"The WAR on error"
The Pope has been identified as a fan of finery in the past, wearing red Prada shoes.
[WAR: This little bit of ironic trivia had escaped my attention before, since I had not seen the movie that my mother saw last night: The Devil Wears Prada.]
One of Germany's leading energy companies wants to extend the lifetime of one of its nuclear plants in a move that anti-nuclear campaigners describe as an attack on plans to phase out nuclear energy in Germany.
The German coalition government is currently preparing a major expansion of its military commitment to the war in Afghanistan. The intensified role of the German army in Afghanistan is inseparably bound up with political initiatives. Ultimately, Germany and Europe can only realize their own interests in the Middle East through their own massive military intervention. The role of the expanded German contingent in Afghanistan serves two purposes: to increase German influence in the region and to apply further pressure on Washington. Inexorably, Germany and Europe are being increasingly drawn into the bloody war in the Middle East.
As Germany gears up to take over the EU presidency in January, Finland can start to relax as it steps down. What did it achieve in 6-months' time? For one thing, Lebanon replaced Russia on the agenda.
The challenge facing Belgium, as it is facing the rest of the EU, is how to define and achieve sufficient cohesion to prevent the whole from breaking apart. If the transfers requested from the rich regions to the poorer are too great, or the explanations for them too thin, the project, whether nation or union, falls into disrepute.
The migration of British Jews to Israel stands in marked contrast to the general decline in immigration to the Jewish state from elsewhere.
Syria is seeking to hold a conference grouping Iraqi factions to try to help stabilise its eastern neighbour, a U.S. senator who has met President Bashar al-Assad said yesterday.
W. Patrick Lang, retired U.S. Army Colonel and onetime Defense Intelligence Officer for the Middle East, and Ray McGovern, a retired 27-year CIA analyst, co-authored an article ridiculing the Bush Administration's moves to bring an additional 50,000 troops to Iraq for the next year as a way of "surging" to victory. Denouncing Bush's "stay the course" approach, the authors warned that incoming Defense Secretary Bob Gates may not realize it, but the Bush-Cheney "surge" policy means that "the U.S. military is about to commit hara-kiri."
Undeterred by the horrors and setbacks in Iraq, Afghanistan and Lebanon, the Bush administration has opened another battlefront in the Muslim world. With full U.S. backing and military training, at least 15,000 Ethiopian troops have entered Somalia in an illegal war of aggression.
German's Foreign Minister has called for an immediate end to the fighting in Somalia. "The latest military escalation in Somalia...is alarming."
Moscow is deeply concerned about developments in the Horn of Africa, the Foreign Ministry said yesterday in comments on reports from the region, primarily Somalia “where warring sides are clashing.” “This is a proof to the considerable exacerbation. Other countries may get involved in the events.”
UPI analysis...
The number of dead in the conflict between Somalia and Ethiopia are unknown and will probably remain unknown; such is the confusion around this latest war being played out in the Horn of Africa.
President Ahmadinejad's letter to Pope Benedict is not political, the president's office announced today. The letter stressed the need to restructure international relations based on the teachings of divine religions, especially in terms of human relations.
Iran has repeated threats that it was ready to use its massive oil exports as a weapon to defend itself if it felt necessary in an international dispute over its atomic programme, the semi-official Fars news agency said yesterday.
Warning to Europeans:
Since the majority of the leading European press surveyed has promoted a falsified view of the current political situation inside the US, I report the following essential facts of the situation there. At present, the new U.S. Congress will not be seated until shortly after the beginning of the new calendar year. In the meantime, there is no doubt among well-informed circles inside the US, that Vice-President Dick Cheney is committed to a massive aerial attack on Iran at some time during the immediate few months ahead.
In response to the Iraq Study Group report, President Bush and Vice President Cheney turned to their chickenhawk allies at the American Enterprise Institute to craft a counter-plan, based on the fantasy premise that a "surge" of American troops could secure victory in Iraq before the next Presidential elections in late 2008.
American Evangelical Christians scare the hell out of secular Britons and, while their reputation may be unfair, it has been long in the making and is reinforced by some truth. And the European Left has been concerned about an American Religious Right bent on ensuring that the Book of Revelation’s apocalyptic prophecies come true through the current President’s policy on Iraq, Israel and the Middle East.
Britain will this week pay off the last instalment of the multibillion-dollar loans that were secured from the United States and Canada more than sixty years ago to help fund the war effort.
The dollar had its biggest drop this month against the yen on speculation waning consumer confidence in the U.S. will increase the likelihood for a cut in interest rates by the Federal Reserve in the first quarter.
Special Der Spiegel issue on How Religion Impacts Our World.
We have compiled a collection of thousands of the most important photographs of the last 150 years; pictures of our struggles, trials, and triumphs.
Meeeeooow!...
A common parasite can increase a women's attractiveness to the opposite sex but also make men more stupid, an Australian researcher says. "Infected women tend to be more outgoing, friendly, more promiscuous, and are considered more attractive to men compared with non-infected controls. In short, it can make men behave like alley cats and women behave like sex kittens''.
Man charged with assault on confined person for passing 'bad gas' on cellmate.
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