News of the Day
The U.S. will join multilateral talks with Iran over Tehran’s nuclear program, if Iran halts uranium enrichment, Secretary Rice announces at the State Department. Der Spiegel offers a backgrounder on Iran and its president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, calling conditions in the country “nightmarish.”
More details continue to emerge about the Marines’ attack on civilians in Haditha last fall. After first being reported in the Denver Post on Sunday, the Times and NPR confirm that a Marines major paid victims’ relatives $2,500 each in reparations weeks after the attack, notably prior to a military investigation this spring and an article in Time. The White House has promised to make public the results of the investigation.
The California Assembly approved a bill yesterday to grant presidential candidates a proportional number of the state’s 55 Electoral College votes. If the bill passes the Senate and Gov. Schwarzenegger signs it, it will not take effect until other states join the proposed interstate compact.
South Dakota Campaign for Healthy Families secured more that twice the number of signatures necessary to place an initiative on the November ballot to repeal South Dakota’s ban on all abortions.
Michael Grebb at Wired.com questions the assumptions behind the calls to preserve “net neutrality.” The net, Grebb argues, has never been neutral and a compromise between the telecoms and Internet activists is necessary. “In a broad sense, the commercialized world wide web evolved almost from the start as a bastion of inequality and favoritism in every way imaginable,” he writes.
The Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty, which Iran signed, says: "Affirming the principle that the benefits of peaceful applications of nuclear technology, including any technological by-products which may be derived by nuclear weapon States from the developments of nuclear explosive devices should be available for peaceful purposes to all Parties of the Treaty, whether nuclear or non-nuclear weapon States." As of now Iran has not violated the treaty. Where is the justification for attacking or "isolating" Iran?
May 31, 2006 1:13 PM | Reply | Permalink