A decade ago, it seemed that men and women with similar qualifications might soon make nearly identical salaries. Today, that is far harder to envision.
President Bush offered an olive branch to congressional Democrats at his news conference yesterday. He said he would work with the opposition party to find compromise on a variety of issues, including immigration, education, and the minimum wage.
Less than a month after a report from the blue-ribbon Committee on Capital Markets Regulation proposed a dramatic deregulation of the nation's financial markets–and only a week after the Securities and Exchange Commission began chipping away at some of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act's requirements for smaller businesses–corporate executives may have received yet another holiday gift.
Evidence continues to mount that the new Democratic majority plans to investigate the war, energy policy, and other Bush policies, key committees have begun hiring lawyer-investigators whose job will be to probe into the administration. In the House, for example, the Appropriations Committee under Rep. John Murtha's direction is hiring investigators who will be charged with looking into the administration's war policies and spending in Iraq and Afghanistan. Also, Rep. Henry Waxman, the incoming chairman of the House Government Reform Committee who's been dogging the vice president's energy task force, is also hiring lawyers. A Democratic leadership official said that the planned hearings and investigations into the war and other issues the lawyer-investigators are being hired to look into will be "very focused." In the Senate, officials said similar hirings were underway in a speeded up effort to have people in place for the start of the new Congress, especially the planned early January hearings into the war and military spending that are set to begin January 8.
AP - Iran's top nuclear negotiator said the country will push forward immediately with efforts to enrich uranium after the U.N. Security Council imposed sanctions designed to stop the nuclear efforts, a newspaper reported Sunday.
AP - Ethiopian fighter jets bombarded the Somali town of Belet Weyne on Sunday, witnesses said, a sharp escalation in violence that is threatening to engulf the volatile Horn of Africa.
Schoolgirls as young as 12 will be vaccinated against a sexually transmitted disease linked to cervical cancer, under plans being drawn up by the Department of Health.
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas are meeting Saturday night in Jerusalem, Olmert's office and a Palestinian official said.
A top Taliban military commander described as a close associate of Osama bin Laden and Taliban leader Mullah Omar was killed in a U.S. airstrike this week close to the border with Pakistan, the U.S. military said today. Mullah Akhtar Mohammad Osmani was killed while traveling by vehicle in a deserted area in the southern province of Helmand, the U.S. military said. Spokesmen with the Taliban denied the claim, according to news agencies.
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