Morning brief, April 11
In Italy, Prodi won by a very slim margin. Berlusconi lost and disputed the results. The FT sees this as a recipe for paralysis. Bush dismisses talk (blah, blah, blah) of Iran attack…. The Telegraph says Iranian scientists are racing to beat the beat the clock: Iran may be five to 10 years away from ...
In Italy, Prodi won by a very slim margin. Berlusconi lost and disputed the results. The FT sees this as a recipe for paralysis.
In Italy, Prodi won by a very slim margin. Berlusconi lost and disputed the results. The FT sees this as a recipe for paralysis.
Bush dismisses talk (blah, blah, blah) of Iran attack…. The Telegraph says Iranian scientists are racing to beat the beat the clock:
Iran may be five to 10 years away from obtaining a nuclear weapon, but British and Israeli officials argue that it will reach "the point of no return" – gaining the know-how to make fissile material – within nine months to a year.
Iraq
At SAIS yesterday, Bush said: “I decided to declassify the NIE for a reason.[…] I wanted people to see what some of those statements were based on, so I wanted people to see the truth.”
Iraq elected a parliament in January, and still has no government. The LAT looks at what the parliamentary time lag has cost Iraq:
The long list of moribund projects has grown, and public officials whose jobs are stymied by the word "interim" have begun to despair. "Summer is coming and we need to get started on many projects," said Raad Haris, a Ministry of Electricity official. "They cannot be done unless a government is formed."
The Shiite bloc met to pick a PM, and they'll met again tomorrow. Jaafari is boycotting the regional conference in Egypt in protest of Hosni Mubarak's comments.
If the Iraqi stock market is a good measure of confidence in the country, things aren't looking good: "the market index has lost almost two-thirds of its value in the past year, closing these days below 30, from a high of 74 in March 2005."
U.S. military says Zarqawi plays are role in more than 90 percent of suicide bombings in Iraq….Richard Cohen on the dereliction of duty by military leaders….Tired of hearing all the critics and naysayers? Well, then read Zalmay Khalilzad and Gen. Casey's truthy LAT oped on the path to success in Iraq.
Elsewhere
Twenty-nine people, mostly Moroccans, charged for Madrid bombings. Israel continues shelling Gaza. More clashes in Nepal. Gordon Brown pledges $15 billion for education in poor countries over the next 10 years. Bernard-Henri Levy weighs in on the France labor law surrender. Populismo in Latin America. UN finds that Syrian women are often beaten. Energy-hungry India looking more into coal-bed methane. China imposes a tariff on its own towels! I sensationalize. It was Taiwan.
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