It was “attack Rick Perry night” at last night’s GOP debate in Florida -—to the extent that even Jon Huntsman got in on the act—and the Texan’s rivals succeeded in landing a few blows. Mitt Romney, who wisely ignored the Tea Party debate audience to focus on people…
Continue reading …Is it too much to ask that a memorial dedicated to the victims of the worst ever attack on American soil should spell those victims’ names correctly? Apparently so. Jeffrey Schreier was killed on 9/11 while working at Cantor Fitzgerald, the financial firm based in the World Trade Center that was nearly wiped out in
Continue reading …Love letters from one of the major romances in James Dean’s short life wil hit the auction block for the first time. The actor, who was killed in a car crash at the age of 24, dated Barbara Glenn for 2 years, and the three letters up for sale date…
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Shane Bauer and Josh Fattal were detained for entering country illegally, along with Sarah Shourd who was freed last year Two Americans sentenced in Iran to eight years in jail for espionage and illegally crossing the border are set for release on bail, their lawyer said on Tuesday. News of the deal came after Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, revealed in separate interviews with two US media organisations that Shane Bauer and Josh Fattal, both 29, who had already been held for two years, will be able to return home in the next few days. In an interview with the semi-official Fars news agency, lawyer Masoud Shafii later confirmed Ahmadinejad’s remarks over Iran’s decision to release the two men, saying they are expected to be freed after paying $500,000 (£316,000) in bail money. The pair were arrested by Iranian security officials in July 2009 along with a friend, Sarah Shourd, 33, after walking across an unmarked border between Iran and Iraqi Kurdistan. Last September, in a similar move and with the same amount of bail, Shourd who became engaged to Bauer while in jail, was released on health grounds. “The families of these two Americans and the Swiss embassy which hosts the US interests section in Tehran have been informed of this issue and Bauer and Fattal can leave Iran similar to Sara Shourd,” Fars added. The Washington Post quoted president Ahmadinejad as saying that Bauer and Fattal were granted a “unilateral pardon”. “I am helping to arrange for their release in a couple of days so they will be able to return home,” he told the paper in an interview in Tehran. “This is of course going to be a unilateral humanitarian gesture.” The US network NBC, which also interviewed the president on the same day, said the Americans will be released in two days. Ahmadinejad appears to be crediting himself for their expected release ahead of his visit to New York for the UN general assembly meeting later this month. In August, an Iranian court sentenced the two men each to three years for illegally entering Iran and a further five years for spying for US intelligence services. Their lawyer lodged an appeal against the sentences and Amnesty International said their conviction made a “mockery of justice”. The court’s verdict was at odds with earlier comments made by Iran’s foreign ministry officials who said before the trial that they would be freed. The contrast highlighted a growing rift between Iran’s judiciary, which is close to the supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and Ahmadinejad’s government. It is not clear why Iran has finally decided to grant them an apparent clemency but international pressure and Iran’s isolation in the region could be factors. A deal might also have been made in exchange for the lifting of the travel ban on Fereidoun Abbasi-Davani, the head of Iran’s atomic energy agency. The offer to release the Americans comes two days after Iran’s nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili said Iran is ready to resume nuclear talks with the EU. It might be an attempt by Iran to reduce tensions with the US and other powers involved in negotiations over its nuclear programme. The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Yukiya Amano, said on Monday he was “increasingly concerned” over Iran’s nuclear activities, which the west worries might have military dimensions. Iran says it wants nuclear energy for producing electricity. Iran Middle East United States Saeed Kamali Dehghan guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …A popular idea in President Obama’s new jobs bill could represent a step toward fundamentally transforming the existing system of federal jobless benefits. Some critics say that such a move is long overdue–but others worry that a major overhaul could threaten a program that since the Depression has been a core component of the social
Continue reading …The story of “Happy Feet,” the wayward emperor penguin that turned up in New Zealand, has captivated the world, but we may never know how it ends. The young penguin was returned to the wild last week and a transmitter that was attached to him has stopped relaying information to…
Continue reading …The same kind of unmanned spy drone used to track militants in the badlands of Afghanistan and Pakistan is finding a growing number of uses in the US. Predator drones, already used to patrol America’s borders with Mexico and Canada, are being used to fight fires, survey flood damage, and…
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More than 160 people, including children, injured as train hits bus on level crossing in suburb of Buenos Aires At least seven people were killed in a rush-hour crash involving two passenger trains and a bus in Argentina on Tuesday, authorities said. Police said 162 people were injured, many seriously, and were being treated at hospitals around Buenos Aires after the bus driver drove through barriers at a crossing in an attempt to beat the trains and get across the tracks. Argentina’s transport secretary, JP Schiavi, said the bus driver was among those killed. The vehicle was hit by an oncoming train as it attempted to cross the tracks and was crushed into a nearby platform. The train was shunted off the tracks, hitting another as it prepared to leave the station in the opposite direction. The force of the arriving train reduced the bus to a fraction of its width. Helicopters helped carry the injured to at least seven hospitals. Schiavi said children were among those injured in the accident, which happened at 6.15am (9.15am GMT) next to Flores station, where many parents use public transport to take their children to school. The transport secretary said the barriers at the crossing appeared to be functioning normally, but reporters at the scene said some witnesses had reported that one had descended only part of the way down, leaving room for the bus to try to drive across the tracks despite warning bells. Schiavi said investigators were studying videotape of the accident to determine exactly what happened. Argentina Rail transport guardian.co.uk
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‘Many tens of thousands’ of items discovered by News of the World publisher that could contain evidence of phone hacking The publisher of the News of the World has found “many tens of thousands” of new documents and emails that could contain evidence about the scale of phone hacking at the paper, it has emerged. News International subsidiary News Group Newspapers’ barrister Michael Silverleaf QC told the high court at a pre-trial hearing on Tuesday: “Two very large new caches of documents have been [discovered] which the current management were unaware of.” NGN was ordered in the summer to search its internal email system for any evidence that mobile phones belonging to a list of public figures were targeted by the paper. That search has not been completed, but some documents have already been retrieved, the high court heard. Referring to the emails that NGN has been searching through, Mr Justice Vos told the high court that “there is some important material in what has already been disclosed”. It also emerged today that lawyers acting for phone-hacking claimants have been a handed a 68-page document by police which lists the names of those who asked Mulcaire to engage in hacking, based on notes seized from the home of private investigator Glenn Mulcaire in a 2006 raid. Mulcaire had a habit of noting the names of people who asked him to target mobile phones in the left-hand corner of his notebooks, often using their initials or first name to denote their identity. The document cannot be made public because Vos has previously ordered that they remain confidential so the police inquiry into phone-hacking is not compromised. The fact the document compiled by Scotland Yard runs to 68 pages suggests it contains many names, however. Mr Justice Vos also gave NGN longer to comply with the earlier order requiring the company to hand over potential evidence to phone-hacking litigants. It must now do so by 30 September. NGN has previously said last year that it had lost some emails from the period when Glenn Mulcaire was most active, but subsequently said they had been found. However, the Commons home affairs select committee was told last week by HCL, which managed the IT systems of NGN’s ultimate parent company News Corp, that its client had asked it to to delete hundreds of thousands of emails on 13 occasions from April 2010 to July this year. It also emerged today that Glenn Mulcaire, the private investigator who worked for the paper, has told one alleged phone-hacking victim, Liberal Democrat MP Simon Hughes, that he cannot remember who at the paper ordered him to target the politician’s phone. Hughes launched legal action against the paper’s publisher in August and won a high court order forcing Mulcaire to answer questions about who asked him to target his phone. Although Mulcaire has now complied with that order, Hugh Tomlinson QC, one of the barristers acting for the phone-hacking victims, told the court today: “Mr Mulcaire has indicated in respect of every question raised that he has no recollection.” •
Continue reading …More than a fifth of Americans under the age of 18 lived in poverty last year, new U.S. Census figures show. The poverty rate for children rose from 20.7 percent in 2009 to 22 percent last year, making kids more likely than any other age group to be poor. For children under the age of
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