The Senate failed to pass immigration legislation; in large part due to Minority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.), who blocked 17 out of 20 proposed ammendments to the bill, which he said would gut the bills cheif elements.
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US Hispanic groups demanded amnesty for illegal immigrants.
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President George W. Bush urged U.S. senators on Wednesday to break a stalemate over an immigration law overhaul and pass legislation that includes a temporary worker program but avoids amnesty for an estimated 11 million illegal migrants.
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A new Time poll shows 79% support a guest worker program while only 47% support the Republican House bill. A substantial majority, 75%, say they should not be allowed to have government services, such as health care or food stamps, and 69% say they shouldn’t be able to get a driver’s license. A slight majority, 51%, think public schools ought to be off-limits.
[no school for you]
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The Senate Judiciary Committee approved sweeping election-year immigration legislation Monday.
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Up to 12,000 protesters marched through the capital of the western US state of Arizona to denounce plans for a draconian legislative crackdown on illegal immigrants. Among the propositions under debate is the construction of an 80-kilometer (50-mile) wall sealing part of the porous US-Mexican border, and a crackdown on anyone giving succor to illegal immigrants.
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Health authorities in northern Brazil are trying to cope with a wave of attacks on humans by vampire bats infected with the deadly rabies virus.
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A massive rescue operation is under way in Central America and southern Mexico, where mudslides caused by a tropical storm have killed at least 250 people.
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Bolivia has a new president.
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In Bolivia, tens of thousands of people are protesting, throwing rocks and dynamite sticks at police as they fire tear gas and rubber bullets at them. The president resigned, but the protesters won’t go away.
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In Mexico, President Vicente Fox has apologized for saying that Mexicans in the United States do the work that African Americans won’t. Last week Fox said “There’s no doubt that Mexican men and women — full of dignity, willpower and a capacity for work — are doing the work that not even Blacks want to do in the United States.” In telephone conversations with the Reverend Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, Fox said he “regretted any hurt feelings.”
In Brazil, South American and Arab leaders are holding a historic summit aimed at reducing US power.
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Audioslave promised Cubans the loudest concert they had ever heard.
Philip Zelikow, the interim director of the National Counter-Terrorism Center said, “Unfortunately, Cuba, North Korea, Syria, and in particular, Iran continued to embrace terrorism as an instrument of national policy. Most worrisome is that these countries also have the capabilities to manufacture weapons of mass destruction and other destabilizing technologies that could fall into the hands of terrorists.”
The selection of Negroponte to National Intelligence Director has focused renewed attention on how much he knew about the Honduran military’s involvement in almost 200 disappearances and what he did about it. Former official Rick Chidester, who served under Negroponte, says he was ordered to remove all mention of torture and executions from the draft of his 1982 report on the human rights situation in Honduras…During Negroponte’s tenure, US military aid to Honduras skyrocketed from $3.9 million dollars to over $77 million dollars.
Starbucks opened several kiosks at Guantanamo Bay this month.
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Bush nominated Ambassador John Negroponte, current U.S. ambassador to Iraq, for Director of National Intelligence. Often referred to as the “terror ambassador” for his central role in coordinating US covert aid to the Contras who targeted civilians in Nicaragua and shoring up a CIA-backed death squad in Honduras; Negroponte also has minimal experience in the intelligence field.
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Judge Green ruled against the Bush administration Monday, declaring that detainees at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, were clearly entitled to have federal courts examine whether they have been lawfully detained.
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