Friday, August 19, 2005

news 24/7

PARIS (AFX) - European countries said that Iran's resumption of nuclear activities has created a 'grave crisis' that requires a united response from the international community.

American and British researchers say that they have found, in umbilical cord blood, a new type of cell -- neither embryonic nor "adult" -- which is more versatile than the latter while avoiding the ethical dilemmas surrounding the former. And in a further development, the scientists have found a way to mass-produce the new cells, sidestepping the problem of limited supply of embryonic cells. (CNSNEWS)

WASHINGTON - The American budget deficit narrowed to $52.8 billion in July from a year earlier as tax revenue surged on higher incomes and business profits. The deficit compares with a shortfall of $69.2 billion in July 2004 and was the smallest for the month since 2002, the Treasury reported today in Washington. Revenue rose 5.7% to a July record of $142.1 billion and spending fell 4.3%. (NY SUN)

Last year's deficit was a record in dollar terms, though many previous deficits in the mid-1980s and early 1990s were larger when measured against the size of the economy. The White House and most economists say that the more relevant measure of the deficit is to weigh it against the size of the economy. Measured that way, the latest estimates for this year are slightly worse than recent historic averages. (AP)

... between early September 2001 and 2004, New York City lost 170,000 jobs, as Steven Malanga of the Manhattan Institute recently noted in these pages, meaning that New York still has a lot of work to do to get back to where it started. Although Mr. Bloomberg tries to spin his jobs number as evidence that the city's economy is growing overall on his watch, New York still lags the competition. In the 2004 edition of its annual report of "best performing cities," the Milken Institute ranked New York ninth among the 10 largest cities in America in terms of economic performance, noting that the city's employment numbers were still 4% below their peak in 2000. (NY SUN)

August 16, 2005 -- Tech-savvy Saudis are circumventing the state's religious edict preventing unrelated men and women from communicating in public by text-messaging each other on Bluetooth-enabled cellular phones. (NY POST)

“It is difficult to exaggerate the perniciousness of the comparable worth theory," Judge Roberts wrote to his boss, Fred Fielding, the White House counsel, on February 3, 1984. "It mandates nothing less than central planning of the economy by judges." (NY SUN)

Judge Roberts, who was 29 at the time, even suggested the congresswomen, Ms. Snowe, Rep. Nancy Johnson of Connecticut, and Claudine Schneider of Rhode Island, might be Marxists. "Their slogan may as well be 'From each according to his ability, to each according to her gender,'" Judge Roberts quipped. (NY SUN)

No comments: