Bowing to a court order, the White House released a long-delayed report yesterday on the “mainly harmful, impact of human-caused global warming in the United States.” According to new projections in the report, “the poor, elderly and communities with lagging public-health and public-works systems will face outsize health risks from warming.”
The U.S. military suspended a Marine yesterday “for distributing coins quoting the Gospel to Sunni Muslims” in Fallujah. The incident has “enraged Iraqis who view it as the latest example of American disrespect for Islam.” Residents of the Iraqi city perceived the effort as “a ‘humiliating‘ attempt to convert them to Christianity.”
The Los Angeles Times writes that Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) “is taking a serious drubbing on YouTube. … Six of the top 10 videos returned by a ‘John McCain’ YouTube search Thursday pegged the 71-year-old as inconsistent, extreme, wooden or a combination of the three.” View some of these videos by Brave New Films here.
Yesterday, a bipartisan group of 20 former U.S. attorneys — including two who served under President Bush — urged a federal judge Thursday to reject the administration’s “assertion of blanket immunity for presidential chief of staff Joshua Bolten and former White House counsel Harriet Miers in the congressional investigation.”
According to a new report by the Commonwealth Fund, the “number of uninsured U.S. young adults, who already represent a major chunk of the American population without health coverage, rose again in 2006.” “Based on census data, 13.7 million people aged 19 to 29 had no health insurance, either public or private, in 2006, up from 13.3 million in 2005.”
Three months after a congressional deadline, the White House “named a special inspector general to search for possible fraud and abuse in the funding of Afghanistan’s reconstruction yesterday.” While Afghanistan has largely escaped the intense scrutiny Congress has given Iraq, one official noted that “a lot of the same problems exist.”
FIFA, the world’s governing body for soccer, “abruptly lifted the suspension of Iraq’s soccer association on Thursday, easing concerns that Iraq’s team, a rare symbol of national unity, would be banned from the 2010 World Cup.” The organization suspended the team earlier this week after the Iraqi government disbanded Iraq’s Olympic Committee.
CIA Director Michael Hayden said yesterday that al Qaeda is “essentially defeated in Iraq and Saudi Arabia and on the defensive throughout much of the rest of the world.” “While cautioning that al Qaeda remains a serious threat,” Hayden’s assessment is “strikingly upbeat” after his agency warned last year of new threats from a resurgent al Qaeda.
And finally: The Examiner reports, “The Kiss Army fan club has an enthusiastic new recruit: Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. In a departure from her normally staid diplomatic duties, Rice met the legendary glam rock quartet when they happened to share a hotel in the Swedish capital.” Rice said she was “thrilled,” adding that her favorite song by the group is “Rock and Roll All Nite.”
What did we miss? Let us know in the comments section.
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