Rebel News - Independent News and Analysis

US President Barack Obama has set up a new high-level agency as a part of strategy that to double US exports in five years in face of a battered economy.

The newly created Export Promotion Cabinet will hold its first meeting in April, and includes representatives from the departments of State, Agriculture, and Commerce, among others.

Two female aid workers with the Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders) in quake-ravaged Haiti, who have been adducted last week, were freed Thursday and are "safe and sound."

For security reasons and in a bid not to "complicate" negotiations to free the women, the Friday kidnapping had been kept secret.

The US President Barack Obama has been cautioned about a humiliating defeat in mid-term elections next autumn if his Democratic Party fails to bring change in Washington.

Steve Hildebrand, Obama's senior advisor during his presidential campaign emphasized in a CNN interview on Thursday that the Democrats will suffer a huge loss in the November elections if they fail "to reform Washington."

After 50 years of suspicions over the cursed bread of the French village of Pont-Saint-Esprit and its people's hallucinations, a journalist found CIA in the background of the tragedy.

In summer 1951, the whole quiet village of Pont-Saint-Esprit in southern France was suddenly and mysteriously affected by psychosis and hallucinations among its residents.

Brazil has urged the US to quickly start negotiations to settle a trade dispute between the two countries over US cotton subsidies.

President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva on Wednesday called on US President Barack Obama to swiftly start talks on the row. He said Brazil expected Washington to respect the decisions of the World Trade Organization (WTO).

Chile will swear in the government of President-elect Sebastian Pinera on Thursday amid efforts to reconstruct the country's quake-ruined regions.

The new administration under rightist Pinera will terminate 20 years of popular leftists' governance in Santiago.

The US House of Representatives has rejected an effort by anti-war lawmakers to force a withdrawal of all US troops from Afghanistan by the end of the year.

On Wednesday, Sixty-five lawmakers, most of them Democrats, voted for the pullout resolution, while 356 voted against.

US President Barack Obama has acknowledged that many Americans no longer believe in his administration and US governments in general.

Obama admitted that people are deeply suspicious of the administration which came to power on a hope and change platform.

US President Barack Obama said on Wednesday that Iran's policies were against US national interests, adding that Washington will keep existing sanctions against Tehran in force.

In a letter to the Congress of the United States, President Obama informed lawmakers about his decision to make the National Emergency on Iran, which will be expired on March 15, saying that the emergency will continue in effect for one year.

The US Treasury Department reports a budget deficit of 221 billion dollars, the highest in 17 months as spending increased to help revive the ailing economy.

The excess of spending over revenue increased to $221 billion last month, compared to a shortfall of $194 billion in February 2009, according to Treasury Department figures released on Wednesday.