Associated Press – An anti-abortion group plans to air radio ads in three congressional races calling for the defeat of Democratic incumbents, among the first ads to capitalize on a Supreme Court ruling this year that freed corporations to directly influence elections. The group, AUL Action, is targeting Democratic Reps. John Boccieri of Ohio, Christopher Carney of Pennsylvania and Baron Hill of Indiana. AUL Action is the legislative arm of the nonprofit Americans United for Life. Ad spending is on a record pace as outside groups raise more money from corporations, individuals and unions. Read Article
Wall Street Journal – A top shareholder in Afghanistan’s largest bank called on the U.S. to shore up the lender after depositors withdrew about a third of its cash reserves in two days, while the country sought to avert a destabilizing crisis at a crucial moment in the fight against the Taliban. Mahmood Karzai, brother of Afghanistan’s president and the third-largest shareholder in Kabul Bank, urged the U.S. to calm the situation, saying the lender could keep up with the pace of withdrawals for only a few more days. Read Article
The Guardian – The Australian prime minister, Julia Gillard, today edged closer to retaining power when an independent MP said he would back her centre-left Labor party to form the country’s first minority government in almost seven decades. A bloc of three independents will now decide whether Labor governs for a second three-year term or a conservative Liberal party-led coalition forms the next administration after the 21 August elections failed to deliver a majority for any party. The conservative coalition needs the backing of all three independents to reach a 76-seat majority in the 150-seat House of Representatives, while Labor needs only two. Read Article
The Independent – An apparent air strike by foreign forces killed six election campaign workers in Afghanistan’s north today, a government spokesman said, and NATO-led forces said hey were investigating the incident. Civilian casualties caused by foreign forces while hunting militants have been a major source of tension between President Hamid Karzai and Western nations. Violence across Afghanistan is at its worst since the Taliban were ousted in late 2001. Today’s attack happened in the Rostaq district of Takhar, a relatively peaceful province in the north near Tajikistan, said a spokesman for the provincial governor, unlike areas in the south and east where the resurgent Taliban are mostly active. Read Article
Daily Telegraph – Japan’s Prime Minister Naoto Kan and his rival, powerbroker Ichiro Ozawa, have launched a leadership battle that threatens to divide the ruling party only a year after it took power. Read Article
AFP-Wildfires have cost Russia 300 billion dollars in forest loss, environmentalists said on Thursday, explaining the scale of the disaster by Vladimir Putin’s “absurd” changes to forestry law. The economic damage amounts to 25,000 dollars per hectare (2.4 acres), or at least 300 billion dollars, according to estimates based on the market value of timber and the cost of reforestation, said Alexei Zimenko, general director of the Biodiversity Conservation Centre. “The figures are completely astronomical,” Zimenko told a news conference, adding that they did not include several factors, such as the loss of wildlife like insects and rare birds and animals -Read Article
EUOBSERVER – People’s confidence in the the European Union has dropped to record lows in most countries amid a placid response to the rising unemployment and the troubles of the eurozone, a Eurobarometer published on Thursday (26 August) shows. Fewer than half of Europe’s citizens (49 percent) think that their country’s membership of the EU is a “good thing” – a seven-year low – while trust in the bloc’s institutions has dropped to 42 percent, six points down compared to autumn 2009. Read Article
AllAfrica .Com – A meeting held yesterday in Mendefera town highlighted the need for exerting coordinated endeavors on the part of all government institutions in raising public awareness in introducing renewable energy, as it has vital role to play in preventing deforestation. In the meeting in which the ministers of land, water and environment, as well as agriculture and justice took part, briefings were given regarding the condition of forests and the alarming irresponsible cutting down of trees in the Southern region -Read Article
Reuters – The CIA is making payments to a significant number of officials in Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s administration, The Washington Post reported. Citing current and former U.S. officials, the paper said the payments were long-standing in many cases and intended to help the agency maintain a source of information within the Afghan government. Some Karzai aides were CIA informants and others received payments to ensure their accessibility, the Post said, citing a U.S. official who spoke on condition of anonymity. Read Article
BBC-The UN’s climate science body needs stricter checks to prevent damage to the organisation’s credibility, an independent review has concluded. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has faced mounting pressure over errors in its last major assessment of climate science in 2007. The review said guidelines were needed to ensure IPCC leaders were not seen as advocating specific climate policies -Read Article
The Independent – Tony Blair secretly courted Robert Mugabe in an effort to win lucrative trade deals for Britain, it has emerged in correspondence released to The Independent under the Freedom of Information Act. The documents show that the relationship between New Labour and the Zimbabwean President blossomed soon after Tony Blair took office in Downing Street. Just weeks after the Government unveiled its ethical foreign policy in May 1997, the British PM wrote a personal letter to Mr Mugabe congratulating him on his role in unifying Africa and helping to improve relations between the continent and Britain. Read Article
NY Times-In a remote reach of the Gulf of Mexico, nearly 200 miles from shore, a floating oil platform thrusts its tentacles deep into the ocean like a giant steel octopus. The $3 billion rig, called Perdido, can pump oil from dozens of wells nearly two miles under the sea while simultaneously drilling new ones. It is part of a wave of ultra-deep platforms -Read Article
Top News – Kapiti Coast District Council had to reduce fluoride dosing in its town supply after it faced public pressure. Previously in the month of June, extremely divided council made the decision that it would retain the usage of fluoride in the water supply for Waikanae, Paraparaumu and Raumati, however, on Thursday, it voted to lessen the usage of the chemical. Read article
Associated Press – A top Afghan prosecutor who has complained that the attorney general and others are blocking corruption cases against high-ranking government officials said Saturday that he had been forced into retirement. Deputy Attorney General Fazel Ahmed Faqiryar said his boss, Attorney General Mohammad Ishaq Aloko, wrote a retirement letter for him earlier this week and that President Hamid Karzai accepted it. Faqiryar, 72, said he wanted to continue doing his work, which has involved pursuing corruption allegations against top officials in the Karzai administration — a task which had put him in the middle of a political fire storm. Read Article
AP) — Afghan officials said they found the bodies Sunday of five kidnapped campaign workers for a female parliamentary candidate in the western province of Herat.The five were snatched Wednesday by armed men who stopped their two-vehicle convoy as it was traveling through remote countryside. Five others traveling in the vehicles had earlier been set free, according to a man who answered the phone at the home of candidate Fawzya Galani and declined to give his name. Read Article
Irish Times-THE GOVERNMENT must immediately implement its pledge to declare Ireland a GM-free zone outlined in its programme for government, the Irish Organic Farmers and Growers Association has said. It said the recent two-pronged decision by the European Commission granting states and regions more autonomy in banning but also in allowing GM cultivation, made this a matter of urgency -Read Article
Reuters- The Canadian government has voiced concerns about a European Union proposal to allow member states to decide whether to ban genetically modified (GM) crops. The bloc’s executive — the European Commission — submitted the proposal in July in a bid to break a deadlock in EU GM approvals, with just two products authorized for cultivation since 1998 -Read Article
BBC – Tens of thousands of people have attended a controversial rally in Washington DC organised by conservative talk show host Glenn Beck. Civil rights leaders criticised Mr Beck for holding the rally at the Lincoln Memorial, the place where Martin Luther King Jr made his “I Have a Dream” speech 47 years ago to the day. Former US vice-presidential hopeful Sarah Palin also spoke at the rally. Read Article
NPR-Hurricane Katrina, and the destruction it wrought, are often referred to as a natural disaster. Think again, says actor Harry Shearer. In his documentary, The Big Uneasy, Shearer says much of the destruction in New Orleans was man-made and preventable — and largely the fault of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers -Read Article
ABC – Burma’s top three rulers resigned from the military on Friday, a senior army source said, paving their way to assume the most powerful roles in the country after a parliamentary election in November. The resignations mean military junta supremo Than Shwe and right-hand men, Muang Aye and Thura Shwe Man, are now civilians and can take the posts of president, vice president or government ministers after the November 7 polls, the first in two decades. Read Article
AP — Kenya’s president signed a new constitution into law Friday that institutes a U.S.-style system of checks and balances and has been hailed as the most significant political event since Kenya’s independence nearly a half century ago. Kenya’s new constitution is part of a reform package that President Mwai Kibaki and Prime Minister Raila Odinga committed themselves to after signing a power-sharing deal in February 2008. That deal ended violence that killed more than 1,000 people following Kenya’s disputed December 2007 presidential vote. Read Article
BBC-Brazil’s government has given the formal go-ahead for the building on a tributary of the Amazon of the world’s third biggest hydroelectric dam. After several failed legal challenges, President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva signed the contract for the Belo Monte dam with the Norte Energia consortium -Read Article
The Australian – AUSTRALIAN of the Year Patrick McGorry has criticised Australians for failing to seriously address the issue of a republic. He likened the country to a 27-year-old who just won’t leave home — “a Gen Y nation”. Delivering the annual National Republican Lecture in Canberra last night, Professor McGorry said Australia needed to “emerge from its prolonged adolescence” and become a republic sooner rather than later. Read Article
IPS- The U.S. state of Mississippi recently reopened all of its fishing areas. The problem is that commercial shrimpers refuse to trawl because they fear the toxicity of the waters and marine life due to the BP oil disaster. “We come out and catch all our Mississippi oysters right here,” James “Catfish” Miller, a commercial shrimper in Mississippi, said in an interview. Pointing to the area in the Mississippi Sound from his shrimp boat, he added, “It’s the only place in Mississippi to catch oysters, and there is oil and dispersants all over the top of it.” -Read Article
BBC – There has been angry reaction to the shooting dead of an Afghan policeman by Spanish forces at a base in western Afghanistan. Spanish officials say the man was taking part in a training course when he opened fire on his instructors, killing two officers and an interpreter. Read Article
