Gates of Vienna News Feed 12/21/2010

The United States Senate voted 67 to 28 to clear the “New Start” arms control treaty for a final vote, so that the treaty is all but certain to be ratified. Eleven Republicans joined with the Democrats to vote in favor of it. Sen. John Kerry hailed the vote as an important step towards drastically reducing the danger of nuclear weapons.

In other news, the Chinese commerce minister says his country is “very concerned” about Europe’s debt crisis. As well it should be — China holds a massive amount of euro-denominated debt. Meanwhile, Citibank says that there will be more bank failures in Europe in the new year, and probably also bailouts for Portugal and Spain.

To see the headlines and the articles, open the full news post.

Thanks to C. Cantoni, Caroline Glick, DF, DL, Fjordman, Gaia, Insubria, JD, McR, Nilk, Vlad Tepes, and all the other tipsters who sent these in.

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Caveat: Articles in the news feed are posted “as is”. Gates of Vienna cannot vouch for the authenticity or accuracy of the contents of any individual item posted here. We check each entry to make sure it is relatively interesting, not patently offensive, and at least superficially plausible. The link to the original is included with each item’s title. Further research and verification are left to the reader.