from

More than eight-in-ten Americans (83%) now agree that “it’s all right for blacks and whites to date,” reflecting the most dramatic change among the racial attitudes tested in Pew polls–as recently as 1987, the public was divided virtually down the middle on the issue, with 48% approving of blacks and whites dating and 46% disapproving. Age is an important factor in attitudes toward interracial dating. In this regard, Pew surveys since 1987 have documented two complementary trends: Each new generation is more tolerant than the one that precedes it. At the same time, members of each generation have become increasingly tolerant as it ages. Together, these trends help explain the increase in expressions of tolerance toward interracial dating in recent decades. Nearly two-thirds of all Americans born before 1946 (65%) say it is acceptable for whites to date blacks. In contrast, this tolerant view of interracial dating is shared by more than eight-in-ten Baby Boomers (84%) and members of Generation X (87%), who were born between 1965 and 1976. Among younger people there is even broader acceptance of interracial dating: 94% of those born since 1977 say it is all right for blacks and whites to date. There have also been striking changes since the late 1980s in how people of different races view black-white dating. In 1987-88, fewer than half of whites (44%) said that interracial dating was acceptable; that number has nearly doubled (to 81%) in the current survey. Two decades ago, about three-quarters of blacks (74%) felt interracial dating was acceptable. Today, nearly all African Americans (97%) believe that interracial dating is acceptable.

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From the state that brought us Joe LIEberman……. guess what party ……
go ahead guess. I’ll give you two guesses, but you’ll only need one!

HARTFORD, Conn. - A legislative leader was arrested Friday on charges that he tried to have a businessman at the center of a federal racketeering probe arrange to threaten someone the senator believed was abusing a relative.

State and federal authorities said Senate Minority Leader Louis DeLuca in 2005 sought help from James Galante, a Danbury trash hauler currently awaiting trial on 72 counts of tax fraud, racketeering, threatening and extortion.

“When you approach someone who is alleged to be a member of organized crime or affiliated with organized crime and you ask for this help, and you slip a note to them in a diner as opposed to even having a conversation, I think it’s fair to draw an inference that you don’t exactly have the best of intentions,” U.S. Attorney Kevin O’Connor said Friday.

More at Yahoo News

By CLAUDE SALHANI
UPI International Editor

WASHINGTON, May 24 (UPI) — How much of a threat is China’s growing military to the security of the United States?

China’s investment in its military, from conventional weapons to cybersystems, along with its lack of openness regarding its intent, raises the possibility of a miscalculation that could spark a conflict with the United States, according to U.S. security policy experts.

So too could the perennial increases in its military spending. According to GlobalSecurity.org, China’s official defense budget for 2000 was approximately $14.6 billion. It was increased the following year by 17.7 percent.

In 2001 China acknowledged its defense budget to be more than $17 billion, a figure higher than the defense budgets of India, Taiwan and South Korea combined. In 2002 China again increased military spending by 17.6 percent, or $3 billion, bringing the reported total to $20 billion.

The following year China once more increased military spending to $22 billion. Again, that figure grew by another 11.6 percent in 2004 to $2.6 billion. And in 2005 China raised its military budget another 12.6 percent, to $29.9 billion.

For the current year China’s military expenditure is expected to hover around $44.94 billion. That’s a jump of some $30 billion in just seven years.

In terms of manpower, China has 2.25 million troops, 800,000 reserves and nearly 4 million paramilitary forces, a total of more than 7 million. Compare that to the United States, which has 1.4 million active military personnel, 858,500 reserves and 53,000 paramilitary, a total of 2.3 million personnel.

But despite having the world’s largest military force, China’s army is smaller per capita than those of many countries, including the United States. Furthermore, some experts see the very size of the Chinese army as a hindrance to modernization. According to Foreign Policy in Focus, China cannot afford adequate pay, training or modern weapons for most of its forces. China will not be able to develop modern military forces unless it either greatly increases military spending (which seems unlikely) or drastically cuts the size of its forces.

read more at UPI.COM

from UPI.COM

MOSCOW, June 1 (UPI) — The ongoing saga of the Russian spy murder may be a topic for discussion at the Group of Eight meeting.

Certainly, it is expected to be a topic for bilateral discussion between British Premier Tony Blair and Russian President Vladimir Putin at the G8 summit in Germany.

On Thursday, the main suspect in the murder of a former Russian spy accused the British intelligence service of being behind the killing. Andrei Lugovoy, the man Scotland Yard’s anti-terror unit believes to be behind the poisoning of Kremlin critic Alexander Litvinenko, accused multiple parties of being responsible for the killing.

Lugovoy said at a news conference in Moscow he had unspecified “evidence” that MI6 has had a hand in the murder, or at least that the British spy service let it happen. MI6 had tried to recruit him to dig up embarrassing material about Russian President Vladimir Putin and his family, he said.

He also claimed exiled oligarch Boris Beresowski may have had a hand in the killing. He held the news conference only a few days after London asked the Kremlin to extradite him so he could be tried in a British court.

The Russian constitution forbids extraditing its own citizens and observers say it is unlikely Russian investigators would find Lugovoy guilty.

From Presesc:

The United States dollar is facing imminent collapse in the face of an unsustainable debt, the United Nations warned today.

United States debt, which had now deepened to well over $3 trillion, might turn out to be unsustainable in the rest of 2007 or next, putting further downward pressure on the United States dollar, Rob Vos, the Director of the Development Policy and Analysis Division of the Department of Economic and Social Affairs (DESA), told correspondents at a Headquarters press conference.

He pointed out that since its peak in 2002, the dollar had depreciated vis-à-vis the major currencies by some 35 per cent and by 25 per cent against a broader range of other currencies.

Vos made these comments at the launch of the 2007 World Economic Situation and Prospects report midyear update.

With that increased debt the risk of a sharp depreciation of the dollar continued, he warned. If countries willing to invest in United States dollar assets expected further depreciation, they might be less willing to hold dollar assets, triggering a much sharper fall in the United States dollar. The risk of disorderly adjustment and the steep fall of the dollar existed. The policy challenge was how to prevent a hard landing of the United States dollar and forge a benign adjustment of the global imbalance.

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Major League Baseball

National League

Eastern Division
New York Mets - 3.5 game lead over second place Atlanta

Central Division
Milwaukee Brewers - 6.5 game lead over St. Louis

Western Division
Los Angeles Dodgers and Arizona Diamondbacks are tied for first place

American League

Eastern Division
Boston Red Sox - 10 game lead over second place Baltimore

Central Division
Cleveland Indians - 4.5 game lead over second place Detroit

Western Division
Los Angeles Angels - 5 game lead over second place Seatlle

National Hockey League
Stanley Cup Finals

Anaheim Ducks lead Ottawa 2 games to none in the best of seven series.
The next game is this evening in Ottawa - game start time at 8:00 PM (EDT) on NBC-TV

National Basketball Association

Eastern Conference Finals
Cleveland Cavaliers lead the best of seven series against Detroit 3-2

Western Conference Finals
San Antonio Spurs win their series against Utah 4-1

Many of the controversial interrogation tactics used against terror suspects in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo were modeled on techniques the U.S. feared that the Communists themselves might use against captured American troops during the Cold War, according to a little-noticed, highly classified Pentagon report released several days ago. Originally developed as training for elite special forces at Fort Bragg under the “Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape” program, otherwise known as SERE, tactics such as sleep deprivation, isolation, sexual humiliation, nudity, exposure to extremes of cold and stress positions were part of a carefully monitored survival training program for personnel at risk of capture by Soviet or Chinese forces, all carried out under the supervision of military psychologists.

This troubling disclosure was made in the blandly titled report, “Review of DoD-Directed Investigations of Detainee Abuse”, which for the first time sets forth the origins as well as new details of many of the abusive interrogation techniques that led to scandals at Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo and elsewhere - techniques that some critics contend the Pentagon still has not gone far enough in explicitly banning. Sen. Carl Levin, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, called the findings “deeply troubling,” and signaled his intention to hold hearings later this year on the interrogation methods it describes.

continue reading at Time

From the Washington Post:

QUOTE

“Don’t go sell it on eBay.”

– President Bush, upon giving a presidential coin to families who lost soldiers in Iraq, according to Elaine Johnson. The antiwar activist, who lost a son in November 2003, told NPR’s “Tell Me More” yesterday that she met with the president later that month at Fort Carson, Colo., where, she said, Bush presented the coin to a few families. “We never discuss the president’s private conversations with family members of the fallen,” White House spokeswoman Emily Lawrimore said .

Interview with Elaine Johnson here