Around the globe: Iraqi parliament, facing deadlines, to go on holiday

WASHINGTON — The White House on Friday appeared resigned to the fact that the Iraqi parliament is going to take August off, even though it has just eight weeks to show progress on military, political and economic benchmarks prescribed by the United States.

“My understanding is at this juncture they’re going to take August off,” White House press secretary Tony Snow said. “You know, it’s 130 degrees in Baghdad in August.”

Snow was reminded that U.S. troops will be continuing to fight throughout August in the heat.

The White House and other top officials previously had worked to persuade the parliament to remain at work, saying it would send a bad signal if the Iraqi lawmakers went on vacation while U.S. troops were fighting and dying.

Snow said that a scheduled Sept. 15 progress report on by Gen. David Petraeus was important, yet said he also said that was not a deadline./AP

Congress doing worse at its job than President Bush is at his

WASHINGTON — Too much bickering and not enough legislating.

That, in just a few words, explains why public approval of Congress’ job performance has fallen 11 points since May, to 24 percent, its lowest level in a year, an Associated Press-Ipsos poll finds.

That’s lower than for President Bush, who isn’t exactly “Mr. Popularity,” either.

Hear the people:

“They’re not addressing the issues that are worth addressing,” Steve Wofford, a moderate Republican from Scottsdale, Ariz., said of Congress.

“They’ve abandoned all the social issues. They don’t want to deal with universal health care. They don’t want to deal with the problems in our education system. It just goes on and on,” lamented Rod Butler, a Democrat from Redondo Beach.

The telephone survey of 1,004 adults had a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3 percentage points./AP

Amsterdam unveils new crackdown on criminality

AMSTERDAM, Netherlands — Authorities announced a major crackdown on organized crime in Amsterdam’s Red Light District on Thursday, for the first time bringing national police investigators and tax authorities to bear on what had long been seen as a local problem.

With its scantily clad prostitutes posing in brothel windows and coffee shops oozing the pungent aroma of marijuana smoke, the district is a magnet for petty criminals and, authorities believe, human traffickers, drug lords and mobsters who take advantage of the situation to launder money.

Prostitution is legal in the Netherlands, and coffee shops are licensed to sell small amounts of marijuana. But prostitutes don’t have cash registers and drug vendors don’t give receipts, making it easy for them to launder money for crime lords./AP

India to re-plant deforested land in global warming plan

NEW DELHI — India, one of the world’s biggest polluters, will plant trees on 15 million acres of deforested land, the prime minister said Friday.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh set a November deadline to create a comprehensive roadmap for energy efficiency and sustainable development.

India, whose economy is growing rapidly, contributes nearly 4 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions as its fossil fuel use increases.

With annual monsoons and a quarter of its population living near its coasts, the country is seen as being especially vulnerable to climate change. But as a developing nation, India is not required to cut emissions under the Kyoto Protocol despite mounting pressure from environmental groups and industrialized nations.

The government has pledged to fight climate change as long as the costs are shared fairly, though it says it is not responsible for global warming./AP

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