WASHINGTON — Unable to win Senate confirmation, U.N. Ambassador John Bolton will step down when his temporary appointment expires within weeks, the White House said Monday.

Bolton’s nomination has languished in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee for more than a year, blocked by Democrats and several Republicans. Sen. Lincoln Chafee, a moderate Republican who lost in the midterm elections Nov. 7 that swept Democrats to power in both houses of Congress, was adamantly opposed to Bolton.

Critics have questioned Bolton’s brusque style and whether he could be an effective public servant who could help bring reform to the U.N.

President Bush, in a statement, said he was “deeply disappointed that a handful of United States senators prevented Ambassador Bolton from receiving the up or down vote he deserved in the Senate.” (more…)

As the dollar’s fall continues, the US must decide between growth or curbing inflation

The last time the pound was at this level against the dollar was in the uneasy days of 1992 between John Major’s April election victory and the cataclysm of Black Wednesday, when the markets realised that Britain’s economic policy was based on smoke and mirrors.
With the economy deep in recession and unemployment heading to 3 million (again), Britain badly needed deep cuts in interest rates to stimulate growth. Yet the foundation stone for the government’s anti-inflation policy was membership of the Exchange Rate Mechanism, which required rates to be kept high to defend the pound’s value. (more…)

Foreign firm bids for control of Texas Free Trade Corridor

American Free Press has learned that a group of foreign companies, which currently lease a toll road in Indiana and are looking at buying up other highways across the country, has its eyes on the Trans-Texas Corridor, or TTC. The TTC is a planned toll road system through the Lone Star State that will largely be used for trucking foreign merchandise into the United States on the wings of the North American Free Trade Agreement.

It will be a major leg of the so-called “NAFTA Superhighway,” and, according to watchdog groups, it will lead to more cheap goods flooding the country and will be devastating to the U.S.-based trucking industry.

In the April 17, 2006 edition, AFP reported that ITR Concessions LLC, a partnership of Cintra of Spain and the McQuarie Bank of Australia, spent $3.85 billion to lease the Indiana Toll Road from the state for 75 years. (more…)

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said Iraq was in the grip of a civil war as U.S. and Iraqi forces attacked insurgent bases in a bid to shore up the authority of a government itself riven by factional rivalries.

In Washington, outgoing Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was revealed to have acknowledged in a memo just before he lost his job that U.S. strategy was not working and it might be better to reduce troop numbers.

President George W. Bush has repeatedly rejected recent assertions in the mainstream media that Iraq is now embroiled in a civil war. Annan’s remarks, to the BBC, might add to pressure for a swift change of policy.

“When we had the strife in Lebanon and other places, we called that a civil war — this is much worse,” Annan said. (more…)

Two major unidentified explosions occurred on North Korean territory not far from the border of the Korean Demilitarized Zone at around 0430 Moscow time (0130 GMT) on Monday 4 December, Russian news agencies report citing South Korean media.

The Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk seismological station did not record any earthquakes in the area of the Korean peninsula on Monday, Interfax reported on the same day. (more…)

Iran yesterday shut down access to some of the world’s most popular websites. Users were unable to open popular sites including Amazon.com and YouTube following instructions to service providers to filter them.
Similar edicts have been issued against Wikipedia, the internet encyclopaedia, IMDB.com, an online film database, and the New York Times site. Attempts to open the sites are met with a page reading: “The requested page is forbidden.”

The clampdown was ordered by senior judiciary officials in the latest phase of a campaign that has seen high-speed broadband facilities banned in an attempt to impede “corrupting” foreign films and music. It is in line with a campaign by Iran’s Islamist president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, to purge the country of western cultural influences. (more…)

On NBC’s Meet the Press, host Tim Russert asked National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley to explain why President George W. Bush keeps harping on al Qaeda while discussing the insurgency in Iraq.

“Whenever the administration seems to be having trouble with Iraq, in terms of its message, al Qaeda comes front and center,” said Russert, before showing a clip of President Bush blaming insurgent violence on al Qaeda at a press conference during his visit to Estonia last week.

Bush said, “There is a lot of sectarian violence taking place, fomented, in my opinion, because of these attacks by al Qaeda, causing people to seek reprisal.”

However, Russert noted, only two weeks ago, Gen. Michael D. Maples, the Defense Intelligence Agency director, told Congress that “attacks by terrorist groups like al Qaeda and Iraq account for only a fraction of the insurgent violence.” (more…)

“In trouble,” the Bush Administration again appears to be turning to the friendlier shores of Rupert Murdoch’s Fox empire.

President Bush met with Fox News anchor Brit Hume on Sunday for a “sit down” interview, Fox News Channel is reporting, and the full interview is scheduled to be aired early Monday evening, beginning at 6 PM EST.

The cable news channel is promoting the interview as Bush’s first “sit down” since Democrats triumphed over his party during the midterm elections.

“With the balance of power shifted and the new battles on the Hill, President Bush gives his first interview since the election!” notes Fox’s website. “What’s his plan to get his party back on track for 2008?” (more…)

Airport security is a serious business, but why was a Reg reader refused a Krispy Kreme doughnut at Heathrow airport?