NEW YORK TIMES: A steep decline in oil prices is straining the budgets of major petroleum-exporting countries around the globe, raising a specter of spending cuts in Russia, where the economy is under pressure from Western sanctions, and posing a potentially grave security challenge for Iraq, which is already struggling to finance its fight against […]
ABC/WashPost Poll: Obama Approval Sinks to New Low
NEWSMAX: President Barack Obama’s approval rating is continuing to drop, and now stands at 40 percent, the lowest level of his presidency, according to a new ABC News/Washington Post poll. The poll, released on Wednesday, brings the president’s rating down another point since September, reports The Post, and also shows political trends that are tilting […]
Reports that the whole world celebrates Putin’s birthday
On October 7, 2014 Russian President Vladimir Putin turned 62. According to media the Russian leader had spend this day in the Siberian forest hundreds of miles from civilization. He was taking this day off, the first time in 15 years in power.
Judge orders top NCAA officials to testify for Corman lawsuit
HARRISBURG (Oct. 15) – A state judge is ordering more than a dozen top NCAA officials to appear for depositions in ongoing legal proceedings testing the validity of the consent decree the organization imposed on Penn State.
LETTER: The Turks hatred of the Kurds far exceeds their concern about ISIS
The Turks want above all to see Kobani fall to ISIS so there will no longer be a Kurdish presence on their Syrian border.
The Risks of Cheap Water
Two studies to be presented at a forum next week organized by the Hamilton Project at the Brookings Institution and the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment make the case that markets and prices are an indispensable part of the tool kit to combat scarcity. They are essential to induce both conservation and investment in water-saving technology, and to steer water to where it is valued most…
Philadelphia Teachers Hit by Latest Cuts
NEW YORK TIMES: Money is so short at Feltonville School of Arts and Sciences, a public middle school here, that a nurse works only three afternoons a week, leaving the principal to oversee the daily medication of 10 children, including a diabetic who needs insulin shots. On the third floor filled with 200 seventh and […]
David Greenglass, the Brother Who Doomed Ethel Rosenberg, Dies at 92
Sam Roberts, a Times editor and reporter, later found Mr. Greenglass and, after a 13-year effort, obtained 50 hours of interviews that led to a book, “The Brother: The Untold Story of the Rosenberg Case.”
C.I.A. Study of Covert Aid Fueled Skepticism About Helping Syrian Rebels
The still-classified review, one of several C.I.A. studies commissioned in 2012 and 2013 in the midst of the Obama administration’s protracted debate about whether to wade into the Syrian civil war, concluded that many past attempts by the agency to arm foreign forces covertly had a minimal impact on the long-term outcome of a conflict. They were even less effective, the report found, when the militias fought without any direct American support on the ground…
Medical marijuana bill unlikely to pass this year; faces House scrutiny, Corbett opposition
Even if the bill did make it through the state House before the end of November, when the two-year legislative session ends, it would not get a warm welcome from Corbett.
Supreme Court blocks Texas law from shuttering abortion clinics
ALJAZEERA: The Supreme Court has blocked Texas from enforcing key parts of a 2013 law that would close all but a handful of the state’s abortion facilities… The justices’ order also said that a provision requiring abortion practitioners to have admitting privileges at a hospital within 30 miles of the clinic could not be enforced […]
The Budapest Beacon turns one year old today
The Budapest Beacon turns one year old today. Although we did not time the Beacon’s launch so that its first anniversary would coincide with municipal elections, it is a fitting occasion for us to rededicate ourselves to writing fact-based news about Hungary in the hope of bringing about positive change.
Pentagon Signals Security Risks of Climate Change
NEW YORK TIMES: The Pentagon on Monday released a report asserting decisively that climate change poses an immediate threat to national security, with increased risks from terrorism, infectious disease, global poverty and food shortages. It also predicted rising demand for military disaster responses as extreme weather creates more global humanitarian crises. The report lays out […]
Turkey Denies Reports of Deal for Use of Its Bases in Fight Against Islamic State
NEW YORK TIMES: …The Turks have insisted that any broad support to the coalition is dependent on the mission going beyond the Islamic State, also called ISIS or ISIL, to also target the Syrian government of Bashar al-Assad, which Turkey has long opposed and blames for creating the conditions that led to the rise of the extremists within Syria and Iraq…