United States online retail sales are on a strong growth track, and will probably hit -billion by 2010, a technology research firm said on Wednesday. Forrester Research pegged US online sales at about -billion this year, and sees a 14% annual growth rate that would bring the internet sector to about 12% of all US retail sales, from less than two percent currently.
Lockheed Martin said on Tuesday it won a contract worth up to seven billion dollars over 20 years to develop the next-generation spy plane for the United States army. The defence and aerospace giant said the contract awarded on Tuesday is for -million to design and develop the aerial common sensor, an airborne intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance and target-identification system.
Much of the intelligence that prompted United States authorities to raise alerts around major financial institutions indicated that al-Qaeda studied the sites as potential targets before the September 11, 2001 attacks, The Washington Post said on Tuesday.
We are a nation in danger
United States Treasury Secretary John Snow, trying to bolster confidence on Wall Street and Main Street amid a new warning about possible terrorist strikes, said on Monday in a statement that the country’s financial system continues to operate normally, a testimony to its ”resiliency and strength”.
A national commission probing the September 11 attacks on Thursday found ”failures of imagination, policy, capabilities and management” by the United States government and recommended a sweeping overhaul of intelligence services. The report is sure to fuel the politically charged debate raging over responsibility for the attacks.
About 44-million United States workers will be telecommuting, or working from home at least on a part-time basis this year, according to a survey released this week. The survey by In-Stat/MDR released on Monday projects the number of telecommuters is expected to grow by 2008 to 51-million, with 14-million working full-time at home.
The United States warned on Tuesday of a severe food shortage in Zimbabwe, rejecting President Robert Mugabe’s boast of a relatively good agricultural season stemming from a so-called economic revival. US State Department spokesperson Richard Boucher charged that Mugabe’s government was trying to curtail donor activity and engagement in Zimbabwe.
There comes a time in many United States presidential elections when things begin to get really tough. And then there is only one thing for it — the candidates bring out their children. Democrats John Kerry and John Edwards can fill whole podiums with their offspring. Now, the White House has struck back with a double whammy — the Bush twins.
The United States Congress hopes that ,6-million will create enough incentive for drug companies to create enough vaccines and antidotes to protect Americans from chemical and biological attacks. The program, called Project BioShield, was passed on Wednesday and President George Bush’s endorsement is guaranteed.
A controversial constitutional amendment banning homosexual marriage is very likely to be defeated in the United States Senate on Wednesday, forcing Republicans to circle their wagons and hope the political fall-out will not affect the upcoming presidential election. Republicans were hoping for a boost among conservative voters.
The principal claims justifying the invasion of Iraq — that Saddam Hussein had biological and chemical weapons and was developing nuclear weapons — were fundamentally wrong and the result of a ”global intelligence failure”, a US Senate investigation has concluded.
The oil boom in Central and West Africa could result in prosperity or disaster in the region, depending on how wisely the revenues are spent, according to a study released on Wednesday. The report by the Centre for Strategic and International Studies said the growing oil exports of Nigeria and Angola will significantly enhance the global position of the two countries.
The United States warned its citizens on Friday of the risk of travel to crisis-ridden Zimbabwe. ”Zimbabwe continues to be in the midst of political, economic and humanitarian crises with serious implications for the security situation in the country,” the US State Department said in a travel warning.
Microsoft said on Thursday it is revamping its internet search operation and preparing to launch its own search engine later this year to compete directly with Google and Yahoo. The immediate change will be a ”cleaner look” for its MSN Search page that separates paid and unpaid search results and provides direct links to Microsoft’s encyclopedia service.
The United States Supreme Court ruled on Tuesday that a law meant to punish pornographers who peddle dirty pictures to web-surfing kids is probably an unconstitutional muzzle on free speech. The high court divided five to four over a law passed in 1998 and now backed by the administration of President George Bush.
The United States resumed direct diplomatic ties with Libya on Monday after a 24-year break, even as the Bush administration pursued reports that Moammar Gadaffi had taken part in a plot to assassinate Saudi Arabia’s crown prince. President George Bush said recenlty that US investigators were looking into reports of such a plot.
Vice president Dick Cheney brought a long-running feud with leading Democrats over his former company, Halliburton, to a foul-mouthed climax on the floor of the Senate. Cheney told Vermont’s senator, Patrick Leahy to ”fuck yourself”, after he apparently approached George Bush’s number two for a chat.
The beheading of US hostage Paul Johnson highlights once again the tense relationship between the United States and Saudi Arabia, and revives a sometimes bitter debate whether the Saudis are doing enough to rein in violent Islamic factions.
The New York Times on Thursday called on President George Bush to apologise to the American people for going to war on Iraq after an official probe into the September 11 attacks found no evidence linking Iraq and al-Qaeda. ”Now President Bush should apologise to the American people, who were led to believe something different,” the Times editorial said.
The United States House of Representatives voted to extend a trade pact that offers duty-free treatment on some goods and other trade benefits to the poorer countries of sub-Saharan Africa. The legislation, approved by voice vote on Monday, would prolong the life of the African Growth and Opportunity Act, or AGOA, by seven years, to 2015.
South African President Thabo Mbeki said United States assistance to Africa is too focused on individual countries and should be directed in large measure toward the continent as a whole. Mbeki was making a stopover in Washington on Wednesday before heading to the Group of Eight summit at Sea Island, Georgia.
Ahead of talks with G8 leaders, South African President Thabo Mbeki called on Wednesday for greater urgency in resolving two of the most pressing crises in the African continent — in Zimbabwe and Sudan. He lamented that formal talks between Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe and opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai had not started despite prolonged informal negotiations.
United States Secretary of State Colin Powell on Sunday warned against what he described as a ”bantustan” solution of the Palestinian problem, insisting that the West Bank portion of a future Palestinian state should be contiguous. ”In the West Bank, you’ve got to have a coherent, contiguous land, which, joined with Gaza, would constitute the state of Palestine,” Powell told CNN television from France.
Ronald Reagan, the cheerful crusader who devoted his presidency to winning the Cold War, trying to scale back government and making people believe it was ”morning again in America,” died on Saturday after a long struggle with Alzheimer’s disease, a family friend said. He was 93.
Reagan’s ‘ugly crime’
Leaders pay homage to Reagan
United States employers added almost a quarter of a million jobs in May, extending a nine-month hiring spree and accommodating enough job seekers to hold the unemployment rate steady at 5,6% of the labour force. Payrolls swelled by almost one million in the past three months alone, the US Department of Labour said on Friday.
Smoking harms nearly every organ in the body and causes far more diseases than once believed, including cataracts, pneumonia, leukaemia, and cancer of the kidneys, pancreas, stomach and cervix, the top United States health official said on Thursday.
The White House warned on Wednesday that the United States has entered a ”serious threat period” with regard to possible terrorist attacks that might target high-profile events until January 2005. ”Our law enforcement and Homeland Security officials are acting 24-7 to address the threats we face here at home,” said a spokesperson.
The target of two car bombs that exploded on Wednesday in Karachi, killing at least one person and wounding 17, was a privately run English-language school and not the nearby residence of the United States consul general in the southern Pakistani port city, a US State Department official said.
<li><a class=’standardtextsmall’ href="http://www.mg.co.za/Content/l3.asp?ao=66939">Car bombs explode in Karachi</a>
<li><a class=’standardtextsmall’ href="http://www.mg.co.za/Content/l3.asp?ao=66939">US enters ‘serious threat period'</a>
More storms battered the upper central United States late on Saturday, a day after a tornado all but wiped an Iowa town off the map. Severe storms and funnel clouds were reported on Saturday night in a band across Nebraska, Iowa, northern Illinois and other states across the Great Plains and Midwest regions.
International inspectors have discovered evidence that North Korea secretly provided Libya with nearly two tons of uranium in early 2001, The New York Times reported on Sunday. The newspaper said that if confirmed, the transaction would be the first known case in which the North Korean government has sold a key ingredient for manufacturing atomic weapons to another country.
Gaddafi walks out of Arab summit
Rebels and government forces may be talking peace in Sudan’s civil war, but minority ethnic groups are still being attacked and more than one million people have been displaced, United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees Ruud Lubbers said on Tuesday.
The first state-sanctioned gay marriages in Massachusetts were set to begin on Monday after the United States Supreme Court refused to step in and block the weddings. The high court’s decision on Friday was the last chance for gay marriage opponents to block the unions in the East Coast US state.