Chivitkonkhmer

2008-09-20T17:36:00.000-07:00

Jolie, Pitt donate $2 million for kids in Ethiopia
Angelina Jolie and partner Brad Pitt have donated $2 million to create a center, named after their adopted daughter, Zahara, for Ethiopian children affected by AIDS and tuberculosis.

The Global Health Committee said the donation from the Jolie-Pitt Foundation would establish a center in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa to treat AIDS orphans and develop a program to treat drug-resistant tuberculosis.

The Oscar-winning Jolie adopted a baby girl she called Zahara, now 3 years old, from Ethiopia in July 2005 and the new clinic will be named after her.

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Angelina Jolie (L) and actor Brad Pitt leave after the screening of "The Exchange" by director Clint Eastwood at the 61st Cannes Film Festival May 20, 2008. REUTERS/Vincent Kessler

"It is our hope that when Zahara is older, she will take responsibility for the clinic and continue its mission," Pitt said in a statement.

Pitt and Jolie now have six children -- twins Knox Leon and Vivienne Marcheline born in July, Shiloh, 2, and adopted children Zahara, Pax from Vietnam and Maddox from Cambodia.

The Jolie-Pitt Foundation helped set up a similar clinic in 2006 in Phnom Penh, Cambodia that is named after Maddox.

"Our goal is to transfer the success we have had in Cambodia to Ethiopia where people are needlessly dying of tuberculosis, a curable disease, and HIV/AIDS, a treatable disease," Jolie said.

Ethiopia has the seventh-highest rate of tuberculosis disease in the world and an estimated 1.7 million people in the country are infected with HIV, according to the World Health Organization. UNICEF estimates that more than 900,000 children have been orphaned by AIDS in Ethiopia.

2008-09-20T17:32:00.000-07:00

'We have NOT split,' insist Brad and Angelina as break up rumours swirl
After weeks of rumours, Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie have denied reports they have split up.

Just two months after the actress gave birth to twins Knox and Vivienne, the couple have issued a statement insisting they are still together.

The couple usually refuse to give credibility to such reports by commenting on them, but have taken the unprecedented step to issue a denial.

Strong couple: Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, pictured at the Cannes Film Festival in May, insist they are committed to each other and their six children

Pitt, 44, has spent a lot of the past month abroad promoting his new film Burn After Reading at the Venice and Toronto Film Festivals, while Jolie has been at the couple's new home in France with their six children.

As rumours the couple had ended their three-and-half year relationship spread over the internet yesterday, Jolie's spokesperson said: 'The stories are absolutely not true.'

At the Toronto Film Festival two weeks ago, Pitt was rumoured to have met his ex-wife Jennifer Aniston for a lunch date as they were both in the Canadian city promoting their new movies at the same time.

Earlier this month, InTouch Weekly magazine reported Jolie was suffering from post-natal depression following the birth of the twins and this had been causing a strain with Pitt.

A source said: 'Angelina feels that Brad has it easy. He had the kids without the pain of birth, and he can just jet off whenever he feels like it.'

Family man: Brad took the couple's two eldest sons Maddox and Pax to the Venice Film Festival last month, while Angelina stayed in France with the rest of the kids

Last year, Jolie ,33, complained the couple barely had any alone time because they were so busy with the children.

She told Marie Claire magazine: 'Mommy and Daddy need to try to figure out more time right now.

'We're working on it; we're working on it. Right now, we're not great about Mommy-and-Daddy time.'

When the couple first started dating in 2005, they had to balance getting to know each other with caring for Jolie's son Maddox - who Pitt later adopted - and welcoming newly adopted daughter Zahara into the family.

The couple now have three adopted children and three biological children in total - Cambodian Maddox, seven; Ethiopian Zahara, three; Vietnamese Pax Thien, four; Shiloh Nouvel, two; and twins Knox and Vivienne, 10 weeks.

Despite having six children aged seven and under, Pitt has often spoke of his wish to have a 'football team' sized family.

Prior to starting their relationship, Pitt was married to Aniston for four and a half years while Jolie's ex-husbands include Jonny Lee Miller and Billy Bob Thornton.

2008-09-20T17:26:00.000-07:00

US to help fund Cambodian genocide tribunal

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia (AP) — The United States announced Monday it has decided to help fund the Cambodian genocide tribunal's work in putting former Khmer Rouge leaders on trial.

Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte told Cambodian Foreign Minister Hor Namhong about his government's decision to fund the tribunal during their meeting Monday, a Cambodian Foreign Ministry spokesman, Koy Kuong, told reporters.

Washington has so far provided no direct funding. It was not clear how much money the U.S. government will give, but Koy Kuong said Negroponte will announce the figure at a press conference Tuesday, the last day of his three-day visit to Cambodia.

U.S. embassy officials could not be immediately reached for comment.

The U.S. diplomat also held talks with Prime Minister Hun Sen, who described the discussions as "positive."

Washington has spent more than $7 million over the past decade to support the work of the Documentation Center of Cambodia, an independent group that collects evidence of Khmer Rouge crimes.

The group has given many documents to the U.N.-assisted tribunal to assist it in investigating cases against the Khmer Rouge suspects.

The tribunal has detained five former Khmer Rouge leaders on charges of crimes against humanity and war crimes. The trial of the first suspect is planned for later this year.

The communist Khmer Rouge, who held power in 1975-79, are blamed for the death of an estimated 1.7 million people from hunger, disease, overwork and execution.

The tribunal, jointly run by Cambodian and United Nations personnel, has been appealing for more money to carry out its tasks.

Negroponte's visit is the latest sign of improved relations between Cambodia and the United States.

On Monday, he joined Hun Sen and other Cambodian officials in overseeing the signing of an agreement for $24 million in U.S. assistance for economic development projects in Cambodia.

The U.S. lifted a ban on direct aid to the Cambodian government last year. Washington imposed the ban in 1997 after Prime Minister Hun Sen ousted Prince Norodom Ranariddh, then his co-premier, in a coup.

Before the ban was lifted, U.S. aid to impoverished Cambodia was mostly channeled to projects implemented by private groups.

2008-09-20T17:20:00.000-07:00

GLOBAL: Economic slowdown to push 100m into poverty

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon, along with heads of (from left to Right) WFP,FAO,UN,WB,IFAD,hold a press conference about the Food Security conference in the Iran Room at FAO headquarters in ROme Italy June 4th, 2008

Ban Ki-moon, the UN Secretary-General, warns in a new report that the gains made in reducing extreme poverty are under threat from the rise in global food and fuel prices and global economic slowdown.

In the UN's Millennium Development Goals Report 2008, launched on 11 September, Ban writes: "The largely benign development environment that has prevailed since the early years of this decade, and that has contributed to the successes to date, is now threatened. The economic slowdown will diminish the incomes of the poor; the food crisis will raise the number of hungry people in the world and push millions more into poverty; climate change will have a disproportionate impact on the poor."

According to World Bank data, the number of extreme poor has fallen â€" from 1.8 billion to 1.4 billion â€" between 1990 and 2005, with the biggest gains made in eastern Asia, in particular, China. In sub-Saharan Africa and the Commonwealth of Independent States, however, the number of poor has increased in the same period.

These figures confirm that the global poverty rate is likely to be halved by 2015 â€" achieving the first MDG.

However, the worldwide increases in food prices will push another 100 million people into absolute poverty, according to the UN report.

"Even though the proportion of people worldwide suffering from malnutrition and hunger has fallen since the early 1990s, the number of people lacking access to food has risen. With recent increases in food prices, it is estimated that one billion people will go hungry, while another two billion will be undernourished," the report states.

Sub-Saharan Africa's poverty rate is constant at 50 percent, while East Asia cut its rate over 25 years from almost 80 percent to less than 20 percent. Overall numbers are thus down from 52 percent in 1981 to 26 percent in 2005.

Slight improvements have been seen in primary school enrolment â€" up from 83 percent to 88 percent on average worldwide, although the rate for sub-Saharan Africa is only 71 percent, with 38 million children of primary school-going age not in school. In contrast, the enrolment ratio tops 90 percent in Southern Asia, although 18 million children do not attend school.

The fourth MDG, cutting child mortality, also saw improvements, with the number of deaths of under-fives falling below 10 million for the first time in 2006, to 9.7 million. The rate has declined from 93 to 72 deaths per 1,000 live births between 1990 and 2006.

However, in 62 countries under-five mortality is not falling fast enough to meet the target of reducing the mortality rate by two-thirds by 2015.

Photo: Manoocher Deghati/IRIN Ban Ki-moon, the UN Secretary-General, has warned that global economic problems will slow down poverty eradicationImproving maternal health, goal five, has seen the least progress â€" maternal mortality rates fell by less than 1 percent a year between 1990 and 2005, significantly below the 5.5 percent annual improvement needed to meet the target.

In sub-Saharan Africa, with the highest level of maternal mortality, progress was negligible. A woman's risk of dying from pregnancy-related causes is about one in seven in Niger, against one in 17,400 in Sweden, according to the report.

Progress on universal access to treatment for HIV/AIDS by 2010 and of halting and reversing the spread of HIV/AIDS by 2015 has been limited. The majority of people living with HIV are in sub-Saharan Africa, 60 percent of them are women; globally, the numbers have risen from around 30 million in 2001 to 33 million in 2007.

However, access to anti-retroviral treatment improved by 42 percent in 2007; by the end of that year, three million people were receiving treatment in development countries, out of an estimated 9.7 million in need.

On the second prong of goal six, combating malaria, about 250 million insecticide-treated bed nets are needed to reach 80 percent coverage in sub-Saharan Africa alone, states the report. Funding so far is sufficient for 100 million nets, and between 350 and 500 million cases of malaria occur worldwide.

Halfway to the target year, said Ban, "it is clear that we are not on track to meet the Goals, especially in Africa. And new global challenges â€" an economic slowdown, high food and fuel prices, and climate change â€" threaten to reverse the progress we have made."

A high-level meeting of premiers and private sector, NGO and civil society leaders on 25 September will seek to address these challenges.

2008-09-20T17:11:00.001-07:00

ISRAEL-OPT: Thousands of East Jerusalem children not in school

Palestinian school children

Thousands of Palestinian children in East Jerusalem do not attend school as there is no room for them in the state school system, parents and rights groups said, adding that the drop-out rate remained the highest in the Israeli school system.

"It is a disgraceful situation," said Abed al-Karim Lafi, head of the Union of East Jerusalem Parents' Committees.

According to the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI), there is a shortage of about 1,500 classrooms in East Jerusalem, which means only about half of all Palestinian children in the city attend state schools.

The rest - about 40,000 pupils â€" are in expensive private education or rely on various substandard forms of unofficial schooling.

To cope with the serious shortage of classrooms, the city came up with solutions such as "rented buildings, a double-shift system, mobile units and permission to operate unofficially recognised schools", according to a report by the Alternative Information Center, an Israeli-Palestinian NGO, in 2007.

These "solutions" mean students study at overcrowded private homes, sometimes without heating or in the open, and others have to wait until the second shift in the afternoon, leaving them on the streets in the morning. While the unofficial schools receive government funding they lack oversight, affecting the quality of education.

Some schools even lacked proper bathrooms, the AIC said.

Poverty and education

"There is a clear connection between the cost and the drop-out rate," Melanie Takefman of ACRI told IRIN, even though "education can help end the cycle of poverty".

In Jerusalem, about 67 percent of Palestinian families live below the poverty line compared with about 21 percent of Jews, according to the Central Bureau of Statistics.

In all, about 9,000 Palestinian children simply do not attend school.

According to the municipality's own statistics, more than 50 percent of Palestinian boys who start school will never finish, though for Jews the rate is less than 8 percent.

The AIC said the fact that in East Jerusalem "only one-and-a-half truancy officer positions are manned" also contributed to the problem.

Filling the gap

Photo: ACRI Israeli Minister of Education Yuli Tamir cuts the ribbon to inaugurate a new school in Um Lison, in East Jerusalem, with Mayor of Jerusalem Uri Lupoliansky "In the past two years, we have built schools in East Jerusalem at an accelerated pace," Israel's Minister of Education Yuli Tamir told reporters on 10 September as she and Mayor Uri Lupolianksy inaugurated a new school in Um Lison, a village on the city outskirts.

Tamir admitted there was "a gap created by neglect for over 30 years" but said there were plans to rectify the situation.

"All we can do is keep building," Tamir said, adding that "we will build wherever there is land".

However, this too is a contentious point for the Palestinians, who said they had to give up their private land for schools as the state did not use its own land reserves.

"Why do they need our land when they can use [the Israel Land] Administration's land?" demanded one parent at the new school.

Shafik Rubaya, head of the Um Lison parents' committee, told IRIN his group had struggled for many years to get the new building.

"We had to fight for the last 12 years to get this new school," he said. "Before this new building, the children used to go to other villages, far away, to get to school. We hope this new school will make things better for us," said Rubaya, though the new school still lacked computers and science laboratories.

Tamir backed the line stressed by the rights groups. "As long as [the Palestinians] are here, as part of Israel, we need to give them the best quality of education," she said, noting that the new school, in her opinion, was not an attempt to strengthen Israel's grip over the city.

2008-09-20T17:08:00.000-07:00

GMA to Cabinet: Ensure RP stability KEEP the house safe and secure.

Thus ordered President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo to her Cabinet secretaries on the eve of her departure for the United States to address the United Nations General Assembly on Sept. 23, 10 p.m., Manila time.

The President is also slated to attend to several pressing concerns including consulting with the hierarchy of the Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC).

Executive Secretary Eduardo Ermita said the President issued the marching orders for the Cabinet to ensure that measures are undertaken to cope with the effects of the economic meltdown in the U.S.

Ermita said that the President’s guidance while she is away from the country is to ensure that national security situation remains stable.

The President is flying to the U.S. Sunday night (Sept. 21) with a lean 71-member delegation, according to Ermita.

It included five official delegates and eight government officials.

She is scheduled to fly home Saturday morning (Sept. 27) in time for the turn over and change of command of the Philippine National Police.

Ermita said that during the absence of the President, they were directed to conduct consultations among civil sectors and religious groups in connection with the peace talks.

2008-09-20T16:53:00.000-07:00

Henry Paulson buries US toxic debtAmerica is poised to spend billions to buy up the toxic bonds that have poisoned the financial system
Henry “Hank” Paulson is a farmer’s son from the Mid-West with a keen interest in saving the environment. His day job, however, is US Treasury secretary. This week, his task is to save the American economy by drawing out the toxic waste that is threatening to destroy it.

If he pulls it off, he will probably go down as the most celebrated Treasury secretary in history. If he doesn’t, his reputation will be in tatters and he may take the global economy with him.

Paulson, a tall and fit 62-year-old, used to enjoy walking and kayaking with his wife Wendy. For the past two weekends, he hasn’t even been home as he tried to rein in the financial panic gripping the markets in America and around the world. He has been locked in meetings in the fortress-like offices of the New York Federal Reserve in downtown Manhattan working on plans that were constantly overtaken by events.

Now comes the hard part. On Friday, he announced the outline of a last-ditch proposal to use “hundreds of billions” of American taxpayers’ dollars to buy up the poisonous derivatives at the heart of the crisis and to transfer them to what amounts to a state-owned toxic bank.

How will he do it? And will he succeed? Can the government really take on the notorious financial instruments tied to subprime mortgages, whose unfathomable loss of value has made the crisis self-perpetuating, and bury them in a vault funded by the taxpayer?

That depends not only on Paulson’s own financial skills but on the co-operation of Washington’s political class and whatever powers of persuasian President George Bush may have left in his last days in office.

If he does succeed, what are the implications for the American and world economies? And how on earth does the free-marketeering former chairman of Goldman Sachs — Paulson previously ran the world’s most powerful investment bank when not walking the Yukon Trail — find himself leading a nationalisation programme that would make Fidel Castro blush?

Paulson’s big idea has been a long time in the making. For at least a month, he and Treasury officials have discussed it in theory. It seemed to guarantee a solution to the crippling freeze in interbank lending: banks had stopped lending to each other because of mutual suspicions about hidden toxic assets. Global business runs on credit and with nobody lending it could grind to a halt. But the plan was also radical and highly expensive — and broke every rule of raw capitalism.

Paulson talked this over with Ben Bernanke, chairman of the Federal Reserve, and with his host for the last two weeks, Timothy Geithner, president of the New York Fed. Although they all agreed it could work, it was never Paulson’s favoured solution — until the events of past few days forced it past the planning stage.

LAST WEEK began with high drama on Wall Street and deep banality at the White House.

In the early hours of Monday, after a weekend of intense talks with bankers in New York, Paulson pulled the plug on Lehman Brothers, the investment bank. Later that day, as a fife and drum band played on the White House lawn, Bush betrayed no hint that America’s financial markets were falling apart at the seams.

It was left to his visitor, President John Kufuor of Ghana, to mention the elephant in the room. “Your tenure has been full of events and challenges, some very mind-boggling and hair-raising,” Kufuor told Bush. “My hope is that history would prove kinder to you.”

For three days last week, the president remained all but silent and mostly out of sight as Paulson grappled with the cataclysmic fall-out from the country’s worst financial crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930s. His reluctance to utter even the blandest of encouraging platitudes reflected two striking features of the carnage.

First, the economic influence of American presidents is severely limited. Secondly, US financial markets have become so complex and reliant on highly technical trading instruments that even some of the country’s best-known economists declared themselves bewildered by the head-spinning turn of events.

“As an economist, I am supposed to have something intelligent to say about the current financial crisis,” said Professor Steven Levitt, the author of Freakonomics, a best-selling guide on the way markets work. “To be honest, however, I haven’t the foggiest idea what this all means.”

There were some who believed that “Commissar Paulson”, as he is now mockingly known, hadn’t the foggiest idea either as he spent another $300 billion propping up the financial system.

Having lanced two of the largest toxic boils by letting Lehman Brothers collapse on Monday and rescuing the insurance giant AIG with an $85 billion loan on Tuesday, Paulson watched aghast on Wednesday as his dramatic actions were met by a worldwide stock market panic while interbank lending remained stubbornly frozen.

On Thursday morning he was out spending again as the Fed and other central banks pumped hundreds of billions in to the financial markets. Again, the plan failed miserably to encourage banks around the world to start lending.

Investors were so rattled that the Treasury had to stump up another $50 billion to shore up the nation's traditionally safe money-market mutual-funds as people demanded their money back.

The fire fighting was not working. Paulson, Bernanke and Geithner began dusting off their big plan.

WHAT Paulson hopes will be the beginning of the end started on Capitol Hill around a conference table in the offices of Nancy Pelosi, the Speaker of the House of Representatives. A Democrat, she is one of the Bush administration’s most high-profile political enemies. But in this tumultuous week, even with a presidential election campaign under way, a bipartisan ethos was emerging.

Paulson and Bernanke left the assembled politicians in no doubt about the seriousness of the situation. The Treasury secretary said he had a plan to deal with the crisis. “If it doesn't pass, then heaven help us all,” he reportedly said.

America was “literally maybe days away from a complete meltdown of our financial system, with all the implications here at home and globally,” Senator Christopher Dodd, Democrat chairman of the Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee reported after the meeting.

Paulson and Bernanke said the financial system was effectively tied in a knot and being pulled tighter and tighter by the day. Without help, the system would seize up. So far the credit crisis had been felt largely in financial services but the risk of it spreading to the wider economy was mounting.

Without radical action, they warned, America could enter a deep, multi-year recession akin to Japan’s lost decade of the 1990s. Political differences would have to be set aside and a solution pushed through quickly if the crisis was to be averted.

Despite the gloomy tone of Paulson’s briefing, the markets reacted with delight to leaks about his plan. Asian stocks shot up overnight, followed by London and New York as officials at the US Treasury Department raced on Friday to start drafting the legislation that will create the government-controlled entity.

As the outline of Paulson’s plan emerged so did the depth of his fears. The central cause of the credit crunch was the “illiquid mortgage assets that have lost value as the housing correction has proceeded”, said Paulson on Friday when he sketched out his proposals in public for the first time.

These illiquid assets are “choking off the flow of credit that is so important to our economy”. His solution, Paulson admitted, will cost “hundreds of billions” but “I am convinced that this bold approach will cost American families far less than the alternative — a continuing series of financial institution failures and frozen credit markets unable to fund economic expansion.”

Paulson wants the government to bring in a “troubled asset relief program”. (The entity has no name as yet, but let’s call it Tarp, an acronym that might appeal to Bush.)

“Tarp” would buy up all the toxic assets from a market now frozen with fear, giving the housing market time to settle and the underlying value of the mortgage-backed securities to rebound. Then in calmer days Tarp would sell them, perhaps even making a profit for the taxpayer.

America has been here before — albeit on a far smaller scale. During the last American banking crisis in the late 1980s and early 1990s, 747 savings and loans associations, also known as “thrifts”, collapsed. Deregulation had allowed them to expand their lending activities and many took advantage of the new lax environment to make a series of bad bets.

The government was forced to take over many of the S&Ls and set up the Resolution Trust Corporation (RTC) to manage the assets, which were sold off in partnership with businesses, so-called “equity partnerships”.

This is no repeat of the S&L disaster, however. Selling off commercial property, the heart of the S&L problem, was a doddle compared with selling a toxic soup of dodgy credit — especially when nobody knows what those assets are worth and nobody has the money to buy them. Government ownership may take the heat off the financial-services industry, it may even bring greater transparency to these troublesome assets, but it doesn’t guarantee that they are worth anything.

The S&L crisis costs an estimated $160 billion and, while it may arguably have contributed to the 1990-91 recession, its affects were mainly local. By contrast, the International Monetary Fund said in April that financial losses stemming from the American mortgage crisis could reach $1 trillion ($1,000,000,000,000).

Tens of thousands of people have been left homeless, leading financial institutions have been destroyed and the American government has been forced to nationalise its largest mortgage firms, Fanny Mae and Freddie Mac.

MANY big questions have yet to be answered. What will happen if the toxic Tarp continues to fail and needs more money to keep it alive? What happens to the shareholders in those companies whose ugliest assets are eradicated? Not everyone will be happy to see them reap the upside while the taxpayer picks up the tab.

In the end the solution may be palatable to nobody but better than the alternative. “It may be against Republican principles but it sure is in favour of economic principles,” said Wall Street legend Donald Marron, former UBS chairman and now head of the venture-capital firm Lightyear Capital. “You can’t afford to make a huge mistake here. Enough mistakes have been made.

“This is an extraordinary crisis. In most of the others it was the stock market that went down and that’s a much easier thing to measure. In this case it was the fixed-income markets and the credit markets, which are bigger than the stock markets in terms of dollars and touch every institution everywhere in the world. If this continues it will be unprecedented in terms of its impact.

“There isn’t enough capital in the market to buy these things and, more important, they are not understood well enough to be valued. All of this will take time, transparency and more openness than has existed so far.”

It will also need bipartisan political support in Congress over the next few days. As it involves taxes, it cannot be introduced simply by presidential fiat. Officials and politicians are working through the weekend in an effort to push the plan through legislative process by the end of this week.

Paulson’s plans will not be easy to sell. Ben Stein, polymath pundit, former speechwriter for President Nixon and one of America’s most popular financial writers, described Paulson’s new found love of interventionism as “catastrophic for the free enterprise system. I would like to see Paulson fired.”

Charles Geisst, professor of finance at Manhattan college and author of Wall Street: A History, called the plan the biggest act of interventionism in living memory. “Under a Republican administration, what greater irony is there than that?” he said — while conceding that “financial markets across the world are praying it will be enough to finally stop the credit crunch.”

On Wall Street some critics said Paulson should have stuck to his principles and let the mighty fall. “What does he think he’s doing? Running the world’s biggest hedge fund?” said one banker.

Cynics noted — somewhat unfairly — that only when Goldman Sachs came under fire from short sellers, as it did last week, did Paulson act. And away from Wall Street, tempers are even higher.

The subprime mortgages responsible for much of the financial mess have costs tens of thousands of people their homes. The city of Cleveland, where more than 34,000 homes have been repossessed since 2003, is currently suing many of the Wall Street banks.

Its Democratic mayor, Frank Jackson, said the banks, with government’s tacit support, had acted “like organised crime” and, only now that their own were being affected, was Paulson riding to the rescue.

“It’s not what happens that matters, it’s who it happens to,” said Jackson. “As long as it was only happening to Cleveland and certain groups in the city of Cleveland it was no problem, no problem at all.”

Barack Obama, in mid-campaign for the presidency, gave carefully worded support for the plan. Some on Wall Street doubt he or any other Democrat will stand in Paulson’s way.

“If this deal starts to fall apart, the markets are going to go into free-fall. In case you haven’t noticed we’re in an election year. Who wants to be blamed for that?” said one Wall Street banker.

Yesterday morning Bush ruefully conceded how far he had strayed from his ideological roots in backing the plan.

He told reporters: "I’m sure some of my friends out there are saying, I thought this guy was a market guy? What happened to him? Well, my first instinct wasn’t to lay out a huge market plan. My first instinct was to let the market work until I realised on being briefed by the experts how significant this problem became. So I decided to act and act boldly.”

Bush said problems in the system threatened “working people and the average family”. “Turns out there are a lot of interlinks throughout the financial system,” he said.

Tomorrow the world will be watching to see if Paulson’s plan can really calm the financial markets after their tumultuous ride. Regulators on both sides of the Atlantic have also taken the heat off the financial players by putting a temporary ban on the short-selling on financial stocks.

Like the president, Paulson has only a few months left in office. Will he soon have time to take up his hiking boots once again? Or will the toxic nightmare harry him far into the future?

2008-08-21T05:43:00.000-07:00

You wants to know about it.

your guide to pregnancy, labour and birth

My pregn ancy calendar

Our week-by-week pregnancy calendar charts exactly how you and your growing baby are changing, and gives handy tips to guide you through all the stages of pregnancy.

When am I due?

Convinced your missed period was one of the early signs of pregnancy? Try our easy-to-use due date calculator to work out when your baby’s due

Nutrition and health

Practical health advice including eating for a healthy pregnancy, foods to avoid, supplements, putting on weight, safe exercise, smoking and drinking alcohol during pregnancy.

Common health worries

Get advice about health worries throughout all the stages of pregnancy, including morning sickness, pregnancy pains, spotting, sore breasts and tiredness.

Labour & birth

We’ve got lots of advice to help you with every aspect of preparing for labour, from writing your birth plan and packing your hospital bag to recognising the first signs of labour and your pain relief options.

Practical info and advice

Find answers to your practical pregnancy questions about scans and tests, maternity rights, travelling, antenatal classes, preparing your home and much more!

Your emotions and relationships

Advice about unexpected pregnancy blues, mood swings and how you can involve your partner in your pregnancy.

Conception & the signs of pregnancy

Tips for conceiving a baby, including information about nutrition, ovulation and a guide to the early signs of pregnancy.

Closing ceremony of Beijing Olympics

The closing ceremony of the Beijing Olympic Games began in the National Stadium, also known as the Bird's Nest, in north Beijing at 8 p.m. sharp on Sunday.

Hu, Rogge attend Olympics closing ceremony

President Hu and IOC President Jacques Rogge were ushered into the Presidential Box on the VIP stand of the National Stadium in Beijing Sunday night.

Iran is ready to restart its negotiations with the European Union (EU) over its nuclear enrichment program, Iran's Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said here on Tuesday.

"I would like to announce our readiness to restart immediately the negotiations with the EU 3 (Britain, France and Germany) to resolve the issue," Mottaki said.

Mottaki made the remarks at a news conference after the conclusion of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) Coordinating Bureau (NAM-CoB) Ministerial Meeting in the Malaysian administrative center of Putrajaya.

Iran will respond to the call of the NAM and will resume negotiations on its nuclear enrichment program with other parties "without any preconditions", Mottaki told reporters.

Earlier, the NAM ministerial meeting released a statement, encouraging Iran to "urgently continue to cooperate actively and fully with the IAEA" in order to resolve the outstanding issue.

When asked whether Iran will resume direct talks with the United States, Mottaki attributed to the suspension to latter's "bad temperament"

"Iran might resume the direct talks over its nuclear program if Washington changed its behavior," said Mottaki.

Iran is a member country of the 45-year-old movement, which includes 116 members of the worldwide. Enditem

President Bush , left, listens as Goldman Sachs Chairman Henry M. Paulson Jr., who is Bush's choice to replace outgoing Treasury Secretary John Snow , speaks in the Rose Garden of the White House Tuesday, May 30, 2006 in Washington.

Clinton to release delegates to Obama (AP)

AP - Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, hoping to unite the Democratic Party and cement her future in it, will gather her hard-won primary delegates Wednesday at a reception where she is expected to formally release them to Barack Obama.

Ready for the weekend
Young residents of Phnom Penh take advantage of a break in the rain and the last light of the day to play a game of badminton in Hun Sen Park, in front of the Independence Monument.

Election claims to be heard

SAM Rainsy Party officials said Thursday they doubted their election complaints would get a fair review as the Constitutional Council continued to examine the opposition's allegations of voter fraud

Kuwait to loan $546m for infrastructure

THE oil-rich gulf state of Kuwait on Thursday announced it would give Cambodia in excess of US$546 million in soft loans for an array of infrastructure projects, primarily in the agricultural sector

When roads become rivers

Shoddy construction means even Phnom Penh's newest roads flood, with excess water damaging road surfaces and making them

Prosecutors appeal Duch indictment

KHMER Rouge tribunal prosecutors are to appeal the indictment of S-21 prison chief Kaing Guek Eav, who stands accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity, saying the court order did not repres

Trash pickers to get land in Kandal

Municipal authorities say they plan to build a new community for scavengers who will find themselves homeless after authorities close the Stung Meanchey dump at the end of the year

Brown plant hoppers spell ruin for rural rice paddies

A spike in the pest's numbers have caused devastation to farmers' crops in three provinces that border Vietnam.
BROWN plant hoppers are wreaking havoc across Cambodia's southeast as chemical fertilisers have nearly obliterated the insects' natural predators, allowing the population to expand.

Cambodia's emerging 'brain drain'

Young Cambodians from the provinces are flocking to Phnom Penh in increasing numbers to attend university in the capital, but the move is taking the best minds from the countryside
A MASS exodus of young people from the provinces is under way.
This is not the rural poor, flocking to staff the Kingdom's booming garment industry or find informal work on the fringes of the country's recent impressive economic growth. This is the rural middle class - young, ambitious Cambodians who are coming to Phnom Penh in search of a degree and a job.

2008-08-18T09:23:00.000-07:00

HOT NEWS

Combination of eight pictures done on August 17, 2008 showing Michael Phelps of the U.S. displaying the eight gold medals he won at the swimming events during the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games.
From L to R, top row: men's 4 x 100m medley on August 17, 100m butterfly on August 16, men's 200m individual medley on August 15, men's 4 x 200m freestyle relay on August 13. From L to R, bottom row: men's 200m butterfly on August 13, men's 200m freestyle on August 12, men's 4X100m freestyle relay on August 11, men's 400m

individual medley on August 10.

Michael Phelps of the United States smiles during the awarding ceremony of the Men's 4X100M Medlay Relay final at the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games in the National Aquatics Center, also known as the Water Cube in Beijing, China, Aug. 17, 2008. Phelps won his eighth gold medal at the Beijing Olympics swimming events on Sunday, breaking Mark Spitz's record of seven gold medals won at a single Games in 1972.
Family members of US swimmer Michael Phelps react after his team winning the men's 4x100m medley relay final at the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games in the National Aquatics Center, also known as the Water Cube in Beijing, China, Aug. 17, 2008. Phelps won his eighth gold medal at the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games with the help of his teammates with 3 minutes 29.34 seconds.

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