ECM WORLD WATCH: GLOBAL AND NATIONAL NEWS 1
Total Views: 32 January 24, 2013 (San Diego’s East County)–ECM World Watch helps you be an informed citizen about important issues globally and nationally. As part of our commitment to reflect all voices and views, we include links to a wide variety of news sources representing a broad spectrum of political, religious, and social views. Top world and U.S. headlines include: Read more for excerpts and links to full stories. U.S. House approves debt limit extension, presses Senate to pass budget (The Hill) Pentagon lifting ban on women in combat, opening new opportunities (Christian Science Monitor) Women in combat: Will they have to register for the draft? (Christian Science Monitor) TSA removing virtual strip search body scanners (CNN) OPEC forecasts record US oil supply growth in 2013 (Christian Science Monitor) How Older Parenthood Will Upend American Society (New Republic) WORLD North Korea to target U.S. with nuclear, rocket tests (Reuters) Idle No More movement sweeps Canada and beyond as aboriginals say enough is enough (Indian Country Today) Syrian opposition leaders fail to form government (Reuters) Algerian hostage-takers threaten further attacks (Jerusalem Post) Jakarta, Indonesia’s megacity of 10 million, is under water (+video) (Christian Science Monitor) Egypt opposition leader aims to break Islamist dominance (Reuters) Blast, drone kill 13 al Qaeda-linked militants in Yemen (Reuters) Raised on Hatred (New York Times) HEALTH/SCIENCE Algae Fuel Could Help Solve The Navy’s Oil Dependence (KPBS) It’s Legal For Some Insurers To Discriminate Based On Genes (NPR) Warnings from a flabby mouse [strong link between endocrine disruptors and obesity] (NY Times columnist Nicholas Kristof) TA researchers: Genome can reveal surname (Jerusalem Post) Read more for excerpts and links to full stories. U.S. House approves debt limit extension, presses Senate to pass budget (The Hill) January 23, 2013–The House on Wednesday approved a bill extending the nation’s debt limit, raising pressure on the Senate to pass its first budget in nearly four years. The House approved the No Budget, No Pay Act, which also includes a measure withholding senators’ pay until they complete that work, in a 285-144 vote. Among Republicans, 33 voted against it to protest the absence of specific spending cuts alongside suspending the nation’s borrowing limit. But they were more than offset by the 86 Democrats who voted for the measure. Pentagon lifting ban on women in combat, opening new opportunities (Christian Science Monitor) January 23, 2013–At the direction of Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, the Pentagon is announcing tomorrow that it will allow women to serve on the front lines of battle, according to top Pentagon officials. This ruling would overturn a 1994 ban on women in combat. The chiefs of the individual service branches are being told to submit a plan to implement the new policy to the secretary of Defense by May, according to a senior Pentagon official. Women in combat: Will they have to register for the draft? (Christian Science Monitor) Now that the Pentagon is lifting its ban on women in combat, does this mean that women could potentially be drafted, too? And as a practical matter: When women turn 18, will they now need to register, as men do, so that they can be conscripted in the event of a World War III, or any military emergency where the US government decides it needs troops quickly? It’s a thorny question, raising what may be a difficult prospect societally. But the legal implications are obvious, analysts argue. TSA removing virtual strip search body scanners (CNN) January 19, 2013–Airport body scanners that produce graphic images of travelers’ bodies will be removed from checkpoints by June, the Transportation Security Administration says, ending what critics called “virtual strip searches.” Passengers will continue to pass through machines that display a generic outline of the human body, raising fewer privacy concerns. OPEC forecasts record US oil supply growth in 2013 (Christian Science Monitor) January 17, 2013–The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries in its report for January said the United States in 2013 may post the highest oil supply increase among non-member states. U.S. oil production should increase by 490,000 barrels of oil per day this year to reach an average of 10.4 million bpd. OPEC said much of the production increase should come from more drilling in the Gulf of Mexico and the oil boom under way in North Dakota. Production from member states Iran, Iraq and Saudi Arabia, meanwhile, declined. Riyadh said recently it wasn’t trying to manipulate the commodities market and, given the downbeat assessment of the U.S. economy, it may be congressional leaders that eventually face the ultimate blame for economic woes despite the oil boom. How Older Parenthood Will Upend American Society (New Republic) December 6, 2012–Over the past half century, parenthood has undergone a change so simple yet so profound we are only beginning to grasp the enormity of its implications. It is that we have our children much later than we used to. This has come to seem perfectly unremarkable; indeed, we take note of it only when celebrities push it to extremes—when Tony Randall has his first child at 77; Larry King, his fifth child by his seventh wife at 66; Elizabeth Edwards, her last child at 50. This new gerontological voyeurism—I think of it as doddering-parent porn—was at its maximally gratifying in 2008, when, in almost simultaneous and near-Biblical acts of belated fertility, two 70-year-old women in India gave birth, thanks to donor eggs and disturbingly enthusiastic doctors. One woman’s husband was 72; the other’s was 77. WORLD North Korea to target U.S. with nuclear, rocket tests (Reuters) January 24, 2013–North Korea said on Thursday it would carry out further rocket launches and a nuclear test that would target the United States, dramatically stepping up its threats against a country it called its “sworn enemy”. The announcement by the country’s top military body came a day after the U.N. Security Council agreed to a U.S.-backed resolution to censure and sanction North Korea for a rocket launch in December that breached U.N. rules. Idle No More movement sweeps Canada and beyond as aboriginals say enough is enough (Indian Country Today) December 22, 2012–The second wave of Idle No More protests swept across Canada
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