After an August 7 meeting with Russian Orthodox Patriarch Alexei II, Cardinal Etchegaray said that the prospects for a "summit meeting" between the Orthodox prelate and Pope Benedict XVI are steadily improving. The cardinal cautioned that no plans were underway for a summit meeting, but important steps were being taken to strengthen the ties between Rome and Moscow, particularly through cooperative efforts to affirm the role of Christianity in European society.
Oh, those Germans...
Imminent rail strikes may be threatening to bring Germany to a standstill later this week, but one German train made an unscheduled halt for an entirely different reason - to replace a broken beer keg tap. Faced with the alarming prospect of a beer-less journey, the train made an unscheduled halt. Twenty-five minutes later, the new tap had arrived and the train could continue on its way. "Deutsche Bahn reacted in a swift and un-bureaucratic way so as not to endanger the good mood of the soccer-mad travelers."
Bavarian premier Edmund Stoiber will visit Croatia next week and meet with his Croatian colleague Ivo Sanader, Stoiber announced after the final session of the Bavarian government before the summer break. Stoiber, who will retire from all positions in September, has planned a busy schedule before his retirement.
Weapons for the Middle East, nuclear power for Gadhafi, nominees to head important international institutions - and nobody even bothers to call Angela Merkel. The government in Berlin is learning a painful lesson this summer: It stands alone in its multilateralist policies and few seem to care what the Germans think.
Five years after former Chancellor Schröder refused to join the US in its invasion of Iraq, surveys show that the continuing bloody conflict there has contributed to a growing negative view of America in Germany.
As Poland's nationalist conservative government coalition lurches from crisis to crisis, a group of center-left parties is building a new political alliance aimed at unseating the governing Law and Justice party. On foreign policy, the new alliance wants Poland to adopt the proposed new EU treaty and join the euro zone. Kaczynski's coalition partners have insisted on a referendum over the EU treaty and oppose Poland adopting the euro.
Accusing Russia of committing an "act of aggression" against Georgia by firing a guided missile into its territory, Tbilisi said the EU should not appease Moscow, but send a "strong and clear-cut" message of condemnation.
Ariel Sharon has been lying in a coma for more than a year and a half now, but his sons have not given up hope that he will recover. Political camps haven't given up claiming his support for their sides.
Pelted by rocks and metal, hundreds of Israeli riot police officers forcibly removed Jewish settlers on Tuesday from houses in the West Bank city of Hebron that they had been occupying illegally for months.
They number only 8, but they are the remnant of a community 2,700 years old — the last Jews left in modern Baghdad. A spokesman for the Jewish Agency in Jerusalem which is responsible for immigration, said none of the 8 Jews left in Baghdad has expressed a desire to leave.
Leaders from North and South Korea are to hold a summit, only the 2nd ever between the two sides, officials have announced.
The Cheney factor is still a threat. The Vice President is pushing an attack on Iran, and the greatest concern is a "Gulf of Tonkin II" incident, particularly during the month of August, giving Cheney the pretext for the attack.
It's a rotten day for America when the conspiracy cranks don't sound so ridiculous.
With the global financial system already collapsing, and with Cheney's backers pushing for war as the way out of the dollar crash, Cheney's removal is now a matter of survival for the US—and that is not a partisan issue.
The original neocons were a small group of mostly Jewish liberal intellectuals who, in the 1960s and 70s, grew disenchanted with what they saw as the American left's social excesses and reluctance to spend adequately on defense. Unlike their predecessors, most younger neocons never experienced being left of center. They've always been "Reagan" Republicans.
Brent Scowcroft...
We are still slow to recognize how revolutionary the changes sweeping the globe are. The forces unleashed by globalization are as important to determining the shape of the coming age as industrialization was 200 years ago. Will the US remain the "indispensable nation" in global affairs under these new conditions? It depends on what you mean by the term. The world is not susceptible to U.S. domination - but without U.S. leadership not much can be achieved.
The Chinese government has begun a concerted campaign of economic threats against the US, hinting that it may liquidate its vast holding of US treasuries if Washington imposes trade sanctions to force a yuan revaluation. Two officials at leading Communist Party bodies have given interviews in recent days warning - for the first time - that Beijing may use its $1.33 trillion of foreign reserves as a political weapon to counter pressure from the US Congress. Described as China's "nuclear option" in the state media, such action could trigger a dollar crash at a time when the US currency is already breaking down through historic support levels.
The core meltdown of the world financial system, which has been in preparation for a long time, has now occurred, with the collapse of the subprime mortgage market in the US. A series of such funds have gone to ground due to speculative failures, and the turbulence has finally spilled over into the international markets and implicated financial institutions in Germany, France, Great Britain, and Australia. And that is only the beginning. While most of the press internationally is in full cover-up mode, the near collapse of the German "industrial credit bank" IKB has shocked some in Germany into recognizing the situation. Jochen Sanio, head of the German banking regulatory agency BAFIN, admitted that this amounted to the "worst banking crisis in Germany since 1931." According to the Süddeutsche Zeitung, the "whole German banking system" was in danger.
The Federal Reserve Tuesday largely sidestepped the growing anxiety over how tightening credit standards will affect the economy, deciding to leave its benchmark interest rate unchanged at 5.25%. More important than the decision to hold rates steady — which was widely expected — the Fed did not significantly adjust the language in its statement explaining the decision.
Huh?...
Women searching for the perfect partner avoid macho men in favour of feminine-looking types whom they see as more committed and better parents, research has found.
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