A Good News Update From a liberal perspective

[gaea 0]

Here's a quick (mostly postive) news post:

 

1) Haiti is in the process of electing Pr?val (a friend of the kidnapped former president Aristede).

 

2) A group of Chinese Elders, who formly held postions of power within the goverment, have publicly challenged China's policy of mass cencorship. Talk about getting support from an unexpected quater.

 

3) Sweden claims that it will fully abolish it's reliance on fossil feuls by 2020. That's 16 years. Wow.

 

4) There are leaked memos floating around that seem to suggest that the UK goverment will pull out half of its troops in Iraq sometime this comming summer.

 

5) Schools in south afriaca are no longer allowed to charge an enterance fee with out first making sure that each family is capible of paying for it. Should see a huge rise in litteracy now education within the next few years.

 

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More News:

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Women making gains worldwide in politics

A study presented at the 50th session of the UN Commission on the Status of Women found that over the past ten years, the representation of women in parliament in 186 countries improved by 5 points, reaching 16.3% last year. In the 39 parliamentary elections held last year, one fifth of the winners were women. Africa also elected its first female president last year, while Latin America made the biggest strides toward gender parity in 2005, thanks to quotas in Argentina, Bolivia, Honduras and Venezuela.

 

Southern Africa’s master plan

The Southern African Development Community is drawing up a master plan for integrated regional transportation and drinking water, to improve essential infrastructure for trade and sanitation. Most famine-related deaths in sub-Saharan Africa are due to a rural shortage of roads, electric power, wells and cash to support trade within countries where sufficient food is often available, but too expensive to transport. Relaxing air traffic agreements and harmonizing road user charges will also stimulate tourism and trade in the region. The goal of water supply and sanitation infrastructure development will be to meet the UN Millenium Development Goal of providing safe drinking water to all citizens by 2015.

 

Brazil’s new sustainable forestry law

The approval of Lula’s compromise legislation on sustainable forestry in the Amazon ends deadlock in a battle marked by heinous government logging scandals and bloodshed over forest land rights. Now logging companies can apply for up to 40-year licences to operate sustainable logging programs, with regularly scheduled independent inspections of licensed sites. Critics believe that inspections every 5 years are not frequent enough to protect the forests, but Greenpeace hailed the new law as a badly needed means of bringing the timber industry under the sway of environmental regulations.

 

China’s real censorship battle

The Google controversy “probably caused little more than a ripple of amusement in the corridors of Beijing’s propaganda department,” in contrast with this real domestic challenge to information control, which forced a government climb-down this week. “There is now an unstoppable wave of demands for more freedom of expression and resistance to the old propaganda policies” Jiao Guobiao, a forced-out professor of journalism, told BBC. A weekly supplement to the Chinese state youth newspaper, Bingdian or Freezing Point was known for edgy investigative reporting before the censors shut it down late in January. Outspoken oppositin to the closure went to the top ranks of the Chinese Communist Party, and the weekly has been reinstated, without its top editors.

 

Corporations cracking under overtime suits

Fair Labor Standards Act suits are winning big settlements for unpaid overtime from companies that thought they could misclassify employees to dodge time-and-a-half pay: $22.4 million (Albertsons, Ralphs and Vons janitors, 2004), $89 million (UBS AG financial advisers, 2006) and $120 million (Allstate Corp. claims adjusters, 2005). Federal and state suits against Lowe’s Cos., IBM, Electronic Arts Inc. and Wal-Mart are also underway.

 

Edited March 15, 2006 by BuffaloHELP (see edit history)

[gaea 0]

Sen. Feingold Introduces Resolution to Censure Bush

Wisconsin Democratic Senator Russ Feingold has just introduced a resolution to censure President Bush for authorizing the National Security Agency to conduct warrantless domestic surveillance (i.e. Wiretaps). "The President violated the law, ignored the Constitution and the other 2 branches of government, and disregarded the rights and freedoms upon which our country was founded," Feingold said. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist attempted to force the Senate to immediately hold a vote on Feingold's resolution before anyone actually read it, but Democrats protested the move. However few Senate Democrats have yet to publicly support Feingold's move to censure. Meanwhile in the House, the number of Democrats backing a resolution to impeach the president has now topped 30.

[BuffaloHelp 24]

Here's a quick (mostly postive) news post:

 

1) Haiti is in the process of electing Préval (a friend of the kidnapped former president Aristede).

 

2) A group of Chinese Elders, who formly held postions of power within the goverment, have publicly challenged China's policy of mass cencorship. Talk about getting support from an unexpected quater.

 

3) Sweden claims that it will fully abolish it's reliance on fossil feuls by 2020. That's 16 years. Wow.

 

4) There are leaked memos floating around that seem to suggest that the UK goverment will pull out half of its troops in Iraq sometime this comming summer.

 

5) Schools in south afriaca are no longer allowed to charge an enterance fee with out first making sure that each family is capible of paying for it. Should see a huge rise in litteracy now education within the next few years.

 

---------------

More News:

---------------

 

Women making gains worldwide in politics

A study presented at the 50th session of the UN Commission on the Status of Women found that over the past ten years, the representation of women in parliament in 186 countries improved by 5 points, reaching 16.3% last year. In the 39 parliamentary elections held last year, one fifth of the winners were women. Africa also elected its first female president last year, while Latin America made the biggest strides toward gender parity in 2005, thanks to quotas in Argentina, Bolivia, Honduras and Venezuela.

 

Southern Africas master plan

The Southern African Development Community is drawing up a master plan for integrated regional transportation and drinking water, to improve essential infrastructure for trade and sanitation. Most famine-related deaths in sub-Saharan Africa are due to a rural shortage of roads, electric power, wells and cash to support trade within countries where sufficient food is often available, but too expensive to transport. Relaxing air traffic agreements and harmonizing road user charges will also stimulate tourism and trade in the region. The goal of water supply and sanitation infrastructure development will be to meet the UN Millenium Development Goal of providing safe drinking water to all citizens by 2015.

 

Brazils new sustainable forestry law

The approval of Lulas compromise legislation on sustainable forestry in the Amazon ends deadlock in a battle marked by heinous government logging scandals and bloodshed over forest land rights. Now logging companies can apply for up to 40-year licences to operate sustainable logging programs, with regularly scheduled independent inspections of licensed sites. Critics believe that inspections every 5 years are not frequent enough to protect the forests, but Greenpeace hailed the new law as a badly needed means of bringing the timber industry under the sway of environmental regulations.

 

Chinas real censorship battle

The Google controversy probably caused little more than a ripple of amusement in the corridors of Beijings propaganda department, in contrast with this real domestic challenge to information control, which forced a government climb-down this week. There is now an unstoppable wave of demands for more freedom of expression and resistance to the old propaganda policies Jiao Guobiao, a forced-out professor of journalism, told BBC. A weekly supplement to the Chinese state youth newspaper, Bingdian or Freezing Point was known for edgy investigative reporting before the censors shut it down late in January. Outspoken oppositin to the closure went to the top ranks of the Chinese Communist Party, and the weekly has been reinstated, without its top editors.

 

Corporations cracking under overtime suits

Fair Labor Standards Act suits are winning big settlements for unpaid overtime from companies that thought they could misclassify employees to dodge time-and-a-half pay: $22.4 million (Albertsons, Ralphs and Vons janitors, 2004), $89 million (UBS AG financial advisers, 2006) and $120 million (Allstate Corp. claims adjusters, 2005). Federal and state suits against Lowes Cos., IBM, Electronic Arts Inc. and Wal-Mart are also underway.

 

Hot News FIR was not meant for you to copy and paste articles from another source. http://ww31.gnn.tv/articles/2152/The_Good_News_Roundup to start showing you copied. The rest I'm not going to even search since I can see that you made your copies.

 

And do not double post. You can edit and add contents. However it may have been, do not copy!

[FLaKes 0]

Chiles new president is a woman, well not so new, this was like a couple of months old.

[gaea 0]

Hot News FIR was not meant for you to copy and paste articles from another source. http://ww31.gnn.tv/articles/2152/The_Good_News_Roundup to start showing you copied. The rest I'm not going to even search since I can see that you made your copies.
And do not double post. You can edit and add contents. However it may have been, do not copy!

Alright, sorry about that. I wasn't aware, and certainly won't do it again.

[Artem ZHI 0]

Russian president Vladimir Putin will not go on 3 term. It becomes simple he the president of the new allied state of Russia and Kazakhstan