We’re two years away from it, but that is not stopping Republican hopeful Chuck DeVore from launching an attack ad on Senator Barbara Boxer in the race for the California Senate seat. The ad is a 90 second spot and thankfully Internet-only.
Mr. DeVore is currently a member of the California Assembly representing coastal Orange County. He’s written a novel about a Chinese invasion of Taiwan which tells you his mindset, or lack of one. But in California, he is known for one issue, an unrelenting advocacy of nuclear power. He’s authored four bills on nuclear power, none of which have made it out of committee. (more…)
War has raged through the Democratic Republic of Congo for more than a decade — it has been called the deadliest conflict since World War II. The United Nations estimates that 200,000 women and girls have been raped in that time, some victims as young as three years old. Both the Congolese army and rebel groups have condoned rape as a weapon of war.
Armed groups use rape to tear apart families, spread disease and weaken communities. Women are often victimized doubly — first by their rapists and secondly by spouses or family members who then find it dishonorable or socially unacceptable to associate with them.
Many journalists and activists have produced harrowing accounts of the epidemic of sexual violence in Congo. But as intense violence destabilizes North Kivu once again, we thought it was important to reiterate that the pervasiveness of rape is directly linked to the war.
WAR-RELATED rape cases in the Democratic Republic of Congo are being reported at the rate of 40 per day and rebels are forcing eight-year-old boys to become soldiers, a press conference was told yesterday.
Called to draw attention to the systematic rape of women as a weapon of war in the Congo, it was told by Fr Eoin Cassidy, of the Catholic Bishops Irish Commission for Justice and Social Affairs (ICJSA), of a statement last month from the Congolese bishops.
They said they were “living through a genuine human tragedy that, as a silent genocide, is being carried out under everyone’s eyes”.
Referring to the lack of any response by 17,000 UN troops in the Congo to this, the bishops said “large-scale massacres of the civil population, the selective extermination of young people, the systematic violations carried out as a weapon of war” were taking place “under the impassive gaze of those who have received the mandate to maintain peace and protect the civil population”.
Fr Cassidy called on the Irish Government to exert pressure on the Congo’s former colonial masters in the EU “who have a responsibility for the legacy there”, to intervene.
Retail prices fell at a record clip in November falling 1.7%. The fall was largely driven by a decline in energy prices and by retailers offering huge discounts in an effort to curtail rising inventory levels. It was the second straight month of record declines in the seasonally adjusted data consumer price index (CPI) since 1947, when the Labor Department began recording the figures. The November headline plunge in CPI far exceeded analysts’ consensus forecast of a drop of 1.3%. Core CPI, excluding energy and food prices, remained unchanged from October.
The accelerating decline in prices stoked fresh concerns about deflation — the pernicious downward spiral of falling prices and weakening growth that is difficult to counter. Assets are simply overvalued and will drift downwards until they find a sustainable bottom. In laymen’s term, supply is outstripping demand.
Consumer prices fell at the fastest rate on record in November while home construction plunged nearly 20 percent in a single month, skidding to its lowest levels in 50 years, according to new government data that shows further weakness in the ailing economy.
The reports on Tuesday morning heightened investors’ expectations that the Federal Reserve would cut its key overnight interest rate from 1 percent later in the day. On Tuesday afternoon, the Fed’s Open Market Committee exceeding Wall Street’s expectations, cutting its target range for the federal funds rate to zero to a quarter of a percentage point.
The Labor Department reported Tuesday morning that consumer prices fell for the second consecutive month, and at the fastest rate since the government began keeping track in 1947.
Prices at cash registers and gas pumps across the country were a seasonally adjusted 1.7 percent lower in November from the month before, led downward by tumbling energy prices, which fell 17 percent over one month as the demand for gasoline and oil eclipsed.
The core rate of inflation, excluding volatile food and energy prices, was flat for the month.
The price of gasoline plunged 29.5 percent while the cost of fuel oil fell 13.6 percent. Food and beverage prices crept up 0.2 percent in November, their slowest rate of growth all year, while clothing prices were up 0.3 percent.
The unadjusted year-over-year inflation rate was 1.1 percent, the government reported.
Al Jazeera’s Inside Story discusses the root causes of the current crisis and its political and social ramifications. How could the police killing of a teenager unleash such violence? And as confidence in the government wanes, what is next for Greece?
In terms of articles on the Greek riots, I have already a few that shed light on them but here is another from Germany’s Der Spiegel:
Economic experts have begun to refer to the €700 generation ($935 generation), and student leader Barutas is a prime example: He studied electrical engineering for five years at the Athens Polytechnic and graduated with excellent grades. Now he’s working as a teacher at a high school for €8 net an hour, 12 hours a week, which is all that is allowed. Such jobs are often limited to four- or five-month contracts. “How am I supposed to survive or establish a family on that?” asks the engineer.
Roughly 21 percent of the population has a university degree, “so not every language and literature expert can immediately become a teacher,” says the government. “Today’s generation of young people has had great dreams,” retorts architecture professor Stavros Stavrides, “and now all their hopes and opportunities have been dashed.”
Stavrides has joined many of his colleagues in support of the protests. “We have tens of thousands of young people who are rebelling and the government doesn’t know how to respond to the situation,” says Nikos Belavilas, an urban planning professor. “The political system has failed to integrate young people,” adds sociologist Georgoulas, “and that’s why things are exploding.”
Abdullah bin Hamad al-Attiya, Qatar’s oil and energy minister, expects that Opec will cut up to 1.5 million barrels from its oil supply because of a shrinking global demand.
Al Jazeera’s James Bays speaks with al-Attiyah ahead of OPEC’s meeting in Algeria on Wednesday.
Stephen J. Wayne, professor of government at Georgetown University, gave a morning keynote address at the Hauenstein Center’s Bush Legacy conference in Washington, D.C. Professor Wayne spoke about “The President’s Leadership Dilemma: An Evaluation of George W. Bush’s Leadership as President.”
Stephen J. Wayne is a Professor of Government at Georgetown University. A Washington-based expert on the American presidency, he has authored or edited 10 books, several in multiple editions, and more than 100 articles, chapters, and book reviews. In addition to “The Road to the White House,” he has coauthored “Presidential Leadership” (with George Edwards) and “Conflict and Consensus in American Politics of American Democracy” (with G. Calvin Mackenzie and Richard L. Cole), all published by Thomson/Wadsworth. His most recent books include, “Is this Any Way to Run a Democratic Election?,” “Is this Any Way to Run a Democratic Government?,” and “The Election of the Century and What It Tells Us about the Future of American Politics” (with Clyde Wilcox).
A much-quoted source for journalists covering the White House, he frequently appears on television and radio news programs and consults for television documentaries. He has testified before Congress on presidential elections, appeared before both Democratic and Republican advisory committees on the presidential nomination process, directed a presidential transition project for the National Academy of Public Administration, and participated in the 2000 White House transition project conducted by the Presidency Research Group. Professor Wayne lectures widely throughout the United States and abroad on the contemporary presidency and presidential elections.
An offshore oil find is bringing an economic boom to the Western African nation of Ghana. Large off-shore oil discoveries were made in 2007 by a British firm Tullow Oil.
Nearly a fifth of Ghana’s 22 million people are deemed “extremely poor” by the UN, living on less than a dollar a day, struggling to access basic social services like health, water and education. Thus the potential for the oil finds to transform the economy and the lives of the poorest people is clearly manifold. Ghananian officials, however, say they are concerned that the oil discovery is “perhaps the greatest managerial challenge” facing the West African country in the 51 years since it gained independence.
Al Jazeera’s Ama Boateng reports on how the west African state can learn the lessons of nearby Nigeria, whose people are failing to benefit from its huge reserves.
More on the challenges facing Ghana from IRIN News:
Farouk Al-Kasim, an oil resource management consultant from Norway who is in Ghana to assist in capacity building, told IRIN the biggest challenge the Ghanaian government faces is ensuring transparency from the outset and avoiding corruption.
To achieve this, the country must first review its legal framework, specifically the Petroleum Exploration and Production Law passed in 1984, Al-Kasim said.
Accusations are already flying that transparency is not working as it should.
“We need to keep an eagle eye on the contracts we are signing with the oil companies,” said the Executive Secretary of Transparency International’s local chapter, Vitus Azim.
He said the current agreement-signing processes with the oil companies had been “less than desirable” and that if civil society and local communities were not allowed to monitor the deals from the outset it “could spell disaster”.
Ghana has consistently scored averagely on the Transparency International corruption perceptions index. In 2007 it was ranked 69 out of 180 countries surveyed worldwide.
Kojo Kwarteng, a spokesperson for the government, dismissed the concerns. He told IRIN the government was currently most concerned about making sure it could independently verify the profits oil companies were making so it could make sure it was getting its cut.
Under existing law, companies involved in the exploration and production of oil will pay royalties to the government of 5 percent, as well as interest, and income tax of 35 percent.
“What we need is clear guidelines backed by law to make sure we are not shortchanged,” Kwarteng told IRIN.
The “Norway model”
GNPC official Francis Ackah said the government’s longer-term plan was to adopt the so-called “Norway model” of resource allocation, a revenue management scheme employed in Norway, the world’s third largest oil exporter.
Norway in 1990 set up the Petroleum Fund of Norway. Run by the central bank, the fund converts oil revenues into stocks and bonds. The fund then hires external managers to invest the assets. Finally, the money is allocated to social services like roads, schools, houses, and health centres, and is given out as loans to small-scale businesses.
Steve Manteaw of the Ghanaian non-governmental organisation ISODEC said Ghana is “not developed enough” to employ this model and cannot afford to put money away in a fund when it has so many immediate needs.
“We must develop a ‘Ghanaian model’ that will factor in our peculiarity, but incorporating all best practices across the world,” he said.
Transparency International’s local chapter, however, believes the “Norway model” is the best for Ghana “because of its core principles of transparency and independence in oil revenue management”, said Transparency International’s Azim.
Muntazir al-Zaydi, the Iraqi journalist who launched a pair of shoes, at US President Bush during a press conference in Baghdad, has been taken into custody but he remains in the eyes of many a hero not just in the Arab world but also here in the United States. I’m thankful that the President wasn’t hurt and that he has taken it in stride. No matter one’s opinion of the President and his failed policies, violence is violence. Still, the President may have committed crimes in pursuit of those policies and as such throwing the book at him may yet occur. Let’s hope that does occur.
Al Jazeera’s Clayton Swisher has more on George Bush’s attacker.