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Microsoft Corp.'s fiscal third-quarter net income fell 32% amid weakness in the global personal computer market, as the software giant also recorded $710 million in charges.
The software giant reported its quarterly revenue fell from the previous year for the first time in its 23-year history as a public company, as it struggled with lower sales in four of its five
WASHINGTON (AP) — Worse-than-expected news on U.S. unemployment and home sales Thursday dampened optimism that a broad economic recovery might be near.
The Labor Department said initial claims for unemployment compensation rose to a seasonally adjusted 640,000, up from a revised 613,000 the previous week. That was slightly more than analysts' expectations of 635,000.
Economists are closely watching the unemployment compensation data because they believe a sustained decline in the number of initial claims could signal the end of the recession is nearing. Jobless claims have historically peaked six to 10 weeks before recessions end, according to a report by Goldman Sachs. Initial claims reflect job cuts by employers.
But the latest report shows job losses remain high. The four-week average of claims, which smooths out volatility, dropped slightly to 646,750, about 12,000 below the peak in early April. Goldman Sachs economists have said a decline of 30,000 to 40,000 in the four-week average is needed to signal a peak.
Abiel Reinhart, economist at JPMorgan Chase Bank, said further declines in the four-week average "would show that our forecast for a resumption of economic growth in (the third quarter) is reasonable."
Other economists said that despite the bigger-than-expected rise in new jobless claims, the range has remained mostly steady for about two months. That's a signal that the pace of layoffs may be leveling off.
But in another sign of labor market weakness, the number of people continuing to claim benefits rose to 6.13 million, setting a record for the 12th straight week.
As a proportion of the work force, the total jobless benefit rolls are the highest since January 1983. The continuing claims data lag initial claims by a week.
Meanwhile, the National Association of Realtors said home sales fell 3 percent to an annual rate of 4.57 million last month, from a downwardly revised pace of 4.71 million units in February. Sales had been expected to fall to an annual pace of 4.7 million units, according to Thomson Reuters. The median sales price plunged to $175,200, from $200,100 a year earlier, but up from $168,200 in February.
The results were "a little disappointing" given that homes are more affordable than they've been in years and mortgage rates are near record lows, said Lawrence Yun, the group's chief economist.
With unemployment rising and the mortgage crisis far from over, foreclosures and distressed sales are dominating the market — especially in California, Florida, Nevada and Arizona. The Realtors group estimates about half of sales nationwide are from foreclosures or other distressed properties. First-time homebuyers purchased about half of all homes sold last month.
A top banking regulator tried to ease some concerns, saying banks and the housing sector had passed the worst part of their downturns.
"I think we're past the crisis stage. We're in the clean up stage now," Sheila Bair, chairman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., said at a financial reform conference.
But on Wall Street, stocks turned lower after the disappointing housing figures were released. The Dow Jones industrial average lost about 60 points in midday trading, and broader indices also fell.
A year ago new jobless claims stood at 353,000, while there were 2.93 million continuing claims. The Labor Department also said an additional 2.3 million people were receiving benefits under an extended unemployment compensation program enacted by Congress last year, as of April 4, the latest data available. That provides an additional 20 to 33 weeks on top of the 26 weeks typically provided by the states.
The high level of continuing claims is a sign that many laid-off workers are having difficulty finding new jobs.
Employers have cut 5.1 million jobs since the recession began in December 2007 in an effort to slash costs as consumers and businesses have sharply reduced spending. The department said earlier this month that companies cut a net total of 663,000 jobs in March, sending the unemployment rate to 8.5 percent, the highest in 25 years.
Based on another increase in continuing claims, Reinhart expects the unemployment rate will rise to 8.9 or 9 percent this month. Many private economists expect the monthly jobless rate will climb to 10 percent by the end of this year.
The jobless rate in the U.S. is expected to average 8.9 percent this year and climb to 10.1 percent next year, the IMF said.
The job cuts reflect the depth of the downturn, which has been global in scope. The International Monetary Fund estimated Wednesday that the global economy would shrink 1.3 percent this year, the first drop in more than six decades. The IMF projects the U.S. economy will decline 2.8 percent, the worst since 1946.
"The world economy is going through the most severe crisis in generations," Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said Wednesday.
The Obama administration is counting on its $787 billion stimulus package, enacted in February, to "save or create" 3.5 million jobs.
More job losses were announced this week. Yahoo Inc. said it will layoff 700 employees, the third round of mass layoffs this year. And oilfield services provider Halliburton Co. said it has cut 2,000 positions in the first three months of the year.
Among the states, Florida saw the largest increase in claims with 9,303 for the week ending April 11, which it attributed to more layoffs in the construction, service and manufacturing industries.
Michigan saw the largest drop in claims with 12,566, which it said was due to fewer layoffs in the automobile industry.
AP Business
WSJ: BofA CEO Lewis testifies to NY AG that Bernanke, Paulson wanted Merrill losses kept quiet
NEW YORK (AP) — Bank of America Chief Executive Kenneth Lewis told the New York attorney general he believed former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke wanted him to keep quiet about the worsening terms of the bank's acquisition of Merrill Lynch, according to testimony reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.
Senate document discloses existence of secret interrogation legal opinions
PAMELA HESS | Associated Press Writer
8:13 PM EDT, April 22, 2009
WASHINGTON (AP) — Five previously unacknowledged secret memos revealing new information about the Bush administration's interrogation policies remain hidden in government file cabinets, a Senate report disclosed Wednesday.
It's not just the memos' contents that are classified. Until Wednesday, their very existence was secret, according to the American Civil Liberties Union, which has a long-running Freedom of Information Act lawsuit to obtain all records about the interrogation program.
PAMELA HESS | Associated Press Writer
7:26 AM EDT, April 23, 2009
WASHINGTON (AP) — Senate Democratic leaders don't appear inclined to appoint an independent panel to investigate the Bush administration's interrogation program before the Senate Intelligence Committee completes its own probe near the end of the year.
The panel is investigating the legal underpinnings for the interrogation program as well as the value of the information it gathered. Republicans oppose the creation of a bipartisan commission for what they view as a backward-looking effort to vilify former President George W. Bush.
"One way or another there needs to be a public accounting of these troublesome policies," said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev. Reid said the committee inquiry "will answer a lot of the questions the American people have."
Two Senate reports issued back to back this week were meant to answer some of those questions.
A Senate Armed Services Committee report draws a direct line between the Bush administration's approval of the CIA's harsh interrogation program and the military's abuse of prisoners at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and in Afghanistan and Iraq.
The Intelligence Committee issued a newly declassified narrative of the legal guidance provided to the CIA that allowed the secret detention and interrogations to go forward.
As early as April 2002, the narrative states, the CIA sought permission to use waterboarding — a form of simulated drowning — to break the resistance of a newly captured alleged terrorist, Abu Zubaydah. Permission came that July, delivered personally by the president's national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, to CIA Director George Tenet.
Whether any Bush administration officials merit prosecution for breaking anti-torture laws will be determined by Attorney General Eric Holder, who was scheduled to go to Capitol Hill on Thursday to discuss the Justice Department budget.
Any attempt by Democrats to gain political advantage from an investigation could be tempered by a memo from National Intelligence Director Dennis Blair, who privately told employees last week that "high-value information" was obtained in interrogations that included harsh techniques, though he deemed them unacceptable and counterproductive.
Sen. John McCain, who fought the Bush administration on its harsh interrogation policies, said Thursday he thinks it would be "counterproductive" to now seek the prosecution of officials who said the tactics were legal.
McCain long has insisted that terrorism-era interrogations of suspects and detainees must strictly follow procedures outlined in the Army field manual and had to comply with the Geneva Conventions.
"I think ... if you criminalize legal advise, which is basically what they're going to do, then it has a chilling effect on any kind of advice from legal counsel that a president might see," McCain said on CBS's "The Early Show."
The Arizona Republican said that "in banana republics they prosecute people for things they didn't agree with under previous administrations. ... We've got a whole array of problems involving detainees ... Frankly, it's going to be bad for the country ... and certainly nonproductive in terms of pursuing the challenges that we face."
WASHINGTON (AP) — For the first time in years, more Americans than not say the country is headed in the right direction, a sign that Barack Obama has used the first 100 days of his presidency to lift the public's mood and inspire hopes for a brighter future.
Intensely worried about their personal finances and medical expenses, Americans nonetheless appear realistic about the time Obama might need to turn things around, according to an Associated Press-GfK poll. It shows most Americans consider their new president to be a strong, ethical and empathetic leader who is working to change Washington.
Nobody knows how long the honeymoon will last, but Obama has clearly transformed the yes-we-can spirit of his candidacy into a tool of governance. His ability to inspire confidence — Obama's second book is titled "The Audacity of Hope" — has thus far buffered the president against the harsh political realities of two wars, a global economic meltdown and countless domestic challenges.
"He presents a very positive outlook," said Cheryl Wetherington, 35, an independent voter who runs a chocolate shop in Gardner, Kan. "He's very well-spoken and very vocal about what direction should be taken."
y R. Jeffrey Smith and Peter Finn
updated 2:16 a.m. PT, Thurs., April 23, 2009
WASHINGTON - Condoleezza Rice, John D. Ashcroft and other top Bush administration officials approved as early as the summer of 2002 the CIA's use at secret prisons of harsh interrogation methods, including waterboarding, a technique that new Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. has described as illegal torture, according to a chronology prepared by the Senate intelligence committee and declassified by Holder.
At a time when the Justice Department is deciding whether former officials who set interrogation policy or formulated the legal justifications for it should be investigated for possible crimes, the timeline lists at least a dozen members of the Bush administration who were present when the CIA's director or others explained exactly which questioning techniques were to be used and how those sessions proceeded.
Rice gave a key early green light when, as President George W. Bush's national security adviser, she met on July 17, 2002, with the CIA's then-director, George J. Tenet, and "advised that the CIA could proceed with its proposed interrogation of Abu Zubaida," subject to approval by the Justice Department, according to the timeline.
Abu Zubaida, a Saudi-born Palestinian whose real name is Zayn al-Abidin Muhammed Hussein, was captured in Pakistan in March 2002. He was the first high-value detainee in CIA custody, and the agency believed that the al-Qaeda associate was "withholding imminent threat information," according to the timeline.
Rice and four other administration officials were first briefed in May 2002 on "alternative interrogation methods, including waterboarding," the timeline shows. Waterboarding is a technique that simulates drowning.
'Lawful'
A year later, in July 2003, the CIA briefed Rice, Vice President Richard B. Cheney, Attorney General Ashcroft, White House counsel Alberto R. Gonzales and National Security Council legal adviser John B. Bellinger III on the use of waterboarding and other methods, the timeline states. They "reaffirmed that the CIA program was lawful and reflected administration policy."
"This was not an abstract discussion. These were very detailed and specific conversations," said Jameel Jaffer, director of the National Security Project at the American Civil Liberties Union. "And it's further evidence of the role that senior administration officials had."
At that point, the United States had also captured Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the self-proclaimed mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, who was waterboarded 183 times in March 2003, according to recently released Justice Department documents.
Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld were not briefed on the program until September 2003, the narrative shows. "Strikingly, unless there is a further story in records not yet shown to us, the secretary of state and the secretary of defense were not involved in the decision-making process, despite the high stakes for U.S. foreign policy and for the treatment of the U.S. military," said Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.).
Reached in California, Bellinger declined to comment. Attempts to contact Ashcroft and Tenet through spokespeople were unsuccessful. Rice did not respond to an e-mail, and a spokesman for Gonzales declined to comment. The CIA also declined to comment.
Cheney has said repeatedly that the CIA program was legal and critical in breaking up a series of planned terrorist attacks. He has called on the Obama administration to declassify memos examining the effectiveness of the interrogation policies he supported.
In the fall of 2002, four senior members of Congress, including Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), now speaker of the House, were secretly briefed on interrogation techniques, including waterboarding, according to U.S. officials. Pelosi has confirmed that she was then "briefed on interrogation techniques the administration was considering using in the future. The administration advised that legal counsel for both the CIA and the Justice Department had concluded that the techniques were legal."
In early 2004, a comprehensive report by the CIA inspector general raised new questions about the program, including queries about the waterboarding of three detainees. It said the interrogations were not clearly legal under an international treaty the United States had signed known as the Convention Against Torture, which bars cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment that falls short of torture.
Safeguards
A fresh legal review by the Justice Department prompted Ashcroft to inform the CIA in writing on July 22, 2004, that its interrogation methods — except waterboarding — were legal. The following month, the head of the department's Office of Legal Counsel added that even waterboarding would be legal if it were carried out with a series of safeguards according to CIA plans. By May 2005, the department had completed two more reviews of the program that came to the same conclusion. Those were among the memos President Obama released last week.
After the leak in 2005 of a Justice Department memo that narrowly defined the type of activity that would constitute torture, Rice traveled to Europe in an effort to quell the international uproar. As her trip was getting underway, she said: "The United States government does not authorize or condone torture of detainees. Torture, and conspiracy to commit torture, are crimes under U.S. law, wherever they may occur in the world."
Rice also said at the time that the administration's policy "will be consistent" with the international convention prohibiting "cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment." A former aide said that gaining administration approval for Rice to make this statement was "a move forward."
By Associated Press
6:35 PM EDT, April 21, 2009
WEYMOUTH, Mass. (AP) — Police say a man dressed liked a ninja used a sword in an attempt to rob a Weymouth dry cleaner.
According to police, a convenience store clerk called police Monday after she noticed a man walking into the store wearing a ski mask and carrying a sword in a sheath on his belt. When the man noticed her, he pulled his mask off and asked if she was calling about him, police said.
When she said she was, police said the man left the store and walked into nearby Galaxy Cleaners.
There, police said he pointed a sword at the register and asked a clerk to give him all the money inside. Police said he left after she told him she couldn't open the drawer.
Police still are searching for the man, who witnesses said appeared to be in his late 20s.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Widening an explosive debate on torture, President Barack Obama on Tuesday opened the possibility of prosecution for Bush-era lawyers who authorized brutal interrogation of terror suspects and suggested Congress might order a full investigation.
Less than a week after declaring it was time for the nation to move on rather than "laying blame for the past," Obama found himself describing what might be done next to investigate what he called the loss of "our moral bearings."
His comments all but ensured that the vexing issue off detainee interrogation during the Bush administration will live on well into the new president's term. Obama, who severely criticized the harsh techniques during the campaign, is feeling pressure from his party's liberal wing to come down hard on the subject. At the same time, Republicans including former Vice President Dick Cheney are insisting the methods helped protect the nation and are assailing Obama for revealing Justice Department memos detailing them.
Answering a reporter's question Tuesday, Obama said it would be up to his attorney general to determine whether "those who formulated those legal decisions" behind the interrogation methods should be prosecuted. The methods, described in Bush-era memos Obama released last Thursday, included such grim and demeaning tactics as slamming detainees against walls and subjecting them to simulated drowning.
He said anew that CIA operatives who did the interrogating should not be charged with crimes because they thought they were following the law.
"I think there are a host of very complicated issues involved here," the president said. "As a general deal, I think that we should be looking forward and not backwards. I do worry about this getting so politicized that we cannot function effectively, and it hampers our ability to carry out national security operations."
Still, he suggested that Congress might set up a bipartisan review, outside its typical hearings, if it wants a "further accounting" of what happened during the period when the interrogation methods were authorized. His press secretary later said the independent Sept. 11 commission, which investigated and then reported on the terror attacks of 2001, might be a model.
The harsher methods were authorized to gain information after the 2001 attacks.
The three men facing the most scrutiny are former Justice Department officials Jay Bybee, John Yoo and Steven Bradbury. Bybee is currently a judge on the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Yoo is a professor at the University of California-Berkeley.
It might be argued that the officials were simply doing their jobs, providing legal advice for the Bush administration. However, John Strait, a law professor at Seattle University said, "I think there are a slew of potential charges."
Those could include conspiracy to commit felonies, including torture, he suggested.
Bybee also could face impeachment in Congress if lawmakers were so inclined.
A federal investigation into the memos is being conducted by the Justice Department's Office of Professional Responsibility, which usually limits itself to examining the ethical behavior of employees but whose work in rare cases leads to criminal investigations.
The chairmen of the Senate and House Judiciary committees said Tuesday they want to move ahead with previously proposed, independent commissions to examine George W. Bush's national security policies.
Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., who has referred to his proposed panel as a "Truth Commission," said, "I agree with President Obama: An examination into these Bush-Cheney era national security policies must be nonpartisan. ... Unfortunately, Republicans have shown no interest in a nonpartisan review."
Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., has proposed separate hearings by his committee in addition to an independent commission.
Over the past weekend, White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel said in a television interview the administration did not support prosecutions for "those who devised policy." White House aides say he was referring to CIA superiors who ordered the interrogations, not the Justice Department officials who wrote the legal memos allowing them.
Yet it was unclear exactly whom Obama meant in opening the door to potential prosecutions of those who "formulated the legal decisions." Press Secretary Robert Gibbs was asked if the president meant the lawyers who declared the interrogation methods legal, or the policymakers who ordered, them or both.
"I don't know the answer to that," Gibbs said during a briefing in which he was peppered with questions about the president's words. Later, he added: "The parsing of some of this is better done through a filter of the rule of law and done at the Justice Department and not done here at the White House."
When pressed about any confusion stemming from his comments and Emanuel's, Gibbs said: "Take what the president said, as I'm informed he got more votes than either of the two of us."
A number of Republicans, including former Vice President Cheney and former top intelligence officials, say Obama has undermined national security with his release of the memos on the matter. On the other side, some Democratic lawmakers, human rights groups and liberal advocates want to see punishment for those involved in sanctioning brutal interrogations — the kind they say amount to torture and have damaged U.S. standing around the world.
"Certainly, this is an attempt not just to stake a ground between the left and the right, but also to navigate through something that he would prefer not be there as an ongoing issue," said Norm Ornstein, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute
"He's walking the tightrope," Ornstein added. "You don't want to give a blanket, 'everything's OK, we're only moving forward.' And you don't want a president making a decision that it is a legal decision."
Obama said he was not proposing that another investigation be launched, but if it happens it should be done in a way that does not "provide one side or another political advantage but rather is being done in order to learn some lessons so that we move forward in an effective way."
DINA CAPPIELLO | Associated Press Writer
2:32 PM EDT, April 21, 2009
WASHINGTON (AP) — The federal government will once again require companies to fully disclose the toxic chemicals they release into the air, onto land and into water.
The Environmental Protection Agency announced Tuesday that it was reversing a decision by the Bush administration in 2006 that reduced reporting of toxic pollution for more than 3,500 facilities nationwide.
The Bush rules allowed facilities storing or releasing smaller amounts of toxic chemicals to submit less-detailed information to the government.
More than a dozen states had sued the agency over the change saying it reduced the information available to the public about chemical hazards in communities.
EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson said Tuesday that the annual database — known as the Toxics Release Inventory — was a crucial tool for safeguarding public health and the environment.
For more than two decades, the inventory has collected information on the release of hundreds of hazardous chemicals from thousands of facilities nationwide.
"People have a right to the information that might affect their health and the health of their children — and EPA has a responsibility to provide it," Jackson said in a statement.
In December 2006, to reduce the burden on industry, the Bush administration allowed companies using less than 5,000 pounds of toxic chemicals, or releasing less than 2,000 pounds, to submit shorter, less-detailed reports.
Previously, more detailed information had to be provided in longer forms if there was as little as 500 pounds, a threshold that the Bush rule maintained only for some of the most dangerous chemicals.
Congressional auditors said the change would have cut by a quarter the number of emissions reports the government receives each year.
The EPA was required to reverse the rule by a spending bill signed into law in March. It will apply to reports due July 1 covering emissions during 2008.
The special inspector general says TARP is 'inherently vulnerable to fraud, waste and abuse.' The risk grows as the plan becomes more complex, he says.
BY RALPH VARTABEDIAN AND TOM HAMBURGER | Los Angeles Times Writers
10:24 AM EDT, April 21, 2009
WASHINGTON - In the first major disclosure of corruption in the $750-billion financial bailout program, federal investigators said Monday they have opened 20 criminal probes into possible securities fraud, tax violations, insider trading and other crimes.
The cases represent only the first wave of investigations, and the total fraud could ultimately reach into the tens of billions of dollars, according to Neil Barofsky, the special inspector general overseeing the bailout program.
The disclosures reinforce fears that the hastily designed and rapidly changing bailout program run by the Treasury Department and Federal Reserve is going to carry a heavy price of fraud against taxpayers -- even as questions grow about its ability to stabilize the nation's financial system.
Barofsky said the complex nature of the bailout program makes it "inherently vulnerable to fraud, waste and abuse, including significant issues relating to conflicts of interest facing fund managers, collusion between participants, and vulnerabilities to money laundering."
The report said little about who is under investigation and how the fraudulent schemes work, but investigators are already on alert for a long list of potential scams. Such schemes could include obtaining bailout money under false pretenses, bilking the government with phony mortgage modifications, and cheating on taxes with fraudulent filings.
"You don't need an entirely corrupt institution to pull one of these schemes off," Barofsky said. "You only need a few corrupt managers whose compensation may be tied to the performance of these assets in order to effectively pull off a collusion or a kickback scheme."
The risk of fraud is only increasing as the bailout becomes "more complex and larger in scope," he said.
Indeed, much of the 247-page report released in Washington today by Barofsky's office focuses on a segment of the bailout that is only now being put into motion -- an effort to buy toxic securities from banks and other investment groups in which the federal government would provide up to 92.5% of the money. That effort could be the most vulnerable to fraud, Barofsky said, because investors would have so little at risk.
Among the toughest recommendations in the report is for the Treasury to abandon its planned structure for buying the toxic securities, which include intricate bundles of bad mortgages and loans, before it gets rolling.
Members of Congress and consumer advocates expressed outrage Monday when they heard about the findings of the report.
"It shouldn't be a big surprise that a huge pot of honey attracts a lot of flies," said Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, the senior Republican on the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, which is also examining the program. "I would guess that 20 investigations, while a good start, is only the tip of the iceberg."
"That's an appalling record," Barbara Roper, director of investor protection for the Consumer Federation of America, said of the 20 criminal investigations. "In the midst of this crisis from which they are being bailed out, the same people who created this mess are apparently still breaking the law. What is it with these people?"
In a series of recommendations, Barofsky asked the Treasury Department for greater transparency and greater fraud protections.
The Treasury Department's bailout chief, Neel Kashkari, said in a letter dated April 14 that the recommendations would be "considered."
The report underscores just how complicated the bailout program has become.
What started out in October as a $750-billion effort only to buy toxic securities has morphed into 12 separate programs that cover up to $3 trillion in direct spending, loans and loan guarantees -- an amount roughly equal to the annual federal budget.
Today, banks, insurers, brokerages, auto companies, car parts makers and homeowners are just some of the beneficiaries of the program, known formally as the Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP.
The report dedicated an entire section to what many experts believe is its most risky operation -- a toxic asset purchase plan under a broader program known as the Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility, known as TALF. Originally, TALF was aimed at expanding consumer lending programs for autos, student loans and other types of credit.
But the Obama administration expanded TALF to include funding and federal loan guarantees to purchase toxic securities.
That program has at least two parts: one to buy up bad loans from banks and another to buy up bundled loans in the form of mortgage-backed securities from investment markets. The government would split any profits with the private investors it partnered with.
The latter has sparked greater concern because of the possibility that buyers could collude to manipulate prices and extract kickbacks, with the government taking virtually all of the risk.
"When you are buying from the market or the street, transparency comes into question," Barofsky, a former federal prosecutor, said. "The potential for pricing fixing and collusion becomes greater because the government doesn't have control or knowledge of who" all the players are.
Members of Congress, who were given Barofsky's report Monday, have already expressed concern over the plan.
House Financial Services Committee member Brad Sherman (D- Sherman Oaks), a certified public accountant, said that under the plan, taxpayers would take virtually all the risk, get zero control and only 50 percent of the profits.
"That doesn't sound like a good deal," he said.
"I can't imagine Warren Buffett signing something like that."
WASHINGTON (AP) — The government has completed the transaction providing nearly $30 billion more in support to American International Group Inc., minus $165 million in controversial bonus payments.
The Treasury Department also says it added Bank of America Corp. and Countrywide Home Loans Servicing to its mortgage relief program. That means a total of nine companies are participating in the $75 billion effort.
The department also approved the applications for six more banks to participate in the $700 billion financial rescue program, bringing the total number of banks being helped to 553.
The ongoing debate over the ethics and usefulness of interrogation techniques such as waterboarding received new fuel on Sunday night, with a New York Times report that two Al Qaeda suspects were subject to the method, which simulates drowning, a combined 266 times.
That number is higher than previously reported, and will no doubt cast a long shadow over President Obama's first scheduled visit to CIA headquarters today, where he will publicly address employees.
The New York Times reports that, according to a recently released May 2005 interrogation memo, Al Qaeda operative Abu Zubaydah was subjected to waterboarding 83 times in August 2002.
Khalid Sheikh Mohamed, who has confessed to planning the September 11, 2001, attacks as well as personally beheading Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, was subjected to waterboarding 183 times in March 2003.
That number is higher than previously reported, and will no doubt cast a long shadow over President Obama's first scheduled visit to CIA headquarters today, where he will publicly address employees.
The New York Times reports that, according to a recently released May 2005 interrogation memo, Al Qaeda operative Abu Zubaydah was subjected to waterboarding 83 times in August 2002.
Khalid Sheikh Mohamed, who has confessed to planning the September 11, 2001, attacks as well as personally beheading Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, was subjected to waterboarding 183 times in March 2003.
That version of events is starkly different than the one reported by ABC News in December 2007, when former CIA officer John Kiriakou, who was involved in the interrogation of Mr. Zubaydah, claimed he had only been waterboarded once for 35 seconds.
"The next day, he told his interrogators that Allah had visited him in his cell during the night and told him to cooperate," said Kiriakou in an interview...
"From that day on, he answered every question," Kiriakou said. "The threat information he provided disrupted a number of attacks, maybe dozens of attacks."
The sheer frequency with which waterboarding was apparently used on these two suspects may cast doubt on past Bush administration assertions that they were strictly obeying guidelines on the use of the practice, says the Times. It also notes that "a footnote to another 2005 Justice Department memo released Thursday said waterboarding was used both more frequently and with a greater volume of water than the CIA rules permitted."
The new information came out over the weekend thanks to the investigative work of bloggers like Marcy Wheeler, who found it in the footnotes of Bush administration interrogation memos released last week and posted it to her blog emptywheel.
Information on the frequency of the practice, and the amount of water used each time, was redacted from some copies of the memos but not from others. The numbers were not included in initial reporting on the release of the memos.
Writing on her blog, Ms. Wheeler points out that it is unclear how the CIA could use the method on these suspects so many times and still mange to abide by its own guidelines.
The same ... memo passage explains how the CIA might manage to waterboard these men so many times in one month each (though even with these chilling numbers, the CIA's math doesn't add up).
"...where authorized, it may be used for two "sessions" per day of up to two hours. During a session, water may be applied up to six times for ten seconds or longer (but never more than 40 seconds). In a 24-hour period, a detainee may be subjected to up to twelve minutes of water application. See id. at 42. Additionally, the waterboard may be used on as many as five days during a 30-day approval period."
So: two two-hour sessions a day, with six applications of the waterboard each = 12 applications in a day. Though to get up to the permitted 12 minutes of waterboarding in a day (with each use of the waterboard limited to 40 seconds), you'd need 18 applications in a day. Assuming you use the larger 18 applications in one 24-hour period, and do 18 applications on five days within a month, you've waterboarded 90 times–still just half of what they did to [Khalid Sheikh Mohamed].
The new information is certain to invigorate critics of the practice who say it is an ineffective way of obtaining information from detainees.
Last week, The New York Times made a similar claim in an article on the interrogation of Zubaydah, who was mistakenly believed to be a high ranking "lieutenant" in Al Qaeda before interrogators realized he was just "a helpful training camp personnel clerk," the Times reported.
Interrogators, who spoke to the Times on condition of anonymity, said they believed Zubaydah told them everything he knew before waterboarding began. They communicated this to agency higher-ups in Washington, who nonetheless insisted on the use of the practice, and asked to watch it take place.
"You get a ton of information, but headquarters says, 'There must be more,' " recalled one intelligence officer who was involved in the case. As described in the footnote to the memo, the use of repeated waterboarding against Abu Zubaydah was ordered "at the direction of C.I.A. headquarters," and officials were dispatched from headquarters "to watch the last waterboard session."
Bob Quick: UK Anti-Terror Chief Resigns Over Document Reveal
LONDON — Britain's top counter-terrorist police officer resigned Thursday after he was photographed carrying clearly visible secret documents about an operation against an alleged al-Qaida plot by Pakistani nationals to launch an attack in Britain.
Assistant Commissioner Bob Quick's blunder forced police to scramble to round up the suspects sooner than planned. Twelve men were arrested late Wednesday in raids across northwest England.
Prime Minister Gordon Brown said the raids had disrupted "a very big terrorist plot."
"We have been following it for some time," Brown told reporters.
Greater Manchester Police Chief Constable Peter Fahy said police had not identified a threat to any particular target. But he said the raids had been triggered because police thought public safety was at risk.
"We perceived a threat was there and we had to take action," he said.
"What happened essentially meant we have brought the matter forward but it would have happened in the next 24 hours in any event," he said.
Police said 11 of the men arrested were Pakistanis, most on student visas, and the twelfth was British. The suspects ranged in age from the teens to a 41-year-old man.
Several past terrorist plots in Britain had links to Pakistan, including the July 7, 2005 London transit attacks by four suicide bombers that killed 52 commuters.
"We know that there are links between terrorists in Britain and terrorists in Pakistan," said Brown. He said he would be asking Pakistani Prime Minister Asif Ali Zardari to take tougher action.
The British government currently assesses the country's terror threat level as "severe," the second-highest of five possible ratings. It means the government considers an attack likely.
Quick, the Metropolitan Police anti-terror chief, was photographed Wednesday clutching confidential documents as he arrived for a meeting with Brown at 10 Downing St. The document on top showed details of an anti-terror operation code-named Operation Pathway.
When officials became aware that clearly readable photographs of the document _ which listed names of senior officers and plans for a series of raids _ were in circulation, they changed their timetable for action.
News organizations were warned by a joint government-media body Wednesday that "publication or broadcast of any details of this photograph would seriously damage national security."
Hundreds of officers swooped on eight addresses across northwest England Wednesday evening _ a contrast to the dawn raids usually favored by police.
Greater Manchester Police said the suspects were detained under anti-terrorism laws in the cities of Manchester and Liverpool and the surrounding area, about 200 miles (300 kilometers) northwest of London.
The raids targeted homes, an Internet cafe, Liverpool's John Moores University and a car driving along a highway.
Once the raids were over, Quick swiftly stepped down.
"I have today offered my resignation in the knowledge that my action could have compromised a major counterterrorism operation," he said in a statement Thursday.
It's not the first time officials calling on the prime minister have been caught out by photographers standing in Downing Street with powerful telephoto lenses.
In May, two government ministers were snapped carrying sensitive materials that could be seen. Caroline Flint, who was then minister for housing, was holding a document forecasting a 10 percent drop in British house prices _ a bigger fall than the government was then predicting.
Hazel Blears, the communities minister, was photographed with an e-mail on the possible participation of the prime minister in a TV reality program to be called "Junior PM."
"I'm not the first person to have been caught out in this way and probably won't be the last," Flint said.
Quick's blunder was the first to raise a security issue and force a resignation.
Law enforcement officials said they were not aware of any instances in which a readable image of Quick's document was published before Wednesday's raids.
After the raids took place, television news reports showed images of Quick holding them. Newspapers also carried the photos, with The Daily Telegraph and the Evening Standard showing close-up images that were clearly readable.
Quick's replacement in the top terror job, Assistant Commissioner John Yates, has been involved in several prominent cases, including an investigation into whether knighthoods and other honors were being given in exchange for Labour Party donations.
At the end of the investigation in 2007, which included police questioning of then-Prime Minister Tony Blair, prosecutors did not charge anyone.
The National Poetry Contest had come down to two semi-finalists, a Yale graduate and a redneck from Arkansas. They were given a word, then allowed two minutes to study the word a come up with a poem that contained the word.
The word they were given was "Timbuktu."
First to recite his poem was the Yale graduate. He stepped to the microphone and said...
Slowly across the desert sand
Trekked a lonely caravan,
Men on camels, two by two,
Destination-Timbuktu.
The crowd went crazy! No way could the redneck top that, they thought. The redneck calmly made his way to the microphone and recited...
Me and Tim a huntin' went,
Met three whores in a pop up tent.
They was three, and we was two,
So I bucked one, and Timbuktu.
The redneck won, hands down!
A teacher asks her students if they're Yankees fans. All of the hands go up except for one student. "Okay, Bobby. What team are you a fan of?" "The Red Sox." "Why's that?" "Well, my parents are both Red Sox fans, so I'm a Red Sox fan too." "That's not a good answer, Bobby. If your parents were both morons, would you be a moron too?" "No, that would make me a Yankees fan!"
"Has there been any insanity in your family?"
"Yes, doctor. My husband thinks he's the boss."
Why did the fish get kicked out of school?
Cause he was caught with seaweed.
talk about a sore loser or just plain asshole or revolutionist or traitor
Fr:The Birmingham News
Bachus tells city and county officials he's worried about socialists in Congress
Touring his Birmingham-area district today, U.S. Rep. Spencer Bachus started the day in Trussville, where he treated a breakfast of municipal and county leaders to his thoughts on guns, socialists and the federal budget.
APU.S. Rep. Spencer Bachus, shown here in Washington, spoke to city and county officials at a breakfast in Trussville today.
As for President Barack Obama, the Vestavia Hills Republican said he has "some hope."
"He's a better listener than George W. Bush," Bachus said. "He tries to get ideas from people."
But he said he is worried that he is being steered too far by the Congress: "Some of the men and women I work with in Congress are socialists."
Asked to clarify his comments after the breakfast speech at the Trussville Civic Center, Bachus said 17 members of the U.S. House are socialists.
> http://www.thedailyshow.com/video/index.jhtml?videoId=223861&title=00bama-international-man-of
Keeping 50,000 troops in Iraq
Adding more forces in Afghanistan
and now this
A pair of bills introduced in the U.S. Senate would grant the White House sweeping new powers to access private online data, regulate the cybersecurity industry and even shut down Internet traffic during a declared "cyber emergency."
Senate bills No. 773 and 778, introduced by Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.V., are both part of what's being called the Cybersecurity Act of 2009, which would create a new Office of the National Cybersecurity Advisor, reportable directly to the president and charged with defending the country from cyber attack.
-----Wants case against NSA dismissed-----
President Barack Obama invoked "state secrets" to prevent a court from reviewing the legality of the National Security Agency's warantless wiretapping program, moving late Friday to have a lawsuit that challenged the program dismissed.
The move -- which holds that information surrounding the massive eavesdropping program should be kept from the public because of its sensitivity -- follows an earlier decision in March to block handover of documents relating to the Bush Administration's decision to spy on a charity. The arguments also mirror the Bush Administration's efforts to dismiss an earlier suit against AT&T.
The Friday brief involves a lawsuit filed by the civil liberties group Electronic Frontier Foundation, which is suing the NSA for the wiretapping program. The agency monitored the telephone calls and emails of thousands of people within the United States without a court's approval in an effort to thwart terrorist attacks.
In attempting to block a San Fransisco court from reviewing documents relating to the NSA program, the Obama Administration is also protecting other individuals named as defendants in the suit: Vice President Dick Cheney, former Cheney chief of staff David Addington and former Bush Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. The Friday brief responded to the government agencies being sued; the individual defendants have asked for more time to prepare their response.
It also stands firmly behind the telecommunications giant AT&T. AT&T whistleblower Mark Klein revealed that the company allowed the agency to install network monitoring hardware to spy on American citizens.
The Director of National Intelligence, the Justice Department says, "has set forth a more than reasonable basis to conclude that harm to national security would result from the disclosure of whether the NSA has worked with any telecommunications carrier." AT&T is specifically mentioned. Public reports have fingered AT&T, Verizon, MCI and Sprint as participating in the government's eavesdropping efforts.
Acting Assistant Attorney General Michael Hertz penned the brief on behalf of the Obama Justice Department.
"The grounds for this motion [to dismiss] are that the Court lacks subject matter jurisdiction with respect to plaintiffs' statutory claims against the United States because Congress has not waived sovereign immunity, and summary judgment for the Government on all of plaintiffs' remaining claims against all parties... is required because information necessary to litigate plantiffs' claims is property subject to and excluded from use in this case by the state secrets privilege and related statutory privileges," Hertz and other trial attorneys for the Justice Department wrote.
The Justice Department also holds that the lawsuit can't proceed because of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. They assert that the US government has "sovereign immunity" against statutory claims that it illegally wiretapped or accessed communications data.
Congress expanded the wiretapping program in 2008 with passage of amendments to the Act, which gave telecom companies immunity for past and future participation in the program and expanded the legal use of warrantless wiretaps from 48 hours to seven days. The revised Act also allowed the government to destroy records of previous taps.
Obama voted for the revised Act while a senator last year.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation fired off a scathing press release Monday.
"President Obama promised the American people a new era of transparency, accountability, and respect for civil liberties," said EFF Senior Staff Attorney Kevin Bankston in the release. "But with the Obama Justice Department continuing the Bush administration's cover-up of the National Security Agency's dragnet surveillance of millions of Americans, and insisting that the much-publicized warrantless wiretapping program is still a 'secret' that cannot be reviewed by the courts, it feels like deja vu all over again."
Former state senator Dianne Wilkerson began taking bribes in exchange for political favors in 2002, five years earlier than authorities originally alleged when she was arrested last October in an alleged extortion scheme, according to a new federal indictment announced yesterday.
Discuss
COMMENTS (31)
A grand jury handed up a superseding indictment yesterday that also added 23 additional charges against Wilkerson for activities that led to her previous indictment. Those charges did not cover the additional bribes that were alleged yesterday.
The Roxbury Democrat resigned in November following her original indictment, which accused her of accepting eight bribes totaling $23,500 to secure a liquor license for a nightclub and legislation to pave the way for a commercial development in Roxbury.
The new charges of theft of honest services and mail and wire fraud were added to the nine charges Wilkerson already faced, including one count of conspiring to extort cash "under color of official right" - that is, in her official capacity as a lawmaker - and eight counts of attempted extortion under color of official right.
But the indictment also alleged that Wilkerson accepted a previously undisclosed series of bribes from November 2002 to October 2006 from an individual who wanted her help with developing the state-owned property at Melnea Cass Boulevard and Washington Street.
The individual is identified only as "Witness D" and allegedly made a series of payments that ranged from $500 to $1,200. The indictment does not specify the number of payments but said they came after Wilkerson began asking Witness D for money.
"Concerned that Wilkerson would not support his development plans in the absence of payments, Witness D made a series of payments to Wilkerson . . . in connection with his plans to develop Parcel 8," the 32-page indictment reads.
Last year, Wilkerson urged the Roxbury Strategic Master Plan Oversight Committee, of which she was a nonvoting member, and the Boston Redevelopment Authority to separate the parcel from a comprehensive urban plan that applied to neighboring publicly owned properties, the indictment said.
Parcel 8 is one of many undeveloped sites in Roxbury that has been the focus of a community planning process for years. Development in the area is seen as critical to spurring development in an economically distressed corner of the city.
Wilkerson was not charged with any crimes in connection with the payments she allegedly received from Witness D, some of which occurred beyond the five-year federal statute of limitations. But prosecutors appeared to be trying to show that Wilkerson had engaged in a pattern of criminal behavior years before her arrest.
Her lawyer, Max D. Stern of Boston, said his client denies taking any money to help pave the way for a development.
"It's telling that although these allegations are thrown in in the course of an indictment where they have been able to add some 23 new counts, they have not managed to make a count out of this allegation," he said.
Shortly after Wilkerson's arrest on Oct. 29, Christopher Marrano, owner of Harrison Supply Co., told the Globe that his colleague, Azid Mohammed, had complained to him about pressure she had allegedly applied as he sought to develop Parcel 8 and property he owned next to it.
Mohammed said Wilkerson wanted him to team up on the project with an Atlanta developer, Marrano said. That developer turned out to be an undercover FBI agent who was allegedly paying Wilkerson bribes as part of the sting. Marrano said at the time that he was unaware of any cash payments; Mohammed did not return phone calls at the time. Neither man could be reached yesterday.
Each of the 32 charges that Wilkerson faces carries a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison, three years of supervised release, and a $250,000 fine, according to federal prosecutors.
Wilkerson's codefendant, Boston Councilor Chuck Turner, is charged with conspiring to extort cash under color of official right, one count of attempted extortion under color of official right, and three counts of making false statements to FBI agents. No new charges were filed against him yesterday.
Turner was arrested in November on charges of pocketing a $1,000 payment from a nightclub operator, Ronald Wilburn, a cooperating witness who participated in the FBI sting.
WASHINGTON - Patients who get more intensive treatment for early bladder cancer do not fare any better than patients who get less treatment, US researchers reported yesterday.
Medicare, the federal health insurance plan for the elderly, spent more than twice as much on the intensively managed patients without improving their survival rates, Dr. Brent Hollenbeck of the University of Michigan and colleagues found in their study.
The study, published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, supports findings that show great variation in how much different hospitals and doctors spend on care, with little indication that spending more helps patients.
"Urologists should not assume that more is necessarily better," Hollenbeck said in a telephone interview.
"We are observing the variation and we are not seeing any benefit with the added treatment. Eliminating unnecessary care is very important. Overuse is a big problem in the US healthcare system."
Bladder cancer affected 68,810 people in 2008 in the United States and killed 14,100, according to the National Cancer Institute. It is more likely to affect men.
Treatment can include surgery, chemotherapy, radiation therapy, and infusion of the bacteria used to vaccinate against tuberculosis. Doctors believe the BCG vaccine for TB somehow stimulate immune cells to attack cancer cells.
Hollenbeck and colleagues used federal data on 20,713 Medicare patients diagnosed with early bladder cancer between 1992 and 2002 by 940 doctors, mostly urologists
BAGHDAD (AP) — Iraq's highest court on Tuesday reduced the prison sentence for an Iraqi journalist who hurled his shoes at former President George W. Bush from three years to one, a court spokesman said.
Abdul-Sattar Bayrkdar, the spokesman, said the decision was taken because the journalist had no prior criminal history.
The defense appealed the original ruling to the Federal Appeals Court citing an Iraqi law stipulating a maximum sentence of only two years for publicly insulting a visiting foreign leader.
BERLIN (Reuters) - A German woman was involved in three car accidents in less than an hour that left a total of seven vehicles damaged but she suffered only slight injuries from the series of mishaps, police said Tuesday.
The 69-year-old woman from Berlin first crashed into three cars while trying to pull out of a supermarket car park on the Baltic resort island of Usedom.
Then, she accidentally stepped on the accelerator and sped across a lawn before crashing into a nearby house, police said. She was taken to hospital in an ambulance but that vehicle was then hit by a truck.
"She was actually fortunate that no one was seriously hurt in any of the accidents," said Zinnowitz police spokesman Axel Falkenberg. "The accidents were a little bit like dominoes toppling."
BERLIN (Reuters) - A cat named Felix was found alive and well beneath the rubble of a six-storey building in Cologne that collapsed five weeks ago, the fire brigade in German city said Tuesday.
The 12-year-old cat was in surprisingly good health, authorities said. He was found beneath the city archives building that collapsed on March 3.
Rescue workers were clearing away the rubble from the ruins, in which two people were killed, when they spotted a pair of small paws.
"The men lifted some concrete blocks when suddenly a little cat came to light," said Dietmar Paust, fire brigade spokesman.
BERLIN (Reuters) - The skeleton of a German retiree who tied himself to the top of a tree and shot himself to death nearly 30 years ago has been found by a hiker.
German police in the southern town of Landshut said on Monday the 69-year-old man disappeared in 1980 and had been classified as missing.
An 18-year-old hiker discovered a bone in the forest last week and brought it to police. They searched the area and spotted the skeleton hanging about 11 meters up, near the top of the spruce tree.
"After searching the area we found the skeleton up in the tree with the pistol hanging on a rope next to it," police spokesman Leonard Mayer said. Police were able to identify the man through DNA testing and an artificial hip.
By Helen Chernikoff
NEW YORK (Reuters) - More U.S. consumers are falling behind on their mortgages, an indication that the housing market has yet to hit bottom, a top credit bureau executive told Reuters.
Dann Adams, president of U.S. Information Systems for Equifax Inc, reported that 7 percent of homeowners with mortgages were at least 30 days late on their loans in February, an increase of more than 50 percent from a year earlier.
He also said 39.8 percent of subprime borrowers were at least 30 days behind on their home mortgage loans, up 23.7 percent from last year.
"I'm trying to find optimism in these numbers, but I'm pretty hard pressed to do that," Adams said, despite a recent burst of relatively positive news that has fueled hope that the U.S. housing market has turned a corner.
Late last month the Commerce Department reported that sales of newly built U.S. single-family homes rose to a 337,000 annual pace in February, the highest in 10 months.
Such news has boosted homebuilder shares, which are up about 45 percent since March 6, according to the Dow Jones U.S. Home Construction Index.
But Adams said the continued increase in mortgage delinquencies revealed in his data foreshadows more foreclosures, short sales and home price declines as homeowners default and banks then repossess the homes to sell them at deep discounts.
LIFELINE OF CREDIT
The Equifax data also reveals the impact of the rise in unemployment, which is at its highest rate since 1983. Employers cut 663,000 jobs in March, sending the national unemployment rate to 8.5 percent, the Labor Department said on Friday.
The rising jobless rate manifests itself in consumers' increasing reliance on credit cards even as lenders try to restrict access to credit, Adams said.
Banks closed 8 million credit card accounts in February, reducing the number of open cards to 400 million from a July 2008 peak of 483 million, according to Equifax data.
Credit limits fell as well, to $3.27 trillion in February from a July 2008 peak of $3.59 trillion.
"Limits are falling because lenders are trying to minimize their losses," Adams said.
The data shows that lenders have good reason to be wary. Bank card delinquency is at its highest level in the past five years. Some 4.5 percent of total balances on bank-issued credit cards were at 60 days past due in February, a 32.7 percent increase from a year earlier.
"Their credit card is their lifeline," he said.
By Bob Burgdorfer
CHICAGO (Reuters) - This year's Easter ham may be smaller and guests may be asked to bring a dish, as cash-strapped consumers spend less to celebrate the Christian holiday.
"I think people are more cognizant that we don't need these elaborate bashes," said Brian Leonard, whose Easter plans have shrunk to include only his family of five, down from previous years, when 30 were on the guest list.
"Sunday we are going to have a small family meal; normally we have a large family meal," said Leonard, who lives on Chicago's west side.
The ongoing recession, 8.5 percent unemployment, and 10 percent of Americans using food stamps have changed the country's eating habits and food buying decisions.
In addition to Sunday's meal, Leonard, who works at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, said his family will donate an Easter ham to a Chicago homeless shelter, where the number of tenants has jumped this year to about 240 from 130.
Dining at upscale restaurants is out for many, with more consumers eating Sunday's holiday meal at home.
Spending for that home-prepared meal is forecast to be down from a year ago, and the portions may be smaller.
"The question will be: Will it be a big ham or a small ham?," said Harry Balzer, vice president at market research firm NPD Group.
In addition, consumers may serve more lower-cost grain-based items like pasta or have guests bring a portion of the meal, said Balzer.
At the bustling Chicago Mercantile Exchange where prices are set for the grain and meat that go into those holiday meals, a few traders said their Sunday dinners will be pot luck affairs with guests contributing menu items.
A recent National Retail Federation survey indicated consumers will spend an average of $117 on Easter merchandise this year, down from $135 a year ago. Of that, about $38 will be spent on food, down from $41 a year ago.
"Survey findings indicate that many people will opt for less-expensive celebrations this year. Americans' largest expense will be preparing a meal," the NRF said in a statement.
LOWER COST DEALS ARE OUT THERE
Supermarkets and food companies are offering holiday promotions to reach consumers looking to spend less.
"This is a very tough time in the food business, and anybody who is not offering deals is having a real difficult time," Balzer said.
From Rebecca Sinderbrand
CNN Deputy Political Editor
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WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Vice President Joe Biden brushed aside recent criticism by predecessor Dick Cheney that moves by the Obama administration had put the United States at risk, telling CNN on Tuesday that the former vice president was "dead wrong."
Vice President Joe Biden sits down for an interview with CNN's Gloria Borger and Wolf Blitzer on Tuesday..
"I don't think [Cheney] is out of line, but he is dead wrong," he told CNN's Wolf Blitzer. "This administration -- the last administration left us in a weaker posture than we've been any time since World War II: less regarded in the world, stretched more thinly than we ever have been in the past, two wars under way, virtually no respect in entire parts of the world.
"... I guarantee you we are safer today, our interests are more secure today than they were any time during the eight years" of the Bush administration.
In an interview with CNN's John King last month, Cheney said President Obama had been "making some choices that in my mind will raise the risk to the American people of another attack."
Biden said former President Bush had not been fully aware of the country's position in the world. Video Watch Biden lash out on Bush and Cheney »
"I remember President Bush saying to me one time in the Oval Office, and he was a great guy, enjoyed being with him. He said to me, he said, 'Well, Joe,' he said, 'I'm a leader.' And I said, 'Mr. President, turn around and look behind you. No one's following.' People are beginning to follow the United States again as a consequence of our administration."
"... I think the biggest thing we're doing is, I'm operating in concert with the president," he said. "There are not -- there are -- look, everybody talks about how powerful Cheney was. His power weakened America, in my view."
But he did not deny reports of disagreement within the Obama administration as well, over the president's plan to widen involvement in Afghanistan. A report last week said Biden had warned about the possibility of getting into a quagmire, while military advisers pushed for more troops. Video Watch more on Obama's Afghanistan plan »
"Well, look. Without commenting specifically on who took what position, there was a healthy debate. There is a healthy debate within our administration."
Don't Miss
* On '60 Minutes,' Obama rebukes Cheney criticism
* Cheney says Obama policies raise risk of attack in U.S.
The vice president said that he condemned a new Afghan law that would allow men to rape their wives, but that those issues were not the focus of the U.S. presence in that nation. "I am not prepared to send American troops to die for that," he said.
As the president made an unannounced visit to Baghdad, Iraq, on Tuesday, Biden said that he had no concerns that a recent uptick in violence in Iraq might affect plans to withdraw most U.S. troops from that country by the summer of 2010.
"I'm not worried about that at all. We will draw down along the timeline we suggested," the vice president said.
Also not a concern for Biden: the possibility of an Israeli strike on Iran's nuclear facilities. The vice president said he was not worried that Israel's new government, under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, would order such an attack.
"I don't believe that Prime Minister Netanyahu would do that. I think he would be ill-advised to do that. And so my level of concern is no different than it was a year ago."
A day after North Korea's rocket test sparked alarm from world leaders, Biden called for a tougher response from Moscow and Beijing.
"What I'd like to see is a strong condemnation and a united effort on the part of the Chinese, Russians in the six-party talks to say, 'enough is enough, there will be greater sanctions, we will squeeze down even harder on North Korea,' " he said.
He added that China could "do a great deal more," although he was uncertain it would. "I think this puts the onus on China and Russia and South Korea and Japan, et cetera, along with us, to be bolder in our condemnation."
On the domestic front, Biden said that the administration's economic plan would prevent up to 4 million jobs from being lost and stabilize the economy, but that "it will take at least another year before you start to see employment," and in the meantime, jobs will continue to disappear.
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"There will be an additional job loss. ... You're not going to see reports this calendar year saying there was no job loss this month. That is not going to happen. ...There will continue to be job losses the remainder of this year. The question is will they continually go down before they begin to rebound, and employment -- we go down to zero job loss and back to employment."
He said it was "too premature" to begin discussing another stimulus package, though he has not ruled one out.
“Some suggestions are that perhaps we would see an enhancement of wildlife expansion because of the warmth of the pipeline,” she said. […] The [existing Alaska pipeline] pipeline has now become a meeting ground and “coffee klatch” for the caribou, she said.
Our favorite Member of Congress from the State of Minnesota Michele Bachman is now in the lead with the most quotes of the day of anyone on TreeHugger, with her latest complaint about Nancy Pelosi and the fight against climate change:
""[Pelosi] is committed to her global warming fanaticism to the point where she has said that she's just trying to save the planet. We all know that someone did that over 2,000 years ago, they saved the planet -- we didn't need Nancy Pelosi to do that."
Quotes:
"We had oral sex. He prefers that modus operandi because then he can say, 'I never slept with her.'" - Anne Manning (who was also married at the time.)
"We would have won in 1974 if we could have kept him out of the office, screwing her [a young volunteer] on the desk." - Dot Crews, his campaign scheduler at the time
[In the book] "Men Who Hate Women and the Women Who Love Them", [I] "found frightening pieces that related to my own life." - Newt.
"I think you can write a psychological profile of me that says I found a way to immerse my insecurities in a cause large enough to justify whatever I wanted it to" - Newt, speaking to Gail Sheehy.
"She isn't young enough or pretty enough to be the President's wife." - Newt, on his first wife.
"I don't want him to be president and I don't think he should be." - Newt's wife Marianne.
"If the country today were to move to the left, Newt would sense it before it started happening and lead the way." - Dot Crews, his campaign scheduler throughout the 1970s.
Adultery:
Sex on the Desk - Oral Sex is More Easily Denied
Several newspapers are now reporting that Newt Gingrich is dating and basically living with Callista Bisek, a "willowy blond Congressional aide 23 years his junior." Biske, 33, has been spending nights at Gingrich's apartment near the Capitol and has her own key. In an amazing act of hypocrisy, Gingrich was apparently dating Bisek all during Clinton-Lewinsky adultery scandal, even as he proclaimed family values and bitterly criticized the President for his adultery.
Reporters and other Washington insiders have known about this relationship since 1994, even before Gingrich became Speaker of the House, but did not have any solid proof to report. In 1995, Vanity Fair magazine described Bisek as Gingrich's "frequent breakfast companion." Gingrich was married to Marianne Gingrich during all of that time, and just filed for divorce in August 1999.
Newt is apparently trying to create a new hybrid form, Christian adultery. According to MSNBC, Bisek sings in the National Shrine Choir, and Newt would often wait for her at the Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, listening to her sing while he read the Bible.
This is hardly the first time Newt has cheated, either. "It was common knowledge that Newt was involved with other women during his [first] marriage to Jackie. Maybe not on the level of John Kennedy. But he had girlfriends -- some serious, some trivial." -- Dot Crews, his campaign scheduler throughout the 70s. One woman, Anne Manning, has come forward and confirmed a relationship with him during the 1976 campaign. "We had oral sex. He prefers that modus operandi because then he can say, 'I never slept with her.'"
Kip Carter, his former campaign treasurer, was walking Newt's daughters back from a football game one day and cut across a driveway where he saw a car. "As I got to the car, I saw Newt in the passenger seat and one of the guys' wives with her head in his lap going up and down. Newt kind of turned and gave me this little-boy smile. Fortunately, Jackie Sue and Kathy were a lot younger and shorter then."
Family Values? Pressing Wife for Divorce in the Hospital:
"He walked out in the spring of 1980.... By September, I went into the hospital for my third surgery. The two girls came to see me, and said, "Daddy is downstairs. Could he come up?" When he got there, he wanted to discuss the terms of the divorce while I was recovering from my surgery." - Jackie, his first wife.
Dead-Beat Dad:
The hospital visit wasn't the end of it, either. Jackie had to take Newt to court to get him to contribute for bills, as utilities were about to be cut off.
Draft Dodger:
Though he relentlessly pushes military spending and talks like a bigtime hawk, Gingrich avoided the Vietnam War through a combination of student and family deferments. (He married one of his teachers at age 19.)
Problems With Women?
Newt pressed his first wife to sign divorce papers while she was still in the hospital recovering from cancer surgery. He also graciously said "She isn't young enough or pretty enough to be the President's wife." But his second marriage hasn't been that smooth either. Newt and Marianne have been separated - "frankly", she told the Washington Post in June 1989, "it's been on and off for some time."
Does Newt have some kind of problem with women? He has said that he read a book called "Men Who Hate Women and the Women Who Love Them", and "found frightening pieces that related to my own life."
Incidentally, Marianne told Gail Sheehy she doesn't want Newt to run for President. " I told him if I'm not in agreement, fine, it's easy. I just go on the air the next day, and I undermine everything. ... I don't want him to be president and I don't think he should be." Newt's response? Marianne "was just making the point hypothetically" that he would not run unless she agreed he should.
House Banking Scandal: Newt Bounced 22 Checks
Remember the House Banking scandal, where so many congressmen wrote rubber checks on government money? Newt hopes you don't, because he bounced 22 himself, which almost cost him reelection in 1992. His vote for the secret House pay raise, and the chauffeur who drove him around Washington in a Lincoln Town Car, didn't help.
Lucrative and Questionable Book Deals: Murdoch's $4.5 Million wasn't the first
The 1995 Murdoch Deal --- The 1984 Book Deal
The 1995 Murdoch Deal
You probably heard something about Newt's book scandal. He was offered first $2.5 million, then $4.5 million by Harper Collins, a publishing company owned by Rupert Murdoch, who also owns the Fox TV network and newspapers and TV stations around the world. Murdoch has been having problems with a complaint by NBC that Fox is a foreign owned TV network, which is against US law.
In the past, Harper Collins has offered million dollar book contracts to several conservative politicians in countries where Murdoch was having regulatory trouble, including England (Margaret Thatcher, Jeffrey Archer) and China (Deng Xiaoping's daughter). A week after the initial offer, Newt met with Rupert Murdoch - and Murdoch's legislative lobbyist - to discuss politics, including the NBC complaint. As facts about the deal were made public, and even Republicans criticized him, Gingrich decided to give up the $4.5 million advance for a still-lucrative deal based on royalties.
Gingrich's story kept changing through the controversy. First, Newt's spokesman said that Murdoch knew nothing about Gingrich and the book deal. On Friday January 13, Newt's spokesman admitted that Murdoch actually met Newt on a park bench the week before the deal was made, but didn't talk about it. He also said he knew nothing about Murdoch's lobbyist being at their meeting. The next day, he admitted the lobbyist was there, but claimed he didn't say so because no one asked.
Newt also said repeatedly that the book wasn't his idea; that a literary agent named Lynn Chu had sought him out and proposed it. After Ms. Chu said that Gingrich's associate Jeff Eisenach called her first on Newt's behalf, Eisenach and Newt's spokesman admitted that was true.
The 1984 Book Deal Murdoch's book deal wasn't the first lucrative and controversial book deal Newt engineered. In 1983 he established a limited partnership in Atlanta called COS Limited, which pulled together about two dozen of his biggest campaign contributors to finance his book.
The former administrator of his congressional offices in Georgia, Dolores Adamson, resigned over the deal. "The manuscript was put together in the district office using office equipment," she said. "He would just come in and say 'This is what I want to do.' I would say, 'This is not ethical," but after a while he didn't listen." That office equipment, of course, was paid for by US taxpayers including you.
GOPAC sleaze: Taxpayer subsidies for his partisan campaign course.
Newt in his poltical career was the king of using tax-payer subsidized donations for his personal and political purposes. He stooped so low as to hijack not one but two charities for poor inner city kids and use their donations for his personal goals.
GOPAC, Newt's longtime political action committee, was the centerpiece of a complex network of non-profit, and mostly tax exempt organizations that Newt has used to support himself and other conservative candidates. In an act of incredible hypocrisy, this crusader against taxes obtained taxpayer subsidies for his personal and political goals, by misusuing these tax-exempt groups.
For example, one GOPAC document said that its goal for the 1990s was "to both create and disseminate the doctrine of a majority Republican party." In another GOPAC document, titled "Key Factors in a House GOP Majority," Gingrich wrote "It is more powerful and more effective to develop a reform movement parallel to the official Republican party", instead of using the party structure, because it would get more attention and be more credible. Shortly thereafter, GOPAC paid for a television program promoting a "grassroots" movement to reform government; publicly they claimed it was nonpartisan, but private internal documents made its partisan goals clear.
After it got expensive, Gingrich transferred the program to the "Abraham Lincoln Opportunity Foundation," a tax-exempt group controlled by a GOPAC official named Bo Callaway. It had been set up years earlier to help inner city kids, which is why it was tax exempt. The group spent $260,000 on the television program in 1990. That same year, Newt started another tax-exempt group that paid poor students for reading books. He bragged of this in many a political speech. But after the first two years, most of this foundation's money went to Mel Steely, a former Gingrich aide who is now Newt's official biographer.
The best known effort was a college course (titled "Renewing American Civilization") at a third-rate college that Gingrich nakedly used to recruit and organize conservative candidates, and to feed them his carefully constructed ideology and political slogans.
Of course, using tax-exempt educational or charitable donations for partisan purposes is illegal, and several ethics complaints were filed against Gingrich. He agreed to pay a $300,000 fine for misleading the committee during the investigation, and in the process dodged conviction on the actual charges through a combination of finessing some legal definitions, sheer self-confidence and raw political power (as Speaker of the House at the time of the complaints, he appointed the ethics committee. Furthermore, GOPAC had one ethics committee member on its roster last session, and gave money to another.)
The Ethics Committee dropped its final charges against Gingrich not long before he resigned as speaker, despite finding that Gingrich had in fact violated one rule by repeatedly using a political consultant paid by GOPAC to develop the Republican political agenda, because there was no evidence he was continuing to do so.
The IRS also started an investigation of one group, the Progress and Freedom Foundation, for violating its tax-exempt status by donating to Gingrich's college course. In the investigation, the special counsel found that these activities were "substantially motivated by partisan political goals." The IRS eventually overruled him, and found that the course "was educational and never favored or opposed a candidate for public office.'' It said the foundation ``did not intervene on behalf of candidates of the Republican Party merely by promoting'' themes in the course. This extremely narrow reading of the law basically said "so what if he used the course to recruit, organize and groom candidates; as long as they didn't say 'Vote for Jones', it wasn't partisan." Despite what Gingrich fans argue, this hardly proves his innocence. The IRS has chickened out before in political cases, notably letting the Church of Scientology completely off the hook in its investigation of that group.
Corporate reward: $2,500/month to Newt's wife
According to the Wall Street Journal, a company hired Marianne Gingrich (Newt's wife) for $2,500 a month plus commissions in September 1994 after he announced support for a free trade zone in Israel that they are trying to build. Her "job" for Israel Export Development Co. is to find tenants for the trade zone. Gingrich's spokesman said that since her job did not involve working with the US government, there was no conflict of interest.
Who Owns Him?
- Rupert Murdoch (see book deal above)
- Georgia's Richards family, owners of Southwire Corporate ($1.3 billion/year)
The Richards lent and donated money and office space to Gingrich from his earliest days in politics. They have given over $100,000, and Gingrich was the first recipient of donations from Southwire's PAC. By coincidence, Gingrich has changed from an environmentalist critic of Southwire to a staunch anti-environmentalist during that time. People with ties to Southwire were instrumental in two earlier lucrative book deals of Gingrich's in 1977 and 1984; the latter was investigated for ethical violations.
Sources:
"Newt Plays House With New Squeeze," by Timothy Burger and Owen Moritz, NY Daily News, August 12, 1999
"Newt's Fooling Around With His Girl On the Hill," by Andy Soltis, New York Post, August 12, 1999
"The Big One That Got Away," by David Corn, Salon Website, August 12, 1998
adulterous choir practice: "Personals", by Leah Garchik, San Francisco Chronicle, August 17, 1999 pE12
"Gingrich Won't Answer Woman's Adultery Story," Missoula (Montana) Missoulian, August 16, 1995page 1
"Tales About Gingrich make field level", Idaho Spokesman Review, August 16, 1995 pB6
"Gingrich Aided Export Firm That Employed His Wife", NY Times News Service, San Francisco Chronicle, February 7, 1995 pA7
"Gingrich, Critic of 'Business as Usual,' Helps Out Special Interests Like 'Any Member of Congress'", Phil Kuntz, Wall Street Journal, April 3, 1995 pA16
"Gingrich's political education", Jeff Gerth and Stephen Labaton (NY Times News Service), San Francisco Examiner, February 12, 1995 pA6
"IRS clears Gingrich donation that led to his House censure", Capitol Hill Blue Website, February 4, 1999
Ethics Committee Drops Last of 84 Charges Against Gingrich ,By Curt Anderson (Associated Press), Washington Post, October 11, 1998, Page A13
"Use of Tax-Exempt Groups Integral to Political Strategy", by Charles R. Babcock, Washington Post, January 7, 1997, Page A01
"Jump-Start: How Speaker Gingrich Grabbed Power and Attention So Quickly", Wall Street Journal, January 19, 1995 pA1
"The Inner Quest of Newt Gingrich", Gail Sheehy, Vanity Fair, September 1995 p147 "Gingrich, Murdoch reveal lobbyist's role at meeting", Katharine Seelye (NY Times News Service), San Francisco Examiner, pA1 "Murdoch, Gingrich Admit They Talked", San Francisco Chronicle, January 13, 1995
"The Mysterious Mrs. Newt", Martin Fletcher (London Times News Service), SF Examiner, January 15, 1995 pA4 "Newt's Near Misses", Ron Curran, The Bay Guardian, January 11, 1995 p10
"Newt, Inc.", Dennis Bernstein, Bay Guardian, February 1, 1995 p19
This past Wednesday, Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) appeared on Sean Hannity's radio show, and sharply reiterated her calls for revolution in America, warning against the imminent dangers of tyranny under Barack Obama:
We are headed down the lane of economic Marxism," said Bachmann. "More quickly, Sean, than anyone could have possibly imagined. It's difficult for us to even keep up with it day to day."
And then came this:
At this point the American people - it's like Thomas Jefferson said, a revolution every now and then is a good thing. We are at the point, Sean, of revolution. And by that, what I mean, an orderly revolution -- where the people of this country wake up get up and make a decision that this is not going to happen on their watch. It won't be our children and grandchildren that are in debt. It is we who are in debt, we who will be bankrupting this country, inside of ten years, if we don't get a grip. And we can't let the Democrats achieve their ends any longer.
"If Tim Geithner is successful under President Obama, and they move us to an international currency," Bachmann warned, "Then we have no hope of standing on our own as a sovereign nation with our own economic system. It's over. We can't do that."
Bachmann also declared: "Economics works equally in any country. Where freedom is tried, the people rejoice. But where tyranny is enforced upon the people, as Barack Obama is doing, the people suffer and mourn."
And there was this exchange:
Bachmann: Right now I'm a member of Congress. And I believe that my job here is to be a foreign correspondent, reporting from enemy lines. And people need to understand, this isn't a game. this isn't just a political talk show that's happening right now. This is our very freedom, and we have 230 years, a continuous link of freedom that every generation has ceded to the next generation. This may be the time when that link breaks. And I'm going to do everything I can, I know you are, to make sure that we keep that link secure. We cannot allow that link to break, because as Reagan said, America is the last great hope of mankind. where do we go--
Hannity: The last great hope of man on this Earth.
Bachmann: Do we get into an inner tube and float 90 miles to some free country? There is no free country for us to repair to. That's why it's up to us now. The founders gave everything they had to give us this freedom. Now it's up to us to give everything we can to make sure that our kids are free, too. It's that serious. I hate to be dramatic, but--
Hannity: It's not -- you are not overstating this case, Congresswoman, and you don't need to apologize for it. And as a matter of fact, it's refreshing. And I can tell you, all around this country, on 535 of the best radio stations in this country, people are saying "Amen," "Hallelujah", "where have you been?"
April 6 (Bloomberg) -- CLSA analyst Mike Mayo assigned an “underweight” rating to U.S. banks, saying loan losses may exceed Great Depression levels and the government may be forced to take over large lenders.
Financial shares and major U.S. stock indexes dropped after Mayo advised clients to sell shares of banks including Winston- Salem, North Carolina-based BB&T Corp. and Cincinnati’s Fifth Third Bancorp. Mayo said in a report today that he assigned “underperform” ratings to Bank of America Corp. and JPMorgan Chase & Co., the two biggest U.S. banks by assets.
“While certain mortgage problems are farther along, other areas are likely to accelerate, reflecting a rolling recession by asset class,” said Mayo, who joined CLSA from Deutsche Bank AG last month. “New government actions might not help as much as expected, especially given that loans have been marked down to only 98 cents on the dollar, on average.”
The 46-year-old Mayo gained recognition in 1999 at Credit Suisse AG for correctly taking a bearish stance on bank stocks when other analysts remained bullish. After being fired from Credit Suisse, he joined Prudential Equity Group in 2001, where he earned a reputation for criticizing investors and companies who tried to curb objective analysis. At Deutsche, Mayo had “sell” or “hold” ratings on all 18 companies he covered, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
Bank of America, based in Charlotte, North Carolina, fell 21 cents, or 2.8 percent, to $7.39 at 12:52 p.m. in New York Stock Exchange composite trading. New York-based JPMorgan dropped $1.48, or 5.1 percent, to $27.82. The KBW Bank Index lost 5.2 percent, the first decline in five days.
Government Takeovers
Nationalization of banks remains a possibility because government policy remains unclear, Mayo said on a conference call after releasing his report.
Existing government efforts aimed at boosting bank capital don’t “preclude regulators from taking harsher action,” Mayo said. “I don’t want to be a partner with the government in investing in bank stocks.”
Mayo said he expects loan losses to increase to 3.5 percent, and as high as 5.5 percent in a stress scenario, by the end of 2010. The highest level of loan losses in the Great Depression was 3.4 percent in 1934, according to the report. Mayo’s estimate matches the prediction he made on March 10 for Frankfurt-based Deutsche Bank.
Mortgage-related losses are about halfway to their peak, while credit-card and consumer losses are only a third of the way to their expected highest levels, according to Mayo, who declined to comment beyond the report. CLSA is an affiliate of New York-based Calyon Securities.
Economic Crisis
The nation’s largest banks may be transitioning from a financial crisis marked by writedowns of capital to an economic crisis featuring large loan losses, Mayo wrote. The U.S. government cannot provide much relief because its actions will lead to either banks having to raise new capital or toxic assets remaining on banks’ balance sheets, Mayo wrote.
Mayo said solutions to the banking crisis will take time, as the increase in risk happened over a decade or more.
CLSA’s underperform rating reflects the expectation that the stock will underperform the local market by 0 to 10 percent, while a sell rating expects it to fare worse by more than 10 percent, according to the report.
Mayo said banks engaged in “seven deadly sins”: greedy loan growth, gluttony of real estate, lust for high yields, sloth- like risk management, pride of low capital, envy of exotic fees, and anger of regulators. Mayo’s “underweight” rating applies to the entire sector.
Meredith Whitney, who left Oppenheimer & Co. in February to found Meredith Whitney Advisory Group LLC, said in a Forbes interview that banks will continue to write down their mortgage assets as home prices decline further than lenders expected. The unemployment rate also has exceeded banks’ projections and could lead to further loan losses, Whitney said.
Bachmann's efforts against non-existent proposal gaining steam.
Dave Wiegel of The Washington Independent is reporting that Rep. Pete Hoekstra (R-MI), who is leaving Congress after this session to run for Governor of Michigan, may sign on as the 31st co-sponsor to Rep. Michelle Bachmann's (R-MN) bill to prohibit the United States from "abandoning the dollar" and adopting a new global currency. This could be a nice development for Bachmann, whose bill has an impressive number of co-sponsors, there's just one, small, problem; there is no proposal to replace the dollar as the currency of the United States.
Bachmann loony overdrive
Bachmann again calls for revolution against climate action
Two weeks ago, Rep. Michelle Bachmann (R-Minn.) called for an “armed and dangerous” revolution against measures to curb greenhouse-gas emissions and move away from fossil fuels.
Bachmann wants Minnesotans ‘armed and dangerous’ against Obama energy policy
During a radio show on Saturday, Rep. Michele Bachmann described herself as a “foreign correspondent on enemy lines” in Washington, D.C. The Republican congresswoman went on to tell WWTC-AM:
I want people in Minnesota armed and dangerous on this issue of the energy tax because we need to fight back. Thomas Jefferson told us, having a revolution every now and then is a good thing, and the people — we the people — are going to have to fight back hard if we’re not going to lose our country. And I think this has the potential of changing the dynamic of freedom forever in the United States.
Bachmann fears ‘politically correct re-education camps for young people’
U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann says she fears the Obama administration will create “re-education camps for young people, where young people have to go and get trained in a philosophy that the government puts forward and then they have to go to work in some of these politically correct forums.
White House senior adviser David Axelrod shot back at Dick Cheney, slamming comments the former vice president made alleging that the new administration has made Americans less safe.
“It’s a little incredible to me that he would argue somehow that what we’re doing in forging and international alliance to finally pursue a strategy to defeat and dismantle al Qaeda in Afghanistan is going to make us less safe,” Axelrod said on CNN's "State of the Union." “I think it was an unfortunate statement.”
But Axelrod only had praise for former President Bush, who he called “incredible cooperative” during the transition period.
“He’s behaved like a statesman,” said Axelrod. “I just don’t think the memo got passed down to the vice president.”
WASHINGTON (CNN) – Newt Gingrich said Monday that former Vice President Dick Cheney was "clearly right" to suggest that the country faces a greater threat of terrorist attacks with President Obama in the White House.
In an online Q&A session with Politico, Gingrich was asked: "Do you agree with Dick Cheney's assessment that we are less safe under the Obama administraion?"
"Dick Cheney is clearly right in saying that between the Court decisions about terrorists and the administration's [sic] actions the United States is running greater risks of getting attacked than we were under President Bush," Gingrich responded.
In a March 15 interview on CNN's "State of the Union with John King," Cheney said the Bush administration's anti-terror strategies "were absolutely essential to the success we enjoyed of being able to collect the intelligence that led us to defeat all further attempts to launch attacks against the United States since 9/11."
"I think that's a great success story," Cheney said. "President Obama campaigned against it all across the country. And now he is making some choices that in my mind that will in fact raise the risk to the American people of another attack."
April 6 (Bloomberg) -- Joseph Ramelo gave up searching for work in January to return to school, two months after he was laid off as a San Francisco election clerk. Antonio Poe is struggling to get by doing part-time landscaping in Greensboro, North Carolina, after losing his job as an electrician.
While such workers are feeling real pain from the recession that began in December 2007, they’re not represented in the 8.5 percent unemployment rate the Labor Department reported last week. They are part of a broader group that includes those who want a job but have stopped looking for work and those who want full-time positions but have to settle for part-time employment.
A measure of underemployment that counts those people has almost doubled over the past two years, to 15.6 percent, providing a more complete gauge of the labor market’s deterioration. Along with an historic drop in the percentage of the population who are working, and record numbers of long-term unemployed, the figures point to a permanent shift in employment patterns, said former U.S. Labor Secretary Robert Reich.
“We’re seeing many more people who are losing their connectedness to the labor force,” said Reich, who served in President Bill Clinton’s Cabinet and is now an economist at the University of California at Berkeley. “There is a profound weakening of ties to the labor market among a large portion of our working-age population.”
Job Losses
U.S. employers cut 663,000 jobs in March, bringing losses since the slump began in December 2007 to about 5.1 million, the worst in the postwar era, according to the Labor Department. Unemployment exceeds 10 percent in seven states. Michigan’s jobless rate is 12 percent, South Carolina’s is 11 percent and California’s is 10.5 percent.
Job losses in the current recession are more enduring than in previous ones, according to an April 3 research report by Credit Suisse.
“Permanent job losses are accounting for a much larger share of total job losses than any cycle in recent memory,” with almost half of unemployed workers “job losers” as opposed to temporary layoffs, according to the report.
The number of Americans who want full-time jobs but are working part time has increased 83 percent in a year to 9 million, according to Labor Department data.
Ken Hueser may become one of them. The Minneapolis architect lost his $60,000-a-year position in February and is applying for part-time work at garden centers for $8.50 an hour.
Sooner or Later
“The economy will come back some day, but the unknown is whether it’s sooner or later,” said Hueser.
In the meantime, said Ramelo in San Francisco, “even if I don’t have a job, at least I’ll have my degree.” He returns to his City Hall job temporarily later this month. “At this point, I’m thinking any income will do,” he said.
The increase in temporary workers is the result of a severe recession that coincides with a large drop in household wealth and a lack of access to credit, leaving laid-off workers without the cushion they might have had in a milder downturn, said Michael Feroli, an economist at JPMorgan Chase & Co. in New York. “So people are doing whatever it takes to get some income for their households,” said Feroli.
Lisa Smith, a Trenton, New Jersey, childcare worker who lost her job last September, said she is now willing to take whatever work she can get.
“I would like to work 40 hours a week, but if someone offered me 30 or 35, I’d be glad too,” she said.
More Competition
She and workers like her face greater competition, even for temporary jobs, because more people are out of work for longer periods. There are currently about four unemployed workers for every job opening, according to the Economic Policy Institute in Washington.
The long-term unemployed, those who have been out of a job for more than six months, constitute 24.2 percent of the unemployed, the largest share during a recession since the Labor Department began recording data in 1948.
“This recession is causing extreme desperation and frustration for a very wide swath of workers, even people who thought they were flexible and could find work again easily,” said Andrew Stettner, deputy director at the National Employment Law Project, a New York group that advocates for workers’ rights.
In addition, the downturn is undoing years of gains to overall employment. Beginning in the mid-1970s, the percentage of working-age adults who have jobs began to rise steadily as more women joined the workforce, from about 56 percent in 1975 to 63.4 percent in December 2006. It has since dropped 3.5 percentage points, the steepest decline in any recession since the Great Depression.
That drop has implications for the economy’s potential growth rate, because fewer workers, without a compensating increase in productivity, means less output.
“We’ve taken a huge step back here,” said James Glassman, senior economist at JPMorgan & Co. He said elevated levels of unemployment and underemployment are costing the economy about $1 trillion in gross domestic product a year.
“We’ve lost several decades of progress that was going on in terms of the people number of people coming into the workforce,” said Glassman.
The Old North Church in Boston, where two lanterns signaled the departure of British regulars to Lexington, has been immortalized for what happened atop its 277-year-old Medford bricks. But far below, in a dark and dusty crypt where the public rarely visits, the stories of hundreds of early Bostonians have long lay dormant and forgotten.
But now, thanks to the Old North Foundation and the groundbreaking work of a funerary archeologist, those stories are beginning to be resurrected along with a new appreciation of the daily life of young Boston's bustling North End.
Armed with a flashlight, a notebook, and a determination to ignore the shadows and eerie creaking around her, Jane Lyden Rousseau is spending hundreds of hours analyzing the condition and configuration of the crypt. Above ground, she pores over centuries-old ledgers to determine who is buried beneath Boston's oldest standing church, why they were interred there, and what can be learned about early American burial rites.
"It's amazing to see how much you can learn about life by studying death," said Rousseau, who is a curatorial assistant at the Peabody Museum at Harvard University.
What she has learned is providing a new snapshot of the pecking order and priorities of a busy, burgeoning port. African-Americans are buried here, along with heroes of the Revolution. A barrel-vaulted tomb installed eternal status on its occupants, but church leaders were not loath to sweep out the bones after a few decades and replace them with fresh ones - all in the name of cash flow in a fast-changing society.
Rousseau also found that those "sweepings" were tossed in a charnel house, where the remains were mingled in a large pit beneath the crypt floor. The pit, a remnant habit of medieval Europe, where urban burial space was severely limited, might have been the only one of its kind in New England, Rousseau said.
Until Rousseau uncovered its existence in church documents, the pit had been forgotten for generations. For an archeologist who specializes in the dead, the discovery produced a thrilling eureka moment.
"It's a one-of-a-kind find," Rousseau said of the charnel house. "It's a fascinating aspect of our history."
Currently, just a few members of the public are allowed in the crypt as part of an admission-only "behind the scenes" tour of the church, which also allows them into the bell-room of the famous steeple. Ed Pignone, executive director of the Old North Foundation, said that a master plan expected by the end of the year will study the feasibility of opening the crypt to general viewing.
"We'd like to make it more accessible," Pignone said, "but there are some real structural challenges."
The crypt today is a crowded warren of pipes, sprinklers, boilers, and bric-a-brac squeezed into a low-ceiling basement where tombs have been built against the walls. A narrow walkway leads past vaults that line all four sides, and around a collection of tombs that occupy the middle of the room and serve as a support for the church floor.
TANALEE SMITH | Associated Press Writer
9:01 AM EDT, April 6, 2009
SYDNEY (AP) — Australian researchers sifting papers belonging to the author of "Schindler's List" discovered a yellowing roll of 801 men saved from the Holocaust by the German industrialist — the very copy the writer used to bring the story to the world's attention, a curator said Monday.
The 13-page document is a copy of one of Oskar Schindler's famed compilations of names that eventually included 1,100 men and women he saved by employing them in his factories in World War II Germany.
"It's the list Tom used when writing 'Schindler's Ark' and that really brought Schindler's actions to the attention of the world," said State Library of New South Wales co-curator Olwen Pryke, referring to the book's author, Thomas Keneally.
"It is a copy of a copy, but it's a moving document, regardless," said Pryke, who stumbled upon the pages late last year. "When you look at it you think of the lives that were saved."
Keneally wrote the book "Schindler's Ark," also published as "Schindler's List," which was made into the Oscar-winning film by Steven Spielberg in 1993.
He sold his research, files and notes on the book to a manuscript dealer, and the library purchased those six boxes in 1996. The curators did not realize that they contained a copy of Schindler's list.
Keneally was given the copy of the list by Leopold Pfefferberg, No. 173 on Schindler's list, in a chance meeting in 1980, and was urged by the survivor to write about Schindler.
The author told the Sydney Morning Herald that he carried the list in his briefcase as he traveled the world researching the book — which won the Booker Prize in 1982 — before selling it along with all of his research.
"I'm very glad the list has ended up at the State Library," he was quoted as saying in Sunday's newspaper.
Pryke said they found the yellowing list — a copy of a carbon copy dating to 1944 or 1945 — amid German newspaper articles, photographs and Keneally's handwritten notes.
It includes the names, nationalities and skills of 801 men employed at Schindler's factory.
Pryke said several copies of the list were typed between 1944 and 1945 and carbon copies were made, as the originals would go to the German bureaucracy.
The list will be on display at the library and on its Web site beginning Tuesday.
Lawrence Summers, President Obama's top economic adviser, earned millions over the past year as managing director of the hedge fund D.E. Shaw Group and through speaking fees, some from financial institutions now at the center of the government's rescue program. Financial disclosure reports released by the White House show that Summers received $5.2 million from D.E. Shaw. He also reported payments for appearances before institutions such as J.P. Morgan, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, and Lehman Brothers. Overall, Summers was paid $2.7 million for more than 40 appearances before different organizations and companies, including financial institutions. (AP)
By Jason Straziuso
Associated Press / April 5, 2009
KABUL - The Afghan president said yesterday that he had ordered a review of a new law that critics say makes it legal for men to rape their wives, responding to criticism from around the world that included sharp comments from President Obama.
If the law contravenes the nation's constitution or Sharia law, 'measures will be taken.'
WOMEN'S RIGHTS
The law, signed by President Hamid Karzai last month, is intended to regulate family life inside Afghanistan's Shi'ite community, which makes up 10 percent to 20 percent of the country's 30 million people. Under one article legislating the frequency of sexual relations between Shi'ite husbands and wives, husbands have the right to sex every fourth night unless the wife is ill.
The United Nations Development Fund for Women has said the law "legalizes the rape of a wife by her husband."
Asked about the law at a news conference yesterday following the NATO conference in Strasbourg, France, President Obama described it as "abhorrent." He said the United States is communicating its views to the Karzai government.
"We think that it is very important for us to be sensitive to local culture, but we also think that there are certain basic principles that all nations should uphold, and respect for women and respect for their freedom and integrity is an important principle," President Obama said.
Even before President Obama's comments, Karzai said he ordered the Justice Ministry to review the law, and if anything in it contravenes the country's constitution or Sharia law, "measures will be taken."
The issue of women's rights is a source of tension between the country's conservative establishment and more liberal members of society. The Taliban government that ruled Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001 banned women from appearing in public without a body-covering burka and a male escort from her family.
Now, millions of girls attend school and many women own businesses. Of 351 parliamentarians, 89 are women.
But in the staunchly conservative country, critics fear those gains could easily be reversed. Fawzia Kufi, a lawmaker who opposed the legislation, said last week that the law undermines all the advances Afghan women have made in the last seven years.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper of Canada, who has criticized the law, offered qualified praise for Karzai's decision to review it.
"There is going to remain enormous pressure on the government of Afghanistan on this question," he said in Strasbourg.
Karzai did not mention the controversial article yesterday but said at a news conference he had studied the law earlier in the day and that "I don't see any problems with it."
He complained that Western media outlets had mistranslated it. He read an article of the law during the news conference that appears to restrict Shi'ite women's right to leave their homes, though Karzai underscored a provision that allows women to leave in emergencies.
Still, he said the law should be reviewed in consultation with scholars and religious leaders.
"I ordered the justice minister to review the law, and if there is anything that would contravene the country's constitution or Sharia law or the freedom our constitution gives to Afghan women, without any doubt there will be changes in it, and again it will be sent to the parliament of Afghanistan," he said. "Measures will be taken."
Critics have accused Karzai of signing the law to court Shi'ite votes in the country's August presidential election.
By Michael Kranish
Globe Staff / April 5, 2009
WASHINGTON - Shortly before the first signs of the stock market collapse, the Bush administration made a crucial decision that has propelled an estimated one to two million workers into stock-heavy retirement funds.
Many of the funds in which workers were automatically enrolled dropped more than 25 percent last year, while a more conservative investment strategy rejected by the Bush administration would have resulted in a gain of 4.7 percent.
The administration's decisions came in response to a congressional mandate to encourage more workers to participate in company-sponsored retirement savings plans. The Bush administration came up with a rule that enabled businesses to automatically enroll their workers in tax-free 401(k) retirement plans.
If the workers failed to specify how they wanted their money invested, the company would be required by law to place their retirement money in investment funds that, for the most part, relied heavily on stocks. The administration specifically rejected calls for a more conservative investment option.
"Everybody was going to win, everybody was going to Disney World, everyone would ride the equity wave" and make profits, said Gina Mitchell, president of the Stable Value Investment Association, which represents some of the companies whose conservative strategy was rejected. "They really underestimated the volatility of the market."
But federal officials who wrote the regulation said it reflects their belief that stock investments would pay off over the course of many years and cannot be evaluated on the basis of a year in which the stock market has collapsed.
"I firmly believe that the regulation is a very good one and will serve people very well," said Bradford Campbell, the former assistant secretary of labor for employee benefits, who oversaw the writing of the rule. "I believe what we put in was appropriate strategy for long-term retirement savings."
While there is no official tally of how many people have been subject to the regulation, an analysis by the private Employee Benefits Research Institute, based on overall enrollment in retirement plans, estimated that up to two million workers have already been enrolled into the accounts since the regulation was adopted in 2007.
The intent behind the regulation was to get more people to contribute to retirement savings accounts. Such savings are considered a pressing need at a time when the number of company-run pension plans is shrinking and many baby boomers are on the verge of retirement. About two-thirds of workers opted into such plans before 2006, and participation was expected to rise to more than 90 percent with an auto-enrollment provision.
There was bipartisan support in Congress for finding a way to increase worker participation. But many companies told Congress that they were reluctant to automatically enroll workers for fear that they would be sued if the funds performed poorly. Congress responded by passing legislation that provided protections against lawsuits if the companies put employees into certain categories of default funds and provided a match for part of an employee's contribution.The impact was immediate: The percentage of companies offering automatic enrollment jumped from 24 percent to 36 percent after the measure was passed, according to industry studies.
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But Congress left it up to the Bush administration to determine what categories of funds should be allowed. That set off a lobbying frenzy between companies that sold stock-heavy funds and those that offered nonstock "stable value" funds.
Stable value funds are composed of fixed-income investments and are coupled with insurance contracts that are designed to offset fluctuations in interest rates. They are not guaranteed, and a small number have lost value. But the mostly stable returns - an average return of 4.7 percent last year - have made them increasingly popular.
Backers of such funds said they were particularly well suited for people who did not opt in or out of their retirement plans because such individuals might be unfamiliar with the risks associated with stock funds.
The Bush administration, however, rejected the pleas of stable value fund managers to have their product be available as a stand-alone option for automatically enrolled workers, reasoning that the funds would be vastly outperformed by stock-heavy investments over the long term. The administration asserted that the stable value funds would not provide "meaningful retirement savings over the long term."
The Bush administration instead required that automatically enrolled workers be placed in other types of funds, with the most popular category being "target date" funds that have a mix of stocks, bonds and other products and are designed to become more conservative as a person nears retirement.
But the funds have not always worked as advertised, with even some of the funds designed for people near retirement being far more heavily invested in stocks than the government had expected. In one case, a fund with a 2010 retirement target had 64 percent of its portfolio in stocks and has lost 40 percent of its value in the last year.
Morningstar, a market analysis company, surveyed all the major 2010 funds and found that their one-year return, as of March 31, ranged from a loss of a little more than 6 percent to a loss of nearly 41 percent.
The Senate Special Committee on Aging says that target date funds are expected to make up 20 percent of savings in 401(k) and related retirement plans by 2010 - up from just 3 percent in 2006.
"I am very concerned that so many Americans are being moved into a financial product devoid of any regulation," the committee's chairman, Herbert Kohl, Democrat of Wisconsin, wrote recently to the Obama administration, requesting a review of the way workers are being put into target date funds under the Bush-era regulation.
Kohl wrote that large losses "simply should not occur in a financial product that was designed and is specifically advertised to limit risk and volatility as one nears retirement."
Campbell said it is "flatly wrong" to call the funds unregulated. But he said some of the funds for those nearing retirement may have been too heavily into stocks. If the funds were not managed according to "prudent" standards, he said, workers who were put into the funds may have legal recourse against those who ran them.
Brian Reid, the chief economist of the Investment Company Institute, whose members offer the target date funds, said the plans are here to stay because they help people balance their plans for their retirement. Asked if some of the plans were too aggressively into stocks, he said, "This is the first generation of understanding of how these work in the markets."
Given the impact of the stock market decline on the funds, he predicted that "we will be observing more firms offering target date funds that have much more conservative glide paths."
Workers who are automatically enrolled in such funds usually are given the option of later choosing from a broader array of funds offered by their employer.
PITTSBURGH - A gunman wearing a bulletproof vest and "lying in wait" opened fire on officers responding to a domestic disturbance call yesterday, killing three of them and turning a quiet Pittsburgh street into a battlefield, police said.
Police Chief Nate Harper said the motive for the shooting isn't clear, but friends said the gunman recently had been upset about losing his job and feared the Obama administration was poised to ban guns.
Richard Poplawski, 23, met officers at the doorway and shot two of them in the head immediately, Harper said. An officer who tried to help the two was also killed.
Poplawski, armed with an assault rifle and two other guns, then held police at bay for four hours as the fallen officers were left bleeding nearby, their colleagues unable to reach them, according to police and witnesses. More than 100 rounds were fired by the SWAT teams and Poplawski, Harper said.
The three slain officers were Eric Kelly, Stephen Mayhle, and Paul Sciullo III. Kelly had been on the force for 14 years, Mayhle and Sciullo for two years each. Another officer was shot in the hand and a fifth broke his leg on a fence.
Poplawski had gunshot wounds in his legs but was otherwise unharmed because he was wearing a bulletproof vest, Harper said. He was charged with three counts of homicide, aggravated assault and a weapons violation.
The shooting occurred just two weeks after four police officers were fatally shot in Oakland, Calif., in the deadliest day for US law enforcement since Sept. 11, 2001. The officers were the first Pittsburgh city officers to die in the line of duty in 18 years.
"This is a solemn day and it's a very sad day in the city of Pittsburgh," Harper said. "We've seen this kind of violence happen in California. We never would think this kind of violence would happen in the city of Pittsburgh."
At 7 a.m., Sciullo and Mayhle responded to a 911 call from Poplawski's mother, who remained holed up in the basement during the entire dispute and escaped unharmed, Harper said.
When they arrived at the home, Sciullo was immediately shot in the head. Mayhle, who was right behind him, was also shot in the head.
"It appears he was lying in wait for the officers," Harper said.
Kelly, who was on his way home after completing his overnight shift when he heard the call for help, rushed to the scene and was killed trying to help Sciullo and Mayhle, Harper said. SWAT teams and other officers arrived and were immediately fired on as well.
Don Sand, who lives across the street from Poplawski, said he was woken up by the sound of gunfire. Hunkering down behind a wall in his home, he saw the first two officers go down and then saw Kelly get shot.
"They couldn't get the scene secure enough to get to them. They were just lying there bleeding," Sand said. "By the time they secured the scene enough to get to them it was way too late."
Poplawski feared "the Obama gun ban that's on the way" and "didn't like our rights being infringed upon," said Edward Perkovic, his best friend.
Perkovic, 22, said he got a call at work from him in which he said, "Eddie, I am going to die today. . . . Tell your family I love them and I love you."
Perkovic said, "I heard gunshots and he hung up. . . . He sounded like he was in pain, like he got shot."
Poplawski had once tried to join the Marines, but was kicked out of boot camp after throwing a food tray at a drill sergeant, Perkovic said. Another longtime friend, Aaron Vire, said Poplawski feared that President Obama was going to take away his rights, though he said he "wasn't violently against Obama."
Vire, 23, said Poplawski once had an Internet talk show but that it wasn't successful. He said Poplawski owned an AK-47 rifle and several powerful handguns, including a .357 Magnum.
Obama has said he respects Americans' constitutional right to bear arms, but that he favors "common sense" gun laws. Gun rights advocates interpret that as meaning he would approve of curbs on ownership of assault and concealed weapons.
Poplawski had been laid off from his job at a glass factory earlier this year, said another friend, Joe DiMarco. DiMarco said he didn't know the name of the company, but knew his friend had been upset about it.
Poplawski had often fought with neighbors and had even gotten into fistfights with a couple of them, Sand said.
GRAHAM, Wash.—A quiet mobile home park nestled among towering evergreens reeled Sunday in the aftermath of an unthinkable crime: five children slain in their own home, apparently by their father, who took his own life with a gunshot miles away.
"How could something like this happen?" asked Mary Ripplinger, whose kids were playmates of the slain children. "Everyone's asking: Why did he do it? It's not right."
A relative visiting the family's doublewide trailer at the Deer Run mobile home park Saturday couldn't get anyone to answer the door but through a window glimpsed a child lying motionless on a bed.
Pierce County deputies called to the home 15 miles southeast of Tacoma were confronted with a horror: four children murdered in their beds and the fifth slain in the bathroom. The four girls and the youngest child, a 7-year-old boy, apparently had been shot to death.
"This was not a tragedy. It was a rotten murder," Pierce County Sheriff Paul Pastor said. "This appears to be the terrible work of the biological father. If that doesn't break your heart, I don't know what does."
Earlier Saturday, police found the father dead in his still-running car near the Muckleshoot Casino in Auburn, about 18 miles north of Graham and 30 miles south of Seattle.
The father had apparently killed himself with a rifle, Auburn Police Sgt. Scott Near said. No note was left in the car.
The mother's aunt, Penny Flansburg, identified the couple as Angela and James Harrison and the children as Maxine, Samantha, Heather, Jamie and James. The father worked as a diesel mechanic, and the mother works at Wal-Mart, Flansburg said.
She was at a loss to explain the crime.
"They were pleasant together," Flansburg said. "We can't even figure out why."
Ryan Peden, a classmate of the eldest daughter, who was 16, said she told him Friday night that her parents had gotten into a fight and her mother had left. The father followed the mother and tried to get her to return, said Peden, 16.
Carolyn and Raymond Bader, a former neighbor of the family, told The Seattle Times they often heard the father yelling at the children. The Baders said they called the sheriff's department and Child Protective Services several times with their concerns.
we must start by adding the ugly facts up.
In the Sunday Globe today, the front page was about the possible closing of the Globe within the next 30 days, ironically there was an ad insert for you to subscribe to the Globe for 26 weeks at 1/2 price.
There was also a story about the revenues lost by the Red Sox because of the downturn in the economy.
Washington St. in Boston THE Shopping District looks like a ghost town.
We still have a banking crisis, a housing crisis, an auto crisis, energy crisis. 8.5% Unemployment and rising, the slumping dollar ,
rising gun sales , tent cities, health care cost, States unable to meet budgets, Mexican drug wars IN the Southwestern United States etc.
Yet, you have clowns like Jim Kramer and the comics at CNBC peddling the Wall St. word and praising the end of the "recession"suckering in more people.
we have 2 wars, one holding steady and one growing at a cost of billions each and every day
We are trillions of dollars in debt
We owe China more than a trillion
We are up the creek without a paddle no matter how it is spun and no matter who is spinning it.
By Kylie MacLellan
LONDON (Reuters) - Scientists said on Thursday they had shown the human body regenerates heart cells at a rate of about one percent a year, a discovery that could one day reduce the need for transplants.
The study of 50 volunteers, using a dating method that detects traces of a carbon isotope left by Cold War nuclear bomb tests, raises the prospect of artificially stimulating the renewal process some day, they reported in the journal Science.
"It would be a way to try and help the heart to some self-help rather than transplanting new cells," Jonas Frisen of Sweden's Karolinska Institute said in a telephone interview.
"Taking advantage of the heart's own capacity to generate new cells either using pharmaceutical compounds or, if it is possible, by exercise or any other environmental factor."
Heart cells are unusual in that they stop dividing early in life. Doctors knew there were master cells called stem cells in the heart, but heart muscle usually simply forms scar tissue after damage and never fully regenerates.
In their four-year study, Frisen and colleagues employed an ingenious method to find out whether there is any regeneration at all.
"The DNA of all plant and animal cells incorporated high concentrations of carbon-14 released into the atmosphere by above-ground nuclear testing during the Cold War, and this unfortunate episode provides a unique opportunity to test cell population dynamics in human tissues," Charles Murry of the University of Washington and Richard Lee of Harvard Medical School wrote in a commentary.
Carbon-14 dating showed that overall, the hearts of their 50 volunteers were "younger" than the patients' ages.
Frisen said the rate at which the new cells are produced slows as we get older, with a young adult in their twenties renewing cells at a rate of about 1 percent a year, falling to half a percent a year by the age of 75.
"If you exchange cells at this rate it means that even if you live a very long life you will not have exchanged more than 50 percent of your cells," said Frisen.
"So at any given time your heart is a mosaic of cells you carry with you from birth and cells that that have been added later to replace cells that have been lost during life."
The finding could also help scientists determine whether some people are predisposed to heart disease, by looking at the heart's ability to renew cells.
"We are interested in studying whether some heart diseases could potentially be caused by too low an ability to replace heart cells," Frisen added.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - One Antarctic ice shelf has quickly vanished, another is disappearing and glaciers are melting faster than anyone thought due to climate change, U.S. and British government researchers reported on Friday.
They said the Wordie Ice Shelf, which had been disintegrating since the 1960s, is gone and the northern part of the Larsen Ice Shelf no longer exists. More than 3,200 square miles (8,300 square km) have broken off from the Larsen shelf since 1986.
Climate change is to blame, according to the report from the U.S. Geological Survey and the British Antarctic Survey, available at pubs.usgs.gov/imap/2600/B.
"The rapid retreat of glaciers there demonstrates once again the profound effects our planet is already experiencing -- more rapidly than previously known -- as a consequence of climate change," U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said in a statement.
"This continued and often significant glacier retreat is a wakeup call that change is happening ... and we need to be prepared," USGS glaciologist Jane Ferrigno, who led the Antarctica study, said in a statement.
"Antarctica is of special interest because it holds an estimated 91 percent of the Earth's glacier volume, and change anywhere in the ice sheet poses significant hazards to society," she said.
In another report published in the journal Geophysical Letters, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reports that ice is melting much more rapidly than expected in the Arctic as well, based on new computer analyses and recent ice measurements.
The U.N. Climate Panel projects that world atmospheric temperature will rise by between 1.8 and 4.0 degrees Celsius because of emissions of greenhouse gases that could bring floods, droughts, heat waves and more powerful storms.
As glaciers and ice sheets melt, they can raise overall ocean levels and swamp low-lying areas.
BY CARRIE MASON-DRAFFEN | carrie.mason-draffen@newsday.com
10:45 PM EDT, April 3, 2009
The country's longest-running postwar recession continues to wreak havoc on the national job market. The U.S. economy lost 663,000 jobs in March and the unemployment rate shot up to a 26-year high of 8.5 percent, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
That jobless rate rose from 8.1 percent in February, and 5.1 percent in March of last year.
A revised January number of 741,000, up from 655,000, shows even faster month-to-month deterioration in the job market than first thought. Though initial Bureau of Labor Statistics reports can impact stock markets, the data are almost always revised.
The January job loss is the highest so far for this recession, which began in December 2007, and, at 17 months old, is the longest postwar downturn. All told the country has lost 5.1 million jobs since the recession began, more than half in the past five months. The number of unemployed stands at 13.2 million, compared with 7.7 million at the start of the recession.
Dow closes above 8,000 even as report shows US jobless rate at 25-year high of 8.5 percent
"Today's numbers show that we have more work to do," said U.S. Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis.
The job market has deteriorated so rapidly that some career experts are advising job seekers to consider new job-hunting strategies.
" . . . You can't look for a job the same way you used to," said Amy Friedman, chief executive of Partners International/OI Partners, a career-consulting and outplacement firm based in Manhattan.
Job seekers should market themselves as a brand name, she said.
"Personal branding is hugely important right now. I don't care if you are a truck driver, whatever," she said. You have to ask yourself, "Why do I stand out? What is my personal brand?" One example is having skills that are transferrable from one industry to another, such as selling.
She said that even her office's career coaches had to seek retraining on new strategies to help workers. For example, the coaches had to bone up on consulting as a career because it's increasingly a career choice for laid-off workers.
Coaches "need to know what consulting means," she said.
All the economy's sectors lost jobs last month except for health care, which added 14,000 jobs. But even that consistent job generator is slowing. Its monthly job growth averaged 17,000 in the first quarter of this year, compared with 30,000 a month in 2008, BLS said.
The manufacturing and construction sectors as well as the professional and business-services category led the job losers. More than half of the losses in professional and business services occurred among temporary staffing companies. That is significant because the industry is considered a bellwether of the job market's health.
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama intends to lift the U.S. ban on family members traveling to Cuba and remittances to the island, two senior administration officials said Saturday.
Obama will announce the policy change before this month's Summit of the Americas in Trinidad and Tobago, according to the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the announcement had not yet been made.
The move would fulfill a pledge Obama made during the presidential campaign and could signal a new openness with the communist nation.
The Wall Street Journal first reported the development on Friday.
Democrats in Congress are also moving to loosen restrictions on family travel to Cuba, but Obama plans to use presidential powers to ease the rules on his own.
The president does not intend to call for lifting the decades-long trade embargo against Cuba, which would require congressional approval, the newspaper report said.
During the presidential campaign, Obama pledged to allow unlimited family travel and remittances to Cuba. "It's time to let Cuban-Americans see their mothers and fathers, their sisters and their brothers," he said in a speech last May in Miami. "It's time to let Cuban-American money make their families less dependent on the Castro regime."
The rules will affect an estimated 1.5 million Americans who have relatives in Cuba, the Journal said.
GIRL WAS WITH HER: Homeowner hit twice was waiting with gun.
By ZAZ HOLLANDER
zhollander@adn.com
Published: April 3rd, 2009 04:24 PM
Last Modified: April 4th, 2009 03:13 AM
WASILLA -- Todd Palin's half-sister was arrested Thursday after police say she broke into a Wasilla home to steal money for the second time this week but ended up getting caught by the armed homeowner. The woman's 4-year-old daughter was nearby, police said.
Todd Palin is Gov. Sarah Palin's husband. He referred questions to a spokeswoman for the governor, who said the family would have no comment.
Police arrested 35-year-old Diana Palin at a house on West Mill Site Circle near Wasilla's Multi-Use Sports Complex.
Homeowner Theodore Turcott told police an unfamiliar gray 1993 Toyota Camry pulled into his driveway Thursday morning, according to a affidavit filed Friday at the Palmer courthouse. Turcott told police he'd been burglarized twice recently: Someone stole $2,200 on March 26, leaving $400 behind, and after another apparent break-in Tuesday, all but $9 was gone.
So, Turcott told police, when he didn't recognize the woman getting out of the Camry, he grabbed a gun and hid in the bathroom to see what would happen, said Wasilla police Deputy Chief Greg Wood.
Palin made straight for the bedroom cabinet where Turcott kept his cash, Wood said.
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Turcott confronted her, detaining her until police arrived, he said.
But before officers got there, Palin's 4-year-old daughter came into the house, the prosecutor handling the case said during a Palmer District Court hearing Friday.
"There was a significant safety issue regarding this 4-year-old child," prosecutor Mike Walsh told Judge John Wolfe.
The girl told police she'd been to the house a couple of days earlier, the affidavit stated. Palin, however, said she had never been there before, and mistakenly thought it was a friend's house.
Police arrested Palin on felony burglary charges stemming from the break-ins Thursday and Tuesday, as well as misdemeanor theft and criminal trespass charges. Her tire tracks and footprints appeared to match those in photographs taken earlier by Turcott, police said.
She remained jailed at Mat-Su Pretrial Facility in lieu of $10,000 bail Friday afternoon.
The Palmer District Attorney's office is deciding whether to also pursue child endangerment charges, Wood said. He said other charges could also be filed stemming from the first break-in at Turcott's when the case goes to a Palmer grand jury next week.
At Friday's hearing, Palin appeared shaken but polite, answering, "Yes, please," when Wolfe asked if she wanted a court-appointed, state-funded public defender, a request the judge granted.
How Turcott's house was chosen remains unclear. Palin and her husband, Scott McLean, live in a completely different neighborhood on the other side of Wasilla.
McLean was not at the Friday hearing. Earlier in the day, he said he had learned of his wife's arrest when police called him Thursday morning to come pick up their daughter. He'd assumed Palin had been arrested for driving on a suspended license due to a series of traffic offenses including speeding and expired registration.
He said he didn't recognize Turcott's address, and said he had no idea why his wife would be at a house so far from her own -- the sports complex is on the west side of Wasilla, while the Palin home is halfway to Palmer, near Mat-Su Regional Medical Center.
McLean said he was still in shock. His wife, a stay-at-home mom, took good care of their 4- and 6-year-old children, he said.
"Everything seemed normal," he said.
binghamton N.Y.
Guy walks into a place and stabs 15 people to death
wait
wait
sorry
man SHOOTS 15 people to death, another proud N.R.A. moment
the Depression is over as of 4-2-09 @ 8:00 am
He made the announcement on MSNBC
An American tourist in London decides to skip his tour group and explore the city on his own. He wanders around, seeing the sights, occasionally stopping at a quaint pub to soak up the local culture, chat with the locals, and have a pint of bitter.
After a while, he finds himself in a very nice neighborhood with big, stately residences...no pubs, no stores, no restaurants, and worst of all NO PUBLIC RESTROOMS.
He really, really has to go, after all those Guinnesses. He finds a narrow side street, with high walls surrounding the adjacent buildings and decides to use the wall to solve his problem.
As he is unzipping, he is tapped on the shoulder by a London police officer, who says, "I say, sir, you simply cannot do that here, you know."
"I'm very sorry, officer," replies the American, "but I really, really have to go, and I just can't find a public restroom."
"Ah, yes," said the policeman..."Just follow me". He leads the American to a back delivery alley to a gate, which he opens.
"In there," points the policeman. "Go ahead sir, anywhere you like."
The fellow enters and finds himself in the most beautiful garden he has ever seen. Manicured grass lawns, statuary, fountains, sculptured hedges, and huge beds of gorgeous flowers, all in perfect bloom.
Since he has the policeman's blessing, he relieves himself and feels much more comfortable. As he goes back through the gate, he says to the police officer, "That was really decent of you... is that what you call English hospitality?"
"No sir...", replied the police officer, "...that is what we call the French Embassy."
A duck walks into a bar and asks: "Got any Bread?"
Barman says: "No."
Duck says: "Got any bread?"
Barman says: "No."
Duck says: "Got any bread?"
Barman says: "No, we have no bread."
Duck says: "Got any bread?"
Barman says: "No, we haven't got any bread!"
Duck says: "Got any bread?"
Barman says: "No, are you deaf?! We haven't got any bread, and if you ask me again and I'll nail your dang beak to the bar you irritating dang duck!"
Duck says: "Got any nails?"
Barman says: "No"
Duck says: "Got any bread?
NEW YORK - The bidding for Boston's tallest building, the John Hancock Tower, was over as soon as it began.
Shortly after 10 a.m. in the Manhattan offices of powerhouse law firm Skadden Arps, a young man with jet black hair stepped behind a lectern and called for offers from a crowd of stone-faced lawyers and real estate investors.
From the front row, Jeffrey Gronning, an executive with Normandy Real Estate Partners, quickly raised a paddle in the air, bidding $20.1 million with a flick of the wrist.
The auctioneer began darting glances and pointing fingers. "I have $20 million, 100,000. Do I hear 20.2?"
The crowd was silent and still. The auctioneer followed with the familiar call, going once, twice, "fair warning?" Again, nothing.
In less than 60 seconds, Boston's most storied office building was sold, for $20.1 million plus $640.5 million in preexisting debt, putting the total value of the building at $660.6 million.
It was an abrupt passing, but the event was among the first of what real estate specialists predict will be many such auctions or forced sales of distressed properties in coming months. The Hancock auction was prompted by the failure of the now-former owner, Broadway Partners, which bought it in late 2006 for $1.3 billion, to make its debt payments on the property.
The winning bidder was a joint venture of Normandy Real Estate Partners and Five Mile Capital Partners, which began buying pieces of Broadway Partners' debt on the building last summer as part of a loan-to-own strategy. The firms initiated foreclosure in January after Broadway Partners defaulted on some loans.
Executives of the new owner said Normandy will manage the Hancock and make significant improvements to help attract new tenants to the building, which is struggling with rising office vacancies. The two firms also bought 10 Universal City, an office tower in Burbank, Calif., yesterday.
"Normandy and Five Mile believe these two buildings are each one of the top properties in their respective markets," the partnership said in a statement.
The auction was the first in a wave of such proceedings expected to hit commercial properties in coming years, as the recession takes its toll on real estate firms unable to make debt payments.
"It's certainly going to bring truth to the market," said David Fitzgerald of CB Richard Ellis, a commercial real estate firm. "The recession is starting to hit the commercial market, and the auctioning of the Hancock is the real proof of that."
Normandy and Five Mile initially bought a $75 million slice of debt on the Hancock, hoping to emerge from a pool of lenders in control if Broadway defaulted. By yesterday, Normandy and Five Mile had persuaded several other lenders to sell their interests to them for less than 40 cents on the dollar, according to executives involved in the matter.
While several other potential bidders attended the auction, Normandy and Five Mile were considered to be in the best position because the form of the auction favored existing investors. Arms-length buyers in such foreclosures are required to buy out other lenders, a time-consuming and potentially costly endeavor that proved to be in Normandy and Five Mile's favor.
Many of the lawyers, bankers, and real estate investors who packed the Skadden Arps conference room said they were there to get a sense of how similar auctions will unfold in coming months.
The auctioneer called for bids on Universal City Plaza and then on the Hancock. In both cases, Normandy and Five Mile made the first - and only - bids.
The event ended before many of the executives had taken off their suit jackets.
WASHINGTON - Al Franken, the comedian-turned-politician, won a potentially decisive court ruling yesterday in his bid to replace Norm Coleman, a Minnesota Republican trying to hold on to his Senate seat.
A three-judge panel ruled that only 400 absentee ballots - far fewer than Coleman had sought - should be examined for possible counting.
If the ruling stands, it could be devastating for Coleman, who trailed his Democratic challenger by 225 votes out of some 2.9 million cast and had hoped that nearly 1,400 absentee ballots might be recounted.
Even if the results put Coleman further in the hole, as expected, he could fight on, before the Minnesota Supreme Court or perhaps in the federal courts. His lawyer said Coleman had not given up.
After seven weeks of deliberations, the court said it would decide which of the 400 ballots would be counted in open court by next Tuesday.
The panel said it based its decision on "a complete and thorough review of the 1,717 exhibits and transcripts of testimony."
The mathematics appeared to give Franken a big advantage, and the lawyers for both sides recognized that.
"We feel pretty good about where we stand," Marc Elias, a lawyer for Franken, said.
Ben Ginsberg, a lawyer for Coleman, disagreed sharply with the court's ruling.
"I just think they're wrong," he said.
Ginsberg said the Coleman campaign plans to appeal the ruling to the Minnesota Supreme Court, but he would not speculate on whether Coleman would take his appeal to federal courts.
By Pedro Nicolaci da Costa
NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. home prices plunged at a record pace in January while consumer confidence held just above record lows in March, according to data on Tuesday that showed no signs of a bottom for the lengthy recession.
Home prices nationwide have lost around 30 percent of their value from their peak in 2006, according to the S&P/Case Shiller index, with regional variations making for much steeper declines in places like Florida and Nevada. In the year to January alone, prices plunged a record 19 percent.
A depressed housing sector, coupled with dire employment prospects, kept consumer sentiment close to rock bottom. The Conference Board's index of confidence barely inched up from February's all-time low, rising to 26.0.
"Job conditions are terrible," said Brian Bethune, U.S. economist at IHS Global Insight in Waltham, Mass. "There is a general sense of uncertainty because people are peppered with bad news around the world."
Recent economic reports had shown hints of a pickup in consumer spending and a rebound in durable goods orders. But the data on Tuesday was less reassuring.
The Chicago purchasing managers index, a measure of business activity in the Midwest, fell to 31.4 this month from 34.2 in February, the most severe shrinkage since 1980.
Nor were details of the confidence survey reassuring for those hoping that a turnaround in housing will lead the economy out of its morass.
Only 2 percent of Americans said they intended to buy a home in the next six months, the weakest reading since 1982. Car-buying intentions also fell sharply.
"The mood is still quite gloomy, people are reticent about spending," said David Resler, chief economist at Nomura Securities.
GLOBAL IMPACT
The troubles were hardly confined to U.S. borders. The Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development said member economies would contract 4.3 percent this year. That was sharply down from the last forecast of -0.4 percent, made in November.
"The world economy is in the midst of its deepest and most synchronized recession in our lifetime caused by a global financial crisis and deepened by a collapse in world trade," the OECD said in its interim economic outlook.
Germany suffered its biggest jump in unemployment in March since the outset of the global economic crisis, with the jobless total rising for a fifth straight month.
Canada, meanwhile, was on track to post one of its worst-ever economic quarters, likely pushing the central bank to go beyond interest rate cuts in its efforts to combat the recession.
TOKYO (Reuters) - Honda Motor Co (7267.T) said it would cut production in North America by 62,000 vehicles by shutting down factories for 13 days starting in May and said it would cut pay for salaried and factory workers.
Honda's shares gained 7.3 percent in morning trade in Tokyo on Wednesday as the yen lost ground, outperforming a 5.3 percent rise in Tokyo's transport sector subindex .ITEQP.T. The news was announced on Tuesday in the United States.
Japan's No.2 automaker, which like its rivals has been hit by the sharp downturn in auto sales, said it will cut pay for salaried and factory workers and also offered buyouts and early retirement incentives to most of its 32,400 workers in the United States and Canada.
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Job losses in the U.S. private sector accelerated in March, more than economists' expectations, according to a report by ADP Employer Services on Wednesday.
Private employers cut jobs by a record 742,000 in March versus a 706,000 revised cut in February that was originally reported at 697,000 jobs, said ADP, which has been carrying out the survey since 2001.
The big drop foreshadows a huge decline in the non-farm payroll reading in the government's employment report that will be released on Friday, some analysts said.
"It's a terrible number. It is almost a loss of three quarters of a million jobs which is possibly the highest we have seen so far over the length of this crisis," said Matt Esteve, foreign exchange trader with Tempus Consulting in Washington.
U.S. stock futures and the dollar fell after news of the bigger-than-expected job losses, while U.S. Treasury bonds regained some of their lost ground.
Economists had expected 655,000 private-sector job cuts in March in the ADP report, according to a recent Reuters poll.
Alaska, US government file civil lawsuits against BP for oil spills on North Slope
MARK THIESSEN | Associated Press Writer
6:42 AM EDT, April 1, 2009
ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — Separate state and federal civil lawsuits were filed Tuesday against BP Exploration (Alaska) Inc. over two spills at the nation's largest oil field in 2006.
The lawsuits were filed two years after the company pleaded guilty to federal violations of the Clean Water Act for one of the spills and agreed to pay a $20 million fine.
The federal government filed its lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Anchorage alleging violations of federal clean air and water laws for the spills at Prudhoe Bay, on Alaska's North Slope. It asks the court to order BP Alaska to take actions to prevent spills in the future and impose stiff penalties.
The state of Alaska followed with its own lawsuit in state Superior Court later in the day, alleging violations of state environmental laws and loss of revenue for the state.
The state is seeking penalties and restitution for revenue lost between 2006 and 2008 as production was first slowed because of the spills and then for reconstruction of the pipeline system.
Steven Mulder, chief assistant attorney general of the state Department of Law's environmental section, estimated there was a production shortfall of at least 35 million barrels of oil over the three-year period. About 90 percent of Alaska's state revenue comes from oil taxes and royalties.
Both lawsuits contend some of the penalties could be quadrupled if negligence was found to be a factor.
"We have taken significant steps to ensure that our operations are safe and reliable, and protect the environment. Those include building a new $500 million system of oil transit lines at Prudhoe Bay," BP Alaska spokesman Steve Rinehart said in a statement.
"We have no comment on the legal issues," he added.
A 212,000-gallon crude spill in March 2006 and a smaller spill five months later ultimately caused BP to halve production at Prudhoe Bay for several weeks starting in August 2006. The spill came from a leak the size of an almond, caused by erosion, in a pipeline that hadn't been examined by devices that clean out sludge and check for corrosion and wall thickness since 1998. The crude covered two acres of tundra and a frozen lake.
The federal lawsuit alleges BP Alaska illegally discharged more than 200,000 gallons of crude oil from pipelines onto the North Slope, failed to prepare and implement spill prevention and control plans in accordance with good engineering practices and didn't implement some required spill prevention measures under the Clean Water Act.
That lawsuit also claims BP Alaska violated the Clean Air Act by improperly removing materials containing asbestos from pipelines, and failed to comply in a timely manner with an order from the Department of Transportation to conduct certain testing, inspection, maintenance and repair activities.
BP Exploration Alaska Inc. in 2007 pleaded guilty to one violation of the Clean Water Act for the March 2006 spill. The company agreed to pay $20 million in fines related to the spill, the largest ever in the vast, oil-rich region of arctic Alaska. It also admitted it didn't adequately assess the lines or mitigate the development of corrosion which led to the leaks, the state lawsuit says.
The company's "admitted failures were part of a pattern of practice of unlawful behavior in its oil and gas operations," the state suit says.
The federal lawsuit was filed by the Justice Department on behalf of the Department of Transportation-Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration and the
Report: Justice Department planning to drop federal felony charges against former Sen. Stevens
DEVLIN BARRETT | Associated Press Writer
7:19 AM EDT, April 1, 2009
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Justice Department will seek to drop all charges against former Sen. Ted Stevens, whose conviction on corruption charges sparked complaints of prosecutorial misconduct, officials said Wednesday.
The 85-year-old Alaska Republican was convicted late last year on seven felony counts of lying on Senate financial disclosure forms to conceal hundreds of thousands of dollars in gifts and home renovations from a businessman.
Stevens has appealed his conviction. Problems with the prosecution angered the judge and made it more difficult for the Justice Department to defend the conviction.
Two people familiar with the case, speaking on condition of anonymity because they aren't authorized to talk about it before court documents are filed, said Justice officials have decided to ask the judge to dismiss the indictment. If the judge agrees, Stevens' conviction would be vacated.
The decision was first reported Wednesday by National Public Radio, which said Attorney General Eric Holder decided the conviction could not be defended because of problems with the government's prosecution.
In December, Stevens asked a federal judge to grant him a new trial or throw out the case, saying his trial had many "deficiencies."
Reached at his office this morning by the Anchorage Daily News, Stevens' lawyer, Brendan Sullivan, told the newspaper he has a meeting at the Justice Department at 10 a.m. but said he had not been informed of the reported decision by Justice.
Messages for Stevens' lawyers from The Associated Press were not returned early Wednesday morning.
U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan held Justice Department lawyers in contempt last month for failing to turn over documents as ordered. He called their behavior "outrageous."
Sullivan had ordered Justice to provide the agency's internal communications regarding a whistle-blower complaint brought by an FBI agent involved in the investigation of Stevens. The agent objected to Justice Department tactics during the trial, including failure to turn over evidence and an "inappropriate relationship" between the lead agent on the case and the prosecution's star witness.
The Justice Department has since assigned a new team of prosecutors to the case.