More than 100,000 protesters organised by Catholic groups staged separate demonstrations in French cities over the weekend to protest against government plans to legalise same-sex marriage next year.
Most of them took to the streets on Saturday, backed by the French Catholic Church and joined by several senior clerics, and several thousand more paraded with ultra-traditionalist Catholics in Paris on Sunday.
WASHINGTON -- Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said Thursday that banks' overly tight lending standards may be holding back the U.S. economy by preventing creditworthy borrowers from buying homes.
Jordanian authorities have threatened to crack down on those who incite violence during protests with an "iron fist", while opposition groups pledge to continue demonstrations in the kingdom.
The protests, which erupted on Tuesday across the country in response to the government's raising fuel and gas prices, are the largest and most sustained to hit the country since the start of uprisings in the region nearly two years ago.
By Steve Coll, Daily Comment @ newyorker.com, Nov. 15, 2012
Home page lede:
Who Will Run the C.I.A.?
The agency could use a vision of the future of intelligence, a different life story, and some sort of signal that the Obama Administration is not just business as usual...
President Barack Obama on Thursday toured some of the city's hardest hit areas from the storm and also announced a native New Yorker will be the point-person in the effort to rebuild.
U.S. Housing and Urban Development Secretary Shaun Donovan will be in charge of coming up with a long-term recovery plan.
WASHINGTON — The Postal Service on Thursday reported a record $15.9 billion net loss for the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, bringing the financially troubled agency another step closer to insolvency.
Text drawn from a lecture by PAUL VOLCKER, NYRB Blog, Nov. 6, 2012 (to be printed in NYRB Dec 6 issue)
[....] Virtually every day we read of polls about the president’s popularity, or the ups and downs of the Republican contenders during the recent election. The poll that concerns me is different, and much more challenging.
In more bad news about U.S. generals, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, who is in Australia for talks, announced on Wednesday he was demoting a retiring four-star Army general for wasting taxpayer money on extravagant trips and would seek to recoup tens of thousands of dollars from him [...] The investigation into Ward by the Pentagon's Inspector General found numerous examples of wasted taypayer money, including taking his official plane to Bermuda for an overnight refueling stop with his wife [...]
This Petition Asking Macy's To Dump Donald Trump Has Gone Viral Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/petition-asks-macys-to-fire-donald-trump-2012-11#ixzz2CAvvXEVU
By Elisabeth Rosenthal, New York Times, Nov. 12/13, 2012
The United States will overtake Saudi Arabia as the world’s leading oil producer by about 2017 and will become a net oil exporter by 2030, according to a new report released on Monday by the International Energy Agency.
By Michelle Conlin in Occeanport, NJ, Reuters, Nov. 10, 2012
[....] To be sure, no one has been forced to stay in the tent city. But many say they have no other immediate option.
"This is an incredibly tough situation trying to find housing for these people," said Federal Emergency Management Agency Public Affairs Manager Scott Sanders. "With winter coming, they obviously can't stay there."
By Jonathan Weisman and Jennifer Steinhauer, New York Times, Nov. 10/11, 2012
WASHINGTON — On a conference call with House Republicans a day after the party’s electoral battering last week, Speaker John A. Boehner dished out some bitter medicine, and for the first time in the 112th Congress, most members took their dose.
By Krishnadev Calamur, The Two-Way @ npr.org, Nov. 11, 201
For the first time since the Yom Kippur War in 1973, Israel fired warning shots into Syria on Sunday – just days after a Syrian mortar shell hit a target inside the Israel-occupied Golan Heights.
