Thursday, February 26, 2009

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Lisa Madigan OK's Early Senate Election That Could Remove Burris Top
SPRINGFIELD, Ill. (AP) -- Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan says the General Assembly can constitutionally pass a law that moves up the date of the next election for President Barack Obama's former Senate seat. State Republicans sought Madigan's opinion, issued Wednesday night, which comes as controversy swirls around Sen. Roland Burris' appointment. Voters are scheduled to vote for Obama's successor in a February 2010 primary and November 2010 general election. But the GOP wants a May 26 election -- effectively kicking Burris out of he doesn't win. Madigan says neither the U.S. Constitution nor the Illinois Constitution would prohibit moving up the election. In her opinion, the 17th Amendment shows a "clear preference" for Senators to be chosen by direct popular election. Currently, Illinois' governor has the power to fill Senate vacancies.
 
Old-Fashioned Calorie-Cutting The Only Diet That Works Top
LOS ANGELES — Low-fat, low-carb or high-protein? The kind of diet doesn't matter, scientists say. All that really counts is cutting calories and sticking with it, according to a federal study that followed people for two years. However, participants had trouble staying with a single approach that long and the weight loss was modest for most. As the world grapples with rising obesity, millions have turned to popular diets like Atkins, Zone and Ornish that tout the benefits of one nutrient over another. Some previous studies have found that low carbohydrate diets like Atkins work better than a traditional low-fat diet. But the new research found that the key to losing weight boiled down to a basic rule _ calories in, calories out. "The hidden secret is it doesn't matter if you focus on low-fat or low-carb," said Dr. Elizabeth Nabel, director of the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, which funded the research. Limiting the calories you consume and burning off more calories with exercise is key, she said. The study, which appears in Thursday's New England Journal of Medicine, was led by Harvard School of Public Health and Pennington Biomedical Research Center in Louisiana. Researchers randomly assigned 811 overweight adults to one of four diets, each of which contained different levels of fat, protein and carbohydrates. Though the diets were twists on commercial plans, the study did not directly compare popular diets. The four diets contained healthy fats, were high in whole grains, fruits and vegetables and were low in cholesterol. Nearly two-thirds of the participants were women. Each dieter was encouraged to slash 750 calories a day from their diet, exercise 90 minutes a week, keep an online food diary and meet regularly with diet counselors to chart their progress. There was no winner among the different diets; reduction in weight and waist size were similar in all groups. People lost 13 pounds on average at six months, but all groups saw their weight creep back up after a year. At two years, the average weight loss was about 9 pounds while waistlines shrank an average of 2 inches. Only 15 percent of dieters achieved a weight-loss reduction of 10 percent or more of their starting weight. Dieters who got regular counseling saw better results. Those who attended most meetings shed more pounds than those who did not _ 22 pounds compared with the average 9 pound loss. Lead researcher Dr. Frank Sacks of Harvard said a restricted calorie diet gives people greater food choices, making the diet less monotonous. "They just need to focus on how much they're eating," he said. Sacks said the trick is finding a healthy diet that is tasty and that people will stick with over time. Before Debbie Mayer, 52, enrolled in the study, she was a "stress eater" who would snack all day and had no sense of portion control. Mayer used to run marathons in her 30s, but health problems prevented her from doing much exercise in recent years. Mayer tinkered with different diets _ Weight Watchers, Atkins, South Beach _ with little success. "I've been battling my weight all my life. I just needed more structure," said Mayer, of Brockton, Mass., who works with the elderly. Mayer was assigned to a low-fat, high-protein diet with 1,400 calories a day. She started measuring her food and went back to the gym. The 5-foot Mayer started at 179 pounds and dropped 50 pounds to 129 pounds by the end of the study. She now weighs 132 and wants to shed a few more pounds. Another study volunteer, Rudy Termini, a 69-year-old retiree from Cambridge, Mass., credits keeping a food diary for his 22-pound success. Termini said before participating in the study he would wolf down 2,500 calories a day. But sticking to an 1,800-calorie high-fat, average protein diet meant no longer eating an entire T-bone steak for dinner. Instead, he now eats only a 4-ounce steak. "I was just oblivious to how many calories I was having," said the 5-foot-11-inch Termini, who dropped from 195 to 173 pounds. "I really used to just eat everything and anything in sight." Dr. David Katz of the Yale Prevention Research Center and author of several weight control books, said the results should not be viewed as an endorsement of fad diets that promote one nutrient over another. The study compared high quality, heart healthy diets and "not the gimmicky popular versions," said Katz, who had no role in the study. Some popular low-carb diets tend to be low in fiber and have a relatively high intake of saturated fat, he said. Other experts were bothered that the dieters couldn't keep the weight off even with close monitoring and a support system. "Even these highly motivated, intelligent participants who were coached by expert professionals could not achieve the weight losses needed to reverse the obesity epidemic," Martijn Katan of Amsterdam's Free University wrote in an accompanying editorial. ______ On the Net: New England Journal: http://www.nejm.org
 
Nadesapillai Vithyatharan, Sri Lanka Editor, Arrested And Accused Of Aiding Rebel Strike Top
COLOMBO, Sri Lanka — Sri Lankan police arrested the editor of a Tamil-language newspaper in the middle of a funeral Thursday, accusing him of aiding a rebel air attack on the capital last week. The arrest of Nadesapillai Vithyatharan came as the government faced growing criticism for a recent spate of attacks on journalists viewed as critical of the offensive against the Tamil Tiger rebels in the north. Last month, a prominent newspaper editor critical of the war was killed by gunmen, a private TV station was attacked by assailants armed with guns and grenades and another editor was stabbed. Opposition officials and media activists have accused the government of a role in the attacks, an allegation the government denies. Vithyatharan, editor of the reputedly pro-rebel Sudar Oli newspaper, was attending a funeral near Colombo Thursday when three uniformed police officers drove up in a van, pulled him from a crowd of mourners standing near the coffin, and drove away, said E. Saravanapavan, managing director of the newspaper. "We were trying to push him inside and they were trying to drag him the other way," he said. Lakshman Hulugalle, a defense spokesman, said Vithyatharan was being held in connection with the rebels' kamikaze attack on Colombo last Friday, but that it was too soon to know if he would be charged. He defended the conditions of the arrest. "There was nothing harsh in the arrest because he's a wanted person," he said. Saravanapavan said the arrest came a day after police came to the newspaper's offices and demanded everyone's name and address. They did not explain the reason for the demand, he said. Reporters Without Borders demanded Vithyatharan's immediate release. "What is this respected Tamil editor accused of? Outspoken coverage of the situation in Sri Lanka, including the fate of its Tamil population," the group said in a statement. Meanwhile, army troops and the Tamil Tiger separatists fought fierce battles in Puthukkudiyiruppu, the last rebel-held town, the military said. The military has driven the rebels out of much of the de facto state they controlled across the north and boxed them into a tiny strip of land along the northeastern coast. If Puthukkudiyiruppu falls, the rebels will be confined to a few villages and jungle areas, along with tens of thousands of civilians still trapped in the war zone. In a speech Thursday, President Mahinda Rajapaksa accused the rebels of increasing their forcible recruitment of children as they grow more desperate in the face of the military onslaught. The rebels have been fighting since 1983 for an independent state for minority Tamils after decades of marginalization by governments dominated by the Sinhalese majority. More than 70,000 people have been killed in the fighting. More on Asia
 
Liz Smith Says Goodbye, Trashes New York Post Top
Liz Smith published her final column in the New York Post Thursday, headlined "I'll Miss You, NYC!" The column began with an announcement that she would miss being in the paper and ended with the following farewell: HAIL AND FAREWELL! This column marks my last for the New York Post, where I've been writing for 14 years. I am sorry to go. But I've lived long enough to know the closing of one door means the opening of another.... Tomorrow marks the first time in 33 years that the Liz Smith column will not appear in a New York City newspaper. But it's exhilarating to be fired at age 86. So, thanks for all your support and enthusiasm over the years and much love to each of you. Smith was more free-wheeling in an i nterview with fellow fired gossip columnist Lloyd Grove , who was dismissed from the New York Daily News in 2006. In the interview, published in The Daily Beast, Smith tells Grove that she doesn't consider the New York Post a real New York City paper, that she's only laid eyes on editor Col Allan three times (he fired her by letter), and that she reads Page Six "mystified every day." Smith also told Grove she longs for the days of Old Hollywood gossip: A real gossip story is Lana Turner's daughter killing Johnny Stompanato. It had all kinds of tragic ramifications--celebrity, sex, a little girl involved and so forth. I mean, who cares if somebody you've never heard of is sniffing cocaine in a bathroom down in Soho? That's the level of gossip today Read their full interview here .
 
Jay Leno On Trial Over Strike Monologues Top
Reporting from Los Angeles and New York -- Comedian Jay Leno was hauled in front of his own union's trial committee Wednesday to address charges that he broke guild rules during last season's writers strike, a full year after the alleged violations. The NBC late-night host was a prominent backer of the Writers Guild of America during the 100-day work stoppage, but he alarmed union officials when he announced on the air that he was penning his own monologues while the strike was still in full swing. Leno contends that he did nothing wrong. He has the highest profile among a handful of writers whose cases are being reviewed by the committee, which will make a recommendation to the board on whether any action should be taken. Possible penalties include a reprimand, a fine and even expulsion from the union. More on Jay Leno
 
Pakistan's Sharif Urges Protests After Court Bans Him From Contesting Elections Top
Nawaz Sharif, a former Pakistani prime minister and leader of the biggest opposition party, has urged people to join him in what is expected to be a large anti-government rally next month by lawyers. More on Pakistan
 
Rosie O'Donnell's "America" Marks Her Return To TV -- On Lifetime Top
BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. — Rosie O'Donnell says she doesn't have time these days to view "The View." "I don't watch it too much," O'Donnell said. "I don't really watch too much daytime, having four kids and being kind of overwhelmed by that." O'Donnell _ who left the daytime talk show in 2007 after a single tumultuous season _ returns to TV on Saturday night with a Lifetime movie about the foster-care system called "America." She had been a foster parent to two children, including a girl named Rosie for 1 1/2 years, when an intern in 2002 handed her the book by E.R. Frank that inspired the movie. O'Donnell, who co-wrote the script and is executive producer, plays a therapist for a boy aging out of foster care. She discovered her 17-year-old co-star Philip Johnson while eating at a Detroit diner just days before production was to begin. "He was at a table with two uncles, three sisters and a dad. And I would watch him listen to each conversation," O'Donnell said. "I was staring at them so much, finally one of the uncles said 'Isn't that Roseanne Barr?' And I said 'Close enough!'" O'Donnell is raising four children with Kelli Carpenter, who she married five years ago in a San Francisco ceremony courts later invalidated. They range in age from 13-year-old Parker to 6-year-old Vivi. The former host of "The Rosie O'Donnell" show said she found this year's Academy Awards to be "beautifully gay," and praised acceptance speeches by "Milk" screenwriter Dustin Lance Black and the film's star, Sean Penn. "I thought that was absolutely heartwrenching and perfect," she said. "It was very moving to me. And I thought Hugh Jackman was wonderful." In the wake of California voters banning same-sex marriage, O'Donnell said she expects the gay-rights movement to move beyond individual states. "We keep walking forward," she said. "Civil rights don't happen overnight. I think it's going to happen, and it's going to happen soon. It will be national." "When you think really how long the gay-rights movement has been around, it's not that long," she added. "It's tremendous progress. When my career began, no one would even insinuate anyone was gay. People wouldn't even bring it up. It was never mentioned. It was almost a taboo subject. "When I was (first) on TV, it was before 'Will & Grace,' it was before Ellen came out. And not one person ever asked me. Times have changed just in my lifetime. To walk down the street in Manhattan and see 20-year-old guys holding hands or young, cute lesbians. ... I think 'Wow.' There has been tremendous progress made. Just in my lifetime. And I'm almost 47." ___ On the Net: http://www.lifetimetv.com (This version CORRECTS release date from to Saturday, sted Sunday.)
 
Holder Vows To End Raids On Medical Marijuana Clubs Top
Attorney General Eric Holder said at a press conference Wednesday that the Justice Department will no longer raid medical marijuana clubs that are established legally under state law. His declaration is a fulfillment of a campaign promise by President Barack Obama, and marks a major shift from the previous administration. After the inauguration, the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) continued to carry out such raids, despite Obama's promise. Holder was asked if those raids represented American policy going forward. "No," he said. "What the president said during the campaign, you'll be surprised to know, will be consistent with what we'll be doing in law enforcement. He was my boss during the campaign. He is formally and technically and by law my boss now. What he said during the campaign is now American policy." The exchange takes place at about the 25:00 mark here . Holder's declaration is a high point for the movement to legalize medical marijuana, which has been growing for decades despite federal hostility. In 2007, for a book on drug culture and drug trends that will be released in June, I toured a number of the medical marijuana dispensaries in question and interviewed their owners and customers. This is what I found, excerpted from the book: * * * * * A first-time visitor to Harborside Health Center might have a hard time believing he's about to enter "an extraordinary environment of medical care, honesty, and friendliness," as the place describes itself online. Situated in a nondescript warehouse just off the freeway in Oakland, California, it's labeled only with the giant digits of its street number, 1840. Two security guards in blue are posted outside, and the facility is also equipped with motion detectors, video and audio surveillance, and laser alarms. The guards are, in fact, extraordinarily friendly, offering professional smiles to those who approach. But they're not exactly welcoming, and for good reason: at Harborside, no one gets in without a medical-cannabis card or a recommendation from a doctor. I had come with a federal medical researcher who'd recently finished a long study of medical-cannabis clubs in the Bay Area and was able to vouch for me. But it's not exactly impossible to get a card or a recommendation. Ads in alt-weeklies throughout the state advertise doctors willing to give a consultation to anyone who has one of a seemingly endless list of symptoms and illnesses that might be treatable with medical marijuana. Take the ad for Aldridge Medical Care that runs in the LA Weekly and features a guy wearing a white coat with a stethoscope hanging around his neck. Walk-ins are accepted, the text states, as long as the patient suffers from "pain, migraines, cramps, anxiety, depression, ADHD, nausea, IBS, insomnia, etc." Once you get the card, it's not much harder to find a shop. On the very same page of the Weekly, the Green Earth Pharmacy offers "Free Samples" to "first time patients with this ad." And for the consumer looking for choices, there's WeedTRACKER.com, which, yes, tracks the varieties of weed available at Harborside and similar centers, allowing patients to rate the quality of each establishment - a Better Business Bureau of sorts. ("[W]e carry over 50 different types of buds, plus all our edibles and concentrates. If we don't have what you are looking for, we probably have something you will like," Harborside promises.) If you're not an official medical-cannabis patient, WeedTRACKER suggests that you "click here"--which sends you directly to Google, a site almost as good at finding pot dispensaries. We walked through Harborside's metal detector and waited for the two owners, a guy named David Wedding Dress and his partner, Steve DeAngelo. They opened the center in October 2006, on a day that three other clubs in the Bay Area were raided. "We had to decide in that moment whether or not we were really serious about this and whether we were willing to risk arrest for it," said DeAngelo. "And we decided we were gonna open our doors. And we did, and we haven't looked back since. The only way I'll stop doing what I'm doing is if they drag me away in chains. And as soon as they let me out, I'll be back doing it again." After less than a year, the shop was doing $1 million a month in revenue. In the next room were a half-dozen glassed-over counters where Harborside personnel were describing the various strains of marijuana available to customers. Marijuana's major ingredient, tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, combines with more than thirty other active agents called cannabinoids. It's not clear how the interaction of THC and cannabinoids affects the user's experience, but THC taken by itself has an effect different from that of marijuana. Different varieties of the plant also have different effects. Cannabis sativa provides a speedy, uplifting high. ("Good for when you want to clean out your garage," said one sales rep.) Cannabis indica, often recommended for pain relief, knocks you out stone-cold. Most of the pot on sale is a mix of the two, and a young woman behind one counter elaborately explained the benefits of each and whether it had been grown indoors, outdoors, in the shade, or in the open and when in its life cycle it was harvested. "Green Erkle is Purple Erkle picked before it turns purple," she offered. "It's a sativa-indica blend heavier on the sativa, with a nice fruity flavor to it." For those without a green thumb, the shop offers classes on pot-growing, both indoor and outdoor. Would-be farmers who want a more professional-sounding degree can also enroll at nearby Oaksterdam University. Continuing the tour, Wedding Dress pressed a finger to an electric scanner, opening the door to a back room. Three men sat in a waiting room with duffel bags full of marijuana. In the next room, two Harborside employees were sorting through the deliveries and negotiating prices with guys who could reasonably be called drug dealers. * * * * * Patriotic potheads love to point out that cannabis was grown at Jamestown, that George Washington might have used hashish, and that Thomas Jefferson wrote a draft of the Declaration of Independence on hemp-fiber paper. But recent history offers more compelling reasons that marijuana is a definitively American drug: since the 1930s, it has slotted neatly into the age-old debate over chemically induced pleasure versus chemically induced pain relief. Since the 1990s, it has been at the center of a conflict between states' rights and federal authority; it's considered by advocates and opponents alike to be the most likely of all controlled substances to change the terms of U.S. drug policy. Of course, the medical-marijuana movement is hardly unprecedented in our national history. During prohibition, congressional hearings were held on "medical beer," a serious effort to get around the law. There has always been some legitimacy to the medical-use argument: alcohol and marijuana can both make people feel better. But there has always been some cynicism. In March 1921, under the scare-quoted headline "Brewers Jubilant Over 'Medical' Beer," the New York Times dryly noted that "one physician in Chicago wrote 7,000 prescriptions for liquor, none for less than a pint, in the course of a few weeks." Medical marijuana clubs have come a long way since the August day in 1996 when Dennis Peron heard boots pounding up the stairs of his Cannabis Buyers Club in San Francisco's Castro district and thought he was being robbed. His club had been openly selling marijuana to the ill--and, allegedly, the non-ill--since at least 1991. That year, San Francisco voters passed Proposition P, which made enforcement of laws against medical marijuana the city police's lowest priority. Within days of Peron's arrest--which was made with a deliberate lack of assistance from local authorities--four more clubs had opened. "Repression isn't used to that reaction," suggested DeAngelo. "Repression is used to bringing down the hammer and having a ripple effect. Instead, all they did with Peron was cut off the head, and now the four managers needed somewhere to go. So they started their own clubs." A few months after Peron's arrest, the voters of California legalized medical marijuana with Proposition 215. The people who had opened the state's first shops quickly found themselves overwhelmed by demand. "The first dispensaries were started by activists, really well-intentioned people who didn't have any business experience, who didn't have any capital, who didn't know how to manage or run a business, who often didn't really know that much about the cannabis business because they were activists, not dealers," said DeAngelo, who proudly keeps detailed accounting records at Harborside. "There were so many patients flocking to them. They found themselves, without even trying to, in the middle of these very lucrative businesses bringing in millions of dollars a year." In a pattern that would repeat itself in cities across the state, a second wave of entrepreneurs entered the fray. In San Francisco, pot clubs quickly outnumbered McDonald's franchises. Their owners had the same motivation as those of the Golden Arches: profit. Out went the idealism that had helped to police a business illegal on the federal level and quasi-legal on the local level. Though medical marijuana wasn't prohibited anymore, it wasn't regulated or licensed, either, with no central authority controlling zoning, licensing, or consumer protection. And despite the state law, some aggressive law-enforcement officials--including the far-right state attorney general Dan Lungren, who'd ordered the raid against Peron's club--still sought to prosecute dispensaries, citing federal law as justification. "[The second wave of pot clubs] was started by people, unfortunately, who were more interested in those millions of dollars than they were attracted to doing service for the community or moving the medical-cannabis movement forward," said DeAngelo. "So [their clubs] were opened quickly, often in inappropriate locations. They weren't up to code. They were run by people that had shady backgrounds. And inevitably, problems started occurring. There were robberies, there were neighbors and nearby business that complained. Cars were double-parked. There were shootings. There were not good things happening," he said. In Oakland in the late nineties, as in San Francisco a few years earlier, federal raids served only to increase the number of cannabis clubs. If a club owner was jailed and his place shuttered, his former staffers often kept themselves employed by opening new clubs. Soon, downtown Oakland was being referred to as "Oaksterdam," host to at least eight pot clubs and a culture of pot smoking. Even some cafes and bars began to allow patrons to smoke on their premises. Jeff Jones, a longtime medical-marijuana activist, opened a pot club right around the corner from Oakland City Hall--with the full knowledge of those who worked in the building. He was one of those who, like Peron, jumped out ahead of the pack without any legal protection from the state. He told me that he opened his shop in July 1996, five months before the election. City politicians, he says, had been generally supportive but were unsure of what to do next. In March of that year, the city council had set up a task force to study the medical-pot issue and passed a resolution endorsing Jones's club. "'What do you want, another liquor store?'" Jones said he would ask cops and council members whenever they got squeamish. Local politicos were certain that Prop 215 would fail and that he would then have to close his shop. Indeed, some were actively lobbying against the legislation. Senator Dianne Feinstein, who as mayor of San Francisco had opposed the movement, said that the proposed law was "riddled with loopholes so big that it would have the effect of legalizing marijuana." She was partly right, but 56 percent of the state didn't care. "They were blown away when we won," Jones said of city officials. "'What do we do now, Jeff?'" Oakland politicians had company in their surprise: eleven days after California passed Prop 215 and Arizona approved its own medical-cannabis law, Clinton drug czar Barry McCaffrey convened a high-level meeting to formulate a response. The opposition had been caught flat-footed. California and Arizona, he vowed, would be the last two states to legalize medical marijuana. McCaffrey summoned two of the initiative's most vocal opponents, Orange County sheriff Brad Gates and California Narcotic Officers' Association spokesman Tom Gorman, to D.C. to plot how to thwart implementation of the law. (At this same meeting, the participants conjured up the antipot advertising campaign that led to accusations of federally sponsored payola.) McCaffrey announced that the federal government would work hard against doctors and patients involved with medical marijuana, going after the licenses of physicians who recommended it. Doctors sued, arguing that the penalty violated their First Amendment rights, and won a landmark victory. * * * * * Since then, medical-cannabis centers have spread across the state of California, and they now represent the single greatest threat to current pot-prohibition policies. In 2003, the California legislature attempted to codify the new industry with the passage of a bill designated--seriously--SB 420. If the clubs remain successful--and, as Harborside's self-image has it, "professional"--they could fundamentally alter America's cultural relationship with drugs. The backers of prohibition know this, and they've dug in against medical marijuana, making it a major target of the drug war. In McCaffrey's defense, there was little that he could have done to beat Prop 215. The movement had been gaining strength in response to another phenomenon that the federal government had initially ignored: the AIDS epidemic. "Once AIDS came on the scene, [the movement] exploded. That's what put us over the top," said Mykey Barbitta, who runs the Compassion Care Center, a descendant of the Cannabis Buyers Club located at the same spot on Market Street as Peron's clinic. "The medical-cannabis movement was a response to a need, HIV," agreed Randi Webster, founder of the San Francisco Patients Care Collective, who lost more than thirty friends in the early years of the AIDS epidemic. "It started as a treatment for patients with extreme bone disease." Long before the Reagan administration was taking AIDS seriously, people suffering and dying from it spread the word that marijuana could ease nausea and increase appetite, both crucial to living with the disease. Some early AIDS patients turned to a little-known Food and Drug Administration pilot program that allowed those with legitimate medical need to get marijuana directly from the government. The program dated to 1976, when Washington, D.C. resident and glaucoma patient Robert Randall, using the medical-necessity argument, essentially forced the feds into growing pot on a farm in Mississippi. Today, a handful of surviving patients get a monthly canister containing three hundred prerolled joints. The Compassionate Investigational New Drug program had very few initial participants. For one thing, marijuana was widely available, cheap, and of increasingly high quality. For another, the nation had a permissive attitude toward the drug, with even President Jimmy Carter calling for decriminalization. There was little incentive for a patient to apply, especially given a built-in disincentive: that your name would now be on a federal list associated with marijuana. That changed
 
Presented By: Travel's Latest Attraction Is A Magnetic Force Top
New Rolling Duffel Features Magnetically Attached, Easily Removable Messenger Bag (PRWeb Feb 26, 2009) Read the full story at http://www.prweb.com/releases/OGIO_Bus/rolling_duffel/prweb2184324.htm >> Read more Ads by Pheedo
 
Obama Budget Projects $1.75 Trillion Deficit This Year Top
WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama is sending Congress a "hard choices" budget that would boost taxes on the wealthy and curtail Medicare payments to insurance companies and hospitals to make way for a $634 billion down payment on universal health care. Obama's first budget, which will top $3 trillion, predicts the deficit for this year will soar to a whopping $1.75 trillion, according to administration officials who spoke on condition of anonymity before the public unveiling of the budget Thursday. The huge deficit reflects the massive spending being undertaken to battle a severe recession and the worst financial crisis in seven decades. As part of the effort to end the financial crisis, the administration will propose boosting the deficit by an additional $250 billion this year, enough to support as much as $750 billion in increased spending under the government's financial rescue program. That would more than double the $700 billion bailout effort passed by Congress last October. Obama, in a morning briefing, spoke of "hard choices that lie ahead." He called his budget "an honest accounting of where we are and where we intend to go." One administration official called the request for additional bailout resources a "placeholder" in advance of a determination by the Treasury Department of what will actually be needed. The spending blueprint Obama is sending Congress is a 140-page outline, with the complete details scheduled to come in mid to late April, when the new administration sends up the massive budget books that will flesh out the plan. However, the submission of the bare budget outline was certain to set off fierce debate in Congress over Obama's spending and tax priorities. The document includes additional requests for the current year and Obama's proposals for the 2010 budget year, which begins Oct. 1. The budget balances efforts to fulfill Obama's campaign pledges to deliver tax cuts to the middle class, expand health care coverage and combat the economic crisis with an effort to keep an exploding deficit over the next few years from becoming a permanent drag on the economy. However, Republicans assailed the budget for the tax increases and some Democrats worried that Obama was not doing enough to get the deficit under control. "I would give him good marks as a beginning, but we have to do a lot more to take on this long-term debt buildup," said Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad, D-N.D. Republicans zeroed in on the tax increases to fund half of Obama's health care expansion. "Everyone agrees that all Americans deserve access to affordable health care, but is increasing taxes during an economic recession, especially on small businesses, the right way to accomplish that goal?" asked House Minority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio. The $634 billion down payment on expanding health care coverage would come from a $318 billion increase over 10 years in taxes on the wealthy, defined as couples making more than $250,000 per year and individuals making more than $200,000. The tax increase would occur by reducing the benefit the wealthy get on tax deductions. As one example, taxpayers in the current top tax bracket of 35 percent would see their tax deduction for every $1 given to charity drop from 35 cents to 28 cents. The other half of the down payment on Obama's drive toward universal health care _ $318 billion _ would come from curtailing payments to hospitals and insurance companies under Medicare and drug payments under Medicaid. To meet his pledge of tax cuts for the middle class, the president wants to make permanent the $400 annual tax cut due to start showing up in workers' paychecks in April as part of the $787 billion stimulus package just passed by Congress. Obama's budget also extends the middle class tax cuts passed by the Bush administration in 2001 and 2003. Those cuts were due to expire at the end of 2010. If Congress approves Obama's recommendations, the Bush tax cuts would only expire for couples making more than $250,000 per year. The cost of the stimulus bill and the increased bailout support would push the deficit for this year to $1.75 trillion, a level _ as a percentage of the economy _ not seen since World War II. The deficit is expected to remain around $1 trillion for the next two years before starting to decline to $533 billion in 2013, according to budget projections. Obama's plan proposes achieving $634 billion in savings on projected health care spending and diverting those resources to expanding coverage for uninsured Americans. The $634 billion represents a little more than half the money that would be needed to extend health insurance to all of the 48 million Americans now uninsured. Americans now spend a total of $2.4 trillion a year on health care. Obama also will ask for an additional $75 billion to cover the costs of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan through September, the end of the current budget year. That would be on top of the $40 billion already appropriated by Congress, the administration official said. The administration will also ask for $130 billion for Iraq and Afghanistan in 2010 and will budget the costs of operations in Iraq and Afghanistan at $50 billion annually over the next several years. Obama's budget proposal would effectively raise income taxes and curb tax deductions on couples making more than $250,000 a year, beginning in 2011. By not extending former President George W. Bush's tax cuts for such wealthier filers, Obama would allow the marginal rate on household incomes above $250,000 to rise from 35 percent to 39.6 percent. The plan also contains a contentious proposal to raise hundreds of billions of dollars by auctioning off permits to exceed carbon emissions caps, which Obama wants to impose on users of fossil fuels to address global warming. Some of the revenues from the pollution permits would be used to extend the "Making Work Pay" tax credit of $400 for individuals and $800 for couples beyond 2010, as provided in the just-passed economic stimulus bill. About half of what officials characterized as a $634 billion "down payment" toward health care coverage for every American would come from cuts in Medicare. That is sure to incite battles with doctors, hospitals, health insurance companies and drug manufacturers. Some of the Medicare savings would come from scaling back payments to private insurance plans that serve older Americans, which many analysts believe to be inflated. Other proposals include charging upper-income beneficiaries a higher premium for Medicare's prescription drug coverage. To raise the other half, Obama wants to reduce the rate by which wealthier people can cut their taxes through deductions for mortgage interest, charitable contributions, local taxes and other expenses to 28 cents on the dollar, rather than the 35 cents they can claim now. Even more money would be raised if the top rate reverts to 39.6 percent, as Obama wants. Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, called Obama's proposal to tax the wealthy to finance health care reform a starting point. But he wants to also examine taxing some of health insurance benefits provided by employers _ an idea rejected by Obama in last year's presidential campaign. Budget documents provided to The Associated Press show that Obama will not lay out a detailed blueprint for a health care overhaul, but a set of broad policy principles and some specific ideas for how to raise a big chunk of the money. Obama's promise to phase out direct payments to farming operations with revenues above $500,000 a year is sure to cause concerns among rural Democrats. Even after all those difficult choices, cutting about $2 trillion from the budget over 10 years, Obama's budget still would feature huge deficits. The $1.75 trillion deficit projected for this year would represent 12.3 percent of the gross domestic product, double the previous post-war record of 6 percent in 1983, when Ronald Reagan was president, and the highest level since the deficit totaled 21.5 percent of GDP in 1945, at the end of World War II. At $533 billion, the deficit in 2013 will be about 3 percent of the size of the economy, a level that administration officials said would be manageable. ___ Associated Press writers Andrew Taylor, Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar and Anne Gearan contributed to this report. More on Barack Obama
 
Joseph O'Neill's Netherland Wins PEN/Faulkner Prize Top
NEW YORK — Joseph O'Neill's "Netherland," an acclaimed post-Sept. 11 novel bypassed for the National Book Awards and the National Book Critics Circle prize, has finally received a literary honor: the PEN/Faulkner Award for fiction. The choice was announced Thursday by Susan Richards Shreve and Robert Stone, directors of the Washington-based PEN/Faulkner Foundation. O'Neill, whose book is narrated by a man who lived in downtown Manhattan at the time of the 2001 terrorist attacks, will receive $15,000. The finalists _ Sarah Shun-Lien Bynum's "Ms. Hempel Chronicles," Susan Choi's "A Person of Interest," Richard Price's "Lush Life" and Ron Rash's "Serena" _ each get $5,000. Previous winners include Philip Roth, John Updike and E.L. Doctorow.
 
New York Times Slashes "T" Frequency Top
In a sign that even its most promising titles are falling on hard times, The New York Times is scaling back the number of issues it publishes of T, its fashion and lifestyle supplement. After appearing 15 times last year, the struggling newspaper company is scaling back T's frequency to 12, according to a company spokeswoman.
 
Sen. Fritz Hollings: State of the Union Top
President Obama faced two challenges in his State of the Union. First, to restore the people's confidence in their government. Next to make the people confident that their government could solve the problem with the economy. As to the first, the President did a masterful job. He spoke as if he knew what he was talking about and, most importantly, felt what he was talking about. Sure enough the Louisiana Governor, Bobby Jindal, came with the same old Republican politics. Jindal waxed: "The strength of America is not found in our government." Since Ronald Reagan, the Republican creed has been: "Government is not the solution, government is the problem." And with the recent antics of our Secretary of the Treasury on the bank problem, people are beginning to believe that government is the problem. Obama brilliantly dispelled this thought. "History reminds us that at every moment of economic upheaval ..." that government "has responded with bold action and big ideas." But as to the principal problem with our economy -- the offshoring of the nation's investment, research, development, production and jobs, i.e. the economy, he barely mentioned it. And only as a tax equity problem. Globalization is nothing more than a trade war with production looking for a country cheaper to produce. Every industrialized country on the globe engages with a fierce competition - subsidies, tax benefits, currency distortion, everything imaginable. For example, China just promised Russia steel for a 20-year delivery of $20 a barrel oil. All nations are fighting for their economy, but in this trade war the United States is AWOL. Two years ago, the Princeton economist, Alan Blinder, estimated that in ten years this nation will lose thirty to forty million jobs to offshoring. The President covered his stimulus plan to create jobs, but said nothing about losing jobs faster than any stimulus could create. At present, the government is the problem. Offshoring is caused not by the little tax cost to producing in-country because corporations pass this on in the price of the product. It's the high standard of living that is required for production in America: Social Security, Medicare, labor rights, minimum wage, clean air, clean water, safe working place, safe machinery, plant closing notice, parental leave, anti-trust, etc. Economists usually measure competition in manufacture by productivity. But in globalization, it's government. The Chinese government controls labor and has none of our environmental restrictions. Moeover, production in China also has a 17% VAT tax advantage - rebated at export. The United States doesn't rebate corporate taxes. In short, the problem with our economy is that, unless business is local, like a laundry or a restaurant, business can't make a profit in our country. This sounds crazy, but in globalization it's a fact. You can have a wonderful industry producing for a profit, but if your competition goes to China, India or Mexico and you continue to work your own people, you'll go broke. In short, the affirmative action policy of the United States government is to get rid of jobs, get rid of the economy. And President Obama, with his "free trade" economic team, continues our demise. The President mentioned Teddy Roosevelt's call for reform of health care costs, but he should have spent more time on Teddy Roosevelt's exclamation: "Thank God I'm not a free trader." Business opposes our competing, cautioning "Free Trade," "Protectionism," "Don't start a trade war." The banks, Wall Street, and a substantial amount of our production, have long since offshored making big profits. They even have the United States Chamber of Commerce objecting to "Buy America" in the President's stimulus plan. But the American people are the most productive, the most competitive. The people are proud of our high standard of living and they don't want to go back to dirty air and no labor rights. They were looking to hear from their wonderful President his plan to compete in globalization. It wasn't mentioned.
 
David Sirota: Nationalization: It's Not Scary, It's All Around You Top
Amidst the punditocracy's handwringing about the supposedly unprecedented possibility of nationalization in America, Paul Krugman this week reminded his New York Times readers that nationalization is "as American as apple pie." He noted that the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation has been nationalizing about two banks per week, and that the best way to save our financial system is to temporarily nationalize it. But before we get scared about the prospect of nationalization (ie. public/government ownership of major parts of the economy), let's remember: nationalization already pervades far more than the banking industry - it's all around us. For instance, about 45 million Americans rely on public power utilities for their electricity . Those utilities are nationalized - that is, they are owned and operated by government (in this case, municipal governments). Have you ever taken a subway, a commuter train like New Jersey Transit, a public bus or Amtrak? Have you ever sent a letter through the U.S. Postal Service? Then you've benefited from nationalized services - in those cases, mass transit and mail. Then there's the health care system, with Medicare creating a quasi-nationalization model, and the Veterans Administration providing a fully nationalized system. And what do you know? Medicare is wildly popular, and the VA system has improved itself to the point of receiving national accolades for its quality . These are just a few examples of nationalization in our midst. And as Harvard's Richard Parker notes in Newsweek, our country has a solid record of responsible nationalization during major crises. In his essay entitled, "Not a Dirty Word," he reports: In World War I, the nations' railroads were successfully nationalized to sustain the war effort. In the 1930s, the Reconstruction Finance Corp. bought millions of shares in over 6,000 banks in order to rescue them. During World War II, government took control of the economy's entire pricing system for consumer goods--a more complex job than taking over several big banks--and did quite well at it, most economists agree. In the 1980s, the Resolution Trust Corp. seized hundreds of failed savings and loans in order to save the system. After 9/11, the government effectively nationalized the private-security firms at airports, and replaced them with the federal TSA. So the next time you hear Rush Limbaugh or some teevee pundit blathering on about the economic crisis and claiming nationalization is dangerous and un-American, remember: nationalization is everywhere in America, and has been for a long time - and it has worked quite well when done responsibly. More on Ben Bernanke
 
GM Loses $9.6 Billion In 4Q Top
DETROIT — General Motors Corp. posted a $9.6 billion fourth-quarter loss and said it burned through $6.2 billion of cash in the last three months of 2008 as it fought the worst U.S. auto sales climate since 1982 and sought government loans to keep the century-old company running. The nation's biggest domestic automaker said Thursday it lost $30.9 billion for the full year and expects to state in its upcoming annual report whether its auditors believe the company remains a "going concern." GM and its auditors must determine whether there is substantial doubt about the automaker's ability to continue it operations. Chief Financial Officer Ray Young said the determination will depend a lot on whether GM gets further government loans and whether it can accomplish its restructuring goals. Young said that auditors are studying the future of the company because "there's uncertainty with how the Treasury will view our viability plan," and "uncertainty on whether we're going to be able to execute the terms of our loan agreement." The company has received $13.4 billion in federal loans since Dec. 31 and says it needs up to $30 billion to stay out of Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. Top GM executives were in Washington, D.C., Thursday to meet with the Obama administration's auto task force to talk about restructuring and additional loans. "2008 was an extremely difficult year for the U.S. and global auto markets, especially the second half," Chairman and CEO Rick Wagoner said in a statement. "These conditions created a very challenging environment for GM and other automakers and led us to take further aggressive and difficult measures to restructure our business." Young said GM would reduce its structural costs by another $4.5 billion in 2009, from $30.8 billion to $26.3 billion. GM's adjusted cash burn for the year in 2008 was $19.2 billion, but Young expects that to fall to $14 billion in 2009 due to restructuring efforts. But even with the structural cost reductions, the company still expects U.S. sales overall to be a dismal 10.5 million vehicles, so it will need more government help, he said. Most of the cash burn this year will take place early when the company shut down many of its plants, he said. "We're not pleased with a negative $14 billion cash flow burn, that's still a very, very sizeable amount. But at the same time we recognize that the industry conditions in '09 are going to remain fairly challenging. We're not forecasting any heroic recovery in terms of industry conditions in '09." GM reported a net loss of $15.71 per share for the fourth quarter, compared with a loss of $722 million, or $1.28 per share in the year-ago period. Quarterly revenue fell 39 percent to $30.8 billion from $46.8 billion, as credit availability froze across the globe, and a lack of consumer confidence and fears of job losses kept people from buying vehicles. GM's fourth-quarter loss included $3.7 billion in special items, including a $1.1 billion charge for a drop in value of machinery for the Hummer and Saab brands, which are up for sale. Other charges included $900 million for restructuring, including worker buyout and early retirement payments, and $660 million to increase reserves for former parts arm Delphi Corp.'s future pension obligations. The charges were offset by a $533 million net gain from a bond exchange at GM's financial arm, GMAC Financial Services. Excluding special items, GM's fourth-quarter adjusted loss was $5.9 billion, or $9.65 per share. That was worse than Wall Street expected. Analysts surveyed by Thomson Reuters predicted a quarterly loss of $7.40 per share on sales of $35.1 billion. For the full year, GM's net loss was $53.32 per share, the second-worst annual result in the company's history. The worst loss occurred in 2007, when the Detroit-based company lost $38.7 billion, or $68.45 per share, in 2007, due largely to charges for unused tax credits. GM's cash burn rate, the difference between how much it takes in and how much it spends, narrowed slightly from $6.9 billion in the third quarter, reflecting GM's restructuring efforts. The company last year announced the closure of four assembly plants and a parts stamping factory. Last week, a plan GM submitted to the Treasury Department to justify more loans said the company would close five more U.S. factories and cut another 47,000 jobs globally. GM also reached a tentative deal with the United Auto Workers on concessions that will reduce labor costs. Since 2000, GM's U.S. salaried work force has shrunk by 33 percent from its 2000 high of 44,000 people. At the same time, the number of hourly workers has plunged by more than half _ to about 63,700 people at the end of last year from 133,000 in 2000. GM ended last year with about $14 billion in cash, $10.5 billion less that the $24.5 billion it had at the end of 2007. The 2008 figure is close to the minimum amount of cash GM has said it needs to fund its operations. Young said GM's total debt at the end of 2008, including the $4 billion in government loans it received Dec. 31, was $45.3 billion. The company has been negotiating with bondholders to convert most of that debt to equity, which is a requirement of the government's loan terms. Young told reporters the credit crisis spread from the U.S. to other markets, making the fourth-quarter a challenging one. But there was some hope, he said. While global sales fell, some emerging markets, such as China, are off to a good start in 2009. "A lot of the governments in these countries are putting a lot of stimulus into the economy as well as the automotive market," he said, citing lower sales tax rates on cars sold in China and Brazil. GM shares rose 3 cents to $2.58 in morning trading.
 
Mortgage Relief Bill Set For House Vote Thursday Top
WASHINGTON — Debt-strapped homeowners facing foreclosure could resort to bankruptcy to force reductions in their monthly mortgage payments under a measure awaiting a House vote. The bill set for a vote Thursday would let bankruptcy judges reduce the principal and interest rates on home loans. But the measure has been watered down since Democrats first proposed it, due in large part to mortgage industry lobbying to limit the cost for banks. The plan is part of a broader housing package that also would raise the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation's borrowing authority and take other steps to prevent foreclosures. President Barack Obama called for the bankruptcy measure last week as part of his housing rescue plan. Democrats and consumer advocates regard it as crucial to slowing the rapid rate of foreclosures. The mortgage industry contends the measure will impose steep and unpredictable costs on its companies, which will be forced to raise fees and interest rates for borrowers. The industry spent millions last year on a successful lobbying effort to kill the bill, which almost all Republicans oppose. Opponents call it the "cram-down." This year, with Obama in the White House and Democrats enjoying a broader majority, a rift has emerged in the industry. One major player, Citigroup Inc., has bowed to the new political reality and moved to grab a seat at the negotiating table. It cut a deal last month with Democrats to back the plan in return for some key concessions. The measure now in the House only applies to existing loans made before enactment and is limited to homeowners who have tried working with their lenders to adjust their loans before seeking relief in bankruptcy. Other banks say they oppose the plan, but have changed their strategy. As they push to squash the legislation, they are stepping up their bid to gut key provisions. Among their goals: restrict the measure to a shorter time-period, certain kinds or sizes of home loans, certain borrowers, or situations where the mortgage holder _ known as the loan servicer _ agrees to the changes. "I don't see a scenario where we can ever support this, but we're trying to make it the least-worst way to do the wrong thing," said Scott Talbott, a lobbyist for the Financial Services Roundtable, a trade group representing large banks. The group spent $7.8 million last year lobbying on this and other issues. The change in tactics has paid off for the banks, now actively bargaining with top Democrats on the details of the legislation. House Democrats agreed late Wednesday to strengthen the requirement that borrowers prove they tried other ways of modifying their mortgages before resorting to bankruptcy. They also restricted the measure to people who could not otherwise afford to make their home loan payments. A Senate version of the measure by Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, the No. 2 Democrat, is expected to see a vote within weeks. "We continue to be opposed to the bill and that hasn't changed, but we do live in the real world, and we do understand that this is very likely to happen, and we owe it to our members to recognize that reality and to limit the damage as much as possible," said Francis Creighton, a lobbyist for the Mortgage Bankers Association, which spent $4.2 million on lobbying last year. "We're encouraged by the fact that the bill is moving to limit the damage of cram-down rather than make it worse."
 
Lisa Earle McLeod: Gossipers and Gossipees: Who Has the Street Cred? Top
Why are we so willing to believe bad things about good people? Have you ever noticed how easy it is to get sucked in by gossip? Sometimes it doesn't even matter where it came from. If it's juicy enough we'll buy it. I could be sitting in a meeting at church, and if one of the most dysfunctional people in the entire congregation suddenly announced that our mild-mannered minister was having an affair with the cleaning lady, half the people there would want to know the details. It's like just because someone says it or writes it, it must be true. I've seen the phenomenon play out over and over again. A somewhat less than credible source, person A, shares information about person B and, even if it's contrary to everything we've ever known about person B, we'll still believe it. We hear that a boss we've known to be level-headed did something rash; or that a co-worker we've always experienced as helpful is sabotaging; or that a neighbor we've always known to be kind did something malicious, and our first reaction isn't usually to question the information. It's to express our shock that so-and-so could do something so awful. We may say, "I can't believe," but in reality we do. It's almost as if we have no pause button. As if we're somehow incapable of saying, "Hmm that doesn't sound like her." Or, "Are you sure about that? Because that's not how I ever experienced him." It doesn't matter whether it's PTA gossip about a room mom stealing money from the popcorn booth or a much-forwarded e-mail about a politician who burns the flag and secretly worships the devil. If it's negative information, we rarely dismiss it. But have you ever noticed that the people repeating these stories seem to enjoy telling them just a little too much? Or that the co-worker accusing the boss of playing favorites can cite lots of examples where she's been the victim? Or that the neighbor who's eager to tell you how so-and-so did him wrong has experienced numerous incidents where people have disrespected him? Or that the person sharing the torrid details of the affair seems to finds endless ways to be the center of attention? I find that if the story is negative, it usually has more to do with the person telling it than it does the actual event itself. Whether they're trying to get sympathy, validate their own belief system, or just hold center court, if there's a continual theme to their talk, that's when the bells should go off. Perhaps instead of jumping to conclusions and searching for evidence to support the bad thing we just heard, we might want to hit the pause button and consider where it came from. Ask yourself: Is this in keeping with what I know to be true about the story subject? Or is this more typical of what I often hear from this storyteller? If your experiences with the gossipee are more positive than with the gossiper, you probably have your answer. And if you hear something about someone that doesn't match the way you have experienced them, feel free to speak up. Because after all, if some dysfunctional neurotic gossip-monger started talking about you, wouldn't you want someone to give you the benefit of the doubt? Lisa Earle McLeod is a syndicated columnist, author, keynote speaker and business consultant who specializes in helping individuals and organizations create happiness and success. Her latest book is Finding Grace When You Can't Even Find Clean Underwear - For more info - www.ForgetPerfect.com < http://www.ForgetPerfect.com>
 
Ablacknophobia: Stephen Colbert Talks Race In America (VIDEO) Top
In last night's segment of "The Word," Stephen Colbert chose to take up Attorney General Eric Holder's challenge and talk about race in America. After explaining his history growing up in the South in the Sixties, he continued to talk about race while putting his hand through an open flame. He then discussed his hatred for rap music while eating dollar-store peanut butter, and talked to an actual black man while hosting a tarantula on his head. All went smoothly until the last experiment. It started off well enough with Stephen asking the random man he brought on stage, "So Duke, what's it like to be black?" Duke responded that it was "fine." But it quickly degenerated into a fear-filled experience for Colbert who ended up apologizing for slavery in return for the removal of the spider. He failed Eric Holder's challenge. WATCH: The Colbert Report Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c The Word - Ablacknophobia Colbert Report Full Episodes Funny Political News Christian Bale Parody Joke of the Day More on Stephen Colbert
 
Rob Crilly: Lockdown in Darfur Top
It's business as usual, according to pretty much anyone you ask in Khartoum when the issue of next week's International Criminal Court indictment of Omar al-Bashir comes up . No-one wants to give the Sudanese government an excuse to accuse diplomats or the international community of acting as judge and jury and finding Bashir. So the charade continues: Diplomats insist that the endless speculation about the judges' desicion affects nothing. Travel to Darfur and things could not be more different. Communications in Nyala, capital of South Darfur , are next to impossible. The mobile phone networks have been running at a fraction of normal capacity for the past few days - a sure sign that the government is either planning a big push or wants to underline its control of the region. Many NGOs rely on the mobile network for the internet too, so clusters of aid workers can be found anywhere with a satellite connection. Charities, which are looking after millions of people living in camps, are preparing to batten down the hatches. No-one quite knows what to expect. Last time around ( in July when the chief prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo delivered his evidence to the ICC judges ) there were a few small demonstrations. If anything, access to camps was easier than normal. But this time around no chances are being taken. Trips to the field are being cut back and food and water hoarded in case of an extended period of unrest. It is easy to see why. Last weekend Salah Gosh, head of Sudan's National Security and Intelligence Service and one of the key members of the regime's engine room, won a promotion in rank and celebrated by warning the world that the ICC decision could have serious repercussions... "We were Islamic extremists then became moderate and civilized believing in peace and life for everyone. "However we will revert back to how we were if necessary. There is nothing any easier than that." There's no doubt that the prosecution of Bashir is the way to find justice in Darfur. But the atmosphere in Nyala, hub for many of the agencies responsible for protecting and providing for the region's displaced, suggests that it comes with a cost. The cost is the ability of aid workers to reach people in need. No-one yet knows how severe the repercussions will be. Salah Gosh's statement is probably a testing of the water, rather than a real commitment. Everyone here - where lives are on the line - is taking it very seriously. This is crossposted from The Frontline Club . Rob Crilly is in Darfur researching a book on the conflict More on Darfur
 
Presented By: PromotionWorld Honors the Efforts and Techniques of the Medium Blue Search Engine Marketing Team Top
SEO Firm Is Named Number One Search Engine Optimization Company for the Month of February (PRWeb Feb 25, 2009) Read the full story at http://www.prweb.com/releases/search-engine/marketing-optimization/prweb2182994.htm >> Read more Ads by Pheedo
 
Michael Likosky: Economic Intelligence: 5 No-Brainer Risks Top
Yesterday, President Obama received his first Economic Intelligence Brief from the Central Intelligence Agency. This is a welcome milestone along the road back to responsible leadership. Just as President Obama inherited the Iraq War with all its national security threats, he too inherits a threat-ridden legacy of global economic insecurity. And, just as our President noted with Iraq, we must be as careful getting out as we were careless getting in. Unfortunately, the route out of global economic crisis is littered with landmines set by our enemies, allies and the ancien regime , unintentionally or otherwise. While we don't know exactly what the CIA Brief said, here are 5 no-brainer economic risks to our national security. They are risks that come along with our bold promising solutions to an economic threat decades in the making and inherited by the present administration. In other words, these 5 risks arise mainly from legacy threats. Still, they must be assessed and addressed. Our leaders can not do this alone-we must together align security and sustainable economic recovery. In fact, many of us outside the beltway have more first-hand intelligence on economic insecurity than those within. In this way, Americans now losing their factory jobs have much in common with citizens in China who are also having factory doors shut on them. We must recognize that, as Gil Scott-Heron put it: 'sometimes distance brings misunderstanding.' It's time to broaden our network of town hall meetings to turn national economic security problems into global sustainable solutions. Here are 5 risks then: 1) Stimulus Risk The risk that reinvestment into the US will siphon capital away from the most unstable places, aggravating conflicts. 2) Onshoring Risk The risk that bringing US manufacturing jobs home will mean lay-offs in factory enclaves in poor countries. 3) Sustainable Energy Risk The risk that the manufacturing of clean energy will itself be polluting at times and that the more damaging aspects will happen overseas where environmental laws are lax. 4) American Leadership Risk The risk that the resurgence of US moral and political authority will create an unrealistic expectation that our domestic solutions will do the main heavy lifting for getting the global economy out of crisis. 5) Uneven Recovery Risk The risk that solutions to the crisis will unevenly distribute benefits and burdens, offloading costs on those least able to shoulder them. More on Stimulus Package
 
Captain Planet Playing On A Computer Near You Top
Captain Planet, the cartoon that taught me to cut up plastic rings that hold six packs of soda before throwing them away, is back. The Mother Nature Network is going to be hosting every episode of the classic superhero show right here . Episode 1 Recap: In A Hero for Earth, the first episode of Captain Planet and the Planeteers, viewers are introduced to Gaia, the spirit of Earth, played by Whoopi Goldberg. Gaia awakes to find humans are destroying the planet. To save the Earth, she creates five magic rings, each with the power to control an element of nature and one controlling the extra element, heart -- and presents the rings to five special young people she selects from across the globe: Kwame from Africa, Wheeler from the United States, Linka from the Soviet Union, Gi from Asia, and Ma-Ti from South America. These are the Planeteers. When they encounter situations they cannot handle alone, they combine and magnify their powers to summon Captain Planet, who possesses all of their powers magnified. More on Video On HuffPost
 
Byron Williams: Comic's Act Offers an Honest and Funny Discussion of Race Top
Anyone attending comedian W. Kamau Bell's intelligent, funny, creative solo performance: "Ending Racism in About an Hour" at the San Francisco Playhouse, will be greeted with thought-provoking comedy on what remains as the most uncomfortable issue for Americans to address -- and that's before the show actually begins. Through the seductive use of irony and absurdity, Kamau challenges the audience, regardless of hue, to examine their preconceived notions of race and just how seductive it is in our everyday life. It is an interesting study of human behavior, given at a time when the American automobile industry is on the brink of collapse as we know it, there is talk of nationalizing banks, news of massive layoffs has become commonplace, and the United States continues to occupy two countries militarily, that a cartoon some believe depicts the president as a monkey becomes newsworthy. By my unofficial count, far more demonstrated moral outrage of a cartoon than the allegations of singer Chris Brown's alleged domestic violence case against fellow singer and girlfriend Rihanna. And, unlike the cartoon, the photos of Rihanna's battered face were not subject to speculation. For those who brand themselves as the curators of all things racist, their critiques fall flat when they become unable to examine other issues of injustice with the same vigor. When I saw the controversial New York Post cartoon that led many within the African-American community to conclude that not only was President Barack Obama being portrayed as a monkey, but also it was sounding the clarion call for his assassination, I just wasn't there. Race as a topic is invariably led by an emotion that makes it unable to hear or see anything to the contrary. A number of those who e-mailed me to get my take on the Post cartoon were astounded that I did not reach the same conclusion they did. Given that Travis, a Chimpanzee who was protagonist of this poorly crafted cartoon, was actually shot by police, he must have weighed more than 200 pounds. For me to make the racism connection with the president, the depiction of the monkey in the cartoon needed to be slimmer; wearing a nice suit and the ears had to be enlarged. But that's the tricky thing about America's failure to address its original sin of racism -- because I didn't reach the same conclusion as others does not make their observations invalid. Likewise, those who don't see an issue as racist will seek to justify their opinions demonstrating that another person of color aligns with their perspective. This line of erroneous thinking is followed closely by the "intent" factor. The "intent" factor is the belief that racism can only occur if someone is deliberately causing it. This is the defense of the privileged class. Men use it against charges of misogyny, as do heterosexuals against accusations of homophobia. If an individual is standing on someone's neck, doesn't the pain sustained in the moment make the intent of the individual irrelevant? Those who look for racism in every nook and cranny along with those who wish to believe the election of Obama makes America post-racial are opposite sides of the same naive coin -- neither is true. Herein lies the real value of Kamau's project. Laughter offers a safe environment in which to become self-reflective. Is there an issue in America in more need of collective self-reflection than race? Kamau lures the audience in by examining the absurd and then, without warning, he shrewdly holds up the mirror of self-reflection to show how we participate in the absurdity. If America is indeed to become post-racial, it won't occur through race lectures or denial. It may only occur through a comedian bold enough to take the subject on, along with an audience daring enough to participate in the discomfort through the prism of laughter. But, fortunately, history offers a plethora of examples that change does not occur without some measure of discomfort, especially on the part of the status quo. Kamau recently took his solo act to perform at Comedy Central's Henderson Theater in Los Angeles. His show will run one more week in San Francisco.
 
Bob Franken: One City, Two Rags Top
ONE CITY TWO RAGS I do not normally advocate layoffs, and I'm not about to start, since all too often that's the way the corporate fats cats keep their own jobs and bloated salaries. No, I will not be advocating layoffs here. But I am demanding that certain people be summarily FIRED. They would include anybody in the chain-of-command at the New York Post who had anything to do with, any responsibility for that editorial cartoon that showed policemen, who had just shot dead a chimpanzee saying "They'll have to find someone else to write the next stimulus bill". Artist Sean Delonas on up to the Managing Editor should be terminated immediately, for racial insensitivity that is not acceptable at the Shoppers News, to say nothing of a major metropolitan paper. Even if we buy the contention that they did not mean for the monkey to suggest bigotry, they should be let go for their unacceptable lack of knowledge of derogatory stereotypes. The uproar has gotten loud enough that Mr. Big himself, Rupert Murdoch, has been rattled into making an apology. The tabloid's owner says "I now better understand the hurt this cartoon has caused...It was not meant to be racist, but unfortunately, it was interpreted by many as such." To review: We have an African-American president. Likening him to a monkey is a slur, a serious one. Any fool should know that. If this was unintentional it doesn't even pass the "Fool Test" Frankly, Mr. Murdoch, the apology is not enough. Your bozos apparently didn't know, or didn't consider it important. Instead of a New York City daily, maybe they can next work for the Ku Klux Klan Kronicle, where they'd be much more at home. We should extend our sympathies to the people of New York City, because this was not the only case of shoddy journalism they had to endure. Paired up with the New York Post is the New York Times, that bastion of self-proclaimed quality. Except, where the Post might have run this story on Page Six, the Times saw fit to display it on the front page...in glaring gray. Finally, In recent days we have been treated to a hidden, mealy-mouthed statement from Times management for that sleazy hit job on then-presidential candidate John McCain. You remember it, don't you? That was the one which tried to hype a story on McCain's connections to special interests. As valid as the premise was, it wasn't sexy enough apparently. It went on to imply, with no factual basis, that the Senator was having a romantic relationship with a beautiful blonde lobbyist, Vicki Iseman. The sourcing was demonstrably pathetic. To use journalism parlance, the Times didn't "have " the story of the McCain dalliance it was nevertheless suggesting. Am I wrong, or are media supposed report, not suggest? Still, to further make sure anyone paid attention to the paltry article, Times editors saw fit to include a glamorous photo of Ms.Iseman. No solid reason, but a lovely picture of a sexy woman. She sued. Good for her. The case was very recently settled out of court. No money changed hands but the paper printing what amounted to a clarification, a statement saying it had never intended to even suggest there was something illicit going on. Management then had the mealy-mouthed gall to say it was standing by its story. It thereby provided a devious ending to a mean story where the worst sleaze was running it in the first place, at least with the kind of nasty innuendo that certainly was NOT..."News fit to print" Newspapers are in trouble. They have been overrun by technology that provides a forum for anyone and everyone who wants to report and comment. These interlopers offer themselves up as alternatives to a Mainstream Press that all too often speaks for a corrupt Establishment. Papers often respond by looking down their noses at this internet rabble, as people with careless opinions that are weak on facts, and often highly insensitive What a pity that two of the nation's most important papers were doing no better.
 
Don Hewitt: Remembering Edward R. Murrow Top
By and large, how Americans got their news when I first met, got to know and was privileged to work with the CBS News legend, Edward R. Murrow in 1948 was by reading newspapers. Listening to the radio took second place and watching television news was "so so" at best. Although broadcasters like Edward R. Murrow, H.V. Kaltenborn, Gabriel Heatter and Lowell Thomas had become big names in America, newspapers like The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Baltimore Sun, The Atlanta Constitution, The Boston Globe, The Chicago Tribune, The Denver Post, The Los Angeles Times and the San Francisco Chronicle were where it was at — until the truck drivers delivering their newspapers to newsstands in those cities soon found themselves driving through neighborhoods, the rooftops of which were festooned with television antennas feeding what came to be known as commercials into the houses below (commercials paid for with money that once went into the coffers of newspapers) while, in the suburbs, kids on bicycles were tossing news papers they carried in a canvas bag slung over their shoulder up onto front porches on streets — under which cables carried commercials that gobbled up advertising dollars that had formerly been a source of income for newspapers. Along with that, broadcasters like Walter Cronkite, Mike Wallace, the late Ed Bradley, the late Chet Huntley, David Brinkley, Peter Jennings and most significantly... The late Edward R. Murrow, the most respected name ever in broadcast journalism, were attracting attention — especially Murrow who with his movie-star good looks, could have been a matinee idol, but, fortunately for us and the world at large didn't. A keen mind and a way with words led him to radio and then to television where I was privileged to be associated with him as the director of his and Fred Friendly's winner of just about every award in broadcasting — "See It Now" — as well as producing and directing his year-end specials and his coverage, 56 years ago, of Queen Elizabeth's coronation...the kinescope of which (film recorded off the tube before video tape burst on the scene) was edited by the two of us during what was then an eleven-hour trip across the Atlantic on a chartered British Airways trans Atlantic propeller-driven airliner stripped of a couple of dozen or so of its seats and replaced with what were called "movieolas" to edit what were called "kinescopes" (film recorded by cameras focused on the screen) ready to be aired when we touched down in Boston. Why Boston? We were in a race with NBC to be the first on the air with footage of the Coronation and landing in Boston and airing it from the airport instead of from a studio, gave us a head start. That's how "horse and buggy" airing an event overseas the same day it took place was when television first burst on the scene — editing a kinescope (videotape was still a distant dream) — of an event of historic proportions on an airplane and airing it from an airport. Today, the lack of worthwhile programming — not looking for new and better ways to broadcast the existing programming — is the problem. Today, the TV techs are virtual wizards at getting us on the air in a flash — even from the moon — which is nothing short of amazing. What is also "nothing short of amazing" is how much unadulterated drivel finds its way onto the tube. Leave it to Murrow to say that without using television to teach, illuminate and inspire "it is nothing more than wires and lights in a box." Anybody want to take issue with that? The first time I laid eyes on Ed Murrow I was a 21-year-old World War Two war correspondent — enthralled by the sights and sounds of wartime London, none more enthralling than the sight and sound of a broadcaster who every night left his sandbag-protected BBC studio, a short walk from his CBS office, climbed a flight of stairs to a rooftop overlooking the city to bring America a first hand account of the Luftwaffe's attempt to burn London to the ground. There were, to be sure, newsreel pictures of what came to be known as "The London Blitz" but because it was before television, the only on-the-spot-as-it-was-happening pictures of it transmitted each night to the United States were those Murrow painted with words...and doing that — painting pictures with words — is a what good writing is all about. That the television age was as good to him as the age of radio had been was hardly surprising. He was, if anything, a casting director's dream come true. If someone who had never seen him on television — only heard him on radio — had undertaken to do a docudrama about him and he showed up under an assumed name to audition for the part, he'd have gotten it. Ed Murrow looked like Ed Murrow, just as Walter Cronkite looks like Walter Cronkite. Think about it: who else could they be? In an age of Amos and Andy, Kate Smith and Bing Crosby, how did an academic with a penchant for humanitarian causes become a broadcasting icon? When the FCC required that broadcasters perform some sort of public service, CBS, NBC and ABC started news divisions...and it wasn't long before Bill Paley's Midas touch led him to make Murrow the trademark of his news division, not long, either before a simple phrase like "Good Night and Good luck" became as familiar to a generation of radio listeners as Clark Gables' "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn" was to a generation of movie goers. But, despite his close, personal relationship with CBS' chairman, Bill Paley, Murrow knew that continuing to be a success in broadcasting meant — as it does everywhere in broadcasting — doing something for your boss' pocketbook as well as his soul. Having already done that with his "This is London" broadcasts (which, rumor had it, were regularly listened to at both 10 Downing Street and 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue) and later with his and Fred Friendly's highly regarded radio series "I Can Hear It Now," he and Friendly were ready to take the plunge into television with "See It Now" — a remarkable series of Sunday afternoon broadcasts, the most memorable of which took on the dreaded Junior Senator from Wisconsin, Joe McCarthy, who took time out from looking for communists and communist sympathizers to respond as follows: "Now, ordinarily, I wouldn't take time out from the important work at hand to answer Murrow, However, in this case, I feel justified in doing so because Murrow is a symbol, the leader and the cleverest of the jackal pack which is always at the throat of anyone who dares to expose individual Communists and traitors." Murrow's response was "The actions of the junior senator from Wisconsin have caused alarm and dismay amongst our allies abroad and given considerable comfort to our enemies — and whose fault is that? Not really his. He merely exploited it and rather successfully. Cassius was right. The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars but in ourselves. Good night and good luck." Later on — on his own, without Friendly (a journalistic purist, if there ever was one), Murrow embarked on yet another broadcast for his and Bill Paley's pocketbook with an interview show called "Person to Person"...not exactly the best use of an Edward R. Murrow...as noted by the television critic John Crosby who called the two broadcasts — See It Now and Person to Person — "high Murrow and low Murrow" — two broadcasts that, in essence, sparked me to come up with 60 MINUTES. "High Murrow and low Murrow" in the same broadcast predicated on the same rationale that Murrow built his "Person to Person" on ....that it's okay to look in Marilyn Monroe's closet if you're also willing to look into Robert Oppenheimer's laboratory. About that band of brothers who came to be know as "Murrow's Boys" — among them Eric Sevareid, Howard K. Smith, and Charles Collingwood — the best known of a dozen or so first rate reporters who could hold their own with anybody and who I liked to think of as characters in a story that supposedly happened in the last Century about something or other of a newsworthy nature at The Vanderbilt Mansion on New York's Fifth Avenue... When the butler, so the story goes, went into the drawing room he announced to Mrs. Vanderbilt that there were, "a dozen or so reporters at the door and a gentleman from The Herald." Had Murrow been around in those days and one of what were known as "Murrow's Boys" had been among the reporters at Mrs. Vanderbilt's door, it is not unreasonable to think the butler might very well have added "and a gentleman representing Mr. Murrow." Is it different now? Not all that different. Murrow and Friendly gave us something to measure up to. And, by and large, broadcasting has measured up. One of the things that's different now is that being a television journalist (or a print journalist, for that matter) is a better way to earn a living than it used to be. Guys who were known as "ink-stained wretches" when I started out...now have weekend houses and kids in private school and more and more of the best reporters and editors are — at long last — women who have the same determination to cover a story without fear or favor as the best of their predecessors did, even though not one of them ever made the Murrow team. Over and above the first-rate reporting that made the Murrow Boys (not one Murrow girl in the bunch) stand out was a kind of quirkiness that enhanced rather than detracted from their stories. Take Murrow's longtime colleague Eric Sevareid, who always seemed to be deep in thought like the day I dropped in on him and sensed I was intruding on some weighty matter he had been turning over in his mind. How did I know? He shared it with me. "Have you noticed?" he said, "that the messages in fortune cookies are not being written as well as they used to be?" Was he putting me on? No, bad writing was an anathema to Sevareid, even when it showed up in a fortune cookie, while Murrow, who, I'm reasonably sure, never brooded about fortune cookies, had a sense of humor about himself that was more delicious than a fortune cookie...as in his hearing through the grapevine that a bunch of his colleagues were starting a club called "Murrow Isn't God," and asking, "Where do I go to join?" But my favorite story about him is one he loved to tell about Israel's Moshe Dayan driving him to an air strip in the Negev and telling him how much he admired him for his wartime "This is London" broadcasts...his putting the skids to Joe McCarthy...his ground breaking television coverage of Christmas in Korea...to which Murrow responded that he had gotten far too much of the credit for those broadcasts, that the guys who deserved it were guys he worked with who went out of their way to make him look good... At that, Dayan clammed up and never said another word until Murrow was boarding the plane...and shouted up to him from the tarmac: "Murrow! Don't be so modest; you're not that good!" However, even that didn't top Bill Downs, one of the Murrow Boys, reporting from one of the two inaugural balls in Washington on the eve of Jack Kennedy being sworn into office that: "Both the President's balls are in full swing tonight." Did he get chewed out? No, everyone was so convulsed with laughter that had they"chewed him out" they might have choked. So much for Ed Murrow and his "Murrow Boys." Where we're going to find another bunch like them is beyond me. For that matter, where we're going to find another Walter Cronkite, another Mike Wallace, another Ed Bradley — to mention just a few of the giants of broadcast journalism I was privileged to work with over a long and rewarding career in the news business — is also beyond me.
 
Shelly Palmer: Tiger's Return to Golf is Great for TV: MediaBytes with Shelly Palmer February 26, 2009 Top
Tiger Woods will return to PGA play this weekend for the first time since June . Back from rehab Woods will participate in the Accenture Match Play Championship and his sponsors and the broadcast networks are particularly excited. While Tiger almost guarantees higher ratings for networks, the economic downfall may hinder their ability to turn big ratings into big advertising revenue. Yesterday at Apple's shareholders meeting, the board of directors defended its decision to keep shareholders in the dark regarding Steve Jobs health . The board noted that Jobs is still involved in strategic matters and will be returning to Apple in June. Unfortunately for concerned investors, the meeting provided little to no detail about Jobs health. According to Nielsen , President Barack Obama's State of the Union Tuesday night drew 52.3 million viewers . The ratings company reported that the address, which aired on ABC, CBS, NBC, FOX, Telemundo, Univision, CNBC, CNN, Fox News and MSNBC, took in a 32.5 rating/49 share and was viewed in roughly 37.1 million homes. However, the real story were the members of Congress Tweeting about the speech as it happened. The FCC is set to issue a Notice of Inquiry (NOI) over implementation of its Child Safe Viewing Act . The NOI will collect data on advanced ways to block video content on TV's, DVD players, cable and wireless handsets. Many broadcasters are up in arms over the Act, as they believe the V-chip is a more suitable tool for blocking content. Jerry Seinfeld is set to return to television as creator and executive producer of The Marriage Ref . Seinfeld, who has been on an 11 year hiatus from television, is working with longtime Oprah executive producer Ellen Rakietan in creating the show, which will air on NBC. The show will feature celebrities giving real life marriage advice with a comedic twist. Seinfeld noted "This is not a therapy show, it's a comedy show...After nine years of marriage, I have discovered that the comedic potential of this subject is quite rich." Shelly Palmer is a consultant and the host of MediaBytes a daily show featuring news you can use about technology, media & entertainment. He is Managing Director of Advanced Media Ventures Group LLC and the author of Television Disrupted: The Transition from Network to Networked TV (2008, York House Press). Shelly is also President of the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences, NY (the organization that bestows the coveted Emmy® Awards ). You can join the MediaBytes mailing list here . Shelly can be reached at shelly@palmer.net More on Apple
 
Royal Bank Of Scotland Posts Biggest Loss In British Corporate History Top
LONDON — The Royal Bank of Scotland posted an annual loss of 24.14 billion pounds ($34.4 billion) _ the biggest in British corporate history _ and unveiled a massive restructuring Thursday that will offload many of its international businesses. The already part-nationalized bank also said it will dump 325 billion pounds of toxic assets into a government insurance program, a step that could result in the state increasing its stake to as high as 95 percent. RBS Chairman Philip Hampton blamed the massive 2008 loss, which compared with a 7.3 billion pound profit in 2007, on the "unprecedented turbulence" in financial markets and deteriorating conditions around the world. Revenue fell 15 percent to 25.87 billion pounds. RBS' financial downfall has stirred anger in Britain, prompting the resignations of former Chief Executive Officer Fred Goodwin and Chairman Tom McKillop. Both men issued a public apology for their roles in the bank's downfall, but controversy over their huge salaries continued to rage on Thursday with revelations that Goodwin, 50, is receiving a 650,000 pound a year pension. "You cannot justify these excesses, especially when you have got such a failure of this magnitude," Treasury chief Alistair Darling told BBC radio. Darling said the Treasury had urged Goodwin to give up his 16 million pound pension pot, but had not yet received a reply. Derek Simpson, a spokesman for the Unite union, said the "historic and humiliating losses bring into sharp focus just how reckless RBS's former management team have behaved," and called for full nationalization. New RBS Chief Executive Stephen Hester refused to make forecasts for the current "difficult" year but said he was confident the restructuring and the government assistance would return RBS to "standalone strength." The bank said it planned to shift 240 billion pounds, or 20 percent, of its funded assets to a noncore division, along with 145 billion pounds of derivative balances and 155 billion of risk-weighted assets. Those assets will then be wound down over the next three to five years. Hester said the designated "bad" assets would be culled from a range of regions and businesses, but the bulk would come from the bank's underperforming Global Banking and Markets division. The restructuring, which includes plans to cut more than 2.5 billion pounds from the bank's cost base, will leave the bank centered on Britain, with smaller, more focused global operations. Hester declined to comment in detail on potential job losses but acknowledged reports of the bank shedding 20,000 positions, or 10 percent of its work force, were "not unreasonable." Investors liked the overhaul, with the bank's shares soaring 28.5 percent to 29.7 pence on the London Stock Exchange. The stock has plummeted more than 90 percent over the past year. Meanwhile, RBS' participation with another 325 billion pounds in the government's asset protection program was widely anticipated, though analysts had expected it to seek guarantees for only about 200 billion pounds in assets. RBS will pay 6.5 billion pounds to the Treasury to take part in the program, aimed at encouraging a return to lending by increasing the capital strength of banks. The cost will be funded by issuing new shares. The government has agreed to take a new class of "B" shares worth 13 billion pounds, with the option for another 6 billion pounds worth. That raises the possibility of the government taking on as much as 25.5 billion pounds in new capital in the bank, which Hester acknowledged could lift its stake from 68 percent to as much as 95 percent. However, he said the government had agreed to cap its voting rights to 75 percent. Panmure Gordon analysts said the asset protection program, also expected to be taken up by Lloyds when it announces full-year earnings on Friday, came at a favorable price. "While we do have concerns about further losses and capital strains ... we expect these concerns will crystallize over the next six months; for now, the markets will probably focus on the favorable terms of this bailout," they said in a note. However, Manoj Ladwa, a senior trader at ETX Capital, said that the better-than-expected figures _ analysts had factored in losses of up to 28 billion pounds _ were of "little comfort .. when you have booked the biggest loss in UK corporate history." "Although the share price is likely to rally today, a predominantly state-owned bank that is having a fire-sale on its assets gives investors little reason to buy," Ladwa added. Hester said that investing more in the government program would give the bank a greater degree of stability as well as allow it to fulfill an agreement with the government to increase lending to its core British customer base. RBS' downfall in the wake of the global credit squeeze has been swift. As recently as July 2008, The Banker magazine rated it as one of the world's top banks based on its Tier 1 capital. McKillop earlier this month acknowledged that RBS' decision to buy Dutch bank ABN Amro in December 2007 _ when its investment banking business was heavily exposed to the complex financial instruments hit by the crisis _ was a "bad mistake."
 
Stress Test Details Revealed, "Not Harsh Enough" Say Critics Top
WASHINGTON -- The Obama administration ordered the nation's 19 biggest banks on Wednesday to undergo stress tests to check whether they could hold up if the economy deteriorated further. But analysts say the administration's worst projections, which it describes as unlikely, are not much more dire than what many private forecasters already expect. More on The Bailouts
 
Obama Live Video: Introduces Budget Plan Top
President Barack Obama introduces the budget plan he is submitting to Congress. The event is scheduled to begin at 9:30am ET. WATCH IT BELOW: Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News , World News , and News about the Economy
 
Continuing Jobless Claims Top 5 Million Top
WASHINGTON — New jobless claims rose more than expected last week and the number of laid-off Americans continuing to receive unemployment benefits topped 5.1 million, fresh evidence the recession is increasingly forcing employers to shed jobs. The Labor Department said Thursday that first-time requests for unemployment benefits jumped to 667,000 from the previous week's figure of 631,000. Analysts had expected a slight drop in claims. The 667,000 new claims are the most since October 1982, though the labor force has grown by about half since then. The four-week average of initial claims, which smooths out fluctuations, rose to 639,000, the highest in more than 26 years. Separately, U.S. manufacturers saw orders for big-ticket goods plunge by a larger-than-expected 5.2 percent in January as global economic troubles cut demand from customers at home and abroad. The latest report on U.S. factory activity, released by the Commerce Department, showed orders falling for a record sixth straight month. The previous record of four months came in 1992. Meanwhile, the number of people receiving unemployment insurance for more than one week also increased more than expected to 5.1 million. That's the fifth straight week the figure has set a new record-high on data going back to 1967, and compared with only about 2.8 million people a year ago. As a proportion of the work force, the number of people continuing to receive benefits has reached its highest point since July 1983. An additional 1.4 million people were receiving benefits under an extended unemployment compensation program approved by Congress last year, as of Feb. 7, the latest data available. That brings the total number of jobless benefit recipients to roughly 6.5 million. The increase in continuing claims is an indication that many newly laid off workers are having difficulty finding jobs. Economists consider jobless claims a timely, if volatile, indicator of the health of the labor markets and broader economy. A year ago, initial claims stood at about 359,000. The labor market has deteriorated rapidly in recent months. Employers cut a net total of nearly 600,000 jobs in January, the highest monthly tally since 1974, sending the unemployment rate to 7.6 percent. Many economists expect the rate to reach 9 percent by the end of this year, even with the passage of President Barack Obama's $787 billion stimulus package. More job losses were announced this week. The NFL said Wednesday that commissioner Roger Goodell has taken a 20 percent pay cut and the league dropped 169 jobs through buyouts, layoffs and other reductions. Spartanburg, S.C.-based textile maker Milliken & Co. said it would cut 650 jobs at facilities worldwide, while jeweler Zale Corp. said it will close 115 stores and eliminate 245 positions. On Monday, troubled flash memory maker Spansion Inc. said it will lay off about 3,000 employees and computer chip maker Micron Technology Inc. announced it will slash as many as 2,000 workers by the end of August. Among the states, New Jersey had the biggest increase in jobless claims for the week ending Feb. 14, a jump of 2,093 that it attributed to layoffs in the service, transportation and manufacturing industries. The next largest increases were in Virginia, Rhode Island, Vermont and South Dakota. California saw the largest drop in claims, a decline of 16,550, which it attributed to fewer layoffs in service industries. Drops of 4,000 or more also were reported in Kentucky, Pennsylvania, Illinois and New York. ___ AP Economics Writer Jeannine Aversa contributed to this report. More on Economy
 
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Arrested Money Managers Stephen Walsh, Paul Greenwood Lived High On The Hog Top
For two decades, Paul Greenwood and Stephen Walsh looked like Wall Street wizards. Their supposed investment prowess lured hundreds of millions of dollars from public pension funds and universities and earned the two lavish trappings of success: stately homes, a stake in the New York Islanders and, for Mr. Greenwood, a horse farm that once belonged to Paul Newman.
 
Brad, Angelina And The Oldest Four See "The Little Mermaid" Top
Color us jealous. Big time. Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie just took kids Zahara, Pax, Maddox, and Shiloh to see Disney's Broadway musical The Little Mermaid at the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre. More on Celebrity Kids
 
Iran's Women Are Taking On The Mullahs Top
Zohreh Vatankhah slides into the driving seat of her BMW X3, flicks a switch to some pulsating Persian pop and we're soon zipping along the narrow lanes near her home in northern Tehran, almost in the foothills of the snow-capped Alborz mountains. Most Iranians behave in traffic as if they are in charge of dodgems, not potentially lethal vehicles: the traffic is heart-stoppingly dangerous, but with this woman I can relax. A professional racing driver, she's used to competing, and winning, at speeds of up to 180mph. She's glamorous, too, wearing high-heeled boots over her jeans (a controversial look in the eyes of the Iranian morality police) and a Rolex on her wrist. When she's not confounding stereotypes of Iranian women by beating men on the rally circuits, she's climbing mountains (she recently conquered Mount Damavand, the highest peak in the Middle East), or, here, in the axis of evil, sworn enemy of the United States, watching US (banned but tolerated) satellite TV channels; 24 is one of her favourite shows. "I LOVE Barack Obama," she says, "and Michelle, she's so stylish and so smart." At 31, Vatankhah was born a year before Iran's Islamic revolution. In February 1978, Tehran had nightclubs and dancing and girls-about-town who dressed as fashionably as their counterparts in Europe. A year later, the Shah had fled from his Peacock Throne; Iran was reborn as an Islamic Republic and women, many of whom supported the overthrow, were waking up to find their lives drastically changed. Not only obliged to cover up from head to toe, and banned from singing or performing in public to conform with Ayatollah Khomeini's narrow interpretation of Sharia law, they were also, as Shirin Ebadi, Nobel prize winner and Iran's first woman judge, found to her cost, sidelined from senior jobs. Women, "too emotional", were no longer employed as judges. The woman in the driving seat next to me looks anything but downtrodden. Yet, the tension between modernity and tradition that weighs heavily on women's lives in Iran is never far away. At one point she leans over to say: "Please, your scarf," when the bothersome piece of cloth on my head slips down. But then something happens that could be a metaphor for the revolution that may be quietly taking place in contemporary Iran. Our drive stalls when an irate male motorist, assuming she's trying to enter a one-way road, hogs the intersection and waves at her to go back. Vatankhah doesn't budge - she knows she's in the right. She holds her ground, presses on, but when he passes he shouts an obscenity. She rolls down her window calmly and tells him whatever the Farsi equivalent is of shut up and get a life. Iranian women, and not just the sporting queens or Nobel prize winners, are standing up to the mullahs. And some of them are experiencing a frightening political backlash. On our journey downtown, we pass within sight of a forbidding-looking building set back from the road, framed by the mountains, a reminder that we're in a country with an extraordinary recent history. This is Evin prison, Iran's biggest and most notorious jail, where unknown numbers of political prisoners are held. This month, a woman called Alieh Egham Doost began serving a three-year jail sentence in Evin. Her crime was to attend a peaceful women's rights protest three years ago. Dozens of other women have been arrested and sentenced on similar charges, but Egham Doost is the first to be actually put behind bars. Her jailing has caused alarm abroad and raised suspicion that a crackdown on the nascent Iranian women's movement is under way, and that more women like Egham Doost could be thrown into the high-security cells. Parvin Ardalan, a 39 year old Tehran journalist, could be one. She helped to set up a campaign with the aim of gathering one million signatures petitioning for a fairer deal for women under the law. Despite winning Sweden's Olof Palme human rights prize last year, she has been convicted by the revolutionary courts of "acting against national security". Now, she waits at home for the knock on the door. If her appeal fails, she will be serving six months in Evin prison. "It was awful. We were five or six to a cell" she says of a brief spell on remand in Evin when she was first arrested. Thousands of "enemies" of the revolution were incarcerated and executed in the same prison in the early 1980s; Shirin Ebadi, a human rights lawyer as well as Nobel prize winner, was jailed here, and Zahra Kazemi, a Canadian photojournalist was so badly beaten up after being taken into custody at Evin that she died of her injuries. Ardalan's passport has been confiscated to stop her travelling. "There's no point in being scared," she says, in a matter-of-fact tone. Iranians have "a fantastic talent for waiting" wrote Ryszard Kapuscinski in Shah of Shahs, his account of the 1979 revolution. "They can turn to stone and remain motionless for ever". And Iranian women have certainly shown extraordinary forbearance. It took 27 years after the Islamic regime was installed before they staged that first public demonstration in 2006. Police reacted by beating and arresting dozens of them. So Ardalan and a few others decided to change tactics. Now they fan out in ones and twos, to small towns and villages, going into shops, beauty salons, schools and offices, or stand at bus stops explaining "face to face" how the Iranian interpretation of Sharia law is stacked against half the population. They ask men and women to sign their petition. Those who refuse are asked to take a leaflet detailing the manifold forms of legal discrimination. It explains, how, for example, a man can divorce on a whim, while a woman has to jump through hoops - and then custody of children over seven routinely goes to the husband; a woman can to be stoned to death for committing adultery, whereas a man can have up to four wives and any number of "temporary" wives; a 13-year-old girl can be condemned as a criminal but the age of legal responsibility for a boy is 15; a woman's life is deemed to be worth only half of that of a man or a boy. No woman can stand for the presidency. A woman must cover her head and body at all times in public, and if she refuses can be punished, sometimes in seventh-century fashion, by flogging. Sitting next to Vatankhah in her $80,000 car, as she tells me about her new penthouse, the unfair laws certainly seem academic. She enjoys a fun-filled life and seems to have everything she wants within the limitations of Iran's global isolation. But the rich, like Vatankhah, have to find ways around the curbs on their freedom. She chose motorsports partly because so many other internationally competitive sports are off-limits to women. "I wouldn't like to try for swimming competitions in Iran. There's some sort of dress you have to wear". A Manchester United fan, she can only dream about ever seeing a real match. It is another of the petty strictures on women that in football-crazy Iran, women are banned from soccer stadiums. When South Korea played Iran for a world cup qualifying match earlier this month, a small group of Iranian women football fans stood forlornly outside Tehran's Azadi stadium and handed Korean women (who were allowed in) a letter which read. "Dear Korean sisters, Could you please shout once, just once, for us in support of IRAN? Would you do it for us, sisters? While you are screaming, shouting, clapping for your team, we are prisoners in our homes, behind a damn television screen. We have to kill the scream in our throats; we just cry, even when we are happy, because our footballers cannot hear us encouraging them." The headscarf - compulsory from the age of nine for any woman living in Iran or visiting the country - is the most obvious manifestation of how Iranian women are kept in check. The rules demand, too, that women wear clothes to conceal the natural shape of the body. These elements combine to produce hijab - a concept of modesty as much as actual garments. However, the compulsion to wear such coverings is not the biggest worry for Iran's feminists, explains Parvin Ardalan. That is because the hijab has become, in effect, the symbol of the revolution. Attacking it could lay the women open to charges of political activism aimed at toppling the regime. In any case, most now appear resigned to covering up. "It's like a part of your body. It feels the same as your jeans feel on your legs," Afsaneh Ahmadi, Zohreh Vatankhah's friend and navigator told me. To the Western visitor, a compulsory scarf around your head morning to night feels like anything but a part of your body. In Iran's overheated hotels and airports it becomes especially trying. It gets in the way when speaking on a mobile phone. Even some Iranian men find it oppressive. "It makes us feel like beasts," one confided, "as if we wouldn't be able to control our urges." There is enough repression in the system to prevent open defiance of the hijab rule, but it should perhaps be more worrying for the authorities that many women wear their scarves and modest attire with so little conviction. Two middle-aged figures in black chadors (long cloaks that include head covering), the most severe form of hijab, stood as if on guard at Mehrabad airport as we returned on a domestic flight one day during my stay. "Welcome to Tehran" they announced in Farsi. The real purpose of these sentries, I was later told, was to prevent "bad hijab" among incoming female passengers. But out in the streets, affluent north Tehrani princesses stay just within the law, while affirming nothing about their commitment to the values of the Islamic revolution. The resulting look can be sexy, if more Fifties-housewife than Angelina Jolie. The scarf, often Hermès and in bright colours, is knotted under the chin, and tilted back at a flattering angle to show a broad band of hair. Blonde highlights, beehives and carefully coiffed fringes seem hot this season. Huge sunglasses pushed up on the head, and a short, tight-fitting belted coat over narrow jeans complete the look. "It signals that we obey the law, but nothing more than that," remarks Ardalan. Since eyes, nose and hands are the only features on show, eye make-up is applied with scientific precision - and Tehran has become the nose-job capital of the world, with 70,000 rhinoplasty operations a year. I lost count of the numbers of women I saw with post-operative plasters stuck on their noses like starfish. Women are also having tattoos done in increasing numbers, "on the stomach and other places", as one young Tehrani told me. Appearance, then, is every bit as important as in the West, which is not exactly what the Islamic revolutionaries had in mind back in 1979. In the early years, red lipstick was "an insult to the blood of the martyrs". For men, too, the cadres of the revolution were discouraged from wearing ties (too Western, too reminiscent of the Shah). Many took to wearing plastic sandals to demonstrate their revolutionary credentials. For women, it seems, the clerics wanted the public space free of any trace of overt femininity. Satellite dishes have put the nail in that coffin. Upper-class Persians were always stylish, but watching shows like Sex and the City or the music videos of Lebanese superstar Nancy Ajram has given women of all backgrounds an eye for fashion and fitness. Even this has its complications. At the vast and impressively equipped Enghelab sports complex, formerly the Imperial Country Club, a playground for the Shah and his royal entourage, Marjun Massoudi trots in front of me at a brisk pace along a superb "health road" busy with joggers and walkers. She makes a left turn, and we find ourselves at the edge of a fairway on Iran's only golf club which, despite having only 12 holes, has 3,000 members, many of them women. Disappointingly, there's nobody teeing off, as I had been curious to see how to swing a club in a chador. But Marjun assures me golf is ideally suited to the Islamic dress code. Huge efforts go into maintaining sexual apartheid in sport, although I notice at the rifle range two girls in headscarves and slim-fitting "manteaus" are taking lessons from a man. Marjun issues me with a swimsuit in case I want to come use one of the women-only swimming pools. Cut low on the thigh area with bulky bra pads, it's not exactly Edwardian, but still pretty modest given that there would be zero chance of being seen by a member of the opposite sex. No wonder home fitness DVDs are so popular here. There are women who profess to be entirely happy with the status quo. A dozen or so of them spoke at a women's round table organised by the Iranian foreign ministry. "In the name of God the merciful the most compassionate..." each of the speakers began her contribution, a reminder that Iran is, first and foremost, a theocracy. Every woman in the room, apart from a member of the Jewish community, had an ankle-length chador and a head covering that blocked out every wisp of hair. All were highly educated and held senior positions: there was a judge, an agricultural scientist, several university lecturers and academics. Far from subjugating women, the Islamic revolution elevated them in the family, they claimed, and female life expectancy has gone to 75 years from 58 before 1979. Rather, it was in "liberal democracies" that women were oppressed. "I have seen myself in some countries women are cleaning the streets," one speaker said, "They choose these jobs so that they can say they have equality. We don't think like this." The physical punishments we found barbaric were merely "theoretical". "You could count on the fingers of one hand the number of stonings carried out in Iran in the past 10 years," said Fa'eze Bodaghi, a lawyer and judge. And floggings? "Physical punishment might look harsh, but it is immediate," she said, adding that Iranian law is quite often "misunderstood". "I don't want to say there is no problem. Inheritance laws [a widow is entitled to only one eighth of her husband's wealth], for example, are under review. But generally I think these women collecting signatures are after Western human rights standards, and we don't think that can work in Iran." Afterwards, I share a taxi with Farzaneh Abdolmaleki, a senior civil servant. "We don't believe in gender equality, you see," she tells me, shaking her head. "The family is what matters and we all have different roles in the family." Even if these women wanted a different set-up, they would be fairly powerless to do much about it, despite their relatively privileged positions, since it is men who make and interpret the law. There are, of course, competing factions within Iranian politics, some more secular-minded than others, and reforms have at least allowed women back into the judiciary. But there are still only eight female MPs out of 290, and real power is wielded by the Guardian Council, an unelected body of clerics who can veto any proposed legal change they deem to be unconstitutional. In the official narrative of Iran, the self-styled superpower, there is scant room for public dissent. In this Iran, there are no disgruntled women, only fulfilled mothers, daughters, wives. "These rumours are just hoaxes got up by foreign enemies," Zahra Mostafavi Khomeini, the daughter of Ayatollah Khomeini retorted when I asked her what she thought of Alieh Egham Doost and the jailing of the activists. Her father, the man who inspired the Islamic revolution, was a champion of fairness for women, she added. "He wanted women to play a full part in society, not just as typists or nurses. At home, he never asked his wife, even once, 'give me a cup of tea', or 'close the door'. He did it himself!". Attitudes among some Iranian men are less enlightened. One writer and his wife were horrified when they learnt that a friend whose kebab restaurant had run into financial difficulties was pressurising his wife to sell one of her kidneys. Why the dogmatists among Iran's clerics and politicians should be so eager to gag those women who are not even challenging the Islamic
 
Robots Now Driving Some New York City Trains Top
Mass transit developments abound this week -- this time, it's the most futuristic-sounding item yet. New York subway trains along one line will be driven by computers : In a $300 million emotional purchase for the subway, the MTA's CBTC (communication-based train control) system will drive the L train starting today. This means that you'll have a robot conductor in charge of the movement instead of a disgruntled human. When it screws up they can blame technology and not the human beings in control our idiotic train system. RELATED: :: Subway Maps From The Future
 
To Pay for Health Care, Obama Looks to Taxes on Affluent Top
President Obama will propose further tax increases on the affluent to help pay for his promise to make health care more accessible and affordable, calling for stricter limits on the benefits of itemized deductions taken by the wealthiest households, administration officials said Wednesday. The tax proposal, coming after recent years in which wealth has become more concentrated at the top of the income scale, introduces a politically volatile edge to the Congressional debate over Mr. Obama's domestic priorities.
 
Kerry Discusses Condiments, Blago's Hair, and 2004 Election Top
John F. Kerry is a Massachusetts senator, a D.C. VIP, a former presidential candidate and a man filled with wonkish knowledge on all sorts of topics. And while he never quite made it to the Oval Office, he gets to participate in an inauguration anyway -- the inaugural edition of Answer This, POLITICO's occasional series of interviews with leading, and would-be leading, political figures. More on Rod Blagojevich
 
Burris Still Has Senate Clout, Despite Furor Top
SPRINGFIELD, Ill. — Despite the furor surrounding Sen. Roland Burris, experts say Illinois is unlikely to suffer much from having a senator who's getting the cold shoulder from colleagues and faces constant calls for his resignation. Burris can still vote and serve on committees. He can still help constituents getting the run-around from government bureaucrats. Experts say he'll probably be able to bring home money for Illinois. "As long as he's senator, he still can accomplish things for this state," said Peter Fitzgerald, a Republican who represented Illinois in the Senate for one term. Even Sen. Dick Durbin, who says his fellow Illinois Democrat should consider resigning, promised to continue working with Burris _ and ensure his home state isn't left wanting. "We will find ways to cooperate and work together," said Durbin, the Senate's No. 2 Democrat. "I don't want the people of Illinois to lose anything because of this controversy." Burris would hardly be a major power under normal circumstances. He's among the newest members in an institution built around seniority, and other Illinoisans have far more influence in Washington _ notably President Barack Obama, White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel and Durbin, who's in his 13th year in the Senate. Burris was appointed by former Gov. Rod Blagojevich just before Blagojevich was tossed out of office over allegations he tried to sell the Senate appointment. Senate leaders agreed to accept Burris' appointment only if he gave a full explanation of his contacts with the Blagojevich administration. Burris testified he had spoken to only one Blagojevich ally about the Senate seat and that there was no discussion of him doing any favors for the governor. But after he took office, Burris revised his story at least twice, acknowledging he talked to several people close to Blagojevich and looked into raising money for the governor but couldn't find anyone willing to donate. The changing accounts have been greeted with outrage. Illinois politicians, including new Gov. Pat Quinn, are calling for his resignation, as are many newspapers. Still, Burris is taking great pains to demonstrate he's going about business as usual. He named a chief of staff and communications director Wednesday and gave a two-minute speech from the Senate floor in support of a voting rights bill before presiding over the Senate for an hour, a tradition for freshmen lawmakers. "Sen. Burris may be new in Washington, but he's certainly no stranger to politics and relationships," said his spokesman, Jim O'Connor. "He's fully convinced that when the facts come out, things will normalize." But Durbin questioned whether Burris can be an effective advocate while ducking reporters' questions. "I think we found there are limits to what he can do _ when he can't travel to certain places because of media interest, for example," Durbin said Tuesday after meeting with Burris. "He is limited in what he can do because of the circumstances. Maybe that will change, I don't know." Another senator who defied calls for his resignation was Larry Craig, who was accused of soliciting sex in an airport bathroom in June 2007. The Idaho Republican served out the rest of his term despite pressure from party leaders. Bryan McQuide, a political science professor at the University of Idaho, said Craig lost a great deal of clout because he was stripped of committee chairmanships. Burris doesn't have any chairmanships to lose. The pressure and public attention on Craig eased once it was clear he wouldn't run for re-election, making it easier for him to perform basic Senate duties, McQuide said. He speculated Burris also might get out of the spotlight by promising not to run in 2010. In the meantime, McQuide said, Illinois has at least one senator at full strength. "If I were living in Illinois, I wouldn't call Burris," he said. "I would call Durbin." ___ Associated Press writer Henry C. Jackson contributed to this report from Washington.
 
Obama Meets With Black Caucus To Discuss Priorities Top
WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama may be in familiar company when he sits down for his first White House meeting with the Congressional Black Caucus, but it won't be a clubby reunion. Members of the liberal, all-Democratic caucus that just last year counted Obama as one of its own say they plan to press him on their priorities. The session could rekindle lingering differences Obama has had with the group, which hasn't always embraced his approach to politics. It hasn't slipped some caucus members' attention, for example, that Obama first hosted congressional Republicans and the conservative Blue Dog Democrats in his push toward the political middle. They say it's their job to ensure he remains true to certain priorities, such as fixing inner-city poverty, that he once faced as a community organizer in Chicago. "He knows these issues, but I think it's very important that no group is taken for granted," said Rep. Corrine Brown, D-Fla. "It doesn't matter who is president ... if you're not in the room, your interests will be left on the table." Without question, Brown and other African-American lawmakers say they are thrilled to have Obama in the White House, not just because he is the first black president but because his agenda aligns with theirs far more than former President George W. Bush's did. In turn, Obama relies partly on the organization's largely black constituents, who were a big factor in his presidential win. Any differences between Obama and the caucus are overblown, said the group's chairwoman, Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Calif. "His agenda is our agenda," she said. "We are working with the president, and we want to make sure his agenda is supported," she said. Yet Obama maintained a distant relationship with the caucus when he was its only Senate member from 2004-08. That dynamic was on display early in the Democratic presidential primary, when many senior caucus members initially backed Hillary Rodham Clinton even as Obama quickly became viable as a candidate. Those lawmakers eventually endorsed Obama, some realizing it could cost them politically if they didn't. Lee and others declined to discuss specific policy items that may come up at the meeting, which the caucus routinely holds with the president at the start of a new Congress. The list is likely to include concerns about the continued wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, diversity in administration jobs and more help for homeowners facing foreclosure. The caucus already has demonstrated it will challenge Obama if he strays from its priorities. Members were quick to question the wisdom of Obama's failed appointment of Republican Sen. Judd Gregg as commerce secretary. They were wary of the New Hampshire conservative and whether he would ensure a full counting of minorities in the 2010 census, which is conducted under the Commerce Department's jurisdiction. Those concerns in part led Obama to announce that the census would be directed by the White House, not Commerce. The Congressional Black Caucus also lent critical support to former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich's appointment of Roland Burris, who is black, to fill Obama's vacant Senate seat, even as the new administration and other leading Democrats resisted the move. In part, caucus members argued it was important to have at least one black senator. Earlier this week, when the president convened a summit on reducing spending, Lee warned the White House about balancing the budget "on the backs of the most vulnerable Americans." "We will continue to speak out for those who have been disenfranchised," Lee said in an interview. "That's our job." It wasn't clear if Burris _ who is resisting calls to resign _ would attend the meeting. More on Barack Obama
 
Jamie Malanowski: Bringing Freedom to Great Britain Top
Freedom-wise, there's nowhere more self-satisfied than Britain. Bastion of personal liberty, home of the ground-breaking Magna Carta, the place where the sturdy yeoman can sit under his thatched roof secure from the intrusions of the king... Pull the other one. Any sentient citizen must realize that in terms of liberty, the country has less than a state-of-the-art democracy; in fact, it's been coasting on its rep. Now, thanks to a slavishly Bush-poodling Labour government with a startlingly authoritarian bent, Britons are beginning to recognize that this sceptred isle, this earth of majesty, this seat of Mars, this other Eden is about to become this surveillance state, this database depot, this green and pleasant centre of preventive detention, this precious home of biometrically-keyed national identification cards set in a sea of CCTV cameras. But Britons are getting a chance to have their own democratic moment. On Saturday February 28, lawyers, judges, politicians, human rights supporters, anti-surveillance activists, members of the Countryside Alliance, rock 'n' rollers denied the right to stage concerts of their own choosing (honestly) and presumably more than a few ordinary concerned citizens will be gathering all across the UK -- in London of course, but also in Belfast, Bristol, Cardiff, Cambridge, Glasgow and Manchester -- at the Convention on Modern Liberty . There they will hear from a roster of speakers that will include civil rights activist Shami Chakrabarti, journalist Henry Porter, jurist Helena Kennedy and conservative member of Parliament David Davis, who gave up his seat to protest the government's policies on preventive detention, and his party's supine reaction. And they will learn more about the ever encroaching threats to individual liberty that have been fueled by government's growing appetite to keep its citizens under constant watch and maintain detailed files on what they do. It may not be as dramatic as the storming of the Bastille, but it's a start. And a start that might learn from the USA. A new, more American-like legal recognition of individual rights would be a welcome update for what is still, just, one of the world's leading democracies. Not that it could prevent all transgressions, as the Bush-Cheney administration amply demonstrated. But such a change would bring about a fundamental alteration in the relationship between the people and the government. In Britain, the people have always been subservient to the government. Power was first invested in the king, who, the citizenry was told, received it from God. Over the centuries the king's authority was gradually ceded to Parliament. And though it's true that Parliament is elected by the people, the relative infrequency of elections -- contrast with the US where a third of the Senate and the entire House of Representatives=2 0is contested every two years -- and the power of party discipline mean that voters can yelp and squawk and scream and march in their millions but be safely ignored b y the ruling class. As for rebels... Well, there's Oliver Cromwell, who asserted the rights of Parliament, but after he died, the monarchy was restored, and wasn't the restoration more fun? And there was, it's true, the Glorious Revolution, though that should have been called the Clever Revolution, for the smart way one monarch was swapped in for another. But many hardcore malcontents just upped and left. And many of them came to America, where one can more plausibly say that the people rule. They overthrew one government (citing "inalienable rights") and created the next one (in the name of "We, the People.") The Constitution they wrote treated government with extreme suspicion, and they shackled it with checks and balances and separated powers and a firm Bill of Rights that prohibited the government from making laws that limited individual liberty. Today, that suspicion of government survives across the political spectrum: the left is wary of official police powers, the right of spreading, meddlesome, freedom-squelching bureaucracy. The result is a highly individualistic culture, one that constantly mythologizes outlaws (Jesse James, Vito Corleone), self-appointed vigilantes ( Dirty Harry , Spiderman ), and the freelance rebel who climbs onto a motorcycle and goes on the road or onto his raft and head down the Mississippi. With all its problems and difficulties, the pull of this individual freedom has been felt throughout the world -- as it will be in the UK on February 28. It's time to take a stand. It's time to summon up the shades of such great British reformers as William Wilberforce and his fellow abolitionists. It's time to realize that Britain needs to make real something it already thinks is right. It's time, in fact, for the UK's very own Bill of Rights. This post originally appeared on thefirstpost.co.uk .
 
Bishop Richard Williamson Back In Britain After Argentine Expulsion Top
When Bishop Richard Williamson sat down last year in an oak-panelled seminary in the picturesque Bavarian village of Zaitzkoven and agreed to an interview with a Swedish journalist, he probably had little idea of the international political storm it would soon unleash. For the previous five years, the British-born bishop had spent most of his time preaching and praying in an isolated theological college in the Argentinie countryside, a short drive from the capital, Buenos Aires. But that afternoon he was in Germany to ordain a fresh batch of priests for the Society of St Pius X (SSPX), the radical ultra-orthodox breakaway Catholic sect he belongs to which believes the Vatican has been overrun by liberal modernisers and has turned its back on the true teachings of the Catholic Church. Ali Fegan, the journalist, was investigating links between SSPX and far-right nationalist groups in Sweden and hoped to pin down exactly what the society's most outspoken and prominent acolyte really thought about the Holocaust. Much to Fegan's surprise, the usually media-shy Bishop Williamson obliged and offered a full on-the-record interview which has since turned him into one of the world's most controversial religious leaders. In a black cassock with red stitching, and sporting a matching knitted cardigan, the grey-haired cleric set out in slow and carefully chosen words why he believed historians had exaggerated the true extent of the Holocaust. "I believe that the historical evidence is hugely against six million Jews having been deliberately gassed in gas chambers as a deliberate policy of Adolf Hitler," he said. "I believe there were no gas chambers. Between two and three hundred thousand Jews perished in Nazi concentration camps but not one of them by gassing in a gas chamber." When that interview was broadcast last month, that turned the previously little-known Bishop Williamson into an overnight international pariah and thrust the Vatican headlong into a disastrous confrontation with Jews worldwide. The 69-year-old bishop went to ground as the Vatican, which had embarrassingly just lifted an excommunication order against SSPX, ordered him to recant his views on the Holocaust and launched a frantic damage- limitation exercise to assuage outraged Jewish concerns. When journalists tried to visit him they were told he was on a spiritual retreat and the world's most controversial bishop went silent. But yesterday morning, after a brief scuffle with a photographer at Buenos Aires airport and a long flight over the Atlantic, a bleary-eyed Bishop Williamson arrived back in the country of his birth after being ignominiously expelled from Argentina. The Argentine government, with the largest Jewish population in Latin America, had decided that the bishop was no longer welcome and he was ordered to leave the country within 10 days. His return to Britain marks a remarkably swift fall for a figure hugely respected among far-right seminarians and is now finding himself feted by the small but vocal group of historical revisionists who believe that the true extent of the Holocaust has been exaggerated. The bishop has refused to answer questions from journalists, but has indicated he may be willing to change his views on the Holocaust after he reviews the evidence. Waiting for him at Heathrow was Michele Renouf, a former socialite turned documentary film-maker who has regularly come to the aid of those accused of denying the Holocaust. Last year, she put together a legal team for the Australian academic Frederick Toben when he was arrested at Heathrow at the request of police in Germany where Holocaust denial is a crime. Ms Renouf once described Judaism as a "repugnant and hate-filled religion" and supported the British historian David Irving, who was briefly jailed in Austria three years ago for similar crimes, and who has been in regular email contact with Bishop Williamson in the past few weeks. The former beauty queen said she wanted to represent and support Bishop Williamson in getting his views across. Drawing on religious metaphors, she said: "The Holocaust has become a religion and to deny its central tenets and saints is blasphemy." Born to an Anglican vicar in 1940, Bishop Williamson was educated at Winchester College and Cambridge University then worked in Africa as a missionary. He converted to Catholicism in 1971 and joined the ultra-conservative SSPX. Created by the firebrand French cleric Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, SSPX was a direct response by traditionalists to the Second Vatican Council, the landmark meeting of bishops in the mid-1960s which abandoned the Latin Mass and modernised the Catholic Church. The society initially operated with the tacit approval of the Vatican but in 1988, Archbishop Lefebvre was excommunicated with four bishops he had ordained against the Vatican's will, one of whom was Williamson. Over the years, the bishop adopted an increasingly radical political rhetoric, claiming that Jews are fighting for world domination "to prepare the anti-Christ's throne in Jerusalem", that the Twin Towers were brought down by the American government to justify the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan and that Freemasons are conspiring against Catholics. For the Vatican, the presence of Bishop Williamson in Britain is a major embarrassment. Two weeks after the Swedish interview was broadcast, Pope Benedict XVI lifted the excommunication order on SSPX. The rehabilitation was supposed to signal Benedict's desire to extend a welcoming hand to ultra-traditionalists but it translated into the de facto acceptance of a man who many believe holds deeply anti-Semitic views. Before Archbishop Lefebvre died in 1991, he encouraged the French to vote for the far-right Front National party and a SSPX booklet, by Fr Franz Schmidberger, states that Jews and Muslims are "destroying Europe's national identity" and "threatening Christian society". Bishop Richard Williamson: His views * On the Holocaust: "I believe that the historical evidence is hugely against six million Jews having been deliberately gassed in gas chambers as a deliberate policy of Adolf Hitler. I believe there were no gas chambers." * On the belief that 9/11 was committed by the US government: "The police state took a great leap forward with 9/11, that's for certain, and I hope none of you believe that 9/11 was what it was presented to be." * On women: "A woman can do a good imitation of handling ideas, but then she will not be thinking properly as a woman. Did this lawyeress check her hairdo before coming into court? If she did, she is a distracted lawyer. If she did not, she is one distorted woman." * On the failure of "white men" to remain true to Catholicism: "If the white men still refuse to convert, let us pray for some great conversions among Jews, Muslims and blacks so that they may take over where the whites have left off, and may continue to show us the way to Heaven." Read more from the Independent. More on Pope
 
Max Stier: Serious Shortcomings in Obama's Oversight of Stimulus Spending Top
This was originally posted as an exclusive commentary for The Washington Post . The $787 billion economic stimulus package has raised serious questions about the ability of our federal government to fulfill its basic duties, and will require more than just the close scrutiny promised by the Obama administration. Hardly a day goes by without a headline disclosing the failure of a federal agency to carry out its mission because it is short-staffed, under-resourced and ill-equipped, or poorly managed. These are conditions that will inevitably worsen as the government is asked to dispense billions of dollars in stimulus money as quickly as possible. President Obama has promised transparency and intense oversight of the stimulus spending, committing $350 million to this task and thereby ensuring that the first new government hires will be investigators and auditors. He also has named a former Secret Service agent, Earl Devaney, to head the new Recovery Act Transparency and Accountability Board that will police the stimulus spending. While necessary, this approach is insufficient. What's lacking is an aggressive plan to provide the personnel and tools necessary for our government departments and agencies to succeed, and a new paradigm that imagines the watchdog role as constructive rather than punitive. Smart government should be about getting it right in the first place and investing in the front-end capacity, not discovering problems after-the-fact and then bashing agencies and civil servants for failing to do jobs they were never resourced to handle. The status quo is equivalent to assigning a pathologist to a sick patient who would be better aided by a primary care doctor. We need immediate and long-term investments in the people of government. That means additional and better-trained contracting and grants managers who make spending decisions; upgrading the skills of human resources professionals; the hiring of workers with critical skills that match the demands faced by our government; and a focus on the development and training of that talent. We need a commitment to improved management; investments in state-of-the-art technology and systems to enable better productivity; clearly communicated goals and expectations that permit the workforce to be held accountable; and reward systems tied to performance. The Obama administration so far has given a nod to some of these issues, but it is hardly reassuring. The initial guidance to agencies on the stimulus spending only talked in general terms about employing more acquisition professionals and the need to use government hiring flexibilities, but offered no explicit help or plans to even begin the process of rebuilding the capacity of the civil service to do its job. Instead, the biggest emphasis is on oversight through the accountability board, inspectors general, the General Accountability Office and, of course, from Congress. Given the immediate goal of pushing money out the door and the current limitations of the federal workforce, it would be wise for the oversight cops to emphasize collaboration with agencies, to find ways to fix problems and build a strong foundation rather than resort to the customary "gotcha" mentality and blame game. There is little doubt there will be missteps and cases of waste, fraud and abuse, and they must be handled appropriately. But many of the problems will be systemic and flow from the steady erosion of the workforce. Take the Department of Energy. As Energy Secretary Steven Chu has announced plans to quickly disburse $32.7 billion in stimulus grants and $130 billion in loans, his own inspector general issued a report citing a personnel shortage in the Office of the Chief Financial Officer that handles funding applications. The IG said the department has not fully developed and implemented controls necessary to successfully manage an innovative technologies loan program. The financial office was understaffed, according to the IG, without even considering its role in evaluating soon to be awarded loans to the auto industry and the billions of dollars in programs under the stimulus package. "We recognize that the goals of expediency and accountability may prove difficult to fully reconcile," the IG wrote. During the past 30 years, administration after administration has deemphasized the federal workforce, placed increased reliance on contractors, outsourced crucial skills and inherently governmental functions, and often demonized the civil service. We need to use this moment of crisis as an opportunity to rebuild the capacity of our depleted federal government, which is like re-tooling the engine while driving 65 miles per hour. It won't be easy. But if we invest on the front-end to enhance government's engine ¿ its workforce¿and the oversight community serves as a more constructive partner, our chances of success will be greatly enhanced. More on Stimulus Package
 
Psychedelic Frogfish: New Species Of Bouncing Fish Discovered Top
JAKARTA, Indonesia — A funky, psychedelic fish that bounces on the ocean floor like a rubber ball has been classified as a new species, a scientific journal reported. The frogfish _ which has a swirl of tan and peach zebra stripes that extend from its aqua eyes to its tail _ was initially discovered by scuba diving instructors working for a tour operator a year ago in shallow waters off Ambon island in eastern Indonesia. The operator contacted Ted Pietsch, lead author of a paper published in this month's edition of Copeia, the journal of the American Society of Ichthyologists and Herpetologists, who submitted DNA work identifying it as a new species. The fish _ which the University of Washington professor has named "psychedelica" _ is a member of the antennariid genus, Histiophryne, and like other frogfish, has fins on both sides of its body that have evolved to be leg-like. But it has several behavioral traits not previously known to the others, Pietsch wrote. Each time the fish strike the seabed, for instance, they push off with their fins and expel water from tiny gill openings to jet themselves forward. That, and an off-centered tail, causes them to bounce around in a bizarre, chaotic manner. Mark Erdman, a senior adviser to the Conservation International's marine program, said Thursday it was an exciting discovery. "I think people thought frogfishes were relatively well known and to get a new one like this is really quiet spectacular. ... It's a stunning animal," he said, adding that the fish's stripes were probably intended to mimic coral. "It also speaks to the tremendous diversity in this region and to fact that there are still a lot of unknowns here _ in Indonesia and in the Coral Triangle in general." The fish, which has a gelatinous fist-sized body covered with thick folds of skin that protect it from sharp-edged corals, also has a flat face with eyes directed forward, like humans, and a huge, yawning mouth. ___ On the Net: University of Washington: http://uwnews.org/article.asp?articleID47496 More on Animals
 
Australian Researchers Strive To Make Cows Belch Less Top
In August, Australian environment scientists said it would be better if citizens ate Kangaroo meat : Removing seven million cattle and 36 million sheep by 2020 and replacing them with 175 million kangaroos, to produce the same amount of meat, could lower national greenhouse gases by 3 percent a year, said the University of New South Wales study. Evidently, that wasn't so popular. Now that that hasn't caught on, Australian researchers are tasked with getting cows to belch less methane into the atmosphere : Researchers will explore changing diets and chemical and biological controls of stomach bacteria to reduce methane production, as well as genetic approaches such as selective breeding. "We will invest in science to ensure that productivity grows while the industry adapts to lower emissions, particularly as the world food shortage continues," Burke said. The government's top climate change advisor, Professor Ross Garnaut, suggested in a major report on global warming last year that one solution would be for Australians to eat more kangaroos and reduce the number of farm animals. More on Australia
 
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Britain Aided Iraq Terror Renditions, UK Admits Top
The government has admitted that British troops in Iraq handed over terror suspects to the US, which then secretly rendered them to a prison in Afghanistan.
 
Hale "Bonddad" Stewart: Is There A Fundamental Shift Occuring In The Economy? Top
Consumer spending is responsible for 70% of US economic growth. However, over the last few quarters we have seen a big drop in personal consumption expenditures and an increase in personal savings. Is this the start of a new trend or is this a temporary situation? From Reuters The Conference Board, an industry group, said its consumer confidence index fell to 25.0 in February, the lowest since the index began in 1967, from 34.7 in January. Consumers' gloomy outlook showed no sign of turning around, according to the report, boding ill for the consumer spending that drives some two-thirds of the U.S. economy. The data "suggests, unfortunately, that we still haven't found the bottom for the economy," said Zach Pandl, economist at Nomura Securities International in New York. There are a lot of reasons for this drop. 1.) The job market is terrible. In January 2007 there were 138,080,000 total non-farm jobs in the US compared with 134,580,000 in January 2008 for a total loss of 3.5 million jobs in a 12 month period. 1.77 million have occurred since the October numbers. In other words, job losses are accelerating. 2.) There are two sources of wealth for Americans: stocks and real estate. Stocks are in a bear market. Home prices continue to drop: The day's U.S. housing data also offered little reason for optimism. Prices of U.S. single-family homes fell 18.5 percent in December from a year earlier, with the pace of decline speeding up, according to the S&P/Case Shiller home price index. That was the biggest drop since the data series began 21 years ago and suggested prices will probably continue falling in the months ahead, extending a 13-month-old recession. The S&P/Case Shiller composite index of home prices in 20 metropolitan areas fell 2.5 percent after dipping 2.3 percent in November. "There are very few, if any, pockets of turnaround that one can see in the data," said David Blitzer, chairman of S&P's index committee. "Most of the nation appears to remain on a downward path." A separate report from the Federal Housing Finance Agency said single-family home prices fell a record 4.5 percent in the last three months of 2008 compared with a year earlier, though the pace of decline slowed. Housing will not be anywhere near a bottom until we see the rate of year over year price declines slow. As a result, we can expect to see a continued drop in housing prices over the new 6 months (and probably longer). As a result of the drop in housing real estate prices, household net worth has dropped 11% since the third quarter of 2007. In short, between real estate and the stock market, people are feeling poorer. That's leading to lower consumer spending: Overall personal consumption expenditures are dropping at fast rates on a year over year basis. A big reason for this a a drop in durable goods purchases (cars and houses). But non-durable rates are dropping as well. And now we are seeing an increase in savings: Notice its been declining for the last 20 years or so until it eventually started hovering around 0% and that it has recently spiked up. There are some people who are now arguing the consumer is retrenching completely; meaning, the consumer will no longer be the engine of growth. There are two strong fundamental reasons that support this conclusion. 1.) First, the best reading of job growth during the last expansion is for a total of approximately 8.2 million. In other words, job growth was extremely weak. In addition, we've seen fast rates of job loss over the last year along with real estate and stock market collapses. In other words, the macro environment is such that consumers may be paying a lot of attention to their bottom line and thinking, "I don't need to buy that right now." 2.) Total household debt outstanding has increased from 47% of GDP in 1981 to 96% of GDP in the third quarter of 2008. While there is no bright line in economics that says "above this level the household debt/GDP ratio is bad" I feel fairly certain in saying that when there is almost as much household debt as there is GDP in an economy there are serious problems. The point is the possibility that we are at a saturation level with household debt is pretty high. This leads to the conclusion that the consumer will start to pay his debt down leading to lower consumer spending. More on Economy
 
George Mitchell, Netanyahu To Meet Concerning Peace Efforts Top
JERUSALEM — The special U.S. envoy tasked with jump-starting flagging peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians will huddle Thursday with Prime Minister-designate Benjamin Netanyahu, a vocal opponent of the negotiations. The meeting will be the first between Netanyahu and George Mitchell since Netanyahu was designated to lead Israel's next government. The Obama administration has dispatched Mitchell to the region for the second time in its first month, an indication of the new U.S. president's determination to press a resolution of the decades-old conflict. Hillary Clinton is due in the area next week on her first trip since being appointed the new U.S. secretary of state. Mitchell hopes to re-energize stalled talks, over the objections of Netanyahu, who thinks the latest round of U.S.-backed negotiations was a waste of time and wants to promote Palestinian prosperity instead of Palestinian statehood. The Palestinians reject Netanyahu's approach and want Israel to halt West Bank settlement construction. On that point, the Palestinians are in accord with Mitchell, who, as head of an international commission to investigate Middle East violence, urged Israel back in 2001 to freeze settlement expansion. He also called on Palestinians to rein in militants. Netanyahu is an outspoken champion of expanding the settlements, where nearly 290,000 Jews live, up about 50 percent since 2001. Mitchell arrived in Israel on Thursday from Turkey and met with Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni before his scheduled meeting with Netanyahu. In Ankara, Mitchell said predominantly Muslim Turkey's friendship with Israel gave it a unique opportunity to help achieve Middle East peace _ a reflection of Washington's desire to see the two U.S. allies mend ties frayed during Israel's recent offensive in the Gaza Strip. Mitchell promised on his first trip last month a vigorous push for peace but publicly offered no glimpse of how the Obama administration planned to proceed. A U.S. official said he was not expected to make any public policy statements this time, either. Such statements might await Clinton's visit or be put off until Netanyahu forms his government. Despite his own hawkish leanings, Netanyahu knows the international community would like to see a moderate coalition lineup. But his efforts to woo moderate parties that would trade land for peace have not been going well. Livni's Kadima Party and Defense Minister Ehud Barak's Labor Party have rejected his overtures, in part because of his opposition to peacemaking. Netanyahu's alternative is to team up with other nationalist and religious parties in a narrow alliance that could easily break apart over conflicting domestic agendas or international pressure to make concessions to the Palestinians. Netanyahu is familiar with such volatility: His first government, which had dismal relations with the Palestinians, fell apart a decade ago after the U.S. coerced him to cede control of large parts of the biblical West Bank town of Hebron to Palestinian control. One of Mitchell's immediate goals in the region is to shore up a shaky, informal cease-fire that ended Israel's bruising offensive against Gaza Strip militants last month. Egyptian officials have been trying to mediate a long-term truce between Israel and Hamas, which rules Gaza. Low-level violence has marred the Jan. 18 cease-fire, and on Thursday, militants fired two rockets at southern Israel, the military said. No injuries were reported. Mitchell heads to the West Bank on Friday to meet with officials of the Western-backed Palestinian Authority. Besides discussing the political developments in Israel, the two sides will also discuss the need to rebuild Gaza and efforts to reconcile feuding Palestinian factions. The Palestinians hope to raise $2.8 billion at an international donor's conference in Egypt on Monday, where the U.S. is expected to pledge $900 million. The success of reconstruction efforts will depend largely on Israel's agreement to reopen border crossings into Gaza to let through building materials and other equipment and commodities. Israel blockaded its borders with Gaza after Hamas militants overran the territory nearly two years ago, opening them only to let in limited humanitarian supplies. Truce talks recently deadlocked over Israel's insistence that Hamas release a long-held Israeli soldier before border crossings are opened. A power-sharing deal between Hamas and the moderate West Bank government of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas is also seen as key to reconstruction efforts. The international community shuns the violently anti-Israel Hamas and won't send money directly to it. In a report obtained by The Associated Press on Thursday, Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad asked donors to channel aid "first and foremost" through his West Bank government. Hamas and Fatah representatives have been meeting in Cairo this week for Egyptian-mediated talks. But earlier rounds of reconciliation efforts failed, and the two sides remain bitterly divided nearly two years after Hamas overran Gaza. ___ Associated Press writer Selcan Hacaoglu in Ankara, Turkey contributed to this report. More on Hamas
 
Navy Shower Can Reduce Water Use By 95 Percent Top
Showering and bathing represents a lot of our water use. But nobody wants to be unwashed. The solution, of course, is to shower for less time. If you're taking a 20-minute shower, you're probably taking too long. But this much is obvious. There's one more step you can take -- perhaps in moderation -- if you want to shine up your green credentials a bit: the Navy Shower . I was introduced to this as the "submarine shower" when I was staying at a place up in Idaho that didn't have any hot water. There, it wasn't a water-saving technique so much as it was self-defense against the snowmelt running through the house's pipes. Here's how Planet Green defines it: A Navy shower is "the term used for a water-saving technique that was started in the Navy to help save precious freshwater aboard ships. The basic idea is to hop in the shower, get wet all over, turn off the water while soaping up, and then rinse clean. The small change in routine makes a huge difference: a regular shower can use as much as 60 gallons of water, while a Navy shower can check in at about 3 gallons." This one is not for the faint of heart, but I'll say this: If you're looking to cut down on water use and coffee consumption, you're in business. You'll be plenty alert after one of these. More on Green Living
 
Bangladesh: Mutiny Over After Tanks Enter Capital Top
DHAKA, Bangladesh — Mutinous Bangladeshi border guards who seized control of their headquarters completed their surrender Thursday after tanks were sent into the capital as a show of force, the government said. The guards, who are angry over their pay, had agreed overnight to surrender after the government promised them an amnesty and agreed to look into their demands for better conditions. But the process stalled and the revolt looked to be spreading to other areas Thursday until the prime minister issued a harsh warning to the rebels, backed up by tanks and armored vehicles rolling through the streets of the capital. Apparently intimidated by the move, the guards hoisted a white flag on Thursday afternoon and resumed laying down arms. "All the mutinous border guards have surrendered their weapons," government negotiator Mahbub Ara Gini told reporters, adding that all military officials with their families trapped inside the headquarters had been evacuated. But the two-day revolt, which has killed at least 10 people, has appeared to end before, only to resume again. Border guards first mutinied Wednesday at the group's headquarters in Dhaka, turning their weapons on senior officers, seizing a nearby shopping center and trapping students in a school on their compound. Then on Thursday, despite an agreement to surrender, mutineers fired shots at the commanding officer's residence at a border guard post in the southern town of Tekhnaf early Thursday, sending him fleeing, said police official Jalal Ahmed Chowdhury. Witnesses said violence also erupted at border guard posts in Cox's Bazar, Chittagong and Naikhongchari in the south, Sylhet in the northeast, Rajshahi and Naogaon in the northwest. However, no further incidents of violence were reported throughout the day. On Thursday night, an Associated Press reporter saw tanks and armored vehicles take up positions in a residential neighborhood near the compound seized by the guards Wednesday. Local media reported seeing at several more tanks heading toward the city. The move came shortly after Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina appealed to the mutineers to surrender in a televised speech to the nation. "We don't want to use force to break the standoff," Hasina said. "But don't play with our patience. We will not hesitate to do whatever is needed to end the violence if peaceful means fails." At least 10 people have been confirmed dead in Dhaka, but officials fear up to 50 people may have been killed there. On Thursday morning, the bodies of seven border guards _ two of them of officers _ were found outside the violence-wracked headquarters of Bangladesh Rifles, doctors at a local hospital said. More on Asia
 
Raymond J. Learsy: "Clawback": The Fradulent Transfer Of Billions By Those Who Led The Nation To The Poorhouse Top
It's in the air and it won't easily go away. Especially now that billions and billions more of federal (taxpayers) monies will be needed to stabilize sinking banking institutions. One needs only quote from President Obama's address to Congress, "So I know how unpopular it is to be seen helping banks right now, especially when everyone is suffering in part from their bad decisions. I promise you-I get it". As the New York Times' Joe Nocera reported "How can it be, people fume, that companies that brought themselves down with poor decision making and short term greed and very nearly brought down the country's financial system to its knees-how can the employees of these companies still feel entitled to multimillion dollar bonuses? How can they be so callous, so tone deaf, so arrogant?" As Senator Chris Dodd was quoted as saying, "Whenever I'm trying to explain to my constituents why we are doing this stuff to help the financial system, they just want to talk about the bonuses...I would like to see one of these Wall Street guys go to a Caterpillar factory where 20,000 people have lost their jobs and explain why they need their bonuses." As the staggering job loses continue to grow, as the damage to the economy deepens, as past ''earnings" on which compensation was calculated has proven to be nothing more than smoke and mirrors, as taxpayers are marched to the cleaners again and again, the cry for "clawback" is growing from a hesitant murmur to a crescendo throughout the land. And yet, it is generally acknowledged and as reported by Gretchen Morgenson in the NYTimes as well, that there is no current mechanism in law "for forcing the regurgitation of past pay so such efforts would need be bolstered by new legislation." Yet, perhaps there is an avenue that has not been fully explored. Specifically, the concept of "fraudulent transfer". As in the Madoff disaster, were these banks permitted to go bankrupt a "receiver in bankruptcy" would be appointed. His job would be to reinstate to the banks creditors all monies or transfers of funds or assets from the bank over the past six years that were unjustified and in essence diminished the estate without a viable business rationale (aka "fraudulent transfers"). These egregious bonuses and paydays might well be considered such a "fraudulent transfer". It would be the receiver in bankruptcy's job to take the needed legal steps to assure that such funds be returned to the banks "estate" and its creditors, now in large measure the taxpayers. According to Fed Chairman Bernanke we will be pouring added billions into the Zombie Banks the likes of Citigroup, to keep them from failing. These funds are meant to protect depositors, the banks financial paper and its commercial obligations, all of which would fall into serious jeopardy in a bankruptcy. Well and good. But what we are also doing by keeping the institution(s) out of bankruptcy is shielding the monster pay packages from the legal demands of a receiver. Is that what we had in mind? I think not! Perhaps an effort needs urgently be made to provide any new transfer of federal funds to the banks in a manner that clearly categorizes the financial support extended to the banks as being for the protection of the bank's depositors, its business counterparts and where there is still value in its franchise, for its stockholders. Yet a clear distinction would now be made. The previous six years of its bonus pool would be separated out of the banks balance sheet as though it was part of a failed institution, to be turned over to a "special receiver/trustee in bankruptcy". By doing anything less our bailout monies are protecting the billions upon billions of alleged fraudulent transfers that bankers pulled out of the vault while leading the nation to the poorhouse. And in so doing so the President can then stand by his pledge made on Tuesday before Congress, "I will not spend a single penny for the purpose of rewarding a single Wall Street executive". . More on Citibank
 
Jewel May Drop Out Of "Dancing With The Stars" Top
 
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Turkish Crash: Dutch Investigate Fatal Plane Crash Top
AMSTERDAM — Investigators took detailed photos of the wreckage of a Turkish Airlines Boeing 737 and analyzed black box recordings Thursday, trying to piece together why the plane lost speed and plowed into a muddy field, killing nine people and injuring 86. Flight TK1951 from Istanbul fell out of the sky about two miles (three kilometers) short of the runway at Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport on Wednesday morning, smashing into three pieces and spraying luggage and debris across a farmer's field. It was carrying 134 passengers and crew. Despite the catastrophic impact, the wreckage did not burn and a good number of people walked away with only minor injuries. The passengers and crew came from at least nine different countries, including seven Americans and three Britons, mayor Theo Weterings told reporters. Most passengers were Dutch and Turkish, but one person each came from Germany, Taiwan, Finland, Bulgaria and Italy. Weterings said the nationalities of 15 of the passengers still had not been confirmed. Four of the Americans were Boeing employees. He said 121 people were treated for injuries and six were still in critical condition. Of the others, an airport official said earlier that 25 were considered seriously hurt. Three of those killed were Turkish pilots, Weterings said. The identities of the remaining six victims and of four critically injured passengers were still not known. He said investigators were not yet revealing any details of their probe into the cause of the deadly crash. At the crash site, investigators in white overalls and blue helmets clambered in and out of the wreckage Thursday while others inspected the remains of the plane's two engines. Fred Sanders, spokesman for the Dutch Safety Authority, said the flight's data recorders and voice tapes were sent to Paris, where they will be analyzed, a process that takes several days. Investigators will interview crew members, passengers and witnesses on the ground and explore a number of possible causes, including insufficient fuel, weather-related factors or bird strikes. Sanders said a preliminary result may be made public soon, although the full report will not be ready for months. A team of Turkish experts flew to the Netherlands to help. Turkish Transport Minister Binali Yildirim also paid tribute to the pilot. "I would like to commemorate the pilot, who at the cost of his own life, ensured that human casualties were low," Yildirim said. One survivor, Jihad Alariachi, said there was no warning from the cockpit to brace for landing before the ground loomed up through the drizzle. "We braked really hard, but that's normal in a landing. And then the nose went up. And then we bounced ... with the nose aloft" before the final impact, she said. Witnesses on the ground said the plane dropped from about 90 meters (300 feet). Families of Turkish victims arrived on a chartered flight from Istanbul late Wednesday. A retired pilot who listened to a radio exchange between air traffic controllers and the aircraft shortly before the crash said he didn't hear anything unusual. "Everything appeared normal," said Joe Mazzone, a former Delta Air Lines captain. "They were given clearance to descend to 7,000 feet." Just before the end of the 52-second recording _ posted by the Web site LiveATC.net, which captures air traffic exchanges by monitoring scanners near airports _ the last thing heard is the controllers giving the tower frequency to the pilots and instructing them to get clearance to land, said Mazzone, who lives in Auburn, Alabama. Approach Control: "Turkish 1951 contact the tower 11827 bye bye." Pilot: "Thank You, sir." There was no way to tell from the Web recording if there was more communication between the aircraft and the officials at the airport or exactly how long the exchange came prior to the crash. Mazzone said the point where the transmission ended would likely have been two to four minutes before the plane would have normally landed. Sanders said the exchange was part of the investigation. Weather at the airport at the time was cloudy with a slight drizzle. Turkish Airlines chief Temel Kotil said the captain, Hasan Tahsin, was an experienced former air force pilot. Turkish officials said the plane was built in 2002 and last underwent thorough maintenance on Dec. 22. It was the deadliest crash in the Netherlands since a vintage DC3 crashed in a shallow sea on Sept. 25, 1996, killing 32 people. The country's worst crash came on Oct. 4, 1992, when an El Al cargo Boeing 747 slammed into an apartment block near Schiphol, killing 43 people. Turkish Airlines has had several serious crashes since 1974, when 360 people died in the crash of a DC-10 near Paris after a cargo door came off. More recently, in 2003, 75 died when an RJ-100 missed the runway in heavy fog in the southeastern Turkish city of Diyarbakir. ____ Associated Press Writers Mike Corder in The Hague, Slobodan Lekic in Brussels and Suzan Fraser in Ankara, Turkey, and Airlines Writer Harry R. Weber in Atlanta contributed to this report. ___ On the Net: http://www.liveATC.net? More on Europe
 
Betina Wasserman Finds Fame For Mickey Rourke Dog Necklace Top
Queens girl Betina Wassermann may have been the biggest winner on Oscar night - and she's never been in a movie. When Mickey Rourke walked the red carpet in his white Jean Paul Gaultier suit, he was wearing an eye-catching accessory - a necklace charm that featured a picture of his Chihuahua, Loki, who recently died at age 17... "I'm just some girl from Queens who crafts on the weekends. When I saw it at the Oscars and Ryan Seacrest commented on it, I thought I was going to have a heart attack," said Wassermann. "That necklace got more press than frickin' Fred Leighton million-dollar diamonds!" More on The Oscars
 

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