WASHINGTON — After years of painful service cuts and devastating bankruptcies, culminating in the financial collapse of Detroit, state and local governments are being urged to stop using budget gimmicks that obscure the true extent of their money problems. On Tuesday, the State Budget Crisis Task Force released its final […]
Last summer, German Chancellor Angela Merkel promised her citizens a pact which would prohibit US spying on German citizens. But since then, Washington has shown little interest in pursuing such a treaty. Now, officials in Germany fear the deal is dead. Failed talks? Hardly. The negotiations “are continuing,” says Germany’s […]
ET: WASHINGTON: The self-proclaimed mastermind of the September 11 attacks, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, has released a manifesto claiming that the Quran forbids the use of violence to spread Islam. The document, published Tuesday by The Huffington Post and Britain’s Channel 4 News, marks Mohammed’s first public communication since 2009, when the US government officially […]
A Malaysian architecture professor won a legal challenge that sought removal of her name from the US government’s no-fly list. A federal judge in San Francisco said Tuesday in a brief, two-page court filing that the government’s inclusion of Rahinah Ibrahim on the list was a mistake, AP reports. US […]
Huff Post: by Yasmine Hafiz — My iPhone can do almost anything. But could it help me find God? An interview with Siri, the virtual assistant inside many Apple products, reveals that the spiritual teacher you’ve been looking for may have been in your pocket all along. After watching the excellent Spike Jonez […]
Epigraph Will they not, then, meditate upon the Qur’an? Had it been from anyone other than Allah, they would surely have found therein much disagreement and contradictions. (Al Quran 4:83) […]
Source: CNN: (CNN) — Smoking can kill you. We’ve known that for at least 50 years — and yet millions still smoke, and thousands more pick up the habit every year. Why? Their stories involve strong addictions, passionate defiance — and billions spent to make people act against their own best […]
Source: The Economist: ALWAYS keep an eye on the quiet ones. Robert Gates, a Washington veteran who served as George W. Bush’s final defence secretary and stayed on as Barack Obama’s first, has written an incendiary memoir that belies his reputation as an inscrutable, unflappable team player (Team Obama […]
Story Summary January 13, 2014 12:48 AM By David Ignatius The Daily Star Reading the devastating memoir by former Defense Secretary Robert Gates, people are likely to ask the same troubling questions that emerge from the morning newspapers these days: How did the Obama administration’s foreign-policy process get so broken, […]
CTV: Inmates in the US-held notorious Guantanamo Prison are facing one of the most outrageous persecutions in history, an analyst tells Press TV in an interview. “It is one of […]
Saturday marks twelve years since the first detainees arrived at Guantanamo Bay prison on January 11, 2002. On the anniversary US human rights activists marched to the White House demanding the facility’s closure. This time, the annual Day of Action to shut Guantanamo down comes as quite a number of […]
Published on Dec 29, 2013 http://usawatchdog.com/2014-middle-ea… Gerald Celente, Publisher of The Trends Journal, predicts, “Absent the war card, I think we will see a financial crisis before the end of the second quarter of 2014.” Celente sums up what he sees in 2014 as “a year of extremes.” Join Greg Hunter as […]
Excluded genius Ahmad Khan TFT Issue: 10 Jan 2014 TheFridaytimes.com Ahmed Khan pays tribute to the recently deceased Daud Rahbar, the great scholar and writer who was exiled from Pakistan for speaking his mind Daud Rahbar This year, on 31 December 2013, as Zia Mohyeddin read from the letters […]
75 Canadians in the running for a one-way mission to Mars The Globe & Mail: Dozens of star-struck Canadians are surprised, excited and brimming with confidence after reaching the next […]
NEW YORK (CNNMoney) The unemployment rate fell to 6.7% in December — the first time it’s been below 7% in five years. But the drop was for all the wrong reasons. The rate fell because many people got fed up, stopped looking for work and dropped out of the labor […]
CTV: A chart illustrating what people in Muslim countries think women should wear in public is being met with both fascination and derision. The chart was created by the Pew […]
Source: USA Today President Obama heard from congressional lawmakers Thursday about possible changes to government surveillance programs, and he’s on track to unveil his plan in the next two and […]
York University professor who refused student’s request to be separated from female classmates broke ‘obligation to accommodate’: officials Republish Reprint- National Post Toronto Tristin Hopper | January 8, 2014 | Last Updated: Jan 9 7:40 AM ET More from Tristin Hopper | @TristinHopper http://news.nationalpost.com/2014/01/08/york-university-professor-who-refused-students-request-to-be-separated-from-female-classmates-broke-obligation-to-accommodate-officials/ After refusing to honour a male student’s […]
STORY SUMMARY While Afghanistan and Iraq were both messes which Obama’s predecessors got the country into, former Pentagon chief Gates, who served under six presidents, chastised the Democrat leader for dithering on troop surges and overall strategy. The ramifications of over a decade of bad U.S. decisions are still being […]
NATE RAYMOND AND DAVID BRUNNSTROM Published — Friday 10 January 2014 NEW YORK/WASHINGTON D.C.: The Indian diplomat whose arrest and strip-searching in New York caused a major rift between India […]