Daily News Channel
President Obama called Saturday for the Iranian government to refrain from violence and injustice against its own citizens. “The Iranian government must understand that the world is watching,” Obama said in a White House statement. “We mourn each and every innocent life that is lost
Demonstrators gathered in major cities in France, the United States and Germany on Saturday to condemn Iran’s crackdown on pro-democracy protesters in Tehran. The rallies ranged from tens of thousands of Iranian exiles and supporters who crammed a Paris, France-area convention center to the hundreds of demonstrators who braved a downpour in Washington to march to the White House. In Hamburg, Germany, protesters marched against the announced result of last week’s Iranian election, which had President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad declared the overwhelming victor in voting that opposition groups called rigged.
Speaking at an annual conference of real estate editors, James Lockhart, head of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, said on Thursday the government shouldn’t run Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Lockhart should know. He leads the agency that has been doing just that since last September, when the giant mortgage insurers were put into government conservatorship
In the 1960s and 1970s, Big Tobacco was widely viewed as the model for effective special-interest lobbying. “My own view is that in many ways, the tobacco industry invented the kind of special-interest lobbying that has become so characteristic of the late 20th- and earlier 21st-century American politics,” said Allan Brandt, dean of Harvard’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences
To get a sense of just how dysfunctional American health care is, members of Congress don’t need to look further than their local emergency department . The overcrowding in EDs is so bad these days that patients who walk in with “immediate” needs, meaning the most severe on a clinical scale, wait an average of 28 minutes to see a doctor, according to a Government Accountability Office report released in May. That’s 27 minutes more than the recommended wait time for such conditions.
Even as Congress belatedly tackles legislation that would cut U.S. carbon emissions and international negotiators bickered over a global climate deal in Bonn, Germany, a new report by several federal agencies underscores the truths that too often risk getting lost in politics: global warming is real, it’s happening now, and if we don’t act soon, the consequences are likely to be catastrophic.
Whether or not health care reform actually passes in the end, this may be remembered as the week that the reality of the challenge such a massive overhaul poses finally dawned on lawmakers. And that reality is this: It’s all about the dollars. Coming up with a bill that doesn’t add to the deficit is turning out to be even harder than members of Congress thought it would be
Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair resisted public pressure for a comprehensive inquiry into the Iraq war. On June 15, his successor, Gordon Brown, raised the white flag, informing the House of Commons that he had ordered an inquiry even before British troops complete their withdrawal from Basra this summer. “Thanks to our efforts and those of our allies over six difficult years, a young democracy has replaced a vicious 30-year dictatorship,” said the Prime Minister.
North Korea and its nuclear ambitions are expected to be a key part of discussions as President Obama hosts the South Korean president Tuesday. Obama is to meet with President Lee Myung-bak in a closed-door session at the White House on Tuesday morning and then share a working lunch
North Korea and its nuclear ambitions are expected to be a key part of discussions as U.S. President Barack Obama hosts the president of South Korea on Tuesday. Obama is to meet with President Lee Myung-bak in a closed-door session at the White House on Tuesday morning and then share a working lunch