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Nobel Laureate Says Conflicts Can Be Resolved
"We need to untie the Middle East knot," a Nobel laureate and former president of Finland told a Press Club luncheon April 7, and said we must begin by untying the "Israeli-Hamas knot." Martti Ahtisaari, president of Finland from 1994 to 2000 and winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in 2008, said the international community has the "right and responsibility" to settle the Israeli-Hamas conflict. "Americans have the ability to correct their mistakes," he said, but Europeans don't always have what he described as "such vigorous debate." He noted that the U.S. played "a central role in establishing…
Type: News
Authors Discuss New Baseball Books
Paul Dickson and Allen Barra formed an entertaining baseball doubleheader Tuesday evening, April 7. Dickson, a long time NPC member, discussed his book, the third edition of "The Dickson Baseball Dictionary," and Barra, a sportswriter for the Wall Street Journal with his book, "Yogi Berra, Eternal Yankee." Dickson described the genesis of his dictionary series. The first one came out in 1984 after his son asked, “Why do they call it a bunt?” (You’ll have to buy the book to find out why!) From this first edition with 3,000 entries, it now has 10,000 in which you can learn the origins of "…
Type: News
Iceland Rebounding from Financial Crisis, Finance Minister Says
After leading an April 6 Newsmaker through the events leading up to -- and causing Iceland to be one of countries hardest hit by -- the global financial crisis, that Atlantic island nation's minister of business affairs explained what it is doing to recover and said, "the outlook is not all that bad." Gylfi Magnusson, a former reporter with an economics doctorate from Yale, said Iceland's economic recovery measures include reorganizing not just what he conceded was "not a very well developed banking system," but the entire financial sector of the economy as well. "Not all of this is going to…
Type: News
A Plan to Keep the Club Thriving; Read it Here, Vote on May 8
The National Press Club Strategic Planning Committee has completed its two-year effort to develop a blueprint for the Club for the next five years. The strategic plan, called "Preserving and Growing the World's Leading Professional Organization for Journalists," aims to ensure improved journalism training, continued excellent restaurant and bar service, better governance and financial stability at the Club through the middle of 2014. The plan won the unanimous approval of the Board of Governors Strategic Planning Committee this week. "It's simple: The Club needs to think ahead -- to prepare…
Type: News
IRS Presses Off-shore Tax Havens, Commissioner Says
With millions of Americans are facing job losses and the threat of foreclosure — and just two days before the April 15 income tax filing deadline — IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman told the luncheon audience, “In today’s economic environment, it’s more important than ever that the American public feels confident that individuals and corporations are playing by the rules and paying the taxes they owe.” He said the IRS has been turning up the pressure on off-shore financial institutions that help U.S. citizens conceal taxable income. “We are breaking down the much vaunted veil of secrecy,” said…
Type: News
Tips on Covering Congress for Int'l Journalists
The International Correspondents Committee had its largest turnout of the year for its monthly meeting Tuesday when 40 Club members and guests, including foreign correspondents from Asia, South Asia, the Middle East, Europe and South America, came to hear former NPC President Sylvia Smithgive tips about covering Congress. Smith said foreign correspondents need to accept the fact that members of Congress rate speaking to international media representatives at the low end of their priorities for press coverage -- after first dealing with media from their hometowns, their states and the…
Type: News
Fran Drescher's Powerful Role: Health Advocate for Women
I am not glad that I got cancer, but I am better for it,” Fran Drescher, the award-winning actress told the luncheon audience Tuesday. Drescher, State Department special envoy for women's health, was in DC to promote her non-profit organization, Cancer Schmancer, which is also the title of her 2003 New York Times best-selling book. The writer, director, co-producer,and star of the CBS television series "The Nanny," Drescher was diagnosed with uterine cancer in 2001. It had taken several years and eight doctors to find the tumor. Because it went undiagnosed for so long, the disease had…
Type: News
IMF Director Predicts Economic Recovery by July 2010
Dominique Strauss-Kahn, managing director of the International Monetary Fund, predicted recovery from the global economic crisis during the first half of 2010, provided “right policies” were enacted. He spoke at the Club April 16. His necessary policies include financial sector reform and regulation, global stimulus spending and aid to emerging economies. He approved the U.S. plan for addressing banks and the stimulus plan agreed upon for 2009 at the G20 meeting earlier this month. The G20 meeting supported the IMF by pledging $500 billion in potential loans from central banks, in addition…
Type: News
Balloons Become Rabbits at Annual Magic Night
Coins from the air and from a child’s body. A boy sliced in half when a strap passed through his body. “Abe Lincoln” helped produce an American flag. A crew member from the Starship Enterprise “beamed” into a tiny glass bottle. A rabbit appeared where a balloon had been, and NPC General Manager Bill McCarren lost his coat to a woman who was completely tied up. These were some of the scenes at Wednesday night’s free magic show with members of the Society of American Magician’s Larry West Assembly. The assembly has been entertaining Club members and guests for decades as a way of…
Type: News
Samuelson Links Today's Economy to Inflation's Ups and Downs
Robert J. Samuelson, columnist for Newsweek and The Washington Post, tied the rise of inflation and its demise from 1960 to the 2000s to the present economic crisis in a speech at the Club April 21. He referred to his 2008 book, “The Great Inflation and Its Aftermath,” citing its thesis that the rise and fall of inflation was the major economic event of the last half century. He called that rise and fall “more important than globalization and the Internet.” He noted that inflation rose from 1 percent per year in 1960 to 13 percent in the 1980s and then declined in the 1980s and has remained…
Type: News