:: NEWS COCKTAIL aka BlahBlahBlog ::
"Everything is being compressed into tiny tablets. You take a little pill of news every day - 23 minutes - and that's supposed to be enough." -Walter Cronkite, RE TV news. The Web has changed that for many, however, and here is an extra dose for your daily news cocktail. This prescription tends to include surveillance and now war-related links, along with the occasional pop culture junk and whatever else seizes my attention as I scan online news sites.:: 9.29.2004 ::
:: "Britain's Blair Looks to Poll After Iraq Apology" ::
BRIGHTON, England (Reuters) - Britain's Labour Party leaders are to try to shift the focus from Iraq to domestic policy on Wednesday, after Tony Blair offered a partial apology for the war.
Violence in Iraq -- where two more British soldiers died on Tuesday -- and the fate of a British hostage being held there have cast a shadow over Labour's annual conference, where Blair had hoped to concentrate on a campaign for a third term.
Labour will showcase its policies on crime, asylum and immigration on Wednesday -- all key battlegrounds for an election expected in May -- when Home Secretary David Blunkett addresses the party faithful in the seaside town of Brighton.
Irish rock icon Bono, frontman of U2, is also to speak.
Bono is expected to press Labour to do more on debt relief for Africa, international aid and fair trade -- themes that hit a chord with grassroots Labour supporters, many of whom have been alienated by the Iraq war.
Many conference delegates on Tuesday said Blair's apology, in his crucial setpiece speech, went far enough to persuade them to put aside differences over Iraq and focus on the next election, but anti-war stalwarts were not won over.
The prime minister came his closest yet to a mea culpa when he accepted intelligence on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction -- the primary Anglo-American motive for war -- had been wrong.
But he refused to apologize for ousting Saddam Hussein.
Read more here.
posted by me
:: 1:21:00 AM [+] ::
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