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Men who Smoke More Likely to Suffer Dementia in Later Life

EU Times — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 15:06:43 +0000

Long-term risks: Researchers found that smoking in men appears to be associated with more rapid cognitive decline

Those searching for another reason to stick to their resolution to give up cigarettes need look no further. A new study has warned that men who smoke are more likely to suffer dementia in later life.

Researchers found that smoking in men appears to be associated with a greater and more rapid cognitive decline.

Smoking is increasingly recognised as a risk factor for dementia in the elderly. And the number of dementia cases worldwide – estimated at 36 million in 2010 – is rising and is projected to double every 20 years.

Doctor Severine Sabia, of University College London, and her colleagues used the Whitehall II cohort study, which is based on employees of the Civil Service.

They examined the association between smoking history and cognitive decline in the transition from midlife to old age.

Data was obtained from 5,099 men and 2,137 women in the Whitehall II study, with an average age of 56 at the first cognitive assessment.

In the study, researchers analysed data using six assessments of smoking status over 25 years and three cognitive assessments over 10 years. They made four key findings.

The results suggest smoking in men is associated with more rapid cognitive decline, and men who continued to smoke over the follow-up experienced greater decline in all cognitive tests.

In addition, men who quit smoking in the 10 years preceding the first cognitive measure were still at risk of greater cognitive decline, especially in executive function – an umbrella term for various complex cognitive processes involved in achieving a particular goal.

However, long-term ex-smokers did not show faster cognitive decline.

Dr Sabia said: ‘Finally, our results show that the association between smoking and cognition, particularly at older ages, is likely to be underestimated owing to higher risk of death and dropout among smokers.’

She added that the results show no association between smoking and cognitive decline in women, although the underlying reasons remain unclear.

One explanation for the difference they observed between men and women might be the greater quantity of tobacco smoked by men.

The findings were published online in the journal Archives of General Psychiatry.

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Japanese airline named world’s safest

EU Times — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 16:28:03 +0000

Russia’s Transaero and Aeroflot airlines took the 15th and the 35th positions respectively on the list of world’s 60 safest airlines, Ayda.ru website said.

The research to analyze the security level took account of all incidents that took place to jetliners during the recent decade. At the same time, Russia became the most dangerous state for those who like to travel by air. The low level of air safety is connected with small airlines, which do not observe necessary rules.

The title of the world’s safest airline was awarded to All Nippon Airways, Japan, TurNavigator.ru said. The second place was taken by Finnair. Cathay Pacific Airways is ranked third. The list continues with Ethiad Airways (UAE), Hainan Airlines, Jet Blue Airways, Emirates, Virgin Blue, Airberlin.

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Economic freedom worst in Russia, best in Hong Kong

EU Times — Sun, 15 Jan 2012 10:09:16 +0000

Hong Kong

The country with the freest economy on the planet is Hong Kong. Such a statement was made by Heritage Foundation, a US-based NGO. The “Index of Economic Freedom” made by the organization is based on the degree of openness of markets, the effectiveness of the legal framework for business activities and the apparatus of government officials and regulatory authorities.

Hong Kong, which until 1997 was a British colony, and then became a Special Administrative Region of China, has been taking the first place on the list of the freest economies in the world for the 18th consecutive year, Vesti FM said. The second place on the list is taken by Singapore, the third – Australia, the fourth – New Zealand, and the fifth – Switzerland.

The United States went one position down in the current rankings as compared with last year’s data. The country slid from the 9th to the 10th position. Britain, by contrast, has climbed from the 16th to the 14th place.

As for the countries of the former USSR, the very top line – the 16th – is taken by Estonia. The country has thus left behind the economies of Finland, Sweden and Germany.

Russia is ranked 144th on the list of 179 countries of economic freedom. Compared to last year, the country has lost one position. The chairwoman of Business Solidarity Non-Profit Partnership, Yana Yakovleva, said that she was not surprised about Russia’s place in this ranking, reports Finam FM. Everything is logical, the expert believes.

“Russia is at the bottom of all ratings – between Gambia and Zimbabwe, as a rule. They place us on this position from the point of view of the level of economic freedom, entrepreneurship and competition. We are at the bottom of all rankings,” she said.

“The question is how our authorities approach economic issues. Our government believes that economy is their own pocket, in which they can put their hands whenever they want to. They think that they can cut economic ties with a criminal axe and destroy enterprises – do anything except for developing the economy,” she added.

Russia took the worst position on the corruption ranking of Transparency International. The research analyzed 28 largest economies of the world. The last but one position on the list was taken by China.

As for the world ranking of corruption, Russia was placed 143rd – between Nigeria and Uganda. In Moldova, corruption is the lowest among the countries of the CIS. The republic took the 112th place.

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Ron Paul Has Won Young People

EU Times — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 21:28:07 +0000

The next generation of leaders in America are Ron Paul fans.

When Congressman Ron Paul embarked on a third Presidential campaign he did so with one over riding aim – to engage the next generation of Americans and provide them with the platform to restore the principles of the Constitution. The facts show that he has overwhelmingly succeeded.

Tuesday’s primary in New Hampshire saw the Congressman net almost half of all votes from people aged between 18 and 29 years old. Paul received 47 percent of young voter support, data collated by the Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning & Engagement shows.

“Dr. Paul’s 47 percent support from 18- to 29-year-olds was the strongest level of support for any candidate by any age group.” said CIRCLE Director Peter Levine in a press release.

Ron Paul stormed the primary among young voters by a margin of 22 percentage points, more than doubling his youth votes since the 2008 New Hampshire primary. In comparison, Mitt Romney drew around the same number of young voters as he did four years ago, roughly 25 percent. This highlights how Ron Paul’s policies and principles have resonated with the future of the nation.

The number of young voters who turned out for Paul in New Hampshire was close to 14,000. By comparison, the number of young voters who voted for Barack Obama in the 2008 primary was around 26,000. Even the most hardened critics were forced to admit that those figures alone are impressive. Data on young voter participation among Democrats in Tuesday’s primary wasn’t available, but Paul’s numbers will surely be even closer to Obama’s when disillusioned Democrats are factored in.

The results in New Hampshire dovetail with those out of Iowa, where Paul earned the support of 48 percent of the 18,000 Iowans under the age of 30 who participated in the GOP Caucuses. Rick Santorum came in second with 23 percent, while Romney gathered just 13 percent support.

The statistics show that a very substantial 8,800 young people caucused for Ron Paul in Iowa. That means that young voters supported Ron Paul in a far greater percentage than any other age group supported any candidate in the State. Indeed, people under 30 provided Ron Paul with one third of his total votes.

The Congressman constantly praises his young supporters and points out that they are so enamored with his campaign because “freedom is popular” and “That’s where the enthusiasm is”.

Even more statistics released this week highlight the fact that Paul’s ideas have set alight the youth of the nation.

A detailed survey of all U.S. Facebook users provided to POLITICO by Facebook, shows that Paul absolutely dominates the volume of posts, status updates, links shared to friends’ walls and user comments on the world’s most popular social network site.

In the run up to the Iowa caucuses, Paul reached around one quarter MILLION mentions on Facebook, according to the data. The Congressman is routinely by far the most discussed candidate, making him the outright winner of the so called “Facebook primary”.

In addition, an analysis of Twitter traffic by number crunchers Crimson Hexagon shows that Paul dominated the discussion on twitter in the week of the New Hampshire vote.

Paul was mentioned by 26 percent of tweets from Jan. 6-11, while Romney was mentioned 22 percent of the time. Paul also was mentioned more often on Twitter on the day after the primary, with 27 percent to 26 percent for Romney, while Gingrich and Santorum were each mentioned 15 percent of the time.

Earlier this month, three other separate studies also revealed that Ron Paul’s presidential campaign is surging across the social networks and the internet.

Not only is Paul by far the most viral GOP candidate on Facebook and Twitter, he has the largest network reach of all the candidates, and is the most interacted with and trusted by users of all the other major social networks online.

In comments to TIME for a piece on Paul’s youth appeal, Paul’s campaign manager, Jesse Benton, recently noted that young people have an “amazing BS meter,” and they often say they see Paul as more sincere, more reliable than the other candidates. “They haven’t had time to become cynical yet,” Benton added.

Ideas are bullet proof and the Ron Paul Revolution is growing exponentially. In this very real sense, Paul has already won the decisive victory he recognizes is infinitely more meaningful than the office of the presidency.

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US Nationwide Poll: Ron Paul Surges Into Second

EU Times — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 22:13:24 +0000

Five point gain means Paul is tied in second place overall with Independents and Republicans.

Following his effective tied win in Iowa, GOP candidate Ron Paul has seen a surge in popularity nationally according to an influential poll released this week.

Paul is now tied for second place nationally among Republicans and Independents, according to the latest Reuters/Ipsos poll.

The Texas Congressman now stands at 17 percent, according to the poll, tied with Newt Gingrich. The notable trend, however, is that while Paul has jumped a full five percentage points since December, Gingrich has plummeted by 8 points.

Among Republican voters alone, Paul has jumped by 4 points nationally and now stands at 16 percent. Gingrich again slipped by 8 points among Republicans alone, leaving him at 20 percent.

Mitt Romney still holds a considerable lead with 29 percent among republicans and Independents and 30 percent among Republicans alone.

The poll was conducted before Ron Paul’s strong second place showing in New Hampshire. It now appears that Gingrich finished fifth in New Hampshire, behind Rick Santorum, with around 9 percent. Given these statistics, Paul is likely to surge further nationally and Gingrich is likely to slip even further.

Another notable finding from the poll is that Paul is second only to Romney when it comes to a head to head match up with Obama.

Obama bests Romney by 5 percentage points, 48 to 43. Paul falls short of Obama by 7 percentage points, 48 to 41. In comparison, Santorum loses by 11 percentage points, 51 to 40 and Gingrich loses by 15 percentage points, 53 to 38.

When factoring in Democrat voters who are disillusioned with Obama, Paul’s numbers will undoubtedly increase once more.

Indeed, as Neil Cavuto explains below, it is Ron Paul who is the major threat to Obama, more so than Mitt Romney:

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Poll puts Ron Paul neck-and-neck with Obama

EU Times — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 22:41:30 +0000

New Hampshire will host the nation’s first primary of 2012 on Tuesday, and although Election Day is still months away, it looks to be a heated matchup between President Obama and the top-tier Republican candidates.

No matter which GOP hopeful walks away from New Hampshire with this win Wednesday morning, the frontrunners in the race for the Republican Party now all pose a viable threat to President Barack Obama according to the latest polling from CBS News. Conducted following last week’s slim win for Mitt Romney during the Iowa caucus, the results of the latest poll suggest that the big guns among the GOP are about to give Obama a run for his money.

When quizzed to choose between a top-tier Republican and Barack Obama, the current president managed to only escape the hypothetical race as the victor in a few instances.

In the imagined match-up between Obama and Texas Congressman Ron Paul, the two are at a statistical tie.

In a poll of over 1,400 adults, 45 percent say that they would vote Ron Paul in a two-person race for the presidency against Barack Obama. The current commander-in-chief only managed to poll in 46 percent favoritism, putting the two in a statistical tie given the margin of error of 3 percentage points. In that make-believe race, Paul also secures 10 percent of the Democratic vote, even if running as a Republican. The congressman also surpasses the president in popularity among independent voters, garnering 47 percent of the vote from that group to Obama’s 40.

President Obama is guaranteed the victor in all of the other two-person match-ups imagined by CBS, except in the case of Obama against Mitt Romney. In such a race, the pool of voters polled give Romney the win with 47 percentage points to Obama’s 45, still putting a win for either a clear possibility given the 3 point margin of error.

Who will prevail in a race against Obama is a matter to be realized in only nine months’ time. Meanwhile, however, the results of the poll suggest one thing for sure. Mitt Romney’s reign as Republican Party frontrunner is waning as Ron Paul continues to soar with support.

“We’ve called this contest a two-man race between Ron Paul and Mitt Romney, and this poll is further proof of that,” Ron Paul 2012 National Campaign Chairman Jesse Benton says in a statement. “It also demonstrates Ron Paul’s support among independents, an important voting segment within which our candidate is strong.”

As the Rick Santorum campaign loses steam after a near-win in Iowa last week, the top-tier of GOP hopefuls continues to be former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney and Paul, despite a smear campaign waged against the Texas congressman by the establishment that seems to be running scared with the real possibility of a Paul presidency. Jon Huntsman has in recent days seen a surge in popularity and current polling out of Suffolk University suggest that he or Paul pose the only threat to Romney at this time.

“The battle for second place will be determined by which candidate has the best field organization to bring out the votes today,” David Paleologos, director of the Suffolk University Political Research Center in Boston, writes Tuesday. “A good get-out-the-vote-operation accounts for up to 5 points, which can impact an expected outcome.”

While Suffolk’s latest polling released Tuesday still put Romney on top, his popularity slipped during the five consecutive days preceding the primary. Ron Paul has maintained a solid presence in second place throughout the campaign in New Hampshire. Last week in Iowa, Paul walked away with third place in a victory that yielded Congresswoman Michele Bachmann to suspend her run.

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Fox forced to apologize after “Did the Jews kill Jesus?” poll

EU Times — Fri, 30 Dec 2011 19:34:38 +0000

Fox Latin America is being forced to apologize after Rupert Murdoch’s Spanish-language outlet added a questionable poll to its Facebook page as part of a failed promotion.

In an outlandish effort to promote a Christmas special this year on the National Geographic Channel, a Fox Latin America staffer asked fans on the group’s Facebook page, “Who do you think is responsible for the death of Christ?”

The options were Pontius Pilate, High Priests and “Jewish People.” Needless to say, this didn’t go over well with a decent number of Fox’s audience.

In the past, Fox has been called out for its criticism with Muslims and its misrepresenting of followers of Islam, and regularly considered a supporter of Judeo-Christian beliefs. The poll that made it to the network’s Facebook page suggests that a new religion might be on the hit-list for the Latin American branch of the News Corp empire, however.

Fox Spokeswoman Guadalupe Lucero immediately apologized to those offended by the error and assures the network’s Facebook followers that it would be the last time such a gaffe was given the go-ahead. The Simon Weisenthal Center, a Jewish advocacy group based out of Buenos Aires, says it isn’t that easy to dimiss, however. In a statement to the Associated Press, the group calls the inclusion of Jews in the answer pool a reference to outdated Catholic propaganda that characterizes Jewish people as the killers of Jesus Christ. That campaign, says the center, “resulted in the persecution and murder of Jews for two millennia.”

Pope Benedict XVI has criticized the Catholic Church for the campaign himself, and in his book Jesus of Nazareth Part II he says there is no wording in the Bible that singles out the Jews for the killing of Christ.

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Americans Leaving US in Record Numbers

EU Times — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 13:43:03 +0000

Americans leaving US in record numbers

Ever dream of leaving it all behind and heading out of America? You’re not the only one. A new study shows that more US citizens than ever before are living outside of the country.

According to statistics from the US State Department, around 6.4 million Americans are either working or studying overseas, which Gallup says is the largest number ever for such statistic.

The polling organization came across the number after conducting surveys in 135 outside nations and the information behind the numbers reveal that this isn’t exactly a longtime coming either — numbers have skyrocketed only in recent years. In the 24 months before polling began, the number of Americans between the ages of 25 and 34 living abroad managed to surge from barely 1 percent to over 5.1 percent. For those under the age span wishing to move overseas, the percentage has jumped in the same amount of time from 15 percent to 40.

While the United States of America was at one point (and largely still is) a magnet for foreigners in search of work, the statistics makes it clear that an opposite trend is quickly picking up steam.

“There’s a feeling among more entrepreneurial Americans that if you really want to get anything done, you have to get out of country and away from the depressing atmosphere,” Bob Adams of America Wave tells Reuters. “There’s a sense of lost direction, so more people are looking for locations that offer more hope about the future.”

Many of those leaving the US have job skills that would transfer quite well in the American market. Instead, however, they chose to bring those out of the States, attracted instead to opportunities elsewhere.

While America offers some employment opportunities unmatched outside of the United States, the country has also seen dire economic statistics since the dawn of the Obama administration, with jobless benefit claims soaring in recent months, and only last week did the Department of Labor reveal an unemployment statistic below 9 percent. On the contrary, the number of Americans that want full-time work and have given up on finding it or unable to locate it is closer to double that figure, while at the same time many of America’s largest employers have outsourced positions across the globe. Banking giant Goldman Sachs announced earlier this year that in the wake of a recession, they would finally be creating 1,000 new positions, yet making them available only to workers in Singapore. Other industries, significantly American, have been relocated as well; the ending of NASA’s space shuttle program this year left many intelligent US citizens with little choice but to continue in their field outside of the States.

“We’ve pretty much outsourced everything else,” aerospace technician Giovanni Pinzon tells RT. He was left scrambling for a job after years working in America’s space program.

America Wave’s Adams adds to Reuters that the statistics prove surprising to him, but noted that it doesn’t exactly make sense to think that it is a fluke.

“They’re looking for work because of the sluggish economy, and they’ve lost confidence that the U.S. is going anywhere,” says Adams.

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Ron Paul Tied In Second With Romney For Iowa

EU Times — Sun, 11 Dec 2011 22:35:50 +0000

All of Congressman Paul’s responses from last night’s debate.

According to an ABC article, “By all accounts, Ron Paul is on a roll in Iowa. In the latest ABC News / Washington post poll, Paul is tied with Mitt Romney for second place in the state.”

Ron Paul has finally started to gain momentum and turning into a top candidate as he managed to draw big crowds and many undecided voters in Iowa.

Iowa Poll: Only Ron Paul Can Beat Obama

EU Times — Mon, 05 Dec 2011 22:24:07 +0000

A new poll out of Iowa suggests that the only GOP candidate to stand a chance of beating Obama one on one in 2012 is Congressman Ron Paul.

The NBC News/Marist Poll places Paul in third place with 17%, just 1% behind Mitt Romney, and well within the margin of error of second place.

Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich tops the poll with 26%.

Over the past few weeks Paul has consistently polled within the top three in Iowa and New Hampshire, and the latest numbers show he is closing in on the top spot.

Yet the most interesting facet of this latest survey is how the Congressman matches up in a hypothetical head to head with Obama.

The poll finds that the incumbent President betters all GOP competitors except for Ron Paul.

42% of registered voters in Iowa support Ron Paul and 42% back Obama, with 16 percent undecided.

In match ups with Romney and Gingrich, Obama comes out on top by 7 and 10 percentage points respectively, with 15 and 16% respectively undecided.

This highlights how Paul’s biggest hurdle is securing the nomination. There is no doubt that Obama would have a real fight on his hands to retain the presidency against Ron Paul.

Paul also leads Obama 42 to 35% among independent voters and attracts 15 percent of Iowa’s Democrats according to the survey. The Congressman also betters Obama by 14 percentage points among voters under 45 years of age.

Tellingly, Paul also leads the way over his GOP rivals with 25% among voters who see a candidate’s position on the issues, rather than electability or popularity, as the most important factor of their candidacy. Gingrich, on the other hand, leads among avid college football fans.

Speaking to CNN Sunday, Paul stated “You don’t win with just with a hard-core Republican base. You have to have a candidate that’s going to appeal across the political spectrum,”

Referring to himself as “The flavor of the decade” rather than the flavor of the month, in reference to the constant ups and downs of all the other candidates, Paul noted “I think with my views, they’re quite different than the hard-edge views (that) so many on the Republican side are frequently showing.”

Another Iowa poll, published Sunday by The Des Moines Register revealed similar results with Paul in second, with 18%, ahead of Romney at 16% and behind Gingrich at 25%.

Paul’s campaign debuts another ad spot in the early states this week, part of a multi-million dollar push.

The ad, entitled “Big Dog”, focuses on Paul’s concrete plan to cut spending by $1 Trillion and significantly reduce the deficit in the first year of the new presidency by eliminating overly bureaucratic federal departments.

It describes Paul’s rivals as “whimpering like little shih-tzus” when it comes to spending cuts.

“Department of Education? Gone. Interior? Energy? HUD? Commerce? Gone,” the ad says. “Want to drain the swamp? Ron Paul. Do it.”

The Iowa caucuses, scheduled for January 3, signals the beginning of next year’s election season.

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Middle-class areas shrinking in US

EU Times — Tue, 22 Nov 2011 21:26:40 +0000

America’s middle class is disappearing as growing income inequality creates more families in areas either mostly rich or poor, a report says.

Around 44 per cent of families live in middle-income neighbourhoods – down from 65 per cent in 1970, the Stanford University study shows.

Meanwhile a third of families in the U.S. now live in either rich or poor areas, which has more than doubled on the 1970 figure of 15 per cent.

Some of the middle class have fallen into the poorer classes as jobs are lost in sectors such as manufacturing, reported the New York Times.

But at the same time many of the rich are transforming areas where middle-class and lower income families now cannot afford to live.

The biggest rises in income gaps over the last decade came in Detroit, Michigan; Greensboro, North Carolina; Oklahoma City; and Toledo, Ohio.

‘Rising inequality is beginning to produce a two-tiered society in America,’ Harvard University sociologist William J. Wilson told the New York Times.

‘More affluent citizens live lives fundamentally different from the middle- and lower-income groups. This divide decreases a sense of community.’

Thinning: This graphic from the report shows how the American middle class has been shrinking over the period between 1970 and 2007

Rising trend: This graph shows how low-income and high-income families in the U.S. are becoming more segregated from all other families

‘Rising inequality is beginning to produce a two-tiered society in America. The more affluent citizens live lives fundamentally different from the middle- and lower-income groups. This divide decreases a sense of community’ William Julius Wilson, Harvard University sociologist

The gap is widening because children in poorer areas often have less chance of going to better schools and lack strong local support networks.

The gap in standardised test results between rich and poor children is now two-fifths bigger than it was in 1970.

Rich families are becoming more isolated and double now live in affluent areas, compared to in 1970, reported the New York Times.

The present-day figures are based on statistics from 2007, which was the last year captured by data in the study – part of research project ‘US2010’.

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Ron Paul winning Iowa

EU Times — Tue, 22 Nov 2011 21:08:36 +0000

While the mainstream media begins to set their sights on Newt Gingrich as he surges in the polls in recent weeks, the latest numbers out of Iowa reaffirm that fellow Republican candidate Ron Paul has a real chance in the race.

Results from a poll conducted by Bloomberg News earlier this month placed Paul, a medical doctor and libertarian icon, in a statistical tie for first place among the current GOP candidates for Iowa voters. As sexual harassment scandals continue to plague pizzaman Herman Cain and Rick Perry’s unforgettable flub at the CNBC debate have taken a toll on the candidates, Paul has managed to only increase in popularity among voters.

A recent Iowa State/Gazette/KCRG poll also put Paul towards the top, trailing only Herman Cain with 20 percent of the vote.

As the Iowa caucuses get closer and closer, Paul’s popularity suggests that he could emerge from the Hawkeye State as the victor in what is considered by many to be the crucial first step in securing the Republican nomination for the presidency.

During the Iowa straw poll earlier this summer, Paul placed second behind Michele Bachmann, who has seen a serious slump in the race in the months that followed. “He came very close. Very, very close,” economist Lew Rockwell of the Ludwig Von Mises Institute told RT at the time. “The political establishment is going to have to be torn down — I think Ron Paul can do that.”

Back in August, those in Iowa got to take the first glance at the Republican frontrunners 15 months before Election Day 2012. More important than the state’s straw poll, however, is the upcoming caucuses, that could pave the way for the rest of the race.

And if the hype that Ron Paul has managed to attract in Iowa as of late is any indication of things to come, his campaign is only going to heat up.

“A caucus state like Iowa is tailor-made to maximize the vote for a candidate like Ron Paul,” University of Virginia Center for Politics Director Larry Sabato tells The Daily Caller. “He has a dedicated band of supporters who will show up to vote in three feet of snow.”

It was a grass roots campaign during the months leading up to the 2008 election which managed to garner heavy support for Paul among a rapidly growing fan base of diehard supporters. Paul is finding such luck again in Iowa early in the race, and while the mainstream makes Gingrich and Romney the faces of the frontrunner candidates, the numbers coming in show that Paul has just as good of a chance at taking the GOP nod — if not better.

In addition to tying in the recent Bloomberg poll, the news organization adds that Paul came in seven percentage points ahead of Mitt Romney at first place in a similar survey answered only by those who have already made up their minds about the race.

In a recent post to his Twitter account, Craig Robinson, a former political director for the Republican Party of Iowa, said that Ron Paul has his support this time around.

“We have a strong ground game in the state that is reaching out at a faster pace than any other campaign,” Trygve Olson, a Paul adviser, adds to the Washington Post.

Paul and the other GOP hopefuls will participate in a televised debate from Washington DC live this Tuesday.

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Latest poll puts Ron Paul in first-place tie

EU Times — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 22:50:12 +0000

Republican Presidential Candidate Ron Paul

Less than two months before the Iowa caucuses occur — the next monumental step in the course of events leading up to the Republican Party makes their nomination for the presidency — Texas Congressman Ron Paul has taken the lead in the latest poll.

According to the results of the latest poll from Bloomberg News, Paul is neck-and-neck with pizzaman Herman Cain, with the two candidates coming in with 19 percent and 20 percent of the vote, respectively, with a margin of error of plus or minus 4.4 percentage points.

Former frontrunner and Texas Governor Rick Perry falls to place in the top three according to the latest poll, surely a result of last week’s slip-up during a televised debated hosted by CNBC. “We fish from the same pot as Perry sometimes,” campaign chairman Jesse Benton told Politico following Perry’s mistake last week, in which the candidate couldn’t come up with the three areas of government he intended to abolish as president of the United States. According to Paul’s camp, Perry posed quite the competition for the libertarian icon. With the Texas governor slipping in the polls, top-billing was open for Paul to pursue.

“For the first time in this race he looked comfortable and confident in giving answers, but none of that will be remembered. Instead we will remember him searching for words and relying on Ron Paul to bail him out,” Craig Robinson said after Perry’s disastrous debate slip-up in the Washington Post.

Paul resurgence comes despite a serious lack of attention from the mainstream media, who have time and time again downplayed the candidate’s campaign, instead offering coverage to other candidates such as Herman Cain and Mitt Romney. During last week’s debate, CNBC only awarded Paul 89 seconds to respond to questions during the televised portion of the event. According to the latest polling from Bloomberg, however, that might have been enough to give Paul the most powerful chance at the White House yet.

“If I were Romney and Perry, I would be thinking of a way to get Ron Paul off the stage because he is a distraction,” Republican strategist Bradley Blakeman explained to Fox Business in earlier in the race.

In Bloomberg’s latest polling, Paul also places first in support from likely Iowa caucus-goers in regards to his stance on healthcare. Congressman Paul collected 32 percent of the votes, with Mitt Romney coming in with only 25 percent.

Overall, Romney received 18 percent of the vote and Gingrich 17, creating a nearly neck-and-neck race for first place billing. Paul has previously won straw polls in Ohio, California and South Carolina. The caucuses in Iowa are slated to begin in early January.

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Only 4% of Europeans want Iran war

EU Times — Mon, 14 Nov 2011 22:15:40 +0000

A recent survey shows that only four percent of the population in the European Union support a military attack against Iran over its nuclear program.

According to the phone survey conducted between October 18 and 24 by Der Deutsche Marshall Fund Research Company, with a sampling of 2,000 people, 32 percent of the respondents said they believe economic incentives will resolve the impasse over Iran’s nuclear case.

Twenty-eight percent of those surveyed said they are in favor of tougher sanctions against Iran, and 15 percent said they support efforts to help dissidents and the opposition.

Only four percent of respondents said they agree with military intervention in Iran over its nuclear activities, and 16 percent had no opinion.

The United States, Israel, and some of their allies accuse Tehran of pursuing military objectives in its nuclear program and have used this pretext to push for the imposition of sanctions on the country as well as to call for an attack on the country.

Iran argues that as a signatory to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and a member of the IAEA, it has the right to develop and acquire nuclear technology for peaceful purposes.

Iranian officials have promised a crushing response to any military strike against the country, warning that any such measure could result in a war that would spread beyond the Middle East.

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Poll: 85% of Americans against Iran war

EU Times — Sun, 13 Nov 2011 20:26:31 +0000

Less than a week after the publication of an IAEA report on Tehran’s nuclear program, a poll has found that 85 percent of Americans are against military confrontation with Iran.

The poll, conducted by the CBS Broadcasting Inc., also found that more than half of the respondents saw diplomacy as the only means to alleviate Western concerns over Tehran’s nuclear program.

In its latest report, published on November 8, the International Atomic Energy Agency accused Iran of conducting activities related to developing nuclear weapons before 2003, adding that these activities “may still be ongoing.”

Iran, however, rejected the report as “unbalanced, unprofessional and prepared with political motivation and under political pressure mostly by the United States.”

Washington and Tel Aviv have repeatedly threatened Tehran with the “option” of a military strike, based on claims that Iran’s nuclear program may include a covert military aspect, an allegation that Tehran has categorically refuted.

Iran, however, insists that as a signatory to the Non-Proliferation Treaty and a member of the IAEA it has the right to develop and acquire nuclear technology for peaceful purposes such as electricity generation and medical research.

In addition, the IAEA has conducted numerous inspections of Iran’s nuclear facilities but has never found any evidence indicating that Tehran’s civilian nuclear program has been diverted towards military objectives.

Iranian officials have promised a crushing response to any military strike against the country, warning that any such measure could result in a war that would spread beyond the Middle East.

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