Tuesday, Apr 23rd
Last update04:52:41 AM GMT
Exxon Mobil Corp. and Chevron Corp. may report their lowest production since 2005, leaving investors reliant on record energy prices to drive profit gains at the largest U.S. oil companies.
Second-quarter output fell more than 5 percent, the most in at least a decade.
TVNL Comment: Record prices with reduced demand. Do the math. Thank Dick Cheney.
California will sue the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for "wantonly" ignoring its duty to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from ships, aircraft, and construction and agricultural equipment, state Attorney General Jerry Brown said on Wednesday.
"Ships, aircraft and industrial equipment burn huge quantities of fossil fuel, causing greenhouse gas pollution, yet President (George W.) Bush stalls with one bureaucratic dodge after another," said Brown, a strong advocate for the environment since his two terms as a liberal California governor in the 1970s and 1980s.
"Because Bush's Environmental Protection Agency continues to wantonly ignore its duty to regulate pollution, California is forced to seek judicial action," he said.
The Bush administration's terrorism-fighting strategy has not significantly undermined al-Qaeda's capabilities, according to a major new study that argues the struggle against terrorism is better waged by law enforcement agencies than by armies.
The study by the nonpartisan Rand Corp. also contends that the administration committed a fundamental error in portraying the conflict with al-Qaeda as a "war on terrorism." The phrase falsely suggests that there can be a battlefield solution to terrorism, and symbolically conveys warrior status on terrorists, it said.
"The U.S. military can play a critical role in building indigenous capacity," it said, "but should generally resist being drawn into combat operations in Muslim societies, since its presence is likely to increase terrorist recruitment."
Four Democratic senators called yesterday for Stephen L. Johnson to resign as administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, and they asked Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey to investigate whether Johnson lied in testimony to a Senate committee.
The senators, all members of the Environment and Public Works Committee, said Johnson -- the first career scientist to head up the agency -- had repeatedly succumbed to political pressure on decisions vital to protecting health and the environment.
The senators also allege in the letter to Mukasey that Johnson made false statements before the committee in January when he said that he alone had decided California should not regulate the gases blamed for global warming from motor vehicles.
An Army sergeant complained about faulty wiring in Iraq months before the fatal electrocution of another soldier in a shower in the same quarters, according to documents released Wednesday by a congressional committee.
Army records show electricians from contractor Kellogg, Brown and Root found “several safety issues concerning the improper grounding of electrical devices” in February 2007.
On May 17, 2005, the White House’s political affairs office sent an e-mail message to agencies throughout the executive branch directing them to find jobs for 108 people on a list of “priority candidates” who had “loyally served the president.”
“We simply want to place as many of our Bush loyalists as possible,” the White House emphasized in a follow-up message, according to a little-noticed passage of a Justice Department report released Monday about politicization in the department’s hiring of civil-service prosecutors and immigration officials.
The report, the subject of a Senate oversight hearing Wednesday, provided a window into how the administration sought to install politically like-minded officials in positions of government responsibility, and how the efforts at times crossed customary or legal limits.
TVNL Comment: Next time I commit a crime I want it called "crossing legal limits", not committing a crime!
Defence Minister Peter MacKay insisted Wednesday that Canadian troops are not in Afghanistan to guard a new natural gas pipeline being built through the southern part of the country.
He said fears that Canadian troops may end up paying a hefty price to protect the U.S.-backed project from insurgents are unfounded.
“We have to decide what role, if any, we'll play,” Mr. MacKay said. “We are not there specifically to protect a pipeline across Afghanistan.”
TVNL Comment: Sure...we believe you!
Further billions had to be diverted from reconstruction to security because the Bush administration did not adequately foresee how volatile Iraq would be when it began rebuilding the country, the report says.
"The U.S. government did not fully anticipate or plan for the unstable working environment that faced U.S. managers when reconstruction began in Iraq," it says.
Contractors spent an average of 12.5 percent of their reconstruction contracts on security, the inspector general found.
TVNL Comment: This was not "waste", this was "theft!" This war was waged by the people who stood to make the most money by obliterating Iraq, stealing their oil, and then charging American tax payers to rebuild what they just paid to obliterate! War is a scam. Always was, always will be.
At least 50 people have lost their sight after staring at the sun hoping to see an image of the Virgin Mary, according to reports.
Despite warnings, and the potentially harmful effects of their actions, believers are allegedly still flocking to a hotelier's house in Erumeli near where the divine image is said to have appeared.
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