Tag: Evening Edition

The five countries battling for the 2022 football extravaganza — Australia, the United States, South Korea, Japan and Qatar — showcased their bids one last time in presentations at FIFA headquarters in Zurich.

Meanwhile, high-powered delegations from countries slugging it out for the 2018 tournament were engaging in frenzied politicking with the climax to the scandal-tainted vote less than 24 hours away.

The study, which the White House hopes will pave the way for Congress to lift the ban, concluded the risk “to overall military effectiveness is low” if the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” law is repealed.

“We are both convinced that our military can do this, even during this time of war,” wrote the report’s authors, General Carter Ham, and the Pentagon’s top legal adviser, Jeh Johnson.

Despite diplomats’ red faces, officials were quick to criticise the release of the confidential missives, most of which date from 2007 to February this year, and to stress that the leaks would not harm relations.

Highlights include a call by Saudi King Abdullah for the US to “cut off the head” of the Iranian snake over its nuclear programme and leaked memos about a Chinese government bid to hack into Google.

The cables describe the bazaar-like bargaining over the repatriation of Guantanamo Bay detainees, a Chinese government bid to hack into Google, and quote Saudi King Abdullah as saying the United States should strike Iran to halt its nuclear program, telling it to “cut off the head of the snake.”

They also detail plans to reunite the Korean peninsula after the North’s eventual collapse, according to The New York Times, one of a handful of international media outlets that gained early access to the documents.

Annual quotas for the sushi mainstay will be trimmed from 13,500 tonnes this year to 12,900 tonnes in 2011, the 48-member International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT) decided at the close of a 10-day meeting in Paris.

Some nations here favoured a much lower cap, or even a suspension of fishing, to ensure bluefin’s long-term viability.

US diplomats headed to foreign ministries in hopes of staving off anger if the whistleblower website puts out the leaked cables, which are internal messages that lack the niceties that diplomats generally voice in public.

The documents, the third tranche since WikiLeaks published 77,000 classified US files on the Afghan conflict in July, could affect some of the most sensitive US relationships including with Russia, Israel and Turkey.

With the eyes of Europe on his debt-ridden nation, Prime Minister Brian Cowen said his four-year package of cuts and tax increases would restore shattered confidence, calling it a signpost on the road to recovery.

“We can and we will pull through this as we have in the past,” Cowen told a news conference.

The efforts of the European Union and the International Monetary Fund to shore up the debt-laden Irish economy were called into question as the euro sank to a two-month low, dipping under 1.34 dollars.

As political anger at Cowen and the Irish government grew at home, Portugal — tipped to be the next eurozone economy to need a bailout — was bracing itself for a general strike on Wednesday.

It could take several weeks for the budgetary process to be completed and Cowen would then have to formally dissolve parliament and set an election date, meaning an election may not be held until February or March.

Cowen, who entered a coalition government with the Green Party in 2008, bowed to calls from its disgruntled junior partner to call an election in the wake of Ireland accepting a bailout worth up to 90 billion euros (122.5 billion dollars).