Daily News Channel
A former Bush administration official said she thinks former Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge’s recent charges that politics were behind raising the terror level in 2004 were "personally motivated." In a new book, Ridge says top Bush administration officials may have tried to raise the nation’s terror alert for political reasons in the days before the 2004 presidential vote.
Lloyd Blankfein, the 54-year-old chairman and CEO of Goldman Sachs, is powerfully perplexed. In the past six months, his investment-banking and securities-trading firm has roared ahead in profitability by taking risks — that other firms would not — for itself and its clients in an edgy market. It has paid back the billions of dollars, and then some, of taxpayer money the government forced it to take last October; raised billions of dollars in capital from private investors, including $5 billion from Warren Buffett; and urged its cadre of well-paid and high-performing executives to show some restraint on the conspicuous-consumption front.
Former Secretary of Homeland Security Tom Ridge says he successfully countered an effort by senior Bush administration officials to raise the nation’s terror alert level in the days before the 2004 presidential vote. “An election-eve drama was being played out at the highest levels of our government” after Osama bin Laden released a pre-election message critical of President George W. Bush, writes Ridge in his new book, “The Test of Our Times.” Attorney General John Ashcroft and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld strongly advocated raising the security threat level to “orange” — even though Ridge believed a threatening message “should not be the sole reason to elevate the threat level.” The former Pennsylvania governor also writes that he saw no reason for the move, which he now calls a bad idea, because additional security precautions had already been taken in advance of the election
If Washington wants health care reform with bipartisan support, experts say consider what former Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney did as governor in Democratic Massachusetts. “You don’t have to have a public option,” Romney said. “You don’t have to have the government getting into the insurance business to make it work.” Three years after enacting its own version of reform, Massachusetts now has near-universal coverage.
The streets of Kabul were eerily quiet on Thursday, as polls for Afghanistan’s second presidential election since the fall of the Taliban opened to little fanfare and even smaller crowds. Children, taking advantage of the trafficless streets, flew kites. Watermelon sellers languished in the shade of their carts waiting for a sale
In 2007 and 2008, photojournalist Tomas Van Houtryve visited North Korea by infiltrating a communist solidarity delegation. In the second story in his three-part TIME.com series, Van Houtryve describes the surveillance he was subjected to and the bizarre majesty of the mausoleum of Kim Il Sung. After dinner at the end of my second day, I was pulled aside by my guides
Legal action must be taken against Iranian opposition leader Mehdi Karrubi for claiming post-election detainees were being raped behind bars, said the governor of Tehran province, as hard-line criticism grew against the reformist. “If such a person has made such accusations that have infuriated the people and it is shown that he cannot prove them, then legal steps must be taken with regards to this person,” said Gov. Morteza Tamaddon, according to the Iran Labor News Agency.
The "humanitarian situation remains serious" in Zimbabwe amid cholera, starvation and a continuing economic crisis, a United Nations official said Wednesday at a World Humanitarian Day ceremony in Harare.
Agajan has a message for Afghanistan’s incumbent politicians. The turbaned, gap-toothed man may only be a humble shop-keeper, but on election day, Agajan will exercise his right and vote against the president. “I won’t vote for Hamid Karzai,” says Agajan, who according to local custom uses only one name.
The Obama administration is looking hard at pushing through a health care reform bill without Republican backing, top Democrats close to the White House told CNN.