According to Department of Labor data released today, the unemployment rate rose from 5.0 to 5.5 percent in May, which is higher than the expected 0.1 percent jobless rate increase.
In “the most explicit threat yet against Iran” from a member of Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s government, Transport Minister Shaul Mofaz told a newspaper yesterday that Israel “will attack” Iran if it “continues with its program for developing nuclear weapons.” He added that such an attack would be “unavoidable.” Mofaz’s comments were cited as helping to drive the price of oil above $130 a barrel.
“The Justice Department’s ethics office is reviewing a decision in 2002 by department officials to send a Canadian citizen to Syria, where he was tortured.” The review, which began in in March 2007, is examining the role of department lawyers in sending Maher Arar to Syria, which the State Department lists as a country known to torture.
During yesterday’s arraignment of five detainees at a Guantanamo military court, “security officials cut the sound fed to reporters” in the press center when the judge asked a detainee why he was on psychotropic drugs. “It was one of half a dozen times” a security consultant cut the sound “when detainees appeared to be discussing what several of them said had been years of torture.”
On the trail today: Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) is taking the weekend off. He said he’s looking forward to “a date” tonight with his wife, Michelle. Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) will take an airboat ride around the Everglades today. Yesterday, he said, “I am committed to the preservation of the Everglades” despite his record of opposing such action.
“In the wake of fierce pushback from the White House,” Scott McClellan’s brother, Mark McClellan, a former Bush administration official, said Scott “really believes what he’s saying.” “He worked long and hard on that book — I have respect for Scott’s beliefs. This is what he wanted to do,” he said.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates forced the Air Force’s senior civilian official and its highest-ranking general to resign yesterday “following an official inquiry into the mishandling of nuclear weapons and components, an episode that Mr. Gates called an indication of systemic problems in the Air Force.”
Blackwater Worldwide has opened a new training facility in San Diego, CA. The company has been targeted by protesters who objected to the facility, and last month, Blackwater sued “because city officials refused to issue final occupancy documents without a vote by the planning commission.”
Record numbers of Americans are “raiding their retirement savings as the economy has soured, threatening their long-term financial security to make their mortgage payments, pay medical bills, and cope with rising food and fuel costs.” At Fidelity Investments, the nation’s largest retirement plan administrator, “the number of people making hardship withdrawals rose 17 percent last year.”
And finally: Swing ’em home…
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