatise whose phenomenal success took the publishing industry by surprise. And now there is On Truth, a sequel to On Bullshit that its author, Princeton University philosophy professor Harry Frankfurt, says is meant to plug an analytical gap in his first book.
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/ 13 November 2006
Days before the election George W Bush told journalists that there was no way Donald Rumsfeld would leave his job during the president’s administration. But, as Rumsfeld famously once observed, ”Stuff happens”. What happened was a sudden shift in the terms of trade in American politics; Rumsfeld became too heavy a liability for a president struggling to salvage a legacy.
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/ 10 November 2006
Democrats completed their sweep to power in the United States Congress on Thursday, winning the last Senate seat and moving quickly from bitter campaign rhetoric to pledges to try to find common ground with President George Bush. Faced with a new political landscape, Bush signalled a more conciliatory approach on Iraq.
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/ 10 November 2006
A small but increasingly vocal group of United States parents and educators is pushing for homework to be abolished for younger children on grounds that it serves no purpose. According to two new books on the subject, American children are being robbed of time to enjoy hobbies, sports and even family time because of too much homework.
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/ 9 November 2006
Hamstrung by the collapse of his Republican majority in Congress, President George Bush faced the humbling task on Thursday of reaching across party lines to Democrats swept to power by voter anger over his Iraq policy. Bush’s fence-mending with Democratic leaders follow word that they have won enough seats to take control of the United States Senate.
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/ 8 November 2006
United States Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld resigned on Wednesday, paying the price for the Democrat surge to power in Congress driven by a wave of public anger over the Iraq war. President George Bush announced the veteran power broker’s departure, sending shockwaves though Washington.