The Public Observer offers a look at upcoming news next week and presents a pictorial roundup of recent images from The Associated Press.
SOTOMAYOR CONFIRMATION HEARINGS
President Barack Obama's nominee to the Supreme Court, Sonia Sotomayor, will go before members of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee starting Monday when her confirmation hearing begins. The judiciary committee has released a witness list for the confirmation hearings that includes: former Major League Baseball pitcher David Cone, former FBI director Louis Freeh and Michael Bloomberg, the mayor of New York. Sotomayor has been practicing for weeks for the confirmation hearings by undergoing mock questioning from allies.
NABUCCO PIPELINE
The prime ministers of Turkey, Austria, Bulgaria, Romania and Hungary are scheduled to sign an agreement Monday that will allow the U.S.-backed Nabucco pipeline to pass through their territory. The private pipeline project, which will lessen Europe's dependence on Russian gas, involves investments of about $10.3 billion and will run from the Caspian Sea to Austria. The pipeline is expected to be operational by 2015.
CLIMATE CHANGE
The U.S. Senate next week will take up a sweeping energy bill recently passed by the House of Representatives that includes mandatory caps on greenhouse gas emissions. The House narrowly passed the bill last month and some serious politicking will occur in the Senate over the cap on emissions and other issues, such as offshore drilling. Obama has been pressing other countries, including China, to act on climate change and passage of an energy bill domestically would give him more political clout on the world stage.
PICTORIAL ROUNDUP
Here's a look at recent photographs provided by The Associated Press.
Yemenis gather Monday to watch the public execution of a barber who was found guilty of raping and killing an 11-year-old boy who came to his shop for a haircut. A Yemeni soldier is shown standing over the man after shooting him four times in front of the central prison in San'a, Yemen. According to the Saba news agency, the barber was arrested in December 2008 and confessed during a January trial to raping the boy inside his salon, killing him and cutting his body to pieces before dumping it outside San'a. (AP Photo)
A firefighting helicopter makes a water drop Wednesday on a brush fire near the Getty Center art complex in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Nick Ut)
Animal rights activists with their bodies covered in blood and wearing fake ''banderillas,'' barbed darts, lay on the ground Sunday during a protest in Pamplona, prior to start the nine day at San Fermin Festival on Monday in Pamplona, northern Spain. (AP Photo/Alvaro Barrientos)
Sri Lankan fishermen, also known locally as stick fishermen, sit perched on stilts fixed into the ocean floor Wednesday as they fish in Koggala area, south of Galle, Sri Lanka. (AP Photo/Gurinder Osan)
Odin, a white Bengal tiger, dives for a piece of meat Thursday at the opening of the new Odin's Temple of the Tiger exhibit at Six Flags Discovery Kingdom in Vallejo, Calif. (AP photo/Russel A. Daniels)
An estimated 80,000 fans attended the official presentation of Portuguese soccer player Cristiano Ronaldo as a new player for Real Madrid on Monday at the Santiago Bernabeu stadium in Madrid. (AP Photo/Narci Cuervo)
Supporters of Honduras' ousted President Manuel Zelaya are seen through the holes of a graffiti stencil made in the likeness of Zelaya during a roadblock protest Thursday on the outskirts of Tegucigalpa, Honduras. Honduras' army seized Zelaya and flew him out of the country on June 28 after the courts and Congress accused him of violating the constitution. (AP Photo/Esteban Felix)
--Paul Chavez, Clear365 News Editor
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