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Bangladesh: Clerics and neighbors confine Muslim father to home after son converts to Christianity in Australia

Scott — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 19:32:10 +0000

Muslim clerics and neighbors have ordered the father of a man who converted to Catholicism to remain confined to his house until retaliatory punishment can be exacted from the...

Can the Middle East ever be green?

Scott — Sat, 10 May 2008 12:00:37 +0000

Colin Montgomerie has opened one, as has Ernie Els. Tiger Woods is following, with Greg Norman and Vijay Singh in the chasing pack.

When you talk green in the Dubai, it’s can be assumed you mean golf courses. Conservation and eco-tourism are not common parlance in the United Arab Emirates.

In four days at the Arabian Travel Market this week, I heard a slew of figures and superlatives to illustrate the UAE’s headlong goldrush to embrace tourism.

There’s the world’s tallest building still rising in Dubai, the biggest Guggenheim to open in Abu Dhabi and the world’s biggest stable of theme parks planned back in Dubai.

Italy faces postelection stalemate

Scott — Sat, 12 Apr 2008 06:53:43 +0000

The super-white teeth and the endless clowning remain, as when he clutched his chest as if dying after eating buffalo mozzarella, now the focus of a dioxin scare.

But gone are many other trademarks of Silvio Berlusconi. In the heat of the campaign for parliamentary elections Sunday, the comic-book energy has succumbed to self-acknowledged fatigue. Loose-tongued in the best of times, Berlusconi, 71, now says “anything that comes into his head,” one commentator wrote, citing his proposal for mental health screening for prosecutors who apparently were unhinged enough to charge him with corruption.

Mostly, though, what is gone are the big promises: Italy, he seems to be saying, is so ill that not even the mighty Berlusconi can be sure of curing it

“The cross I will have to bear has never been so heavy because never has the situation before us been so difficult,” he said last week.

The cross in question being the office of prime minister, which he is seeking for the third time in elections on Sunday and Monday. The man who once said his leadership would herald “a new Italian miracle” now says: “We can’t promise and can’t achieve miracles.”

Poor get poorer as recession threat looms: report

Scott — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 09:39:53 +0000

The gap between rich and poor in many states has broadened at a quickening pace since the last U.S. recession, which could make it difficult for low-income families to weather the current economic downturn, according to a report issued Wednesday.

Since the late 1990’s average incomes have declined 2.5 percent for families on the bottom fifth of the country’s economic ladder, while incomes have increased 9.1 percent for families on the top fifth, said the report from the liberal-leaning Center on Budget and Policy Priorities and Economic Policy Institute.

The result is that the average incomes of the top five percent of families are 12 times the average incomes of the bottom 20 percent.

Canada is in the middle of a quiet oil boom

Scott — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 11:47:37 +0000

With oil prices hovering near a hundred dollars a barrel, there’s a major oil boom underway. It’s not happening in the sweltering heat of Texas or the dry desert of Saudi Arabia, but on the frozen Canadian tundra where oil producers are developing a new source of fossil fuel.

It may seem like unlikely terrain for one of the biggest oil booms in recent memory. But Canada’s “oil sands” have helped make it the leading supplier to the United States.

Here in Alberta — a once-desolate outpost 800 miles north of the U.S. border that has gone from ghost town to boom town — you won’t see any spouting geysers, or traditional pumps drilling for oil deep underground.