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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Joe NYC who wrote (200595)	9/7/2004 1:08:16 PM
From: tejek	Respond to of 1573439

Gunmen Abduct Two Italian Aid Workers in Baghdad Tue Sep 7, 2004 12:29 PM ET (Page 1 of 3) By Khaled Yacoub Oweis and Tom Perry BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Gunmen abducted two Italian aid workers and two Iraqis in central Baghdad Tuesday in a brazen attack that will alarm foreigners already on edge from widespread kidnappings. Witnesses told Reuters about 20 men with AK-47 assault rifles and pistols with silencers stopped their vehicles in broad daylight in a busy commercial area of Baghdad and raided a building housing humanitarian organization Bridge to Baghdad. They left with Italian staffers Simona Pari and Simona Torretta and two Iraqis, a women who worked for another Italian organization Intersos and a male employee of Bridge to Baghdad. "It appeared it was totally professional. It appeared they knew exactly who they wanted to abduct," said one witness, who declined to be named. Gunmen dragged the Iraqi woman away by her hair. "She was screaming," a witness said. Jean-Domique Bunel, an official from a committee that groups together aid organizations in Iraq, said he saw two well-dressed men with guns enter the building and take away the hostages. "The guards were unarmed and they did nothing," he said. The Italian women were involved in an aid initiative aimed at boosting school attendance in Basra and Baghdad -- including in the capital's Sadr City slums, home to thousands of Shi'ites. An official at the Italian embassy said they had no immediate information on the kidnappings conducted on a side street just off a busy Baghdad square near a hospital and a congested avenue. The abductions raised the stakes in kidnappings that have gripped Iraq for months, with more than 100 foreigners and Iraqis seized since April mostly outside of the capital. Insurgents kidnapped and killed Italian journalist Enzo Baldoni last month as he traveled to the southern city of Najaf. In April, kidnappers killed Italian security guard Fabrizio Quattrocchi. Continued ... reuters.com

To: Joe NYC who wrote (200595)	9/7/2004 1:10:44 PM
From: tejek	Respond to of 1573439

US Congress projects record high of budget deficit this year WASHINGTON, Sept. 7 (Xinhuanet) -- The US Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projected on Tuesday that the federal deficit will hit a record high of 422 billion dollars in fiscal year of 2004 ending on September 30. However, the deficit is smaller than the forecast of 445 billion dollars published in late July by the White House. The deficit amounts to about 3.6 percent of the US gross domestic product (GDP), also smaller than the deficits of the mid-1980s andearly 1990s relative to the size of the economy. The CBO report said US federal deficit would shrink to 348 billion dollars, or 2.8 percent of GDP, in next fiscal year, which would be the third largest ever in dollar terms. Over the 10 years ending in 2014, the CBO now envisions deficits totaling nearly 2.3 trillion dollars, almost 300-billion-dollar more than they projected in last March. The increase is largely due to an assumption that extra US military spending enacted this year for Iraq, Afghanistan and overall defense needs will be continued annually over the next decade. Enditem news.xinhuanet.com