Showing posts with label usa affairs. Show all posts
Showing posts with label usa affairs. Show all posts
Obama hits out at oil giants over high pump prices
"We have got a real problem here. Families day-to-day, they are driving to work. They are just watching their pay cheques get whittled away. They need some relief," Obama told WXYZ television, Detroit.
The president wrote to Republican and Democratic leaders on Capitol Hill, calling on them to "eliminate unwarranted tax breaks" to the oil and gas industry and to reinvest in clean energy to cut US dependence on foreign oil.
Republicans countered that Obama's budget prescriptions
Australian PM urges S.Korea FTA
Speaking at a dinner for business leaders after arriving in the South Korean capital, Gillard said she would discuss the FTA with President Lee Myung-Bak in Monday talks.
"I am very confident that we can strike a mutually acceptable agreement," she said, adding she hoped also to boost trade by matching Australia's services economy with South Korea's high-tech
industries.
The FTA talks, which started in May 2009, hit a snag over Australia's demand for the opening of South Korea's beef market, a South Korean official said.
Australia is seeking a similar level of market access to that provided to the United States in an FTA signed in December but not yet in force.
In 2010 Australia exported 122,000 tons of beef to South Korea, accounting for 49.7 per cent of all beef South Korea imported that year -- followed by the United States, which supplied 40 per cent.
Gillard's talks with Lee will also cover security, trade, resources and other issues, the presidential Blue House has said.
On Sunday she will attend a ceremony commemorating the 60th anniversary of a fierce battle at Gapyeong, where a small force of Australian and other allies defeated an attack by a Chinese division during the Korean War in 1951.
This battle helped stop the Chinese "spring offensive" and proved crucial in preventing a Chinese breakthrough towards Seoul, Gillard said.
On Monday, Gillard will attend the ANZAC Day Dawn Service -- Australia's memorial day -- at the National War Memorial in Seoul.
More than 17,000 Australian troops served in the Korean War, and 340 were killed. Of those, 281 remain buried at the UN Memorial Cemetery in the southern port of Busan, Gillard said.
In her speech the Australian premier expressed Canberra's solidarity with Seoul in the face of "provocative attacks" from North Korea.
"Australia joined with (South) Korea and the international community in condemning the North's unprovoked torpedoing of the ROK (South Korea) corvette Cheonan and the tragic loss of 46 sailors," she said, referring to an attack in March last year. Pyongyang has denied responsibility.
In November 2010 it bombarded the South Korean island of Yeonpyeong, killing two soldiers and two civilians.
"I was also deeply concerned by the North's artillery attack on Yeonpyeong island... Australia strongly condemned this unprovoked attack," she said.
She announced Australia will contribute $10 million to South Korea's Global Green Growth Institute, established by Seoul to support the development of environmentally friendly growth strategies in developing countries.
GE: SDP unveils lineup for Sembawang GRC
Dr Gomez said the team fielded in Sembawang is not an "A" team but a "people's" team.
He said the party selected candidates whom they felt can talk to and connect with residents in Sembawang.
Mr Sadasivam and Mr Luo said they are residents in the Sembawang GRC and so are able to understand the concerns of
N. Korea will never give up its nuclear ambitions: US general
"I do not see that he [N. Korean leader Kim Jong-il] will give up his nuclear capability," Gen. Walter Sharp told U.S. lawmakers on Tuesday during hearings on Pentagon's budget for 2012 fiscal year.
"I think it is clear that Kim Jong-il believes he has to have it for regime survival," Sharp said adding that the U.S. military should maintain a strong presence on the Korean peninsula to stave off any
US to continue drone attacks despite ISI protest: report
Pakistan's intelligence agency ISI chief Ahmed Shuja Pasha, at a meeting on Monday with the CIA director Leon Panetta, had expressed strong concern over the nature of drone attacks.
But the Obama administration has ruled out halting one of its highly successful anti-terror programmes.
"Panetta has an obligation to
US blocks 350 suspected terrorists from boarding flights
The US government has prevented more than 350 people suspected of ties to al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups from boarding US-bound commercial flights since the end of 2009, The Associated Press has learned.
The tighter security rules — imposed after the attempted bombing of an airliner on Christmas 2009 — reveal a security threat that persisted for more than seven years after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.Until then, even as commercial passengers were forced to remove their shoes, limit the amount of shampoo in their carry-on luggage and
Obama to set out budget plan on Wednesday
Washington is still regrouping from the political jousting that led to the near shutdown of the federal government at the weekend, but looming on the horizon are even bigger battles over the debt ceiling and the 2012 budget.
Opposition Republicans put pressure on Obama in the long-term budget debate by unveiling a spending blueprint last week that would cut government expenditures by $6 trillion over the
NATO forces Libyan rebel's fighter jet to land
The jet had taken off from a rebel-controlled airfield near the eastern city of Benghazi in the morning and was intercepted within minutes, the official said on condition of anonymity. No weapons were fired by either side.
"No aggressive action was displayed by the MiG-23 and the NATO fighters proceeded to force it to land back at the Benina airfield," the official said.
The official added that the rebels had not warned NATO that one of their jets was going to take off.
It was the first time that any aircraft violated the no-fly zone since NATO
US government shutdown averted
Party leaders clinched the agreement, including some $38.5 billion dollars of extra spending cuts, after a intense political bargaining, barely an hour before the federal government effectively ran out of money at midnight (0400 GMT, 12pm Singapore time).
"Some of the cuts we agreed to will be painful ... and I would not have made these cuts in better circumstances," Obama said at the White House after a long day of negotiating averted a potential political crisis
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