US Senate Resumes Debate on Iraq

By a vote of 70 to 24, the Senate agreed to begin debating a bill that would cut off money for the unpopular war in Iraq. The legislation is sponsored by Senator Russ Feingold, a Wisconsin Democrat and staunch opponent of the Bush administration policy in Iraq.

"The president's policies have actually empowered former insurgents and militia-infiltrated security forces with questionable loyalties. By supporting sheiks in al-Anbar and elsewhere, we may have reduced violence in the near term, but only by making it more difficult to achieve national reconciliation in the long run," he said.

Feingold and other Democrats argue that the war in Iraq has diverted attention and resources away from the wider war on terrorism.

Republicans, meanwhile, are opposed to Feingold's bill, saying it would, in effect, legislate defeat in Iraq. "Senator Feingold's amendment serves to tie the hands of our commanders on the ground," said Senator James Inhofe is an Oklahoma Republican.

Despite their opposition, Republicans did not block the measure from advancing. Debate on the bill will give them and their party's presumptive presidential nominee, Senator John McCain, the opportunity to criticize Democrats for trying to end funding for the war at a time when military progress is being made. McCain's support for the U.S. troop surge in Iraq has been a focus of his campaign.

cecilias News story

In China they are holding the 2008 Olimpics. It is taking place in Beijing. To help reduce the air pollution they are taking drastic measures to improve there air pollution. They need to lower there air amisions to meet the standard laid down by the World Health Organisation. They know they need to lower the air pollution because the density of breathable particles in the air - is still too high. a new car amision standard will be inforced on March 1. Cars and Buses that fail the checks will be banned from the streets. More than 1,300 petrol stations in Beijing are being upgraded to cut fumes and the rest will be shut down. also five provences around beijing will have to meet the standards.

SAVE THE ELEPHANTS!

South Africa is now making it legal for elephants to be killed. It has been illegal to hunt elephants for the past thirteen years. They have decided that it will help lower the elephant population by raising the ban. Many animal rights activists are angry and upset. Activists are threatening to boycott and plan protests.

When hunting elephants was popular in the early 1900's, it nearly killed off the elephant population. When it first became illegal, in 1995, there were 9,000 elephants. It has now risen to over 20,000 elephants. There is so many elephants that many crops and trees are trampled. There is not yet a specific date to when the ban will be lifted.

Historic Gate Burned Down.

Earlier this week a fire destroyed a large 600 year old gate in South Korea. It used to gate the city of Seoul. It was known as the National Treasure in South Korea. It is sad for many because it has been around for so long and survived so much. It survived both the Chinese and Japanese invasions and also the Korean War. On Monday they suspected a man named Chae had set it on fire and he later confessed to his crime. Two years ago, in 2006, he also set fire to the Changgyeong palace, which is also in Seoul that 4,230 dollars in damage. The Cultural Heritage Administration estimated that it will take a couple of years and about 21 million dollars to rebuild the gate.

Gang robs Zurich of top paintings

According to BBC News, an armed gang stole four paintings worth 160 million dollars, on Sunday. The painting were "Poppies near Vetheuil" by Claude Monet (1879), "Count Lepic and his Daughters" by Edgar Degas (1871), "Chestnut in Bloom" by Vincent Van Gogh (1890) and "Boy in a Red Jacket" by Paul Cezanne (1888). The painting were stolen at the Emil Buehrle Collection in Zurich at 1630 local time. One of the men threatened a security guard with a pistol, while the other two stole the paintings. The painting were put into a white vehicle outside the museum. Police have said that one of the robbers spoke German with a Slavic accent. Mario Cortesi, a Zurich police spokesman told journalists, "We're talking about the biggest ever robbery carried out in Switzerland, even Europe." The paintings were described as "the four finest in the museum's collection," by Museum director Lukas Gloor. The art theft is one of the biggest in the world in the last twenty years.

New-born rhino named Kofi Annan

According to BBC news a new-born rhinoceros in Kenya has been named Kofi Annan in honour of the former UN Secretary General. Baby Kofi was born on the weekend in the community-owned Ol Choro Oirogua Conservancy in the Maasai Mara reserve. Mr Annan is trying to mediate between President Mwai Kibaki and opposition leader Raila Odinga, who disputed the results of elections in December. Kofi's birth comes three months after a new strategy was announced to increase the numbers of endangered rhinos. Rangers did not say there were any obvious comparisons between Mr Annan and the horned beast, but some have suggested he will need a thick skin to push forward difficult negotiations between Mr Kibaki and Mr Odinga.

A new-born rhinoceros in Kenya has been named Kofi Annan in honour of the former UN Secretary General.

Baby Kofi was born at the weekend in the community-owned Ol Choro Oirogua Conservancy in the Maasai Mara reserve. Mr Annan is trying to mediate between President Mwai Kibaki and opposition leader Raila Odinga, who disputed the results of elections in December. Kofi's birth comes three months after a new strategy was announced to increase the numbers of endangered rhinos. Rangers did not say there were any obvious comparisons between Mr Annan and the horned beast, but some have suggested he will need a thick skin to push forward difficult negotiations between Mr Kibaki and Mr Odinga."Thick-skinned Kofi Annan is likely to spend years in the wild," the United Nations said in a statement. The new strategy to save endangered black rhino seeks to raise numbers from the current 540 to 700 by the year 2011.

Alice's GAOC for Feb. 14

On Monday, February 10 at 22:00 GMT, East Timor's President Jose Ramos-Horta was shot in the stomach at his house after two cars of renegade soldiers pulled up and began the attack. Ramos-Horta was taken immediately to a Australian-military run hospital in the country's capitol of Dili to have an emergency operation. His condition is said to be serious, but not life-threatening. Unconfirmed reports say that there was also an attack at the house of Prime Minister Xanana Gusmao, but that no one was killed or injured.

One renegade soldier, Alfredo Reinado, was shot dead by the President's guards after he got out of the car. Alfredo Reinado has in the past been indicted for fighting between rebel troops and police in 2006 which caused more than 150,000 to flee their homes. Reinado, in November of 2007, sent out a threat, saying that he would use forces against the government.

East Timor gained independence in 2002, 6 years after Jose Ramos-Horta and Bishop Carlos Filipe Ximenes Belo won a joint Nobel Peace Prize after the campaign work to be independent from Indonesian rule when the Portuguese withdrew from East Timor in 1975.

Battles kill 41 in Iraq।

On Sunday, February 10th, a suicide car bombing in Iraq killed at least 19 people. The new violence came when Robert Gates; the U.S. Defense Secretary made an unanounced visit to Baghdad to talk with the U.S. commanders and iraqi leaders.
The car bombing happened near a market on the outskirts of Balad, a town just north of Baghdad. There were several raids in villiges in northwestern Iraq, triggering battles with neighborhood militias that killed at least 22 people. The village fights began when several gunmen's stormed villages near Mosul. Out of the 22 dead, 10 had been gunmen.

Feature Story

According to the Ny Times as the fighting in Chad decreases, there are more problems.

After three days of fierce fighting between government troops and rebels here, most of the dead citizens had been carried off, mourned and buried by their families. But the dead rebels had been lying in the streets for days, abandoned by their fleeing compatriots, and attracting black clouds of flies. Even the soldiers held their noses.

But other remnants of the battle that nearly toppled Chad’s government last weekend will not be wiped away so easily. The clash has heightened tensions between Chad and Sudan, threatening to pull the two neighbors deeper into each other’s vexing problems.

Each country accuses the other of forming and causing rebellions across their shared border, and now that Sudanese rebels who had previously been focused on their own struggle in the western Sudanese province of Darfur have come to the aid of Mr. Déby, it has added fuel to the cross-border enmity.Such international alliances and rivalries increase the chances that the entire region could fall into an uncontrolled conflict like the one that engulfed the Great Lakes region of Central Africa after the Rwandan genocide of 1994.

More immediately, the long-sought international peacekeeping missions in both countries have struggled to deploy, because of the new violence here in Chad and the Sudanese government’s stalling tactics in Darfur. This has plunged the fates of more than 2.5 million refugees on both sides of the border into even greater uncertainty.

African Echoes

The residents of this village, founded centuries ago by runaway slaves in the jungle of northern Colombia, try to manage with what they have. Pigs wander through dirt roads. On the surface it resembles any other impoverished Colombian village. But when adults here speak with one another, their language draws inspiration from as far away as the Congo River Basin in Africa. Today, fewer than half of the community’s 3,000 residents actively speak Palenquero, though many children and young adults can understand it and pronounce some phrases.

Palenquero is thought to be the only Spanish-based Creole language in Latin America. But its grammar is so different that Spanish speakers can understand almost nothing of it. It is spoken only in this village and a handful of neighborhoods in cities where workers have migrated.

The survival of Palenquero points to the extraordinary resilience of San Basilio de Palenque, part of whose very name — Palenque — is the Spanish word for a fortified village of runaway slaves. Different from dozens of other palenques that were vanquished, this community has successfully fended off threats to its existence to this day.

Colonial references to its origins are scarce, but historians say that San Basilio de Palenque was probably settled sometime after revolts led by Benkos Biohó, a 17th-century African resistance leader who organized guerrilla attacks on the nearby port of Cartagena with fighters armed with stolen blunderbusses. Palenquero may be the last remnant of a Spanish-based lingua franca once used widely by slaves throughout Latin America.

Palenquero was strongly influenced by the Kikongo language of Congo and Angola, and by Portuguese, the language of traders who brought African slaves to Cartagena in the 17th century. Kikongo-derived words like ngombe (cattle) and ngubá (peanut) remain in use here today.

The defenders of Palenquero view their struggle as a continuation of other battles. “Our ancestors survived capture in Africa, the passage by ship to Cartagena and were strong enough to escape and live on their own for centuries,” said Mr. Salgado, the schoolteacher.

“We are the strongest of the strongest,” he continued. “No matter what happens, our language will live on within us.”

Rwanda-DRC quaks kills dozens

Two earthquakes hit southern Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo, on Sunday, killing 39 people and leaving hundreds severely injured. The first earthquake hit the Democratic Republic o Congo with a magnitude of 6.0 at 10:30am local time. The second earthquake hit southern Rwanda with a magnitude of 5.0 at 1:56 pm local time. In Rwanda 34 people were killed and 231 were injured. Ten people out of the 34 people were killed when a church collapsed. Bernard Watunakanza from the DRC said, "Up to now there are five dead and 149 seriously injured, many people are traumatized."

rhino poaching in india

India is deploying gaurds to watch over a protected game reserve in India’s northeast area. The gaurds were deployed after a poacher killed a rare Rhino. The rhino was killed recently after a mother rhinocerous and her baby were killed in the same park. The main reason why the rhinos are being killed is because their horns can be used to make medicines, but some people use the horns for weapons. After the death of the mother rhino, veterinarians tried to help but they had no luck. The rhino population is rising, due to the fact of their conservation, so they are easier to be attacked by poachers. More rhinos have died this year then in 2006. And the overall number of rhino deaths in the past 40 years is 650 rhinos.

Pakistani Taliban Declares Truce

According to Reuters International, today the Pakistani Taliban declared a truce but the truce was denied by a military spokesman. The denied truce put the Pakistani forces a step back because they were hoping for peace between the two parties. Seven people were declared killed by helicopter crash but was later decided a accident. Even though peace between the two would be safer for all the continued violence and deaths have led to mistrust. About 30 people have died since the start of the year and the numbers continue to climb, in hope to stop the climbing amount of deaths the Taliban hopes to come to an understanding with the Pakistani militants.

Yogi Dies

Maharishi Mahesh Yogi died on Tuesday. The Famous yogi who was the a spokesperson for the Transcendental Meditation movement that was brought to he united states in 1959. The Transcendental Meditation movement (or TM) didn't gain alot of popularity until The Beatles visited him in India in 1968. The TM is about "leading humanity towards a new era of peace and harmony". The organization, originally based off of ancient scriptures, has become a world wide multi-million dollar empire comprised of more than 5 million supporters. The yogi died at the age of about 91 in his house in the Netherlands from natural causes.

I used The Guardian Unlimited UK
bbc news UK
and the times online UK

this story is very interesting and I did not know a lot about transcendental Meditation" before i read these articles.

-Maya

Lena's Focus Story

Lena’s Focus Story:
China has freed the Hong Kong journalist, Ching Cheong, 58, who was jailed for charges of spying on Taiwan. Cheong was a correspondent for The Straits Times in Singapore and was released from a prison in Guangdong Province a few days before the Lunar New Year holiday. He spent nearliy two years out of the five-year sentence. It was not cleared why Cheong was freed. The chief executive of Hong Kong, Donald Tsang said “It is most gratifying that he could reunite with his family in time for the Spring Festival”. Cheong was sentences concerned selling state secrets to a Taiwan donation. Soon after Cheong’s arrest, he admitted to spying. Human rights campaigners in Hong Kong said that Choeng’s early arrest was valid, and the conviction had been flawed. The direstor of the Hong Kong Human Rights Monitor, Law Yuk-kai, said, “It fell far short of the standards of criminal proof required under international human rights treaties, and there was no presumption of innocence.”

sams focus story

Today in jeruselum israeli attackers killed nine hama militants in the gaza strip after people in the hama religion admitted to suicide bombing parts of israel a few years earlier. Hamas statement of responsibility for the earlier attackings have provoked a number of retaliation attacks and they are expecting more. One of the attackers blew himself up outside a row of stores in Dimona.

Meena's GAOC

The Pakistan People's Party has released the political will of former leader Benazir Bhutto in which she states her husband to be party leader. The Pakistan's People Party originally withheld the contents of the document shortly after her assassination in December. A PPP spokesman said they were now releasing it to end debate and speculation about its contents.

Super tuesday- Cecilia

half the country is voting on tuesday febuary 5th, 2008 for the next president of the united states. George is one of the magor states that has closed the polls. The results for the Republican party have shown that John McCain has slitly more votes than his challenger, ex-Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney. FOr the result for the Democratic party is too close a tie between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama to call. Justin Webb, the BBC's North America editor, says one thing is certain: any candidate who does badly today will be finished.

Pakistan

According to Guardian Unlimited, UK in Rawalpindi, Pakistan a motorcyclist rammed a military bus, setting off a bomb killing himself, four medical staff and one civilian. The Chief of the city police says that at least 30 were wounded in the attack and 10 seriously injured. The explosion happened just about 100 meters from the back of the military head quarters. The explosion damaged several vehicles and many military caps were scattered around the explosion site. This is the seventh suicide attack with in the last six months in Paki(stan.


(By Gillian)

Lucy's Blog Post

According to Aftenposten France's new first lady, supermodel-turned-singer Carla Bruni, is to begin recording her third album this later this month. However her agent says that there is a questionmark over the likelihood of concerts. "The album is on the way, in pre-production," Bertrand de Labbey said in a telephone interview. "When you record at this time of year, you always release after the summer, in September, October or November. There's no decision yet and we don't know whether we'll release a single or not." Bruni's highly-publicised whirlwind romance clinched by her wedding last weekend with President Nicolas Sarkozy would have little effect on the new album, he said, as "most of the songs were written some time ago." "What will change is the way we release the album to the public," he added, saying "the release will not be routine." No plans existed to date for a concert or tour, he said. "I will be discussing this with her but for now I think her new functions will force her to observe some reserve," he said.

Bush Seeks Budget of $3.1 Trillion

on monday, february 4th, president bush submitted a federal budget of $3.1 trillion saying that the plan would help keep the united states safe and despite its record size, would still keep to his long time promised plan of letting americans keep as much of their own money as possible.
he said, "thanks to the hard work of the american people ans spending discipline in washington, we are now on a path to balance the budget by 2012. our formula for achieving a balanced budget is simple: create the conditions for economic growth, keep taxes low and spend taxpayer dollars wisely or not at all."

Chavez says Colombia hostage mission to start soon

Accordind to Reuters Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said on Monday his government has started preparing for an operation to rescue three hostages held by Colombian rebels, raising hopes others held in jungle camps could be released.The Marxist FARC rebels said over the weekend they would free three Colombian politicians suffering health problems to Chavez or his delegate after the Venezuelan leader brokered the release of two hostages last month. Colombian President Alvaro Uribe has approved the rescue mission despite a diplomatic dispute with Chavez, who describes the United States as an "empire" and accuses White House ally Uribe of plotting a U.S.-sponsored attack on Venezuela.

Sri Lanka's Independence

Sri Lanka’s 60^th anniversary of independence falls just one day after a suicide bomb in the railway station killed 11 people, reported BBC News. The anniversary was marked with high displays of military hardware and tightened security in Colombo, the country’s capitol. The tightened security is posing problems for the people of Sri Lanka, including slowing down rush hour traffic. Even with such extreme security the Tamil Tigers are still on everyone’s mind, “the fear has really got into people’s minds,” said student Janai Wijentuge to BBC News reports. The independence parade happening in Colombo will also include lots of military equipment and presence. Which leaves the people of Sri Lanka to wonder and dread what would happen if the Tamil Tigers were to strike now.

53 sea lions have been found massacred in Galapagos

Park wardens from Galápagos National Park discovered the bodies while working in early January to remove feral goats from the islands of Floreana, Isabela, Santiago, and Pinta, all part of the famed Galápagos Islands located off Ecuador's Pacific Coast on Pinta, a protected island surrounded by the Galápagos Marine Reserve, workers found the dead sea lions "in an advanced state of decomposition," according to Victor Carrion, the park manager. The animals, nearly all showing signs of being beaten in the head, were distributed within a half-mile radius in a spot known as Puerto Pasado, Carrion said.The marine mammals are Galápagos sea lions, listed as a threatened species by The International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources.

Kathryn's GAOC focus story

It all started on the first of February. Fighting broke out for the controll of the Chad's capital. On the third day of fighting, hundreds of civilians were injured, as France tried to broker a settlement in it's former colony. Rebel leaders, one of which is the President's nephew Timane Erdimi, are insistent that their only motive is to "topple a corrupt and authoritarian remgime". France has 1,450 troops currently in Chad as well as an sircraft, but have refused to break up the fighting. The capital city is currently broken into two sections. The rebels in the west, and the government and their supporters in the east. French military planes evacuated more than 500 foreign residents by the 4th, and still had another 400 people waiting to be evacuated. When the president of Chad accused Sudan of helping the rebel attack, Sudan denyed any sort of involvment. The fighting still hasn't stopped.

Suicide Attack in Colombo.

There was a suicide attack at Fort Railway Station in Colombo on Sunday. The suicide bomber killed 12 people and at least a hundred were injured. The suicide bomber was a woman and is rumored to be part of the LTTE (The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam). The government is blaming the Tigers for the bombing. Also earlier in the day there was a small grenade explosion at the Dehiwala Zoo. 7 people where injured from the small blast. These explosions happened the eve of Colombo's 60th independence day. Since 2002 the Tigers have been attacking on the eve of Colombo's independence.