Free Internet Press Newsletter - Friday October 31 2008 - (813)

Friday October 31 2008 edition
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Interview With Eric Foner: 'Life Is Getting More Difficult For Americans' 2008-10-30 20:24:17 As Americans prepare to vote, historian Eric Foner spoke to Spiegel about the current crisis of confidence in the United States, the roots of U.S. exceptionalism and the country's ever-changing concept of freedom. Foner is professor of history at Columbia University in New York. His research focuses on American 19th-century history and his books include "The Story of American Freedom" and "Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution", among others. Mr. Foner was interviewed by Spiegel correspondents Karen Andresen and Cordula Meyer. SPIEGEL: Professor Foner, almost 80 percent of Americans believe that the country under President George W. Bush is on the wrong track. Do you think that the “American spirit,” the conviction that the United States is exceptional in the world, is in danger? Eric Foner: Well, temporarily perhaps. We never had such a large number of people, at least if you believe public opinion polls, saying that the country is on the wrong track. The reason is a combination of the war in Iraq, but even more the feeling of economic insecurity. Globalization, de-industrialization, declining real wages, even for people who have jobs, life is getting more difficult. Then I think a complete loss of confidence in government. Whoever becomes president, they are going to have to convince voters that they can actually make a difference. For all the crimes and mistakes of the Bush Administration, I think one of its greatest failings was just utter incompetence. SPIEGEL: What parallels to today’s crisis do you see in American history? Foner: Well, of course, the Great Depression and the 1890s before that was another period of tremendous social change and economic problems. Maybe the 1970s is the best example. You had this combination of various economic crises plus the Vietnam War. It is quite different from now because people had enormous confidence in the ability of the government to solve problems. SPIEGEL: People need to be given back this confidence, but under conditions that are much more difficult. Foner: The problems may be more deeply rooted now; the problems caused by globalization seem to be beyond the capacity of any one president. There are so many trends that are affecting everyday life that are supranational. We cannot stop jobs from going to China or India or Mexico. The nation itself is in some ways no longer the primary actor on the world stage. That is what you have to be discussing, even though nobody is really talking about it. Read The Full Story Witnesses: Police Did NOT Warn DeMenzes Before Opening Fire 2008-10-30 20:23:45 Jean Charles de Menezes was not warned before he was shot dead by British police, three witnesses told an inquest Thursday. The claim contradicts the police account that the innocent Brazilian was warned before being shot. Ralph Livock and his girlfriend Rachel Wilson were sitting in a tube carriage (subway car) opposite the 27-year-old Brazilian, the inquest heard. Nicholas Hilliard Queens Counsel and counsel to the inquest, asked him if he heard the police shout a warning. "Absolutely not," Livock replied. "And I remember that specifically because one of the conversations that Rachel and I had afterwards was that we had no idea whether they were police, whether they were terrorists, whether they were somebody else. We just had no idea." Read The Full Story An Era Ends With Closing Of Berlin's Tempelhof Airport 2008-10-30 20:22:13 The last passengers mill around the concourse, the baggage claim belt is at a standstill. After 85 years, Thursday is the last day flights will leave Germany's most famous airport: Tempelhof. It once hosted Marlene Dietrich and the Beatles, but it will now give up the stage to a massive new international airport. The air still reeks of jet fuel. "Hold your breath for as long as you can," Dieter Nickel tells his former colleague as they reach the rooftop of Berlin's Tempelhof Airport. He gazes out over the brightly lit airfield, where a rescue helicopter is landing. The rotors hum. Amateur pilots taxi their planes onto the runway and slowly take off, one after the other. Nickel has worked here for 41 years. He directed design and construction. For the last few years the 70-year-old has also led visitors through Tempelhof. These are goodbye tours. On Thursday, Oct. 30, Tempelhof will turn out its lights for good. After 85 years of service, Germany's best-known airport will pass into the dustbin of history - despite protests by Berliners, despite prominent advocates like German Chancellor Angela Merkel, American billionaire Ronald S. Lauder and journalist Michael S. Cullen. A tortured farewell, partly played out in German courts, is drawing to a close. Read The Full Story Wall Street Rises After Report On Economy 2008-10-30 16:51:21 The news Thursday morning seemed grim: the government reported that the economy shrank over the summer and is almost certainly in a recession. But investors took the report as a re-statement of what they already knew and bought into the market, sending shares higher from the opening bell. While the market swung across a wide range during the session, the Dow Jones industrials finished 189.73 points or 2.1 percent higher. The Dow climbed 250 points in the opening minutes, then moved in and out of positive territory before ending the day at 9,180.69. The Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index gained about 2.58 percent. The G.D.P. report showed that consumer spending tumbled last quarter by the most in three decades, but many of the sharp swoons seen in the market in recent days have already been attributed to defensive plays by investors who are bracing for the impact of the downturn. Read The Full Story U.S. Economy Contracts On Weak Spending 2008-10-30 16:06:55 The U.S. gross domestic product (GDP) - driven largely by consumer spending - shrank, but not as much as expected. Still, economists predict things will get worse before they get better. Consumers cinched their belts sharply in the last few months, curbing spending and driving economic growth into negative territory, the deepest decline since 2001, the government reported Thursday. Gross domestic product shrank by 0.3% in the third quarter, a sharp reversal from the 2.8% increase recorded in the second quarter, said the Commerce Department. In total, personal consumption declined 3.1% in the three months ending Sept. 30. It was the first time since 1991 that consumer spending actually dropped, and the biggest decline since 1980. The belt-tightening was led by a 14.1% drop in consumer spending on big-ticket items like cars and appliances and a 6.4% decline in smaller purchases. Roughly 70% of GDP is driven by spending at the consumer level. Read The Full Story American Express To Cut 7,000 Jobs 2008-10-30 16:06:23 The American Express Company, a big credit card lender, said Thursday that it would cut 10 percent of its work force, or about 7,000 jobs, as the company braced for an economic slowdown. Amex said it expected the reorganization to save $1.8 billion in 2009, when it anticipates a wave of new losses and a decline in the growth of consumer credit card spending. “Card-member spending in such an environment is likely to be very slow. Loan growth will be restrained and some of that will reflect the steps we’re taking to lower credit risk” as the economy weakens, the chairman and chief executive, Kenneth I. Chenault, said in a conference call earlier this month. “To prepare for this difficult environment, we are moving ahead with plans” to reorganize the business. American Express said Thursday that the reductions would occur across business units, markets and staff groups, primarily focusing on management and other positions that do not interact directly with customers. As part of the overhaul, American Express could take an after-tax charge of as much as $290 million in the fourth quarter. Read The Full Story Bomb Attacks In India Kill At Least 67, Wound Hundreds More 2008-10-30 16:05:59 A series of apparently synchronized explosions tore through four towns in the troubled state of Assam in northeastern India on Thursday, killing at least 67 people and leaving more than 210 wounded, according to witnesses and police. The bombs took aim at crowded markets and government buildings like courts and police stations, witnesses said. The attacks, among the bloodiest in recent months, left streets littered with bodies and the wreckage of cars and motorcycles, according to witnesses and photographers at the scene. There were no immediate reports that any group had taken responsibility for the bombings. For many years, Assam state has been riven by a separatist insurgency led by the United Liberation Front of Assam, which demands independence for the region of some 26 million people and is often blamed by the authorities for bombings. Last month, ethnic clashes left 57 people dead in the area when indigenous Bodos fought with Bengali-speaking Muslims. Read The Full Story YAY! Hubble Up And Running, With Picture To Prove It 2008-10-30 16:05:27 After an electrical malfunction caused it to go dormant a month ago, the Hubble Space Telescope is back in business. To show that the orbiting eye still has the same chops as ever, astronomers from the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore used Hubble’s wide-field planetary camera 2 to record this image of a pair of smoke-rings galaxies known as Arp 147. The galaxies, about 450 million light-years away in the constellation Cetus, apparently collided in the recent cosmic past. According to Mario Livio, of the space telescope institute, one of the galaxies passed through the other, causing a circular wave, like a pebble tossed into a pond, that has now coalesced into a ring of new blue stars. The center of the impacted galaxy can be seen as a reddish blur along the bottom of a blue ring. Read The Full Story Political Blog: Al Gore Will Campaign For Obama In Florida 2008-10-30 16:04:28 Intellpuke: This political blog was written by New York Times writer Michael Falcone and appeared in that newspaper's edition for Thursday, October 30, 2008. Returning to the state that became ground zero for the Election Day troubles that ended up costing him the presidency, former Vice President Al Gore plans to campaign in Florida on Friday for Senator Barack Obama. And Mr. Gore, who will be joined by his wife, Tipper, is heading to Palm Beach and Broward counties, which played leading roles in the drama of the 2000 election. He will hold rallies in West Palm Beach and Ft. Lauderdale. “Nobody knows better that every single vote counts - especially in Florida - than Vice President Al Gore, who will be encouraging Florida voters to early vote in record numbers so no amount of chads, butterflies or undervotes can stand between Floridians and the change we need,” the Obama campaign’s Florida state director, Steve Schale, said in a statement. Read The Full Story	Data Mining You To Death: Does Google Know Too Much? 2008-10-30 20:24:01 Google gathers so much detailed information about its users that one critic says some state intelligence bureaus look "like child protection services" in comparison. A few German government bodies have mounted a resistance. The little town of Molfsee, near Kiel in northern Germany, has three lakes, an idyllic open-air museum and a population just under 5,000. It’s not the likeliest place to declare war against a global power. Yet Molfsee has won the first round of a battle against a powerful digital age opponent. The source of friction is a fleet of dark-colored Opel Astras. The cars caused a stir when they started cruising the streets of German cities over the last few months, sporting roof-mounted cameras that record 360-degree images from 11 lenses. Some of the vehicles bear the name of the company that sent them on this massive photographic mission: Google. "Street View" is the name of the service offered by Google. The California-based Internet company is photographing city streets all over the world, linking the images to digital maps and making the whole package available on the Web. Anyone with an Internet connection will then be able to call up not just a "Google Map" but pictures of the area as well. The company also plans a feature to let users take a virtual stroll through a city. The camera-wielding Astras haven't come to Molfsee yet, and local Google opponents want to keep it that way. Some of them have resorted to local law. According to a road traffic act passed in the town, Google would need a special permit to drive and photograph in Molfsee. Local politicians have refused to issue the permit. Read The Full Story Britain's Attorney General Asked To Investigate MI5, CIA Over Briton's Rendition 2008-10-30 20:22:50 Britain's Home Secretary Jacqui Smith has asked the country's attorney general to investigate possible "criminal wrongdoing" by the MI5 and the CIA over its treatment of a British resident held in Guantanamo Bay, it was revealed Thursday night. The dramatic development over allegations of collusion in torture and inhuman treatment follows a high court judgment which found that an MI5 officer participated in the unlawful interrogation of Binyam Mohamed. The MI5 officer interrogated Mohamed while he was being held in Pakistan in 2002. It emerged Thursday night that lawyers acting for Smith have sent the attorney general, Baroness Scotland, evidence about MI5 and CIA involvement in the case, which was heard behind closed doors in high court hearings. In a letter seen by the Guardian newspaper, they have asked Scotland - as an independent law officer - to investigate "possible criminal wrongdoing". The move could lead to a criminal prosecution. The evidence was suppressed following gagging orders demanded by British Foreign Secretary David Miliband and the U.S. authorities. The action by Smith, the minister responsible for MI5 activities, is believed to be unprecedented. A Home Office spokesman confirmed Thursday night that the letter and closed evidence had been sent to the attorney. It had no further comment. Read The Full Story European Union Holds Emergency Talks As Congo Teeters On The Brink 2008-10-30 20:21:56 The European Union announced emergency talks Thursday on the destabilizing situation in the Democratic Republic of Congo after nine people were reported dead following overnight fighting and looting in a border town. E.U. officials will meet in Brussels, Belgium, before the weekend to discuss sending a humanitarian force to help peacekeepers in the country, said French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner. Oxfam was among the British agencies that announced it was pulling back its staff from Goma, which was besieged Wednesday by a rebel army. U.N. radio said nine people were shot amid gunfire and looting in the town on the eastern border with Rwanda. Rebels loyal to the Tutsi warlord Laurent Nkunda closed in on Goma Wednesday before declaring a ceasefire near its outskirts. Read The Full Story Data Pins Global Warming Blame On Humans 2008-10-30 16:51:09 Scientists think they have uncovered conclusive proof that human activity is responsible for rising temperatures in both polar regions. Research carried out at the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia (UEA) in the United Kingdom  demonstrates for the first time that anthropogenic climate change is responsible for warming at the Arctic and Antarctic. Previous studies have observed rises in temperature at both poles, but none, until now, have formally attributed the cause to human activity. Using up-to-date gridded data sets, scientists led by the UEA observed mean land surface temperatures in the Arctic over a 100 year period. For the Antarctic the observation period was shorter - 50 years - as there is no station data available before 1945. They then applied an average simulated response using two models. The first examined natural forcings - events like solar cycles and volcanic activity which can affect temperatures. Read The Full Story Days Before The Election, Stark Signs Of An Economic Slowdown 2008-10-30 16:06:40 Less than a week before Americans go to the polls to select a president, a government report released Thursday showed that the economy contracted in the third quarter as consumer spending dipped for the first time in 17 years. Economists said the drop in economic activity - with the gross domestic product (GDP) shrinking at a 0.3 percent annual rate - presages more bad news in the months ahead. The impacts of a now-global financial crisis are continuing to squeeze companies and impede investment, prompting more layoffs and another wave of austerity. “The economy has taken a turn for the worse, big time,” said Allen Sinai, chief global economist for Decision Economics, a consulting and forecasting group. “Consumption literally caved in. It is a prelude to much worse news on the economy over the next couple of quarters. The fundamentals around the consumer are all negative, and there are no signs of any help anytime soon, from anywhere.” In an election likely to be decided by the economy, the latest batch of dismal data offered no comfort to the Republican nominee, Senator John McCain, of Arizona, who has been running behind the Democratic standard-bearer, Senator Barack Obama, of Illinois, according to polls. Read The Full Story Exxon Mobil Posts Largest Quarterly Profit Ever 2008-10-30 16:06:13 Exxon Mobil Corp., the world's largest publicly traded oil company, reported income Thursday that shattered its own record for the biggest profit from operations by a U.S. corporation, earning $14.83 billion in the third quarter. Bolstered by this summer's record crude prices, the Irving, Texas-based company said net income jumped nearly 58 percent to $2.86 a share in the July-September period. That compares with $9.41 billion, or $1.70 a share, a year ago. The previous record for U.S. corporate profit was set in the last quarter, when Exxon Mobil earned $11.68 billion. Revenue rose 35 percent to $137.7 billion. Read The Full Story Archaeologist Finds 3,000-Year-Old Hebrew Text 2008-10-30 16:05:37 An Israeli archaeologist has discovered what he says is the earliest-known Hebrew text, found on a shard of pottery that dates to the time of King David from the Old Testament, about 3,000 years ago. Professor Yosef Garfinkel of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem says the inscribed pottery shard - known as an ostracon - was found during excavations of a fortress from the 10th century B.C. Carbon dating of the ostracon, along with pottery analysis, dates the inscription to time of King David, about a millennium earlier than the famous Dead Sea Scrolls, said the university. The shard contains five lines of text divided by black lines and measures 15 by 15 centimeters, or about 6 inches square. Archaeologists have yet to decipher the text, but initial interpretation indicates it formed part of a letter and contains the roots of the words "judge," "slave," and "king," according to the university. That may indicate it was a legal text, which archaeologists say would provide insights into Hebrew law, society, and beliefs. Read The Full Story End Of Daylight Savings Time Is Good For The Heart 2008-10-30 16:04:51 Turning your clock back one hour for the end of daylight saving time could do your own ticker some good. Researchers have found a 5% drop in heart attack deaths and hospitalizations the day after clocks are reset each year to standard time, according to a study published Thursday in the New England Journal of Medicine. (In the U.S. this year, daylight saving time ends Sunday.) Unfortunately, the Swedish researchers also found that the onset of daylight saving time in the spring appears to increase the risk of heart attacks. Physicians can now add daylight saving time to the list of seemingly mundane events that have an effect on the heart, said Dr. Ralph Brindis, a vice president of the American College of Cardiology who practices in Oakland, California. The risk also rises on holidays and anniversaries, though no one knows why, he said. Read The Full Story Oy! Officials Warn College Tuitions Could Rise Sharply 2008-10-30 16:03:56 A report released Wednesday by the College Board showed that the average price of attending college rose nearly 6% this fall, but education officials warned that the widening economic crisis might push tuition bills sharply higher next year. Annual tuition, fees, and room and board for in-state students at four-year public colleges and universities nationwide grew 5.7% for the current academic year to $14,333, according to the College Board's annual college pricing survey. For four-year private schools, the price of attending rose 5.6% to $34,132. Financial aid reduced schooling expenses for eligible students. The increases closely matched the 5.6% overall inflation rate for the fiscal year ending July 2008 and were relatively moderate compared with a run-up of college costs a decade ago. "This is certainly not high by historical standards," said Sandy Baum, a College Board policy analyst and economics professor at Skidmore College in New York. Yet trouble might be looming. State budget cuts, college endowments hit hard by the tumbling stock market and an expected slide in donations could lead to higher charges for students and parents next year, some officials warn. However, some experts speculate that schools may be loath to raise prices at a time when many American families face layoffs, home foreclosures and shrinking investments. Read The Full Story
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Free Internet Press Newsletter - Thursday October 30 2008 - (813)

Thursday October 30 2008 edition
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U.S. Treasury, FDIC Eye Plan To Help 3 Million Homeowners 2008-10-29 23:47:28 Officials with the U.S. Treasury Dept. and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. are nearing agreement on a plan under which the government would guarantee the mortgages of millions of homeowners now struggling to avoid foreclosure. According to three sources familiar with the discussions, the plan would cover up to three million homeowners. It would cost between $40 billion and $50 billion and cover as much as $600 billion in mortgage loans. Under the program being discussed, the lender would agree to reduce borrowers' monthly payments based on their ability to pay. The reductions could be achieved by lowering the interest rate, slashing the amount owed or extending the repayment period. These reconfigured loans would help homeowners avert foreclosure. In exchange, financial institutions that agree to participate in the program would receive a government guarantee for a portion of any losses occurring if borrowers default on the reconfigured loan. Read The Full Story U.S. Stocks Falter At End of Trading Day 2008-10-29 23:47:10 Stocks plunged more than 360 points in the final minutes of trading Tuesday, losing the momentum gained after the Federal Reserve's decision to cut a key interest rate to help alleviate fears of further economic deterioration. The Dow Jones industrial average closed down 0.8 percent, with a loss of more than 74 points. The broader Standard & Poor's 500 fell 1.1 percent, or 10 points. The tech-heavy Nasdaq closed up nearly 8 points, a gain of about half a percent. Even after stocks' 11 percent run-up Tuesday - stocks' second-biggest point gain ever - stocks were fickle for most of the morning, seesawing between losses and gains. The market rallied just before the Fed's announcement, then pulled back when the central bank said it would cut the federal funds rate - the rate at which banks lend to each other - by a half-point to 1 percent, the lowest level in four years. The three major indexes then picked up steam again, with the Dow gaining more than 280 points. But in the last moments of the session, stocks swung quickly into the red, resuming the volatility that has come to characterize the last hour of trading. "This selling is just so indicative of the hair-trigger nervousness we're seeing in the market," said Richard Cripps, chief investment officer at Stifel Nicolaus in Baltimore, Maryland. Read The Full Story Commentary: John McCain In The Echo Chamber 2008-10-29 23:46:38 Intellpuke: This commentary was written by author and essayist Gore Vidal and appeared on the truthdig.com website edition for Monday, October 27, 2008. October proved to be the cruelest month, for that was the time that Senator McCain, he of the round, blank, Little Orphan Annie eyes, chose to try out a number of weird lies about Barack Obama ostensibly in the interest of a Republican Party long overdue for burial. It is a wonder that any viewer survived his furious October onslaught whose craziest lie was that Obama wished to become president in order to tax the poor in the interest of a Democratic Party in place, as he put it in his best 1936 voice, to spend and spend because that's what Democrats always do. This was pretty feeble lying, even in such an age as ours. But it was the only thing that had stuck with him from those halcyon years when Gov. Alfred M. Landon was the candidate of the Grand Old Party, which in those days was dedicated to erasing every policy of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, whose electoral success was due to, they thought, Harry Hopkins' chilling mantra, "we shall ... spend and spend and elect and elect." Arguably, the ignorant McCains of this world have no idea what any of this actually signifies; Hopkins' comment is a serious one, and serious matters seldom break through to cliché-ridden minds. Although I am no fan of the television of my native land, I thought that an election featuring two historic novelties - the first credible female candidate for president and the first black nominee - would be great historic television, yet I should have been suspicious whenever I looked at McCain's malicious little face, plainly bent on great mischief. Whenever Obama made a sensible point, McCain was ready to trump it with a gorgeous lie. When Obama said that only a small percentage of the middle class would suffer from income tax during his administration, McCain would start gabbling the 1936 Republican mantra that this actually meant that he would spend and spend and spend in order to spread the money around, a mild joke he has told for the benefit of a plumber who is looking forward to fiscal good fortune and so feared the tax man, using language very like that of long-dead socialists to reveal Obama's sinister games. Read The Full Story Pakistan Quake Toll Could Be As High As 600 2008-10-29 23:45:28 Terrifying aftershocks rattled southwest Pakistan Wednesday night after an earthquake killed scores of people and left thousands homeless, with the death toll expected to climb. Local officials in Baluchistan province said 170 people had been killed and 350 injured, but the Care International aid agency put the death toll at 500 to 600. Several villages were reduced to rubble. Local television showed lines of bodies, in white shrouds, laid out in the villages. The 6.5 magnitude quake struck in the early hours of yesterday, centred about 40 miles northeast of the provincial capital Quetta. Aftershocks rippled throughout the day, including a massive tremor of 6.2 magnitude at around 5:30 p.m. local time. "We went to a village, Wam, where we saw mass graves being dug," said Hasan Mazumdar, Care International's Pakistan director. "Bodies were still arriving. I estimate that 200 died in that village alone. "There was a big jolt while we were standing there. The mountains shook. Boulders came crashing down. The people were really scared. They never experienced anything like this. I spoke to a man in his early 30s, who had lost four daughters. He was just completely heartbroken." Read The Full Story Delta, Northwest Airlines Merge 2008-10-29 23:44:27 Delta and Northwest announced Tuesday evening that the two companies had officially merged, hours after the U.S. Department of Justice said the deal to create the world's largest airline did not raise antitrust concerns for the government. The combined airline will be called Delta and headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia. It will be the world's largest by several measures, including number of passengers flown, departures and destinations. Operations of the two carriers are expected to be combined over the next 14 to 16 months. In a statement, Delta chief executive Richard Anderson said the merger gave the new company "increased flexibility to adapt to the economic challenges ahead." Anderson will retain the chief executive role at the combined company. The outlook for U.S. airlines appears to be mixed over the next several months. Already, there are signs that the economic slowdown is leading to a pull back from air travel. Airlines, however, are benefiting from a dramatic drop in oil prices after peaks this summer led to talk of bankruptcies and wider industry consolidation. Read The Full Story Barack Obama To Appear On 30 Minute Infomercial Tonight 2008-10-29 19:19:57   Tonight at 8pm Eastern, US Presidential Candidate Barack Obama will be seen on a 30 minute infomercial providing information on various campaign topics including the US Economy.   Tune into NBC, CBS, MSNBC, Fox, Univision, BET or TV One to see what he has to say.   Read The Full Story U.S. Governors Call For Federal Rescue Package For States 2008-10-29 16:14:16 New York Governor David A. Paterson and New Jersey Governor Jon S. Corzine added their voices to the growing support for a second federal economic stimulus package,saying that state governments will face devastating cutbacks if they do not receive assistance soon. Appearing before separate congressional committees on Wednesday, Paterson and Corzine said their states, like many others, have already moved to address their budget deficits. Their actions alone would not be enough, they said. “We are cutting all we can,” Paterson told the House Ways and Means Committee. “Therefore, we feel that targeted, sensible actions by the federal government will provide relief for us now.” Speaking to the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, Corzine implored, “We need federal help to get through these tough times.” Their remarks increased the pressure on the federal government to include money for state governments in the next round of economic stimulus legislation, pointedly putting the requests of the executives of two of the nation’s most populous states on the record. Read The Full Story GMAC Seeks Bank Status To Access Bailout Money 2008-10-29 16:13:51 GMAC, the financing arm of General Motors, is in negotiations to become a bank holding company, a shift that would allow it to take advantage of the government's $700 billion financial rescue package, according to sources familiar with the matter. Over the past few weeks, GM has been talking about the possible change of status with the Federal Reserve, according to the sources, who were familiar with the effort but not authorized to speak about it on the record. Already facing a cash crunch, GM's position has been made even more problematic because of recent problems in global credit markets. Its own borrowing costs have risen, while its dealers and potential car buyers have found it more difficult to finance inventory and vehicle purchases. "We are exploring a number of avenues with government to find a solution to the problem of constrained access to funding," said GMAC spokeswoman Toni Simonetti. She declined to comment on GMAC seeking bank holding status. Read The Full Story Editorial: End Of The Road For Ted Stevens 2008-10-29 16:12:58 Intellpuke: This editorial appeared in the New York Times edition for Wednesday, October 29, 2008. One of life’s enduring mysteries is why powerful people risk substantial reputations and careers for relatively insubstantial sums of money. Perhaps the answer is power itself and the sense of entitlement and invulnerability it confers. Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska has now been convicted of seven felony counts of violating federal ethics laws. His career and reputation are in tatters. Mr. Stevens still insists he is innocent, and he is imploring Alaskans to re-elect him next week. Voters there should turn him out. If they do not, the Senate must expel him. The jury found Mr. Stevens guilty of failing to report tens of thousands of dollars in gifts and services from friends. These included an estimated $250,000 in renovations to his home in Alaska underwritten by the owner of an oil-services company and one of the state’s leading power brokers. In his four decades in the Senate, and especially in his former role as chairman of the Appropriations Committee, Mr. Stevens dispensed untold millions of dollars worth of favors, especially to his home state. He clearly felt no compunction about accepting favors in return. Read The Full Story 170 Killed In Pakistan Earthquake 2008-10-29 16:12:24 A strong earthquake jolted southwestern Pakistan early Wednesday, killing at least 170 people, injuring hundreds of others and destroying houses and government buildings, Pakistani officials said. The tremors measuring as high as 6.5 on the Richter scale struck villages and small towns 45 miles north of Quetta, the capital of Baluchistan province, beginning shortly after 4 a.m., according to the U.S. Geological Survey. A second major tremor late in the day sent panicked citizens out of their buildings and into the cold evening air, but no additional casualties were reported. The epicenter of the early morning quake was about 400 miles southwest of the Pakistani capital of Islamabad, with towns and villages in the Ziarat district apparently the worst-hit. The cities and towns struck by the tremor included Pishin, Qila Abdullah, Chaman, Loralai, Sibbi and Mastung, rural areas all lying close to Baluchistan's border with Afghanistan.  According to Pakistani news channels, the shocks from the quake were felt in the Kandahar province of Afghanistan as well. At least 16 aftershocks were felt in the quake-affected regions, averaging more than 4.0 on the Richter scale, according to Qamar-uz-Zaman, chief of Pakistan's Meteorological Office. Read The Full Story	Obama, The Infomercial: A 30-Minute Pitch To America 2008-10-29 23:47:19 Stumbling upon a half-hour-long infomercial on American television is usually a sign that you've stayed up too late, or clicked too far through the channels to the outer fringes of cable. But last night's 30-minute broadcast happened in peak time, on three of the main networks, and it wasn't a sales pitch for an innovative new bathroom tile-cleaning device. It was Barack Obama's final opportunity to ask a mass national audience for their votes, and he used it stirringly. The Democrat's 30-minute ad, costing $1 million per channel, wasn't without its hazards: it risked annoying viewers forced to miss their favorite shows, and a rumor, which proved unfounded, held that it might even delay the start of the World Series baseball game between the Tampa Bay Rays and the Philadelphia Phillies, a surefire way to anger audiences. In the event, though, the Obama Show - a combination of treacly Hollywood movie and hard-edged documentary - seemed more likely to persuade than to repel. Beginning with images of cornfields, railways and picket-fence homes over soaring strings, it soon cut to a shot of Obama standing, besuited, before a wooden table and a large American flag: it wasn't the Oval Office, but the resemblance was no accident. "We've seen over the last eight years how decisions by a president can have a profound effect on the course of history, and on American lives," he said, before narrating the stories of four middle-class Americans, each struggling economically. They were chosen with an eye to demographics: a white married mother from Missouri, a black retired railroad worker from Ohio, a Hispanic widow, mother and teacher from Kentucky, and a white male Ford motor worker from New Mexico. They painted a grim picture. "The pressure is just to keep your head above water, so you don't feel like you're drowning all the time," said Juliana Sanchez, the Kentuckian. "You feel like you can't breathe." Five Democratic governors, two senators, and the chief executive of Google also all appeared to sing Obama's praises. Read The Full Story Commentary: Don't Look Now, There's A Huge Wave Of Inflation Coming Toward Us 2008-10-29 23:46:58 Intellpuke: This commentary was written by Kevin Phillips and appeared on the Huffington Post website edition for Wednesday, October 29, 2008. The time has come to review how back in 2005-2006 George W. Bush - now increasingly perceived as another Herbert Hoover - picked two top appointees who helped steer him towards his fateful 2008 rendezvous with a second Great Crash. One of them, a top level financier, insured that Washington's eventual rescue policies would concentrate on trying to bail-out Wall Street while ignoring the gnawing cancer of its warped ambitions and financial malpractices. The second, a professor, misapplied dogma about how to guard against severe downturns into a disastrous attempt to refight the onset of the 1930s depression - his academic specialty. He did not understand the very different context of our own era of cyber-spatial financial recklessness and gathering global inflation. Henry Paulson, Bush's pick as treasury secretary, was not your ordinary gray-flannel investment bank CEO. One 2006 Business Week article spotlighted the new secretary as a high-roller: "Think of Paulson as Mr. Risk. He's one of the key architects of a more daring Wall Street where securities firms are taking greater and greater chances in their pursuit of profits." That, the magazine added, "means taking on more debt ... it means placing big bets on all sorts of exotic derivatives and other securities." That means stuff like collateralized debt obligations (CDOs) and credit default swaps (CDSs), innovations we now know to have spread toxicity, opacity and paralysis. Economics professor Ben Bernanke, before replacing Alan Greenspan as Federal Reserve Board chairman in early 2006, had served almost three years as the Chairman of George W. Bush's Council of Economic Advisers. There he had been a cheerleader for Bush economic policies, including upper-bracket tax cuts, Social Security privatization, "securitization" of assets and "safe" financial derivatives. On top of which, he was an academic and theoretical specialist in monetary policy and economic depressions - a man who boasted of understanding downturns' critical preventative. The Fed should pump up the money supply or liquidity which would overcome any credit crunch. As a card-carrying monetarist, he also insisted there was no meaningful inflation during the 2005-2007 period even though global commodity price indexes had been soaring. Read The Full Story Commentary: How These Gibbering Numbskulls Came To Dominate Washington 2008-10-29 23:46:03 Intellpuke: This commentary was written by British Prof. George Monbiot and appeared in the Guardian edition for Tuesday, October 28, 2008. "The degradation of intelligence and learning in American politics results from a series of interlocking tragedies." How was it allowed to happen? How did politics in the U.S. come to be dominated by people who make a virtue out of ignorance? Was it charity that has permitted mankind's closest living relative to spend two terms as president? How did Sarah Palin, Dan Quayle and other such gibbering numbskulls get to where they are? How could Republican rallies in 2008 be drowned out by screaming ignoramuses insisting that Barack Obama was a Muslim and a terrorist? Like most people on my side of the Atlantic, I have for many years been mystified by American politics. The U.S. has the world's best universities and attracts the world's finest minds. It dominates discoveries in science and medicine. Its wealth and power depend on the application of knowledge. Yet, uniquely among the developed nations (with the possible exception of Australia), learning is a grave political disadvantage. There have been exceptions over the past century - Franklin Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy and Bill Clinton tempered their intellectualism with the common touch and survived - but Adlai Stevenson, Al Gore and John Kerry were successfully tarred by their opponents as members of a cerebral elite (as if this were not a qualification for the presidency). Perhaps the defining moment in the collapse of intelligent politics was Ronald Reagan's response to Jimmy Carter during the 1980 presidential debate. Carter - stumbling a little, using long words - carefully enumerated the benefits of national health insurance. Reagan smiled and said: "There you go again." His own health program would have appalled most Americans, had he explained it as carefully as Carter had done, but he had found a formula for avoiding tough political issues and making his opponents look like wonks. It wasn't always like this. The founding fathers of the republic - Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, John Adams, Alexander Hamilton and others - were among the greatest thinkers of their age. They felt no need to make a secret of it. How did the project they launched degenerate into George W Bush and Sarah Palin? Read The Full Story Maryland, Virginia To Ditch Electronic Voting Machines 2008-10-29 23:45:11 Goodbye, electronic voting. Farewell, fancy touch screen. Maryland and Virginia are going old school after Tuesday's election. Maryland will scrap its $65 million electronic system and go back to paper ballots in time for the 2010 midterm elections - and will still be paying for the abandoned system until 2014. In Virginia, localities are moving to paper after the General Assembly voted last year to phase out electronic voting machines as they wear out. It was just a few years ago that electronic voting machines were heralded as a computerized panacea to the hanging chad, a state-of-the-art system immune to the kinds of hijinks and confusion that some say make paper ballots vulnerable. But now, after concern that the electronic voting machines could crash or be hacked, the two states are swinging away from the systems, saying paper ballots filled out by hand are more reliable, especially in a recount. The trend reflects a national movement away from electronic voting machines. About a third of all voters will use them Tuesday, down from a peak of almost 40 percent in 2006, according to Election Data Services, a Manassas-based consulting firm specializing in election administration. Every jurisdiction that has changed election systems since 2006 has gone to paper ballots read by optical scan machines, said Kimball Brace, the firm's president. And for the first time in the country's history, fewer jurisdictions will be using electronic machines than in the previous election, he said. "The battle for the hearts and minds of voters on whether electronic systems are good or bad has been lost," said  Brace. The academics and computer scientists who said they were unreliable "have won that battle." Read The Full Story Commentary: Campaign Misinformation 2008-10-29 19:45:00   Editor:   People hear rumors about all kinds of people.  Sometimes it's about your gay neighbor (who isn't really gay).    As a journalist, I like to listen to people, not argue their points, and then research as much as possible.   One educated individual had several reasons why he did not want Obama to be the next president of the United States.   One misconception was that Barack Obama is not an American citizen.  Simple logic on my part knew this couldn't be true, but a bit of research was required also.  My hunches are frequently right, but my hunches are not enough to report on as truth.   You can read supporting information here at Snopes.com and FactCheck.org.  He is an American citi! zen, born in Hawaii.  You can read more information on the two links above, or do your own research to find out more.  Beware, plenty of unresearched information is still floating around the Internet.   The second is the misinformation that Obama is a Muslim.  While it is perfectly acceptable for anyone in America to be of any faith, and there is a large Muslim community here in the United States, it simply isn't true.  Obama is a Christian.   You can read more about this misinformation at Snopes.com and FactCheck.org.   For the interest of equal time, there have been some rumors about John McCain.  The most popular that I've heard from people is that McCain does not use email.  This is a simple answer, but unfortunately I cannot find a good validation to link to, but I! saw an interview which clarified the subject.  McCain wa! s tortur ed for years in Vietnam, like many POWs.  From the torture and mistreatment, he doesn't have the same motor control of his hands that the average Joe does.  It's hard for him to do things like type, so his staff handles his emails for him.     Feel free to discuss these and other rumors in the comments area. Read The Full Story Fed Reserve Cuts Interest Rate To 1 Percent 2008-10-29 16:14:25 The Federal Reserve slashed a key interest rate to match its lowest level in decades Wednesday, as the central bank continued pulling out all possible stops to try to contain the economic fallout of the financial crisis. The Fed’s policy-making committee this afternoon cut the federal funds rate, at which banks lend to each other, to 1 percent, from 1.5 percent. The last time the rate was that low was in the aftermath of the dot-com bubble in the early 2000s; the Fed’s target rate hasn’t been lower than 1 percent since the 1950s. The stock market, which had been up modestly before the announcement, fell immediately thereafter. At 2:35 p.m., the Dow Jones industrial average was down more than one percent or 119 points. The lower rate is meant to stimulate the economy and guard against a deep and long recession; it followed an emergency rate cut just two weeks ago. In normal times, Fed rate cuts make it cheaper for businesses to borrow money to expand and for consumers to get auto loans, home mortgages, and credit card debt. But in the current environment, with banks reluctant to lend, its impact is uncertain. “The pace of economic activity appears to have slowed markedly,” said the Federal Open Market Committee in a statement, “owing importantly to a decline in consumer expenditures.” It also noted that business spending is falling off and exports appear poised to weaken. “Moreover, the intensification of financial market turmoil is likely to exert additional restraint on spending, partly by further reducing the ability of households and businesses to obtain credit.” Read The Full Story Panel: FDA Ignored Scientific Evidence That BPA Is Harmful 2008-10-29 16:14:07 The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) ignored scientific evidence and used flawed methods when it determined that a chemical widely used in baby bottles and in the lining of cans is not harmful, a scientific advisory panel has found. In a highly critical report to be released Wednesday, the panel of scientists from government and academia said the FDA did not take into consideration scores of studies that have linked bisphenol A (BPA) to prostate cancer, diabetes and other health problems in animals when it completed a draft risk assessment of the chemical last month. The panel said the FDA didn't use enough infant formula samples and didn't adequately account for variations among the samples. Taking those studies into consideration, the panel concluded, the FDA's margin of safety is "inadequate". The panel is part of the Science Board, a committee of advisers to the FDA commissioner, and was set up to review the FDA's risk assessment of BPA. Many of the studies that the panel said the FDA ignored were reviewed by the National Toxicology Program, which concluded in September that it had "some concern" that BPA can affect brain and behavioral development in infants and small children. Read The Full Story Commentary: A Detroit Bankruptcy Beats A Bailout 2008-10-29 16:13:42 Intellpuke: This commentary was written by Washington Post Business Columnist Steven Pearlstein and appeared in the Post edition for Wednesday, October 29, 2008. Not content with $25 billion in government loans to retool factories for fuel-efficient cars, the auto industry is already back at the trough, this time angling for a taxpayer investment in the firm that would result from a merger of General Motors and Chrysler. You can just imagine the pitch from the populists of the Michigan congressional delegation: If the government is willing to invest $250 billion to bail out pinstriped bankers, then the least it could do is throw an extra $10 billion to rescue the domestic auto industry and the millions of workers and retirees who depend on it. There's only one difference: The government will make money on its bank investment, while the GM-Chrysler deal is a lemon. As reported by Reuters, GM and Chrysler would have the Treasury invest $3 billion directly in the newly merged automaker in exchange for preferred shares with warrants, as with the banks. The government would take over $3 billion of the company's pension obligation. To deal with the industry's short-term liquidity problem, the government would also commit to buying $4 billion in commercial paper issued by the new company. Read The Full Story 20,000 More U.S. Troops Sought For Afghanistan 2008-10-29 16:12:37 U.S. commanders in Afghanistan now believe they need about 20,000 additional troops to battle a growing Taliban insurgency, as demands mount for support forces such as helicopter units, intelligence teams and engineers that are critical to operating in the country's harsh terrain. The troop requests, made in recent weeks, reflect the broader struggles the U.S. military faces in the Afghan war. Fighting has intensified, particularly in the country's eastern region, where attacks are up and cross-border infiltration of insurgents from Pakistan is on the rise. U.S. troop deaths in 2008 are higher than in any other year since the conflict began in 2001. The Pentagon has approved the deployment of one additional combat battalion and one Army brigade, or about 4,000 troops, set to arrive in Afghanistan by January. Commanders have already requested three more combat brigades - 10,500 to 12,000 troops - but those reinforcements depend on further reductions from Iraq and are unlikely to arrive until spring or summer, according to senior defense officials. Now, U.S. commanders are asking the Pentagon for 5,000 to 10,000 additional support forces to help them tackle the country's unique geographic and logistical challenges. Afghanistan's rugged mountains, bitter winters and primitive infrastructure pose a major hurdle as the U.S. military seeks to build up its combat forces there. The conditions contrast with those in Iraq, where roads, runways and built-up urban areas helped absorb nearly 30,000 U.S. forces during the troop "surge" last year. Read The Full Story 5 Suicide Bomb Attacks Hit Somalia 2008-10-29 16:12:04 Five suicide car bomb attacks rocked a presidential palace, government security posts, United Nations offices and an Ethiopian consular unit in two regions of northern Somalia on Wednesday, killing or wounding dozens of people, according to officials and witnesses. Five suicide car bomb attackers struck within half an hour in the two regions, in Hargeisa, the capital of breakaway Somaliland, and in Bosasso, in Puntland, said Faisal Hayle, a security official in Mogadishu for the transitional government of Somalia. Several buildings were leveled by the attacks. According to officials, the bombers struck between 10 a.m. and 10:30 a.m., the first attacking in Hargeisa where they struck the presidential palace of Somaliland, an Ethiopian consulate office and a United Nations office in Hargeisa. In the port of Bosasso, two huge blasts rocked the city as suicide bombers attacked two offices of the Puntland security forces, killing a woman cleaner and injuring six soldiers, said residents and officials. Read The Full Story
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Free Internet Press Newsletter - Wednesday October 29 2008 - (813)

Wednesday October 29 2008 edition
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Bargains Spark Late Rally On Wall Street 2008-10-28 17:18:05 Investors shrugged off downbeat reports on home prices and consumer confidence to fuel a late session rally that was poised to push the Dow Jones industrial average to its biggest one-day gain in more than two weeks. As of 11:50 a.m. PDT, the Dow was up 424.12 points, or 5%, at 8,599.89. The broader Standard & Poor's 500 index was up 5% and the tech-laden Nasdaq composite was up 4.3%. If it holds to those gains, it would be the Dow's biggest advance since it jumped 936 points on Oct. 13. A report showing a steep plunge in consumer confidence threw Wall Street into reverse earlier in the morning, erasing much of an early 300-point rally in the Dow. But investors apparently decided to go bargain-hunting after a two-day stretch that saw the Dow fall 500 points. The Conference Board, a private research group, said its gauge of consumer sentiment fell to 38 in October. That was well below analysts' expectations and down from a revised 61.4 in September. It was the lowest reading since the group began tracking consumer sentiment in 1967 and is a bad omen for consumer spending, which makes up about two-thirds of U.S. economic activity. It also reinforced worries that the nation is sliding into a potentially lengthy recession. Investors were also reacting to a steep drop in the Standard & Poor's/Case-Shiller index of housing prices, which dropped 16.6% in August compared with a year earlier. Disarray in the U.S. housing market has been a major driver of the current global credit crisis. Read The Full Story New York Governor Warns Of Big Deficit, 'Painful Cuts' 2008-10-28 17:17:45 New York Gov. David A. Paterson said Tuesday that the state’s financial health has worsened considerably in recent weeks, swelling next year’s projected budget deficit to the largest ever forecast. In a speech from the governor’s office in Manhattan, Paterson said that New York State's budget division now expects the budget gap for next year to be $12.5 billion - nearly double what it projected a few months ago, and that the deficit for this year’s budget has reached $1.5 billion. But Paterson pointedly declined to say how he would address the mounting problems, saying he preferred to wait until legislators make their own proposals at a special session next month. “I don’t want to get ahead of them and start marking out specific areas,” he said after the address. The forecast Paterson laid out through 2012 was even more grim. According to the state’s estimates, the budget deficit would expand to $15.8 billion for the fiscal year starting in 2010 and $17.2 billion in 2011 - for a total of $47 billion of projected shortfalls including next year’s gap. Read The Full Story Should Republicans Cut McCain Loose To Mitigate Their Losses? 2008-10-28 17:17:18 With each passing day the political outlook seems to worsen for Republicans. Barack Obama appears to be consolidating his electoral college edge over John McCain while Republicans are playing defense in the Senate and the House. Neutral observers are now predicting Republican losses of eight or more seats in the Senate and 20-plus seats in the House. Faced with such a dire landscape, David Frum, a former speechwriter for President Bush and now a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, penned an op-ed in the Washington Post's Outlook section on Sunday that made the case that the party must throw McCain over the side to save itself. Writes Frum: "In these last days before the vote, Republicans need to face some strategic realities. Our resources are limited, and our message is failing. We cannot fight on all fronts. We are cannibalizing races that we must win and probably can win in order to help a national campaign that is almost certainly lost. In these final 10 days, our goal should be: senators first." Read The Full Story Day Of Reckoning Dawns For Denizens Of Hedge-Fund Heaven 2008-10-28 17:16:38 Greenwich, Connecticut. It isn't easy to get the super-rich to discuss their money woes, and the Rev. Chuck Davis, who runs the Stanwich Church here in the hedge-fund capital of the world, has tried. His flock includes the mandarins of finance who've lost fortunes in the stock market debacle. In a recent sermon, he urged parishioners to simply admit that they're enduring a terrible ordeal. "C'mon, let's us talk about it, right now," he said from the pulpit. "There's fear. I've never seen this kind of fear in people. There's concern. Our world has been rocked in some ways. I think we've come to realize that we've lived an illusion for a little while, haven't we?" This isn't an "Amen!" kind of place, but listeners were rapt. "And we've been shocked," he continued, "even though it was an illusion and it wasn't a reality, coming back to reality, we still want to know that God's in the midst of it. Because darkness would seem to drown out our hope and sense of well-being." Uplifting words, and delivered to a group that you have to assume could use a hug. But if there is darkness here in Greenwich, it's not visible, at least not yet. The impeccably kept home to scores of suddenly unemployed and just barely employed investment bankers, Greenwich is the most famous of the money towns of Fairfield County - along with Darien, New Canaan and others - where some 28,000 millionaires resided the last time anyone counted. The area has just suffered its version of a Category 5 hurricane. If there was a FEMA for portfolio devastation, Greenwich would be swarming with feds. Read The Full Story Christian Science Monitor To End Daily Publication 2008-10-28 17:15:50 The Christian Science Monitor said Tuesday it will become the first national newspaper to drop its daily print edition and focus on publishing online, succumbing to the financial pressure squeezing its industry harder than ever. Come April, the Boston, Massachusetts-based general-interest paper - founded in 1908 and the winner of seven Pulitzer Prizes - will print only a weekend edition after struggling financially for decades, its editor announced Tuesday. The Monitor's circulation has fallen from a peak of 230,000 in 1970 to about 50,000 now, while its online traffic has soared. The newspaper gets about 5 million page-views per month, compared with about 4 million five years ago and 1 million a decade ago. The Monitor was one of the first newspapers in the country to put content online, beginning in 1995, when correspondent David Rohde was taken prisoner in Bosnia. "Obviously, this is going to help with our costs, but it also enables us to put much more emphasis on the Web and basically put our reporting assets and our editorial assets where we think growth will be in a very tough industry in the future, which we think is the Web," said Editor John Yemma, who was the Boston Globe's multimedia editor before he moved to the Monitor in June. Read The Full Story U.S. Treasury Dept. To Use Bailout Money For Auto Industry 2008-10-28 03:23:36 The Bush administration is in negotiations to broaden its $700 billion financial rescue plan to include U.S. auto companies, potentially opening the door to an array of industries to seek federal aid. Detroit's Big Three are eligible for aid under a broad interpretation of the law that authorized the $700 billion financial rescue, Treasury Department officials said Monday, but they declined to discuss the details of any assistance. "The law grants the secretary broad authority to purchase troubled assets that he deems important to improving financial stability," said Treasury spokeswoman Jennifer Zuccarelli. Ford and General Motors are eligible because they are both chartered as thrift holding companies, so they can establish banks to make car loans nationwide. Other businesses, such as General Electric, Nordstrom, John Deere and Macy's, are chartered in the same way to issue credit cards or make loans to their customers. Chrysler would also be eligible, said Treasury officials. Helping such businesses could put the Treasury in the tricky situation of picking winners and losers within the economy, a far cry from restoring the free flow of credit in the financial system, which was the original intention of the rescue package, some analysts said. It could lead to a long line of companies heading to the Treasury for aid, especially if the holiday shopping season is as disastrous as retailers are forecasting. Read The Full Story Syria Vows To Defend Territory Against Attack 2008-10-28 03:22:58 Syria Monday condemned the U.S. for launching "criminal and terrorist aggression" on its soil, while the Iraqi government defended action against foreign jihadis amid warnings it might complicate plans for a controversial security agreement between Baghdad and Washington. Walid al-Muallem, Syria's foreign minister, used a visit to London to lambast the U.S. for its "cowboy politics" and hinted that Sunday's raid was designed to halt Syria's gradually improving relations with the European Union and Britain. Iran and Russia also condemned the U.S. for aggravating tensions in the region. Syria reported that U.S. troops, backed by helicopters, launched the attack five miles into its territory, killing eight people, including four children. At the funerals of the victims, where angry crowds chanted anti-American slogans, an Associated Press photographer said he saw the bodies of seven men. Read The Full Story	U.S. Consumer Confidence Plunges To Record Low 2008-10-28 17:17:56 Layoffs, plunging home prices and tumbling investments have pushed consumer pessimism to record levels in October, a private research group said today. Wall Street shook it off, though, focusing instead on higher global markets amid optimism the Federal Reserve will ease interest rates further. The Conference Board said the consumer confidence index fell to 38, down from a revised 61.4 in September and significantly below analysts' expectations of 52. That's the lowest level for the index since the Conference Board began tracking consumer sentiment in 1967, and the third-steepest drop. A year ago, the index stood at 95.2. Wall Street, which has come to expect bad news on the economy, took the report in stride. The Dow gave up some of its early gains but was still up about 2 percent in midday trading, while the broader S&P 500 index rose 1.7 percent. Investors are expecting the Federal Reserve to cut its target interest rate Wednesday by up to one-half a percentage point to 1 percent after its two-day meeting that began Tuesday. Read The Full Story FBI Breaks Up A Dozen Juvenile Sex Rings 2008-10-28 17:17:34 Federal authorities rescued 47 juveniles and arrested scores of pimps as part of a wide-scale effort to crack down on child prostitution and sex trafficking rings in the U.S. The sweep across more than two dozen cities over the weekend marks the latest in a series of efforts by the FBI and Justice Department,working in concert with state and local police departments in task forces dubbed "Innocence Lost". Ten of the children taken into protective custody appeared on a registry operated by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, including youths from Texas, Ohio, Michigan and California, FBI Deputy Director John S. Pistole said at a news conference Monday. Using tips and informants, agents patrolled truck stops, Web sites and streets of such local cities as Alexandria, Virginia, Baltimore and College Park, Maryland. In one operation in Prince William County, FBI investigators worked with county police to draw customers to hotels, said Melissa S. Morrow, the supervisory special agent in the child exploitation squad at the bureau's Washington field office. In all, investigators dismantled a dozen organized prostitution rings nationwide and seized firearms, vehicles and drugs as part of the raids. Seventy-three pimps and more than 500 other adults were arrested. Read The Full Story Political Blog: McCain Calls For Sen. Stevens To Quite, Palin Doesn't Go That Far 2008-10-28 17:17:06 Intellpuke: The following political blog was written by Don Frederick and appeared in the Los Angeles Times edition for Tuesday, October 28, 2008. Sens. Ted Stevens and John McCain caucused together as Republicans, but as lawmakers they marched to very different beats. Stevens specialized in funneling every federal dollar he could find to his home state of Alaska (most notoriously the "bridge to nowhere"); McCain, of course, battled "pork-barrel spending" whenever and wherever. So it's no surprise that following Stevens' conviction Monday on corruption-related charges, McCain would call for his colleague to resign his office. What's intriguing is that Sarah Palin, who as governor of Alaska could be part of a potentially tangled scenario involving Stevens, issued a more cautious comment. McCain, in a statement Tuesday, called the verdict against Stevens "a sign of the health of our democracy that the people continue to hold their representatives to account for improper or illegal conduct." He added: "It is clear that Senator Stevens has broken his trust with the people and that he should now step down. I hope that my colleagues in the Senate will be spurred by these events to redouble their efforts to end this kind of corruption once and for all." Read The Full Story Retaliating For U.S. Raid, Syria Orders American School Closed 2008-10-28 17:16:06 The Syrian cabinet decided on Tuesday to close the American School and an American cultural center in Damascus, the capital, after a raid into Syria on Sunday by United States Special Operations forces, the official SANA news agency said. The decision was the first retaliation against the United States by Syria, which has accused it of “terrorist aggression” in the raid. Syria said eight civilians were killed in the attack. But American officials said the raid by American helicopter-borne forces killed an Iraqi militant responsible for running weapons, money and foreign fighters across the border into Iraq, and that all the people killed in the assault were militants. A senior American official said and that women and children living with the militants had not been harmed. The strike into Syria was by far the boldest by American commandos in the five years since the United States invaded Iraq and began to condemn Syria’s role in stoking the Iraqi insurgency. Read The Full Story Central Banks Slashing Rates As Investors Flee 2008-10-28 03:23:47 Central banks around the world are moving to further slash interest rates as they seek to contain the damage from the bursting of the biggest credit bubble in history. The Federal Reserve is poised to cut its benchmark rate for the second time in two weeks at a pivotal meeting in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday, and the European Central Bank Monday suggested that it would do the same next week. South Korea announced a dramatic rate cut Monday, by three-fourths of a percentage point. Governments worldwide have already approved massive bailouts and stimulus packages to halt financial meltdowns, but the trouble spots in the United States and abroad continue to multiply. Monday, there were growing signs that the U.S. Treasury Department was close to extending its $700 billion rescue program to cover the ailing auto industry. Analysts said governments are trying to manage what has become the biggest threat to the global financial system - a massive pullout by panicked investors from any holding they see as remotely risky. From consumers to multibillion-dollar hedge funds, investors are cashing out to cover losses or guard against further damage by moving into safe havens such as U.S. Treasurys. Rate cuts, however, are not packing their usual punch. Normally, when central banks cut rates, it becomes cheaper for businesses and consumers to borrow money. Now, with banks and other financial institutions experiencing a severe crisis, lenders have been reluctant to extend credit at any price. Read The Full Story In U.S., Foreclosures Open Door To Disorder 2008-10-28 03:23:16 Among the many harsh lessons for mortgage lenders in the housing bust is this one about evictions: Selling a house is far easier than taking it back. Clever opportunists and struggling families have figured this out, too, and the result is a rapidly evolving free-for-all coursing through the Washington, D.C., region's worst foreclosure-racked suburbs. Defaulting homeowners are taking advantage of banking chaos to live mortgage-free for six months or longer, dragging out the eviction process, according to lenders and real estate agents. Unscrupulous landlords are collecting rent but withholding mortgage payments, leaving a rude surprise for their tenants when repossession comes. And banks are so eager to avoid the hassle of eviction that they are paying occupants $5,000 or more simply to hand over the keys and move out without a fight. Then there are the illegal squatters, appliance thieves and miscellaneous animals - wild and domestic - that abound amid the disorder. Someone has to sort out the mess, and that's where people such as John Zampino, a deputy with the Prince William County Sheriff's Office, come in. Zampino is one of hundreds of deputies across the region who increasingly function as the armed couriers of the real estate meltdown, delivering court documents, serving repossession orders and, when necessary, carrying out evictions. He estimates that he has conducted more than 100 evictions this year, up from two in 2006. "We're never happy about kicking people out of their homes," said Zampino, 36. 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

Free Internet Press Newsletter - Tuesday October 28 2008 - (813)

Tuesday October 28 2008 edition
Free Internet Press is operated on your donations. Donate Today
Central Banks Slashing Rates As Investors Flee 2008-10-28 03:23:47 Central banks around the world are moving to further slash interest rates as they seek to contain the damage from the bursting of the biggest credit bubble in history. The Federal Reserve is poised to cut its benchmark rate for the second time in two weeks at a pivotal meeting in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday, and the European Central Bank Monday suggested that it would do the same next week. South Korea announced a dramatic rate cut Monday, by three-fourths of a percentage point. Governments worldwide have already approved massive bailouts and stimulus packages to halt financial meltdowns, but the trouble spots in the United States and abroad continue to multiply. Monday, there were growing signs that the U.S. Treasury Department was close to extending its $700 billion rescue program to cover the ailing auto industry. Analysts said governments are trying to manage what has become the biggest threat to the global financial system - a massive pullout by panicked investors from any holding they see as remotely risky. From consumers to multibillion-dollar hedge funds, investors are cashing out to cover losses or guard against further damage by moving into safe havens such as U.S. Treasurys. Rate cuts, however, are not packing their usual punch. Normally, when central banks cut rates, it becomes cheaper for businesses and consumers to borrow money. Now, with banks and other financial institutions experiencing a severe crisis, lenders have been reluctant to extend credit at any price. Read The Full Story In U.S., Foreclosures Open Door To Disorder 2008-10-28 03:23:16 Among the many harsh lessons for mortgage lenders in the housing bust is this one about evictions: Selling a house is far easier than taking it back. Clever opportunists and struggling families have figured this out, too, and the result is a rapidly evolving free-for-all coursing through the Washington, D.C., region's worst foreclosure-racked suburbs. Defaulting homeowners are taking advantage of banking chaos to live mortgage-free for six months or longer, dragging out the eviction process, according to lenders and real estate agents. Unscrupulous landlords are collecting rent but withholding mortgage payments, leaving a rude surprise for their tenants when repossession comes. And banks are so eager to avoid the hassle of eviction that they are paying occupants $5,000 or more simply to hand over the keys and move out without a fight. Then there are the illegal squatters, appliance thieves and miscellaneous animals - wild and domestic - that abound amid the disorder. Someone has to sort out the mess, and that's where people such as John Zampino, a deputy with the Prince William County Sheriff's Office, come in. Zampino is one of hundreds of deputies across the region who increasingly function as the armed couriers of the real estate meltdown, delivering court documents, serving repossession orders and, when necessary, carrying out evictions. He estimates that he has conducted more than 100 evictions this year, up from two in 2006. "We're never happy about kicking people out of their homes," said Zampino, 36. Read The Full Story Dow Takes Late Dive, Finishes Over 200 Points Down 2008-10-27 20:58:41 Stocks took a late dive Monday afternoon despite investors' excitement earlier in the day over moves by the U.S. Treasury to help banks recover from the credit crisis. The Dow Jones industrial closed down 203 points, or 2.4 percent, after a morning spent mostly in the red and an afternoon rally. The broader Standard & Poor's 500-stock index and the tech-heavy Nasdaq posted losses of about 3 percent, down 27 and 46 points, respectively. Tuesday, the Federal Reserve begins a two-day meeting and is expected to cut the key federal funds rate by half a point, down to one percent. "That is a legitimate reason to be buying stocks," said Richard Cripps, Stifel Nicolaus chief investment officer in Baltimore. "More importantly, we're seeing coordinated action coming out of Europe." The European Central Bank could be moving toward an interest rate cut after President Jean-Claude Trichet said today that such a move was "a possibility" as inflation pressures ease up. Read The Full Story Public Pension Funds Lose Billions In Wall Street Turmoil 2008-10-27 20:58:19 The market downturn is ravaging public pension funds across the United States, with many state and local governments seeing more than 20 percent of their retirement pools swept away in the turmoil. Even before the financial crisis, many large pension funds were considered to be inadequately funded, according to the Government Accountability Office. The losses could force some states and local governments to ask taxpayers to pay more into the funds or to demand more contributions from the police, teachers and other government employees the pensions cover. Public pension funds dropped 14.8 percent in value for the year that ended Sept. 30, according to Northern Trust,  the investment company. The funds, which typically have most of their money in stocks, likely have dropped far more because the markets have dropped another 20 percent since then. "We expect this is going to be the worst year we've seen since we've been tracking the funds," said William Frieske, of Northern Trust Investment Risk and Analytical Services, which began watching the funds 14 years ago. "It's got all the hallmarks of a bad - really bad - year." Virginia's retirement fund, for example, has dropped about 20 percent since July 1, plummeting from $55 billion to $44 billion. Most of that fund was invested in stocks. Read The Full Story Jennifer Hudson's Nephew Found Dead In Missing SUV 2008-10-27 20:57:21 Actress Jennifer Hudson's 7-year-old nephew was found dead on Monday, ending a grim search that began three days ago with the discovery of his murdered grandmother and uncle in the house they shared on Chicago's South Side. Julian King's body was discovered in the back seat of a missing 1984 Chevrolet Suburban parked on a residential street miles from the original crime scene. He had been shot several times. Police superintendent Jody Weis somberly announced the news that Chicago residents had feared since the Oscar-winning actress's mother and brother were murdered Friday in the working class Englewood neighborhood on the city's South Side. "Today, a family and a community are grieving," Weis told reporters this afternoon. The discovery came one day after Hudson, who won an Academy Award for "Dreamgirls," offered a $100,000 reward for information leading to the safe return of Julian, the son of her sister Julia Hudson. Read The Full Story U.S. Air Strike Kills 20 People In Pakistan 2008-10-27 20:56:47 An American drone aircraft hit a militant compound in South Waziristan on Sunday night, killing 20 people, including two important local Taliban commanders known for their attacks against American soldiers in Afghanistan, a senior government official and a local resident said Monday. One of the dead commanders, Eida Khan, was wanted by the Americans for his cross-border attacks from bases in Waziristan, the government official said. The other commander, Wahweed Ullah, worked with Arabs who were part of al-Qaeda, said the local resident. Ullah, in his late 20s, was known as an ideologically committed fighter who specialized in attacks against Americans in Afghanistan, the resident said. The drone launched a missile attack on a compound in the village of Manduta, close to Wana, the capital of South Waziristan, about 20 miles from the border with Afghanistan. Read The Full Story Wall Street Steady After Shares Plunge Overseas 2008-10-27 16:12:27 One of Wall Street’s worst months in history reached its final week on Monday, but the impulse to sell showed some signs of abating. Shares pushed into positive territory after an encouraging report on sales of new homes, which rose more than expected, and then spent most of the day struggling to stay there At about 3:30 p.m, the Dow Jones industrials were down about 7 points after dropping more than 150 points at the opening bell. Both Europe and Asia experienced some declines, including a 6.4 percent drop in the Nikkei, sending the Japanese index to its lowest level since 1982. The Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index was down 0.83 percent, and the Nasdaq composite index was 0.64 percent lower. The home sales report was the second sign in a week that buyers had begun to move back into the beleaguered housing market. Sales of newly constructed homes rose 2.7 percent in September, rising to an annual rate of 464,000. All the gains came in southern and western states. Read The Full Story Editorial: As China Goes, So Goes ... 2008-10-27 16:12:00 Intellpuke: This editorial appeared in the New York Times edition for Sunday, Oct. 26, 2008. As the world tips into recession, China’s economic decisions could affect how other countries fare in the downturn. Over the last 30 years, China has hitched its economy to the industrial world, exporting cheap goods to the United States and other developed nations, building up an enormous trade surplus that will hit about $400 billion this year. As those industrial economies sputter, China is now in a position to pick up some of the slack: selling more of its own goods at home and buying more from the rest of the world. To get China’s consumers to spend, the government will need to spend more at home, investing in public works projects and providing more social benefits - including health insurance and pensions - so its citizens don’t feel they have to save so much for a rainy day. This is clearly in Beijing’s interest, though China’s leaders are still clinging to the old export strategy. China is already feeling the impact of a slower world economy. Both economic growth and export growth have braked sharply. The slowdown threatens job creation, direly needed to absorb millions of rural Chinese seeking employment in the cities. Read The Full Story Mobs Attack U.N. Installations In Congo 2008-10-27 16:11:37 A United Nations mission in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo was "under attack" on Monday, said a U.N. spokesman. A mission staff member inside the U.N. compound, who did not want to give his name for security reasons, said U.N. security forces had returned fire in an attempt to disperse angry crowds near the U.N. compound. Gunshots could be heard as he spoke on the phone. He said the attack had resulted in several deaths, but that could not be confirmed. The assault died down later in the day, a U.N. spokesman said, but people continued to pelt the building. It was unclear who was doing the attacking, but the staff member told CNN that the people were from a village that had been taken over by the CNDP, a Congolese renegade group led by Gen. Laurent Nkunda that seized a major military camp and gorilla park in a renewed bout of heavy fighting Sunday. Read The Full Story Police Probing Hudson Case Find Boy's Body 2008-10-27 15:17:42 Investigators were working Monday to identify the body of a child found in a car on Chicago's West Side, while family members of Oscar-winning singer and actress Jennifer Hudson assumed the worst--that this was her missing nephew. The body was found in the back seat of the white Chevrolet Suburban police were looking for in their search for 7-year-old Julian King, three days after the bodies of Jennifer Hudson's mother and brother were found shot to death in the mother's house in Englewood. Law enforcement sources said that the boy was shot multiple times in the back of the vehicle. Police are testing the clothing of a man in custody for gunshot residue. Hudson family members were expected at the medical examiner's office this afternoon to identify the body. Police Superintendent Jody Weis will hold a press conference at 4 p.m. Monday. Read The Full Story Mystery Writer Tony Hillerman Dies At 83 2008-10-27 15:17:09 Tony Hillerman, author of the acclaimed Navajo Tribal Police mystery novels and creator of two of the most unlikely of literary heroes - Navajo police officers Joe Leaphorn and Jim Chee - died Sunday of pulmonary failure. He was 83. Hillerman's daughter, Anne Hillerman, said her father's health had been declining in the last couple years and that he was at Presbyterian Hospital in Albuquerque, New Mexico, when he died at about 3 p.m. Hillerman lived through two heart attacks and surgeries for prostate and bladder cancer. He kept tapping at his keyboard even as his eyes began to dim, as his hearing faded, as rheumatoid arthritis turned his hands into claws. "I'm getting old," he declared in 2002, "but I still like to write." Anne Hillerman said Sunday that her father was a born storyteller. "He had such a wonderful, wonderful curiosity about the world," she said. "He could take little details and bring them to life, not just in his books, but in conversation, too." Read The Full Story	U.S. Treasury Dept. To Use Bailout Money For Auto Industry 2008-10-28 03:23:36 The Bush administration is in negotiations to broaden its $700 billion financial rescue plan to include U.S. auto companies, potentially opening the door to an array of industries to seek federal aid. Detroit's Big Three are eligible for aid under a broad interpretation of the law that authorized the $700 billion financial rescue, Treasury Department officials said Monday, but they declined to discuss the details of any assistance. "The law grants the secretary broad authority to purchase troubled assets that he deems important to improving financial stability," said Treasury spokeswoman Jennifer Zuccarelli. Ford and General Motors are eligible because they are both chartered as thrift holding companies, so they can establish banks to make car loans nationwide. Other businesses, such as General Electric, Nordstrom, John Deere and Macy's, are chartered in the same way to issue credit cards or make loans to their customers. Chrysler would also be eligible, said Treasury officials. Helping such businesses could put the Treasury in the tricky situation of picking winners and losers within the economy, a far cry from restoring the free flow of credit in the financial system, which was the original intention of the rescue package, some analysts said. It could lead to a long line of companies heading to the Treasury for aid, especially if the holiday shopping season is as disastrous as retailers are forecasting. Read The Full Story Syria Vows To Defend Territory Against Attack 2008-10-28 03:22:58 Syria Monday condemned the U.S. for launching "criminal and terrorist aggression" on its soil, while the Iraqi government defended action against foreign jihadis amid warnings it might complicate plans for a controversial security agreement between Baghdad and Washington. Walid al-Muallem, Syria's foreign minister, used a visit to London to lambast the U.S. for its "cowboy politics" and hinted that Sunday's raid was designed to halt Syria's gradually improving relations with the European Union and Britain. Iran and Russia also condemned the U.S. for aggravating tensions in the region. Syria reported that U.S. troops, backed by helicopters, launched the attack five miles into its territory, killing eight people, including four children. At the funerals of the victims, where angry crowds chanted anti-American slogans, an Associated Press photographer said he saw the bodies of seven men. Read The Full Story Lawyers In Both Political Camps Ready To Keep Eye On Polls 2008-10-27 20:58:30 With heavy voter turnout expected on Election Day, both parties are amassing thousands and thousands of lawyers to keep an eye on the polls. Senator Barack Obama's campaign is expected to send at least 5,000 lawyers to Florida alone. The first recruitment e-mail message the campaign sent out nationally received 6,000 responses from lawyers willing to volunteer. Meanwhile, Senator John McCain's campaign has lined up “Lawyers for McCain” to spread out at polling places in closely contested states as advocates for the ticket. Both campaigns plan to use the lawyers to protect their supporters at the polls, help untangle ballot problems and run to court should litigation be necessary. Given the heated ballot challenges in the 2000 and 2004 elections, getting legal talent on the ground on Election Day is becoming as common a tool for the campaigns as advertising and polling. “Both sides are assembling literally thousands of lawyers at the state level,” said Kenneth Gross, a campaign finance lawyer at Skadden, Arps in Washington who represents both parties. “We’re not talking about Laurence Tribe or David Boies, but there will be no shortage of lawyers looking for any kind of imperfection in the process.” “There’s been a tremendous mobilization effort,” said Gross. Read The Full Story Countries Scramble To Shore Up Economies 2008-10-27 20:57:50 Policy makers around the world, unnerved by the relentless sell-offs of shares, scrambled to support their economies on Monday. In South Korea, the central bank, at an emergency meeting, slashed its key rate by three-quarters of a percentage point, to 4.25 percent. The bank also announced that it would further shore up local banks by purchasing their domestic bonds. The Australian central bank intervened in the currency markets for a second day by buying Australian dollars to prop up the exchange rate. The Bank of Israel lowered interest rates by a quarter of a point, and the Bank of Canada said that it would add 6 billion Canadian dollars, or $4.7 billion in liquidity to that country’s markets. In Japan, Prime Minister Taro Aso said the government would expand a program that gives banks access to public funds and would strengthen regulation on the short-selling of shares. But that was not enough to head off another sharp slide in shares in Tokyo. In Europe, with evidence mounting that the Continent is lurching into a recession, the European Central Bank president, Jean-Claude Trichet,said it was “possible” that the bank would lower interest rates for a second time in as many months, after making its first move alongside other central banks on Oct. 8. “It is not a certainty, it is a possibility,” said Trichet. Read The Full Story U.S. Officials Confirm Commando Raid In Syria 2008-10-27 20:57:01 A raid into Syria on Sunday was carried out by American Special Operations forces who killed an Iraqi militant responsible for running weapons, money and foreign fighters across the border into Iraq, American officials said Monday. The helicopter-borne attack into Syria was by far the boldest by American commandos in the five years since the United States invaded Iraq and began to condemn Syria’s role in stoking the Iraqi insurgency. The timing was startling, not least because American officials had praised Syria in recent months for its efforts to halt traffic across the border. In justifying the attack, American officials said the Bush administration was determined to operate under an expansive definition of self-defense providing a rationale for strikes on militant targets in sovereign nations without those countries’ consent. Together with a similar American commando raid into Pakistan seven weeks ago, the operation on Sunday appeared to reflect an intensifying effort by the White House to find a way during the administration’s waning months to attack militants even beyond the borders of Iraq and Afghanistan, where the United States is now at war. Administration officials declined to say whether the emerging application of self-defense could lead to strikes against camps inside Iran that have been used to train Shiite “Special Groups” that have fought with the American military and Iraqi security forces. Read The Full Story BREAKING NEWS: Sen. Ted Stevens Found Guilty In Corruption Trial 2008-10-27 16:36:57 Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens was convicted of seven corruption charges Monday in a trial that tainted the 40-year Senate career of Alaska's political patriarch. The verdict, coming barely a week before Election Day, added further uncertainty to a closely watched Senate race. Democrats hope to seize the once reliably Republican seat as part of their bid for a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate. Stevens, 84, was convicted of all the charges he faced of lying about free home renovations and other gifts from a wealthy oil contractor. Jurors began deliberating last week. The senator showed no emotion as the jury foreman said "guilty" seven times. After the verdicts, Stevens sat in his chair and stared at the ceiling as attorney Brendan Sullivan put his arm around him. Stevens faces up to five years in prison on each count when he is sentenced, but under federal guidelines he is likely to receive much less prison time, if any. The judge originally scheduled sentencing for Jan. 26 but then changed his mind and did not immediately set a date. The month-long trial revealed that employees for VECO Corp., an oil services company, transformed Stevens' modest mountain cabin into a modern, two-story home with wraparound porches, a sauna and a wine cellar. Read The Full Story Second-Guessing The Palin Pick 2008-10-27 16:12:15 Last week, Tom Ridge, the former Pennsylvania governor, said that Senator John McCain might now be on the verge of winning Pennsylvania - the mainly Democratic state where McCain is investing considerable time and energy in these final days of his presidential campaign - had he chosen Ridge as his running mate. Senator Lindsey Graham, the senator from South Carolina and one of McCain’s closest friends and advisers, has in recent days been quite direct in saying that he counseled McCain to choose Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, of Connecticut, for the second spot. Lieberman, he said, would have been a breakthrough choice, winning McCain plaudits and support from independent voters who are weary of partisanship. McCain may still win the election. Still, anticipating that he will fall short, the pre-postmortems have already begun, both inside and outside his campaign headquarters. And without question, the biggest one is whether he would have been in a better position today had he not chosen Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as his running-mate. The answer, in the view of many Republicans and Democrats, is almost certainly yes. Read The Full Story Two Shot Dead On Arkansas Campus 2008-10-27 16:11:50 Two students were killed and a third person was wounded in a shooting on Sunday night outside a dormitory on the campus of the University of Central Arkansas, in Conway, said college officials. The shooting at the university, a liberal arts institution about 30 miles north of Little Rock, occurred shortly after 9 p.m. and prompted police to lock down the entire campus. Classes were canceled on Monday and scheduled to resume on Tuesday. University officials identified the student victims as Ryan Henderson, an 18-year-old from Little Rock who was pronounced dead at a local hospital, and Chavares Block, 19, from Dermott, Arkansas, who died at the scene. The third victim, Martrevis Norman, a 19-year-old from Blytheville, Arkansas, was treated at Conway Regional Medical Center for a gunshot wound to his leg and released late Sunday night. Officials said he is not a student at the university. The police said there were four suspects in the shooting, two of whom have already been taken into custody. One was stopped in a car near the campus Sunday night by police officers acting on information from witnesses, and the other walked into the university police department hours after the shooting. All four are men from central Arkansas, investigators said. Presten Gumbles, a spokesman for the university police, said the motivation for the shooting was unclear, but added, “We do not believe at this time that it was a random act.” Read The Full Story 'Possible Verdict' In Sen. Stevens' Trial 2008-10-27 16:11:26 Jurors in Sen. Ted Stevens' corruption trial passed a note with "a potential verdict" to a federal judge Monday, said a courthouse spokesman. The jury has been beset by problems since deliberations began Wednesday. Courthouse spokesman Sheldon Snook said the panel sent a note Monday. Attorneys for both sides were called back to court Monday for a reading of the note. The ambiguity of the note's description, though, apparently leaves open the possibility that jurors have been unable to reach a unanimous verdict. If so, the judge likely would send them back to continue deliberating. In a tight election year, the verdict has the potential to alter the nation's political landscape. The Senate's longest-serving Republican is fending off an aggressive Democratic challenger. If Stevens is convicted, it would hurt his chance of keeping a seat he's held for generations. And it could push Democrats toward a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate. Read The Full Story U.S. Helicopter Shot Down In Afghanistan By Insurgents 2008-10-27 15:17:20 Insurgents Monday downed a U.S. helicopter in a province near the capital, the American military said - a highly unusual feat for the Taliban. The crew survived and was rescued, an American military spokesman said. Also Monday, a suicide bomber disguised as an Afghan policeman killed two American soldiers at a police station in northern Afghanistan, said provincial officials. The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack, which also injured some Afghan officers, according to police in Baghlan province. The U.S. military confirmed the deaths of two members of the U.S.-led coalition in the bombing in Baghlan's provincial capital, Pul-e-Khumri, but did not immediately confirm their nationalities. Three coalition soldiers were hurt, a spokesman said. The downed helicopter had been flying over Wardak province, west of Kabul, when it came under small-arms fire from insurgents, said U.S. spokesman Lt. Cmdr. Walter Matthews. The crew returned fire, but the craft was forced down, he said. Read The Full Story
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