One Bangladeshi fisherman was shot dead and anther injured by Myanmar border force Nasaka in the Bay of Bengal this afternoon. BDR sent a letter to Nasaka protesting the killing of Bangladeshi fisherman.
Teknaf police recovered the body and sent it to Cox's Bazar district hospital morgue for autopsy.
Posted by: Steve White ||
04/11/2009 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[0 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
Remings me of the oyster wars between the Virginian and Marylanders. Or our shrimp turf battles down here between the Slavs and the Vietnamese.
MOSCOW, April 10 (RIA Novosti) - Some 1,000 Bolivians have joined President Evo Morales in a hunger strike to demand that the country's congress pass an electoral law ratifying a date for general elections in December. Leaders of several labor and social groups have pledged to take part in the hunger strike.
The more the merrier! How much weight are they planning to gain?
In January Bolivians approved a new constitution allowing Morales to seek a second five-year term in December's elections, and giving more power to the country's indigenous majority. Morales, Bolivia's first indigenous president, was elected in 2005.
The new constitution came into effect on February 7. By law, the new presidential and parliamentary elections must be held on December 6. Opposition parties believe this will give Morales an unfair advantage in the upcoming elections, and have so far refused to enact the new election law.
Opposition parties delaying the enacting of the new law have demanded an updated voter registry, raised arguments over whether Bolivian expatriates should be able to vote, and contested the number of seats in Congress that should be assigned to indigenous groups.
The first round of debates ended on Thursday after 30 hours of heated arguments, which led to an overall acceptance of new electoral laws. Congress must now agree on all of its 84 points. Discussions are expected to continue on Friday. Morales is expected to receive the backing of the lower house where his supporters make up the majority, but may fail in the opposition-dominated upper house.
The opposition has called for Morales to end his hunger strike, calling his actions "a presidential diet meant to cover up a lie." The opposition believes the law in its present state is "dark and full of loopholes."
Posted by: Steve White ||
04/11/2009 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[4 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
a bunch of blow and you don't even feel like eating
Posted by: Frank G ||
04/11/2009 15:24 Comments ||
Top||
#2
He could stand to lose a few kilos, and I don't mean the kind he usually champions.
China's crude oil imports fell 5.5 percent in March from a year earlier to 16.34 million tons, or 3.86 million barrels a day (bpd), but jumped 39.3 percent from February's 11.73 million tons for the first rise in three months, government data showed Friday. Crude oil imports in the first three months of this year fell 10.2 percent from the same period in 2008 to 40.89 million tons (3.33 million bpd), the General Administration of Customs said on its website.
China's National Energy Administration, a top level administration oversees the energy sector, announced in February that the country, the world's second-biggest oil importer, would build eight new crude oil reserves by 2011.
The program will increase its strategic crude reserve capacity to 44.6 million cu m.
Just a couple of random data points in the stream, but they are interesting data points and I wish I didn't have to go to Kuwait's news agency to find them. The Western media is getting nearly useless in its fearmongering and fanaticism...
WASHINGTON (AP) - The Treasury Department said Friday that the budget deficit increased by $192.3 billion in March, and is near $1 trillion just halfway through the budget year, as costs of the financial bailout and recession mount. Last month's deficit, a record for March, was significantly higher than the $150 billion that economists expected.
The deficit already totals $956.8 billion for the first six months of the budget year, also a record for that period. The Obama administration projects the deficit for the entire year will hit $1.75 trillion. A deficit at that level would nearly quadruple the previous annual record of $454.8 billion set last year. The March deficit was nearly four times the size of the imbalance in the same month last year.
Nearly $300 billion provided to the nation's banks and other companies to cope with the most severe financial crisis in seven decades has pushed government spending higher. The Treasury report said that through the end of March, $293.4 billion had been provided to support companies through the $700 billion bailout fund Congress passed last October. That support has been provided primarily to banks, although insurance giant American International Group Inc. (AIG) and auto companies General Motors Corp. (GM) and Chrysler LLC also have received assistance.
Besides the bailout fund, Fannie Mae (FNM) and Freddie Mac (FRE) received $46 billion last month, bringing the total assistance provided to the mortgage finance companies to $59.8 billion since October. The government took control of both last September after they had suffered billions of dollars in losses on mortgage loans.
Through the first six months of the budget year that began Oct. 1, tax revenues have totaled $989.8 billion, down 13.6 percent from the year-ago period. The government's receipts have been reduced sharply by the recession, which is shaping up to be the longest of the post World War II period. The downturn began in December 2007.
Government outlays totaled $1.95 trillion through March, 33.4 percent higher than the year-ago period. Besides higher payments for the financial rescue, the government is paying more in such areas as unemployment benefits and food stamps. The Treasury report showed benefit payments from the unemployment trust fund totaled $44.6 billion so far this budget year, up from $19.4 billion last year.
The Congressional Budget Office estimated last month that President Barack Obama's budget proposals would produce $9.3 trillion in deficits over the next decade, a figure $2.3 trillion higher than estimates made in February in the administration's first budget proposal. The CBO review projected Obama's budget would generate deficits averaging almost $1 trillion annually over the decade ending in 2019.
Do the math: $956 billion deficit for 6 months. Last year the 6 month deficit was about $225 billion. We're running (rough numbers here) $730 billion more. Minus $300 billion to the banks, that leaves $430 billion. Minus $30 billion for unemployment, etc., and $60 billion for Fannie and Freddie, that leaves $340 billion. Minus the drop in revenue, about $130, that leaves $210 billion spent in 6 months on who knows what. I'll bet there isn't a single person in government who can tell you that the extra spending went for anything useful.
Er, I was told there would be no math in this Administration?
Posted by: Steve White ||
04/11/2009 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[0 views]
Top|| File under:
The Russian company Atomenergoprom says the first batch of uranium pellets has been delivered to India as part of an international fuel supply deal.
The Russian civil nuclear industry company said in a statement that as per the long-term fuel agreement between India and Russia, a large batch of uranium dioxide pellets were sent to the Nuclear Fuel Complex in the Indian city of Hyderabad, the Press Trust of India said Friday.
"Thirty metric tons of pellets have been delivered to Hyderabad-based Nuclear Fuel Complex for the production of fuel for 'Rajasthan' NPP," Atomenergoprom said of the nuclear power plant delivery.
The TVEL Corporation in Russia reached the $700 million fuel supply agreement with India's Department of Atomic Energy in February.
The uranium pellets being supplied by the Russian company will be used by India to fuel pressurized heavy water reactors, the Press Trust said.
Posted by: john frum ||
04/11/2009 13:06 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[4 views]
Top|| File under:
TEHRAN, Iran (AP) - Iran hanged three men on Friday for their involvement in a bombing inside a packed mosque that killed 14 people nearly a year ago, the official IRNA news agency reported. The three, who were not identified, were hanged in Abdel Abad prison in the southern city of Shiraz near where the attack occurred, the agency said. The sentencing was carried out after Iran's Supreme Court upheld the guilty verdicts against them.
Iran's Revolutionary Court found the three men guilty in November for their involvement in the April 12 bombing that also wounded more than 200 people. The court, which handles state security cases, also found the three guilty of having links to the United States and planning to destabilize Iran through a campaign of bombings and assassinations. It said they had confessed.
According to the court, the three said they were members of the Iran Royal Association, a little known monarchist group that wants to overthrow the country's ruling Islamic establishment.
Which is enough regardless of whether or not they ever threw a bomb.
The mosque that was bombed is part of the Rahpouyan-e-Vesal cultural center in Shiraz, about 550 miles (885 kilometers) south of Iran's capital, Tehran. The mosque was packed with about 1,000 worshippers at the time of the explosion.
Posted by: Steve White ||
04/11/2009 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[4 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
Shocking stuff.
Posted by: Dave UK ||
04/11/2009 4:53 Comments ||
Top||
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
MOSCOW, April 10 (RIA Novosti) - Some 1,000 Bolivians have joined President Evo Morales in a hunger strike to demand that the country's congress pass an electoral law ratifying a date for general elections in December. Leaders of several labor and social groups have pledged to take part in the hunger strike.
WASHINGTON (AP) - The Treasury Department said Friday that the budget deficit increased by $192.3 billion in March, and is near $1 trillion just halfway through the budget year, as costs of the financial bailout and recession mount. Last month's deficit, a record for March, was significantly higher than the $150 billion that economists expected.
