Tuesday, March 10, 2009

Parliament approves Iran’s $289b budget

 

Iran’s parliament passes the 298-billion-dollar budget bill for the next Iranian calendar year.

Iranian lawmakers have approved a 289-billion-dollar budget proposed by the Ahmadinejad government for the next Iranian calendar year.

The next calendar year begins on March 21.

The Iranian parliament on Sunday commenced discussing the budget bill and hours later approved the bill which was submitted to the Majlis by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in lat

Posted by Babak Esmaeili in 09:28:54 | Permalink | Comments (3)

Unemployment hits 25-year high

The U.S. economy continued to hemorrhage jobs in February, bringing total job losses over the last six months to more than 3.3 million, and taking the unemployment rate to its highest level in 25 years.
 
The government reported Friday that employers slashed 651,000 jobs in February, down from a revised loss of 655,000 jobs in January. December’s loss was also revised higher to a loss of 681,000 jobs, a 59-year high for losses in one month.
 
 Economists surveyed by Briefing.com had forecast a loss of 650,000 jobs in February.
 
 ”The economy is headed south with a vengeance,” said Kurt Karl, head of economic research for the U.S. unit of insurer Swiss Re.
 
 The unemployment rate rose to 8.1% from 7.6% in January. It was the highest reading since December 1983 and higher than economists’ projections of 7.9%.
 
 Most workers who have jobs today are not old enough to have worked in a labor market this bad, while 13% of workers weren’t even alive the last time unemployment was at this level.
 
 The survey of households found 12.5 million people are now unemployed, the most since records started being kept in 1940.
 
The U.S. economy has now lost 4.4 million jobs since the start of 2008. To put that in perspective, that’s about equal to the total number of jobs in each of the following states — Georgia, Michigan and North Carolina — at the end of 2007.
 
 ”It’s a dismal report. We thought we’d have another month like this, and I think we have a couple of more coming,” said Tig Gilliam, chief executive of Adecco Group North America, a unit of the world’s largest employment firm. “We’ve got a lot of layoffs being announced that haven’t been implemented.”
 
 Gilliam said he expects the unemployment rate to rise to 9% within the next few months.
Other economists echoed Gilliam’s view that the battered labor market has yet to hit bottom. John Silvia, chief economist at Wachovia, pointed to the weekly initial jobless claims, which are still above 600,000 a week, and the large increase in the number of people working part time when they’d prefer full-time work as signs of more job losses to come.
 
“I’d love to believe this is the worst, but I suspect we’ll continue to lose jobs for months to come,” he said. “All we can hope is that the pace would slow down.”
 
The Obama administration issued a statement saying that the jobs report and overall economic problems are the reasons why it moved quickly to get an economic stimulus package passed by Congress last month.
 
 ”There’s no doubt that we have a long way to go to get this economy moving again, and the jobs numbers are one more reminder of that,” White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs told reporters aboard Air Force One.
 
 But some economists questioned whether the stimulus package will be able to do much to address job losses in the near term.
 
“The stimulus won’t have immediate effect on job creation even though some planned layoffs could be cancelled,” said Sung Won Sohn, economics professor at Cal State University Channel Islands. He said most of the job growth that the $787 billion in government spending will create won’t be seen until 2010.
The number of workers with part-time jobs who either can’t find full-time positions or have had their hours cut jumped by 787,000 in February to 8.6 million.
 
 Counting those part-time workers, along with discouraged job seekers no longer counted as unemployed by the government, the so-called underemployment rate hit 14.8% in February, up from 13.9% in January. This was the fifth straight record high for that reading, which has been calculated since 1994.
 
 Silvia said the cut in total hours worked and the jump in those now working only part-time are both signs that the overall economy will continue to slow.
 
 He said many people with part-time jobs are not earning enough to pay their bills. That will probably lead to more cuts in consumer spending, which in turn will lead to more drops in revenue for businesses and more layoffs.
 
The job losses were widespread, with manufacturing and construction companies, as well as business and professional services firms all losing more than 100,000 workers.
 
 The report also showed that businesses in more three-quarters of the sectors in the economy reduced the number of jobs in the last month. Over the last three months, 83.2% percent of industries have lost workers, a record high for that reading.
 
 ”What started in construction and manufacturing and financial services has spread to every industry,” said Gilliam.

source:CNN

Posted by Babak Esmaeili in 09:13:34 | Permalink | Comments (3)

Obama Taking ‘Wrong Path’ on Israel

The Leader of the Islamic Revolution says those who advocate a “pragmatic” approach toward Israel should have learned to think twice.

“By now those who advocated a pragmatic approach under the illusion of the invincibility of the Zionist regime and who succumbed to surrender and compromise with the usurpers should have realized their mistake,” Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei said on Wednesday.

Addressing an international conference in support of the Palestinians in Tehran, the Leader was referring to “those who entertained hopes of a peaceful coexistence with the Zionist”.

Some Arab leaders provoked outrage among the people of the Middle East by either remaining silent on the plight of the Palestinians or aiding and abetting Israel in its 60-year oppression of the Palestinian population.

Israel’s blockade of Gaza and the atrocities committed during its recent war on the territory “proved that the savage and criminal instincts of the fake Zionist state have not changed in the least since that early decades of the of the disaster in Palestine,” Ayatollah Khamenei explained.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict began in 1948 when leaders of the Zionist movement won the support of colonial European countries and the US to establish a ‘pure Jewish state’ under the Zionist slogan of a ‘land without a people and a people without a land’.

European leaders and Zionist officials justified the colonization of Palestine as the only way out of the massive wave of anti-Semitism that hit the Europe in the early 20th century.

Zionists benefited by gaining power over the native land of the Palestinians, but the establishment and the subsequent terror attacks against the Palestinian population gave rise to the philosophy of resistance and in recent years armed retaliation.

Israel’s December and January operations in the Gaza Strip killed nearly 1,350 Palestinians and injured around 5,450 others.

Tel Aviv carried out its operations using white phosphorous bombs, classified as a ‘chemical weapon’ by the US intelligence.

According to Ayatollah Khamenei, the Israeli aggression was in line with the “same policies and predatory and ruthless motives which created such tragedies as those of Deir Yasin, Sabra and Shatilla.” — operations in which Israel systematically massacred the Palestinians and intensified its grip on the land.

Although Tel Aviv has ended its major operations in Gaza, it continues to stage air strikes on the strip and to enforce a 20-month blockade on the sliver of land.

Posted by Babak Esmaeili in 05:41:45 | Permalink | Comments (3)

Wednesday, March 4, 2009

Gordon Brown pictured having make-up applied before Barack Obama meeting

Gordon Brown was pictured having make-up applied after he landed in Washington for a meeting with President Barack Obama.

گوردون براون درحال آرایش، پیش از دیدار با اوباما

A quick-witted photographer captured Mr Brown having his face powdered shortly before exiting the British Airways jet that took him to the US capital on Monday.

It comes almost a year after Mr Brown was pictured with a large orange blob of make-up on his forehead at a Progressive Governance Summit in London.

Mr Brown had sought to distance himself from the image-conscious style of his predecessor, Tony Blair, who was in 1997 filmed wearing thick make-up as he responded to claims Labour had taken an improper donation from Bernie Ecclestone, the head of Formula One racing.

In 2005 it emerged that Mr Blair spent more than £1,800 of taxpayers’ money on cosmetics and make-up artists between 1999 and 2005.

In a parliamentary answer earlier this year, Mr Brown said he had spent nothing on make-up.

The Prime Minister will meet Mr Obama to discuss the global economic crisis among other major issues. Mr Brown is the first European leader to meet him since he was elected president.

He will also address Congress and is expected to warn against protectionism in the effort to tackle the crisis.

The two leaders are to appear briefly in front of the media in the Oval Office, rather than in a full press conference, as had been planned by Downing Street.

Posted by Babak Esmaeili in 16:56:06 | Permalink | Comments (3)