Source: REUTERS

By Stephen Brown

DUESSELDORF, Germany | Sun May 13, 2012 12:49pm EDT

(Reuters) - Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservatives suffered a crushing defeat on Sunday in an election in Germany's most populous state, a result which could embolden the left opposition to step up its criticism of her European austerity policies.

The election in North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW), a western German state with a bigger population than the Netherlands and an economy the size of Turkey, was held 18 months before a national election in which Merkel is expected to fight for a third term.

She remains popular in Germany for her steady handling of the euro zone debt crisis, but the sheer scale of her party's defeat leaves her vulnerable at a time when a backlash against her insistence on fiscal discipline is building across Europe.

According to first projections, the centre-left Social Democrats (SPD) won 38.8 percent of the vote and will have enough to form a stable majority with the Greens, who scored 12.2 percent.


Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/05/13/us-germany-election-nrw-result-idUSBRE84C09G20120513

By Associated Press,

ONEONTA, Ala. — Some Alabama farmers say they are planting less produce rather than risk having tomatoes and other crops rot in the fields a second straight year because of labor shortages linked to the state’s crackdown on illegal immigration.

Keith Dickie said he and other growers in the heart of Alabama’s tomato country didn’t have any choice but to reduce acreage amid fears there won’t be enough workers to pick the delicate fruit.

Some farmers lacked enough hands to harvest crops because immigrants fled the state after Gov. Robert Bentley signed the immigration law last fall, and some told The Associated Press they fear the same thing could happen this year.

“There’s too much uncertainty,” said Dickie, who farms with his brother on a ridge called Straight Mountain, about 40 miles northeast of Birmingham.

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http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/some-ala-farmers-plant-fewer-crops-say-immigration-crackdown-drove-away-workers-to-pick-them/2012/05/13/gIQAbLiSMU_story.html?tid=pm_national_pop

By Ryan Devereaux, The Guardian

A course at a military academy that taught US officers to prepare for “total war” with Islam does not represent an isolated incident, campaigners have warned.

The Pentagon moved swiftly to distance itself from revelations that officers in a defense department class were taught that “Hiroshima”-style tactics would be needed to combat the threat from Islam.

“It was totally objectionable, against our values and it wasn’t academically sound,” said General Martin Dempsey, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff.

The class in question was canceled in April and Dempsey noted the instructor responsible for the course, army lieutenant colonel Matthew A Dooley, is “no longer in a teaching status”. Dooley, however, is still employed at the Joint Forces Staff College in Norfolk, Virginia.

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http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/05/11/anti-islam-teachings-widespread-in-u-s-law-enforcement/

Former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin states that the country's deficit will lead to some form of major duress like high inflation, a long period of very slow economic growth and, most likely, a serious financial and economic crisis. (May 10, 2012)

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By ANDREW TAYLOR | Associated Press | 2 hours, 5 minutes ago in

Moving to protect the Pentagon, Republicans controlling the House are pressing for cuts to food stamps, health care and pensions for federal workers as an alternative to an automatic 10 percent cut to the military next year.
Article continues below

The proposed cuts in a measure scheduled for a vote Friday afternoon are but a fraction of those called for in the broader, nonbinding budget plan that passed the House in March. They are aimed less at taming trillion dollar-plus deficits than at blocking indiscriminate cuts to the Pentagon and domestic agencies coming in January.

The automatic spending cuts, totaling $98 billion next year, according to a new estimate, are punishment for the failure of last year's deficit-reduction "supercommittee" to strike a deal. Lawmakers in both parties want to avoid the automatic cuts, but Democrats are strongly opposed to the GOP approach, which slices more than $300 billion from domestic programs over the coming decade while preventing the Pentagon from absorbing a $55 billion blow to its budget next year.

The automatic cuts would strike domestic programs as well, including a 2 percentage point cut from Medicare payments to health care providers and a $16 billion cut in farm subsidies over a decade. The GOP measure would leave those cuts in place.

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http://www.newser.com/article/d9ulu3u82/house-gop-plan-cuts-food-stamps-health-care-other-social-programs-to-stave-off-pentagon-cuts.html

Source: Associated Press

PHOENIX -- Federal authorities say they intend to file a lawsuit against Arizona sheriff Joe Arpaio and his department over allegations of civil rights violations.

The U.S. Justice Department sent a letter dated Wednesday to lawyers for the Maricopa County sheriff, giving his office "notice of intent to file civil action."

Arpaio's office has been accused of racially profiling Latinos, basing immigration patrols on racially-charged citizen complaints that didn't allege crimes and punishing Hispanic jail inmates for speaking Spanish.

The DOJ also has accused Arpaio of having a culture of disregard for basic constitutional rights.


Read more: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/05/09/joe-arpaio-justice-department-lawsuit_n_1504563.html

WASHINGTON — The White House says Russian President Vladimir Putin is skipping a planned visit to the United States this month for an economic summit and a much-anticipated meeting with President Barack Obama.

The White House says Obama and Putin spoke by phone Wednesday. The Russian leader told Obama that he needs to finish work setting up his new Cabinet. Putin took power this month, returning after six years to a post he had previously held.

MORE...

http://www.greenfieldreporter.com/view/story/d06dd7becb164ae09b502fff82dc25de/US--US-Russia

After Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu finished celebrating the aftermath of the political bombshell that he had dropped on Israel by bringing in Kadima into the government, he freed up Wednesday to deal with a different bomb.

On Wednesday afternoon, the prime minister met with European Union Foreign Affairs Chief Catherine Ashton, who arrived in Israel to brief Netanyahu on the preparations for the second round of nuclear talks with Iran, which are set to take place on May 23 in Baghdad.

Ashton's visit was first reported in Haaretz last week. In an unusual move, Netanyahu invited Defense Minister Ehud Barak and Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman to join the meeting with Ashton, along with the newcomer, Kadima head Shaul Mofaz. Mofaz, who will be sworn in Wednesday as a minister in the government, will join Netanyahu's security cabinet, which will now be called the forum of nine senior ministers.

During the meeting, the Israelis presented a rigid set of demands for the Iranians, a senior Israeli official said. Netanyahu and the three ministers told Ashton that Israel's position leading up to the Baghdad talks is that the talks will be considered as progress only if they would yield an Iranian guarantee – with a clear timetable – to halt uranium enrichment, to remove all enriched uranium out of Iranian soil, and to dismantle the underground enrichment facility in Fordo, which is near Qom.

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http://www.haaretz.com/blogs/diplomania/netanyahu-iran-must-commit-to-halt-all-enrichment-in-upcoming-nuclear-talks-1.429227

By PETE YOST | Associated Press | 49 minutes ago in

FBI Director Robert Mueller (MUHL'-ur) has urged Congress to renew wide-ranging surveillance authority to thwart terrorism plots like the latest one in which an al-Qaida-engineered explosive device was to have been detonated on a U.S.-bound airline flight.

Mueller tells a House panel the FBI is examining the device and says the scheme hatched in Yemen demonstrates that it's essential for Congress to reauthorize counter-terrorism tools enacted in 2008. These programs expire at year-end.

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http://www.newser.com/article/d9ul8sto3/fbi-director-urges-congress-to-renew-wide-ranging-surveillance-power-in-counterterror-probes.html

Even as opinion polls show growing approval of same-sex marriage nationally, opposition remains strong in some battleground states, as North Carolina voted to ban gay marriage and Colorado Republicans killed a measure to approve such civil unions.

Such divisions also reflect the split in Washington, where President Barack Obama has been reluctant to echo endorsements of gay marriage by Vice President Joe Biden and Education Secretary Arne Duncan.

“I don’t think it could cost him the election, but I think they’re scared it might, and they don’t want to take the chance,” said Jim Williams, issue polling specialist for Public Policy Polling, a Raleigh, North Carolina-based Democratic research firm. “Politicians are cautious people. Public opinion on gay marriage is shifting very quickly.”

As North Carolina yesterday passed a constitutional amendment defining marriage as a contract between a man and a woman, a Colorado legislative committee approved a bill allowing homosexuals to enter into civil unions. Republicans in the Colorado House later killed the measure by delaying the vote past a midnight deadline.

MORE...

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-05-09/gay-marriage-shows-obama-dilemma-in-battleground-states.html