Daily News Channel
President Obama and former Vice President Dick Cheney offered competing views on how to keep America safe in back-to-back speeches Thursday. Obama said his administration is trying to clean up “a mess” left behind by the Bush administration. He defended his plan to close the Guantanamo Bay detention center in Cuba, his ban on torture, the release of Bush-era interrogation memos and his objection to the release of prisoner photos.
President Obama poked fun at the travails of the Republican Party last weekend, telling the party’s chairman that no, the GOP does not qualify for a bailout, and conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh does not count as a troubled asset.
What prompted Condoleezza Rice to break a self-imposed silence on the Bush Administration’s controversial use of harsh interrogation techniques on terror detainees? Friends and colleagues of the former Secretary of State say it was not something she had planned, but that she was simply responding to questions in public settings
Prosecutors will recommend that a Spanish court drop its investigation of six former Bush administration officials for alleged torture of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, Spain’s attorney general said Thursday. The claim against the former officials, presented by a human rights group and provisionally accepted last month at the court — pending an opinion from the prosecutors — is a fraudulent claim, said Attorney General Candido Conde-Pumpido, according to his press chief. If alleged torture at Guantanamo is going to be investigated at all, that should be done first in the United States, so that the former American officials would have a chance to defend themselves there, Conde-Pumpido added, according to his press chief, Fernando Noya
Jade Goody’s life and death in the limelight has played out as if it is part of another dimension. While the former Big Brother contestant appeared omnipresent, particularly in Britain, in the weeks leading up to her death from cervical cancer, it is the reflection cast by her demise that is most interesting.
Britain’s Jenson Button won the opening race of the 2009 Formula One season after dominating the Australian Grand Prix for the newly-formed Brawn GP team. Button, who started from pole at Albert Park, was claiming the second victory of his 154-race career to complete a remarkable reversal of fortunes for the former Honda team who were facing an uncertain future when the Japanese car manufacturer withdrew from F1 late last year.
Despite the destruction it caused in a massive spill near a Tennessee power plant in December, coal ash has found many uses that benefit industry and even the environment.
Mauricio Funes, a member of a political party that waged guerrilla war against the government 17 years ago, has claimed the presidency of El Salvador. “This is the happiest night of my life,” Funes told a jubilant crowd at his election headquarters Sunday night. “It’s also the night of greatest hope for El Salvador.” The FMLN party’s Funes had 51.12 percent of the vote, while the ARENA party’s Rodrigo Avila had 48.87 percent with 84 percent of the national ballots counted, the electoral commission said on its Web site
Voters in El Salvador will line up at a crossroads of history Sunday, deciding whether to give the presidency to a political party that 17 years ago was waging guerrilla war on the government.
The surgeon who performed heart surgery Wednesday on former first lady Barbara Bush said Thursday that she is recovering well from the 2 1/2-hour surgery in which her aortic valve was replaced with a pig valve. “From our perspective, this was a very routine procedure, and we expect her to make an excellent recovery,” Dr