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Violent extremists calling fighters to Somalia

2010-04-27T02:28:00.000-07:00

In Somalia's enduring chaos, militant groups have for years come and gone. Today's most powerful -- Al Shabaab -- are much more menacing, say those in Mogadishu.
In Arabic, Al Shabaab means 'the youth', but it is too far-reaching to be just a rabble of youngsters. It controls much of central and southern Somalia and large parts of the capital Mogadishu.
And after years of pledging allegiance to al Qaeda, Al Shabaab formalized the relationship in February. Since then, the Somali government says there's been an influx of foreign fighters.
"With regard to the fighting that's going on in Afghanistan, in Pakistan and in Yemen, some people are looking for a place to hide and Somalia is a good candidate for that," said Somali President Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed, who leads the weak, U.N.-backed Transitional Federal Government (TFG).
Ahmed was once a senior, moderate figure in the Union of Islamic Courts -- an alliance that included Al Shabaab and which held power in Somalia for six months in 2006 before being overthrown by Ethiopian forces.
The Ethiopians remained until early 2009 when the TFG took tentative control, clinging to a small part of Mogadishu, and protected by African Union (AU) peacekeepers mainly from Uganda and Burundi.
A quiet figure, President Ahmed sits in his office at the palace grounds while government troops outside fire warning shots to prevent people from venturing too close.

"We used to estimate the number of foreign fighters to be between 800 and 1,200 but that number seems to have been growing," he said.
Al Shabaab has reached out to Somalis living in the West, radicalizing young Muslims via the Internet and encouraging them to move back to the country to join the Jihad.
In November 2009, eight Somali-American men from the U.S. state of Minnesota were charged with offenses including attending Al Shabaab terrorist training camps and fighting for the group. In August 2009 two Somalis were arrested in Melbourne, Australia, for allegedly planning a suicide attack on a military facility.
And a naturalized-American suicide bomber, who blew himself up killing 29 people in October 2008, was born in Somalia.
Although the suicide attack took place in Northern Somalia, there is a growing debate as to whether those Somalis living in the West who are recruited by Al Shabaab may return to the U.S., Canada or Europe to stage attacks.
"[Somalia is] a place to hide and a place to fight, not only with the West but with anybody who disagrees with them," said the president. "They go from place to place but their objectives don't change, they fight people of all persuasions."
This is commonly noted by Somalis who talk about Al Shabaab -- they not only violently oppose the West, but also other Somalis who don't support their war.
"If you are not with them, you are against them," said one official at Mogadishu Airport when asked to describe the group's outlook.
Many Somalis live in fear of even appearing to dissent from the group's orders.
At the African Union base they opened the military hospital to the public in response to the lack of medical facilities in the city. When they run out of drugs and instead issue prescriptions, even the desperately ill throw them away, knowing the risks of being caught with such evidence of "collusion."
In February, the group banned the U.N. World Food Program, even though millions rely on food aid for survival.
Music and radio stations have been banned as well as school bells, which were recently declared too Christian by Al Shabaab and their allies.
Stories of the brutal nature of their control over the city's streets make their way through the hospital staff and into the A.U. camp.
Tales of dismemberment, bodies being chopped up and sent back to families, routine executions, even people being skinned alive emanate from neighborhoods closed off to the international community or any form of governance.
Leaning over the wall of a lookout post at the notorious Kilometer Four junction, one soldier points to a minaret. "That's the Red Mosque," he says. "That's where they chop people up."
Such a fate is often promised to Major Ba-Ho Ku, the Ugandan spokesman for the peacekeepers.
Callers to his cell phone promise death and dismemberment. He dismisses the group as misguided and accuses them of making the lives of ordinary Somalis horrific.
"It's so sad," he says, hanging up on another sinister voice. "They don't know what they are doing. They are just killing their own people."
It is estimated that around half the population of Mogadishu have fled to refugee camps.
Those left behind are caught in an increasingly deadly form of urban warfare. Senior A.U. military figures say the signs of al Qaeda's hand in the fighting are visible through the use of Improvised Explosive Devices, or IEDs, and suicide bombings.
Most of the fighting goes on between the local TFG forces, weak and underfunded, and Al Shabaab.
At the A.U.'s hospital the morning after a skirmish in town, TFG soldiers lie of stretchers, thin and bleeding. Colonel Dr James Kiyengo, a surgeon, leans over one soldier injured by an IED.
"This kind of injury has increased," he says. "Earlier on the soldiers could move out of the camp and come back, and when the Ethiopians withdrew there was a vacuum that was filled.
"I think the insurgents came closer, and into the city, such that we found that these injuries increased. Earlier on there were no IEDs, not as common as it is now."
A major offensive against Al Shabaab to retake large areas of the city has been rumored for months. Military leaders in Mogadishu play down the reports, saying the move against Al Shabaab will happen gradually.
Last month the New York Times reported that the U.S. had become so concerned with the group's activities across Somalia and in Yemen, across the Gulf of Aden, that they were giving direct military support to the TFG. This was strongly denied in Washington.
"The United States does not plan, does not direct, and does not coordinate the military operations of the TFG, and we have not and will not be providing direct support for any potential military offensives," Johnnie Carson, Assistant Secretary of State for Africa, told reporters. "Further, we are not providing nor paying for military advisors for the TFG. There is no desire to Americanize the conflict in Somalia."
The dull whir of a nightly drone circling Mogadishu's skies however only adds to speculation amongst locals.
"The American's gather intelligence," one official whispered. "But they don't share it with the Somali government."

Treasury unveils new $100 bill

2010-04-22T03:22:00.000-07:00

Benjamin Franklin gets a facelift as the Treasury Department unveils a new $100 bill Wednesday, the first remake of the denomination since 1996.
The new design for the $100 note made its debut during a 10:30 a.m. ceremony at the Department of the Treasury's Cash Room attended by Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke.
"The $100 note is the highest value denomination of U.S. currency in general circulation, and it circulates broadly around the world," according to a statement from the Bureau of Engraving and Printing. The denomination is popular when large amounts of cash need to be carried internationally.
Anti-counterfeiting measures are the main reason the United States has been making changes in currency.
The currency changes started in 1996 with the $100 bill, followed by a new $20 bill in 2003. The $50 bill got an overhaul in 2004, and the $10 was redesigned in 2006. The $5 bill was upgraded in 2008.
Watch CNNMoney video: Meet the new Benjamin
Security features added to the paper help people to spot bogus bills. They include watermarks and an embedded security thread.

Black farmers call on Congress to pay racial bias settlement

2010-04-22T03:10:00.000-07:00

African-American farmers hoping for government settlement money in a racial bias case met with lawmakers Wednesday and called on Congress to come up with a way to fund the $1 billion deal.
A March 31 deadline to appropriate the funds has passed, and farmers now may withdraw from the settlement and pursue independent litigation against the government. Congress now has a target date of the end of May to come up with a plan.
"We spend a billion dollars on a jet to go bomb somebody. We're talking about a billion dollars to help feed our country, and I just don't see why Congress and the president can't go ahead and find [the funds]. It is an emergency," said Gary Grant, with the Black Farmers and Agriculturalists Association.
Litigation known as the Pigford Case established a longstanding pattern of discrimination at the U.S. Agriculture Department against African-American farmers who had applied for farm loans and support from federal programs.
Under the terms of an involved process overseen by a federal judge and dating to 1999, qualified farmers could receive $50,000 each to settle claims of racial bias. In addition, U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack has said those farmers may pursue a claim for actual damages from the bias and potentially receive up to $250,000.
Ralph Paige, executive director of the Federation of Southern Cooperatives/Land Assistance Fund, said Wednesday that he believed that Congress was "very close" to coming up with a way to pay the settlement, which covers as many as 80,000 African-American farmers.
"These farmers have suffered much, much too long, and it's time that this thing get behind us. We can settle Pigford once and for all and send a clear message to the country that we are on the right track as a nation," Paige said at news conference.
"We're talking about much more than the money. We are talking about remedying past discrimination," Paige said.
Rep. G.K. Butterfield, D-North Carolina, said there is a "total commitment" from President Obama and the majority party in the House and Senate to make sure the settlement is taken care of. Butterfield represents his state's First Congressional District, which is home to Timothy Pigford, who filed the class-action lawsuit more than a decade ago.
Butterfield said lawmakers need to work out how to pay for the settlement under the PAYGO rule, meaning Congress must balance any increased spending with equal savings elsewhere. The other option would be to designate the settlement as an emergency, which would be exempt from PAYGO.
Lawmakers are looking for an appropriate piece of legislation in which to include the settlement to avoid adding to the deficit, Butterfield said.
"If we cannot find the appropriate vehicle, then I would certainly support declaring this settlement as a national emergency and adding it to the next supplemental that may be on the House floor," he said.
Farmers have until May 31 to withdraw from the pending class-action settlement and pursue an independent claim against the government if they feel their chances would be better for a payout. If they choose to stay in the class, they will wait as a group to apply for the promised monetary damages.
Vilsack has said there's no question the damages are due for African-American farmers. In a statement last week, he said, "I have met with and talked to key stakeholders and members of Congress reiterating the administration's ongoing efforts to close this chapter in the history of the department."

Brazil, India pressure China on currency

2010-04-22T02:55:00.000-07:00

China is facing growing pressure from other developing countries to begin appreciating its currency, providing unexpected allies for the US in the diplomatic tussle over Beijing's exchange rate policy.
Speaking ahead of a meeting of finance ministers and central bank heads from the Group of 20 countries which starts on Thursday in Washington, Indian and Brazilian central bank presidents have made the most forceful statements yet by their countries about case for a stronger Chinese currency.
While most of the public pressure on China has come from the US, the comments underline that a number of developing economies feel that China's dollar peg has imposed costs on their economies.
CNN readers weigh in on U.S.-China currency flap
Henrique Meirelles, head of the Brazilian central bank, said that a stronger Chinese currency was "absolutely critical for the equilibrium of the world economy". He said there were "some distortions in world markets, one of them is a lack of growth and another is China".
Duvvuri Subbarao, governor of the Reserve Bank of India said that an undervalued renminbi was creating problems for countries, including India.
"If China revalues the yuan, it will have a positive impact on our external sector," Mr Subbarao said. "If some countries manage their exchange rate and keep them artificially low, the burden of adjustment falls on some countries that do not manage their exchange rate so actively."
How much more would you spend on Chinese goods?

Lee Hsien Loong, prime minister of Singapore, added his country's voice to the debate last week, saying it was "in China's own interests" with the financial crisis over to have a more flexible exchange rate.
Some in China have fended off US pressure for a stronger currency, describing it as a distraction from the real causes of the financial crisis. However, criticism from developing countries is not so easy to bat away. "If the rich and emerging economies are united in asking China to revalue, it would be harder to dismiss the request as an example of superpower arrogance," said Sebastian Mallaby at the Council on Foreign Relations.
The increase in criticism of China comes at a time of relative calm between Beijing and Washington over the issue, with many US officials and analysts assuming China has already decided to abandon its peg with the dollar over coming months.
The impact of China's currency policy on other developing countries is not clear-cut, however. Although a number have seen their currencies appreciate sharply over the past year, putting pressure on their exports and exposing them to fiercer competition from China, the economic recovery in China has also provided a boost, especially for its neighbours in Asia as well as commodity-producing countries such as Brazil

The Wall Street 'bailout' that isn't

2010-04-22T02:08:00.000-07:00

When Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell decided last week to portray the Democratic version of financial regulation as a Wall Street "bailout," it seemed like a brilliant, albeit cynical, political move.
What do the voters hate even more than Wall Street? Bailouts. What's the perfect way to combine their antagonism for big banks with their distaste for taxpayer-funded bailouts? Accuse the Democrats of bailing out the banks. Perfect.
A good political move in theory, only it didn't work. First, the outcry was over a "bailout" that wasn't. Granted, there is some money in the bill -- $50 billion -- but it's provided by the banks, not the taxpayers. And it's not there to bail out banks, it's to help the sick ones die properly without creating a panic. "Paying for the funeral" is the way Treasury sources describe it.
Republicans complain it would "open the door" to future taxpayer-funded bailouts. Really? "The notion is wrong," said Elizabeth Warren, who runs congressional oversight of bank bailouts. "At the end of what McConnell calls a bailout, the company is dead."
And get this: When the GOP leadership hatched this idea, it found more than a handful of Republicans -- and not just the usual moderate suspects -- who actually want to vote for financial reform. In fact, the difference between Wall Street reform and, say, health care reform, is that "there truly is a group of us who will hold our side's feet to the fire" to get a bill, one Senate Republican told me.
So when McConnell got all his Republicans to sign a measure to force more negotiations before bringing the bill to the floor, some were with him with a strong caveat: They would not threaten to filibuster a bill they think the country needs. Period.
And then there's the presidential X-factor: With health care, President Obama didn't actively engage until late in the game. This time, though, lesson learned: The president is out there. "This one's easier," senior White House adviser David Axelrod tells me. "Our goal is to be as aggressive as possible." Hence a trip Thursday to the lion's den on Wall Street where he's not going to make nice.
And one more thing. He's not going to let Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid write this bill. Been there, done that.
So have the Republicans. And it worked once, on health care, which is still not popular with the American people. But financial reform is different. Voters want it done. In most cases, the supply of government exceeds the demand for it. In fact, a slew of recent polls show that only about 20 percent of the people trust the government to do the right thing. But even so, a majority of folks actually want the government to intervene to fix Wall Street's excesses.
In other words, the banks are so out of control that even the inept government needs to step in and do something.
So it's no surprise that, after some public chest-thumping, the sides are reported to be back at the negotiating table. Truth is, they never left. Serious senators concerned with reform had always been working on it -- but quietly, for months. The GOP leadership takes credit for moving the process along. They may have lit a fire, that's true, but under the Democrats, who were not about to cave.
Negotiate, yes. But kill the bill? Not a chance.
The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Gloria Borger.

Starbucks profit soars as customers come back

2010-04-22T02:05:00.000-07:00

There may not be a Starbucks on every corner any more, but Americans are finding their way back into the upscale coffee retailer's stores.
Starbucks' profit surged in the quarter ended March 28, topping Wall Street forecasts and prompting the coffee retailer to boost its forecast for 2010.

The world's largest coffee chain reported earnings of $217.3 million, or 28 cents per share. Stripping out restructuring charges, Starbucks posted an adjusted profit of 29 cents per share. Analysts polled by Thomson Reuters, who typically exclude one-time items from their forecast, were looking for earnings of 25 cents per share.
Sales jumped 9% to $2.5 billion, beating analysts' expectations of $2.4 billion.
Starbucks (SBUX, Fortune 500)' shares rose nearly 2% on the news in aftermarket trading, after rising 0.5% during regular hours.
Over the past two years, Starbucks cut costs by closing hundreds of stores, trimming its workforce, overhauling its food menu and adjusting drink prices. The changes finally took hold last quarter, when the company reported a profit that quadrupled its earnings from a year earlier.
Since then, Starbucks has teamed up with Burger King to serve Seattle's Best Coffee and announced it will pay out dividends to shareholders for the first time ever beginning Friday.
Same-store sales, which measure sales at stores open at least a year and are a key gauge of customer traffic, climbed 7% in both the United States and international markets.
U.S. growth was driven by a 5% rise in spending and a 3% uptick in traffic, marking the first increase in more than three years. "An important milestone" for the company, said chief financial officer Troy Alstead.
"Clearly, customers are opening up their wallets and coming back to the brand," said Bart Glenn, analyst at D.A. Davidson.
With business reinvigorated in the United States, Alstead said Starbucks' "best days lie ahead of us." He expects the lion's share of growth for the company to be in opening more stores overseas, with China being the largest market.
0:00 /2:07Starbucks steams into China
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Starbucks raised its outlook and said it expects to earn between $1.19 and $1.22 per share for the full year. In its last forecast, the company said it expected to earn up to $1.09 per share in 2010.
The company also said it is on track to open 100 stores in the United States and 200 in international markets this year, as announced last fall.

Obama to push for tougher financial rules for Wall Street

2010-04-22T02:00:00.000-07:00

President Obama is expected to call on Wall Street to join him in his efforts to reform the financial sector in a visit to Manhattan Thursday.
The address at Cooper Union For The Advancement Of Science & Art will take place just blocks from the heart of Wall Street.
Likely provisions of any reform legislation would include making banks and financial firms strengthen their capital cushions, as well as creating a new process for taking down giant failing companies and preventing future Wall Street bailouts.
Other topics for reform would include creating a new consumer financial protection regulator and keeping an eye on the kind of complex financial dealings that led to the crisis.
Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke weighed in on one of those issues last week.

During a congressional hearing, when asked whether a consumer financial regulator should be able to act independently of existing regulators, Bernanke said that unchecked independence could adversely impact credit availability for consumers.
Once back in Washington, the president is expected to ask congressional leaders for bipartisan support on a reform bill.
On Wednesday, the Senate Agriculture Committee voted 13-8 in favor of a bill, which would impose regulations on the complex system of Wall Street trades known as derivatives.
Watch how derivatives work
Senate leaders now will look at merging the measure with a financial regulations reform bill already passed by the Senate Banking Committee that is headed for debate by the full chamber.
The House passed a regulatory overhaul in December.
The White House has started some preliminary discussions on Capitol Hill, with Obama meeting with congressional leaders last week in the administration's push for regulatory overhaul.
"All of us recognize that we cannot have a circumstance in which a meltdown in the financial sector once again puts the entire economy in peril," Obama said. "I'm absolutely confident that we can work out an effective bipartisan package that assures that we never have too big to fail again."

Goldman CEO fights back on SEC charges

2010-04-22T01:47:00.000-07:00

Lloyd Blankfein on Wednesday attacked the Securities & Exchange Commission's fraud charges in telephone calls to clients as Goldman escalated its campaign to stem the damage to the firm's reputation.
One person who received a call from the Goldman chief said he was told the regulator's case against the bank was politically motivated and would ultimately "hurt America".
Mr Blankfein mounted the campaign to bolster the confidence of its business partners in the wake of the SEC charges that the bank had sold investors a security designed to fail.
In the conversations with private equity executives and others, Mr Blankfein left clients with the impression that he was eager to fight the charges in court. The SEC has requested a jury trial. "He was very aggressive," said one person called by Mr Blankfein on Wednesday. "He feels that the government is out to kill them, that they are under attack and the whole thing is totally political." Mr Blankfein said the SEC action "hurts America", this person said.
Mr Blankfein did not initiate talk about the politics or timing of the SEC charge, announced on Friday. A person familiar with the matter said: "Clients brought up the politics ... and there was a discussion around the context of what happened."

Mr Blankfein's charm offensive with clients came as it emerged that Fabrice Tourre, the Goldman employee also named in the SEC case, would appear with him next week before a US Senate panel investigating Wall Street's role in the financial crisis.
Mr Blankfein said a female staffer at ACA, the manager of the security, new that Paulson & Co intended to bet against the transaction, according to a person that was called. This goes against the SEC charges that Goldman failed to disclose that Paulson was taking the opposite side of the deal. Paulson's short position yielded it a profit of about $1bn while investors who bought into the security lost $1bn, the SEC complaint says.
Goldman this week bolstered its legal team by hiring Greg Craig, a former counsel to the Obama White House. Though Mr Blankfein did not indicate on the calls whether he was considering settling the suit, some clients close to Goldman say they believe it is gearing up for a fight. "They will likely fight aggressively and hope to win clean," the person said.
SEC staff have said that regulators would seek disgorgement of Goldman's profits on the transaction as well as penalties and injunctive relief.
Goldman maintains it made a loss on the transaction. But its argument was hurt by the disclosure on Wednesday that the loss resulted from a failure to sell some positions in the deal.

Mobile app developers tackle Africa's biggest problems

2010-04-13T03:29:00.000-07:00

Growing up on a dairy farm in central Kenya, Amos Gichamba says he watched farmers be exploited by the people who bought their cows' milk and sold it to dairy companies.
"The price of milk at the farmer level is very low compared to how much it's sold to consumers. So they end up getting very little money for a lot of work," he said by phone.
The problem, he thought, was one of information. The rural farmers didn't know how much they could charge for their cows' milk. They didn't know what rates dairy farmers other villages were being paid. And without a sense of current market conditions, they weren't sure when to ramp up or slow down production. All of this made them easy targets for scams.
So, with all that in mind, Gichamba, 26, decided to create what he sees as the perfect technological solution for the farmers: a mobile phone app.
He created a text message-based system that lets farmers send questions to a computer. When the app launches at the end of April, a machine will match up farmers' queries with a database of information about local dairy markets -- and then spit answers back in 140 characters or less.
"As Africans, we are the ones who understand Africa the best," he said. "We see situations from the ground. We are involved with what's happening. So, when we are coming up with solutions, we come up with solutions for problems we know."
Gichamba is one of a number of mobile app developers to crop up in Africa in recent years. While developers in the United States rush to make flashy games for Apple's latest gizmo, the iPad, these young developers are trying to tackle Africa's most vexing problems.
Many are doing so with simple text message applications on phones that cost no more than $25.
Text message phone apps now help African people check market prices, transfer money, learn languages and alert authorities to the need for food or other aid in the event of a disaster. And this all comes despite Africa's reputation as the "least wired" continent in the world.
The work of these mobile developers is buoyed in part by the fact that while wired telephone lines and broadband Internet connections are very rare in Africa, cell phone use is exploding.
Mobile phone subscriptions in Africa are growing at a rate of about 50 percent per year in recent years, faster than that of any other continent, according to the International Telecommunication Union. A 2009 ITU report found 28 percent of people in Africa have a mobile phone subscription. By contrast, only 5 percent of people there use the Internet, the ITU says.
In Jessica Colaco's view, the ubiquity of mobile phones makes them vehicles for social change.
The 27-year-old mobile developer says that in some ways, Africa is taking the lead in developing apps that can be used in rural places and can improve livelihoods.
"What we need is more evangelism," she said. "People need to know what Africa is doing -- and how they can adopt from us."
Colaco, who is also a researcher at Strathmore University in Nairobi, Kenya, started a "boot camp" program for young people who want to become app developers. So far, she's held two sessions with 100 participants each, she said, and she has plans for more.
The group has inspired competition and yielded tangible results, she said.
One student, for instance, created a text message app that alerts fishermen when fish trigger sensors in a certain area of a local lake, she said. That way, the fishermen will know exactly where and when to put their lines in the water.
"People in the environment know exactly what they need," Colaco told CNN.
Colaco said African technologists should emulate the successes of Western companies like Apple and Google, but they must work on ideas that work specifically in local conditions.
Her first mobile app was a smartphone map of Nairobi. It came out in 2007, before Google had published detailed maps of the area, she said. She lived there, so she knew that a mobile map would be useful -- and that one didn't exist.
Other developers relayed similar experiences.
Ory Okolloh started the mobile-informed Web site Ushahidi after she traveled to Kenya to vote in the 2007 elections, which turned violent. She posted reports about the violence on her blog, and she asked people to tell their own stories as comments to her posts.
The comment fields filled up so quickly that she thought to create a site where people could share their stories by text message immediately after a crisis. She paired those reports with a map to make the data more useful for crisis responders.
Okolloh emphasized the site is a team effort, with 10 full-time staff members now.
The code that supports the site is available for free and has been used in several disasters since, including the January earthquake in Haiti and the "snowmageddon" storm in Washington, D.C., this February.
"At the heart of apps that have been successful and that will continue to be successful are apps that are practical and allow people to do something that they weren't able to do before -- either with a bank account or to communicate, which is at the heart of Ushahidi ... to allow people to get their story out," she said by phone from Johannesburg, South Africa, where she lives now.
Okolloh said people should be able to develop apps that work all over the world, "whether they're in Alaska or in Timbuktu."
But Africa has a history of "tinkering" -- led by people who learn by necessity to make the most of their limited resources -- that gives the continent's app developers a certain creative, make-it-work determination, she said.
"Just the art of tinkering and making something out of nothing has a long history and tradition that still goes on," she said. "What you're begging to see is shifting that mindset of making something out of nothing into technology."
A number of barriers remain for app development and tech deployment in Africa.
Jon Gosier, founder of a Uganda-based company called Appfrica, said some people aren't comfortable getting information through text, or don't know how to send accurate queries to text-based apps. Others simply can't read. His company tested a call-center model, also tried in India, where farmers can call a free hotline to get information about crop disease.
The number of farmers who use cell phone apps is relatively small, he said.
"I think it's being tried a lot and I think there's a lot of use, but it has to be more ingrained just in, like, people's daily workflow than it is," he said.
Developers said smartphones will have to get much cheaper in order for masses of people to purchase them. The mobile Web and wired broadband connections also have to improve in Africa for tech innovation to make the next leap, the developers said.
And the use of text messaging to get information from a database or an entire social network is relatively new for most people, who tend to think of phones only for one-on-one communication, according to Gichamba, the former farmer in Kenya.
But the African app makers seem largely hopeful.
Gichamba says the phone, especially when enabled with apps, has the power to change people's lives.

Bangkok battles hit tourist industry

2010-04-13T03:06:00.000-07:00

Thailand's political turmoil which culminated in the weekend's running street battles is starting to take its toll on tourism, the lifeblood of the economy.
More than 40 countries have issued travel warnings amid reports of thousands of tourists cancelling trips.
The Ministry of Finance said growth in gross domestic product, once estimated at 3.5 to 4.5 per cent for 2010, would be cut by 0.2 to 0.5 per cent because of the unrest. Eknitti Nitithanprapar, executive director of the macro-economic policy bureau at the finance ministry, said tourism and consumption-related industries would be hardest hit.
The severity of the blow was felt on the stock market on Monday, where shares in the travel and leisure sector were hard hit. Thai Airways shares were down 13.6 per cent, contributing to a market fall of 3.6 per cent.
The SET Index, which until last week had proved remarkably resilient to the month-long anti-government demonstrations, has now lost 6.4 per cent since the government of Abhisit Vejjajiva, the prime minister, invoked a state of emergency last Wednesday.
Tourism, which draws visitors to the temples of Bangkok, the beaches of the Andaman Sea and the mountains of northern Thailand, accounts for almost 7 per cent of GDP, and is an important source of employment.
The family of Tomas Oyarzun, a 19-year-old from Chile, who arrived on Saturday to stay in Bangkok's Khao San Road on the fringe of the fighting, are cutting short their holiday and going to Bali.
"It feels strange here," said Mr Oyarzun, echoing the feelings of many other visitors interviewed by the Financial Times on Monday in the wake of the violence that left 21 people dead.
Tourists party near shrines for Bangkok protest dead

Vichit Prakobgosol, president of the Thai-Chinese Tourism Alliance Association, told the Bangkok Post the violence had led to cancellations of all charter flights from China. Charter flights for holidays during this week's Thai Songkran new year festival had already dropped to just 30 from 100 even before the violence.
"But now all charter flights from China have been cancelled," he said. "We don't want to talk about it any more. Violence is not the right answer and is not good for the country. Everyone, the red shirts included, will be affected."
iReport: Were you there? Send your images, video
Dale Lawrence of the Pacific Asia Travel Association said there was "a dark cloud hanging over the travel and tourism industry. You can't blame people for making alternative plans -- there is no end in sight."
But Mr Lawrence pointed out that Thailand's tourism market had proved robust in the past. Tourist numbers last year were marginally up on 2008 despite the global downturn and the closure of Bangkok's two main airports by protests in December 2008.
Mr Lawrence said the 'Mice' market -- meetings, incentive travel, conferences and exhibitions -- is likely to have been badly hit. Many companies are unable to get insurance to send executives to countries with travel bans in place.
iReport: Watch an eyewitness video of protests
The Thai government set up a scheme over the weekend offering coverage of up to $10,000 for loss of life or a limb and up to $100 a day for losses or damages.
The demonstrators who took on troops on Saturday have been campaigning for a month for Mr Abhisit's resignation. The street battles erupted when soldiers moved in to clear one of the main protest sites near the Khao San Road.
One end of the road still looks like a warzone, with a shrine marking where a protester died. But 40 yards away, western backpackers on Monday were celebrating Songkran with music and water-pistol fights. Businesses said it was a quieter festival than normal, but it was going ahead.
Mr Oyarzun, when asked if he would come back to Thailand after what he had seen, gave a one-word answer: "Definitely".

Report: Airline industry performance up

2010-04-13T02:44:00.000-07:00

The performance of the airline industry improved in 2009, compared with the previous year, according to an annual report released Monday.
The 2010 Airline Quality Rating report compiles information on 18 U.S. airlines based on factors such as on-time arrivals, denied boardings, mishandled baggage and customer complaints.
Overall, the airline industry recorded the third-highest score in the 19 years researchers have tracked their performance, the report said.
Fourteen airlines improved their on-time arrival performance in 2009, the report said, though only six airlines had an on-time percentage greater than 80 percent.
Customer complaints fell industrywide to 0.97 per 100,000 passengers, from 1.15 per 100,000 passengers.
The Airline Quality Rating report is a joint research project by Purdue and Wichita State universities. The study is based on figures compiled by the U.S. Department of Transportation.
Hawaiian Airlines had the best on-time performance for 2009, with 92.1 percent. With 69 percent on-time arrivals, Comair recorded the industry's lowest rate in this category, the report said.

The report said Hawaiian was the best-performing airline in 2009, followed closely by AirTran Airways. JetBlue, Northwest and Southwest rounded up the top five.
Among major carriers, Continental was ranked sixth, U.S. Airways eighth, American ninth, United 13th and Delta 15th.
Compared with 2008, the airline industry scored higher in every category except for denied boardings, which shouldn't come as a surprise, said Dean Headley, a Wichita State professor and one of the report's authors.
"You would expect denied boardings to increase as you tighten up on the number of seats that are available," Headley said in a statement. "When you look at the past 10 years, you find that the airline industry performs most efficiently when the system isn't stressed by high passenger volume."
There's also an explanation for why the airlines did better in the other areas, said Claes Fornell, a professor of business at the University of Michigan and creator of the American Customer Satisfaction Index.
"What has happened is that because there are fewer flights, fewer passengers, you know airlines have been able to lose fewer bags and arrive on time more often, and that's what's driving the numbers up," he said.
"But of course they are losing money also, so this is not a sign that the airlines have really improved. It's a sign of weak demand, and it's easy to handle fewer customers than many customers."
Joe Brancatelli, who flies several times a month and runs JoeSentMe.com, a Web site for business travelers, said he is no fan of the report.
The report "is such a small part of the overall experience, it's almost unimportant, in my opinion," he said.
"There is nothing in this that the government hasn't already reported and it doesn't address the issues the government doesn't address, which is the waits at airports, the fact that there are no empty seats on the plane, which makes the experience terrible, the fee issue -- all those things also go into the experience."
One of the reasons why low-cost carriers are at the top of the ranking is because people know what to expect from their experience, Brancatelli said.
"The ones that do the best -- JetBlue, Southwest, AirTran -- it's not that they're smaller, it's that they're more consistent. They do the same thing every flight, every seat, every route, every day," he said.

Markets rally on Greek aid resolution

2010-04-13T02:40:00.001-07:00

Share prices in Athens rose 3.5 per cent, their biggest one-day gain since early January. Bank stocks jumped more than 6 per cent after heavy losses last week.

“The solid form given to the Greek aid package, whether they use it or not, has given the market a much-needed psychological boost,” said Mike Berg, strategist at 4Cast consultancy.
The euro also benefited. The currency enjoyed its best single-day gain since August last year, adding 1.43 per cent before easing to $1.3583, up 0.7 per cent by mid-afternoon in New York. Two-year Greek borrowing costs fell 0.78 percentage points to 6.11 per cent, having dropped as low as 5.42 per cent in early trade.
The Greek government is set on Tuesday to borrow €1.2bn in six and 12-month loans to repay existing debts. The sale is expected to go smoothly.
However, former International Monetary Fund officials said there was uncertainty over how the eurozone would work with the IMF, which would be involved in a rescue.

Morris Goldstein, a former deputy director of the fund’s research department, said the lines of responsibility in the emerging deal were unclear.
Mr Goldstein said both groups might want to take the lead should Greece ask for aid.
The fund, he said, would insist on playing a leading role in setting the conditions for lending. These were likely to involve tough fiscal targets, more transparency on public finance data and possibly some structural reform to hold down wages and reduce costly pension rights.
“This has the makings of a strange dog’s breakfast,” said Mr Goldstein. “If a regional grouping can set IMF conditionality, what is the point of the fund anyway? This could create a very dangerous precedent.”
The rescue package agreed by eurozone members at the weekend would set interest rates of about 5 per cent – higher than eurozone countries’ own borrowing costs, but lower than the levels available to Greece in the markets.
Analysts said the details of the rescue plan had left questions unanswered, including whether it implied that eurozone members were now liable for each others’ debts.
The ongoing struggles of the eurozone to reach a deal have also left a “sour taste” in investors’ mouths, said Simon Derrick, head of currency strategy at Bank of New York Mellon.

Can a Russian Silicon Valley Spur Tech Innovation?

2010-04-13T02:36:00.000-07:00

The Kremlin wants to engineer its own Silicon Valley. In a plan that was revealed in February, the Russian high-tech haven will come complete with new-wave architecture and all the comforts of a resort, a place for Russian geniuses to get together and invent the biggest thing since, well, the Internet. That's the hope, anyway. President Dmitri Medvedev, who has cultivated the image of a tech-savvy liberal, is staking much of his economic vision on the plan's success. And Russia has a resource that other nations envy: a fervid hacker culture with a reputation for excellence, or at least daring.
Since the Soviet collapse, no major platforms have emerged in Russia for its computer experts to innovate. As a result, many of them have emigrated, while many others have turned to hacking, a field in which Russians seem to excel. In January, police arrested a 40-year-old computer whiz for hacking into a Moscow advertising mainframe and turning a giant billboard display into a clip of hard-core pornography over one of the city's main streets. To avoid detection, the man had routed his attack through a proxy in Chechnya, a sophisticated trick. But for all his skills, the man was found to be unemployed. He told police he had done it "just to give people a laugh." The Russian government's idea now seems to be giving minds like his something more productive to do. (See 10 ways Twitter will change American business.)
That ambition, at least, is admirable. But for all Medvedev's project evokes of free thinkers brainstorming in a park, it still has a distinctly Soviet feel. It relies on central planning rather than a movement of geeks in garages, and it will be managed by the state. What it reveals, experts say, is the irreconcilable conflict between the Kremlin's new-age ambitions and age-old desire to control.
The government has clear goals. It wants the denizens of its Silicon Valley to hatch lucrative inventions that will help break the economy's dependence on the sale of oil and gas. "The appearance of great ideas, like life itself, is still considered a miracle," said the Kremlin's chief ideologist, Vladislav Surkov, who laid out the project in a rare interview with Vedomosti, a Russian business daily, on Feb. 15. "There are, of course, no miracle workers among bureaucrats and businessmen, but together we need to create an environment where miracles are possible." (See how hackers crippled Twitter.)
Surkov, officially Medvedev's deputy chief of staff, said that Prime Minister Vladimir Putin had approved the idea of a Russian Silicon Valley after Medvedev came up with it. Surkov said he himself had been assigned to oversee its creation, most likely on the outskirts of Moscow. It is an unusual role for him. Both under Putin's presidency between 2000 and 2008 and now under Medvedev's, Surkov has been widely seen as Russia's éminence grise. He is the author of the "sovereign democracy" theory that underpins Russia's neo-authoritarianism and the engineer of the Kremlin youth group Nashi, which uses strategic thuggery to discourage opposition. Now he has embraced his role as Russia's innovation guru.
He has been doing his homework. In January, he traveled to MIT to take part in a two-day seminar on innovation, visiting the kinds of labs, design rooms and incubators where new technologies are born. Two weeks ago in Moscow, he hosted a delegation from the real Silicon Valley that included top executives from eBay, Twitter and Cisco Systems. The actor Ashton Kutcher also came along, and documented the visit on his Twitter feed. "Russia is building their own Silicon valley. And they want help," Kutcher tweeted on Feb. 18. "If we rebuilt it today what would we do differently?"

How to nominate a CNN Hero

2010-04-07T03:45:00.000-07:00

Great things can happen to those nominated as CNN Heroes:
• Anne Mahlum's Philadelphia running program is now helping the homeless get "back on their feet" in Baltimore and Washington.
• Doc Hendley's 'Wine to Water' organization, which works in three continents, is building sustainable water filtration systems in earthquake-ravaged Haiti.
• Jordan Thomas, 20, has raised more than $500,000 to provide prosthetics to underserved children -- including Haiti.
What do they have in common? Each was selected as a CNN Hero after being nominated by someone like you -- someone who wanted us to share their story with the world.
Enter your nominations at CNN.com/Heroes
Now your nomination of a 2010 CNN Hero could help the person that inspires you achieve even greater recognition and success.
Do you know someone who should be recognized as a CNN Hero? Here are some suggestions we hope will help you in crafting your nomination.

• Think about what makes your hero special. Ask yourself: What makes my nominee unique? What specific accomplishment has he or she achieved that is truly remarkable? What impact has their work had on others? We encourage you to watch videos of previous CNN Heroes to familiarize yourself with the achievements of the inspiring individuals we honor as "everyday people changing the world."
• Take a look at our nomination form. We suggest you review the information requested about yourself, your nominee and their work before filling out your submission.
• Tell us about your hero! Take your time and write from the heart. Remember: What you share -- in your own words -- is the most important factor in advancing a nomination for further consideration. You can enter your answers to the essay questions directly on the form, or write them first in a word-processing document and "cut-and-paste" them into each answer field. Please note that the information you provide will be used in accordance with our privacy policy.
• Click "Submit." If your nomination has been successfully transmitted, you'll see a "thank you" message on your screen. If you provided us with your e-mail address, we'll also send a confirmation that your nomination has been received. And yes, we read each and every one.
That's it! Nominations for 2010 CNN Heroes remain open through August 1.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q: Who is eligible to be considered as a CNN Hero?
A: Nominations must be in the name of a single individual, at least 13 years of age, whose accomplishment occurred (or continued) after November 26, 2009. Nominees in the "Young Wonder" category must be 25 years of age or younger. Groups and organizations are ineligible for consideration. Citizens of voided countries are also ineligible. For complete details on eligibility requirements and other rules governing selection of CNN Heroes, please read our Legal Disclosures.
Q: How will I know if my hero is selected?
A: Because of the high volume of nominations received, we cannot respond individually to each submission. However, if your nomination advances, we will contact you and your nominee through the contact information you provide.
Q: What if I don't know my nominee's address, e-mail, and telephone number?
A: Please make every effort to provide as much contact information as possible. We require either an email address or telephone number so we may quickly contact your nominee to obtain their permission for consideration as a CNN Hero.
Q: May I submit additional supportive information about my nominee?
A: There's space at the end of the form to provide links to articles or Web sites with more information about your hero. Please do not send additional materials unless requested.
Q: May I mail or fax my nomination?
A: No. All nominations must be submitted online through our Web site.
Q: What if my nomination form is rejected?
A: When filling out your form, please note that certain information is required. Those fields are marked with an asterisk (*). If you are not certain of your hero's nationality, select "Other" from the country drop-down menu. Likewise, if you're unsure which category their cause belongs in, just click "Other."
CNN is not responsible for technical problems that may prevent your submission from being successfully transmitted. You may wish to first write and save the answers to essay questions in a word-processing document. That way, if you need to re-submit your nomination, you can "cut-and-paste" those answers into the form without re-writing them.
Q: Can I buy tickets to "CNN Heroes: An All-Star Tribute"?
A: Unfortunately, seating for our November telecast is limited and by invitation only. Airdates and times for the global broadcast of "CNN Heroes: An All-Star Tribute" will be announced later this year.

Airline to charge for carry-on bags

2010-04-07T03:39:00.000-07:00

With many airlines now charging a fee for checked luggage, the next step had to come sometime: A carrier asking passengers to pay for the privilege of bringing carry-on bags on board.
Well, that time is here.
Spirit Airlines announced Tuesday that it will charge its customers $20 to $45 for items they place in the overhead bins.
The cost depends on whether passengers are members of the airline's ultra-low fare club and whether they "pre-reserve" their carry-on bag in advance.
Each passenger will still able to bring one personal item that fits under a seat for free, such as a purse, briefcase, backpack or laptop computer. They also won't have to pay extra for items such as diaper bags, pet containers and cameras.
Airline officials called it a "bring less; pay less" policy that would ultimately benefit customers.
"In addition to lowering fares even further, this will reduce the number of carry-on bags, which will improve inflight safety and efficiency by speeding up the boarding and deplaning process," Chief Operating Officer Ken McKenzie said in a statement.
Spirit's new fee is effective for reservations made after April 5 for travel starting August 1. Although it's already among the airlines that charge for checked bags, the ultra-low-cost carrier is the first carrier in the United States to implement a fee for carry-ons. It may also be the first airline in the world to do so, said Genevieve Shaw Brown, senior editor at Travelocity.
Spirit, which is headquartered in Miramar, Florida, and flies to destinations in the U.S., the Caribbean and Latin America, says it keeps costs low by starting with rock-bottom fares and asking passengers to pay only for the optional services they want.
Will a backlash follow?
Spirit's new fee structure had industry observers wondering whether other airlines would follow. Shaw Brown called it a "very, very bold move" and predicted that Spirit's competitors would be watching the fee's failure or success very closely.
Others wondered whether it signals even more drastic changes for passengers.
"When will more shoes drop?" asked Airfarewatchdog.com President George Hobica.
"When will we finally see a U.S. airline dare to charge for using a credit or debit card, and who will be the first to eliminate airport check-in counter staff, forcing passengers to show up at the airport with a pre-printed boarding pass and pre-paid luggage fees? ... No human interaction necessary."
Another expert said Spirit's move may be too much for fliers who are already enraged by fees.
"It's interesting that the program will not kick in until August, perhaps giving Spirit time to cut the program if there's significant backlash from customers," said Jami Counter, senior director of TripAdvisor Flights.
"I do think this is a step too far for the traveling public, and other carriers won't follow Spirit's lead on this."
Shop around carefully
The new fee reinforces how important it is for air travelers to stay on top of fees and not be lured by cheap base fares, Shaw Brown warned.
"Travelers are going to naturally gravitate toward the airline with the lowest fare, and they may not realize what those extra charges are going to be and how they can add up very quickly," she said.
"The best advice is, know all the fees, know the kind of traveler you are, how much you do end up packing and how much it's going to cost you, and make sure to add that to the base fare so that you know exactly how much you're going to be paying."
Most major air carriers started adding checked-bag fees in 2008. The airlines reported collecting nearly $740 million in baggage fees in the third quarter of 2009, according to U.S. Bureau of Transportation Statistics.
Many have also cut costs by eliminating complimentary meals in economy class and have drawn ire for asking passengers to pay for services like reserving a seat in the emergency exit row, which usually has more legroom.
Still, the fees -- even the latest one from Spirit Airlines -- probably won't stop anyone from flying.
"The truth of the matter is, the desire to travel often overcomes these annoyances that people face. People adapt," Shaw Brown said.

Man accused of death threats against U.S. senator

2010-04-07T03:35:00.000-07:00

Police arrested a 64-year-old Washington state resident who authorities say made death threats against Democratic Sen. Patty Murray of Washington, the Justice Department announced Tuesday.
A department statement said the suspect, identified as Charles Alan Wilson of Selah, Washington, made the threats in phone messages to Murray's office between March 22 and April 4.
Wilson allegedly stated that Murray "had a target on her back" and that he wanted to kill her, according to the statement, which said the threats were in response to congressional passage of the new health care bill.
According to the statement, Wilson allegedly "told undercover FBI agents that he regularly carries a firearm with a concealed weapons permit" and "also stated that he was extremely angry about the passage of the health care reform legislation."
A statement from Murray's office said that after receiving the phone calls, staff contacted the Capitol Police Department, which advised them to contact the FBI. The office declined to comment further, citing the ongoing investigation.
"Senator Murray will continue to focus on working for the people of Washington state," the statement said.
Threatening a federal official is punishable by up to 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine, the Justice Department statement said.
Threats against U.S. senators and representatives increased as Congress held its final debates and votes on the health care bill, which was unanimously opposed by Republicans. In addition, conservative activists around the country protested the bill.
Most of the reported threats were against Democrats, though there were some against Republicans.

Brazil flood toll exceeds 100

2010-04-07T03:31:00.000-07:00

The death toll from heavy rain and floods in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and surrounding areas reached 102 on Wednesday, the country's civil defense said.
About 287 people have been rescued, and others were trapped under mudslides caused by the rain, Maj. Ronaldo Nogueira said on Tuesday.
A record-breaking 11.3 inches (288 millimeters) of rain fell in Rio within 24 hours on Tuesday, Mayor Eduardo Paes said, according to the state-run Agencia Brasil news agency.
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The downpour continued Wednesday.
Firefighters were focusing on rescuing people from multiple mudslides throughout the state of Rio de Janeiro.
There were reports of power outages, and schools were closed because of the rain. A high tide came with the rain, making the situation worse, officials said.

L.A. mayor looks at shutting most city services twice a week

2010-04-07T03:21:00.000-07:00

The mayor of Los Angeles, California, called Tuesday for a plan to shut down all city services -- except for public safety and revenue-generating positions -- twice a week beginning Monday in an effort to solve the city's budget crisis.
"There are no easy decisions or simple ways to solve this budget crisis," Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa said. "But as the CEO of this great city, it is my responsibility to make these difficult, but necessary, decisions to steer the city out of this crisis and onto solid financial ground."
He said he was asking the city administrative officer to develop a plan to shut down the city for two days a week and calculate the money the city would save from the move.
"We can no longer wait. We can no longer keep saying no. We must act now," he said.
The mayor's announcement comes a day after the Department of Water and Power said it will not be paying $73 million to the city's general fund.
The department's interim general manager, S. David Freeman, said the department's anticipated $73.5 million transfer to the city's general fund was contingent on the city's approval of an electricity rate increase, CNN affiliate KTLA reported. The department said the electricity rate increase was necessary because of the rising cost of energy.
The City Council rejected the increase last week. It had earlier approved a more modest increase, but the department's board voted for a higher one, which the council then rejected, The Los Angeles Times reported.
Without the $73.5 million, City Controller Wendy Greuel said, the city's general fund will be negative $10 million on May 5.
She called the situation "the most urgent fiscal crisis" in the city's recent history. She urged the mayor to transfer $90 million from the city's reserve funds so that she could pay city employees and the city's bills.

FBI joins search for girl who vanished on way to party

2010-04-07T03:17:00.001-07:00

A $10,000 reward is being offered in the search for a 12-year-old Colorado girl last seen walking to a birthday party at a friend's home.
Kayleah Wilson, who is from Greeley, Colorado, disappeared on her way to the party on Sunday, March 28. The FBI and the Greeley Police Department hope the reward will solve a mystery that began more than a week ago.
"We can't rule anything out at this point," Greeley police spokesman Sgt. Joe Tymkowych told CNN. "It could be a runaway. It could be an abduction. Right now, we don't have anything to rule out, one side or the other."
Tymkowych said authorities have received more than 300 tips since Kayleah vanished, including two possible sightings at a mall near her home.
"We feel fairly confident that they may have seen her, and those [tips] are being followed up as well," Tymkowych said. "But that would have been during that time span when she left her house and before she was going to arrive at the birthday party."

"We have a contingent of FBI agents and our own investigators that are working pretty much around the clock," Tymkowych said. Officers are using horseback, all-terrain vehicles, search dogs and an airplane, he said.
Kayleah lives with her mother, brother and grandmother, police said. They also told CNN there is no evidence to suggest any domestic conflicts that would cause her to run away.
Kayleah, who is a student at Brentwood Middle School, was not carrying a cell phone or a bag when she left the home Sunday afternoon for what should have been an eight- or nine-block walk to the party, authorities reported.
"We can't prove what happened to her," Tymkowych said. "We just don't know."
The case reminded him of another incident that occurred in Greeley a quarter of a century ago.
"About 25 years ago, we had a young lady about the same age that actually disappeared from her house," Tymkowych said. "We knew she was dropped off there after a school event, she was home for a short while ... but we were never able to determine what happened to her."
Kayleah was wearing a white-and-pink shirt, blue jeans and white-and-red shoes at the time she was reported missing.
She is 5-foot-1, 145 pounds, with brown eyes and brown hair.
Anyone with information about Kayleah's whereabouts is asked to contact the FBI at 1-800-CALL-FBI (1-800-225-5324) or the Greeley Police Department at 970-350-9600.

N. Korea: American sentenced to 8 years

2010-04-07T03:09:00.000-07:00

An American man has been sentenced to eight years hard labor for illegally entering North Korea, the reclusive country's official press agency said in a release monitored in Seoul Wednesday.
The American is Aijalon Mahli Gomes, 30, who was arrested after crossing the North Korea-China border on January 25. The American was, according to South Korean press reports, an English language teacher with strong Christian convictions, who had taken part in anti-North Korean protests in the South.
It is the third recent case of Americans being held in North Korea.
Two American journalists -- Laura Ling and Euna Lee, who had crossed the border last March and were arrested and sentenced to 12 years hard labor -- were released in August after an intervention former U.S. President Bill Clinton.
Robert Park, a Korean-American Christian evangelist who was arrested after entering the country on Christmas Day, had given a media interview in which he stated his aim to force change in North Korean human rights conditions. He was released in February after telling North Korean state media that he had been wrong about human rights conditions there.
A statement attributed to Park and released by one of his associates -- high-profile anti-North Korean activist Norbert Vollertsen -- on March 24, stated: "Robert Park begs the American government to intervene on Mr. Aijalon Gomes' behalf...Mr. Gomes is one of the most kind, gentle, beautiful and good persons Mr. Robert Park has ever met."
The United States has no diplomatic relations with North Korea -- U.S. interests there are represented by Sweden. In an e-mail to CNN, Swedish ambassador to Pyongyang Mats Foyer referred questions on Gomes' welfare to the U.S. State Department.
In recent years, no Americans have been incarcerated in North Korea's harsh labor camp system. Lee and Ling were held in isolation in a guest house in Pyongyang, as was Evan Hunziger, who was held in the country for three months in 1996 after swimming across the Yalu River border. He was released after a diplomatic intervention by former U.S. Congressman Bill Richardson, who maintains high level contacts in Pyongyang.
"The North Koreans don't want anyone to see inside their camps," said Choi Jin-wook of the Seoul-based Korean Institute of National Unification. "He [Gomes] is going to be used by North Korea as a bargaining chip."
North Korean survivors of the camps who have defected to South Korea paint a grim portrait of institutionalized brutality. The most significant peril, however, is death by starvation. With large portions of North Korea's general population routinely suffering malnutrition, occupants of the gulag are at highest risk.

7.7-magnitude quake strikes Indonesia

2010-04-07T03:05:00.000-07:00

A 7.7-magnitude earthquake struck off the coast of Indonesia early Wednesday, triggering two tsunamis and injuring several people, officials said.
Six people on Simeulue island were injured when the quake hit, and two houses collapsed under the violent shaking, said Dadik, the head of Simeulue police, who goes by only one name.
The island is just off the coast of Banda Aceh, a city at the northern tip of Indonesia's Sumatra island where residents lost power after the temblor.
"The quake was felt quite strong, maybe about three to four minutes," said Dadik, the head of Simeulue police who goes by only one name. "I've ordered my staff to check if there's any damage or casualties, but apparently no damage reported so far."
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Residents in coastal towns fled inland to higher ground just after the quake, according to a local radio station.
The temblor struck 125 miles from Sibolga, situated on Sumatra, the U.S. Geological Survey reported. The quake hit at a depth of 19.3 miles at 5:15 a.m. (6:15 p.m. ET, Tuesday) said USGS, which downgraded the quake from an earlier magnitude of 7.8.
Measurements of sea levels indicated that tsunami waves "may have been destructive along coasts near the earthquake epicenter," the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center said.
Scientists said they do not expect a tsunami to affect the west coast of North America.
The tsunamis, in Banyak Island and Teluk Dalam, were small and not dangerous, measuring just under a foot high, said Fauzi, chief of the Indonesian Meteorological and Geophysics Agency. Fauzi also goes by only one name, which is common in Indonesia.
Indonesian officials acted quickly to announce the tsunami warning, said geophysicist Gerard Fryer with the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center. Indonesia's Meteorological and Geophysics Agency lifted it about two hours later, as did the warning center.
In 2004, a 9.1-magnitude underwater earthquake struck off the coast of Sumatra, triggering a tsunami that killed more than 200,000 people in 14 countries.
The tsunami, which washed away entire communities, caused nearly $10 billion in damage and more casualties than any other tsunami in history, according to the United Nations. Indonesia was among the hardest hit nations.
Indonesia is on the so-called Ring of Fire, an arc of fault lines circling the Pacific Basin that is prone to frequent earthquakes and volcanic eruptions.

Man pleads no contest in slaying of his alleged molester

2010-04-07T03:01:00.000-07:00

A California man pleaded no contest to voluntary manslaughter with the use of a gun Tuesday in the shooting death of a man who he claimed sexually abused him as a teen, a prosecutor said.
The plea comes less than a week before Aaron Vargas' first-degree murder trial was supposed to start for the slaying of Darrell McNeill, a neighbor from his childhood and a family friend whom Vargas claims began molesting him when he was 11 years old.
Under the terms of a plea deal, Vargas, now 32, faces anywhere from probation to 10 years in prison for shooting the former Boy Scout leader and local businessman last year in his home in the Northern California community of Fort Bragg.
Lawyers will return to court April 20 to place a statement of facts on the record before Judge Ronald Brown decides on the final sentence. "There's some relief that we know we won't lose him for the rest of his life, but there's also a lot of anxiety about what the judge is going to do," said Vargas' sister, Mindy Galliani.
"I won't have closure until he's home," she added. "But even when he's home, it's still not going to be closure. We need to get him into treatment so he can get help. I feel like this is only the beginning."
Since his arrest, Vargas' family has waged a tireless campaign to reduce the charges and raise awareness over child sex abuse, earning support from members of the community and giving rise to more sex abuse allegations against McNeill.
McNeill used his position as a Boy Scout troop leader and as active neighborhood father to win the trust of Vargas and other young boys, Galliani said. He took the boys on camping trips or hikes, gave them alcohol or drugs and molested them, Galliani alleged.
The alleged sexual abuse waned as Vargas grew into adulthood, but McNeill continued to call him and visit the home where Vargas lived with his wife and infant daughter. The continued contact drove Vargas to the breaking point, his sister said.
Vargas was under the influence of alcohol the night of February 8, 2009, when he drove to McNeill's mobile home with a loaded gun and shot him in front of his wife, Mendocino County Assistant District Attorney Elizabeth Norman said.
The prosecutor said she consulted with the victim's family and reached what they thought a jury may have found -- that his level of intoxication placed the crime more along the lines of an "emotional decision rather than an intentional first-degree murder."
Norman said she has received four reports of sexual abuse involving McNeill, which factored into the decision to strike a plea deal even though she could not prove they were true.
"When you have other victims coming forward, that does lend credibility to that scenario," she said. "These people have written me letters and said this has happened, and I have no way of showing this has happened, but it has been put out there."
The slaying victim's wife, who lived next door to Vargas' family and has known the defendant since he was a child, said she had no reason to doubt his claims of abuse. "I love this young man and feel he needs counseling more than anything," McNeill's wife said in an e-mail. She requested that her name not be published.
"I cannot condone what Aaron has done, but I do understand it. I believe he took the wrong avenue by taking the law into his own hands. Like most of this community, I do not feel he deserves 50 years in prison. Unlike most of this community, I feel he should serve some time, but not much."
The case, with its suggestions of long-buried secrets, has rocked Fort Bragg, a former logging community that has become a coastal tourist destination. Another longtime Fort Bragg resident has come out publicly with allegations of abuse against McNeill.
"I was a reserved kid, some considered me a loner; I just kind of kept to myself as a kid, and he would play on that," Todd Rowan said in an interview in March. "He'd give me pot and beer, and he'd get me stoned and a little drunk, and he took advantage of me that way."
Rowan said the abuse began when he was 15 and continued on and off until he was 19, but the emotional trauma lingered for years, driving him to substance abuse and suicide attempts. He said he brought the allegations to Fort Bragg Police in 2001 but nothing happened.
"All those years, I wanted to forget about and push it away with alcohol because you're supposed to be a man. And then, when police didn't do anything, that pushed me even further down the hole."
Repeated calls for comment to the Fort Bragg Police Department and the Mendocino Sheriff, which handled the investigation of McNeill's death, were not returned. Since then, Rowan said his ability to stay sober for more than two years braced him for news of McNeill's death.
"When I got news that he'd been shot, the first thing I thought was, 'who got him? Somebody got him. Who else did he do it to?'"
McNeill's second wife, Jenny Cotila, who divorced him in 1980, said she also went to Fort Bragg Police in the 1990s after she was told that her ex-husband had sexually abused her son years ago.
"It could've been stopped a long time ago but the police didn't take me seriously when I reported it because they said the statute of limitations was up by the time I found out what happened to my son," Cotila said in a phone interview Tuesday.
Cotila said she has long felt indifference toward her ex-husband but worried about the effects of his death and the abuse allegations were having on their children, now adults.
"It's hard for them to cope because they're friends with Aaron, they knew him," said Cotila. "Darrell's their father and he's their friend. They're having a hard time separating their father from the pedophile."
Members of the community also expressed shock that a "normal" guy like McNeill, a small business owner who installed the blinds in your home after you bought them at his furniture store, was capable of such horrific acts right under their noses.
"Here we have this man, and he's being the normal, small-town businessman, and he's following all the cultural paths available and all the norms, so when you have people coming forward and saying this man is doing something to me that's outside the norm, there's a tendency to not listen closely or to ignore it," said Jeff Edwards, a hospital employee who has lived in Fort Bragg most of his life.
"I guess we are to blame in a way, for thinking that this could never happen in our town."

Shuttle Discovery docks with space station

2010-04-07T02:50:00.000-07:00

Space shuttle Discovery docked with the international space station early Wednesday despite a broken antenna that knocked out radar tracking aboard the shuttle.
The shuttle docked with the space station at 3:44 a.m. ET. At the time of docking, both spacecraft were traveling 225 miles over the Caribbean sea near Caracas, Venezuela, NASA said.
Commander Alan Poindexter and his crew completed the rendezvous without the use of the shuttle's Ku-band radar, relying instead on other navigation tools to precisely track the space station, NASA said.
The Discovery's seven-person crew now joins the six-person space station crew for more than a week of work together.
It will mark the first time four women have been in space at one time.
Three women -- mission specialists Stephanie Wilson, Dorothy Metcalf-Lindenburger and Naoko Yamazaki -- comprise part of the Discovery's crew. NASA astronaut Tracy Caldwell Dyson is already at the space station.
Discovery launched Monday morning from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
The shuttle's 13-day mission includes three planned spacewalks, replacing an ammonia tank assembly and retrieving a Japanese experiment from the station's exterior.
It is scheduled to return to Earth on April 18 at 8:35 a.m. ET.
There are only three shuttle missions remaining before the space shuttle fleet is retired.

Remains of 2 people found in trash bags in New Jersey, officials say

2010-04-06T02:08:00.000-07:00

Authorities in Linden, New Jersey, have launched a homicide investigation after the discovery Monday of a pair of trash bags containing the dismembered remains of two people, officials said.
The medical examiner has confirmed the body parts are "indeed human," the Union County Prosecutor's Office said in a news release.
"There were two bodies found inside trash bags near the intersection of Essex Avenue and Cranford Avenue," spokesman John Holl said in the release, adding that the remains are from adults, one male and one female.
Yellow police tape surrounded the scene Monday afternoon, tied to the tree trunks lining the quiet residential street where the black trash bags were discovered earlier in the morning.
Linden Mayor Richard J. Gerbounka, who was at the site, called the shocking discovery "very unusual for this area."
"We've got the homicide investigative team out and they're in the process of culling the area for evidence," he said.
Along with the Linden Police Department, investigators from the county prosecutor's office and the city fire department also were at the site. Officials spread a white sheet around the trash bags before loading the remains onto two stretchers and taking them away for further study.
Autopsies were scheduled for Monday afternoon, according to the prosecutor's office.

Destroyer nears oil tanker seized by Somali pirates

2010-04-06T02:05:00.000-07:00

A South Korean navy destroyer Tuesday caught up with a South Korean oil tanker that was seized earlier by pirates off the coast of Somalia, official Korean media reported.
The 4,500-ton destroyer was keeping a close watch on the hijacked vessel about 30 miles away, South Korean defense officials told Yonhap news agency.
Pirates captured the South Korean tanker Sunday about 690 miles (1,111 km) north of the Somali coast. News of the attack came as the Combined Maritime Forces -- a cooperative effort by several countries to patrol international waters -- warned that pirates in the Somali basin and Gulf of Aden are venturing farther from home waters to target commercial vessels.
The 300,000-ton supertanker, Samho Dream, was seized while on its way to Louisiana in the United States.
Twenty-four crew members -- five South Koreans and 19 Filipinos -- were aboard.
"Ships operating in Somali waters are often accompanied by private or government escorts because of rampant pirate activity in the area, but the ship did not have any guards on board as it was operating in areas where piracy is not frequent," the Yonhap report said.
Valero Energy Corp., the U.S. company that owns the cargo, did not say how much oil was on the ship. But ships of that size generally carry around 2 million barrels of oil, company spokesman Bill Day said.
At current prices, that cargo could be worth about $170 million.

Explosions near U.S. Consulate in Peshawar kill at least 8

2010-04-06T02:01:00.000-07:00

A terrorist attack near the U.S. Consulate in Peshawar, Pakistan, killed two consulate security guards and at least six others Monday, authorities said.
The two consulate employees who died were Pakistani, the U.S. Embassy in Islamabad said, and "a number of others were seriously wounded."
At least eight people were killed in all, a government official said.
All U.S. citizens were accounted for, and some had minor injuries, State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said.
The coordinated attack involved a vehicle suicide bomb and attackers who tried to enter the consulate by using grenades and weapons fire, the U.S. Embassy said in a statement.

The blasts in the capital of the North West Frontier Province came hours after a suicide attack killed at least 30 people and wounded 50 others in another part of the province.
The Pakistani Taliban claimed responsibility for both attacks. In a phone call to CNN, Azam Tariq, spokesman for Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan, said the group was behind the attacks in Peshawar and Dir.
The U.S. Embassy, in its statement, said the two attacks reflect "the terrorists' desperation as they are rejected by people throughout Pakistan."
Peshawar is about 75 miles (120 kilometers) from Islamabad, the country's capital.
Bashir Ahmad Bilour, a senior provincial minister, told reporters at the scene that several militants came in two vehicles. The first vehicle exploded near a security checkpoint, and gunmen in the second car opened fire.
The dead included two Pakistani security personnel working for the U.S. Consulate, one policeman, two civilians and three unidentified bodies, said Karim Khan, a senior police official in Peshawar.
"They were well-organized. They were well-equipped," he said of the attackers.
The three explosions went off within a span of 15 minutes in the area of Saddar and Hayatabad Avenue, near the American consulate and the Peshawar headquarters of Pakistan's intelligence agency, which was the target of a deadly car bomb attack in November.
The North West Frontier Province is rife with Islamic extremists and has been the site of recent clashes between Pakistani security forces and militants.
Monday's earlier suicide attack took place at a rally for the province's ruling Awami National Party in Timargarah in the lower Dir district, said lawmaker Mehmood Zeb Khan.
Hundreds of the participants had gathered for a rally to change the name of the province to Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
The bomber walked into the government building where the meeting was going on and blew himself up, said provincial spokesman Mian Iftikhar Hussain.
The province was given its current name during the British colonial rule. The party, which heads a coalition government in the province, wants the area's name to reflect its majority Pashtun population.
A bill to amend the constitution in support of the name change was expected to be introduced in parliament on Monday.

Five workers found dead in China mine collapse

2010-04-06T01:57:00.000-07:00

Five trapped workers were found dead Tuesday in northern China more than a week after their coal mine was flooded by a rush of underground water, state media reported.
The fatalities came a day after 115 miners were pulled out alive amid cheers, as rescuers scrambled to reach dozens more believed to be still trapped inside.
The miners were part of a larger group of 261 working in the Wangjialing mine when it flooded on March 28. Rescuers were able to reach 108 miners immediately after the flooding.
Before the Monday rescue, the miners tapped and shouted to indicate they were alive, state-run Xinhua news agency said. Hundreds of rescuers were working around-the-clock to drain water, monitor gas and pull out miners, said Wang Jun, governor of Shanxi province, where the mine is situated

Mine accidents are common in China. In 2009, 2,631 people were killed in such accidents. The figure, while high, is down from 2002 when 6,995 people died.
On Monday, the country launched a two-month campaign of safety inspections in mines and other industries that have had serious accidents.

U.S. seeks $16.4 million fine against Toyota

2010-04-06T01:50:00.000-07:00

The Department of Transportation's National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is seeking the maximum fine of $16.4 million against Toyota Motor Corp. for failing to notify the agency of a "sticky pedal" defect in its cars for at least four months.
Under federal regulations, automakers are required to inform the agency within five days of determining that a safety defect exists in one of its products.

NHTSA learned, through documents obtained from Toyota (TM), that the automaker knew of sticky gas pedal problems since at least September, 2009, the agency said in an press release.
"We now have proof that Toyota failed to live up to its legal obligations," said Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood. "Worse yet, they knowingly hid a dangerous defect for months from U.S. officials and did not take action to protect millions of drivers and their families. For those reasons, we are seeking the maximum penalty possible under current laws."
NHTSA is still investigating to see if Toyota committed any additional violations that may warrant more penalties, the agency said. Under federal regulations, $16.4 million is the most an automaker can be fined for a single violation.
Toyota said it has not received a letter from the NHTSA about the fine, but responded to the announcement by saying the company has begun to address the agency's concerns.
"We have already taken a number of important steps to improve our communications with regulators and customers on safety-related matters as part of our strengthened overall commitment to quality assurance," the company said in a statement. "These include the appointment of a new Chief Quality Officer for North America and a greater role for the region in making safety-related decisions."
GM to expand use of brake override system
Toyota cars and trucks have been the subject of at least three separate major recalls in the past year. One was for the "sticky pedal" situation in which gas pedals, as they age, begin to stick in a partially depressed position. Another was for gas pedals that can stick on some floor mats and a third was for braking problems on Toyota Prius hybrid cars.
The biggest fine that's ever been levied was just $1 million taken from General Motors in 2004 for failing to deal promptly with a windshield wiper issue, an amount that was negotiated down from the $3 million NHTSA originally asked for.
Toyota could challenge the penalty and question how the NHTSA determined the record amount, especially since the difference between Toyota's and GM's fines is so large, said senior analyst Jessica Caldwell of automotive Web site Edmunds.com.
"It'll be interesting to see how Toyota responds," she said. "But $16.4 million is a drop in the bucket of cash Toyota has, so they might just find it easier to pay and avoid a bigger news story."
It also strikes experts as odd that regulators would seek the maximum penalty in a case in which the specific defect involved resulted in no serious crashes, injuries or deaths. "I see this as politically motivated," said Ed Higgins, a Michigan attorney who has worked with automakers in defect cases. "NHTSA is under a lot of political pressure to get tough."
In documents filed with NHTSA, Toyota has indicated that it did not originally believe the sticky gas pedals were a genuine safety issue. At worst the pedals got stuck only an inch or so down resulting in a situation the driver could easily control using the brakes.
That belief gives Toyota a ready defense, Higgins said. The regulations state that the automaker has five days from the time it determines a safety-related defect exists to report it. If Toyota didn't see this as safety related, Higgins said, the clock wasn't running.
There were injuries and deaths alleged to result from a separate issue in which gas pedals could become stuck on floor mats. NHTSA has not announced a fine in that recall.

Woods says he's better person after rehab

2010-04-06T01:41:00.000-07:00

A humbled Tiger Woods returned Monday to Augusta National Golf Club and told reporters that he has emerged from rehab a better man, if not a better golfer.
"I'm trying as hard as I possibly can each and every day to get my life better and better and stronger, and if I win championships along the way, so be it," said the four-time winner of the Masters, which tees off at Augusta National on Thursday.
Woods' 35-minute news conference came more than four months after he crashed his Cadillac Escalade into a fire hydrant and a tree outside his family's home in a suburb of Orlando, Florida.
The November 27 incident, which left him with a sore neck and a cut on his lip that required five stitches, also set in motion the crash of his storybook life.

A few days beforehand, the National Enquirer had reported he was having an affair with a New York nightclub hostess, who denied it. But that allegation was followed by others, and Woods' tightly controlled world and image soon began to crumble, threatening his five-year marriage to former model Elin Nordegren.
Just after Christmas, he entered a rehabilitation center, where he stayed for 45 days.
"It was to take a hard look at myself, and I did, and I've come out better," he said.
In February, Woods said he had been in therapy for issues, which he did not explain, and he acknowledged multiple extramarital affairs.
He was no more forthcoming on Monday. Asked what the rehab was for, he said, "That's personal, thank you."
Blog: Coverage of the Woods briefing
During his treatment, he said, he missed the first birthday of one of his two children. "That hurt a lot," he said, adding he has vowed never to miss another one.
Woods said he is continuing with treatment, has returned to meditating "religiously" and feels "more centered, more balanced."
He said that, although he has won numerous tournaments in the past few years, he had not been having as much fun as he used to. "When you live a life where you're lying all the time, life is not fun," he said. "Now that's been stripped away, and here I am. It feels fun again."
The 34-year-old golfer indicated that he hopes to woo back sponsors, who have left him in droves.
"Do I understand why they dropped me? Of course," he said. "I've made a lot of mistakes in my life, and I totally understand why they would do that."
He added: "Hopefully, I can prove to the other companies going forward that I am a worthy investment, that I can help their company, help their company grow and represent them well. I felt like I was representing companies well in the past, but then again I wasn't doing it the right way because of what I was engaged in."
But Woods appeared gratified that he remains popular among the golf fans who showed up at Augusta National on Monday morning.
"For them to still cheer for me is just incredible, it really is," he said about the galleries' reaction to his play in a practice round.
Woods started the round at the famed course at 8 a.m., dressed in a striped shirt and dark slacks and flashing an occasional smile.
He promised to show more appreciation for his fans. His failure to have done so in recent years, he said, "was wrong of me."
"Too many kids have looked up to me and so many families have supported me over the past few years. I just want to say 'thank you' to them," he said.
He said that his wife will not attend the Masters. He did not answer a reporter's question about whether this was a sign that she wasn't ready to support him.
Woods apologized to other players, whom he said the news media have "bombarded" with questions about him. "I certainly apologize to all of them for having to endure what they've had to endure over the past few months," he said.
Woods said he will try to play more calmly. "I made a conscious decision to try and tone down my negative outbursts," he said. "Be more respectful of the game."
Woods denied ever having taken any illegal drugs, but said he had received injections of platelet-enriched plasma to help speed the healing of his left knee after he blew out the anterior cruciate ligament in 2008 and subsequently tore his Achilles heel in his right leg.
He said he also underwent treatment in a hyperbaric oxygen chamber to speed the healing process.
Woods also acknowledged having taken Vicodin to help relieve pain and the sedative Ambien to help him sleep when he was concerned about the failing health of his father, Earl, who died in 2006. But he said he had never taken any illegal drugs.
Asked whether Ambien may have played a role in his car wreck, for which he was cited for careless driving, the golfer did not respond directly. "The police investigated the accident and they cited me 166 bucks and it's a closed case," he said.
Woods was unsparing in his self-criticism. "I was rationalizing; I was denying, in total denial, at all times," he said. "I lied to myself; I lied to others."
He added: "The way I was thinking caused so much harm with the people that I loved and cared about the most on this planet."
Woods said he learned during his stint in rehab that he had fooled himself in addition to fooling others. "I take full responsibility for all I have done, and I don't take that lightly," he said.
Asked whether his reckless behavior indicated that he wanted to get caught, Woods said, "I don't know."
"All I know is I acted just terribly poorly, made just incredibly bad decisions and decisions that have hurt so many people close to me. That's enough," he said.
Though Woods projected the image of a changed man, he said his desire to win remains immutable. "Nothing has changed," he said. "I'm going to try and go out there and win this thing."
Though he had delivered a carefully managed statement in February to a small, hand-picked crowd, and given two one-on-one interviews, Monday's news conference was his first in months.
"The mental challenge that is facing Tiger Woods as he returns to Augusta National and then afterwards at other PGA Tour events, we can assume, later on in the 2010 season, is probably something that no other golfer has ever faced before," said David Dusek, deputy editor of Golf.com.
However, Woods' choosing to return to the Masters may be a strategic move as the organizers of the tournament traditionally have kept a tight rein on the media and spectators. Woods, a four-time Masters champion, can expect to be shielded and protected to a certain degree.
"This makes sense," said Chris Verdery, a golf pro at the River Golf Club in the adjacent town of North Augusta, South Carolina. "People really love him here in Augusta. He's been wonderful for the Masters, the city of Augusta, and everybody is excited to have him back."
Woods hopes to claim his 15th victory in a major tournament at the Masters.
His caddie, Steve Williams, has said Woods would not be returning to the game unless he felt he could win. Some leading bookmakers have him as the favorite to prevail.
But Dusek said, "I think it is a little bit much to sort of assume that he is just simply going to walk on, after really not having any competitive play for the better part of four months, walk into the season and be able to physically dominate the way that we assume Tiger Woods always does.
"I would look for him to improve and get better as the season goes on. I would not be surprised if he wins golf tournaments in 2010, but I do not think he can come out and win the Masters right away."
And the focus -- at least for the media -- will be on the spectacle rather than the sport.
"TMZ, Entertainment Weekly and People magazine, along with 'Extra,' are ... typical calls I don't get, come Masters week," said Augusta Mayor Deke Copenhaver.
Still, Woods' devoted fans are looking forward to seeing him play once more.
"I love his golf, and that's what we're here for, that's what I like to see, and I really don't care about his personal life," Masters ticket holder Dick Benck said.

U.S. to announce new nuclear weapons strategy

2010-04-06T01:36:00.000-07:00

The United States will swear off the development of new generations of nuclear weapons and reduce its reliance on them in a sweeping overhaul of its nuclear strategy due out Tuesday.
The Obama administration's Nuclear Posture Review will alter decades of U.S. policy to provide an incentive for countries to stay within the rules of the 1968 Non-Proliferation Treaty, a senior administration official told CNN. The focus of U.S. nuclear policy will be on isolating countries that are flouting their obligations under that pact, the official said.
President Barack Obama is scheduled to announce the new strategy on Tuesday, two days before he plans to sign a new nuclear arms treaty with Russia that reduces both countries' missile stockpiles. The president is expected to be joined by several Cabinet members, including Defense Secretary Robert Gates, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Energy Secretary Steven Chu.
Under the new strategy, preventing the spread of nuclear weapons and their use by terrorists becomes the top priority of the U.S. nuclear agenda. And the United States will make "substantial investments" in managing its current weapons rather than build new ones, said the senior administration official, who did not want to go on record ahead of Tuesday's announcement.

"It will also extend the life of warheads currently in the nuclear arsenal," the official said. "This is an alternative to developing new nuclear weapons, which we reject."
That policy is aimed at encouraging further cuts in world stockpiles and stem the proliferation of atomic bombs, the official said.
In 2009, the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists estimated the current U.S. nuclear stockpile at 5,200 nuclear bombs, including 2,200 operational, long-range strategic weapons.
Seven other nations -- Britain, France, Russia, China, India, Pakistan and North Korea -- are declared nuclear powers. Israel is widely believed to have developed nuclear weapons, but has never declared that publicly.
Obama has made reducing the global nuclear threat a top priority of his presidency, and will host a summit on reducing the global nuclear threat later this month. The purpose of the new strategy is to prevent nuclear terrorism and proliferation while maintaining an effective nuclear deterrent for the United States and its allies "for as long as nuclear weapons exist," according to the senior administration official.
Continued investment in the nuclear weapons system will enable the simultaneous reduction in overall warheads and increase in strategic effectiveness, the official said.

Review of forex education

2010-02-11T23:30:00.000-08:00

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Death of Nancy Kerrigan's father ruled a homicide

2010-02-09T23:14:00.000-08:00

The medical examiner has ruled that the death of Daniel Kerrigan, the father of figure skater Nancy Kerrigan, was a homicide, the Middlesex County district attorney's office said Tuesday.
The skater's brother, Mark, was arraigned in January on assault and battery charges in an incident involving his father, but the district attorney's office would not say if other charges might be filed against the younger Kerrigan in light of the medical examiner's finding.
Daniel Kerrigan, 70, died January 24 after an alleged altercation with his son at the Kerrigan home in Stoneham, Massachusetts.
The Kerrigan family released a statement through their attorney expressing disappointment "that the medical examiner would release a cause of death without having all of the relevant facts. We believe this finding to be premature and inaccurate."
"The Kerrigan family does not blame anyone for the unfortunate death of Dan Kerrigan, who had a pre-existing heart condition," said the family statement, released by attorney Tracy Miner.
Mark Kerrigan, 45, pleaded not guilty to the charges against him January 26. Through his attorney, he denied any responsibility in his father's death.
According to Middlesex County Assistant District Attorney Elizabeth Keeley, police responded to a 911 call at approximately 1:30 a.m. January 24 from Brenda Kerrigan, wife of Daniel and mother to Mark and Nancy Kerrigan.
Keeley told District Court Judge Mark Sullivan during the arraignment for Mark Kerrigan that there was a violent argument and struggle between the father and his son, resulting in the elder Kerrigan falling or collapsing on the kitchen floor. Keeley said Mark Kerrigan told authorities "that he did in fact have an argument with his father, the argument became physical, he grabbed his father around the neck, and at some point the father collapsed to the floor."
According to Keeley, police found Mark Kerrigan in the basement of the house, "clearly intoxicated" and "extremely combative." He refused to comply with police officers, said Keeley, and they had to subdue him with pepper spray before forcibly removing him from the home.
Mark Kerrigan's attorney, Denise Moore, said in court that Kerrigan was unemployed, was recently released from a correctional facility and was living at home with his parents. He is taking medications and seeking psychological help for post-traumatic stress, apparently from his time in the Army, she added.
Despite appeals from his attorney, the judge ordered Kerrigan held on $10,000 cash bail. His next court appearance is expected to be February 24.
Nancy Kerrigan first gained prominence by winning a bronze medal at the 1992 Winter Olympics in Albertville, France. In 1994 she earned a silver medal in Lillehammer, Norway. But she is perhaps best remembered for being injured in an attack before the 1994 Winter Games by skating rival Tonya Harding's ex-husband and an accomplice.

Murtha's gallbladder procedure rarely deadly

2010-02-09T23:03:00.001-08:00

Taking out a patient's gallbladder is routine. At least 500,000 such surgeries are done each year in the United States. It takes an hour or two, and the patient can go home that day or the next.
But in rare cases, the surgery can be deadly. Democratic Rep. John Murtha of Pennsylvania recently died after complications from the procedure after doctors "hit his intestines" during surgery, a source close to the late congressman told CNN.
Murtha underwent the scheduled laparoscopic surgery at the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland, on January 28, to remove his gallbladder, and was discharged. Three days later, he was admitted to Virginia Hospital Center's Intensive Care Unit because of major complications from surgery, the hospital said in a statement. He died there Monday at age 77.
The National Naval Medical Center declined to reveal additional details on Murtha's death.
At most, only one out of every 1,000 patients, dies during gallbladder removal, according to the American College of Surgeons. Factors that increase the risk of death include gangrene, a burst gallbladder, or severe diseases.
The laparoscopic surgery is a safe, minimally invasive procedure, said Dr. L.D. Britt, president-elect of the American College of Surgeons and professor at Eastern Virginia Medical School. Out of hundreds of thousands of cases, only a handful result in damage to the intestines, he said. Precise statistics are not available.
"Even when you have an injury, it doesn't often, obviously, lead to death," Britt said. "This is very surprising, but we know that death is a possible complication of any procedure."

The gallbladder, a small pear-shaped organ under the liver, squeezes bile from the liver out into the small intestine. Signs that this organ may need to be removed include sharp pain in the right abdomen, low fever, and nausea and bloating.
In a laparoscopic cholecystectomy, the technical term for the procedure, the surgeon removes the gallbladder with instruments placed into four small slits in the abdomen, according to the American College of Surgeons. This kind of surgery is performed to remove gallstones or to remove an infected or inflamed gallbladder.
A laparoscope, a telescope-like instrument with a light and video camera on the end, helps the surgeon see inside the abdomen. Removal of the gallbladder this way usually takes one to two hours. This is much more common and less invasive than an open cholecystectomy, which involves making a six-inch incision in the abdomen and cutting through to the gallbladder.
Injury to the intestines during the procedure is rare, but it is a risk that patients are informed about before surgery, said Dr. Albert Wu, professor of health policy and management at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
If the intestine is perforated, stool can leak into the abdomen, causing a systemic infection called sepsis, he said. If the patient begins taking antibiotics immediately when that happens, that could solve the problem, but if the perforation goes unnoticed and several days pass, the infection can get worse and result in death, Wu said.
This is just one possible scenario, however, experts said. It is unknown at what point during the procedure his intestine may have been harmed, or in what way.
"It certainly is a surgical error, I just don't know where the mistake [was], how that occurred," Britt said.
The damage could have occurred during dissection or, alternatively, when inserting the trocar, a surgical device that aids the introduction of other instruments into the abdomen, Britt said. Another possibility is that the heat probe could have injured the intestine, and later the area that got burned could have opened up and leaked, Britt said.
The takeaway message is to always call your doctor or come back in the hospital if you feel unwell after surgery, experts say.
"If you suspect that something is wrong, without delay you should contact the surgeon because time really is of the essence," Wu said.
A 2009 study led by the Mayo Clinic found that almost 9 percent of U.S. surgeons who responded to the survey said they had made a major error in the previous three months.
"No operation is 100 percent free of complications and problems," Britt said. "The best you can do is, obviously, follow instructions, as I'm sure [Murtha] did."
Britt stressed that the laparoscopic procedure is common. He performed three last week, two that went smoothly and one of which needed to be converted into an open procedure because of scar tissue. The public should not be frightened, he said.
"At the end of the day, if you don't have it done and you have a diseased gallbladder, you're talking about a very high complication rate and a possibility of death," he said.

Haiti rubble collapses as diggers try retrieve body

2010-02-09T23:01:00.001-08:00

Teams of rescuers in Haiti's capital rushed to the city's Caribbean Market on Tuesday after a machine used to clear rubble caused a secondary collapse, trapping at least one Haitian in the rubble.
A French excavation team was working the site, which collapsed in the January 12 earthquake, said Lt. Col. Christophe Renou of French Civil Protection. The team spotted a body in the rubble and brought in an excavation machine, which resembles a bulldozer, to attempt to reach the body, he said.
The machine tipped into a hole, however, and caused further collapse, Renou said. Several Haitians were in the building at the time, he said, some helping in the search and others looking for useful items. Teams are aware of at least one person alive, confirmed with radar.
Renou said he believes more people are trapped, but he doesn't know how many or whether they are alive.
The French crews called U.S. and Mexican teams to the site to help with the rescue. The U.S. team brought more radar and lifting devices to try to extract the known survivor and reach any others, said Norman Skjelbreia, an incident commander from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
The rescue mission is complicated, he said, by the Caribbean Market's debris and rubble and an adjacent building that is partially collapsed.
More than 212,000 people died in the earthquake, Haitian officials said, and bodies are being recovered every day.
Rescuers pulled an apparent survivor of the original quake, Evan Muncie, 28, from the rubble of a market on Monday. Doctors found him suffering from extreme dehydration and malnutrition, but without significant crushing injuries.
Muncie's family told staff at the hospital that he had been missing since the quake, and was found in the wreckage of a market where he sold rice. Muncie told doctors that someone brought him water while he waited for rescue, but sounded confused and sometimes thought he was still in the rubble.
By Wednesday, Muncie was in stable condition, according to University of Miami hospital spokeswoman Nery Ynclan, who said he was more alert and aware of his surroundings and was answering questions.
Ynclan said Muncie had eaten and even asked for chocolate -- which staff provided in small quantities. Muncie will be at the hospital at least another week, she said. His brother and mother arrived Monday at the hospital to be with him, she said.
Ynclan also said that crews returned Tuesday to the the site where Muncie was found and determined he may have been trapped in a room with some food or water. He was likely not pinned down, she said, but scrapes on his hands and feet indicate he may have tried to climb out.

One year in, Obama must define himself

2010-02-09T22:57:00.000-08:00

In his first year in the White House, President Obama has proved to be an elusive figure. This is ironic given that his campaign to win the Democratic primary in 2007 and 2008 had been premised on the idea that voters preferred a candidate who stood for something.
For one thing, he distinguished himself from Sen. Hillary Clinton by highlighting the fact that he had been against the Iraq War from the start and never wavered in his position.
Yet in 2010, many Democrats, as well as Republicans, are unsure of who President Obama is and what exactly he stands for.
The president has opened himself up to attack by falling into the trap of being the pragmatic president who avoids taking clear stands. He makes himself vulnerable to attack from liberals who believe he is disloyal to their cause, moderates who are not convinced that he really will govern from the center and conservatives who can paint him as embodying their very worst fear.
Several times, the nation has seen Obama take a firm stand but then back off. Most recently, the president has wavered on his decision to have one of the masterminds of 9/11 tried in a civilian court in New York. When a backlash developed from New York officials, the Obama administration backed down and said it was reconsidering.
This was similar to what happened with the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base. The president started his term announcing he would close the facility within a year. But from the time of the announcement, he encountered fierce opposition from members of both parties who didn't want detainees transferred to detention centers in their home states. At this point, the schedule to close Guantanamo remains unclear.
We have seen the same kind of elusiveness on domestic policy. With some exceptions, such as his effective speech on health care after a politically brutal month, the president has avoided making too many speeches where he outlines his broader vision of public policy.
At several points in the health care negotiations, the president has conceded on significant items that he once supported. Many liberals were upset that he gave up on the public option and allowed for abortion restrictions to be placed in the bill. Many moderates were unhappy that the president did not fight harder for cost-control measures that he once said were essential to the success of the legislation.
When presidents fail to define themselves, they can find themselves in political trouble. To be sure, it is essential that a president avoid being so ideologically rigid that he circumscribes the opportunities for productive negotiations.
But at the same time, a president needs to let voters and fellow politicians know what he is about. Lyndon Johnson frequently spoke about his broader vision for a Great Society, even while accepting significant compromises on the particulars of bills.
Ronald Reagan stuck to his arguments about the dangers of too much government and the need for an aggressive stance against Communism, even while accepting policies, such as arms negotiations with the Soviets in 1986 and 1987, that signaled very different goals.
Even Bill Clinton, who was notoriously opportunistic, was able to define himself as a centrist Democrat who would defend the social services provided by the federal government since the New Deal while pushing for market-based reforms and market deregulation.
Then there were presidents who proved much less popular.
Jimmy Carter ran into trouble in 1979 and 1980, as critics from all sides of the political spectrum saw in him a lot of what they didn't like -- conservatives saw a left-wing Democrat, liberals saw a hidden conservative -- while few people found something in his presidency for which they were willing to fight.
Similarly, George H.W. Bush saw his political standing plummet after a high point during Operation Desert Storm for, among other things, refraining from dealing with the "vision thing" on domestic policy during a recession. As a result, he found himself under attack from multiple angles.
Since the Republican victory of Scott Brown in Massachusetts, Obama has tried to speak out in a more forceful fashion but continues to send signals in many directions.
At some moments, he draws on a populist rhetoric to attack the banks and call for regulations; at other times, he taps into the agenda of the moderate Democratic Leadership Council with his calls for deficit reduction and spending cuts.
Most recently, the president has invited Republicans to participate in a summit on health care. If the event comes off, it will be important that Obama provides a strong sense of what provisions within the existing legislation the White House will insist on if there is to be a final deal.
The president is still early in his presidency. He has time to correct his problems and to emerge stronger during year two. But time is slipping away. Many members of the administration must feel like athletes on the court, looking up at the game clock as the minutes fade away.
The president must do better at explaining just what his presidency is about. This does not mean abandoning a strategy of negotiation and compromise and ideological flexibility, but it does mean better defining the person who will be at the negotiating table. Otherwise, everyone else in the room will do that job themselves.
The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Julian Zelizer.

The Dow Jones industrial average (INDU) added 150 points, or 1.5%, after having risen as much as 230 points earlier in the session. It was the Dow's b

2010-02-09T22:49:00.000-08:00

Stocks rallied Tuesday as growing bets that European officials will rescue Greece from its debt problems reassured investors after a four-week selloff.
After the close, Dow component Walt Disney (DIS, Fortune 500) reported higher-than-expected quarterly earnings and revenue. Shares rose 2% in extended-hours trading.

The Dow Jones industrial average (INDU) added 150 points, or 1.5%, after having risen as much as 230 points earlier in the session. It was the Dow's biggest one-day point advance since Jan. 4, when it gained 155.91.
The S&P 500 index (SPX) rose 14 points, or 1.3% and the Nasdaq composite (COMP) gained 25 points, or 1.2%.
"The prospect of the EU helping out Greece is a sigh of relief, but I really think today is mostly a bounce after the selloff," said Scott Armiger, portfolio manager at Christiana Bank & Trust.
He pointed out that last week, stocks rallied the first two sessions of the week before sliding later in the week. "Today is a good day, but it's only Tuesday," he said. "We need to see how the week plays out."
The threat of a default in Greece has sparked fears of a broader crisis that could impact Portugal, Spain, Ireland, Italy and other debt-challenged European nations. U.S. investors have been trying to gauge what kind of impact such a crisis would have on financial institutions as well as the still-fragile global economic recovery.
News that European Union leaders will meet Thursday to discuss how to manage a growing debt crisis reassured investors. Additionally, Greece said it's raising the retirement age and asking civil servants to accept bonus cuts.
European Central Bank president Jean-Claude Trichet is reportedly leaving a conference in Australia early to join the Thursday meeting. And the Wall Street Journal reported Germany is considering a plan to work with other EU members to offer loan guarantees to Greece and other troubled euro zone countries.
The December trade balance from the Commerce Department is due in the morning, while the January Treasury budget is due out in the afternoon. The weekly crude oil inventories report from the government is also due in the morning.
The House Financial Services Committee holds a hearing on the unwinding of Federal Reserve liquidity programs that were put in place at the height of the financial crisis. Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke testifies.
Pop after the fizzle: Stocks have fallen for four weeks straight on worries about China curbing bank lending, Washington cracking down on bank trading practices, and more recently, Europe's debt woes.
Between rally highs hit on Jan. 19 and Monday's close, the Dow lost 7.6%, the S&P 500 lost 7.3% and the Nasdaq lost 8.4%.
"I don't see this as much more than a reflex rally after the downtrend," said Mike Stanfield, chief investment officer at VSR Financial Services.
"There's still a lot of uncertainty about the economic and political environment going forward," he said. "It wouldn't be surprising to see the first half of the year be something of a consolidation period."
The burger and beverage recession
On the move: Financial shares bounced Tuesday, with the KBW Bank (BKX) index rising 1.3%. The index slipped nearly 5% between the market rally peak on Jan. 19 and Monday's close.
Big energy stocks including Exxon Mobil (XOM, Fortune 500) and Chevron (CVX, Fortune 500) rallied as the dollar slipped versus the euro. Barrick Gold (ABX), Goldcorp (GG) and Alcoa (AA, Fortune 500) were among the other big commodity shares rising.
Caterpillar (CAT, Fortune 500) gained after it was reportedly upgraded to "overweight" from "underweight" by Morgan Stanley.
Economy: Wholesale inventories fell by 0.8% in December after rising 1.6% in November, according to a government report released in the morning. Economists surveyed by Briefing.com thought inventories would rise 0.5%, on average.
"The weak inventories number shows you that businesses are not ready to restock their shelves," said Armiger. "They don't feel confident enough yet."
Toyota: The troubled automaker announced a global recall of 437,000 hybrids, including the 2010 Prius, due to problems with the anti-lock brakes.
Toyota (TM) has recalled 8.1 million vehicles due to brake problems. Shares gained 2.4%.
The House Oversight Committee holds a hearing on the company's recall Wednesday.
Quarterly results: Coca-Cola (KO, Fortune 500) reported fourth-quarter earnings of $1.54 billion or 66 cents per share, up 55% from a year earlier and in line with analysts' estimates, according to Thomson Reuters' estimates. The Dow component reported revenue of $7.51 billion, up 5% from a year ago and better than expected.
Shares of Coca-Cola rose 2.6%.
With 335 companies, or 67% of the S&P 500, having reported results, earnings are on track to have risen 207% versus a year ago and revenues to have gained 8%, according to Thomson Reuters. The jump is largely attributed to a combination of cost-cutting efforts and easy comparisons to a year ago.
Financials are expected to benefit more than any sector. Striping out financials leaves earnings growth at 16% and revenue growth at 3%.
Results have largely been positive, with 74% of companies beating earnings forecasts and 71% beating revenue forecasts.
0:00 /1:20Toyota workers on the fix
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Commodities: U.S. light crude oil for March delivery rose $2.56 to settle at $73.75 on the New York Mercantile Exchange.
COMEX gold for April delivery rose $11 to settle at $1,077.20.
Bonds: Treasury prices tumbled, raising the yield on the 10-year note to 3.63% from 3.56% late Monday. Treasury prices and yields move in opposite directions.
Market breadth was positive. On the New York Stock Exchange, winners topped losers three to one on volume of 1.24 billion shares. On the Nasdaq, advancers beat decliners by over nine to four on volume of 2.24 billion shares.

Crew inspects shuttle after launch, heads for space station

2010-02-09T01:32:00.000-08:00

As they head toward a rendezvous with the international space station, crew members of the space shuttle Endeavour are checking for any signs of damage after Monday's early morning launch.
Tuesday's routine inspection includes checks of the shuttle's protective thermal tiles. Cameras and lasers capture views of the shuttle's exterior, which NASA will inspect on Earth for any damage sustained during launch.
The shuttle will dock with the space station just after 12 a.m. Wednesday.
Endeavour lifted off from Kennedy Space Center early Monday. During the mission, the six-member crew is delivering a key module to the space station.
The crew is delivering a third connecting module, an Italian-built Tranquility node and a seven-windowed cupola to be used as a control room for robotics. The mission also will include three spacewalks.
The space station will be about 90 percent complete once the node and cupola are added, NASA said.

Federal workers in Washington, with the exception of emergency employees, stayed home Monday and students in most schools in the nation's capital got

2010-02-09T01:28:00.000-08:00

The mid-Atlantic region continued digging out Monday from the weekend's record blizzard, but snow-weary residents learned of a new winter storm due in the area on Tuesday.
The National Weather Service issued a winter storm warning, with predictions of another 10 to 20 inches of snow, for northern Virginia and eastern Maryland, including the District of Columbia, beginning Tuesday afternoon and continuing through Wednesday.
"A winter storm warning means significant amounts of snow are expected or occurring," said the statement from the weather service facility in Sterling, Virginia. "The combination of snow and strong winds will make travel very hazardous."
If as severe as predicted, the new storm would be the third major snowfall to hit the nation's capital and surrounding region in just over seven weeks.
In last weekend's blizzard, a record 32.4 inches of snow fell on Washington's Dulles International Airport over two days, breaking a January 7-8, 1996, record of 23.2 inches.

Federal workers in Washington, with the exception of emergency employees, stayed home Monday and students in most schools in the nation's capital got a snow day.
Many residents who spent the weekend playfully making snowmen and hurling snowballs also grumbled as they shoveled hip-high snow from driveways.
"The streets are pretty well covered," Kingsley Barreto said Sunday about his subdivision in Gaithersburg, Maryland.
"No cars coming in or out of here. Hopefully everyone in the community has enough supplies to last them for a little while, because it doesn't look like we're going anywhere anytime soon," Barreto said in a post he submitted to iReport, a CNN Web site that allows people to submit information, pictures and videos.
Watch Barreto's iReport on his neighborhood
Crews worked around the clock to clear roads and repair power lines, warning that it might take days to restore electricity to some customers from Pennsylvania to Virginia.
Two of Dulles' four runways were open Monday morning, and officials hoped to have a third open later in the day, said Courtney Mickalonis of the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority.
The situation there is "getting back to normal," Mickalonis said.
But airport officials asked travelers not to go there without confirmed flights.
Reagan National Airport was scheduled to reopen at 10 a.m. Monday, with flights resuming on a limited basis, the airport authority said. Travelers were urged to check with airlines on flight schedules before heading to the airport.
Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport was open Monday, with limited service, spokesman Jonathan Dean said.
One of the two runways opened Sunday night, and some flights landed, Dean said. However, airport authorities expect carrier delays and cancellations because of the backlog.
Are you there? Share your winter weather photos, video
Airport crews were dealing with a refreeze from overnight, but officials intended to have both runways open by the end of Monday.
Amtrak canceled several trains Sunday after trees and power lines fell on tracks, the train service said. Dozens of Greyhound bus trips in mid-Atlantic states also were canceled, the company said on its Web site. And officials across the region advised drivers to stay off slick roads.
"Everybody's just trying to clean up and get a little bit ahead of the game before the next round comes," said Michelle Timberlake, who lives on a farm in Boyce, Virginia, about two hours west of Washington.
The interior designer found herself running through a mountain of snow when about 40 cows escaped from the pasture on her husband's farm in search of food and shelter.
"This was not what I imagined for myself," she said Sunday, laughing about the experience.

3 shot during Super Bowl celebrations in New Orleans

2010-02-09T01:26:00.000-08:00

Three people were shot amid celebrations surrounding the New Orleans Saints' Super Bowl win, police said Monday.
The shootings occurred at about midnight, at the intersection of Iberville and Bourbon streets, in the Crescent City's French Quarter, authorities said in a statement.
None of the victims -- a 25-year-old man, a 30-year-old woman and a 36-year-old woman -- had life-threatening injuries, New Orleans, Louisiana, police said.
The 25-year-old was shot in his right ankle and both women were shot in their left shin. All three were treated and released in good condition.
"According to investigators, the victims stated that they were standing with a crowd when they heard gunshots and observed that they had been struck," the police statement said. Several officers were in the area and responded quickly to the call of shots fired, according to the statement.
CNN affiliate WWL-TV of New Orleans reported Monday that two people had been detained in connection with the incident. In the police statement, issued Monday, authorities asked those with information to contact them.

Study: 'Electronic cigarettes' don't deliver

2010-02-09T01:23:00.000-08:00

"Electronic cigarettes" that vaporize nicotine juice to inhale instead of smoke from burning tobacco do not deliver as promised, according to research at Virginia Commonwealth University.
"They are as effective at nicotine delivery as puffing on an unlit cigarette," said Dr. Thomas Eissenberg, at the school's Institute for Drug and Alcohol Studies.
His study, funded by the federal National Cancer Institute, is the first by American doctors to check the function of so-called "no-smoke tobacco" devices, which are unregulated in the United States for sale or use.
The units are shaped like a cigarette and contain a battery that heats a filament to vaporize liquid nicotine in a refillable cartridge. Smokers buy the devices to get around no-smoking restrictions and to attempt to quit conventional cigarettes.
Some users nickname what they're doing as "vaping" instead of smoking, to reflect the vapor produced by the heating element. The devices are marketed as an alternative to smoking, but retailers avoid making claims about health or safety.
Fans have established a Web site, www.e-cigarette-forum.com. Founder Oliver Kershaw said the site "is the largest e-smokers community online with some 26,000 members, most of whom are in the U.S."
Jimi Jackson, a former tobacco smoker in Richmond, Virginia, who sells electronic cigarettes, is convinced there are immediate health advantages in avoiding the known cancer-causing substances in the smoke of a burning cigarette.
"I smoked 37 years, and when I found them, I was, like, 'Thank, you Jesus,' " Jackson said with a laugh, as a reporter visited his shop, No Smoke Virginia, coincidentally just a few blocks from where the research was conducted at Virginia Commonwealth.
In March, the Food and Drug Administration imposed a ban on continued imports of the devices, pending regulatory review for any health risks.
The latest clinical evidence suggests users are not getting the addictive substance they get from smoking tobacco. "These e-cigs do not deliver nicotine," Eissenberg said of the findings he expects to publish in an upcoming issue of the British Medical Journal.
This past summer, Eissenberg recruited smokers without prior experience using e-cigarettes to volunteer to use two popular brands of the devices for a set period. The 16 subjects were regularly measured in a clinical setting for the presence of nicotine in their bodies, their reported craving for conventional cigarettes, and certain physiological effects such as a change in heart rate.
"Ten puffs from either of these electronic cigarettes with a 16 mg nicotine cartridge delivered little to no nicotine," the study found.
But the units may deliver hazardous chemicals, according to preliminary checks by federal regulators. In a notice to importers, the FDA blocked continued shipments after finding diethylene glycol, a chemical used in antifreeze that is toxic to humans.
The government's statement noted there are no health warnings on the products, and that "the FDA analyses detected carcinogens, including nitrosamines."
The notice of the import ban says "the product appears to be a combination drug-device," that "requires pre-approval, registration and listing with the FDA" in order to be marketed in the United States.
A company challenging the import ban claims in federal court documents to have sold 600,000 of the devices in a year's time through a network of 120 distributors in the United States.
"We are on the verge of going out of business, which is why we are suing the FDA in U.S. District Court," said Washington, attorney Kip Schwartz, representing a company called "Smoking Everywhere," a U.S. wholesaler that was importing the devices from China.
The lawsuit questions the FDA's authority to block shipments of a non-tobacco product, and says the agency has violated its statutory process for product review. Liquid nicotine is available on the open market through pharmaceutical houses and vendors who sell e-cigarettes.
A judge has yet to rule on the company's request for an injunction that would allow imports to resume. "There has been no change," said FDA spokesman Siobhan DeLancey. She said "a decision in the case is still pending, with no timeline."
President Obama, who has described himself as an occasional smoker, has been offered one of the devices by Florida Rep. Cliff Stearns. The Republican lawmaker's office said the president did not respond.
An administration spokesman last year said the White House was not aware of the offer.
In a copy of a letter to the chief executive dated March 26, Stearns wrote, "I have recently given out e-cigarettes to a few members of Congress and they have become quite a hit."
Sales of the devices continue at shopping mall kiosks and small storefront retailers, apparently drawing from stock imported before the FDA began to block shipments from overseas suppliers.

Rep. John Murtha dies after surgery complications

2010-02-09T01:20:00.000-08:00

Rep. John Murtha of Pennsylvania, a longtime fixture on the House subcommittee that oversees Pentagon spending, died after complications from gallbladder surgery, according to his office. He was 77.
The Democratic congressman recently underwent scheduled laparoscopic surgery at National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland, to remove his gallbladder. The procedure was "routine minimally invasive surgery," but doctors "hit his intestines," a source close to the late congressman told CNN.
Murtha was initially hospitalized in December and had to postpone a hearing with Defense Secretary Robert Gates on the administration's strategy in Afghanistan. The congressman returned to work after a few days in the hospital and helped oversee final passage of the 2010 defense appropriations bill.
Murtha had a "tough-as-nails reputation" and a "passion for service," President Obama said in a written statement. He was "a steadfast advocate for the people of Pennsylvania" and "a respected voice on issues of national security," Obama said.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a longtime ally of Murtha's, said in a statement that he always put "the troops and their families first."
Murtha was "incredibly effective in his service in the House," said Wisconsin Rep. David Obey, chairman of the Appropriations Committee. "Every person who serves in the military has lost an advocate and a good friend."

Murtha "will be missed," said House Minority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio. "The House of Representatives has lost one of its own."
Murtha had represented Pennsylvania's 12th Congressional District since 1974, making him the chamber's eighth most senior member. According to his biography on the House of Representatives Web site, Murtha was the first Vietnam War combat veteran elected to Congress.
He was considered one of "the kings of pork" on Capitol Hill by taxpayer watchdog groups for requesting tens of millions of dollars in earmarks.
On his House Web site, Murtha strongly defended earmarks, saying, "I believe that elected representatives of the people understand their constituents and districts best."
Supporters said his efforts helped bring thousands of jobs to western Pennsylvania.
Other controversies dogged Murtha's career. Critics alleged that he steered Pentagon contracts to businesses that hired his brother as a lobbyist, but Murtha insisted that his brother was treated like everyone else.
Murtha also turned up in the FBI's Abscam investigation in 1980 when undercover agents offered bribes to several members of Congress. Murtha was videotaped turning down a bribe, saying he wasn't interested "at this point." He was not charged.
Murtha came under fire during the 2008 election campaign for saying that part of his state was a "racist area" where constituents would not vote for Obama because he was black.
He later apologized and said, "While we cannot deny that race is a factor in this election, I believe we've been able to look beyond race these past few months."
Murtha won 58 percent of the vote in 2008, his last re-election; Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain won the district by less than 1,000 votes.
Murtha, a former Marine, also earned a reputation as one of Congress's loudest anti-war voices. He initially supported the 2003 invasion of Iraq, but he stunned much of Washington when he called for a swift U.S. pullout in November 2005, saying, "U.S. and coalition troops have done all they can. ... It's time for a change in direction."
In 2006, Murtha seemed on track to become the House Majority leader, but he lost to Rep. Steny Hoyer of Maryland. Murtha said he was subject to "swift boat-style attacks" on his ethics record, blasting critics who raised concerns about "unfounded allegations that occurred 26 years ago."
Born June 17, 1932, in West Virginia, Murtha moved with his family to Pennsylvania as a child.
Before joining the House, he was in the Pennsylvania state Legislature. He also served 37 years in the Marines and Marine Corps Reserves. He retired from the Reserves in 1990 and received the Navy Distinguished Service Medal.
Murtha attended Washington and Jefferson College, but dropped out in 1952 to enlist in the Marines. He later graduated from the University of Pittsburgh.
He is survived by his wife, Joyce, and three children.

Elizabeth Smart kidnapper pleads guilty to trying to abduct cousin

2010-02-09T01:17:00.000-08:00

A woman convicted in the 2002 kidnapping of Utah teenager Elizabeth Smart pleaded guilty in the attempted kidnapping of Smart's cousin a month later, court officials said Monday.
In exchange for Wanda Barzee's plea of guilty but mentally ill to one count of conspiracy to commit aggravated kidnapping, prosecutors dropped state charges against her in Smart's abduction, said Nancy Volmer, spokeswoman for Utah state courts.
Barzee, 64, pleaded guilty in November to federal charges of kidnapping and unlawful transportation of a minor in connection with Smart's abduction. As part of that plea agreement, she agreed to cooperate with the state and federal cases against her husband, Brian David Mitchell, federal prosecutors have said.
Barzee and Mitchell were accused of abducting Smart, then 14, at knifepoint from her bedroom in her family's Salt Lake City home in June 2002. Smart was found nine months later, walking down a street in the Salt Lake City suburb of Sandy, Utah, in the company of Barzee and Mitchell, a drifter and self-described prophet who calls himself Emmanuel and had done some handyman work at the Smarts' home.
The month after Smart was kidnapped, prosecutors alleged, Barzee and Mitchell attempted to break into the home of her cousin, but were unsuccessful. The girl was 15 years old at the time, according to CNN affiliate KSL. She is not named in court documents.
"Mr. Mitchell's attempt was thwarted when the minor child awakened, which caused Mr. Mitchell to flee," the court documents said.
Following her arrest in 2003, Barzee told authorities that she and Mitchell went to the home in order to abduct the girl, and planned to hold her, along with Smart, in the couple's camp in the mountains, according to court documents.
Sentencing is set for May 21 on the state charge, Volmer said. Barzee faces between one and 15 years in prison, but prosecutors have agreed to allow that sentence to run concurrently with her federal sentence, according to court documents.
Federal prosecutors have recommended a sentence of 15 years in prison for her in exchange for her cooperation against Mitchell. Federal sentencing was set for May 19, but a spokeswoman for federal prosecutors has said a sentence would not be imposed until Barzee's cooperation against Mitchell is complete.
At the hearing in federal court, Barzee apologized to Smart, according to a transcript.
"I'm greatly humbled as I realize how much Elizabeth Smart has been victimized and the role I played in it," she said. "I'm so sorry, Elizabeth, for all the pain and suffering I have caused you and your family. It is my hope that you will be able to find it in your heart to forgive me one day."
Barzee had been housed at the Utah State Hospital while courts determined her competency as well as Mitchell's. After years of being declared incompetent, she recently was declared competent to stand trial, according to the Salt Lake Tribune newspaper. A state court had ruled she could be forcibly medicated, and that ruling led federal prosecutors to proceed with bringing a case against the couple, the Tribune said.
At a competency hearing for Mitchell in October, Smart, now 21, testified that she had been held captive in Utah and California. Just after her abduction, Mitchell took her to a wooded area behind her home and performed a mock marriage ceremony with her, she said. During the nine months of her captivity, Smart testified, no 24-hour period passed without her being raped by Mitchell.
U.S. District Judge Dale Kimball has not yet ruled on Mitchell's competency. State court proceedings are on hold pending the outcome of the federal case.

Toyota adds 1 million vehicles to recall

2010-01-27T23:18:00.000-08:00

Toyota announced Wednesday night that it is adding another 1.1 million vehicles to an an earlier 4.2 million vehicle recall originally announced in November.
The vehicles are being recalled to fix a problem in which the gas pedal can become caught on the edge of the removable floormat, causing the vehicle to accelerate uncontrollably.

The vehicles now being added to that recall are the 2008-2010 Highlander, 2009-2010 Corolla, 2009-2010 Venza 2009-2010 Matrix, 2009-2010 Pontiac Vibe.
General Motors' Pontiac car is included in the recall because the Vibe and Toyota's Matrix are similar vehicles that were produced under a partnership between the two companies.
The vehicles originally included in this recall were the 2007-2010 Toyota Camry, 2005-2010 Avalon, 2004-2009 Prius, 2010 Tacoma, 2007-2010 Tundra and the 2007-2010 Lexus ES350, 2006-2010 and the 2006-2010 IS250 and IS350.
This recall is separate from one announced last week regarding accelerator pedals that could stick on their own. That recall involved 2.3 million vehicles.
Most, but not all, of the vehicles involved in the more recent recall are also involved in the older recall. They are the 2009-2010 Toyota RAV4, Corolla and Matrix and the Pontiac Vibe; the 2005-2010 Avalon; 2010 Highlander; 2007-2010 Tundra and the 2008-2010 Sequoia; and some 2007-2010 Camrys.
In the more recent recall, Toyota has not yet announced a proposed remedy for the problem. Owners who experience sticking or slowness in the movement of their car's gas pedal should stop driving the car and call a Toyota dealer immediately.

Apple unveils the 'magical' iPad

2010-01-27T23:15:00.000-08:00

Apple CEO Steve Jobs on Wednesday unveiled the iPad, the widely and wildly anticipated tablet-style computer that he called "a truly magical and revolutionary product."
"What this device does is extraordinary," Jobs said. "It is the best browsing experience you've ever had. ... It's unbelievably great ... way better than a laptop. Way better than a smartphone."
The computer will act as a sort of missing link between the two. The model Jobs demonstrated at an invitation-only event in San Francisco operated without a hardware keyboard, with Jobs typing on what he described as a nearly full-size touchscreen keyboard.
"It's a dream to type on," he said.
It has a nearly 10-inch screen, runs existing apps from the Apple apps store and is available in 16-gigabyte, 32-gigabyte and 64-gigabyte versions, according to Jobs.
It will be about a half-inch thick and weigh about 1½ pounds.
Jobs said the iPad will be lightning fast: "It screams," he told a crowd that included former Vice President Al Gore.
See CNN iReporters' reaction to the iPad
The device will have a 1 GHz processor, an announcement that coaxed "oohs" and "ahs" from the audience.
Pricing will start at $499 for the 16-gigabyte version, $599 for the 32-gig version and $699 for the 64, Jobs said.
Having 3G mobile access will cost an extra $130 on each, he said.
Two mobile plans will be available through AT&T, and there will be no contracts, allowing customers to opt out at any time, according to Jobs.
They are scheduled to begin shipping in 60 days.

Jobs and executives from other companies announced several new apps designed for the iPad, including the New York Times and Major League Baseball. The slate also will be able to run all iPhone applications unmodified.
Some members of the struggling print media have expressed hope in recent weeks that a popular Apple tablet could renew interest in their content while bringing new revenue through subscription plans or iTunes purchases.
Also creating buzz at the event was the unveiling of the iBook interface, an aspect of the iPad that's expected to take a big bite out of the e-reader market currently dominated by Amazon's Kindle.
The iBook display looks like a real wooden bookshelf and will let users touch a book on that shelf to read it. It lets readers change fonts, tap the screen to turn pages or drag pages with their finger, according to Jobs' demonstration.
Jobs demonstrated several functions on the iPad, including Google Street View and used the reader function to pull up the New York Times and Time magazine.
Apple disciples -- and, yes, some await each new product announcement from the company with near cult-like devotion -- have been anticipating a tablet computer for several years.
The company has been considering designs for such a device since as early as 1983, and some smaller consumer-electronics companies already have rolled tablet computers onto the market.
Attendees at the Apple event cheered on several occasions, hollering particularly loudly when a skinny Jobs took the stage, when the iPad's price was announced, when Jobs debuted the iBookstore and when it was announced that the iPad will be sold unlocked, without a mobile carrier contract.
Some tech writers in the audience said they came into the event unsure of the concept but left as near-converts to the idea.
"I went into it prepared to be very skeptical, but I was impressed," said Jacqui Cheng, a senior writer at the tech site Ars Technica. "As a person who uses an iPhone, a laptop and a Kindle, it's kind of a natural way to combine all three things."
Stephen Hutcheon, an editor at the Sydney Morning Herald, said the iPad has sex appeal.
"It certainly has that Apple panache to it, so I'm sure it will be a top seller," he said.
Dylan Tweney, an editor at Wired.com, said the product did little to impress him.
Some tech writers said they were shocked that the iPad's price is so low, when they had predicted it to cost about $1,000. And Cheng said she found it amazing that the iPad doesn't lock consumers into a mobile contract.
But the iPad doesn't have a camera, as some had hoped. There was some groaning across the Internet at the news that AT&T -- which some users have accused of spotty coverage on the iPhone -- would be carrying the iPad's 3G signal too.
And the machine's apparent inability to run multiple applications at the same time was getting some negative comments.
And then there's the name. Lots of folks watching the announcement -- some of them, no doubt, dedicated Apple haters -- were quick to make the lowbrow connection between the name and a personal hygiene product.
While the Apple event was still going on, the term "iTampon" became a trending topic on Twitter.
Financial analysts debate how big the tablet market will be.
Bob O'Donnell, vice president of the firm IDG, said he expects the new tablet or slate computer category to result in 3 million to 4 million device sales this year, an amount he said was on par with e-reader sales for 2009. So, the category is notable but not enormous, he said.

Endeavour set to blast off in February

2010-01-27T23:13:00.000-08:00

NASA will launch Space Shuttle Endeavour on February 7, which will be the first of five launches this year before the shuttle fleet is retired.
Endeavour will blast off from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida on a 13-day mission to the international space station.
The mission will include three spacewalks, NASA said. The shuttle will also deliver the final U.S. portion of the space station. This portion will provide more room for crew members.
NASA plans to retire its space shuttles Discovery, Endeavour and Atlantis later this year.
The space agency has been looking for places, such as museums, to house the shuttles after they are retired.
Space Shuttle Discovery will be transferred to the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum in Washington.
The privilege of showing off a shuttle won't be cheap -- about $29 million, NASA said.

Book: Pope John Paul II self-flagellated to get closer to Jesus

2010-01-27T23:07:00.000-08:00

Pope John Paul II used to beat himself with a belt and sleep naked on the floor to bring himself closer to Christ, a book published Wednesday says.
The late pope had a particular belt for self-flagellation and brought it with him to his summer residence, according to the book, "Why he is a Saint: The True story of John Paul II."
"As some members of his own entourage were able to hear with their own ears, both in Poland and in the Vatican, Karol Wojtyla flagellated himself," the book says, using the name the pope was given at birth.
"In the closet, among the cloaks, a particular pant-belt hung from a hook, which he utilized as a whip and one which he always had brought to Castel Gandolfo," the book says.
The book was written by a Vatican insider, Slawomir Oder, with Italian journalist Saverio Gaeta of the Catholic weekly Christian Family. Oder is head of the Vatican committee investigating whether John Paul II should be declared a saint. John Paul died in 2005.
The evil albino monk in Dan Brown's "The Da Vinci Code" may be the best-known example of self-flagellation these days, but the practice is not unusual in Catholicism -- or nearly as extreme as it is shown in the movie.
"When members or former members [of Opus Dei] see the monk go at it in the movie, they just burst out laughing, it's so nutty," said the Rev. Michael Barrett, a priest of the Catholic Opus Dei sect.
In actual Catholic self-flagellation, "there is no blood, no injury, nothing to harm a person's health, nothing traumatic. If it caused any harm, the Church would not allow it," he wrote on Opus Dei's Web site when the movie came out in 2006.
"This voluntarily accepted discomfort is a way of joining oneself to Jesus Christ and the sufferings he voluntarily accepted in order to redeem us from sin. 'The Da Vinci Code's' masochist monk, who loves pain for its own sake, has nothing to do with real Christian mortification," Barrett said.
Mother Teresa is among famous Catholics who self-flagellated in some way, Barrett said.
Catholics are not alone in choosing to inflict pain on themselves for religion reasons. Some Shiite Muslims lash themselves until they bleed when marking the mourning period of Ashura, while fasting is practiced by people in several religions, including Jews on Yom Kippur, the day of atonement.
David Gibson, a journalist who worked for Vatican Radio when John Paul II was pope, pointed out that the pontiff wrote an apostolic letter -- essentially a papal position paper -- on suffering in 1984.
"Christ did not conceal from his listeners the need for suffering. He said very clearly: 'If any man would come after me ... let him take up his cross daily,' " the pope wrote, quoting the Gospel of Luke.
Jesus, the pope wrote, "suffered in place of man and for man. Every man has his own share in the Redemption. Each one is also called to share in that suffering through which the Redemption was accomplished.
"In bringing about the Redemption through suffering, Christ has also raised human suffering to the level of the Redemption. Thus each man, in his suffering, can also become a sharer in the redemptive suffering of Christ," says the letter, Salvifici Doloris, On the Christian Meaning of Human Suffering.
"John Paul was a product of a very Old World Polish Catholicism," said Gibson, who now writes on religion for Politics Daily.
"He was a very disciplined man and a very rigorous man in his personal spirituality," he said.
The authors of the new book clearly approve of any whipping the pope did of himself, he added.
"Even though it's going to weird people out, it's obviously seen by his postulators as a sign of his holiness," he said, using the technical term for the person who investigates a person's qualifications for sainthood.
He said the idea is not as bizarre as it might sound to contemporary ears.
"The idea of fasting, renouncing something, giving up your Starbucks latte so you can send money to Haiti -- you can't simply look down your nose at it without rejecting a lot of other ideas about self-sacrifice," he said.
The authors of the book based it on interviews with 114 "witnesses" and access to unedited documents in the Vatican's archives, according to the publisher, Rizzoli.
The book is available only in Italian, but the publisher is having it translated into Polish and other languages.

Cowell replacement could be big music biz name

2010-01-27T23:04:00.000-08:00

There's lots of speculation as to who will be replacing Simon Cowell on "American Idol" and who will serve as judges on Cowell's new show "The X Factor."
One name being bandied about is that of Tommy Mottola, former head of Sony Music Entertainment, who is said to be in the process of being courted by both shows as a possible judge.
A source with knowledge of the negotiations said there is "some truth" to reports that Mottola has been pegged to possibly replace the mercurial "Idol" judge. That source said Cowell also is interested in bringing Mottola on board for his new talent show.
"There's a lot of business that Mr. Mottola does with Simon Cowell and lots of businesses that probably will be announced soon," the source said. "Nothing is official yet, and nothing is set."
Mottola is the ex-husband of singer Mariah Carey and well-known in the industry for having an eye and ear for major talent.
It's been widely reported he helped guide the careers of several successful acts including Jennifer Lopez and Destiny's Child. He is currently married to Mexican pop star Thalia.
The news of a possible deal with Mottola comes as buzz continues to build that former "Idol" judge Paula Abdul has met with Cowell to discuss her participation in the show. Abdul and Cowell were known for their playful battles on "Idol," and fans were vocal about their displeasure that Abdul would not be returning for the ninth season.
This season, several celebrities have served as guest judges on "Idol" during the audition round, including singer Katy Perry, who told MTV that she enjoyed the gig that saw her dishing out some harsh criticism and crossing swords with permanent judge Kara DioGuardi.
"If I was offered that job as a permanent host, I would ditch my career and take on that career," Perry said.

iPad name draws feminine hygiene jokes

2010-01-27T22:59:00.000-08:00

Punch lines about hygiene products flooded the blogosphere on Wednesday only moments after Apple Inc. announced it would call its new touch-screen computer the "iPad."
"The mocking goes along the lines of: Yes, the iPad is small, lightweight and slim. But can you swim with it?" wrote the Los Angeles Times' tech blog.
The term iTampon -- a riff on the fact that the iPad can be taken to sound more like a maxipad than a slick new computer -- was the third most-talked about trend on Twitter on Wednesday evening.
Some female bloggers wrote that Apple seemed not to have any women on its marketing team.
"With "iTampon" quickly emerging as a trending Twitter topic, it's probably safe to say that many women found themselves cringing as they asked, 'Do any women work at Apple?' " wrote Annie Colbert on the blog "Holy Kaw!"
The tech community has discussed the name for Apple's new keyboard-less computer for months if not years. Rumor had it that the device might be called the iSlate, but one reporter at Apple's San Francisco event joked that the term "slate" might sound too ancient or heavy for a lightweight lap computer.

"Slate is a little bit 'Flintstones,' " said Stephen Hutcheon, an editor at The Sydney Morning Herald, a newspaper in Australia.
It's also unclear what people should call the category of computers that now includes the iPad. Some refer to computers without keyboards and with touch-screens as "slate computers."
Others call them tablets, a term that also can refer to '90s devices with keyboards and pens attached.
After Apple unveiled the iPad at an invitation-only event, some tech journalists said they thought the jokes about feminine hygiene would dissipate soon.
The name "iPod" sounded strange at first, for example, and now is a part of the standard vocabulary, said Hutcheon.
"If you think of iPods in 2001, we probably got the same smirks," he said. "I think the jokes will disappear."
He added that one could take "pad" to mean "home," which is where Apple CEO Steve Jobs hopes many people will use the iPad to read books, watch movies and the like.
Andy Ihnatko, a tech columnist at the Chicago Sun-Times, said Apple could call its new gadget a "mangled baby duck" and people would still buy it, both because Apple has sex appeal and because the iPad is a good product.
"With the right device, marketing doesn't really matter," he said.
The name iPad sticks with Apple's "i" line of branding and is therefore a smart move, said Jacqui Cheng, a senior writer at the tech site Ars Technica.
"I don't hate it," she said of the name. "I don't know if I love it, but it's OK."
Still, the torrent of online jokes about the iPad could stick in consumers' minds. It seems particularly damaging that MADtv was making fun of the iPad name long before Apple ever introduced its new product.
A years-old comedy skit from the show circulated the Internet on Wednesday. It shows two women discussing an Apple period-maintenance device called the iPad.
As Twitter user @DontStealMyPen notes snarkily, the botched iPad name has the potential to alter shopping habits:
"Will women send their husbands to the Apple store to buy iPads?" the user wrote.

Obama calls for 'don't ask, don't tell' repeal

2010-01-27T22:56:00.000-08:00

President Obama said Wednesday night he will work with Congress and the military to repeal the "don't ask, don't tell" policy that bars gays and lesbians from openly serving in the armed forces.
Obama made the remark in his first State of the Union speech during a short litany of civil rights issues, which included his successful hate crimes bill, a move to "crack down on equal-pay laws" and improvement of the immigration system.
"We find unity in our incredible diversity, drawing on the promise enshrined in our Constitution: the notion that we are all created equal, that no matter who you are or what you look like, if you abide by the law you should be protected by it," he said.
"We must continually renew this promise. My administration has a Civil Rights Division that is once again prosecuting civil rights violations and employment discrimination. We finally strengthened our laws to protect against crimes driven by hate," he said.

"This year, I will work with Congress and our military to finally repeal the law that denies gay Americans the right to serve the country they love because of who they are."
Weigh in on the president's address
Former Navy pilot Sen. John McCain said "it would be a mistake" to repeal the 1993 law that bars gay men and lesbians from revealing their sexual orientation, and prevents the military from asking about it.
"This successful policy has been in effect for over 15 years, and it is well understood and predominantly supported by our military at all levels," McCain said. "We have the best-trained, best-equipped, and most professional force in the history of our country, and the men and women in uniform are performing heroically in two wars. At a time when our Armed Forces are fighting and sacrificing on the battlefield, now is not the time to abandon the policy."
But in a message to Pentagon leadership, Gen. John Shalikashvili, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said it's time to repeal the law.
"As a nation built on the principal of equality, we should recognize and welcome change that will build a stronger more cohesive military," said Shalikashvili. His letter was sent to Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-New York, who supports repealing the policy.
The Servicemembers Legal Defense Network, an organization that works with those affected by the "don't ask, don't tell" law, praised Obama's call for repeal.
"We very much need a sense of urgency to get this done in 2010," the group said. "We call on the president to repeal the archaic 1993 law in his defense budget currently being drafted, that is probably the only and best moving bill where DADT can be killed this year. ... The American public, including conservatives, is overwhelmingly with the commander in chief on this one."
House Minority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, flatly disagreed with the idea of ending it.
"When it comes to 'don't ask don't tell,' frankly, I think it's worked very well. And we just ought to leave it alone," he said to reporters Wednesday morning.
The policy prohibits openly gay men and women from serving in the U.S. armed forces.
The policy bans military recruiters or authorities from asking about an individual's sexual orientation but also prohibits a service member from revealing that he or she is gay.
Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin, D-Michigan, supports ending the practice but wants to go about it carefully.
Levin said he did not have any details about what the president would say.
"If we do this in a way which isn't sensitive ... we could have exactly the opposite effect of what I hope will be the case -- which is to change the policy," he said Monday.
Levin said the committee plans to hold hearings on the issue in early February, although the hearing may be with outside experts -- delaying a hearing with Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Joint Chiefs Chairman Adm. Michael Mullen, that had originally been promised, CNN was told by a congressional source.
Obama campaigned on the promise that he would repeal the law in his first year of office.
Speaking to the gay rights group Human Rights Campaign, in October, Obama admitted that "our progress may be taking longer than we like," but he insisted his administration was still on track to overturn the policy.
"Do not doubt the direction we are heading and the destination we will reach," he said.
Pentagon Spokesman Geoff Morrell deflected repeated questions about the policy at Wednesday's Pentagon briefing, directing reporters to take their questions to the White House.
"We continue to work on this problem," said Morrell. "But I'm not going to get into it with more specificity than that."

'People's History' author Howard Zinn dead at 89

2010-01-27T22:52:00.000-08:00

Noted author and social activist Howard Zinn died of a heart attack Wednesday while traveling, his daughter, Myla Kabat-Zinn, said.
Zinn, author of "A People's History of the United States," was 89. Kabat-Zinn said her father, who lived in Auburndale, Massachusetts," died while traveling in Santa Monica, California.
"A People's History of the United States," first published in 1980, tells a history not often in seen in other books -- from the perspective of those not in a seat of power.
The book was the inspiration for a 2009 documentary, narrated by Zinn, called "The People Speak." The film highlighted people who spoke up for social change, according to the Web site of the History Channel, which aired the program.
Zinn was a shipyard worker and Air Force bombardier before he went to college under the GI Bill and received a Ph.D. from Columbia University, according to his Web site. He taught at numerous universities, including Spelman College in Atlanta, Georgia, and Boston University in Boston, Massachusetts.
Kabat-Zinn said of her father that he lived a "very full and exciting life" and that there were many social issues that were very important to him. Above all, she said, her father believed that there is no "just war."
Zinn's death on the day of President Obama's first State of the Union address was underscored by his contribution to a recently released special from The Nation magazine called "Obama at One."
"I've been searching hard for a highlight," he wrote. "The only thing that comes close is some of Obama's rhetoric; I don't see any kind of a highlight in his actions and policies."
Zinn said he was not "terribly disappointed because I didn't expect that much," noting that he has been "a traditional Democratic president" on foreign policy -- "hardly any different from a Republican" -- and has been cautious in domestic policy.
"On health care, for example, he starts out with a compromise, and when you start out with a compromise, you end with a compromise of a compromise, which is where we are now," Zinn said.
Zinn also cautioned "that Obama is going to be a mediocre president -- which means, in our time, a dangerous president -- unless there is some national movement to push him in a better direction."

John Edwards, wife separate, source says

2010-01-27T22:49:00.000-08:00

Former 2004 Democratic vice presidential nominee John Edwards, who admitted last week that he fathered a child with a videographer who worked on his campaign, has legally separated from his wife, Elizabeth, a source close to her said Wednesday.
The source would not say when the separation occurred, only that it happened a while ago. The source said he or she spoke to Elizabeth Edwards in recent days, and would not speak on the record because of the sensitivity of the situation.
John Edwards issued a statement Wednesday, calling it "an extraordinarily sad moment, but I love my children more than anything and still care deeply about Elizabeth."
Elizabeth Edwards' publisher, Random House, released a statement saying, "Elizabeth is moving on with her life and wants to put this difficult chapter behind her. It was an excruciatingly painful period for her and she [has] no interest in rehashing the past."
News of the separation comes a week before a tell-all book by Andrew Young, a one-time close confidante of John Edwards, is set to hit bookstores.

"Based on the limited portions of the book that have been made available, it is clear it contains many falsehoods and exaggerations," the statement from Random House said. "[Elizabeth Edwards] will not engage in a dialogue on each of the false charges, but would like to set the record straight on two key points.
"First, the allegation that she sought to politicize her cancer is unconscionable, hurtful and patently false. Second, she believed Andrew Young to be the father of this child until her husband confessed his paternity to her this past summer. She will have nothing further to say."
Edwards, 56, had denied he was the father of his mistress Rielle Hunter's infant for more than a year, saying his self-admitted affair with her was over before she became pregnant.
People magazine, a CNN sister organization, first reported the story.
Elizabeth Edwards' sister, Nancy Anania, told People magazine in an article dated Wednesday that Elizabeth Edwards told her, "I've had it. I can't do this. I want my life back."
The sister told the magazine, "She's got cancer and has young children and totally believes in marriage ... but she can only do so much."
Read the People story
John Edwards, a former U.S. senator from North Carolina, sought his party's presidential nomination in 2004 and 2008.
On November 3, 2004, the day her husband and Sen. John Kerry, D-Massachusetts, conceded the presidential race, Elizabeth Edwards revealed she had been diagnosed with breast cancer. She discovered a lump in her right breast the last week of the campaign, but said she withheld the diagnosis from her husband to spare him the distraction during the campaign.
She announced in 2007 that the cancer had recurred. Last year, she told CNN's Larry King that the medicine she was taking seemed to be working. However, she said the situation was "up and down."
Elizabeth Edwards, 60, and her husband have been married for 32 years. They had four children together. The oldest , Wade, died in a car accident in 1996.
Spokesmen for both of the Edwardses did not return CNN calls seeking comment.

Traffickers targeting Haiti's children, human organs, PM says

2010-01-27T22:34:00.000-08:00

Trafficking of children and human organs is occurring in the aftermath of the earthquake that devastated parts of Haiti, killed more than 150,000 people, and left many children orphans, Haitian Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive said Wednesday.
"There is organ trafficking for children and other persons also, because they need all types of organs," Bellerive said in an exclusive interview with CNN's Christiane Amanpour.
He did not give specifics, but asked by Amanpour if there is trafficking of children, Bellerive said, "The reports I received say yes."
Haiti is trying to locate displaced children and register them so they can either be reunited with other family members or put up for adoption, Bellerive said.
But, he said, illegal child trafficking is "one of the biggest problems that we have."
Many groups appear to be legitimate, "but a lot of organizations -- they come and they say there were children on the streets. They're going to bring them to the [United] States," he said.
Bellerive said he's trying to work with embassies in Port-au-Prince to protect Haiti's children from traffickers.

"Any child that is leaving the country has to be validated by the embassy under a list that they give me, with all the reports," he said.
Speaking at his temporary headquarters in a police station near the Port-au-Prince Airport, Bellerive said the first thing Haitian officials seek to confirm is whether the children have adoption papers before they leave the country.
In Washington, the State Department said Wednesday it is moving cautiously on the issue of adoptions from Haiti.
"We want to be sure that when a child has been identified, that due diligence has been done to make sure that this is truly an orphan child and not a child that actually has family," said State Department Spokesman P.J. Crowley. "Sometimes if you push too hard, too fast there can be unintended consequences. So we are being very, very careful."
"We respect the sovereignty of Haiti and their right to control the departure of Haitian children. So we think the system that has been established is working effectively. I know there is a perception out there of 'cut through the red tape.' But there are very good reasons we want to make sure this process works well," Crowley said.
On the broader issue of Haitian children, Bellerive told Amanpour the government will reopen schools Monday in most of the country.
He said there were particular problems in Port-au-Prince.
"We cannot open one school and not the other. But some of the schools want to operate right now. They say if there are tents -- if there are facilities and we can help them -- they are willing to open very rapidly."
Bellerive also highlighted the critical importance of getting enough tents and shelters to Haiti before the rainy season begins in May. He said he didn't know where all the tents promised by aid agencies and governments are.
"We have reports that they've already sent 20,000 tents maybe, and 20,000 more are on the way. But yesterday, when we didn't see the tents and we didn't see any action to organize the shelters, the president himself asked to see the storage place and we only counted 3,500 tents."
Bellerive said President Rene Preval asked for 200,000 tents to house between 400,000 and 500,000 people. "We are very preoccupied about the consequences of all those people on the street, if it starts to rain."
The prime minister also rejected criticism from within Haiti and overseas that his government needs to be more visible to the Haitian people.
"We are in charge. Frankly I don't understand what that position is that we are not visible," he said. "I almost feel that I spend more time talking to radio, television, than I am working."
"I know it's part of my job and I have to communicate. But I really feel that I have spent too much time doing that."
Bellerive also said he does not believe it's necessary to relocate the capital to another part of Haiti.
"I have to wait for technical and scientific evaluation, but from what I've heard until now, Port-au-Prince will stay there."
"Tokyo is still there, Los Angeles is still there. We just have to prepare a better constructed Port-au-Prince, a safer Port-au-Prince," he said.
He also acknowledged the need for more transparency and new procedures to prevent corruption in Haiti. But he said 70 to 80 percent of the aid coming to the country right now does not go through the Haitian government.
Bellerive said about 90 percent of American aid, for example, goes through non-governmental organizations. "They are accountable to the American government, but not to the Haitian government," he said.
The prime minister told Amanpour that he does not believe people overseas are helping Haiti out of a moral obligation.
"I believe it's a more pragmatic responsibility," he said. "I believe Haiti could be an interesting market in the midterm. We are 10 million [people] here and it's a market."

Stocks manage gains after Fed

2010-01-27T22:27:00.000-08:00

Stocks climbed Wednesday, ending a choppy session higher after the Federal Reserve held interest rates steady and hinted it would continue to do so for the foreseeable future. Meanwhile, Apple introduced its new iPad tablet computer.
The Dow Jones industrial average (INDU) gained 42 points, or 0.4%. The S&P 500 index (SPX) gained 5 points, or 0.5%. The Nasdaq composite (COMP) rose 18 points, or 0.8%.

Stocks churned before and after the Fed statement, with gains in technology, telecom and financial stocks tempered by weakness in industrials and commodities. The bank sector surged, with the KBW Bank (BKX) index rising 2.9%.
Apple's new iPad, a crop of major earnings and a House hearing on the government bailout of AIG were also in focus.
Stocks may have staged the late-session advance in anticipation of President Obama's pending State of the Union address, said Michael Sheldon, chief market strategist at RDM Financial Group.
"Some investors may be looking ahead to a less combative and more constructive speech tonight," Sheldon said. "In addition, the market has also had a pretty sharp downdrift over the last few days."
Following that selloff, investors were perhaps willing to scoop up some of the shares that got pummeled.
Ford Motor (F, Fortune 500) and 3M (MMM, Fortune 500) are both expected to report results before the start of trading. Reports are also due on durable goods orders and weekly jobless claims.
Fed: Recovery gaining strength
State of the Union: In his address to the nation later Wednesday, President Obama is expected to talk about how the government plans to temper the growing deficit over the next decade, even as it continues to promote economic growth in the aftermath of the recent recession.
Obama rattled Wall Street last week when he called for greater restrictions on the biggest financial firms, including limiting the ability of commercial banks to make high-risk trades and stopping them from owning or investing in hedge funds.
He is not expected to directly address that particular proposal, but his rhetoric on the banking system and the economy will be closely watched by Wall Street.
Federal Reserve: The central bank opted to hold the fed funds rate, a key short-term bank lending rate, at a historic low near zero percent, as had been widely expected.
In the closely watched statement, the bankers offered little new guidance, saying the economy has continued to strengthen since December's meeting and that the pace of the slowdown in the labor market is slowing. However, the statement did not provide any insight as to when the Fed plans to loosen its accommodative policy -- something investors are very focused on.
One notable surprise was that Kansas City Fed president Thomas M. Hoenig disagreed with the group's decision to state that conditions "are likely to warrant exceptionally low levels of the federal funds rate for an extended period."
Hoenig, a known inflation hawk, thought that activity was picking up at a pace sufficient to change the language to suggest that rates could rise a little sooner.
The phrase "extended period of time" suggests rates will be held steady for at least six months if not more, said James Barnes, vice president and fixed income co-manager at National Penn Investors Trust. Hoenig's dissent indicates he might like to see rates start to move higher in the first half of the year.
However, rates are unlikely to move anytime soon, Barnes said. The combination of low interest rates and the injection of trillions of dollars of stimulus into the system helped fuel the stock market rally last year and take the edge off the worst recession since the Great Depression. The Fed is unlikely to step back just yet, especially when the recovery is still tentative.
"The economic news has in some ways been more positive than anticipated, outside of what we've seen in housing," Barnes said. "But we're still a long ways away from when the Fed is going to be comfortable raising rates or pulling money off the table."
With his term set to expire Sunday, questions remain about whether Fed Chief Ben Bernanke has enough votes in the Senate to force a confirmation vote. Worries that his term might not be renewed contributed to last week's massive stock selloff, in which the Dow, S&P 500 and Nasdaq all lost 5% in three sessions.
Apple: Apple (AAPL, Fortune 500) revealed the new iPad - a 1.5-lb, half-inch wide tablet computer that falls between a smartphone and a laptop.
Apple shares initially dipped as the announcement was underway, but reversed course to end about 1% higher after the lower-than-expected starting price of $499 was announced. Rumors had pegged the price as being closer to $1,000.
Apple shares are down about 1% year-to-date as of Wednesday's close, after spiking 147% in 2009.
Housing: New home sales plunged to a 9-month low, according to a Census Bureau report released Wednesday. Sales fell 7.6% to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 342,000 in December from a revised rate of 370,000 in November.
Quarterly results: Shares of Caterpillar (CAT, Fortune 500) slid 4% after the heavy-machinery maker issued a 2010 earnings forecast of $2.50 per share, short of the $2.71 per share analysts were expecting, on average. The Dow component said that a global economic recovery only favors some of its business units rather than all.
Caterpillar also reported weaker quarterly earnings that nonetheless topped estimates and weaker revenue that missed expectations.
Fellow Dow component Boeing (BA, Fortune 500) reported a quarterly profit versus a year-ago loss on higher quarterly revenue. Results topped forecasts. However, looking forward, the company forecast 2010 earnings of $3.70 to $4 a share versus forecasts for a profit of $4.26 per share. Nonetheless, Boeing stock rallied 7%.
After the close Tuesday, Yahoo (YHOO, Fortune 500) reported a quarterly profit that reversed a year-ago loss, as the online advertising market showed some signs of life. Results were better than expected. The Internet behemoth also reported weaker quarterly revenue that topped estimates. Shares were little changed Wednesday.
World markets: In overseas trading, Asian and European markets tumbled again on concerns about China's bank lending curbs. Global stocks got hammered Tuesday after Standard & Poor's warned it could cut its debt rating on Japan.
Meanwhile, China implemented some of the bank curbs that had been hinted at last week. China is one of the main drivers of the global economy and any slowdown would have a broad impact.
Commodities and the dollar: The dollar reversed course after the Fed statement, falling versus the euro and gaining against the yen.
COMEX gold for February delivery fell $13.80 to settle at $1,084.50 an ounce. Gold closed at an all-time high of $1,218.30 an ounce last month.
U.S. light crude oil for February delivery fell $1.04 to settle at $73.67 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange.
Bonds: Treasury prices rose, lowering the yield on the 10-year note to 3.60% from 3.62% late Tuesday. Treasury prices and yields move in opposite directions.

Neighbor: Stacy Peterson said 'He's going to kill me'

2010-01-27T03:04:00.000-08:00

A neighbor of former Bolingbrook police officer Drew Peterson says Peterson's fourth wife, Stacy, was afraid her husband would kill her.
In the most dramatic testimony yet at a pretrial hearing on the use of hearsay evidence, Sharon Bychowski said Monday she came upon Stacy Peterson outside her house crying one day. She told Bychowski that she wanted a divorce.
Bychowski says Stacy Peterson told her: "'If I disappear, Sharon. It's not an accident. He killed me."'
Bychowski testified that she told Stacy Peterson to start writing down what she was saying. A sobbing Bychowski recalled that Stacy Peterson responded: "'It doesn't matter. I'm already dead. He's going to kill me."'

Stacy Peterson disappeared in 2007, and Drew Peterson is now facing trial in the death of his third wife, Kathleen Savio. He's pleaded not guilty. Peterson has not been charged in the October 2007 disappearance of his fourth wife, Stacy.
Whether it was organizing a search, holding a vigil or appearing on national TV, Bychowski has become a familiar face in the disappearance case of Stacy Peterson. As her next door neighbor, Bychowski had become very close friends with Drew Peterson's fourth wife.
Drew Peterson's attorney, however, doesn't buy Bychowski's testimony.
"The statement makes no sense, clearly, she was trying to mull together the Kathleen Savio case and Stacy Peterson case because disappearance can never be an accident," said attorney Joel Brodsky.
During the testimony, Bychowski broke down in tears to the point the judge had to take a break. She's been accused of staging her outburst.
"That was absolutely rehearsed. It was almost as if she cried on cue. I was looking for the cue card that Mr. Glasgow was going to hold up. That was staged, without question," said Brodsky.
Bychowski is one of over 30 witnesses at the hearsay hearing to determine what evidence can be presented in the trial of his third wife, Kathleen Savio.
Also on stand was Jacqueline Torrez who testified that on the day Stacy Peterson disappeared, she saw a man on her street wearing a hooded sweatshirt. Torrez testified that he looked as though he was confused and had no purpose. She also said he had a look in his eyes as if he just killed someone. Torrez later learned that person was Drew Peterson.

Toyota suspends sales after recall of 2.3 million vehicles

2010-01-27T02:54:00.000-08:00

Toyota Motor Sales USA Inc. said Tuesday it is asking dealers to temporarily suspend sales of eight models.
The company's sales suspension is part of a recall announced last week to correct a problem that could cause the accelerator pedal to stick.

"Helping ensure the safety of our customers and restoring confidence in Toyota are very important to our company," said Toyota USA group vice president Bob Carter. "This action is necessary until a remedy is finalized."
About 2.3 million vehicles will be affected by the recall, Toyota (TM) said Tuesday in a statement. That's more autos than Toyota sold in all of 2009, when it sold 1.8 million vehicles.
The automaker also said that it will halt the production of vehicles in certain production facilities in Canada, Indiana, Kentucky and Texas during the week of Feb. 1 to "assess and coordinate activities." The vehilcles currently being built will not be sold until they are fixed, a Toyota spokesman said.
"Suspending sales and production is certainly good to reassure the public that they are serious about doing something, but too many jobs and lost sales are involved for this to be a PR stunt," Edmunds.com Director of Vehicle Testing Dan Edmunds said in statement. "They must really be concerned about this being something other than a rare condition. Hopefully this means the fix is very close to being ready, because suspension of production and sales is not tolerable for very long."
The recall affects Toyota's 2009-2010 RAV4, Corolla, Matrix, 2005-2010 Avalon, certain 2007-2010 Camry, 2010 Highlander, 2007-2010 Tundra and the 2008-2010 Sequoia.
General Motors' Pontiac Vibe, which is essentially the same car as the Toyota Matrix, was also included in the recall. GM is not participating in the order to stop selling the cars because it has already stopped production of Pontiac vehicles as part of its wind-down of the Pontiac brand, a GM spokesman said.
This new recall is to correct a situation in which the gas pedal could stick without the presence of a floor mat.
The situation is rare, according to Toyota, but can occur when accelerator pedal mechanisms become worn. The problem will usually develop gradually, Toyota spokesman Brian Lyons said. The pedal may become harder to press and may become slower to return when released. In the worst cases, it may become stuck in a partially depressed position.
A Toyota spokesman said there are no confirmed deaths traceable to the defect.
The new recall, involving sticking accelerator pedals, is separate from an ongoing recall of 4.2 million Toyota and Lexus vehicles due to the risk of pedal entrapment because of a loose floormat.
About 1.7 million Toyota Division vehicles have been affected by both recalls.
Toyota owners with questions should call Toyota's customer service line at 800-331-4331.

Freed Belgians cite fears for U.S. hikers in Iran

2010-01-27T02:43:00.000-08:00

Two Belgians recently detained in Iran said they had some contact with three U.S. hikers imprisoned there and are concerned about the Americans' well-being.
In a statement Tuesday, Idesbald van den Bosch and Vincent Boon Falleur said they were visiting Iran as tourists when they were arrested and imprisoned September 5 on suspicion of espionage.
The two said they spent three months in Evin Prison, where the U.S. hikers were in solitary confinement when the Belgians were freed in December.
"Iran, please, free the hikers," they said in a statement distributed to French-speaking media in Europe.
Their words prompted the hikers' families to say they "greatly appreciate" the Belgians' support and "share their families' joy that they are home safe."
The three Americans -- Shane Bauer, Sarah Shourd and Josh Fattal -- accidentally strayed across an unmarked border from Iraq into Iran while on a hiking trip, according to their families. They are being held on espionage charges after being detained on July 31 and were to be put on trial.
"We are writing this statement because we had some contact in Evin Prison with the Americans who were hiking in Iraqi Kurdistan, Shane Bauer, Sarah Shourd and Josh Fattal. We are deeply concerned about their well-being," van den Bosch and Falleur said.
"We were detained for half as long Shane, Sarah and Josh will have spent in prison on January 31, 2010. We appeal to the Iranian authorities to act in a humanitarian fashion and not politicize their case. Our hearts go out to them and their families."
In a statement, the hikers' families said they "remain deeply concerned about Shane, Sarah and Josh and their well-being."
"On Sunday, they will have been held for six months, with no contact with their families -- not even one phone call -- and have not had access to their lawyer," the families said. "We appeal yet again to the Iranian authorities to release our loved ones and end our sorrow."
The United States strongly criticized Iran on Tuesday for holding the three American hikers, especially after the Belgians' comments.
"What that tells us is that our three American citizens are potentially in deplorable conditions," State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley told reporters.
"It is outrageous that Iran refuses to abide by international standards, international agreements in terms of treatment of those that were in their care. And we continue, we will continue to press the Iranian government so that we can see for ourselves what the conditions of our citizens are."
Van den Bosch and Falleur said they had been "interested in exploring the country's beautiful landscapes by bicycle" when their holiday "took an unexpected turn." Of the three months in prison, one was in solitary confinement, they said.
"We were freed without a trial and hope that the hikers will be freed as soon as possible. We do not know the current conditions of their detention since we left Evin Prison on December 8, 2009. At that point, they were still in solitary confinement," the two said.
In their statement, the Belgians underscored the ordeal of prison, saying, "The psychological stresses of detention were very great, especially during interrogation and solitary confinement," and adding that they "can only imagine that the pressure they [the Americans] are under to confess to crimes they are innocent of is extremely intense."
"The pressure during interrogation was psychological. In solitary confinement, we were in cells with no outside contact and a ceiling light on day and night. We could not make eye contact with some guards and other prisoners; no communication was possible with other prisoners or with our families. Everything was designed to make us feel very lonely."
The United States, which has not had diplomatic relations with Iran since 1979, has relied on Switzerland to appeal directly for the hikers' release. A Swiss diplomat has met with the Americans in their Iranian prison.
The Belgians said they identify with the hikers because "we, like they, were tourists celebrating the freedom to explore beautiful landscapes, rich cultural traditions and marvelous hospitality."
"Now more than ever, we appreciate that freedom and it should not be unnecessarily and arbitrarily denied to anyone."

clintion slams critics on haiti

2010-01-26T23:07:00.000-08:00

The State Department said Tuesday afternoon it had been critical of some news organizations, including al Jazeera and CNN, for their coverage of the U.S. relief efforts in Haiti.
Earlier in the day Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said she deeply resented some of the news reports on U.S. assistance to Haiti.
"I have absolutely no argument with anyone lodging a legitimate criticism against our country. I think we can learn from that. And we are foolish if we keep our head in the sand and pretend that we can't," Clinton told a town-hall meeting at the State Department, marking her one-year anniversary on the job.
"On the other hand, I deeply resent those who attack our country, the generosity of our people, and the leadership of our president in trying to respond to historically disastrous conditions after the earthquake. So what we're asking for is that people view us fairly," Clinton said.

Verizon to cut 13,000 jobs

2010-01-26T23:00:00.000-08:00

After posting a fourth-quarter loss, Verizon Communications, Inc. said Tuesday it plans to cut about 13,000 jobs this year.
Verizon recorded a net loss of $653 million, or 23 cents per share, compared with a profit of $1.24 billion, or 43 cents a share, a year earlier.

The loss came after the company took a charge of $3 billion for cutting a total of 17,000 jobs last year in both its landline and wireless divisions. Analysts polled by Thomson Reuters had forecast earnings of 54 cents per share.
Total sales rose to $27.1 billion, up from $24.6 billion in the same quarter last year, but below analyst estimates of $27.3 billion. The company's fixed-line revenue plunged 3.9% to $11.5 billion from $11.9 billion last year.
Verizon (VZ, Fortune 500) CEO Ivan Seidenberg said on the company's quarterly earnings call Tuesday that it will slash about 13,000 positions in 2010. The telecom giant previously cut 13,000 jobs from its landline business in 2008 and another 13,000 again in 2009.
Verizon's total headcount at the end of 2010 was nearly 223,000, with 117,000 employees in the fixed-line business.
The layoffs will not be specific to any geographic area, said Bob Varettoni, a Verizon spokesman.
"We have reduced headcount in many ways: by reducing the number of contractors we use, by offering enhanced incentive separation packages, attrition, and other means," said Varettoni. "Any layoffs were kept to a minimum because of these measures."
Separately, Home Depot (HD, Fortune 500) also announced Tuesday that it plans to cut jobs. CEO Frank Blake said in a memo to Home Depot employees the company will eliminate 1,000 jobs nationwide.
"We are a strong company, and we are taking the necessary actions to make us even stronger as our business builds momentum," said Blake.

Can David Plouffe rescue Democrats' agenda?

2010-01-26T22:54:00.000-08:00

The Obama administration's decision to utilize David Plouffe as an outside adviser is a sign that after last week's election in Massachusetts, the White House is aiming to turn the tide against an angry electorate, a top Democratic strategist said.
The hiring of Plouffe, who designed Obama's presidential campaign, comes at an important time, said James Carville, a CNN political contributor and former aide to President Clinton.
"You got to look at this thing in Massachusetts, and think that's a real signal here," he said on ABC's "Good Morning America." "If you don't deal with it, it's going to get worse."
By the looks of it, Plouffe is trying to rally the troops who got Obama elected.
Democrats must "regroup, refocus, and re-engage on the vital work ahead," Plouffe wrote in an e-mail Monday to members of Organizing for America, the group that evolved from Obama for America after the election.
Plouffe said that Massachusetts was a tough blow to Democrats.
"We've hit some serious bumps in the road recently in our march toward change," he wrote in the e-mail. "We always knew it would be difficult, but this past week has definitely been a hard one, for all of us."

Democrats now risk losing their majority in the House in November if they don't figure something out, Carville said.
In the special election in Massachusetts, Republican Scott Brown defeated Democrat Martha Coakley in the solid blue state, which overwhelmingly voted for Obama in 2008. The win shocked Democrats across the country and gave Republicans, who have minorities in the House and Senate, a renewed energy.
Nathan Gonzales, political editor at the Rothenberg Political Report, said bringing in Plouffe is a sign that the White House is "awake and wants to be more involved."
Gonzales said it's unclear how Plouffe's re-engagement is going to play with Democratic strategists helping House and Senate members campaign.
Plouffe's involvement could be just as symbolic as it is strategic.
"Maybe the White House is trying to bring comfort to the Democratic caucus that they are engaged in and ready for the fight. Some of the message coming out of the White House isn't exactly comforting," Gonzales said.
Plouffe is credited with helping the Obama campaign reach out to voters in states that had gone in the past for Republicans.
White House Senior Adviser David Axelrod told ABC on Sunday that Plouffe brings "value added to our operation as we look forward, in terms of strategy and tactics. He'll be consulting with us on that, and we'll be stronger for it."
In a Washington Post op-ed over the weekend, Plouffe looked toward November.
"We still have much to do before November, and time is running short," he wrote. "Every race has unique characteristics, but there are a few general things that Democrats can do to strengthen our hand."
Plouffe listed his headline actions for Democrats: "Pass a meaningful health insurance reform package without delay, We need to show that we not just are focused on jobs but also create them, Make sure voters understand what the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act did for the economy, Don't accept any lectures on spending, No bed-wetting, 'Change" is not just about policies, Run great campaigns."
He said that instead of fearing the 2010 outcome, Democrats should prove that they have "more than just the brains to govern -- that we have the guts to govern. Let's fight like hell."
"Let's remember why we won in 2008 and deliver on what we promised. If Democrats will show the country we can lead when it's hard, we may not have perfect election results, but November will be nothing like the nightmare that talking heads have forecast."
The Washington Post's Jonathan Capehart said in a recent blog post that the "no bed-wetting" advice "should buck up the confidence of some wavering Democrats."
But Plouffe's message, Gonzales said, could be a sign the White House is asking some Democrats to become proverbial sacrificial lambs on health care reform.
"When Plouffe said in that op-ed that he knows the short-term politics of health care are bad, that means that they are essentially asking Democrats to sacrifice their seats in the short term in order for the president to have a longer-term political gain," he said. "I don't know that it's going to be a very popular stance with many Democratic members."
News of Plouffe's new role was met with praise from the man in charge of protecting and increasing the Democrats' majority in the Senate.
Asked whether the White House's decision to bring in Plouffe suggested that he had not done enough, Sen. Robert Menendez, chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, said he welcomed Plouffe.
"We welcome the White House beefing up their political operation in a volatile political atmosphere," Menendez told CNN Chief National Correspondent John King on "State of the Union" on Sunday.
Plouffe, a married father of two, is a senior adviser at AKPD Message and Media, a Democratic consulting firm. He joined in 2000.
Recently, the American Association of Political Consultants awarded Plouffe the 2009 "Pollie Award" for campaign manager of the year.
His career has spanned two decades, beginning in 1990 when he worked on Sen. Tom Harkin's re-election campaign in Iowa. He later worked for the Iowa senator's unsuccessful 1992 presidential campaign.
He also has worked for successful candidates in Senate, House and state elections across the country.
Plouffe was former House Speaker Dick Gephardt's chief of staff. He later directed operations at the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. In 2000, he worked on Gephardt's failed presidential bid.
He found success eight years later, steering Obama to become the Democratic presidential candidate after a long and tough Democratic primary campaign against Hillary Clinton.
Plouffe did not join other Obama campaign staffers in the White House. Instead, he took time to write his 2009 book "The Audacity to Win," about the campaign. He credits technology with fundamentally changing the political climate.
"Big moments, political or otherwise, will no longer be remembered by people as times when everyone gathered around TVs to watch a speech, press conference or other event. Increasingly, most of us will recall firing up the computer, searching for a video and watching it at home or at the office -- or even on our cell phones," he wrote.

It's just survival for life

2010-01-26T22:46:00.000-08:00

A couple of days ago, a man was stoned to death about a block from where we are staying in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. I have been down here nearly two weeks covering the earthquake devastation, having arrived quickly the morning after it occurred. I didn’t see the stoning myself, but several of my colleagues described a man who had been trying to steal money and was met with swift and deadly citizen justice. A lot was made of this particular tragedy, and if you caught only that headline, you might be left believing the incident was in some way emblematic of what was happening all over the place. Truth is, even though I braced myself to see rampant lawlessness and mob hostility, I wanted to blog about what I have actually seen.
As I drove through the streets of Port-au-Prince, just 16 hours after the earthquake, I was met with stunned stares and unfathomable grief, as parents tried to dig their babies out of the rubble and older kids did the same for their parents. It was heartbreaking. And though we raced out with our first aid bags to help those we could, it seemed like we would never be able to make a dent in the suffering. There were people who died in this earthquake and those who lived – but there were also a large number of people somehow caught in between. They were alive, but terribly injured and dying. That is where we focused our attention. Terrible crush injuries of arms and legs. Degloving injuries, where the skin of the arms or legs was ripped away. And, people so malnourished and dehydrated that they could barely walk.
I expected to see those stunned stares turn to desperation, and that desperation turn to brutality. It didn’t. In fact, I remember driving by a water station that had finally opened on January 18th, five days after the earthquake struck. It stayed in my mind for two reasons. First of all, five days is a long time to go with little to no water, especially in Haiti heat. Second of all, there was no pushing, shoving or aggressive behavior. There were no armed guards and there was a tight line, with people waiting patiently. Some were even singing songs, while blistering away in the heat. I almost cried. A piece of my faith in humanity, which had been trashed by too many terrible images, was slowly restored.
A couple of days later, I was seeing patients at one of the hospitals in downtown. It was actually more of a tent city situated outside the hospital, where care was sparse and misery was thick. Helping care for wounds, evaluate injuries and even perform surgery – every single patient said thank you, in Creole, French and English. Thank you. When recounting this to a neurosurgery colleague of mine, he reminded me that we could often go months working at a county hospital in the states without ever hearing those two words.
Over the last two weeks, I have not seen the violence Haiti has been known for in years past. During this time, when lawlessness had been put to the test, it seems the people of Port-au-Prince stood tall, dignified and with respect for one another. Yes, there has been “looting” from stores of supplies. But, is “looting” even the correct term for people taking basic necessities for themselves and their families? Instead, it is just survival, and faced with the same situation, I would’ve likely been right there with them, wanting to preserve the lives of my wife and children.
Consider this a blog that went beyond a headline, and presented a reporter’s on-the-ground view of this very important issue. I won’t pretend that this is more than a slice of life in the aftermath of a terrible natural disaster, but it is my slice, and I wanted to share it with you. Thank you – for reading it.
Editor's Note: Medical news is a popular but sensitive subject rooted in science. We receive many comments on this blog each day; not all are posted. Our hope is that much will be learned from the sharing of useful information and personal experiences based on the medical and health topics of the blog. We encourage you to focus your comments on those medical and health topics and we appreciate your input. Thank you for your participation.

Officials find arsenal of weapons in New Jersey hotel room

2010-01-26T22:39:00.000-08:00

A man arraigned Tuesday on multiple firearms charges had an arsenal of high-powered weapons and a map of U.S. military base in his New Jersey hotel room, authorities said.
Lloyd R. Woodson, 43, has been charged with two counts of unlawful possession of weapons, possessing prohibited weapons, possessing large capacity ammunition magazines, two counts of defaced firearms, obstruction of justice and resisting arrest. Authorities say he has no apparent ties to terrorist activities.
Woodson also is being charged as a convicted felon in possession of firearms, Gregory Reinert, a spokesman for the the U.S. Attorney's Office in New Jersey, said.
Somerset County Judge John Pursel set bail at $75,000, and Woodson is expected to appear in court again by the end of the week.
Woodson appeared angry and withdrawn in court, according to CNN's Deb Feyerick, who attended the arraignment. His hands and feet were shackled and he was escorted by two guards. Woodson kept his head down and barely acknowledged the judge, except for responding "yes" when asked if he understood English.
Woodson, of Virginia, was arrested Monday after police responded to a call about a suspicious man in the Quick Chek convenience store in Branchburg, New Jersey, said local prosecutor Wayne J. Forrest.

The suspect was in possession of an automatic .223 rifle converted to a .50 caliber rifle with a laser sight; five customized magazines, each fully loaded with hollow-point .50-caliber rounds and a military bulletproof vest when he was taken into custody, the New Jersey Regional Operations Intelligence Center (ROIC) said.
At his hotel room, investigators found a Bushmaster .308-caliber semiautomatic rifle with a defaced serial number, a rifle-mounted night vision scope, a 37 mm Cobray grenade launcher, a ballistic vest, a police scanner, hundreds of rounds of ammunition, military pouches and garrison equipment, and a detailed map of Fort Drum, an Army post in upstate New York.
Earlier, Forrest said authorities had also found a Middle Eastern-style headdress, but no such item was mentioned in ROIC's statement or in an FBI agent's affidavit.
Woodson waived his rights, according to the affidavit, and told investigators that all the weaponry was his, that he'd bought the guns on the streets of New York and that he had "obliterated" the serial numbers.
He has a prior conviction for criminal possession of a weapon from Kings County (New York) Superior Court in 1997.
The ROIC statement also said Woodson "expressed anti-law enforcement sentiments" stemming from run-in with police regarding domestic disputes. He has no ties to organized groups, the statement said, echoing what federal agents said earlier in the day.
Michael Murphy, the senior vice president of Quick Chek, said the employee who called 911 "prevented a bad situation and possible tragedy down the road."
The company is protecting her identity for safety reasons, he said.
Murphy said Woodson did not buy anything in the store and may have drawn suspicion because he looked like he wanted to shoplift.
When officers arrived, Woodson ran into the woods but was subdued after wrestling with officers, Forrest's statement said.
Preliminary findings indicate that Woodson has no ties to known terrorist groups or a specific terrorism plot, said FBI Special Agent Bryan L. Travers in a statement Tuesday.
Federal investigators from the FBI and ATF are assisting local law enforcement.
Woodson spent a brief time in the Navy, according to U.S. Navy spokesman Lt. Justin Cole. In February 1988, he served on board the USS Orion, a submarine tender, Cole told CNN. He deserted the ship eight months later, Cole said.
Woodson was taken into Navy custody in 1996 and discharged a month afterward, Cole added.

Nancy Kerrigan 'really struggling' after father's death

2010-01-26T22:35:00.000-08:00

Reeling from the death of her father, Nancy Kerrigan still mustered the strength to show the class and courtesy for which she is known in the skating world.
Paul Wylie, an Olympic silver medalist who also competed in the 1992 Albertville Olympics with Kerrigan, spoke with her by phone early Monday when he heard the news that Daniel Kerrigan, 70, died after an alleged assault by his troubled son, Mark.
"She was really struggling," Wylie told PEOPLE. "But she called to thank me for calling."
Kristi Yamaguchi, who also competed with Kerrigan in Albertville, offered her condolences by text mail, and Kerrigan responded, "Thank you...I appreciate all the support I've been getting."
Authorities charged Mark Kerrigan with assaulting his father who died during an altercation at the family's Massachusetts home January 24.
A cause of death has not been determined, but Daniel Kerrigan's wife Brenda told the Boston Herald he may have suffered a heart attack. At a Monday arraignment in the Boston, Massachusetts suburb of Woburn, Mark Kerrigan pleaded not guilty to the charges and was held on $10,000 bail.
"I am so saddened for Nancy," Yamaguchi, the Olympic champion and winner of the sixth season of ABC's "Dancing With the Stars," told PEOPLE. "My heart goes out to Nancy and her family. "
Yamaguchi, who performed in a cancer benefit with Kerrigan in November, said the tragedy has hit the skating community hard.
"Nancy is part of our family and the loss of a parent is devastating," Yamaguchi said. "I always smile when I think of Dan because he was a lot of fun and he had such pride for his daughter and her accomplishments. That meant a lot to Nancy. He and Brenda were always there for her."
Daniel Kerrigan, Wylie adds, was a father figure to all the skaters. "He and Brenda touched many skaters lives," he said. "One day he visited me at my apartment and said, 'That window needs fixing and if you do it this way, it'll save you $20 on your heating bill.' He was fatherly like that. Dan was a great guy and a family man."

Police 'fairly certain' remains are student missing from Metallica concert

2010-01-26T22:29:00.000-08:00

Police tentatively identified remains found on a remote farm as the Virginia Tech student who disappeared in October during a Metallica concert.
Morgan Harrington, a 20-year-old education major, went to the concert at the University of Virginia's John Paul Jones Arena in Charlottesville, Virginia, on October 17. She was separated from her friends and was the subject of repeated searches.
Police said skeletal remains were found after 9:30 a.m. Tuesday by a farmer driving a tractor through a hay field on his 700-acre farm. The area has no public access point, police said.
The farm is about 10 miles from where the concert was being held.
The farm's owner, David Dass, told CNN affiliate WTVR that he was out looking for damage after wind and rain knocked down several trees in his yard over the past week. He told WTVR that the area is at least a mile and a half from a main roadway.

"I looked down and saw what looked like a human skull, and my first thought was that it was Morgan Harrington," Dass told WTVR, adding that he immediately called 911.
WTVR: State police 'confident' remains are Harrington
There was significant evidence leading police to believe that the remains are Harrington's, Virginia State Police Col. W. Steven Flaherty said, though he declined to specify what the evidence was.
Police said the area where the remains were found had not been searched during the early stages of the investigation into her disappearance.
The girl's parents, Dan and Gil Harrington, were in town to identify the remains, WTVR reported.
Dan Harrington, in tears, told WTVR that "this is a horrible day" for his family.
Gil Harrington expressed concerns Saturday that there was beginning to be complacency in the search, she wrote in a blog on the Web site set up to help find their daughter.
On Sunday, more than three months after Morgan went missing, Gil Harrington still clung to hope.
"Despite the length of time Morgan has been gone I remain hopeful," she wrote. "Part of me is waiting to be surprised. Waiting for God to pull the rabbit out of the hat and bring Morgan home.
"I remember that the light always returns, it cannot help but return. Will the light of my life return soon? I cannot imagine that all the water of Morgan's potential is to run down the drain and be wasted. Can it really play out like that?"
Now, it appears, the Harringtons finally have their answer. Police say they have now switched their focus to finding out how Morgan Harrington ended up in the remote farm and who put her there.
During the concert, Harrington left her friends to use the restroom, police said. When she did not return, they called her cell phone at 8:48 p.m. She told them she was outside the arena and could not get back in because of its policy, police said, but told them not to worry about her and that she would find a ride home.
There are restrooms inside the arena, police said, and police do not know how or why Harrington got outside. Witnesses who saw her outside the arena said she did not appear to be with anyone, police said.
About 9:30 p.m. that night, witnesses reported seeing a person matching Harrington's description walking on a nearby bridge, police said. No further sightings were reported.
Harrington's purse, with her identification and cell phone inside, was found the following day in an overflow parking lot near the arena, police said. A friend had driven Harrington's car to the concert, she said, and was still in possession of the car keys when they got separated.
Harrington was reported missing the day after the concert, when she did not show up at her parents' home to study for a math exam with her father.
Working with police and the Texas-based Laura Recovery Center, the Harringtons organized community searches, saying they would not give up hope that their daughter would be found.
A $150,000 reward has been offered for information leading to Harrington's whereabouts, police said. Of that, Metallica contributed $50,000.
The couple was joined at a news conference after her disappearance by Ed Smart, whose daughter Elizabeth was abducted in 2002. She returned home nine months later, after police say they found her in the custody of Brian David Mitchell and his wife, Wanda Barzee.
Harrington said he reached out to Smart last week to seek advice on how to go through the disappearance of a child.
Harrington was wearing a black Pantera T-shirt, a black miniskirt, black tights and black boots when last seen.

Napolitano sees chance to set global standards in airline security

2010-01-26T22:17:00.000-08:00

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said Tuesday there is a "renewed sense of urgency in the international community" about terrorism after the Christmas Day bombing attempt aboard a U.S.-bound plane, and the U.S. should now push for global security standards for international airports and aircraft.
"The attempted attack on the 25th of December was a powerful illustration that a terrorist would stop at nothing to kill Americans," Napolitano said. "I believe we have an important opportunity right now, right in front of us, to strengthen the system."
Napolitano last week traveled to Spain and Switzerland to meet with her counterparts, as well as foreign ministers and airline executives. Talks focused on four broad areas -- sharing information between countries, passenger vetting, security technology and creating international aviation security standards, she said.
"I was very gratified to see there exists a broad consensus for working on these four areas among my European counterparts and a clear sense of urgency to take immediate action to strengthen security measures," she said.
The trip culminated in a declaration confirming European and U.S. commitment to advancing security initiatives and to hold further talks about security.
The thwarted attack, in which suspect Umar Farouk AbdulMutallab allegedly tried to ignite a bomb hidden in his underwear, has rattled air carriers and passengers, largely because it exposed gaps in a vast and expensive security net designed to keep terrorists off planes.
The attack has changed international attitudes because other nations realized terrorists will go "anywhere in the international system" to find security gaps and because citizens of 17 nations were on the targeted plane, Napolitano said.
Napolitano suggested that International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) -- an agency of the United Nations -- set standards that would apply to all international airports, strengthening weak links in the security chain.
Previous efforts by the U.S. to gain access to passenger information has been stymied by European privacy laws, but Napolitano said she believes the governments can find a way to share information "in a way that deals with their privacy issues."
Napolitano said the sense of urgency after the September. 11, 2001, attacks has "perhaps dissipated over time," but has now has been renewed and "added to."

2010-01-25T23:17:00.000-08:00

Less than two years after the housing market collapsed, the U.S. economy is threatened by a new bubble in asset prices. This time, four billowing balloons are hovering: two commodities -- gold and oil -- stocks, and government bonds.

fooled into thinking that last week's 5% drop in the S&P, and the recent sell-off in oil, remotely makes them fairly valued, let alone bargains. Equities and commodities, as well as Treasuries, which actually rallied as stocks dropped, still have a long way to fall. The reason: They've already seen huge run-ups that put their prices far above their historic averages, and far above the levels justified by fundamentals.
Two examples: Most companies can't possibly grow earnings fast enough to support their lofty valuations, and oil and gold are so expensive that we'll see what high prices always bring, a surge in new supply. That makes a price-pounding glut inevitable.
Since the start of 2009, oil has returned to the danger zone by jumping 63% to $75 a barrel, and gold has risen more than 20% to set astounding new records by climbing above $1,100 an ounce. After briefly returning to historically normal valuations in March, stocks are now selling at price-to-earnings multiples 40% above their historic range of 14, and 10-year Treasuries are so pricey that they yield 1.5% less than they did in 2007.
What's causing this resurgence of speculative fervor? One view blames the same policy that caused the real estate rampage -- incredibly low interest rates that are flooding the banks with cheap funds that, in theory, are available for loans. (The current Fed target rate is between 0 and 0.25%.)
"Investors can borrow at extremely low rates to buy assets," says Brian Wesbury, a monetary specialist at mutual fund manager First Trust. "So they're using cheap debt to bid up prices. The Fed's expansionary policies are making assets look a lot less risky than they really are."
Other prominent economists dispute that we're in bubble territory, at least right now. Allan Meltzer, the distinguished monetarist at Carnegie Mellon, argues that even though banks are loaded with cheap money, they aren't lending -- which is why we have a credit crunch. "I would be a lot more concerned if loan demand were higher," says Meltzer.
The one asset that definitely isn't bubbling is housing. There, prices have fallen to a level where new buyers buy a house for the same total monthly cost as rental. That's gravity operating.
So how do you spot a bubble? My view is that we're now seeing the same signs that exposed the frenzy in real estate: prices flying far above their historic averages, measured either in inflation-adjusted dollars (commodities) or as a ratio of the income they produce (stocks and Treasuries). Watch for gravity to take over, just as it did in housing.
Treasuries
The rate on the 10-year Treasury is now a mere 3.6%, well below the 5.5% rate that it averaged between 1993 and 2007, a period where inflation ran at an annual 3% clip, meaning that the "real rate" after inflation, stood at about 2.5%.
So let's assume that future inflation also averages 3%, about where it stood in the second half of 2009. At today's prices, Treasuries are offering a real yield of just 0.6% -- 1.9 points below our 14-year average.
But as the economy recovers and the threat of inflation causes the Fed to tighten monetary policy by raising rates, the yield could rise to 5.5%, handing investors a big loss. Reminder: When yields rise, bond prices fall.
Yet even that scenario is optimistic. Given the huge deficits from the bailouts, it's likely that investors will want a far bigger cushion for expected inflation -- which suggests, says Wesbury, that the yield on 10-year bills could go over 6% in 2011.
Oil
At around $75 a barrel, oil may look like a bargain compared to the record of $147 in July 2008 (see editor's note). But we've simply moved from an immense bubble to a moderate one.

For oil, as in all commodity markets, the highest-cost unit that customers are willing to buy to "clear the market" sets the price. Indeed, prices can go far above cost for short periods, since it takes time for producers to drill new wells or because they hoard inventories.
So how much are oil companies paying to produce the world's most expensive barrels of oil? A good estimate is $55 to $60 a barrel. That's what it costs Anadarko Petroleum (APC, Fortune 500) to extract oil from deep wells in the Gulf of Mexico, according to Anadarko CEO Jim Hackett.
Hence, the world's highest-cost producers are now earning 30% to 40% margins. It won't last; to take advantage of the prices, oil companies will ramp up production, and that extra supply will cause prices to fall back into the $55 range, or even lower.
Gold
Investors are rushing to gold, because they rightly fear far higher inflation in the next couple of years and want to hedge against both rising prices and a declining dollar with a commodity that, they claim, has a fixed supply.
Since early 2009, the price has jumped to $1,100 an ounce from $875, triple its average price between 1990 and 2004. Yet the supply of gold is far more fluid than the gold bugs admit, partly because mining companies are investing heavily to increase production.
The real threat: Prices are so high all over the world that people who once treasured their gold jewelry are now rushing to sell it. Swiss refiners are offering irresistible prices for bracelets and brooches, "cash-for-gold" stores are in Chicago malls, and suburbanites are hosting Tupperware-style parties where neighbors show up to hock their gold teeth.
When this happened in the early 1980s with silver, prices plummeted from $50 to $15 in less than a year. Look for gold to end up below $500 an ounce within two years.
Stocks
Let's assume that investors want a 10% return from stocks (a 7% real return plus 3% gains from inflation). But at current prices, there is no way that the S&P can deliver those kind of gains in future years.
Here's why: Think of the S&P as one company that provides a total return in two components, a dividend yield and a capital gain. Together, the two should equal 10%. But the two are inversely correlated. The lower the dividend yield, the higher the earnings growth rate must be to get you to that 10%. When yields are extremely low, those growth rates become mathematically impossible.
Right now, the P/E multiple for the S&P is an extremely high 20, based on a formula developed by economist Robert Shiller that removes the constant gyrations that can under or overstate the ratio, and the dividend yield is just over 2%. So to hit that 10%, earnings must rise 8% -- assuming 3% inflation, 5% annually in real terms.
But earnings tend to track GDP, which rises about 3% a year over long periods, though far more slowly in a recession. So 3% real GDP growth isn't nearly enough to lift profits 5%. That implies that stock prices must drop sharply: A fallback to their historic P/E of around 14 would require a 29% correction, taking the S&P from its current level of 1,092 to around 770.
"Stocks will disappoint us if we buy them when they're expensive and delight us if we buy them when they're cheap," says Rob Arnott, chief of asset manager Research Affiliates. Now, they're extremely expensive, and destined to disappoint.An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated that oil had hit a record price of $148 in mid-2007.

Iran crackdown a 'human rights disaster,' report says

2010-01-25T00:27:00.000-08:00

A human rights group is calling on Iran to free protesters detained after the disputed June 12 presidential election, calling the government's crackdown on its critics a "human rights disaster."
A report released Sunday by New York-based Human Rights Watch details alleged abuses by members of Iran's Revolutionary Guard, Basij militia and police following widespread demonstrations in the wake of hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's re-election over opposition leader Mir Hossein Moussavi.

About 4,000 people have been arrested in the post-election crackdown. The government has confirmed the deaths of at least 37 people in the protests or in detention, seven of those deaths happening in December on Ashura, a major religious observance, the report said, alleging that many detainees have been beaten, tortured and in some cases, sexually abused. The group also says it believes the death toll is much higher.
"The systematic and brutal targeting of demonstrators and government critics by security forces shows that the regime's crackdown is nothing but an attempt to silence voices of dissent," said Joe Stork, the group's deputy director for the Middle East. "Iran's post-election unrest is now a full-blown human rights crisis."
The Iranian government had no immediate response to the report.
Three prison officials have been charged with premeditated murder in the beating deaths of three detainees and a parliamentary investigation concluded earlier this month that 147 protesters arrested July 9 suffered "harsh corporal punishment, humiliating and insulting techniques," and other mistreatment. The investigation did not reveal evidence of rape or other sexual abuse.
Human Rights Watch's study of Iran's alleged abuses was part of the much larger World Report released Wednesday. In the Iran chapter, the group calls on the government to restore rights in Iran by freeing post-election protesters and investigating alleged abuses of demonstrators and detainees, and prosecuting those responsible.

White House adviser: Obama has brought 'enormous change'

2010-01-25T00:03:00.000-08:00

The White House rejected criticism Sunday that President Obama has not delivered on his promise of "change" during his first year in office.
White House senior adviser Valerie Jarrett said the president has brought about "enormous change."
"I think what we've seen is a dramatic difference in terms of how the United States is perceived around the world," Jarrett told NBC's "Meet the Press," on the final Sunday before the president's State of the Union address.
Obama's travels have established relationships with world leaders that "lay a foundation for keeping America safe and making us a partner around the world," she addedObama's travels have established relationships with world leaders that "lay a foundation for keeping America safe and making us a partner around the world," she added.
Jarrett also credited the president with having "pulled back the economy from the brink of disaster."
"That's an enormous amount of change when you consider where we were a year ago right on the brink," she said. "And he's adding discipline in government to try to get control over our fiscal house. So I think that we've seen enormous change."
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, on the same program, countered that "if you look at the first year of this administration, we haven't made much progress." He complained about the deficit in the president's budget and the health care reform package that Republicans oppose.
But McConnell, R-Kentucky, was also on the defensive about the GOP, which critics have been calling "the party of no."
Asked to characterize the performance of his own party this year, McConnell said, "What we did is try to operate on principle. The president decided to go hard left. That's why he doesn't have many of my members [supporting his agenda]. If he chooses to govern in the middle, he will have broader support."
Jarrett insisted the president never wavered from his promised bipartisan approach.
Discussing his health care initiative, Jarrett said Obama "has sat down with the leadership and members of the Republican Party, both the House and the Senate. In fact, bills in both the House and the Senate contain provisions that were suggested by the Republican Party -- so nothing's changed about the president's approach."

In Haiti's outlying areas: 'When will they come to help us?'

2010-01-24T23:58:00.000-08:00

In a dirt field 20 minutes outside of Leogane's city center, desperation surfaces in the form of fear, anger, thanks. All at once.
Relief trucks from CARE International have arrived, and the waiting wall of people pounces on the aid workers. The residents clutch paper tickets given out earlier to collect the goods: one mattress and blanket per family.
CARE begins to distribute 250 of each, but the makeshift settlement here holds as many as 10,000 earthquake victims. Guards wearing gray polo shirts with the word "securite" painted on their backs roam the grounds with metal baseball bats in hand. They anticipate chaos.
"We are happy for the mattresses. We are thankful," says Willio Sainvil, a spokesman for a community organization helping organize the flow of aid.
"But what we need is water. We need food. We have people who are sick. They need medicine," he says. "We need tents, especially if it rains."
Above the sun is hiding, for the moment, under dark clouds.
iReport: Looking for loved ones in Haiti
"You can see the people are not satisfied," Sainvil says. "But they are thankful."
CARE spokesman Rick Perera says the humanitarian agency delivered a water buffalo to this settlement, about 20 miles west of Port-au-Prince, but nothing else arrived until the mattresses on Sunday.The agency plans to supply more relief items, but distribution has been a huge problem, Perera said. It has been difficult finding enough trucks to carry the goods.
In outlying areas like this, the biggest fear is people will be forgotten. Sainvil says aid agencies have visited the city center, but few have received help in the townships and villages of Leogane province, lined with sugarcane groves, banana trees and now, mangled chunks of concrete that used to be homes, offices, schools and clinics.
Twelve days after a magnitude-7.0 earthquake, the focus in Haiti has shifted from extracting survivors from heaps of rubble to helping those who survived. By some estimates, 1.5 million Haitians were rendered homeless. In Leogane, at the epicenter of the massive quake, about 85 percent of the town may have been destroyed.
Kenneth Merten, U.S. ambassador to Haiti, told CNN'S Christiane Amanpour on Sunday that the relief was slow in the first few days.
"It was very slow, a lot came in, it was hard to get it out to the people who needed it most," he said. "If I were a Haitian here, I would be, frankly, angry at the whole situation I found myself in. But I must say that I think the Haitians are resilient, and they're to be applauded for approaching this in a stoic and dignified fashion."
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The International Organization for Migration said Sunday that the biggest need was tents for as many as 500,000 displaced people.
The agency identified two new sites in Port-au-Prince and Leogane where temporary shelters will be developed for those "living in deplorable conditions in makeshift settlements without basic services.""The temporary tent settlements will provide a clean and safe environment for the displaced," said Vincent Houver, the agency's chief of operations in Haiti, "but they are a short-term solution. Tent settlements are not sustainable."
More than 500 aid agencies are operating in Haiti. Fifteen of them met with Leogane officials Saturday to address needs. The United Nations plans to set up a separate water and sanitation system for Leogane, but the world organization is "quite stretched," said Paul Shanahan, senior emergency specialist with CARE.
"It's hard to imagine how it could be worse," he said about Leogane's sanitation problems. "Human waste is being generated and disposed of informally."
He meant left in open areas or dumped onto trash heaps.
"You see every mode of catastrophic failure possible," Shanahan said of Leogane. "And the people fear they are not going to be attended to."
Interactive map of where to find aid, hospitals in Haiti
That includes the 10,000 people who are making do at this makeshift camp with whatever they could rescue from their shattered homes. Bed sheets, cooking utensils, a lawn chair -- and memories of lost lives.
Fenilmarie Carmel has managed to build a shelter for the five people left in her family. She points to the packed dirt under her feet to show where she has been resting her head every night.
"We have nothing. When will they come to help us?" she asks.
She clutches her printed floral mattress made in Haiti -- CARE says it tries its best to promote local manufacturers rather than ship in goods from other nations -- and a blanket sent by the Latter Day Saints.

Haiti awash in doctors; nurses in short supply

2010-01-24T23:49:00.000-08:00

So many doctors are answering Haiti's call for medical aid that the largest hospital in Port-au-Prince has a new problem: organizing and finding good use for them all.
"I think there is a lot of confusion," said Marivittoria Rava, a longtime volunteer with the charity Friends of the Orphans, which runs a children's hospital now caring for some post-operative patients from the general hospital.
Rava said that medical supplies and resources have improved, but the crush of volunteer doctors in Port-au-Prince can complicate treatment in the city while there is great need for help in other places hit by the earthquake.
The general hospital has nine operating rooms, but a near platoon of volunteer surgeons, leaving many standing by for work.
As the city's main hospital is brimming with doctors, it is in need of nurses and physical therapistsCNN's Sanjay Gupta learned medical teams are now taking their first steps to organize and see exactly how many of them are needed. Representatives from each volunteer doctor group at the general hospital gathered for a quick, to-the-point meeting over the weekend.
"We are all well-staffed," Stanford University doctor Paul Auerbach told the group. "The issue is coordinating."
Auerbach is the point person to try and control the surge of doctors. Over the weekend, he and volunteer groups started tackling some basics of treatment: how to ID patients, keep records and make rounds.
Among the problems with the large number of doctors, Auerbach said, is that patients can have their dressings opened three or four times in close succession as one and then another crew of doctors come to evaluate their wounds.
To change that, charity groups have set up shifts and literally drawn lines, sketching maps on hospital walls showing who is working where. They are also identifying medical centers outside of Port-au-Prince, where there is need for the booming supply of doctors in the capital.
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Space is also an issue. A team from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is carefully assessing the buildings that survived on hospital grounds, trying to find a stable place for post-operative care. Patients now recover in tents or are taken to other hospitals.
Thousands of amputees will need significant, specialized help from physical therapists, but few are available.
Nurses are in short supply. A nursing school on the grounds of the general hospital was crushed in the earthquake, killing some of the people who would be giving care now. The flood of outside volunteers is mostly doctors, not nurses.
At one point over the weekend, a mass of 12 medical workers gathered around a tiny premature infant. Someone called out, "If you're not a doctor, step away!" Immediately someone else responded, "We're all doctors!"
Even as they juggle an abundance of doctors now, many volunteers worry the general hospital in Port-au-Prince could again face dire need after this first wave of medical staff rotates out of Haiti over the next two weeks.
Those on the ground advise doctors who want to help Haiti to wait and volunteer in a few weeks or months