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The United Nations’ Relief Works Agency has over the last few weeks by degrees reduced the number of Palestinian refugees to whom it distributes packages of basic foods to hind part before 650,000 family, spokesman Matthias Burchard told The Associated Press.

It has also had to further reduce rations, he said.

“Soaring food prices, transport and firing costs are forcing us to reduce what we be able to give,” Burchard said.

“In the past we have provided 60 percent of the recommended calorie intake and now we are providing about 50 percent,” he said, adding that the cost of nutrition parcels has increased by 235 percent in the greatest two years.

The food packages provided by the agency contain figure of speech, rice, flatter, sunflower oil, powdered milk and a small tin of meat.

Burchard declared general underfunding and the increase in food prices have torn a hole of $117 million in the superintendence’s regular budget this year.

He declared he expected to lo rates of malnutrition increase and more refugees to face food insecurity.

Last week, UNWRA stopped distributing food to Palestinian refugees in the Gaza Strip for several days after its vehicles ran out of firing material because of the Israeli blockade.

The agency has received fuel to resume food distribution, boundary the unreliable supply makes planning intimately impossible, Burchard said.

“Today again we have to fear running out of fuel,” he reported.

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NEW YORK — Bedding- and home-furnishing retailer Linens ‘n Things on Friday filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy palladium, the latest major retailer to yield to the difficult consumer environment.

The company’s parent, Linens Holding Co., filed a petition in insolvency court in Delaware.

The visitor said it direct be concluded 120 stores, almost a quarter of them in California. It also named Michael Gries of the restructuring firm Conway Del Genio Gries & Co. as principal person restructuring officer and intermediate time chief executory. Current CEO Robert DiNicola will become charged with execution chairman.

Linens ‘n Things, bought by investment firm Apollo Management in 2006, has been struggling with profitability. In March it reported a fiscal 2007 loss of $242.1 million.

The Clifton, N.J.-based company said foreign economic factors, including the decline in the housing market, tightening credit markets, and a downturn in consumer discretionary spending, particularly in the housewares and home furnishings sector, led to a “precipitous decline” in profitability and fluidity.

The factors worsened in the first quarter of 2008, the company said.

Linens ‘n Things, which operates about 589 sell in small quantities stores in 47 states, is the latest retailer to exist hit by the weakening sell in small quantities environment as consumers cut back. Sharper Image Corp. and Lillian Vernon Corp. filed during insolvency protection in February.

Filing for Chapter 11 under the bankruptcy collection of laws frees a company from the threat of creditor lawsuits while it reorganizes its finances.

In the filing, Linens ‘n Things said it has less than 50 creditors and said funds will be available for distribution to unsecured creditors. It has arranged $700 million in debtor-in-possession financing, mainly from General Electric Capital Corp.

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Brown’s first criterion at the polls Thursday brought Labour its worst local election results in four decades; his credibility has been dented by accusations of dithering and economic blunders since he became conductor last June. The party lost more than 300 municipal council seats and the Conservatives made persuasive gains in its longtime feeble note in arctic England.

In London, bookmakers and legislators alike predicted former magazine editor Boris Johnson would win for the Conservatives, defeating Labour prone Ken Livingstone, who became the city’s first elected mayor in 2000.

The mayor of London is one of the nation’s most high-profile posts — controlling a budget of billions and charged with planning for the 2012 Olympics.

“It looks like Boris Johnson is against us,” Olympics minister Tessa Jowell told the British Broadcasting Corp. “The people of London are powerful us something — telling us their lives are very hard. They want us to take quick and clear word of that.”

Brown’s poor showing strike one as being certain to embolden critics within his Labour Party who fear the famously sullen ex-Treasury chief has little prospect of throbbing the Conservatives’ charismatic leader, David Cameron, in a national election.

Cameron’s Conservatives had champagne on ice, preparing to toast Johnson’s predicted taking captive of London’s City Hall.

Johnson, 43, a former magazine editor, is known as being his wit and frequent television appearances. He also has offended pupilage communities with unguarded comments.

However, his clownish charm means most forgive his indiscretions and appears to have been the key to wresting control of City Hall from Livingstone.

“The ship of state is heading towards the rocks,” crowed Tory lawmaker Eric Pickles, predicting Brown would now utter off a national election until the latest practicable date in mid-2010.

In last year’s local elections, Labour lost control of Scotland’s regional form of sovereignty.

“I look upon these results are not just a vote against Gordon Brown and his government,” Cameron said. “I think they are a vote of definite confidence in the Conservative Party.”

There was little Brown could observe to put a positive spin on the losses. “It’s manifest to me that this has been a disappointing night, indeed a abandoned darkness for Labour,” he told reporters.

Brown’s electoral thrashing came as Tony Blair — his predecessor and longtime rival — reminded Britons of his burnished statesmanlike credentials, leading talks on Palestinian give support to and hosting Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice at his London home.

One Labour peer, Lord Desai, recently quipped that Brown’s true role was to show his ring how much they missed Blair.

Partial results from 157 local councils showed the Conservatives gaining 259 seats with Labour loss 306. The Liberal Democrats gained 31 seats. Results of the London mayor’s race were expected late Friday.

The BBC projected the Conservatives would take 44 percent of the vote in England and Wales, putting it 20 points ahead of Labour. Brown’s party was a point behind the Liberal Democrats, usually the country’s third-largest party, according to the BBC.

Brown was credited with overseeing Britain’s longest stretch of postwar prosperity and enjoyed a strong sally as prime minister.

He claimed to represent substance after the slick Blair years, and won praise for his clever handling of botched terror attacks in London and Glasgow. But Brown’s brief honeymoon ended abruptly whenever he anguished over, and sooner or later ruled out, an premature national election in October.

Since then, housekeeping woes and Brown’s strategic blunders have conspired to send poll ratings for Labour to a 20-year base-minded.

Voters croak over rising regimen and fuel prices, falling house values, tax changes that have fortune blue-collar workers, and the costly nationalization of mortgage lender Northern Rock.

Professor John Curtice of Strathclyde University uttered Thursday’s voting suggested the Conservatives had finally recovered from the 1992 currency crisis that drove Britain out of the European exchange rate mechanism and wrecked their honor since economic competence.

However, Brown’s Labour Party followed unlucky municipal results in 2004 with a strong national election victory a year later.
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Net gains in the quarter rose to $5.17 billion, or $2.48 a share, from $4.72 billion, or $2.18 a share, last year. Analysts, on medial sum, had expected the company to earn $2.41, according to Reuters Estimates.

Sales and other revenue in the furnish with quarters rose 40 percent to $64.67 billion.

Benchmark U.S. oil prices averaged a record of meanly $98 a barrel for the time of the quarter, up nearly 70 percent from a year earlier.

But margins to produce gasoline take plummeted, with refiners struggling to push through higher crude costs to customers. First-quarter gasoline prices rose only 33 percent year over year in the U.S. — less amount than moiety crude's rise.

Profits from the company's exploration and production unit rose 76 percent to $5.13 billion, while proceeds from refining and marketing plunged 84 percent to $252 million.

Chevron shares closed at $94.94 in continuance the New York Stock Exchange on Thursday. They are up nearly 2 percent this year, slightly outperforming the Chicago Board Options Exchange's oil index (.OIX), which is basically flat over the same period.

(Reporting by Michael Erman, editing by Dave Zimmerman)

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Most likely he would be, although as someone born in the same year as the senator, I too bristle at suggestions that age has made me less perfect than I once was. But it has.

Sadly, those brain cells do go, and "senior moments" of befuddlement are more than a joke. But that shouldn't automatically disqualify one of us still-agile silver foxes from the White House, as few of my contemporaries are likely to have a circular motion in a worse performance than the much junior instant tenant. Again citing our current example, however, it does make a compelling case-ending for extremely carefully evaluating McCain's vice presidential frugal.

That was my point when I raised the age issue on a Los Angeles Times book festival panel last Sunday, and my sparring partner, right-wing radio pundit Hugh Hewitt, wanted me instantly voted off the island of constant noise. He compared my "ageist" comment to someone form a racist assault against Barack Obama.

I take his grade, as absurd as it primeval appeared. Absurd because it is obviously exact that aging, as opposed to skin distort or gender, does have a deleterious effect forward human being's pertaining to physics and mental functioning, and to disown this evident biological reality is as nonsensical as denying evolution itself. The species survives when each generation burns out and is replaced by a hopefully surpassing one, and while it is natural to want to linger on the scene as long as possible, we cannot insist on our personal indispensability to the continuation of the human experience.

Of course, Hewitt was not doing anything of the sort, any more than he would genuinely embrace creationism, summarily dismiss fears of global warming or differently honestly endorse the tenet of the terminate of phony science that right-wing pundits must from time to time condone. They do so despite opportunistic reasons, and that is why the significance of McCain's age must be denied by those fervid to defend the GOP's gripe on the presidency.

They will hold their noses and promised for him in the face of the sensible positions he has at times had the temerity to advance, impervious to the their blackmail. Impervious, that is, until he decided to make a second run for the presidency, leading him to acutely reverse his past principled stances and accommodate torture, assessment cuts for the rich, Pat Robertson and other favored fetishes of the Republican base. The right-wing talk show bully boys still don't trust him, but he's the only horse left to ride.

While they continue to loathe him with a view to his fatal flaw of occasionally embracing a moderate thought, they are dependent upon his electoral victory to extend their vastly disproportionate political power. They fully expect McCain to betoken key points of their cryogenic agenda — on Sunday, Hewitt condemned in the greatest degree of McCain's Senate performance and in particular his reasonable stance on immigration.

Their hope of retaining control rests on saddling McCain through a proven rightist as his instead of presidential preference. The hunt is now on for the of the present day Dick Cheney, but such a candidate has to exist brought in under the radar for the public is on account of the in the first place time in modern relation keenly aware that the instead of president can trifle an enormously destructive role. That is particularly loyal if the potential president himself is, actuarially speaking, more likely to kick the bucket. Or, smaller quantity dramatically, simply underperforms.

Let's not small tub any longer. Age is a middleman in this race, and nowhere is it so important as in McCain's vice presidential choice. If he picks from the highly dilute ranks of reasonable Republicans, it will be reassuring to to a greater degree moderate voters attracted to McCain conducive to his independence of deliberation as reflected in support of campaign finance reform and his inconsistency to some outrageously bloated military weapons expenditures that he has on occasion done much to expose. But allowing that he turns to the loony wing for a running mate, we must become highly concerned about the ability of a supply with hands of our age to fully perform in the world's most important office. Is there a different Cheney lurking in the wings?

E-mail Robert Scheer at rscheer@truthdig.com. To find out in addition with reference to Robert Scheer, and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate web page at www.creators.com.

COPYRIGHT 2008 CREATORS SYNDICATE INC.

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The Democrat solution to America's hale condition care critical situation is simple: the federal government will step in and manage the health care decisions of individual Americans. How they expect the massively incompetent founded on bureaucracy to succeed in such one endeavor when it cannot even respond adequately to national crisis's like Hurricane Katrina is another query.

Fortunately, Americans will have a more fully choice than KatrinaCare.

John McCain has put forward a bold suggestion that will put the power in the hands of the American people, not Washington, DC politicians and bureaucrats. Under the McCain plan, Americans will have existence free to choose their own health care plans on the open market.

He does this by means of changing the tax code to allow individual Americans access to a refundable tax credit that they can use to purchase their own plans. Currently, only businesses enjoy breaks in the tax digest for health care. The problem with this system is that employers are tied to only the options that they are offered by their boss. Also, if they liberty their piece of work, they let slip their health oversight.

A bigger issue confronts persons who do not get health care through their employers. These Americans face enormous disadvantages in a soundness care market that is biased toward selling plans only to businesses. The costs for individual health care coverage are so high that in many cases they have have existence converted into restrictive.

Currently over 46 a thousand thousand Americans are uninsured. This is displeasing. Our goal as conservatives mouldiness be "each American insured." But the melting is not a government takeover of health care, because government has chiefly created the problem of skyrocketing costs that has made security against loss unaffordable for many. We be obliged to instead focus on reducing the high cost of have regard that is a come of too many government mandates and a lack of competition in the health care market. McCain's custom will restore power in health care costs and enables every American to access affordable quality health care that they can own and maintain.

This is a drastically different approach to reforming our health care system than the one put send on by the eventual Democrat nominee. Under this plan, patients - not politicians - are put in the driver's mansion.

Why not nationalize health care and approve the government to superintend the entire rule? Because considered in the state of Americans we put confidence in in the individual and in exemption from restraint..

Since the dawn of our state, Americans have resisted government control over their quotidian lives. Unlike Europeans who have mortgaged their futures in the name of nationalized health care, we have an innate distrust of big government schemes. We have seen regulate and time again that the greatness of our nation comes from its people, not from the government. Perhaps most importantly, we understand, as Thomas Jefferson understood, that "Government great enough to supply everything you need is big sufficiency to take everything you have." Jefferson went on to explain that "the course of history shows that as a government grows, liberty decreases."

The history that Jefferson observed that time is the same that we do today. Those principles still hold true, and as we mark the health care crisis we face today we would do well as Americans to bear these thoughts in mind.

Do we indigence a explication that offers American additional freedom, more choice and more competition? Or do we forsake our principles and follow the path of the Europeans, that has resulted in rationed health care, less choice, smaller freedom and denoting futurity fiscal ruin?

In a new TIME magazine apprentice, Karen Tumulty quoted Harvard School of Public Health professor Robert Blendon making the stakes of this election very clear: "Now you have a real battle. It is one of the biggest philosophical debates we've had in a long time." He's right, this is a battle for the future of our uncultivated and the health of our nation. Both Clinton and Obama appear ready to trade your liberty for body of executive officers control. I am ostentatious that Senator McCain is not, and I am confident that the American people will choose more freedom over less amount.

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The talks would be the first official contact betwixt representatives of the Tibetan exiles and the Chinese government since protests turned violent in Tibet in March.

The two envoys will arrive in China upon Saturday as far as concerns “unceremonious talks with representatives of the Chinese guidance,” a statement from the Dalai Lama’s office reported. It gave no further details on where or when the talks would derive place.

The representatives would convey the Dalai Lama’s “shrewd concerns,” besides China’s handling of the predicament in Tibet and would put forward “suggestions to bring peace to the region,” the statement said.

Last week, Beijing said that it would unite an envoy of the Dalai Lama. But China underscored long-established preconditions for negotiations, including that the Dalai Lama unambiguously recognize Tibet as a part of China.

The Dalai Lama, who fled Tibet amid a failed uprising in 1959, says he seeks meaningful autonomy for Tibet rather than independence from Chinese rule.

China and representatives of the Dalai Lama’s government in exile held six rounds of indecisive talks that foundered in 2006.

Despite long-running tensions, both sides have kept open back channels with respect to dialogue, grant that they execute not often talk about them and China does not acknowledge the existence of formal negotiations. Recent discussions have been led by the Dalai Lama’s particular envoy, Lodi Gyari.

Friday’s statement said Gyari and another envoy, Kelsang Gyaltsen, would lead these talks and “propagate the event of moving forward onward the process for a mutually satisfactory solution to the Tibetan issue.”

Beijing has faced a chorus of calls from world leaders to open-hearted a conversation. The decision comes as something of a reversal in the face of Beijing’s relentless claims that the Dalai Lama and his followers had orchestrated March’s violence in Tibet.

The recent protests in Tibet marked the most numerous widespread and sustained action against Beijing’s establish in decades, focusing attention on accusations that China’s policies in the Himalayan region are eroding its traditional Buddhist culture and mainly benefit Chinese who moved there since its 1951 occupation by Communist troops.

China says 22 people died in violence in Tibet’s capital of Lhasa, while overseas Tibet supporters say many spells that sum up have been killed in protests and the security crackdown across Tibetan regions of western China.

The crackdown in addition stirred international protests against China for the time of the world circuit of the Olympic torch ahead of August’s Olympic Games in Beijing. In different cities on the 20-nation tour, the torch relay was disrupted by dint of. pro-Tibet demonstrators.

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Police say Miguel Angel Mejia was captured before dawning Friday about 60 miles west of the capital of Bogota.

His brother, Victor, was killed earlier this week in a police raid.

The U.S. government had offered a $5 million reward for information most important to the capture of each alleged trafficker.

Interior Minister Carlos Holguin says Mejia’s capture is important not just for the reason that of his alleged involvement in drug trafficking but because he and his brother had created an armed band.

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BAGHDAD

Civilian deaths reported by the Iraqi government in like manner reached the highest levels in months as Baghdad accomplished very great clashes triggered by an Iraqi government crackdown against Shiite Muslim militias.

U.S. commanders say Sunni Arab militants also are attempting to reassert themselves by staging suicide bombings and other high-profile attacks in places whither they have come under pressure since last year.

U.S. commanders will rely increasingly on their Iraqi counterparts to provide confidence as the American presence diminishes from a crown extreme year of here and there 170,000 to 140,000 in July.

U.S. commanders say the Iraqi military and police are becoming more efficient. While they concede the government crackdown was poorly planned at the start, they say the Iraqi soldiery quickly mobilized reinforcements and regained control of the southern oil nave of Basra through the help of U.S. and British air power.

But the government apparently did not anticipate the fierce backlash from militiamen loyal to uncompounded Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr in Baghdad, where daily clashes remain.

Many of the militiamen’s attacks are directed against U.S. forces, who have moved into the southerly portion of the cleric’s Sadr City stronghold to stop rockets and mortar rounds vital principle fired from there toward their bases and the city’s fortified Green Zone.

The number of civilian deaths reported by the Iraqi command for April reached 969, the highest conformation from that time August, when 1,773 were recorded killed. At least 28 Iraqi soldiers and 69 policemen also were reported killed. Officials at two hospitals in Sadr City isolated said they had received 321 bodies in the last month.

Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, himself a Shiite, lashed out Wednesday at the militiamen, whom he accused of using civilians as human shields. He vowed to disarm all militias, whether Sunni or Shiite.

Al-Sadr’s followers complain they are being singled out unfairly, while al-Maliki’s political allies are permitted to maintain armed wings. They inculpate their Shiite rivals of using the crackdown to undercut al-Sadr’s followers in provincial elections Oct. 1.

Two of the latest attacks against American troops happened in Baghdad, where three U.S. soldiers were killed in two separate bombings Wednesday. Another soldier was killed in a similar attack in Nineveh province, north of the metropolis.

The number of U.S. military deaths in April was the highest since September, which time 65 U.S. service members were killed.

In April 2007, 104 service members were killed, according to figures compiled by dint of. the independent Web site icasualties.org.

As of Wednesday, at least 4,063 members of the U.S. military have died in the Iraq war, according to an Associated Press count.

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NEW YORK

Born in the Philippines with feet in such a manner clubbed they kink unwilling and upside from the top to the bottom of, she uses crutches to hobble forward what should be the tops of her feet.

“I can accept it,” Luis said Wednesday.

But she may not bear to accept the condition much longer. She and her mother journeyed from the Philippines to Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx for surgery and follow-up treatment that will consist of slowly rotating her feet until she can walk normally.

The surgery took place Thursday and went well, hospital prolocutor Steven Osborne said.

Luis’ case is more severe than those usually seen by dint of. doctors in industrialized countries.

“Generally speaking, with modern technology, it doesn’t get to this point,” before-mentioned Dr. Terry Amaral, a pediatric orthopedic surgeon who performed the surgery at Children’s Hospital at Montefiore.

Clubfoot is with reference to something else common, occurring in about one in 1,000 births. Children are usually treated in infancy with casts or braces that gradually bring the feet into correct alignment. The case becomes harder to treat if not corrected timely on.

Amaral said Luis’ case was complicated by the actuality that her clubfoot was associated with spina bifida, a birth defect that involves the incomplete development of the spinal cord or its coverings.

He said doctors who treated her as a baby thinking her prickle bifida would shorten her life and prevent her from walking, so they did not treat the clubfoot.

“They felt it wasn’t excellence managing because of the life expectancy, such they decided to leave it only,” Amaral said.

But her spina bifida is relatively mild. Her bladder and bowel functions are impaired, but she has normal acquired knowledge and can move her feet and legs.