Wednesday-Night

BBC Iran country profile ; Iran on Wednesday-Night.com ; Search NYT for Iran ; Slate: Why the Islamic republic has such a youthful population ; Iran on the Economist ; Huffington Post Iran Uprising Live-Blogging ; The Land of Nod

Who killed Neda? Not us, Iran claims
(National Post Comment) … according to Iran’s Press […]

China to allow renminbi trade payments
(FT) Beijing moves towards reducing reliance on the US dollar with new rules that will enable importers and exporters to settle their payments to select Chinese companies in renminbi
11 June
China’s Commodity Buying Spree
HONG KONG — Strong buying by China has helped lift commodity prices around the world […]

President Pushes Health Plan as an Economic Boon
ANNANDALE, Va. — President Obama returned to the familiar trappings of a political campaign on Wednesday, holding a town-hall-style meeting where he sought to heighten the urgency surrounding the health care debate and dismissed critics who say the issue is too complex to tackle during his first year […]

(BBC) Afghanistan country profile ; Pakistan post 2008 elections - Updates
U.S. deploys 4,000 Marines in major Afghan offensive
With the backing of helicopter gunships, nearly 4,000 U.S. Marines and 650 Afghan soldiers launched a ground campaign in the volatile Helmand River valley, where poppy crops provide the Taliban with a significant source […]

Healthcare reform in the United States
Under the current system, Americans have achieved rather extensive health care coverage for a high percentage of its citizens, but at excessive cost and with a significant portion of the population receiving inadequate treatment or monitoring. President Obama’s challenge will be to overcome the sanctity of the free enterprise […]

The size and extent of the damage caused by the Bernie Madoff (yes, ironically, it really is pronounced ‘Made-off’) Ponzi scheme is so great that we have decided to give it its own page, rather than mingling it with the news of the rest of the economic and financial woes of the world.

Robert Scheer: […]

Roberts Court Shifts Right, Tipped by Kennedy
(NYT Analysis) The court took mainly incremental steps in major cases concerning voting rights, employment discrimination, criminal procedure and campaign finance. But the chief justice’s fingerprints were on all of them, and he left clues that the court is only one decision away from fundamental change in many areas […]

See also Iraq 5 years later ; U.S. Foreign Policy ; Iraq news on Wednesday-Night.com
Bidding war for Iraq’s huge oil contracts sputters into life
(The Independent) Iraq is locked in a struggle with the world’s largest oil companies over contracts that would see “Big Oil” return to the Iraqi oilfields for the first time in almost […]

More on Water and on Wednesday-Night.com     Thirst a powerful slide show on water ; Stockholm International Water Institute ; Nanotechnology for clean water
Clean Water Should Be Recognized as a Human Right
Firstly, access to clean water can substantially reduce the global burden disease caused by water-borne infections. Secondly, the privatization of water—as witnessed in Bolivia, Ghana […]

Search ‘Latin America’ on www.wednesday-night.com
The Eclipse of the Americas
How the Trinidad Summit Marked the Fragmentation of the Inter-American System
Richard Feinberg
(Foreign Affairs) With the spirit of an all-inclusive hemispherism in eclipse, the United States will have to shop around or create forums where it can pursue its interests with willing partners — what in the Western […]