Monday, Dec 22nd
Last update09:35:06 AM GMT
International Glance
The price of property in the West Bank is rocketing beyond the reach of most local businesses and home buyers, pushed up by a weak dollar and Israeli control of large chunks of the territory, a World Bank report said Thursday.
Israel, citing the need to prevent Palestinian attacks inside Israel and on Jewish settlers in the West Bank, has kept large swaths of Palestinian land and roads off limits to Palestinians.
Two senior British counterterrorism officials have in recent days criticized the United States for what they described as its overly militaristic approach to fighting terrorism and warned of a further erosion of civil liberties.
One of the officials, Dame Stella Rimington, a former head of the country's domestic intelligence agency, said that she hoped the next American president "would stop using the phrase 'war on terror."' She also said there had been a "huge overreaction" to the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has told the BBC she believes the Middle East is a better place for the policies of President George W Bush.
Asked to assess the outgoing US administration's legacy, she said she was especially proud of the situation in the Palestinian territories.
Ms Rice also said Iraq had become a "good Arab friend" of America.
"The Middle East is a different place and a better place," Ms Rice told BBC Arabic TV.
Iraq, far from being destroyed, was fully integrated into the Arab world, she said.
TVNL Comment: Does Rice have a heroine problem? Does she take LSD? Did she have a big bowl of mushrooms for breakfast?
The retreat came as Wednesday's vote on the government's embryology bill, seen by anti-abortionists at first as a once-in-a-generation opportunity to change the law on a woman's right to choose, risked descending into farce.
Downing Street had still not resolved a cabinet row over how to handle the bill yesterday. But it is expected that the time allotted for debate will be so sharply curtailed that dozens of rival abortion amendments tabled by both sides in the argument will not be put to a vote, meaning that the law is likely to stay unchanged.
TVNL Comment: Sanity reigns across the pond!
"They will not be my neighbors if I do what I have to do, which is take them back to their lands," he said. "We don't want them here. Expelling them is the solution."
TVNL Comment: This is the hidden story that remains ignored as the US continues its unconditional support for Israeli policy.
The overwhelming approval by Ecuadoreans of a new Constitution that gives leftist President Rafael Correa a tighter grip on the economy puts the country firmly on a socialist track similar to Hugo Chávez's Venezuela.
Ecuador's new Constitution grants all citizens the right to water and universal healthcare, pensions, and free state-run education through the university level.
TVNL Comment: Imangine...giving citizens the right to water and universal healthcare, pensions, and free education are loathed by the right in this nation. It just shows their inhumanity and how the only thing that drives them is greed.
In the wake of the September 11 terror attacks, pro-Israel lobbyists hoped the rest of the world would become more sympathetic to their conflict with the Palestinians and the rest of the Arab world, which erupted soon after the birth of the Jewish nation in 1948.
TVNL Comment: That is why they helped deliver that event in the first place!
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