A top United Nations envoy for children held talks with senior Sri Lankan officials on Monday after meeting former child soldiers, an official said.
The Dutch UN official is due to tour Batticaloa in the islands east and then Vavuniya, in the north, where hundreds of youngsters previously involved in the fighting are undergoing vocational training.
Sen. Claire McCaskill said Monday a Senate move to embrace the House’s tough anti-abortion language in pending health care legislation “goes too far” and must be defeated.
Appearing on the same show, Republican Sen. Lamar Alexander of Tennessee denied the GOP is mostly trying to obstruct the legislation.
Senator Christopher Dodd chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, is ready to push through a controversial financial regulation reform bill with or without Republican support, senior aides said, just days before the House of Representatives votes on its own reform legislation.
“We expect that the final bill will pose significant costs and risks to the financial industry,” said Dan Alamariu, an analyst at the Eurasia Group, a research and consulting firm that follows Washington politics closely.
Newspapers in 45 countries will implore Monday world leaders to take decisive action at the Copenhagen climate change talks, warning failure will bring calamity, the London-based Guardian said.
“We call on the representatives of the 192 countries gathered in Copenhagen not to hesitate, not to fall into dispute, not to blame each other but to seize opportunity from the greatest failure of modern politics,” it said.
US President Barack Obama paid tribute to rocker Bruce Springsteen, actor Robert de Niro and film director Mel Brooks for their work for American culture at a black tie dinner in Washington.
Opera diva Grace Bumbry and jazz musician Dave Brubeck also got the awards at the gala performance at the Kennedy Center followed by a reception at the White House.
President Barack Obama will pressPrime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, one of NATOs twoMuslim members, for more support in curbing Irans nuclearprogram and rebuilding Afghanistan.
Erdogans government has been expanding trade ties withIran, which supplies about 20 percent of Turkeys natural gas.
U.N. talks billed as a “turning point” in a bid to slow global warming open on Monday seeking to agree curbs on greenhouse gas emissions and raise billions of dollars for the poor in aid and clean technology.
The planned attendance of the leaders and pledges to curb emissions by all the top emitters — led by China, the United States, Russia and India — have raised hopes for an accord after sluggish negotiations in the past two years.
A Kansas lawmaker says he’s sorry if he offended anyone by criticizing President Barack Obama while wearing a cap that calls opossum “the other dark meat.”
But he’s standing by his rhymes. Among other things, he criticizes bringing Guantanamo Bay prisoners to the U.S. and the economic bailouts.
Al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden may periodically slip back into Afghanistan from his remote hideout in neighboring Pakistan, a senior White House official says, adding a new twist to the mystery of the elusive terrorist’s whereabouts.
But Obama’s Pentagon chief, Robert Gates, said the U.S. has lacked good intelligence on bin Laden for a long time - “I think it has been years” - and did not confirm that he’d slipped into Afghanistan.
The pharmaceutical industry may have to cough up more than the $80 billion it agreed to contribute to President Barack Obama’s health overhaul effort, reflecting pressure from Democrats and their supporters for more money to cover older and low-income people.
By many accounts, the health package the House approved last month would count on getting about $140 billion from drug companies to defray additional health care costs over the next decade.
