Wednesday, May 14, 2008

Wednesday Morning Quick Hits

Colombia Extraditing Warlords to United States to stand trial on charges of drug trafficking. To date, fourteen former right-wing paramilitary leaders have been extradited to the U.S. after they failed to uphold their end of a peace deal that demolished the groups they fought for. They were supposed to confess to their crimes and surrender assets acquired as a result of their crimes.

Run-off election in Zimbabwe to be delayed Future poets aren't going to pen odes to Mugabe and his stoic walk into that dark night, that's for sure. By law, the run-off election should be held within 21 days of the announcement of the results of Aprils balloting, but the countries chief elections official said the country needed more time to prepare and stage an election. Opposition candidate Morgan Tsvangirai said over the weekend that he would participate in the run-off (he had previously said he would not participate and insisted he won with over 50% of the vote so no run-off was necessary) but added that failure to hold the second round within the time limit risked rendering the election process illegitimate. The government, on the other hand, is insisting that they have up to a year in which to hold the run-off election.

Our M$M forgot to cover this A G8 summit just wrapped up in Japan, but our media forgot to tell us that labor representatives from all of the G8 nations met and discussed the impact of human activity on climate change and struck an agreement on measures that member nations pledged to take to deal with the impact climate change will have on labor markets. They acknowledge that there will be job-losses as businesses are forced to adapt to changing energy supply and demand, but they also acknowledged that new technologies currently emerging are bringing with them a need for skilled labor that can't be outsourced. The G8 nations agreed on the need for a coherent balance of growth, employment, productivity and environmental protection as we face the future.


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