Free Republic

<p>WASHINGTON (AP) -- The administration wants $100 million for an Iraqi witness protection program, $290 million to hire, train and house thousands of firefighters, $9 million to modernize the postal service, including establishment of ZIP codes.</p> <p>A Bush administration document, distributed to members of Congress and obtained by The Associated Press, goes far beyond the details officials have publicly provided for how they would spend the $20.3 billion they have requested for Iraqi reconstruction.</p>

<p>The administration wants $100 million for an Iraqi witness protection program, $290 million to hire, train and house thousands of firefighters, $9 million to modernize the postal service, including establishment of ZIP codes.</p> <p>A Bush administration document, distributed to members of Congress and obtained by The Associated Press, goes far beyond the details officials have publicly provided for how they would spend the $20.3 billion they have requested for Iraqi reconstruction.</p>

Thu September 18, 2003 10:09 AM ET By Glenn Somerville KABUL (Reuters) - U.S. Treasury Secretary John Snow said on Thursday he hoped Afghanistan would receive around $2 billion in extra aid, warning that failure to rebuild the war-ravaged country "cannot be an option." On a lightning visit to Kabul, where he met senior officials including President Hamid Karzai, Snow said the United States had pledged around $1 billion in extra donations, and that the amount should be matched by the rest of the world. "The U.S. has talked in terms of a billion dollars and we've said we want...

The United States has paid Thailand a bounty of 10 million dollars for its capture of Asia's most wanted man Hambali, Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra said yesterday. "We have received 10 million dollars. Part of the money will be distributed to officers involved in the operation, the rest will fund foundations to oversee the welfare of officers injured in the line of duty," the premier said. Thaksin said security agencies involved in the capture of Asia's top terrorist suspect will receive fair shares of the bounty. "Don't worry, the United States has specified which agencies worked with them and...

For education and discussion only. Not for commercial use.Standard Chartered Bank argues that the strength of the US dollar is a temporary phenomenon in an article by economist Daniel Hanna in the Middle East Standard. The US dollar is making a comeback. But the key question is whether this is a temporary phenomenon or the beginning of a new bullish trend for the dollar. We believe it will be temporary, lasting for a couple of months and may leave EUR/USD vulnerable to test 1.07 in this period. The reason for our revised view from (EUR/USD 1.15 end Q3) rests with...

Jakarta: Hambali is known to have sent funds totalling 45,000 US dollars to "bomb" Indonesia through a Malaysian national given the alias Li-Li. It is now being analysed to find out if this money was used for the Marriott bombing. This was announced by Indonesia's senior detective Commissioner General Erwin Mappasang at a press conference in Jakarta police headquarters today (Tuesday 19 August). "The police are still investigating whether or not Hambali played a role in the Marriott bombing because it is certainly known that a Malaysian citizen arrested in Thailand under the alias Li-Li was sent 45,000 US dollars...

Europe pines for big-spending US tourists By Mark Rice-Oxley | Special to the Christian Science Monitor LONDON - Down at Westminster Pier, where the river cruisers come and go in the unusually hot August sunshine, a chatter of languages floats ashore on a merciful breeze. French, Arabic, Hindi, Russian, Spanish. Tourism, it seems, is alive once more. But one tongue is barely heard. That instantly recognizable American accent, usually so audible in tourist spots around European capitals, is all but silent. It's not that the US contingent is unusually quiet. It's that it is barely present. "My son was just...

BAGHDAD, Iraq — A little baksheesh can go a long way in Iraq. At least, that is what U.S. military commanders hunting for Saddam Hussein and his loyalists are hoping. American troops began this month handing out rewards (such “tips” are known in Arabic as baksheesh) to anyone who gives them credible information on the whereabouts of the fugitive former Iraqi leader or any of his elusive supporters. With unemployment in Iraq around 70 percent, soldiers are turning to an incentive that has been successful since Mesopotamians settled on the Tigris and Euphrates rivers thousands of years ago. “The hope...

<p>Dollar Gains Against Euro as Leading European Economies Stall Aug. 8 (Bloomberg) -- The dollar had its biggest gain in a week against the euro on optimism economic recovery in the U.S. will outpace growth in Europe, boosting demand for dollar- denominated assets.</p>

<p>"Mickey [Mouse] hasn't got a cent," Libération, France's left-leaning daily, announced. "Mickey's little Parisian world isn't smiling," Belgium's Derniére Heure somberly reported.</p> <p>"The worldwide crisis in tourism, the European economic slowdown, the trauma [associated with] Sept. 11 -- for [Euro Disney's] management, those are the principal reasons for its setbacks," reported La Libre Belgique, echoing other business assessments. But "the real problem," an analyst for a leading French labor union explained, "is [Euro Disney's] financial base, the structure of the company itself. [It] is in too much debt." (AFP/La Croix) He added that there has been "a weakening of the product." The analyst said, "André Lacroix talks to us nonstop about marketing, but because there's no budget, there aren't enough new attractions, and people don't come back."</p>

PARIS (AP) - From luxury hotels on the French Riviera to Viennese cafes and the double-decker buses of London, American tourists have deserted Europe en masse. The reasons for the drop in U.S. visitors include a weak dollar, post-Sept. 11, 2001 fears of terrorism and the diplomatic dispute with some European countries over the Iraq war. In France, the absence of Americans is headline news. Le Monde newspaper summed up it up in a front-page cartoon that shows two French vacationers reclining under a palm tree. "Let's not exaggerate! I spotted an American," one of them tells his friend. "Lance...

The Associated Press PARIS Aug. 7 — From luxury hotels on the French Riviera to Viennese cafes and the double-decker buses of London, American tourists have deserted Europe en masse.The reasons for the drop in U.S. visitors include a weak dollar, post-Sept. 11, 2001 fears of terrorism and the diplomatic dispute with some European countries over the Iraq war. In France, the absence of Americans is headline news. Le Monde newspaper summed up it up in a front-page cartoon that shows two French vacationers reclining under a palm tree."Let's not exaggerate! I spotted an American," one of them tells...

KABUL, Aug 4 (AFP) - Afghan Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah Monday welcomed a new one-billion-dollar aid package from the United States and hoped other countries would follow suit. "It is very good news for the people of Afghanistan and is in fact news awaited," Abdullah told reporters at a press conference. "While we remain grateful to the international community as a whole for their generous contributions in the past 20 months, it was very obvious that a new mood was needed, a new effort was needed in that line," he said. "We hope that the international community, the donors, friends...

Kampala The UN special envoy on HIV/Aids in Africa, Mr Stephen Lewis, is angry with the United States for spending money on wars while abandoning the millions of people dying of Aids. "You want money to fight war in Afghanistan, it is there. You want money to fight a war in Iraq, it is there. You want money to rescue people in Africa, it is never there. And that is what Graca and I want to work on collectively with you," Lewis told his audience at Hotel Brovad in Masaka town yesterday. He was speaking to district and community leaders...

American Tourists are announcing their displeasure to the French attitude towards the US in a different way this summer, with their pocketbooks. The Telegraph, a British news agency, is reporting that American visits this tourist season are down 50 percent from last year, while British visits are down 10 percent. This has to just chap the hide of the angriest of the anti-war crowd. As the US contributes billions to the French economy each year. And those aren't spent just by the strongest supporters of the Iraqi War. Perhaps this is also why in a recent NBC/Wall Street Journal Poll...

Millions of foreign tourists are shunning France this summer, costing the country billions of pounds and threatening its position as the world's favourite destination. Travel agents say there is widespread evidence that the tourist industry is suffering as a result of President Jacques Chirac's vehement stand against the war in Iraq. The strong euro has added to the crisis. According to the president of France's travel agents' union, Cesar Balderacchi, bookings from the United States in the past six months were 50 per cent down on last year, with no sign of improvement as the tourist season reaches its peak....

<p>The nation of haute cuisine, insolent waiters and all-around haughtiness wants the sneaker-wearing, loud-mouthed, empire-building Americans back. Badly. Yes, the French apparently miss us.</p> <p>More to the point, the French miss U.S. dollars. Americans accounted for just 5% of visitors to France last year but were responsible for 15% of all tourist spending. The French tourism ministry puts the decline in American visitors at 30% in the first five months of this year, and blames a weak dollar and edginess about trans-Atlantic travel after 9/11.</p>

U.S. Changes Tactics in Violent Iraq City By HAMZA HENDAWI .c The Associated Press FALLUJAH, Iraq (AP) - Faced with sporadic attacks, the U.S. Army has come up with some unorthodox policies to placate Fallujah - handing over security to the locals, compensating people for homes damaged in raids and paying blood money to the families of American-inflicted casualties. Thanks to the experiment, Fallujah, a conservative and deeply tribal Sunni Muslim city of 200,000 people, is no longer the dangerous place it was for U.S. soldiers as recently as mid-July. But anger remains strong. ``We will fight them to the...

FALLUJAH, Iraq (AP) Faced with sporadic attacks, the U.S. Army has come up with some unorthodox policies to placate Fallujah handing over security to the locals, compensating people for homes damaged in raids and paying blood money to the families of American-inflicted casualties. Thanks to the experiment, Fallujah, a conservative and deeply tribal Sunni Muslim city of 200,000 people, is no longer the dangerous place it was for U.S. soldiers as recently as mid-July. But anger remains strong. ``We will fight them to the death if they keep humiliating us,'' said Farhan Siyam al-Jomaili, a local clan chief. Much like...

MOSCOW: A senior Russian lawmaker on Wednesday said he suspected that US$3 million dollars stolen from the Iraqi Embassy in Moscow was intended to bribe Russian politicians in exchange for support of Saddam Hussein's regime. Dmitry Rogozin, chairman of the foreign affairs committee in Russia's lower house of parliament, told the Interfax news agency that embassies never keep such large sums of money on hand. "My theory is that this enormous sum was intended for political reasons, possibly for bribing Russian officials and politicians in an attempt to secure their support for the toppled Saddam Hussein regime," Rogozin said. Rogozin...