View full post on All Stories

View full post on All Stories

View full post on All Stories

View full post on All Stories

Washington, D.C., United States (AHN) – Richard Holbrooke, the U.S. president’s special envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan, is struggling in a critical condition at George Washington University hospital after admission on Friday morning.

“This morning, doctors completed surgery to repair a tear in his aorta. He is in critical condition and has been joined by his family,” said PJ Crowley, the State Department spokesman said in a statement on Saturday.

Earlier on Friday, at the regular briefing, Crowley refused to elaborate on Holbrooke;s condition, saying, “All I can tell you is that the ambassador is at the hospital at the present time, and beyond that I will — we will let you know, as we find out more.”

Crowley also refused to confirm media reports that Ambassador Holbrooke collapsed at Secretary Hillary Clinton’s office, saying on Friday, “It happened on the seventh floor,”

View full post on All Stories

Washington, D.C., United States (AHN) – Vermont’s Independent Sen. Bernard Sanders spent over eight hours denouncing the new agreement to extend Bush-era tax cuts to millions of Americans.

Speaking on the floor of the U.S. Senate, Sanders spoke out against President Barack Obama’s efforts, saying the deal only increases America’s debt and fails to solve the underlying economic issues that mire the country.

Reading letters from constituents, Sanders took aim at Obama, Senate Republicans, China and others.

“I’m not here to set any great records or to make a spectacle. I am simply here today to take as long as I can to explain to the American people the fact that we have got to do a lot better than this agreement provides,” Sanders said.

Nonetheless, the deal will move forward and is likely to clear Congress before the holidays.

View full post on Economy, Business And Finance Stories

London, United Kingdom (AHN) – International protest is building about the arrest of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange this week. Assange is being held in a British jail awaiting extradition to Sweden on rape charges.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Justice Department is seeking to extradite him to the United States to face espionage charges after his Web site released more than 250,000 documents that exposed secret State Department communications. However, political leaders in Australia, Brazil, Russia and elsewhere say Assange is a political prisoner who is being punished for exercising rights of the free press.

Some of the harshest criticism is coming from Australia, where hundreds of people rallied Thursday in three cities to protest Assange’s arrest. Assange is an Australian citizen.

Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd said Assange was merely doing the job of any journalist by publishing the documents. “The blame for any violations of the law should fall on the persons who gave the documents to Wikileaks,” Rudd said. “The Americans are responsible for that.”

The State Department communications, called “cables,” described Rudd as a “control freak” and said that he made mistakes as Australia’s foreign minister.

Rudd said he was unconcerned about the criticisms.

He also said Australia would offer consular help to Assange.

Consular help refers to sending diplomats to meet with a citizen of their own country who is arrested abroad to determine whether legal assistance can be arranged.

In Brazil, President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva described the arrest of Assange as a crime.

“I want to express my protest against this offense against free expression,” Lula said. “I will use the presidential blog to express my protest.”

He also encouraged the international news media to be more vigorous in defending Assange.

“The young man who is giving so much trouble to the diplomacy of the United States was arrested and so far I have not seen any protest defending free expression,” Lula said.

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin described the U.S. government’s efforts to prosecute Assange as hypocritical.

“If it is full democracy, then why have they hidden Mr. Assange in prison,” Putin said during a press conference Thursday. “That’s what, democracy?”

Putin’s remarks appear to be a response to a February 2010 cable from Defense Secretary Robert Gates that said, “Russian democracy has disappeared and the government is an oligarchy run by the security services.”

In Mexico, the Journalists Club put up a plaque in their Mexico City headquarters honoring Assange for his “contribution to the conscience of mankind.”

The State Department documents published by Wikileaks described Mexico’s difficulties in managing its war with drug cartels. The cables described the government’s efforts as ineffective, often corrupt and divided among competing administrators.

Meanwhile, the Congressional Research Service is saying any U.S. prosecution of Assange would face unprecedented legal and diplomatic challenges.

A 24-page report from the government agency examines how the Justice Department could apply U.S. criminal laws to a foreign news operation.

“We are aware of no case in which a publisher of information obtained through unauthorized disclosure by a government employee has been prosecuted for publishing it,” the report said.

The prosecution of Assange creates First Amendment and diplomatic hurdles “based on concerns about government censorship,” the report said.

Some members of Congress, such as Sen. Joseph Lieberman (I.-Conn) and Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), say Assange should be prosecuted under the Espionage Act of 1917.

However, the Congressional Research Service report said no single law forbids the news media from publishing diplomatic cables only a “patchwork” of statutes that leave unclear answers.

View full post on Politics Stories

Washington, D.C., United States (AHN) – New claims for unemployment compensation dropped to 421,000 for the week ending Dec. 4, a decrease of 17,000 claims from the week before, according to the U.S. Department of Labor.

Not all jobless workers are insured by the unemployment compensation program. The advance seasonally adjusted rate of insured unemployed workers was 3.2 percent for the week ending Nov. 27, which was a decrease of 0.2 percentage point from the prior week’s unrevised rate of 3.4 percent, the DOL said in a statement.

The DOL also released the figures for the week ending Nov. 27 for the advance number of seasonally adjusted insured unemployment, which was 4,086,000. That was a decrease of 191,000 from the preceding week’s revised number of 4,277,000 insured unemployed.

Advance unadjusted figures for the week ending Nov. 27 showed the percentage of unemployed workers eligible for unemployment compensation was 3.3 percent. However, the unemployment rate during that week was 9.6 percent.

Figures for the number of unemployed Americans claiming benefits under all unemployment compensation programs was from a week earlier, or the week ending Nov. 13 was 8,297,938.

Extended unemployment compensation benefits, for jobless Americans who are covered by that insurance program, were available in 35 states and the District of Columbia for the week ending Nov. 20.

Those states were Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia and Wisconsin.

View full post on All Stories

Washington, D.C., United States (AHN) – In an attempt to prevent President Barack Obama’s plan to bring terror suspects to the United States for trial, the House voted 212-206 on Tuesday to curb the government’s expenses in the fiscal year. The measure targeted funds aimed at transferring inmates from a military holding facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to prisons in the U.S.

The move hurts Obama’s efforts to close the controversial detention camp by next year or his attempts to transfer 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed in America.

“None of the funds made available in this or any prior Act may be used to transfer, release, or assist in the transfer or release to or within the U.S., its territories, or possessions Khalid Sheikh Mohammed or any other detainee held at Guantanamo Bay as of June 24, 2009,” the bill explains.

The bill will be presented to the Senate for approval and would be sent to Obama to sign into law.

Upon assuming power in 2008, Obama had pledged to close down the notorious facility within a year but failed due to unyielding opposition from the U.S. Congress.

Currently, the prison, which is in Cuba’s Guantanamo naval base, holds nearly 170 detainees, including 58, who have been put into indefinite detention without trial.

View full post on Politics Stories

Seattle, WA, United States (AHN) – Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg pledged Thursday to give half of his wealth to charity. He made the promise by signing up with Bill and Melinda Gates and Warren Buffett’s Giving Pledge campaign.

Aside from Zuckerberg, others who joined the campaign include billionaire investor Carl Icahn, former AOL Chief Executive Stephen Case and financiers Theodore Forstmann, Leon Cooperman and Nicolas Berggruen.

At 26, Zuckerberg is one of the youngest billionaires in the world. He has an estimated worth of $6.9 billion and was 35th in Forbes’ 2010 list of richest people in the U.S.

Zuckerberg pointed out that many people wait until they grow old before they give back to charity. The Facebook co-founder said he would rather start doing it now. He said signing up with the campaign is a big opportunity for him and other successful business people to give to charity while they are still young and could witness the impact of their act.

Zuckerberg previously pledged $100 million to help improve Newark’s public school system.

The campaign, launched in August, encouraged rich people to go public with their donation to encourage others to give as well. Giving Pledge has so far about 40 individuals or families who have signed up, including New York Mayor Micahel Bloomberg and fashion designer Diane Von Furstenberg.

View full post on Economy, Business And Finance Stories