Sunday, April 5, 2009

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Kim Bensen: Four ways to be a thinner chick this Easter... Top
1. USE THE REAL DEAL Real eggs are a naturally nutrient-dense food, which means they have a high proportion of nutrients to calories. One large egg has only 75 calories and provides 13 essential nutrients and are packed in protein. FYI: Of the 76 calories in one large egg, the yolk has about 59 calories and 5 grams of fat and the whites have only 17 calories and 0 grams of fat. And believe it or not, there's more protein in the white than in the yolk. And that's no yolk! So boil up those eggs, decorate them with the kiddos, and EAT them this year! 2. THINK DARK If the thought of going without is too much, stick to dark chocolate as it's lower in calories and fat. Choose chocolate that's high in cocoa as it's packed with antioxidants which can combat cancer, arthritis and heart disease. Dark chocolate is also high in folic acid which is beneficial during pregnancy and magnesium which is linked to the prevention of type 2 diabetes and heart disease. Buuuuuut remember, it's also high in fat and calories so count those calories carefully and don't overdo. 3. DO THE BUNNY HOP ... I MEAN SWAP Read those labels! The calorie difference in candy choices can be eggs-treme! Even just swap lower calorie, lower fat goodies here and there can really made a difference in the overall damage done in those innocent little baskets. Here's my EASTER BASKET CANDY CALORIE CALCULATOR: (say that three times fast!) ❑ 25 small jellybeans - 140 calories ❑ 25 small sugar free jellybeans - 75 calories ❑ 5 Peeps - 160 calories ❑ 5 marshmallow chicks (Circus Peanut type) - 136 calories ❑ 8 robins eggs malted milk candy (personal fav) - 170 calories ❑ 1 small chocolate bunny - 1 ounce - 140 calories ❑ 1 medium hollow chocolate bunny - 1 3/4 ounce - 260 calories ❑ 1 large chocolate bunny - 7 ounces - 1050 calories ❑ 1 chocolate-covered marshmallow bunny - 60 calories ❑ 1 chocolate-covered marshmallow egg - 100 calories ❑ 1 Cadbury Creme Egg - 170 calories ❑ 1 Cadbury Caramel Egg - 190 calories ❑ 1 cup (7 g) Cotton Candy - 50 calories ❑ 1 Fun Dip Packet - 50 calories ❑ 1 Ring Pop - 60 calories ❑ 1 Roll Pez candy - 35 calories ❑ 1 hard-boiled Easter egg - 76 calories ❑ 1/2 deviled egg - 73 calories ❑ 1/2 deviled egg (with fat free mayo) - 38 calories 4. DON'T FORGET THE EGGS-ERCISE To burn off the calories in a typical Easter basket chocolate bunny (about 1000 calories) you'd need to run for an hour and 40 minutes or fast walk for two hours and 45 minutes! Hmmmmm ... wonder how long for a nibble on those ears? One of the best things you can do is to join the egg hunt with the kids. A 170 pound woman will burn approximately 116 calories in 30 minutes of Easter egg hiding, and another 154 calories in 30 minutes of egg hunting. So keep it active, keep it light this Easter. Focus on the real meaning of the season. And most of all ... enjoy!
 
Sean L. McCarthy: The SNL FAQ: #34.20 (Seth Rogen) Top
It's Sunday. You have questions about last night's Saturday Night Live . We have answers. Did they open with a political sketch? YES. Fred Armisen delivered a speech supposedly from Europe as President Barack Obama, and after acknowledging all of the Euro love for him, told business leaders that his administration would not treat them any differently than they have the auto industry, when Obama forced out GM's CEO and told the car companies what's what if they want to keep getting federal subsidies. Which led to a random rundown of various businesses with Obama choosing sides. Apparently, he likes Coke and Pepsi (despite or perhaps because Pepsi changed its logo to look like his campaign banners?!). Spoiler alert? How did the host do, and did he/she do anything outrageously funny? Seth Rogen noted upfront in his monologue that the second time around the SNL hosting train feels a bit different. If you like Rogen already, then you would be pleased with his effort. But I cannot think of anything he did that really stood out, good or bad. He was a good sport, though, in letting the cast poke fun at his looks, and the very idea that he was on to promote a second mall cop comedy movie in 2009. Who played President Obama? Armisen. His vocal impersonation seemed way off this time around. Does that sort of thing matter to you? If so, then you'll still think SNL needs a new guy mocking the big guy. Was there a digital short? YES Was it funny? NO. Unless you really want to hear Andy Samberg rap again. In this instance, he raps his office job performance review to say he thinks his a day in his life is "Like A Boss." Was there a fake ad? Sort of, kind of. There was a taped sketch poking this weekend's number-one movie, with Rogen and Samberg playing off both of their tendencies to see homoeroticism as funny in a fake trailer for The Fast & The Bi-Curious . Did the musical guest lip-sync or otherwise do something worth mentioning? Phoenix, a French band, sounded arty rock good but didn't look French. Did my favorite character return? Yes, if you enjoy Bill Hader's Italian talk show host, Vinny Vedecci. And especially a thousand times yes if you loved Will Forte and Kristen Wiig playing country singing duo Clancy T. Bachleratt and Jackie Sned, selling songs about spaceships, toddlers, Model-T cars and jars of beer, this time with an Easter theme. Also, Kenan Thompson's French "Def Jam" comic, Jean K. Jean, appeared again on the Weekend Update desk to comment on Obama's European trip. Were there any celebrity cameos? NO. Did any celebrities get impersonated? YES. Newcomer Abby Elliott brought back her Angelina Jolie to poke fun at Wiig's Madonna after a Malawi judge rejected her bid to adopt another baby. And if you count comic strip characters and Muppets as celebrities, then there were a couple dozen more impressions to add to this list. Did any politicians get impersonated? Jason Sudeikis put on the Blago 'do as indicted former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich pitched an idea to go undercover...as the governor of Illinois. For the full recap and analysis of this episode of SNL, click here . More on Barack Obama
 
GroundReport: BusinessWeek Recognizes Global Citizen Journalism on GroundReport Top
NEW YORK-- BusinessWeek recognized citizen journalism platform GroundReport.com as one of America's 'most promising' social enterprises in a feature on "enterprising individuals who apply business practices to solving societal problems." GroundReport , a platform for global citizen reporting with the mission to democratize the media, was founded in 2006 and features on-the-ground coverage from 4,000 contributors around the globe. The site shares revenues from advertising and syndication with contributors based on quality and traffic. BusinessWeek quotes GroundReport founding Chief Executive Officer Rachel Sterne, stating: "I thought there must be a better way for people to share stories, create emotional engagements about the world, as well as break the barriers of censorship and media bias," she says. Her answer: democratize news publishing. GroundReport's past coverage has included breaking updates during the Mumbai terrorist attacks, livestreamed video of protests from the Beijing Olympics , and most recently, Taliban activity and drone attacks in Pakistan's tribal regions. Inspired by Sterne's stint reporting on the United Nations Security Council in 2005, GroundReport is distinguished by its high quality standards and pioneering video technology . Visit the site to learn more about GroundReport.
 
Sarah Stephens: News Alert: Last Remnant of Cold War policy (finally) takes a tumble Top
The news alert that crossed my desk at 5:30pm on Friday afternoon caused sighs of relief and cries of joy in Havana, Miami, and places across our country where Cuban-Americans and others who care about modernizing our hopeless Cuba policy had long hoped for a new beginning. Here's what the Wall Street Journal said: "President Barack Obama plans to lift a longstanding U.S. ban on family travel and remittances to Cuba, a senior administration official said Friday, in what could be an opening gesture toward more openness with the Castro regime." It was an historic day. Here was Obama, in Strasbourg, celebrating with a new generation what the post-Cold War environment meant for Europe, also starting to dismantle our Cold War approach to Cuba, starting with the forced separation of Cuban families. While more needs to be done--the entire Cuban embargo needs to be torn down just like the Berlin Wall--we should begin by celebrating what Obama has promised to do. In 2004, grubbing for votes in Florida, and under the false theory that cutting Cuban-American travel to Cuba would add to the financial duress of Cuba's government, President Bush put into place extraordinarily tough restrictions on the ability of Cuban-Americans to visit the island and provide financial support for their Cuban families. It was a uniquely barbaric bit of political pandering. Under Bush's rules, a lucky subset of the community could visit Cuba but only once every three years. Others, who couldn't meet requirements that allowed visits only to nuclear family members, were barred from going at all. There were no humanitarian exceptions. So, family members were stopped from attending births and weddings and funerals; the rules even stopped a storied U.S. soldier, Carlos Lazo, from visiting his sons in Cuba while taking off a few weeks of precious R+R during his service in Operation Iraqi Freedom. It's been five years of heart-break for the Cuban family on both sides of the Florida Straits. As a candidate, President Obama promised to kill these rules and end travel and financial aid restrictions on Cuban-Americans entirely, and now he will make good on that promise in the coming days. My friends with family members on the Island are deliriously happy and they should be. But now that Obama has taken care of them - in essence, restoring the constitutional right to travel but only for Americans of Cuban descent - many in the community have refused to leave the debate to make their travel arrangements. Instead, they are looking past their own interests to the national interest, and are asking the President to support restoring the right to travel for all Americans. There is legislation before the U.S. Congress to do that - the Freedom to Travel to Cuba Act, which would repeal all restrictions on travel to Cuba for all U.S. citizens. Speaking at a press conference for the House version of the legislation, Alfred Duran, a veteran of the Bay of Pigs invasion, and a prominent Florida Attorney, framed the case this way: "This is not an issue of Cuban Americans, Mexican Americans, Black Americans, Chinese-Americans, but of Americans. We are all the same Americans under the constitution and under the laws of this country. As such, every American should be able to travel to Cuba. It is a right that we Americans have and we should not create a separate kind of Americans in giving a privilege to Cuban-Americans. We should be treated and all Americans should be treated the same. That is the law of this country and that is how it should be." Three of his compatriots, Silvia Wilhelm, who came to the U.S. from Cuba as an unaccompanied child in the 1960s, Miami's auxiliary Bishop Felipe Estevez, and a Boston-based businessman Ignacio Sosa, joined Alfredo in making this case: the notion of a two-tiered system of travel rights is not only a contortion of the constitution, it is really bad policy. Travel rights for Cuban-Americans provides no relief for the religious groups, the businesses and workers, the artists and academics and cultural figures, who will still be forced to submit to a burdensome licensing process to get to Cuba - with no assumption that their requests to our government for a travel license will be approved. Travel rights for Cuban-Americans can't help the majority of Cubans, because Cuba is a majority Afro-Caribbean country, and only a fraction of the émigrés in Florida come from those families. Travel rights for Cuban-Americans, while completely just, provide Afro-Cubans will little added financial or emotional support. Cuban-American travel, while humane, still puts the majority of Americans in the oddest political position of being able to visit Tehran, Pyongyang, Khartoum, and Damascus without begging for a license, but unable to visit Havana, even if their presence in Cuba would add information and vibrancy and contribute to openness as American travelers so often do. And what is not said often enough is this: When travelers from the U.S. finally get to Cuba, as they will if this legislation passes, Cuba is also likely to change them, as it has done for me and almost all of the Members of Congress and professional staff I have taken to the island since 2001. When President Obama signs an executive order allowing Cuban-American travel, it is my hope that he will signal the Congress that he is prepared for legislation to take us a step further. Only the Congress can repeal the ban on travel for all, and he should let the House and Senate sponsors of the legislation know that he will sign it if they can pass it and put it on his desk. Obama, as he proved during this trip to Europe, is uniquely equipped to close this chapter in our history and write history anew for America's relationship with Cuba and the Americas as a region. Were he to open up travel for all of us, it would not only restore to all Americans a vital constitutional right, but also send a profoundly important signal, that the United States is ready to embrace the world not as we found it in 1959, but as it exists today. More on Cuba
 
Christine Pelosi: Amid Clouds of Cynicism, National Service Act A Breath of Fresh Air Top
As storm clouds of cynicism gather over a troubled economy and uncertain world, the Democratic Congress delivers a breath of fresh air: a national call to service that triples AmeriCorps and strengthens our national commitment to the common good. HR1388, renamed the Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act http://www.upi.com/Top_News/2009/03/31/National-service-bill-clears-Congress/UPI-40771238533554/ , which passed the House last week and the Senate the week before, will expand AmeriCorps from 75,000 positions today to 250,000 by 2017 and increase AmeriCorps education awards for college or repay student loans, create a "summer of service" program for middle and high school students, and provide education awards for volunteers 55 and older who can transfer these earned awards to a child, grandchild or foster child. Some question the need to facilitate volunteerism when so many people are crunched for time and resources as they encounter mounting personal debt, tuition bills, job insecurity and skyrocketing health care costs. But this is exactly the time when America's generosity of spirit is made manifest, as people overwhelmingly support funding and assistance to nonprofits, public agencies, community and faith-based organizations that want to hire help. The bipartisan Congressional support for this cornerstone of the Democratic agenda is an encouraging sign that solutions are possible - and that not all politics are polarized. When President Obama signs the bill this week, he will officially usher in a new era of responsibility, where Americans are willing to foster a culture of service. Now that is the change we voted for.
 
Amb. Swanee Hunt: Europe's Last Ruling Communists Top
Today is election day in Moldova, Europe's poor step-sister in the southeast corner, near the Black Sea. A good excuse to break out some of the most pleasant wines on the continent -- accompaniment to a smooth, ground lump of golden hominy, plus anything and everything smothered in sour cream. People throughout the countryside will vote en masse in these parliamentary races, given that the assembly elects the president, and the president chooses the prime minister and other ministers. City folk turn-out will be less - "probably because people have more information, so they don't trust anyone," I'm told by Boris, our polished taxi driver. Boris is from a Russian family who moved to Moldova in the 50s, he guesses. A crossroads between east and west (including the principality of Count Dracula's Transylvania!), over the centuries the country was invaded repeatedly, most recently moving in and out of Russian and Rumanian states. Annexed by the Soviet Union, it declared independence in 1991, but scars of forced "cultural re-education" are deep, and many link the reclaiming of Romanian language and alphabet with patriotic identity. Although only 13% of the four million Moldovans are ethnic Russian, they tend to be the more active of the citizens - and the more prosperous. An erudite political analyst explained to me that if you go to fancy places, you'll hear Russian spoken. But listen in the open markets; they speak Moldovan. Those differences weigh heavily in an election where villagers, pensioners, and Russians together can elect the new government. Working as I do with women leaders, I'm particularly interested that, as in neighboring Ukraine, the prime minister (of one year) is a woman. Zinaida Greceanii is a technocrat and refused to join the party of the president who appointed her. That was probably a smart move, given uncertainties of the political scene. With this election, four opposition parties are expected to meet the 6% threshold for representation in the parliament. The communists will almost certainly have the plurality, and the ironic question is whether the three largest opposition parties, which are personality-based, have enough ego-strength to compromise into a coalition. To get some sense of life outside Chisinau, the capital, we went into the rolling countryside, where boys were driving horse-drawn carts of firewood, and women in bright scarves joined men in caps cultivating potatoes and tending grapes vines. The president's black Mercedes whizzed by, police car in front plus follow car. Vladimir Veronin, head of the party of communists is term-limited. He is also confusing. That's because his Party of Communists of the Republic of Moldova is built on fault lines. He's the leader of true-believing old-timers, who face east toward Moscow. But he also speaks for young reformer modernists, who privately say they're embarrassed by the party's name and want to change it. Veronin learned the price of crossing the Big Bear. When the Moldovan made statements about the importance of being close to Europe, Russian President Vladimir Putin declared a boycott of Moldovan wines, a precious export of this cash-strapped country. Even though Veronin has crawled back into the fold, the party is so far removed from the ideology of the bad old days that at least one Western diplomat here has forbidden his embassy employees to call party members "communists." He says the word points to power, not economic theory. In fact, sleazy power. According to several sources, if a policeman stops you, you pay him half and leave without a ticket. Police, to inspectors, to politicos. The only clean leading candidate in this election, I'm told by an international official, is the 30-year-old mayor of Chisinau. More likely it will be the communists who create a coalition by buying members of parliament elected on the opposition tickets. The president's son is particularly disliked. He is young and greedy, using masked thugs to physically threaten business owners not inclined to sell to him. "It's not really business when behind, you have a father who is the president," say the taxi driver. "People aren't blind. They can see that if the son wants to buy your supermarket, tax police come every week until you give in. It's not a life. And it's not democracy." As he was finishing, a policeman pulled us over and asked to see his papers. "Why did he stop you?" I asked. "Because he's bored." At least he has a job to be bored with. With sky-high unemployment, many Moldovans are supported by the 25% of the population working abroad. But the government isn't doing enough. "You can't just wag your finger and expect money to come in," Boris continued. "They don't invest in agriculture even though our soil is so rich, it's like gold. And many office buildings are empty." He resumed pointing out the sights: The former KGB, next to the Orthodox church. Opposite, the Parliament. White House. opera house. Last night I was at the National Philharmonic, watching my husband, Charles Ansbacher, conduct the Moldovan Symphony. The players are well-trained. The music was beautiful. The crowd appreciative. Fourteen years ago, the first time I stepped into that building, it was dilapidated. Since then, it's hard to see where a nickel has been spent on maintenance or repair. Musical scores are in tatters, the light board is run manually by a man in his seventies, the front of the stage overflows with cascading white plastic flowers, the sound system hums, and there were no printed programs. Backstage, in front of wooden steps leading to the stage door, I stopped and took out my camera. A patch of tin was hammered over a rotten board. The patch would do, of course, but it sure wasn't pretty. That's how life seems right now in Moldova. A lot of beauty happening in the midst of ugliness. Let's hope elections this week will move the country a step toward political, economic, and social health.
 
GM Planning For Bankruptcy Top
Fritz Henderson, GM's new president and CEO, said for the first time Sunday that the automaker is planning for the possibility of restructuring within bankruptcy, although he said he still hoped to avoid that public-relations nightmare. More on Auto Bailout
 
Andy Ostroy: Fannie and Freddie's Fuzzy Math: $100 Billion in Losses = $210 Million in Bonuses. Bring on the Outrage Top
Back in January, President Barack Obama said it was "shameful" that near-bankrupt insurance giant and bailout-baby AIG was awarding $400-million in "retention" bonuses to the very same reckless Wall Street cowboys who damned-near sank the entire U.S. financial industry with their ultra-high-risk credit default swaps and derivatives shenanigans. In the ensuing weeks and months, Obama's personal outrage turned into a massive anger-fueled populist movement that called for everything from an immediate return of the bonus money to criminal prosecution of those who took it. How dare they was the overriding sentiment in Washington, Albany (NY Attorney General Andrew Cuomo demanded a return of the money against threats of publicly naming the executives), the media, and in living rooms across America. Legislation soon followed, with a 90% tax on the bonus money. There, that'll show 'em. And now comes the news that failed mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac--which own or insure more than half of the nation's mortgages--are about to hand out $210-million in bonuses of their own, also to "retain" the high-priced failures who've nearly destroyed them, and who for some reason they can't seem to live without. The bonuses will cover 7,600 employees and are as high as $1.5 million. Yes, these are the same two behemoths who combined lost $100 billion last year. The kicker here? The Fannie/Freddie bonuses have been defended by the companies' Federal regulator, James B. Lockhart III of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, who intends to approve the payouts. Lockhart is a Bush man, appointed by the former president in 2006. Obama has the power to name a new chief regulator, but he so far hasn't, which is a mystery. So what we're left with then is a de facto endorsement of these outrageous bonuses by the Obama administration, and therefore an inexplicable contradiction of its prior public thrashing of AIG. Lockhart, the taxpayer-paid G-man, incredibly espouses the same hogwash regurgitated ad nauseam by the Wall Street brass themselves: "These payments send a signal that we think people are important and we want to keep them. If the bonuses are rescinded, it sends the exact opposite signal, and it would be extremely dangerous for the American economy to lose these workers at this point." Excuse me? I'll tell ya what signal it sends. It says we in this country don't know what the fuck we're doing. It says to the world that we let a bunch of greedy gamblers create insanely high-risk financial instruments which erased trillions in investor equity and then saved their sorry asses with taxpayer-funded bailouts. Oh, and we then gave them million-dollar bonuses as rewards for manufacturing this unprecedented shitstorm. How's that for a signal? More on George Bush
 
Karzai To Review Rape Law Top
Hamid Karzai, the Afghan president, has ordered a review of a new law that critics say effectively legalises the rape of women by their husbands. More on Women's Rights
 
Michelle Obama Visits Jewish Cemetery In Prague Top
PRAGUE — Michelle Obama's whirlwind tour of Prague turned into a love affair with a city and its people. "I'll be back," she said. Crowds of young Czechs and tourists chanting "Obama! Obama!" waved at the first lady as she walked the cobblestones of the Jewish Quarter. She waved back, and there were no angry faces as far as the eye could see. "She was totally with them," said Michaela Sidenberg, her guide. Mrs. Obama's tour started in the morning, when Czech first lady Livia Klausova showed her around Prague Castle, the seat of the Czech presidency. Having apparently been warned about Prague's omnipresent cobblestones, Mrs. Obama wore flat shoes. The first ladies walked around the St. Vitus Cathedral, the city's most distinctive landmark, which dates to the 10th century. They then moved to the nearby St. George's basilica, built in the same era, to see the sights and listen to a concert performed by visually impaired children who played "Darmstadter Concert" by Carl Stamitz and "Stabat Mater" by Giovanni Battista Pergolesi. "She is a natural and a very nice person," Klausova said of Mrs. Obama, to whom she presented a gift of Czech glassware. In return, she said, she got "a nice American vase." Did they talk politics on a day that buzzed with reports of a North Korean rocket launch? "Yes, a little bit _ we had to," Klausova said. Mrs. Obama then spent two hours touring the Jewish Quarter's synagogues and unique cemetery. Her visit included a stop at the Pinkas synagogue, whose walls bear the names of more than 80,000 Czech Holocaust victims _ including the ancestors of Madeleine Albright, the Czech-born former U.S. secretary of state. Leo Pavlat, director of Prague's Jewish Museum, said Mrs. Obama liked the inside of the synagogue _ "especially the exhibit of children's drawings from the Theresienstadt ghetto." There were a few somber moments at the tiny cemetery, jammed with some 12,000 family gravestones crowded into a little garden near the Vltava River, and about 100,000 dead buried in several layers beneath them. Mrs. Obama stood briefly by the oldest gravestone _ that marking the resting place of poet Avigdor Kara, who died in 1439 _ before moving to the grave of the legendary 16th century rabbi Yehudav Loew, considered one of the greatest Jewish scholars and philosophers. In keeping with local custom, she placed a prayer on a piece of paper and weighted it down with a little stone. Her last stop was the Old New Synagogue, built around 1270 _ the oldest synagogue in Europe, and one of the earliest Gothic buildings in Prague. Saying goodbye to the leaders of Prague's Jewish community, Mrs. Obama appeared moved. "It was a wonderful visit, but much too short," she said. "I'll be back." More on Michelle Obama
 
Rasmussen To Apologize To 'Islamic World' For Mohammed Cartoons Top
To become NATO secretary general, Anders Fogh Rasmussen will apologize for the Mohammed cartoons. More on Europe
 
Threat to shut Boston Globe shows no paper is safe Top
NEW YORK — When it bought the Boston Globe for a record $1.1 billion in 1993, the New York Times Co. added one of the nation's most acclaimed and profitable newspapers to its empire. But analysts say the 137-year-old Globe has been a money-loser in recent years, and the Times, now $1.1 billion in debt, is threatening to shut down Boston's pre-eminent paper unless it gets $20 million in union concessions. Faced with the global recession and declining revenues, the newspaper business is reeling _ one major paper has already folded this year and several others are seeking bankruptcy protection. But the threat to the Globe, announced Friday on the Globe's Web site, has shocked some industry insiders, who say it shows no one is safe. "It is a huge warning shot across the bow of the newspaper industry. If this can happen to the storied Boston Globe, pretty much nothing is safe," said Boston University communications professor Tobe Berkovitz. Of the major dailies that have gone down, none has the cachet of the Globe, he said. The threat to close the paper "sends a very clear message to all employees and unions of surviving newspapers _ that this is not business as usual," said Ken Doctor, a media analyst with the research firm Outsell. "This is uncharted territory." The Times bought the Globe in 1993 for $1.1 billion _ the highest price ever for a single American newspaper _ getting one of the country's most respected papers. The Globe has won 20 Pulitzer Prizes and has been lauded for some of its work, including its coverage of Roman Catholic clergy sex abuse scandal. But since its purchase, the Globe has gone through several rounds of layoffs and buyouts. As readership shifts to online news, the newspaper's average weekday circulation fell 10 percent to 323,983 for the six months ending Sept. 30, compared to the same six-month period in 2007, according to the Audit Bureau of Circulations. Advertising revenues industrywide have plunged by more than 16 percent in 2008, according to the Newspaper Association of America. Newspapers all "have a sword over their heads," said Doctor. If the industry wants to survive, he said, "everyone has to give some blood." The Globe reported the Times' demands a day after executives from the Times delivered its ultimatum to leaders of the Globe's 13 unions. Boston Newspaper Guild president Daniel Totten told the Globe the concessions could include pay cuts, the end of company pension contributions and the elimination of lifetime job guarantees. The Guild is the Globe's biggest union, representing more than 700 editorial, advertising, and business employees. But some say the Times' threat may be a negotiating tactic as it strives to shed its debt, which stood at $1.1 billion at the end of 2008. It recently sold 21 floors of its new midtown Manhattan headquarters building for $225 million, asked most employees to accept a 5 percent pay cut through the end of the year and secured a $250 million infusion from a Mexican billionaire by agreeing to pay an abnormally high interest rate of 14 percent in addition to giving him potentially valuable stock warrants. "We're a long way from a newspaper that needs to be shut down. I think it's a bargaining strategy," said Alan Mutter, a former journalist-turned-entrepreneur who writes a blog called Reflections of a Newsosaur. He said he doesn't think the Globe is in imminent danger of folding. Globe spokesman Bob Powers declined to comment Saturday; Times spokeswoman Catherine Mathis did not immediately return a call for comment. Doctor said the Times' threat to close the Globe parallels what Hearst Corp. did with the money-losing San Francisco Chronicle, threatening to shut it down barring concessions. Chronicle staffers took 120 buyouts last week, but the paper's seeking 150. Elsewhere, Scripps Co. stopped publication earlier this year of Colorado's oldest newspaper, the Rocky Mountain News, in Denver. Major newspaper companies that have filed for bankruptcy protection in recent months include the owners of The Philadelphia Inquirer, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, the Chicago Tribune and the Los Angeles Times. Newspapers like the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and another venerable Boston publication, The Christian Science Monitor, stopped daily publication in favor of online news. Matt Storin, who was the editor of the Globe when the Times purchased it, said he was shocked and saddened when he saw Friday's headline. The threat to close it "is obviously a negotiating tactic, but one that has to be taken seriously," said Storin, who now teaches journalism at Notre Dame University. "I do think it's obvious that the Times would like to get the Globe off its books," he said. "It's possible they're trying to reduce costs because they have a prospective buyer who is negotiating on that basis." ___ Associated Press Writer Jay Lindsay contributed to this report from Boston. More on Newspapers
 
Frank Rich: C.E.O. Guillotine Won't Do Any Good Top
EVEN among pitchfork-bearing populists, there was scant satisfaction when the White House sent the C.E.O. of General Motors to the guillotine. Sure, Rick Wagoner deserved his fate. He did too little too late to save an iconic American institution from devolving into a government charity case. He embraced the Hummer. G.M.'s share price fell from above $70 to under $3 on his watch. Yet few disputed the judgment of the Michigan governor, Jennifer Granholm, that Wagoner was a "sacrificial lamb," a symbolic concession to public rage ordered by a president who had to look tough after being blindsided by the A.I.G. bonuses. Detroit's chief executive had to be beheaded so that the masters of the universe at the top of Wall Street's bailed-out behemoths might survive. More on Bank Of America
 
Shroud Of Turin Was Hidden By Knights Templar: Vatican Top
Medieval knights hid and secretly venerated The Holy Shroud of Turin for more than 100 years after the Crusades, the Vatican said today in an announcement that appeared to solve the mystery of the relic's missing years. The Knights Templar, an order which was suppressed and disbanded for alleged heresy, took care of the linen cloth, which bears the image of a man with a beard, long hair and the wounds of crucifixion, according to Vatican researchers.
 
US-Iran Thaw Could Bolster Afghanistan Rebuilding Efforts Top
Kabul, Afghanistan - In a crowded section near the western edge of the capital sits a sprawling new university compound, a structure of ornate white stone and blue-tiled domes. More on Afghanistan
 
Brennan Keeping Obama Admin From Releasing Torture Docs Top
In response to Freedom of Information Act requests, the Department of Justice's Office of Legal Counsel was slated to release four closely guarded memoranda created by John Yoo, Jay Bybee, and Stephen Bradbury addressing the use of specific torture techniques including waterboarding, holding prisoners in close confinement (in coffin-like conditions), and "head smacking." Attorney General Holder had cleared the release; it was set for last Thursday. Then something happened.
 

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