New Zealand oil spill -Country's Worst Environmental Disaster

Heavy oil spill and strong winds hit the vessel for a second day on Wednesday, sending empty containers dropping off the ship, which is leaning at around 18 degrees, into the heaving seas. About 50 seabirds have died and group of naturalists have scrubbed and treated 20 more for oil pollution.

The captain was charged with "operating a vessel in a manner causing unnecessary danger or risk". The 775ft (236m) Rena ran aground on a graphed reef off the North Island port of Tauranga a week ago. Officials say the fuel oil leaking from the ship has caused the country's worst environmental disaster in decades.

Maritime New Zealand (MNZ), which is managing the emergency response, said about 70 containers had fallen off the Rena after more bad weather overnight shifted the vessel into a heavy list. The ship is carrying 11 containers of hazardous materials, MNZ said, including ferrosilicon which is flammable upon contact with water.

MNZ said the hazardous materials containers were not among those that had fallen overboard. But New Zealand Prime Minister John Key said stress fractures had been found on the Rena. He said "we can't rule out the risk of the ship breaking up, that's certainly being monitored".

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U.S. ponders how to pressure Iran

WASHINGTON – The Obama administration plans to force charges that Iran plotted to kill Saudi Arabia's ambassador to the United States into a new global campaign to isolate the Islamic republic.

U.S. officials stated that the administration will lobby for the imposition of new international sanctions as well as for individual nations to increase their own penalties against Iran based on charges that Iranian agents tried to recruit a purported member of a Mexican drug cartel to kill the Saudi envoy on American soil.

The Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton stated in an associated press interview, "this really, in the minds of many diplomats and government officials, crosses a line that Iran needs to be held to account for”. She also said she and President Barack Obama want to "enlist more countries in working together against what is becoming a clearer and clearer threat" from Iran.

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Senate GOP poised to scuttle Obama's jobs plan

President Barack Obama's jobs bill, facing a serious test in the Senate, appears likely to fail because Republicans oppose its spending components and its tax supplement on millionaires obama has been waging a campaign style effort to rally public hold behind the $447 billion measure, which was expected to be the subject of a Senate vote Tuesday.

The plan combines payroll tax cuts for workers and businesses with $175 billion in expenditure on roads, school repairs and other infrastructure, as well as unemployment support and help to local governments to avoid layoffs of teachers, firefighters and police officers.

The key elements of the jobs package reprise parts of Obama's $800 billion-plus 2009 stimulus determine and a Social Security payroll tax cut enacted last year unlike the notorious stimulus bill, the jobs measure would be financed by a 5.6 percent surcharge on income more than $1 million, raising more than $450 billion over a decade.

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