Free Internet Press Newsletter - Saturday August 11 2007 - (813)

Saturday August 11 2007 edition
Free Internet Press is operated on your donations. Donate Today
Gouge On Endeavour's Heat Shield Caused By Debris - Worries NASA 2007-08-11 01:42:34 A piece of debris hit the underside of the space shuttle Endeavour during liftoff on Wednesday and gouged a small but potentially worrisome divot in a heat shield tile, NASA officials said Friday. The gouge, spotted via images taken by the crew of the International Space Station as the Endeavour approached docking Friday afternoon, is small, about three inches wide. Still, there were some visual indications that it might be deep. “What does this mean?” John Shannon, chairman of the mission management team, said at a news conference Friday. “I don’t know at this point.” Astronauts will conduct a closer examination on Sunday, using a laser tool attached to the shuttle’s robotic arm to measure its exact shape. Based upon that information, NASA engineers will analyze how much heat might reach the Endeavour’s underlying structure when the spacecraft re-enters Earth’s atmosphere. Read The Full Story Commentary: Oh well. At Least Losing All Those AK-47s Builds A Market 2007-08-11 01:42:03 Intellpuke: The following commentary was written by Marina Hyde and appears in the Guardian edition for Saturday, August 11, 2007. At times it seems that no statistic to emerge from Iraq cannot be looked at in a glass-half-full kind of way. Last year, when the civilian death toll was having one of its moments in the spotlight, Iowan Republican Senator Steve King claimed: "My wife's at far greater risk being a civilian in Washington, D.C., than an average civilian in Iraq." He explained that there were 45 violent deaths per 100,000 people in Washington in 2003 and 27.51 per 100,000 in Iraq as a whole. As it turned out, the source of his Iraq statistic was unclear, while his Washington figures were out of date ... but let's not dignify him any further. The vignette merely illustrates that no matter how obviously dire a situation, there is usually some idiot on hand, someone who is bewilderingly able to "put a new perspective" on horrifyingly high civilian death tolls, or suggest that one can't make a big democracy omelette without breaking a few hundred thousand eggs (I paraphrase slightly). Yet occasionally a statistic comes along that seems indefensibly absurd. And so it was with this week's news that the United States has lost 190,000 weapons issued to the Iraqi security forces since the 2003 invasion - a statistic on which Mr. King has unsurprisingly yet to break his silence. According to the U.S. government accountability department - I know! the what? - 135,000 pieces of body armor are also missing, and even the most frothingly diehard supporters of the whole Iraq adventure are being forced to concede that the figures "raise questions". Read The Full Story Stock Market Volatility Gives Investors Jitters - Stocks Close Down 30 Points 2007-08-10 20:56:42 U.S. stocks gyrated Friday, but the major indexes ended the day little changed, after the U.S. Federal Reserve and other central banks around the world poured billions of dollars into the financial system to soothe global markets roiled by tightening credit conditions. On Wall Street, the Dow Jones industrial average see-sawed through the day, at one point falling more than 200 points and later crawling back up into positive territory, then dipping to close down 30.98 points, or 0.23 percent, at 13,239.70. The broader Standard & Poor's 500 stock market index rose less than a point for the day, ending it up half a percentage point at 1453.65. The tech-heavy Nasdaq fell 11.6, or 0.45 percent, to 2544.89. The Fed injected $38 billion into the system in three separate operations through the day, its biggest one-day infusion since September 2001. Read The Full Story Global Markets Still Reeling 2007-08-10 20:01:04 There were further heavy losses on the world's financial markets Friday despite central banks stepping in with massive injections of cash for a second day running in the hope of restoring a sense of calm. Billions of pounds were wiped off share values as stock markets in Europe, the US and Asia fell sharply. The FTSE 100 index in London saw £63 billion ($126 billion) wiped off leading shares as it closed 3.7% lower, losing 232.9 points to end the week on 6,038.3. It was the biggest one-day percentage drop in the City in almost four-and-a-half years and wiped out all of the gains made by the FTSE this year. The European Central Bank had earlier pumped a further €61 billion (£41 billion or $82 billion) into the money markets to fend off the threat of a credit crunch, where the availability of loans dries up and interest rates soar. The ECB had provided an unprecedented €95 billion on Thursday to ensure liquidity in the markets and keep a lid on short-term interest rates. The world's central banks have now injected $323 billion (£160 billion) into the money markets over the past 48 hours, equivalent to a quarter of Britain's entire annual economic output. Read The Full Story U.S. Stocks Tumble In Morning Trading As Central Banks Infuse Cash To Financial Systems 2007-08-10 11:19:08 World stock markets tumbled on Friday and central banks in Europe, Japan and elsewhere continued an unprecedented infusion of cash into the financial system, as concern spread about the state of the U.S. credit market and the complicated array of investments it supports. On Wall Street, the Dow Jones Industial Average fell more than 100 points in its opening minutes on a day that was expected to add to Thursday's 387 point drop. Though still up for the year, Thursday's decline was the second-worst of the year and knocked nearly three percent from the index's value. The U.S. Federal Reserve, meanwhile, released a statement assuring banks - and investors - that money would be available as needed. "In current circumstances, depository institutions may experience unusual funding needs because of dislocations in money and credit markets," to maintain a target interest rate of 5.25 percent on loans between banks, the central bank said. "The Federal Reserve will provide reserves as necessary." It was much the same overseas, as benchmark indexes across Asia and Europe shed upwards of three percent on Friday. Japan's Nikkei 225 lost 406 points, a decline of 2.37 percent, while the Hang Seng Index in Hong Kong lost 2.88 percent. Read The Full Story Washington, D.C., Area's Biggest Financiers Brace For A 'Serious Shakeout' 2007-08-10 11:18:45 The Washington, D.C., region has become fertile for the financial industry over the past couple of decades, home to giants such as Fannie Mae, Carlyle Groupand investment bank Friedman, Billings, Ramsey. Mid-level lenders such as Allied Capital and CapitalSource grew up here. There's even a crop of venture capital and private-equity spin-offs, including Thayer Capital, Arlington Capital Partners and RLJ Equity Partners. Thursday's 387-point drop in the Dow Jones industrial average, precipitated by concerns about a global squeeze on credit, left area financiers bracing for the fallout to hit locally. Even Carlyle felt the jitters, as financing worries surfaced over one of its biggest deals. Most lenders have been generous with credit in the past few years. But some of the riskier loans are going sour. The concern is that the malaise will spread through the economy. Read The Full Story	Editorial: The Need To Know 2007-08-11 01:42:18 Intellpuke: The following editorial appears in the New York Times edition for Saturday, August 11, 2007. Like many in this country who were angered when Congress rushed to rubber-stamp a bill giving President Bush even more power to spy on Americans, we took some hope from the vow by Congressional Democrats to rewrite the new law after summer vacation. The chance of undoing the damage is slim, unless the White House stops stonewalling and gives lawmakers and the public the information they need to understand this vital issue. Just before rushing off to their vacations, and campaign fund-raising, both houses tried to fix an anachronism in the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which requires the government to get a warrant to eavesdrop on conversations and e-mail messages if one of the people communicating is inside the United States. The court that enforces the law concluded recently that warrants also are required to intercept messages if the people are outside the United States, but their communications are routed through data exchanges here. The House and Senate had sensible bills trying to fix that Internet-age problem, which did not exist in 1978. But that wasn’t enough for Mr. Bush and his aides, who whipped up their usual brew of fear to kill off those bills. Then they cowed the Democrats into passing a bill giving Mr. Bush powers that go beyond even the illegal wiretapping he has been doing since the 9/11 attacks. Read The Full Story Cheney Urging Military Strikes On Iran 2007-08-10 20:56:54 President Bush charged Thursday that Iran continues to arm and train insurgents who are killing U.S. soldiers in Iraq, and he threatened action if that continues. At a news conference Thursday, Bush said Iran had been warned of unspecified consequences if it continued its alleged support for anti-American forces in Iraq. U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker had conveyed the warning in meetings with his Iranian counterpart in Baghdad, the president said. Bush wasn't specific, and a State Department official refused to elaborate on the warning. Behind the scenes, however, the president's top aides have been engaged in an intensive internal debate over how to respond to Iran's support for Shiite Muslim groups in Iraq and its nuclear program. Vice President Dick Cheney several weeks ago proposed launching airstrikes at suspected training camps in Iran run by the Quds force, a special unit of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, according to two U.S. officials who are involved in Iran policy. Read The Full Story U.N. Votes To Expand Political Role In Iraq 2007-08-10 20:56:12 The Bush administration is proposing a series of U.N.-brokered talks in Baghdad between the United States and Iraq's neighbors in an effort to rally support for the beleaguered Iraqi government. The initiative, outlined in an interview with Zalmay Khalilzad, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, comes as American diplomats have struggled to gain regional backing for U.S. policies in Iraq. After a high-profile trip to the Middle East last week by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates yielded few results, the administration is turning to the United Nations to help enlist Iraq's most influential neighbors, including Iran, Saudia Arabia and Turkey, in stabilizing the country. "I think you need regional help to get the Iraqis to come together," Khalilzad said. "For us, it's so hard to do this." Read The Full Story Asian Markets Plunge As Panicked Investors Start Sell-Off 2007-08-10 11:51:10 Fallout from the sub-prime lending crunch hit Asian markets Friday, with investors sending stock prices plunging from Hong Kong to Tokyo. Virtually all Asian markets were down substantially following sell-offs Thursday in U.S. and European markets. In an effort to ease panicked investors, both the Bank of Japan and the Reserve Bank of Australia injected cash into money markets, much as their counterparts in the United States and Europe had done. The Nikkei 225 stock average declined 2.4% to 16,764.09, its biggest fall in five months. South Korea's Kospi index plunged 4.2%, the most in three years. Australia's S&P/ASX 200 index was down 3.7%, its biggest decline since September 2001. The Straits Times index in Singapore and the Hang Seng in Hong Kong were both down by about 3%. Read The Full Story World Markets Reel As Contagion Spreads 2007-08-10 11:18:55 Wall Street took another beating this afternoon as shares extended Thursday's heavy losses while in London the FTSE 100 was mired deep in the red. The London index of leading shares was down more than 200 points at one stage while the Dow Jones Industrial Average slid 126.9 points, or 1%, to 13,143.78 within minutes of the opening bell. With a rapidly spreading credit crisis showing no sign of let up, the FTSE 100 was still down 175.9 points, or 2.8%, at 6,095.3 by 2:45 p.m. U.K. time. The panicky mood across the Atlantic was not helped by further sub-prime fall-out in the financial sector. Read The Full Story
Original materials on this site © Free Internet Press. Any mirrored or quoted materials © their respective authors, publications, or outlets, as shown on their publication, indicated by the link in the news story. Original Free Internet Press materials may be copied and/or republished without modification, provided a link to http://FreeInternetPress.com is given in the story, or proper credit is given. Newsletter options may be changed in your preferences on http://freeinternetpress.com Please email editor@freeinternetpress.com there are any questions. XML/RSS/RDF Newsfeed Syndication: http://freeinternetpress.com/rss.php