New Fundraising Pressures For Obama Campaign
After months of record-breaking fundraising, a new sense of urgency in Sen. Barack Obama’s fundraising team is palpable as the full weight of the campaign’s decision to bypass public financing for the general election is suddenly upon them.
Dow Slides 345 Points Amid Gloomy Economic Reports
The Dow Jones industrial average plummeted 345 points on Thursday on a confluence of poor news about the economy, although investors could not pin the drop on any overriding reason.
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A Chinese government committee said Thursday that a rush to build schools during the country’s recent economic boom might have led to shoddy construction that resulted in the deaths of thousands of students during a devastating earthquake in May.
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Vice President Dick Cheney flew here on Thursday to deliver a forceful American pledge to rebuild Georgia and its economy, to preserve its sovereignty and its territory and to bring it into the NATO alliance in defiance of Russia.
McCain Sets Course in RNC Speech, Vows to End ‘Rancor’
Sen. John McCain, the former prisoner of war whose bid for the White House appeared in complete collapse just one year ago, accepted the Republican presidential nomination on Thursday with a pledge to move the nation beyond “partisan rancor” and narrow self-interest. His speech came at the end of a convention marked by some blistering attacks on his opponent, Sen. Barack Obama.
Hanna is Coming
Flourishing tropical activity in the Atlantic basin over the past week has yielded a trio of storms: Tropical Storm Hanna, poised to become a hurricane and affect Boston Saturday night into Sunday, category 4 Hurricane Ike over the central Atlantic, and minimal Tropical Storm Josephine over the eastern Atlantic. Ike could potentially affect the east coast of the U.S. sometime during the middle of next week, but the main story right now is Hanna, packing sustained winds of up to 70 mph. Its projected path and intensity has the storm grazing the Carolinas as a category 1 hurricane early Saturday and potentially making a second landfall over southern New England as a tropical storm early Sunday morning.
Detroit’s Kilpatrick Will Resign And Serve Short Prison Term
Mayor Kwame M. Kilpatrick pleaded guilty to felony charges here on Thursday and agreed to resign from office and serve 120 days in jail, ending eight months of political turmoil but also sparking a new era of uncertainty for the city.
Lobbyist Abramoff Sentenced To Four Years in Prison
Jack Abramoff, the onetime flamboyant lobbyist who amassed a fortune by showering gifts on congressional and executive branch officials while bilking Indian tribes of millions of dollars, was sentenced on Thursday to four years in prison.
Attack on Police Bus Kills At Least 8 in Pakistan
A car bomb apparently planted by Taliban insurgents blew up a police bus in northwestern Pakistan on Thursday, killing at least eight people, security officials said.
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Students in this tiny town of grain silos and ranch-style houses spent much of the first couple of days in school this week trying to guess which of their teachers were carrying pistols under their clothes.
Scorning Bush, Obama Takes Aim at McCain
Sen. Barack Obama accepted the Democratic Party presidential nomination on Thursday, declaring that the “American promise has been threatened” by eight years under President Bush and that Sen. John McCain represented a continuation of policies that undermined the nation’s economy and imperiled its standing around the world.
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The cable industry, aiming to prevent Internet companies like Yahoo and YouTube from snatching away its ad revenue, has introduced an experimental political channel that gives advertisers a uniform way to buy time and measure the number of people watching.
Fannie Mae Workers Watch As Stock Plans Dwindle
Fannie Mae’s workers had $116 million in the employee stock ownership plan at the end of 2006. Today, it’s more like $17.5 million.
Unlike Years Past, DNC Transformed Into High-Profile Spectacle
For the first time in memory, a spectator at a presidential nomination acceptance speech was treated for sunstroke. Fireworks replaced the traditional balloon drop, sunlight supplanted klieg lights. Parents brought children from as far away as Africa, and delegates munched Bronco Brats and clicked cell phone pictures of a political carnival that bore no resemblance to any convention finale that had come before.
U.S. and Bolivia Spar as Partners in Drug War
The refrain here in the Chapare jungle about Americans is short but powerful: “Long Live Coca, Death to the Yanquis!”
Tropic Thunder
Tropical cyclone activity in the Atlantic basin has recently surged. Tropical Storm Hanna formed yesterday northeast of the Bahamas and will possibly threaten the east coast of the U.S. sometime late next week. However, the main story is Tropical Storm Gustav, which made landfall in Haiti and Jamaica over the past few days and threatens to move into the Gulf of Mexico by the weekend. Oil companies have begun to evacuate some personnel, as the storm will likely impact the Gulf states early next week. The future intensities and exact paths of these storms are still highly uncertain, but they bear close monitoring.
Defiant Envoy to NATO Gives Voice to New Russia
Here is one measure of the aggressive shift in Russian foreign policy in recent days: Dmitri O. Rogozin, Russia’s representative to NATO, a finger-wagging nationalist who hung a poster of Stalin in his new ambassadorial office, is not sounding so extreme any more.
U.S. to Transfer Security Duties In Anbar Province to Iraqis
The American military will hand over responsibility for the security of Anbar province, once a stronghold of the Sunni insurgency and one of the most violent regions in Iraq, to the Iraqi government as early as Monday, Iraqi and American officials said Wednesday.
As Raw Materials Costs Increase, Job Site Thefts Rise Nationwide
Sue Wentz and her husband, Eugene, saved for five years, living in a modest home in a low-income neighborhood of Houston, before they broke ground in January on a 4,300-square-foot house on 12 acres in Magnolia, Texas, a woodsy suburb about 40 miles northwest of the city. They are overseeing the construction themselves to control costs. So it was with dismay that they arrived at the job site one morning in July to find that all the copper wiring and air-conditioning tubing had been ripped out of the rough frame of the house.
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Orders for durable goods, a report that is considered an indicator of future manufacturing activity, topped analysts’ predictions in July and recorded its third consecutive monthly increase.