Smokers have already been banned from New York bars and restaurants, and soon they could be prohibited from lighting up in cars carrying minors, an idea giving added fuel to critics who say the city has become a nanny state.
A City Council member of Queens who is chairman of the council's Environmental Protection Committee, James Gennaro, said he is planning to introduce the smoking bill next week.
Puppet Masters
Last year President Jacques Chirac asked Régis Debray to study the situation in the Middle East. On 15 January 2007 Debray sent the French authorities the following document on Palestine. It is an important key to understanding a long policy drift whose results are now obvious.
Dennis Ross, formerly the United States envoy to the Middle East, admitted back in 2000 that mistakes had been made in the 1978 Camp David accords: the diplomatic process had not taken enough account of developments on the ground, especially the settlements. The number of Jewish settlers in the Palestinian territories doubled from 1994 to 2000. As many Israelis have settled in the West Bank since the Oslo accords of 1993 as in the previous 25 years. With an international conference again being discussed, it would be a mistake to continue to ignore the real state of affairs. There is no need for a committee of inquiry. The report has already been drawn up, many times over. No conflict in the world is as well documented, mapped and recorded.
The OCHA (Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs), a United Nations agency, keeps up-to-date, detailed maps of the disputed territories, with photographs, population counts and graphs. It takes an hour to look at them, but doing so might forestall some of the never-ending statements of good intentions.
Dennis Ross, formerly the United States envoy to the Middle East, admitted back in 2000 that mistakes had been made in the 1978 Camp David accords: the diplomatic process had not taken enough account of developments on the ground, especially the settlements. The number of Jewish settlers in the Palestinian territories doubled from 1994 to 2000. As many Israelis have settled in the West Bank since the Oslo accords of 1993 as in the previous 25 years. With an international conference again being discussed, it would be a mistake to continue to ignore the real state of affairs. There is no need for a committee of inquiry. The report has already been drawn up, many times over. No conflict in the world is as well documented, mapped and recorded.
The OCHA (Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs), a United Nations agency, keeps up-to-date, detailed maps of the disputed territories, with photographs, population counts and graphs. It takes an hour to look at them, but doing so might forestall some of the never-ending statements of good intentions.
As world attention focuses on the daily slaughter in Iraq, a devastating disaster is impending in the north of the country, where the wall of a dam holding back the Tigris river north of Mosul city is in danger of imminent collapse.
"It could go at any minute," says a senior aid worker who has knowledge of the struggle by US and Iraqi engineers to save the dam. "The potential for disaster is very great."
"It could go at any minute," says a senior aid worker who has knowledge of the struggle by US and Iraqi engineers to save the dam. "The potential for disaster is very great."
An aide to the late Palestinian President says the former French President Jacques Chirac knows the circumstances of Arafat's death.
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After presidential selectee hopeful and neocon psychopath Tom Tancredo once again suggested bombing Mecca and Medina as "the best way he can think of to deter a nuclear terrorist attack on the US," according to the International News, a Washington-based Islamic civil rights and advocacy group declared his threat "unworthy of anyone seeking public office in the United States." In fact, as a psychopath, Tancredo has the required skillset for office, although as a one percenter at the bottom of the potential selectee heap he won't be taking up residency at the White House.
A top French official said Saturday that the possibility of a deal in exchange for Libya's release of Bulgarian medics was "a subject that never came up in our discussions."
France confirmed Friday that Libya had reached a major arms deal with the European aerospace giant EADS, the first since a weapons embargo was lifted on Tripoli in 2004 and a potential source of embarrassment for President Nicolas Sarkozy.
France confirmed Friday that Libya had reached a major arms deal with the European aerospace giant EADS, the first since a weapons embargo was lifted on Tripoli in 2004 and a potential source of embarrassment for President Nicolas Sarkozy.
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I suppose it was always going to happen, and I suppose it was the fact that it was always going to happen and that 'the powers that be' knew it, that they exert so much effort in attempting to keep the people distracted. The war on terror has begun to unravel and descend into the only thing it could - farce, albeit a rather insidious and complicated one.
Prime Minister Ehud Olmert on Sunday welcomed an "important and significant improvement" in the amount of American military aid to Israel, which aims to calm fears over an impending major U.S. weapons sale to Saudi Arabia.
Sources in Jerusalem told Haaretz over the weekend that Washington is prepared to increase military aid to Israel in order to ease the defense establishment's concern over the proposed American weapons sale to Riyadh.
Olmert added that Israel appreciates Washington wishes to boost moderate Arab states through weapons sales.
Comment: It looks like US is bribing Israel, so it won't sabotage this "major deal" in any way.
Sources in Jerusalem told Haaretz over the weekend that Washington is prepared to increase military aid to Israel in order to ease the defense establishment's concern over the proposed American weapons sale to Riyadh.
Olmert added that Israel appreciates Washington wishes to boost moderate Arab states through weapons sales.
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FEW would have predicted precisely this outcome.
On Tuesday July 24th five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor, who had been imprisoned for more than eight years in Libya, were finally freed. The six workers had been convicted of deliberately infecting some 400 children in eastern Libya with HIV, despite their claims of innocence and despite evidence that the children probably contracted the virus as a result of poor hospital hygiene. The medics had faced the death penalty, but last week their sentence was commuted to life imprisonment after a mysterious payment of $460m was agreed to be made - through an international fund - to the victims' families.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy heads Wednesday to Tripoli for strategic talks with Libyan leader Moamer Kadhafi, ahead of his first visit to sub-Saharan Africa as head of state.
Sarkozy announced he would make the "political trip" to Tripoli after French efforts contributed to the release of six foreign medics held in Libya since 1999 on charges of having infected children with AIDS.
Sarkozy announced he would make the "political trip" to Tripoli after French efforts contributed to the release of six foreign medics held in Libya since 1999 on charges of having infected children with AIDS.
Comment: Truth be told, all European governments seem to be playing Israel's game. They are all taken in by deception. And the Palestinians are left helpless and alone in the concentration camps of Gaza and West Bank, where slowly but surely, are being exterminated.