More than three million Latino immigrants have stopped sending money to family members in their home countries over the past two years, according to a survey by the Inter-American Development Bank said Wednesday. Half of the 18.9 million Latino immigrants now send financial support back to their country, as compared to 73 percent in 2006. The survey of 5,000 Latino immigrants said that the general economic downturn has contributed to this decrease, as has the recent crackdown on illegal immigration.
At least 35 people were killed and 75 others wounded after suicide bombers set off two explosions in a busy shopping area in the Iraqi city of Beladrouz on Thursday. The first explosion targeted a wedding caravan traveling through the neighborhood, while the second went off after medics and police officers arrived at the site of the bombing. Hours before, a U.S. solider and nine Iraqi civilians were killed by a car bomb in eastern Baghdad.
The government of Belarus expelled 10 U.S. diplomats from the country on Wednesday, provoking an angry response by the U.S. State Department. No official action has been taken by the U.S. government in response to the expulsion, although the State Department said they do not plan on closing the U.S. Embassy in Minsk. The U.S. has criticized the Belarussian government in the past, imposing sanctions against President Aleksandr Lukashenko and other officials after police arrested dozens of protestors following the March 2006 elections.
Swiss chemist Albert Hofmann, who introduced the powerful psychotropic drug LSD to the world, died Tuesday in Switzerland at the age of 102. Hofmann, who died of a heart attack, first synthesized the LSD compound in 1938, but did not realize its full side effects until accidentally ingesting it five years later. He publicly admitted to using the drug hundreds of times, though he insisted those who use it should respect its powerful effects.
Senator Barack Obama forcefully denounced his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., after Wright made a series of controversial, racially charged comments on several television programs over the weekend. Obama had formerly refused to break from Wright despite the pastor’s inflammatory remarks regarding the U.S. government and race relations within the U.S. His denouncement came less than a week after Obama lost the Pennsylvania democratic primary to Senator Hilary Rodham Clinton.
Leave a Reply