US had forged documents in 2001
... Forged documents which are at the centre of a dispute over the quality
of Washington's intelligence in the build-up to war with Iraq were passed on
to the United States as early as the end of 2001, a US lawmaker said in an
interview on Sunday.
US President George Bush used the documents, now shown to be clearly false,
as evidence that Saddam Hussein's Iraq sought to procure uranium for an
alleged nuclear weapons programme from the west African country Niger.
The opposition Democrat lawmaker Henry Waxman told the Italian daily La
Repubblica he had spoken to a variety of different sources who had shown him
that the documents were passed on to Washington at the end of 2001.
Berlusconi May Tighten
Grip on Italian Media (Update1)
Bloomberg - 7-22-03
...
Berlusconi, through his
Fininvest stake, earned about $163 million in 2002 dividends from his three
publicly traded companies, according to Bloomberg calculations. Mediaset
dividends represented two-thirds of the total. The media tycoon is the
world's 45th richest man, worth $5.9 billion, according to Forbes magazine's
2003 rankings.
Bush stays close to
home and raises $7 million with new speech
International
Herald Tribune, France - 7-22-03
... Bush could not resist tweaking the members of the news media as they stood in the blazing sun awaiting a glimpse of a Crawford tradition: the president, driving his white pickup truck, arriving to pick up his guests. As he passed a collection of sweating American and Italian reporters, Bush, showing his compassionate-conservative side, rolled down his window, waved, and said, "Let me turn down my air conditioner - how y'all doing out there?"
