in the news this week

BERLIN (AP) -- Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice warned Iran on Thursday the "international community is united" in the dispute over its nuclear program, but a Tehran envoy defiantly rejected a U.N. call to reimpose a freeze on uranium enrichment.

Tehran - Thousands of Iranian troops will on Friday start a week-long military manoeuvre in the Gulf to ready armed forces for warding off "threats", a senior commander announced on state television. (afp)

Persian Gulf markets are suffering a correction after years of gains, raising concerns about the effect on other emerging markets. (WSJ)

"If they are competent to fight this war, then I ought to be singing on American Idol." (VP Dick Cheney)

A reporter for the Weekly Standard, Steven Hayes, yesterday said he thought the memorandum of the 1995 meeting demolishes the view of some terrorism experts that bin Laden and Saddam were incapable of cooperating for ideological and doctrinal reasons. "Clearly from this document bin Laden was willing to work with Saddam to achieve his ends, and clearly from this document Saddam did not immediately reject the idea of working with bin Laden," Mr. Hayes said. "It is possible that documents will emerge later that suggest skepticism on the part of Iraqis to working with bin Laden, but this makes clear that there was a relationship." (NY SUN)

(CNSNews.com) - Major mutual fund companies are "prime enablers" of the explosive growth in compensation for corporate executives, according to a union-sponsored study released on Tuesday. However, a representative from a pro-business organization called it "ironic" that the report also indicates most shareholders approve of the jobs their CEOs do and the pay they receive.

LONDON (Reuters) - Gold raced to a new 25-year peak on Thursday and silver spiked to its highest in more than 22 years as fund managers pumped more money into commodities before the end of the quarter.

"If the economy is as strong as the Fed is worried about, that's going to mean better corporate earnings," said John Augustine, chief investment strategist at Fifth Third Asset Management. "The driver is rotating from front-end consumer to back-end business spending. And business spending is being driven by the need to continually improve productivity, which brings in tech spending." NEW YORK (Reuters)

TOKYO (Reuters) - The Nikkei rose 0.63 percent to close above 17,000 for the first time in more than 5-½ years on Thursday as bank shares gained on profit prospects and technology stocks rose following a rally in U.S. stocks.

For English-speaking America, the mass protests in Los Angeles and other U.S. cities over the past few days have been surprising for their size and seeming spontaneity. But they were organized, promoted or publicized for weeks by Spanish-language radio hosts and TV anchors as a demonstration of Hispanic pride and power.(AP)

Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, in a scathing letter to the editor of the Boston Herald, accused the newspaper's staff of watching "too many episodes of the Sopranos" for interpreting a hand gesture he made at a cathedral as obscene. (AP)

According to sources on Capitol Hill, U.S. Representative Cynthia McKinney (D-GA) punched a Capitol police officer on Wednesday afternoon after he mistakenly pursued her for failing to pass through a metal detector. (News 11 Atlanta)