US President Barack Obama has chosen Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius as secretary for health and human services, an official said. The nomination comes after Democrat Tom Daschle withdrew his nomination following a tax controversy.
Argentina is struggling to bring torturers of the dictatorship years to justice with only 44 condemned so far. President Cristina Kirchner has asked the courts to speed up the process, but some critics claim that judges are complicit with torturers.
Losses exceeding seven billion dollars for 2008 were confirmed by the Mexican national oil company Pemex on Friday. A slowdown of oil production and a drop in the country's currency were the main reasons cited for the loss.
US President Barack Obama said in a televison interview on Friday that the US had no long-term aspirations in Afghanistan. His comments came hours after he set an August 2010 pull out date for US combat operations in Iraq.
The US will not be sending a delegation to April's World Conference on Racism, an official announced on Friday. In 2001 the US abandoned a similar event over a resolution that compared Zionism to racism. Critics say this conference will slam Israel.
US President Barack Obama on Friday set a date of August 31, 2010 for the end of US combat operations in Iraq, and said he intended to fully withdraw all troops by the end of 2011, in an address from Camp Lejeune in North Carolina.
In 2008's fourth quarter the United States economy shrunk at a 6.2 % annual rate, according to Commerce Department data. Analysts had expected a decline of 5.4 %. The decline was the worst since the first quarter of 1982.
The names of US President Barak Obama and France's President Nicolas Sarkozy are among a record 205 nominations for the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize. Former French-Colombian hostage Ingrid Betancourt and Chinese dissident Hu Jia are also on the list.
US President Barack Obama's proposed budget, unveiled on Thursday, anticipates an economic contraction of 1.2% in 2009, though his projections were more optimistic than those of the Congressional Budget Office.
Today on the Web: after a three-week protest, Martinique turns violent to obtain salary increases from the French government, the blogosphere reacts; Kurdish net users mobilise after a Turkish representative speaks Kurdish in parliament.
