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Rolling out broadband and putting more computers in schools will be pieces of a massive economic recovery package proposed by U.S. President-elect Barack Obama, he has announced.

Obama, in a radio address Saturday, told listeners that he will push for the largest government-funded infrastructure program since the Interstate highway system in the 1950s as a way to stimulate the struggling U.S. economy. Obama’s radio address was short on details, but the program could cost hundreds of billions of dollars.

Obama’s plan will include funds to make public buildings more energy efficient, repair roads and bridges and modernize schools. His plan for schools is to repair aging buildings, make them energy efficient and install new computers in classrooms, he said. “To help our children compete in a 21st century economy, we need to send them to 21st century schools,” Obama said in the address.

The plan will also include rolling out broadband, both to places where it isn’t available and to health-care facilities, Obama said. It is “unacceptable” that the U.S. ranks 15th in the world in broadband adoption, according to Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), he said.

“Here, in the country that invented the Internet, every child should have the chance to get online, and they’ll get that chance when I’m president — because that’s how we’ll strengthen America’s competitiveness in the world,” he said.

Some conservative think tanks have disputed the OECD’s numbers.

Obama also called for hospitals to be connected to each other through the Internet. Modernizing the U.S. health-care system “won’t just save jobs, it will save lives,” he said. “We will make sure that every doctor’s office and hospital in this country is using cutting edge technology and electronic medical records so that we can cut red tape, prevent medical mistakes, and help save billions of dollars each year.”

Free Press, a media reform advocacy group, praised Obama for including broadband in the stimulus package.

“In our 21st-century society, having a connection to a fast and affordable Internet is no longer a luxury — it’s a public necessity,” Josh Silver, executive director of Free Press, said in a statement. “Right now, more than 40 percent of American homes are not connected to broadband. This digital divide isn’t just costing us our ranking as global Internet leader — its costing us jobs and money at a time when both are urgently needed.”

Seafaring countries have agreed new sulphur limits for ship fuels that will slash air pollutants and help clean up the oceans but will raise costs for the oil and ship sectors, a maritime industry source said on Friday.

Governments agreed the measures, which will sharply cut harmful sulphur dioxide (SO2) emissions from ships through a staggered timetable to 2015, at a London meeting of the 168-member U.N. International Maritime Organisation (IMO) late on Thursday.

“It’s a very significant agreement because it means that there will be substantial reductions in the emissions of harmful sulphur by ships,” Simon Bennett, secretary at the International Chamber of Shipping, told Reuters.

“There is going to be much greater demand in the use of distillate fuels, particularly in the years running up to 2015,” he said.

Distillate fuels such as diesel are much less polluting than the heavy residual fuel oil now widely burned in ships.

The week-long talks also tackled how best to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide, either by imposing a fuel tax or including shipping in a cap and trade scheme forcing owners to buy permits to emit the greenhouse gas.

By late on Friday, however, no decision had been made on global warming gases, industry sources at the meeting said.

TOUGH TARGETS

Through the IMO, which governs shipping, countries agreed to cut sulphur limits in so-called special Sulphur Emission Control Areas (SECA) to 0.1 percent by 2015 from the current 1.5 percent.

Worldwide, excluding SECA, the sulphur content limit is 4.5 percent.

The tightening is needed to curb toxic sulphur emissions along coastlines where they have been a major health hazard, especially in heavily populated areas.

In the protected SECA zones, by 2010 sulphur will be limited to just 1 percent.

Some two-thirds of the movements of the 50,000-strong merchant fleet, which carries 90 percent of the world’s traded goods by volume, are in coastal areas.

There are now only two SECA — the North Sea and the Baltic — but it is expected that European Union countries, the United States, Japan, Singapore and Australia will be declared SECA by 2015.

In tandem with the SECA targets, the industry agreed to cut SO2 spewed out globally, including in the middle of the ocean, to 0.5 percent by 2025 from the current 4.5 percent.

Bennett said that the ambitious targets, first formally aired in April, would probably cost the oil and shipping industry billions of dollars to implement.

They could also raise the price of road transport fuels as the industry switches from heavy fuel oil to distillates.

“The big question will be whether or not the oil refining industry will be able to deliver this new demand for distillate that is going to be created for shipping,” Bennett said.

Karl Rove, the man credited with getting President Bush elected twice, has warned both Democrats and Republicans that they are making a mistake by using advertising to attack their respective candidates.Political strategist Karl Rove said Obama may not have consciously wanted to attribute Palin with porcine traits when he used the “lipstick on a pig” analogy to describe the McCain campaign’s policies, but it sure looked like “a deliberate slap” at the Alaska governor.

“The only time this word has intruded in recent months in the campaign was in her, you know, self-deprecating remark at the convention. So for him to use the lipstick remark less than two weeks after she used it struck me as too much of a coincidence not to have been a deliberate attack,” Rove told “FOX News Sunday.”

The ex-White House deputy chief of staff also said Obama is fair in suggesting that McCain is a longtime Washington insider - since McCain has been in Congress since 1982 - but went over the line in attacking the Republican candidate as out of touch because he doesn’t send e-mail or use a computer.

Without specifying, Rove said McCain’s campaign has also gone “one step too far” in some of its ads by attributing to Obama some criticisms that don’t meet “the 100-percent-truth test.”

Rove said that the campaigns don’t have to tell 100 percent of the tale when trying to score points but they do have to be careful about claims that are flat out wrong.

Obama’s campaign responded to the Rove interviewing by saying if Rove calls McCain’s ads over the top, it must be true.

Despite skyrocketing inflation, millions of Malayalis across the Gulf prepared to celebrate Onam, the traditional harvest festival, that falls Friday.Shops and supermarkets were filled with customers buying traditional items like plantain leaves, vegetables, sweets, dry fruits, jewellery, and decorative items.

‘We have managed to procure vegetables that people seek during Oman,’ manager at a branch of the City Supermarket chain here told IANS.

‘People are buying vegetables like velar, paravalam and siniguard from our shelves,’ he added.

But, rice has been a problem, he added.

‘Because of the Indian government’s ban on the export of non-basmati rice, we have not been able to get ponya rice which is so much in demand during Onam,’ he said.

Similarly, the supply of matta or parboiled rice from India has been severely hit in Qatar this year.

Malayalis in that Gulf nation complained that they have not been able to procure this variety of rice and what was available was way too expensive.

Local media reports put the price of matta, which was 5.50 Qatari riyals (Rs.69) a kg last month at QR11 (Rs.137) a kg now.

‘This is because of the unaffordable and unreasonable price of Indian parboiled rice varieties,’ a shopkeeper in Doha told the Gulf Times.

In such circumstances, people are being compelled to buy Thai varieties of parboiled rice, which are priced between QR29 (Rs.362) and QR40 (Rs.500) for a bag of five kilos.

Restaurants and airline operators are also making special arrangements to mark the harvest festival of Kerala.

Oman’s national carrier Oman Airways is laying out a special Onam menu to be served on board all its flights to Kerala in the course of the festival.

The airline will serve Onam Sadhya (Onam feast) on board its flights from Muscat to Trivandrum, Calicut and Kochi.

‘The passengers will be served breakfast, which apart from the usual assorted juices as starters, will include fried banana with coconut and jaggery, ethakka upperi (banana chips) and sarkkara vartti (fried plantain in jaggery),’ the airline’s senior manager for sales, Abdulrazaq bin Juma Al Raisi, said in a statement.

The main course, he said, would comprise steamed coconut appam, vegetable stew and sujian and coconut chutney, followed by ada pradhaman.

Restaurants too are laying out elaborate packages though on a limited scale.

A vast majority of the over 4.8-million expatriate Indians in the six Gulf nations of Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) hail from Kerala.

Angry residents wailed and protested as rescuers in northern China kept hunting on Wednesday for dozens of victims feared trapped by a deluge of mud after a reservoir for mine waste collapsed, killing more than 50 people.State media reported late on Tuesday that searchers had confirmed 56 dead after heavy rain triggered Monday’s collapse of the holding pond at the Tashan mine in Shanxi province.

But news reports and some local officials have suggested the thick mud and sand that blanketed hundreds of metres could hold more dead, possibly a hundred or more.

Dozens of friends and relatives hoping for news of people feared trapped were kept away from the site by police. Many of the dead were apparently migrant workers from southwest China.

Some relatives and friends of the missing accused officials of incompetence and indifference.

“It’s not because of the rain. It wasn’t a natural disaster, it was man-made,” said a migrant worker surnamed Zhang, who said his friend was probably killed.

“Whole families have gone. So many are dead. Why aren’t you digging out our relatives?” a middle-aged woman, Zheng Xiongmei, screamed at a local official.

The official answered, “We are also very sad. We’re doing our best. Don’t cry. We are arranging compensation.”

Locals said residents from seven nearby villages had crowded at a marketplace that was buried by the collapsed reservoir, the Beijing News reported.

The Chinese government took extraordinary steps to ensure the nation was trouble-free throughout the Beijing Olympic Games in August. But this disaster, the first big accident since then, is a reminder that the country’s mines often remain deadly places.

By Wednesday morning the rain that had earlier hampered rescuers had eased. More than 1,100 police, firefighters and villagers have been hunting for survivors, according to state media. But hopes appeared dim of finding any more two days after the disaster.

Officials have blamed reckless mining in this polluted region that is scattered with small mines and smelters.

“They knew about that reservoir and did nothing,” cried one woman, trying to get past the police cordon to the mudslide. She said seven relatives were missing, including her husband.

China’s mining industry is the world’s most dangerous, killing nearly 3,800 people last year, as high demand for raw materials from a booming economy pushes managers to cut safety corners.

Most victims are coal miners. But strong iron ore demand has encouraged miners to dig up even low-grade ore, often with little regard for safety or the environment.

A Slovak tour bus crashed Sunday on a highway in Croatia, killing 14 people and leaving two in a critical condition, a Slovak official said.The bus with 49 passengers swerved off the Zagreb-Split highway near the mountain town of Gospic and slammed straight-on into an overpass concrete pillar shortly before 6 a.m., spokesman for the Slovak Interior Ministry Erik Tomas said.

The passengers, mostly elder vacationers, were on the way from the eastern Slovak city of Kosice to Vodice, a resort town on the central Adriatic coast, he said.

Rescue and medical teams, including airborne paramedic crews, rushed to the scene, roughly halfway between the capital Zagreb and Split, the country’s major Adriatic port.

Nineteen people, including two in a critical condition, were treated in hospitals in Gospic and Zagreb, Slovak officials said.

The cause of the accident was not immediately known.

Thailand’s embattled leader struggled to keep the peace and his grip on power Tuesday after declaring a state of emergency that was openly flouted by thousands of anti-government protesters in the capital.

While Prime Minister Samak Sundaravej sought to tamp down newly violent unrest pitting pro- and anti-government protesters, he also was hit by an electoral commission finding that could disband his party and bar him from politics.

Samak said he had no choice but to impose emergency rule in Bangkok after a week of political tensions exploded into overnight rioting and street fighting between the largely prosperous urban protesters and government supporters, mainly from the country’s impoverished rural majority. The fighting left one person dead and dozens injured.

His decree gives the military the right to restore order, allows authorities to suspend civil liberties, bans public gatherings of more than five people and bars the media from reporting news that “causes panic.”

Samak and the army chief, Gen. Anupong Paochinda, both said authorities viewed emergency rule as a last resort and stressed they wanted to avoid violence.

“I did it to solve the problems of the country,” Samak said in a televised news conference at a military headquarters in Bangkok. “I had no other choice. The softest means available was an emergency decree to end the situation using the law.”

At a separate news conference, Anupong said troops in Bangkok’s streets will be armed only with riot shields and batons.

“If the military has to get involved, it will not use force and will be on the people’s side,” Anupong said. He dismissed speculation the army was positioning itself to seize power again, less than two years after a 2006 coup.

“If the military uses force to stage a coup, it will create a lot more problems,” the general said.

Tensions remained high as thousands of protesters who are demanding Samak’s resignation defied the ban on assembly by staying camped out at the prime minister’s official compound, known as Government House, which they seized seven days earlier.

As a precaution, City Hall ordered 435 public schools closed for three days, while some international private schools opted to shut for a week. The U.S. and other nations warned their citizens of the danger of violence in the capital.

By nightfall, there was no sign of renewed clashes or any attempt to evict the protesters. But the festive atmosphere of recent days had evaporated. Families and children were mostly gone and helmet-clad protesters armed with sticks patrolled the grounds.

“It’s a temporary lull and a new storm is gathering,” said Thitinan Pongsidhirak, a political scientist at Bangkok’s Chulalongkorn University.

Samak’s “back is against the wall,” Thitinan said. “If he enforces the emergency decree, there will be violence because the (protesters) are not budging. But if he doesn’t enforce it, there is a sense of anarchy rule. It’s a lose-lose situation for Samak.”

Some anti-government groups taunted authorities by threatening to switch off water and electricity at police stations and other government offices Wednesday.

A labor federation for state employees said 200,000 of its members would go on strike to support the protesters. Their walkout could disrupt train, bus and air service and cut electricity and water to some government buildings, said Sawit Kaewwan, secretary-general of the State Enterprise Workers Relations Confederation, which comprises 43 unions for state employees.

Yet another challenge confronted Samak when the Election Commission recommended Tuesday that his People’s Power Party be disbanded for fraud during elections last year. Samak and other party leaders would be banned from politics for five years if judicial authorities upheld the ruling, though other members could form a new party and retain power by winning new elections.

Democracy in Thailand has a history of fragility, with the military staging 18 coups since the country became a constitutional monarchy in 1932. Samak’s faceoff with anti-government protesters is only the latest conflict in two years of political tumult.

The group behind the anti-Samak protests, the People’s Alliance for Democracy, formed in 2006 to demand the resignation of then-Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, eventually paving the way for the bloodless coup that ousted him. Thaksin, a telecommunications tycoon, recently fled to Britain to escape corruption charges.

Many of the same allegations behind the uprising against Thaksin — corruption, stifling the media and the ruling party’s buying votes from the rural poor with cash and other benefits — dominate the protests against Samak, who led Thaksin’s allies to victory in last December’s election.

Despite its name, the alliance — a mix of royalists, wealthy and middle-class urban residents, and union activists — argues Western-style democracy doesn’t work for Thailand. It says the ballot box gives too much weight to the impoverished rural majority, who the alliance says are susceptible to vote buying that breeds corruption. It wants most lawmakers appointed rather than elected.

The prime minister has repeatedly insisted he will not bow to demands that he step down.

Samak gave no timeframe for how long emergency rule would be in effect but predicted it would be over “moderately quickly.”

Thailand woke up Tuesday to jarring television images of bloody overnight street battles in which protesters from both sides fought with sticks, knives and slingshots.

Government supporters first scuffled with police, then clashed with anti-Samak protesters. One person, identified as a 55-year-old man, died from head injuries and nine others were hospitalized, at least three with gunshot wounds, the Health Ministry said.

Both sides dispersed after Samak deployed soldiers with riot gear — but no guns. The troops quickly withdrew from the streets, and pro-Samak activists said later in the day that they were leaving Bangkok to respect the emergency rule decree, Channel 9 television reported.

Inside the Government House compound, now crowded with tents, portable toilets and sleeping mats, one of the protest leaders, Chamlong Srimuang, remained defiant.

“We will stay and fight!” he told protesters. “Stay calm. Don’t fear. … Can you be brave a little longer to save our country?”

One of the protesters, 66-year-old Kaewta Singhasaenee, said she was bracing for new clashes.

“If they come, I won’t run,” she said, clutching a bamboo rod and a helmet. “I love my country. I’m an old lady but I’m strong.”

Young Americans studying Arabic like to joke that Jordan is “Middle East Lite” — a safe way into a tumultuous region without Lebanon’s violence, Syria’s tense relationship with the U.S. or the Gulf’s conservative culture.

Drawn by that reputation, an increasing number of Americans interested in Arabic have been flocking to Jordan.

The capital, Amman, lacks much of the history and color that attract Americans to Cairo, the most popular destination for foreign students who want to learn Arabic. But Amman comes without the air pollution and crowds that plague Egypt’s capital. It also feels more Western with its clean streets and numerous American shops and fast-food restaurants.

“I’ve traveled to Morocco but not to the heart of the Middle East, and Jordan was that good entry point,” said Liza Hester, an Arabic student from Maine’s Colby College.

She speculated that places like Egypt and Yemen would be more difficult to navigate and said her college would not give her credit for Arabic classes taken in countries on the U.S. State Department’s travel advisory list, such as Syria and Lebanon.

Jordan, perhaps best known as home of the ancient red rock city of Petra, has generally been safe for foreigners despite an occasional flare-up in violence. A Palestinian gunman wounded six people outside a popular Roman amphitheater in Amman earlier this summer, while triple hotel blasts claimed by al-Qaida in Iraq killed 63 people in 2005.

But such attacks have done little to damage Jordan’s image as a placid island of stability.

Amman has also become a doorstep to neighboring Iraq: Construction has boomed with Iraqi investments and Iraqi refugees have flooded in. Westerners traveling to Baghdad or using the Jordanian capital as a base for operations in the wartorn country are also common.

Still, Amman remains far sleepier than other Arab capitals.

“Amman is like the Kansas City of the Middle East,” Kelly Nau, a 26-year-old Los Angeles native who came to Jordan to work as a nurse, said between puffs from a waterpipe at one of the city’s stylish cafes.

It may not have the “allure of Damascus, Beirut or Jerusalem,” but, Nau adds: “It is stable.”

More than 300 Americans are expected to study Arabic at the University of Jordan in the fall, making up over half of this year’s class of 600 students.

The size of the program has tripled since the Sept. 11 attacks in the United States, said Tawfiq Omar, the academic adviser for foreigners learning Arabic at the university.

It is the largest of more than 30 Arabic language programs offered in Jordan. Many charge about $2,000 per year in tuition — less than the cost of many programs in countries like Egypt and Syria, which have also seen an increase in Arabic language students from the U.S. since the 2001 attacks.

For some, the cheap tuition means money left over to party in Amman’s nightclubs and Irish pubs. Others get jobs waiting tables in the city’s restaurants or write English speeches for Jordanian officials to pay the bills.

Jordan’s moderate government has encouraged Americans to visit the country, hoping the exchange will reduce misconceptions about the Middle East. The country’s youthful Queen Rania launched a Web site on YouTube earlier this year devoted to breaking down negative stereotypes of Arabs and Muslims.

“I want the people to know the real Arab world, unedited, unscripted, unfiltered,” said the queen in one of her videos.

The Jordanian government’s moderate politics has made the country a sort of diplomatic “Middle East Lite” for the U.S. as well.

Jordan, which signed a peace deal with Israel in 1994, is one of America’s most reliable allies in the region and rarely adopts controversial positions on issues such as the Israeli-Palestinian crisis or the Iraq war.

A large number of Jordanians in Amman speak at least a little English, which makes the transition easier for Americans who come to the country to learn Arabic for the first time. Also, many signs in the country are posted in both English and Arabic.

Even the country’s summer weather is fairly moderate, a rarity in a region where temperatures regularly soar above 100 degrees Fahreinheit.

“The lovely climate is the main reason I came here. But the people are also very welcoming,” said Mariam Shaheed, a Texas native who came to Amman over the summer to improve her Arabic.

Nigerian President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua has been in a Saudi hospital for several days, a hospital official said on Sunday, as his government insisted he was in good health.

Yar’Adua has been at the King Fahd Armed Forces Hospital in the Red Sea city of Jeddah, the administrative official told AFP without specifying his medical condition or the treatment he is undergoing.

Saudi military police were seen guarding the hospital, which is run by the Saudi defence ministry and where ruling family members and senior officials are usually treated.

Two Nigerian independent dailies said on Saturday that Yar’Adua, 57, is believed to have undergone surgery in Saudi Arabia.

Nigerian authorities have denied the president is out of the country to seek medical attention, saying he is on a religious pilgrimage.

Yar’Adua left Nigeria around 10 days ago for the Muslim lesser hajj, or umrah, which is performed in Mecca in Saudi Arabia, according to the government.

Nigeria’s government on Sunday again sought to dispel speculation over the president’s health, saying he is well and fit to run Africa’s most populous nation.

“The federal government wishes to restate here that Mr President is very well and healthy,” said Information Minister John Odey.

“He is in good health to steer the affairs of the state to bring about better livelihood for the generality of the people of Nigeria,” Odey said in a statement to the media.

Odey said the head of state is expected back in Nigeria “soon after his trip to Saudi Arabia where he has gone on lesser hajj”.

The Action Congress (AC), one of Nigeria’s leading opposition parties, meanwhile criticised the government “for feeding the public with deliberate lies” on the president’s health.

“What should have earned the president the sympathy and prayers of his countrymen and women has again become a matter for wild speculations,” AC spokesman Lai Mohammed said in a statement.

Russia’s president said Sunday his country will give military aid to the two separatist regions at the center of the war with Georgia — signaling Moscow has no intention of backing down in the face of Western pressure.

Dmitry Medvedev also warned that American domination of world affairs is unacceptable, though he insisted that Russia did not want hostile relations with the United States and other Western nations.

Medvedev’s decision Tuesday to recognize the Georgian breakaway provinces South Ossetia and Abkhazia as independent drew condemnation from the West. Though no other countries have followed Russia’s lead, Medvedev reaffirmed the decision on Sunday.

“We have made our decision, and it’s irreversible,” he said in a speech broadcast on Russian television.

The war began Aug. 7 when Georgian forces began heavy shelling of the South Ossetian capital, Tskhinvali, hoping to retake control of the province. Russian forces poured in, pushed the Georgians out in a matter of days and then drove deep into Georgia proper.

European Union leaders planned an emergency meeting Monday to discuss how to deal with an increasingly assertive Russia, but they are not expected to impose sanctions. Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has angrily warned Europe not to do America’s bidding and said Moscow does not fear Western sanctions.

Medvedev said Sunday the world would be more stable if the U.S. was less dominant.

“The world must be multi-polar; domination is unacceptable,” he said. “We can’t accept the world order where all decisions are made by one nation, even by such serious and authoritative nation as the United States. Such a world would be unstable and prone to conflicts.”

Still he insisted Russia does not want to distance itself too much from the West.

“Russia doesn’t want to isolate itself,” he said.

Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili said the EU summit was a sign of a strong global support for Georgia.

“Russia today has found itself more isolated than the Soviet Union ever was,” he said in a televised statement.

Georgia asked the EU and the U.S. to impose sanctions on companies and individuals that do business in Abkhazia and South Ossetia without its permission.

Medvedev said Russia was preparing to sign deals with the two provinces that will detail Moscow’s obligations on economic, military and other assistance to them. He said the agreements will lay the foundation for “allied” relations.

“We will provide all kinds of assistance to these republics,” Medvedev said. “These international agreements will spell out our obligations on providing support and assistance: economic, social, humanitarian and military.”

Medvedev also said Russia will protect what he called its “privileged” interests in the former Soviet nations and defend its citizens and the interests of its businessmen abroad.

He said Russia may consider economic sanctions against unfriendly nations, but would like to avoid it.

Medvedev’s predecessor and mentor Putin cautioned European nations against adopting the tough U.S. stance on Russia and “serving someone else’s political interests.” Speaking to Russian television Sunday, Putin voiced hope that the Europeans will “look out for their own skins.”

Putin, who was speaking during a visit to Russia’s far eastern region, said Russia will diversify its energy exports and expand sales to booming Asian markets. His comments appeared to be a response to British Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s call in an article published Sunday for Europe to adopt a united energy policy and avoid dependence on Russia.

Russia supplies the EU with about a third of its oil and about two-fifths of its natural gas, and can turn off the tap if it chooses.

Putin said, however, that Russia’s plans to expand energy exports to Asia doesn’t mean that it would cut supplies to European markets.

“We aren’t going to impose any restrictions. We will fulfill our contract obligations,” Putin said. “But we will expand and diversify our opportunities in exporting hydrocarbons. The global economy, and, particularly, the rapidly growing Pacific region, need that.”

Georgia has severed diplomatic ties with Moscow to protest the presence of Russian troops on its territory. It claims, as does the West, that Russia is violating an EU-brokered cease-fire mandating that both sides return their forces to prewar positions. Russia has interpreted one of the agreement’s clauses as allowing them to remain in security zones, now marked by Russian checkpoints.

Georgia appears likely to be hosting tens of thousands of refugees for a grindingly long and expensive time. How much aid the small and struggling country will need to support them is to be among the top issues of the EU summit on Monday.

The United States has sent substantial aid to Georgia following the war, using naval ships and military aircraft. Russian officials speculated that the United States was trying to restore Georgia’s armed forces, which had received massive military aid from Washington in recent years.