AIG loses $60 billion more, will get 4th bailout; Pres. of Guinea Bissau assassinated; Iran calls for prosecution of Olmert for Gaza offensive…
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Insurance giant AIG to receive its 4th rescue package from the US government, after announcing quarterly losses exceeding $60 billion. The firm has received $150 billion in financial rescue to date.
The president of Guinea Bissau has been assassinated. The small western African nation, among the world’s poorest, has a turbulent history of military coups and political assassinations, and political stability could be in jeopardy in the wake of the killing.
The government of Iran has called on the international community to detain and prosecute Israeli PM Ehud Olmert for actions leading to civilian deaths in Gaza; Israel blames Hamas, which controls Gaza, for civilian casualties in recent conflict, saying Hamas set up positions in densely populated areas; critics say IDF did not take adequate measures to avoid harming innocents.
Russia’s finance minister, Alexei Kudrin, has said the government made key mistakes that contributed to his country’s current economic straits. As CNN reports:
The Russian government overspent its vast oil revenues in recent years, fueling inflation, and did not do enough to reduce the economy’s reliance on oil, Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin said in an exclusive CNN interview.
“Of course, I too bear the responsibility for not managing to diversify the economy as much as we wanted,” Kudrin said. “We were spending more money than we could afford, which is why we had a rapid strengthening of the national currency [and] a high inflation rate.”
The UN is in talks with North Korea, possibly aimed at reaching an international political solution to eliminate the DPRK’s nuclear program, and to settle concerns relating to a planned rocket launch, which had initially been touted as a satellite launch, but which was later said to be the testing of a long-range ballistic missile.
Border tensions have increased in the demilitarized zone between North and South Korea, and the regime in Pyongyang has warned US forces operating in the area to cease “provocations” or face retaliation. The escalation in tensions is thought related to concern in Seoul over the launch plans.
Yonhap news agency said the North renewed its condemnation of a major joint US-South Korean military exercise due to start March 9. A UN Command spokesman declined to confirm the report.
Fears of a border clash have grown after the North scrapped peace accords with Seoul and warned of war. It is angry at South Korea’s conservative leader Lee Myung-Bak, who scrapped his predecessors’ policy of offering virtually unconditional aid to Pyongyang.
The UN command in the border region says talks are welcome and could lead to a more sustainable security situation. South Korea’s conservative leader had discontinued a policy of automatic aid to Pyongyang, which was a humanitarian gesture and an effort to build ties, and South Korean and Japanese officials have said they believe any rocket launch would violate a 2006 UN resolution.
Evidence in a lawsuit reveals the CIA destroyed 100 interrogation tapes, possibly showing significant images of brutal “ehanced” interrogation techniques. Whether the CIA had authority to destroy interrogation tapes under any circumstance, whether their destruction was part of a deliberate cover-up of illegal activity, or whether they were destroyed only after they had been subpoenaed, are all questions that remain to be answered.
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