The Hill’s Pundits Blog

May 31, 2007

Iraq Cease-Fire: The Real Answer

Brent Budowsky

There is a story on the AP wire [and in the Army Times] quoting Gen. Ray Odierno instructing his commanders in Iraq to contact insurgent groups in search of possible cease-fires in the sectarian war.

This is profoundly important and represents the single best hope for a positive outcome in Iraq.

The idea would be to seek an all-Iraqi cease-fire and a political solution that ends the carnage among Iraqis and unifies everyone to achieve a military victory against the al Qaeda terrorists.

I proposed this strategy in an op-ed in The Hill under the title “How To Win the Iraq War” and discussed it further in a Pundits Blog entry here suggesting former Secretary of State Colin Powell be sent to Iraq on a special mission promoting a cease-fire and political solution.

This is a long and hard road, for sure, but it represents the best strategy, by far, for a positive outcome in Iraq. When I worked for the congressional leadership during the Reagan years I was involved in very similar Situations, and while hard, it can work here.

South Africa, Ireland, Central America and Lebanon in the 1980s were all resolved by political solutions and cease-fires. It will be Hard, but it can be done. The U.S. should put the full force and power of our country behind the push for a cease-fire.

Gen. David Petraeus has a long history of being subtle and committed to political and diplomatic solutions, and it is major news that private talks have begun.

Budowsky was an aide to former Sen. Lloyd Bentsen and to Bill Alexander, then-chief deputy whip of the House. He is a contributing editor to Fighting Dems News Service. He can be read on The Hill’s Pundits Blog and reached at brentbbi@webtv.net.

[Click the title, above, to post a comment that may be read by your congressman and senators!.—Caro]

Bush sees South Korea model for Iraq
WASHINGTON - President Bush envisions a long-term U.S. troop presence in Iraq similar to the one in South Korea where American forces have helped keep an uneasy peace for more than 50 years, the White House said Wednesday.
The man wants our troops in Iraq FOR 50 YEARS!

The Heretik

Israel strikes northern Gaza Strip
GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip - Israel carried out fresh airstrikes in the Gaza Strip Thursday, persisting in a two-week-old operation to stop Palestinian rocket squads from firing on Israeli border towns.

5 Americans among 7 dead in Afghan crash
KABUL, Afghanistan - NATO troops on Thursday secured the wreckage of a CH-47 Chinook helicopter apparently shot down by Taliban militants, an attack that killed everyone on board — five U.S. soldiers, a Canadian and a Briton, officials said.

Turkey seizes Syria-bound weapons
ANKARA, Turkey - Turkish authorities seized weapons hidden among construction materials on a Syria-bound train from Iran after Kurdish guerrillas bombed and derailed the train, a prosecutor said Wednesday.

Final vote in Turkish parliament on disputed electoral reform
ANKARA (AFP) - The Turkish parliament Thursday began a final vote on constitutional amendments that would see the president elected by popular vote, despite strong objections by the outgoing head of state.

Pipeline would extend Iran’s reach
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - Pakistan, India, and Iran came one step closer this week to realizing a $7 billion natural-gas pipeline, a project that is likely to irk US policymakers trying to contain Tehran’s nuclear ambitions.

Thirteen killed in raid near troubled Pakistan town
TANK, Pakistan (Reuters) - Suspected Islamist militants attacked the house of a senior government official in a village in northwestern Pakistan and killed 13 people, police said on Thursday.

Muslim nine deny terror charges in Australia
SYDNEY (AFP) - Nine Muslim men detained in a series of police raids in 2005 pleaded not guilty Thursday to conspiring to commit a terrorist attack in Australia, at a hearing held under tight security.

Cuba to buy $118 million in U.S. food
HAVANA - Cuba agreed Wednesday to buy $118 million in U.S. food products ranging from pork and corn to soybeans and Spam, and said it was negotiating deals that could bring the total to nearly $150 million.

US-Russia clashes sour G8 meeting
POTSDAM, Germany (AFP) - A clash between the United States and Russia over a proposed missile shield overshadowed a meeting of G8 foreign ministers Wednesday also marred by differences over climate change and Kosovo.

Democrats seek to overturn pay ruling
WASHINGTON - Congressional Democrats said Wednesday they would try to reverse a Supreme Court decision that limits the time that workers have to sue their employers for pay discrimination.

Dems plan vote on stem cell research
WASHINGTON - Congress intends to send President Bush legislation next week to ease restrictions on federally funded embryonic stem cell research, inviting his second veto in as many years on the subject.

Obama, Clinton Target Drugs, Insurers for Health-Care Savings
May 30 (Bloomberg) — For the leading Democratic presidential hopefuls, making health care more affordable is a tale of two villains. Barack Obama is targeting drugmakers, while Hillary Clinton is taking aim at insurers.

GOP fear fallout from new ethics probes
WASHINGTON - A half dozen federal investigations into the activities of Republican lawmakers are raising new worries for GOP leaders who hope to regain the House majority they lost last fall.

Accused madam’s delay request is denied
WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court on Wednesday denied a request to delay the criminal case against a woman accused of running a prostitution ring in the nation’s capital.

Gitmo detainee apparently kills himself
SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico - A Saudi Arabian detainee died Wednesday at Guantanamo Bay prison and the U.S. military said he apparently committed suicide. Critics of the detention center said the death showed the level of desperation among prisoners.

Zoellick must restore calm at World Bank
WASHINGTON - Robert Zoellick has dealt with the Cold War, the killing in Darfur, China’s rise as an economic colossus. His next challenge: to restore confidence at the badly shaken World Bank.

New agency develops spy tools
WASHINGTON - Using a new laptop and a satellite link, FBI agents can find out within two minutes whether the fingerprint from a newly captured suspect overseas matches a terrorist database in Virginia.

FBI: Violent crime still increasing
WASHINGTON - Violent crime kept climbing in 2006, a top FBI official said Wednesday, previewing a report detailing nationwide increases in murders, robberies and other felonies for a second straight year.

California, Ontario join forces on stem cell, global warming efforts
OTTAWA (AFP) - California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty announced plans Wednesday to join forces to advance stem cell research and curb global warming.

Many Katrina evacuees are still jobless
HOUSTON - Nineteen months after Hurricane Katrina sent evacuees from New Orleans streaming into Houston, more than 5,000 heads of households among them are still unemployed despite the city’s booming economy, officials say.

Nagin: New Orleans is a city on the mend
NEW ORLEANS - Mayor Ray Nagin, in his first State of the City address since Hurricane Katrina, said Wednesday that New Orleans is a city on the mend, despite broken promises from the state and federal governments.

S&P 500 index closes at record high
NEW YORK - Wall Street shot higher Wednesday, sending the Standard & Poor’s 500 index to its first record close in more than seven years, as investors grew more confident that the Federal Reserve might cut interest rates in the second half of 2007. The Dow Jones industrials also reached a new high close.

Monster U.S. online jobs index rises in May
NEW YORK (Reuters) - A gauge of U.S. online recruitment activity rose for a fifth straight month in May as demand for workers eased slightly but remained strong, a global online careers and recruiting firm, said on Thursday.

Home prices hit skids
An index of home prices shows the first quarterly year-over year decline since 1991 as many of the top 20 markets falter.

Light on the currency fees
Folks heading overseas on vacation may be shocked to find out how high exchange charges are when they get home. Which credit cards offer the best deal?

U.S. energy companies more prepared for hurricanes: officials
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. energy companies that operate in the Gulf of Mexico are better prepared to keep petroleum and natural gas supplies flowing if hurricanes hit this year than they were during 2005’s disastrous season, U.S. government and industry officials said Wednesday.

Permanent link to MTA daily media news

Al Gore on politics
May 30: Keith Olbermann continues his conversation on politics, climate change and public discourse with former Vice President Al Gore.
Click here to watch the video of this great interview.

McClatchy deserves props for keeping KR’s foreign bureaus
Rem Rieder notes that Knight Ridder had distinguished itself with its against-the-grain reporting on Iraq, and that tradition has continued under McClatchy. News veep Howard Weaver tells the AJR editor: “There’s never been a time in our history when world events had greater impact on Americans — terrorism, security and war in Iraq, obviously, but also immigration, job outsourcing, international trade, African genocide and the possibility of pandemic flu or other global diseases. Does this seem like the right time to cut back?”
And props for keeping the excellent Washington Bureau.

Mexico’s the #2 deadliest country in the world for journalists
Iraq’s the first, of course. More than 30 journalists have been killed in the past six years in Mexico, and countless others have been kidnapped in a campaign of intimidation largely attributed to the drug cartels, reports Manuel Roig-Franzia. A newspaper in Sonora temporarily shut down last week because of attacks and threats by criminal gangs.

What was discussed at the annual ombudsmen convention
“We talked about new reader challenges and how to keep our sanity and equanimity when caught between angry readers and angry newspaper staffers,” reports Deborah Howell. “The meeting stimulated this ombudsman to not just be the complaint department but to also help readers and staffers surf those waves without drowning the best in journalism.”

Murdoch isn’t bad for journalism because he’s a conservative
“He’s bad for journalism because he has no principles,” writes Jack Shafer, who wonders if Rupert Murdoch and his associates come close to upholding the Dow Jones code of conduct. His verdict: “Does Murdoch pass the Dow Jones stink test? He’s not even qualified to take it.”

AP steps up online copyright protection
SAN FRANCISCO - The Associated Press will intensify its efforts to protect its copyrights on the Web and possibly uncover new sources of revenue by working with a Silicon Valley startup that’s trying to help the media gain more control over digital content.

Why aren’t newspaper unions protesting Google’s actions?
“Why have we yet to hear the phrase ‘class action lawsuit’ in this discussion” about Google and how it’s hurting newspapers? asks Roger Moore. “And where are the Guilds on this? It’s not the front office media emperors who are most directly impacted by this ‘Let’s give the public less and less for the same price’ cut-staff slippery slope. It’s not just the public, either, though that price is almost beyond measure, in the news that is no longer covered because the staff isn’t there to cover it.”

LATer says the paper needs an economic justice reporter
Not a celebrity justice reporter, which the paper is hiring. Nancy Cleeland, who is leaving the Los Angeles Times, says a beat on economic justice “might interest some of the millions of workers who draw hourly wages and are being squeezed by soaring rents, health care costs and debt loads.” She says leaving the Times feels “like walking out of a long marriage that was once filled with love and hope, but grew stale.”

Do Immigrants Make Everyone Except High School Dropouts Better Off?
That’s what David Leonhardt asserted in a column that trashed Lou Dobbs for passing along ridiculous stories about how immigrants are damaging the country. While Leonhardt is right to go after mindless immigrant bashing, that should not be an excuse for a little economic slight of hand.

CNN talker Dobbs “flat-out wrong” about leprosy statistics
“When I spoke to him yesterday, he admitted as much, sort of,” says David Leonhardt. He spent some time reading transcripts from old episodes of Lou Dobbs’ show, and concluded the CNN star “mixes opinion and untruths.” Leonhardt writes: “If CNN were serious about being ‘the most trusted name in news,’ as it claims to be, don’t you think it would be big enough to issue an actual correction” about the leprosy figures?

For Wallace, Dems — but not Republicans — who vote “no” on Iraq funding bill are willing to “let the money run out for the troops”
On the May 27 edition of Fox News Sunday, host Chris Wallace asserted that, in voting against the emergency supplemental funding bill for the Iraq war last week, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY) “was voting to actually let the money run out for the troops on the front lines in Iraq and Afghanistan.” However, while Wallace has repeatedly suggested Democrats voting against a supplemental are putting American troops in harm’s way, he has never held President Bush — who vetoed an Iraq supplemental — or Republican members of Congress — many of whom either supported the president’s veto or have themselves voted against a supplemental funding bill — to the same standard.

Web version of NY Times Gerth article left uncorrected 13 years after publication
Thirteen years after the publication of a New York Times article that made a false claim regarding President Bill Clinton’s tenure as Arkansas governor, the online and Nexis versions of that article still do not include the correction.

Nielsen’s top 20 prime-time TV shows
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Following are the top 20 prime-time programs on broadcast TV for the week ended May 27, as measured in average total audience, according to Nielsen Media Research. (Data include same-day DVR playback.)

Warner to put ad-supported video archive online
LONDON (Reuters) - Warner Music, the world’s fourth largest music group, is putting its archive of music video online and making it available for free to fans.

Apple debuts unprotected songs online
SAN JOSE, Calif. - Apple Inc.’s iTunes Store started selling thousands of songs without copy protection Wednesday, marking the trendsetting company’s latest coup and a model for what analysts say will likely become a pattern for online music sales.

Palm unveils new laptop-like gadget
SAN JOSE, Calif. - Seeking to recapture its innovative streak in mobile computing, Palm Inc. on Wednesday unveiled a laptop-like gadget with a full-size keyboard and 10-inch display to serve as a companion for smartphones.

Prosecution rests case in Conrad Black trial
CHICAGO (Reuters) - Prosecutors wrapped up their case in Conrad Black’s criminal fraud trial on Wednesday after 11 weeks of testimony designed to convince jurors the one-time high-flying media mogul and his associates are thieves.

Man described as a top spammer arrested
SEATTLE - A 27-year-old man described as one of the world’s most prolific spammers was arrested Wednesday, and federal authorities said computer users across the Web could notice a decrease in the amount of junk e-mail.
Hallelujah!

More Bandwidth Than You Can Use?
From the moment the first phone-line modems squawked to life, connecting consumers to early Internet service providers two decades ago, there has been a nearly universal quest for more plentiful and speedier data pipes into the home.

Google takes online software applications offline
SAN FRANCISCO (AFP) - Google on Thursday provided software developers with technology to keep online applications like e-mail running on computers even if Internet connections are dropped, unavailable or unreliable.

Cigna Offers Cancer-Fighting Video Game To Patients
HopeLab claims that cancer patients who play Re-Mission have more successful treatment than those who don’t play the game.

Scan Your Brain at Home With New Device
[t]hanks to the hard-working folks at Hitachi, you can nowindulge your curiosity about your own brain patterns - for real. Their new lightweight, rechargeable battery-operated brain scanner lets you use optical topography technology to actually look at your own brain activity.

Health Toll of 9/11 Still Unclear
Toxic plume has officially claimed one, but many more may be at risk, experts say

Parkinson’s Linked to Pesticides, Head Trauma
More exposure means a higher likelihood of the motor illness, research shows

Blah, Blah, Blah: Teachers Top Talking Tests
Human vocal cords can vibrate more than 150 times per second, potentially racking up a million vibrations in just over an hour of speaking and damaging the membranes involved. And new research shows teachers spend nearly a fourth of their time at work talking—not including the silent pauses between words.

Shields Up! Cosmonauts Install Protective Space Station Panels
The International Space Station (ISS) is a little better protected against impact by stray particles today after two Russian cosmonauts installed debris shielding to the station during a 5 hour, 25 minute spacewalk.

Oddball Planet Puzzles Astronomers
HONOLULU–A team of amateur and professional astronomers has discovered a mammoth orb more than 13 times the mass of Jupiter that whips around its parent star in fewer than four days and is considered an “oddball” planet among its exoplanet relatives.

U.S. Rejects EU Emission Reductions
The United States rejects the European Union’s all-encompassing target on reduction of carbon emissions, President Bush’s environmental adviser said Tuesday.

Cyclones Could Save Oceanic Conveyor Belt From Global Warming
The ferocious winds of tropical cyclones churn up ocean water as they spin over the surface, significantly affecting the transport of heat in the ocean, a new study finds. And as global warming heats up the ocean surface, this process could be intensified, preventing the potential shutdown of the oceanic conveyor belt. The intensification could also have strange effects on storms.

The Hill’s Pundits Blog

May 30, 2007

Why Democratic Political Consultants Love the Iraq War

Brent Budowsky

Now we read in the Boston Globe how John Kerry, preparing to campaign to be commander in chief, voted in 2002 for the Iraq war after his political consultants informed the would-be leader of the free world that he would not be “politically viable” unless he voted yes.

This followed the disclosure that Bob Shrum advised John Edwards to send young men and women to die as a way of  improving his weak national-security resume in 2002.

Why Democratic officials listen to this is beyond me…

From the beginning, at every stage, Democrats did better in elections, to the exact degree that they spoke out strongly. In 2002, they voted for the war and lost a recession-like election. In 2004 they moved daintily in opposition and did better, but lost again. In 2006 they took their strongest position yet, and won, and Democrats in Congress surged ahead of the Republican Congress and Republican president in early 2007…

We entered 2007 with one of the most unpopular presidents in history and one of the most unpopular Republican Congresses in history. Now, after a few short months of not fighting courageously for change, the Democratic Congress shows up in polls as equally unpopular as George W. Bush…

The Democratic consultant class likes the Iraq war because it gives Democrats the chance to play pretend with non-binding actions, issue talking points about how they fought to change the policy, then lose everything in the end, at which point they can blame the Republicans for the war.

The majority view of Democratic consultants is they don’t want to win a change in policy, because then they have ownership. They want look like they tried, then lose, and then blame Republicans for the war…

Here is the state of play, rounding off the numbers. Seventy percent of the American people disapprove of the current policy; disapprove of President Bush; disapprove of Republicans in Congress; and now disapprove of the Democratic Congress.

It is America versus Washington…

When Washington begins to respect America, Americans will no longer feel 70 percent disrespect for both parties in Washington.

The way to win the election in 2008 is to respect the election of 2006.

Budowsky was an aide to former Sen. Lloyd Bentsen and to Bill Alexander, then-chief deputy whip of the House. He is a contributing editor to Fighting Dems News Service. He can be read on The Hill’s Pundits Blog and reached at brentbbi@webtv.net.

[Click the title, above, to read more and to post a comment that may be read by your congressman and senators!.—Caro]

Blogosphere fury at Dems on Iraq vote
Furious that congressional Democratic leaders did not fight harder to pass a supplemental spending bill with a timeline to end the war in Iraq and tougher benchmarks, liberal online activists have ripped party leaders and threatened to halt contributions to Democratic lawmakers.

What Now!

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Iraqi-U.S. troops seek kidnapped Britons
BAGHDAD - Hundreds of Iraqi and U.S. troops cordoned off sections of Baghdad’s Sadr City slum early Wednesday and conducted a series of raids in an apparent effort to find five British citizens abducted from a nearby government building the day before, local residents and police said.

Strife in North Iraq as Sunni Arabs Drive Out Kurds
Conflict between Arabs and Kurds is intensifying in Mosul, adding another dimension to the civil war.

Thai political party found not guilty
BANGKOK, Thailand - A court ruled Wednesday that the country’s oldest political party was not guilty of maligning ousted Premier Thaksin Shinawatra and urging voters to cast a “no” vote in last year’s election.
There’s a law against urging voters to vote a certain way?  What good are political parties, then?

Russia Says New ICBM Can Beat Any System
MOSCOW (AP) - Russia tested new missiles Tuesday that a Kremlin official boasted could penetrate any defense system, and President Vladimir Putin warned that U.S. plans for an anti-missile shield in Europe would turn the region into a “powder keg.” First Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov said.

SKorea urges stepped up reconciliation
South Korea pressed communist North Korea to redouble its reconciliation efforts Tuesday, as the estranged neighbors opened high-level talks amid rifts over the North’s nuclear program and the South’s delayed rice shipments.

Australian gay bar can bar heterosexuals
MELBOURNE, Australia - A gay bar has won the right to turn away heterosexuals and even lesbians to provide a non-threatening atmosphere for the men partying inside.

Man eats dog in royal fox protest
LONDON (AFP) - A British artist ate a corgi dog, famous for being Queen Elizabeth II’s favourite breed, in protest Tuesday after a group including her husband Prince Philip allegedly killed a fox earlier this year.

US slaps new sanctions on Sudan over Darfur crisis
WASHINGTON (AFP) - President George W. Bush Tuesday tightened US sanctions on Sudan over “genocide” in Darfur and pushed for a tough new UN Security Council resolution to punish Khartoum for the bloody crisis.

10 Soldiers Die on Memorial Day
Iraq violence suggests that redeployment effort has not yet created a safer security environment.

Al-Qaida video threatens attacks on U.S.
An American member of al-Qaida warned President Bush on Tuesday to end U.S. involvement in all Muslim lands or face an attack worse than the Sept. 11 suicide assault, according to a new videotape.
Another tape?  Another threat?  I swear these guys pick up their paychecks from Karl Rove.

Some Staunch G.O.P. Voters Souring on Iraq
In Congressional districts across the country, Republican backers of the war are starting to take more political heat.

Bush takes aim at GOP critics of immigration deal
GLYNCO, Ga. — President Bush lashed out at critics within his own party yesterday, accusing Republican opponents of distorting the immigration deal he negotiated with leading congressional Democrats and playing on the politics of fear to undermine public support.

Cindy Sheehan quits the anti-war life
This week one of the anti-war movement’s most recognizable figures said she was “resigning” from the movement. Emotionally exhausted and politically frustrated at Congressional Democrats for continuing to fund the Iraq war, Sheehan said she was leaving public life — albeit temporarily — to figure out her next step. Anti-war leaders praised her bravery in putting a human face on the war’s toll, but said the movement will not be derailed by her departure.

GOP plots blue-slip attack
House conservatives are ready to stop the Senate immigration bill in its tracks with a potent procedural weapon should the contentious measure win passage in the upper chamber.

Was She or Wasn’t She?
May 29, 2007 - In new court filings,  special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald has finally resolved one of the most disputed issues at the core of the long-running CIA leak controversy:  Valerie Plame Wilson, he asserts,  was a “covert” CIA officer who repeatedly traveled overseas using a “cover identity” in order to disguise her relationship with the agency.
Gee, I wonder what the right wingers will do to counter this claim.  Oh, I know, they’ll have some Republican bozo pretend her congressional testimony wasn’t consistent.  See below.

Plame called on to explain varied accounts
Former CIA officer Valerie Plame should explain “differences” in her various accounts of how her husband was sent to the African nation of Niger in 2002 to investigate reports Iraq was trying to buy uranium there, the vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee said. Plame’s differing versions have furthered “misinformation” about the origins of the case that roiled official Washington beginning in July 2003, said Sen. Kit Bond, R-Mo.

Lawyer: Cheney visitor logs not recorded
A lawyer for Vice President Dick Cheney told the Secret Service in September to eliminate data on who visited Cheney at his official residence, a newly disclosed letter states. The Sept. 13, 2006, letter from Cheney’s lawyer says logs for Cheney’s residence on the grounds of the Naval Observatory are subject to the Presidential Records Act.

Extreme Makeover: Veco Edition
Sen. Ted Stevens (R-AK) jacked his house off the ground, inserted a new first story and placed the old first floor on top, thanks to the help of a top executive at local oil company Veco Corp. who hired at least one key contractor to complete the feat of a job. Veco is entwined in a broad federal investigation that has led to the indictment of four current and former Alaska politicians and ensnared former Alaska Senate President Ben Stevens, son of Ted Stevens.

Advisers Fault Harsh Methods in Interrogation
A set of experts is calling techniques used since the 2001 terrorist attacks outmoded, amateurish and unreliable.

Justice Offers Rare Vocal Dissent
Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg criticizes the majority for opinions that she says undermine women’s rights.

Trade Negotiator Picked To Head Up World Bank
President Bush decides to nominate Robert Zoellick to replace Paul Wolfowitz, who stepped down from his position after alleged ethical violations.

Taxpayers on the hook for $59 trillion
The federal government recorded a $1.3 trillion loss last year far more than the official $248 billion deficit when corporate-style accounting standards are used, a USA TODAY analysis shows. The loss reflects a continued deterioration in the finances of Social Security and government retirement programs for civil servants and military personnel. The loss — equal to $11,434 per household — is more than Americans paid in income taxes in 2006.
Oh, well, surely that means we have to continue our military adventures abroad and cut subsidies for old folks here at home.

Stocks up slightly ahead of Fed minutes
NEW YORK - Wall Street eked out a modest gain Tuesday as investors, wary about the upcoming release of the Federal Reserve minutes, bought cautiously amid a series of new takeover deals and upbeat consumer confidence figures.

Americans confident despite falling home prices
NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. consumers and investors became more optimistic in May as a rising stock market provided a buffer from the first drop in home values in 16 years, according to reports published on Tuesday.

Immigration bill includes worker screening
WASHINGTON - The nation’s employers say a major problem with system overload is on the way if Congress forces them to prove, electronically, that all their workers are legal.

Older workers holding off on the gold watch
After falling for more than 100 years, the retirement age chosen by working Americans is edging up again.

WakeUpWalMart.com: Leaked Document Shows Wal-Mart’s #1 Overall Business Challenge Is Reputation
WakeUpWalMart.com, America’s campaign to change Wal-Mart, released a stunning new internal document prepared for Wal-Mart by its old advertising agency, GSD&M. The document, entitled “Wal-Mart Positioning Report,” states, in often brutal detail, the serious public image challenges Wal-Mart faces.

Iran could scrap petrol rationing plan: MP
TEHRAN (AFP) - Iran could scrap a plan to ration petrol that was expected to have a profound impact on the economy of OPEC’s number two oil producer, the head of parliament’s energy committee said on Sunday.

India’s market cap crosses the trillion dollar mark
MUMBAI (AFP) - A sharply rising rupee to a near decade high against the dollar and record share prices has resulted in India’s stock market joining an elite club with a capitalisation of more than one trillion dollars.