The unending job of self-government

July 03, 2014 - Daily News Briefing

Freedom is worth supporting wherever and whenever it occurs. Then comes the hard part.

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An extremist group's declaration of an Islamic state in territory it has seized in Iraq and Syria poses a threat to the entire region, Iraq's prime minister warned Wednesday, saying that "no one in Iraq or any neighboring country will be safe from these plans." The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant announced this week that it has unilaterally established a caliphate in the areas under its control. It declared the group's leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the head of its new self-styled state governed by Shariah law and demanded that all Muslims pledge allegiance to him. In his weekly address, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki said the militant group's announcement "is a message to all the states in the region that you are inside the red circle now."

Former French President Nicolas Sarkozy was placed under formal investigation on Wednesday on suspicions he tried to use his influence to thwart an investigation of his 2007 election campaign, the prosecutor's office said. The conservative politician denies all wrongdoing in a string of investigations in which he is either directly or indirectly implicated. Magistrates are looking to see whether Sarkozy used his influence to secure leaked details of an inquiry into alleged irregularities in his victorious 2007 campaign. He is suspected of influence-peddling, corruption and benefiting from "the breach of professional secrets," the prosecutor's office said.

Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen said Wednesday that she doesn't see a need for the Fed to start raising interest rates to defuse the risk that extremely low rates could destabilize the financial system. Yellen said she does see 'pockets' of increased risk-taking. But she said those threats could be addressed through greater use of regulatory tools. Many of those tools, such as higher capital standards for banks, were put in place after the 2008 financial crisis, which triggered the Great Recession. In her remarks at a conference sponsored by the International Monetary Fund, Yellen disputed criticism that the Fed had contributed to the 2008 crisis by keeping rates too low earlier in the decade.

A rocket carrying a NASA satellite lit up the pre-dawn skies Wednesday on a mission to track atmospheric carbon dioxide, the chief culprit behind global warming. The Delta 2 rocket blasted off from California at 2:56 a.m. and released the Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2 satellite in low-Earth orbit 56 minutes later, bringing relief to mission officials who lost a similar spacecraft five years ago. The flight was "a perfect ride into space," said Ralph Basilio, the OCO-2 project manager, at a post-launch press conference.

T-Mobile USA knowingly made hundreds of millions of dollars off its customers in potentially bogus charges, a US government regulator alleged Tuesday in a complaint likely to mar the reputation of a household name in wireless communications. In its complaint filed in a federal court in Seattle, the Federal Trade Commission claimed that T-Mobile billed consumers for subscriptions to premium text services such as $10-per-month horoscopes that were never authorized by the account holder. The FTC alleges that T-Mobile collected as much as 40 percent of the charges, even after being alerted by other customers that the subscriptions were scams.

Archbishop John Nienstedt announced Tuesday that the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis is investigating him after allegations of inappropriate behavior surfaced several months ago. In a statement, Nienstedt said he ordered the investigation himself after the claims were made against him. He did not detail the nature of the allegations, but said they are "absolutely and entirely false." He added that they do not involve minors or lay members and do not suggest anything illegal. "The Archdiocese investigates all allegations of clergy misconduct," Nienstedt said. "It would be unfair to ignore these allegations simply because I know them to be false."

It's not just a people problem: Growing rates of obesity in pets have led to the emergence of fat farms offering "pawlates," ''doga" and "Barko Polo," doggie versions of Pilates, yoga and Marco Polo to help slim down man's best friend. In the US, 53 percent of dogs are overweight or obese, up from 45 percent four years ago. In cats, the figure is almost 58 percent, said Dr. Ernie Ward, a veterinarian and founder of the Association of Pet Obesity Prevention in Calabash, North Carolina.

“The object of the Monitor is to injure no man, but to bless all mankind.” – Mary Baker Eddy

The Daily News Briefing is published Monday through Friday by The Christian Science Publishing Society in Boston, Massachusetts.

“The object of the Monitor is to injure no man, but to bless all mankind.” – Mary Baker Eddy

The Daily News Briefing is published Monday through Friday by The Christian Science Publishing Society in Boston, Massachusetts.

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