Wall Street extended its pullback Wednesday as investors, retrenching from an optimistic stance early in the week, waited to see how well corporate earnings and the job market have held up in an uneven economy. The market showed little conviction for a second day as economic readings offered few surprises and as investors looked for signs – possibly from the September employment report due Friday – of whether the market’s rebound from its summer lows has been warranted. The decline Wednesday preceded earnings reports from the recently completed third quarter and Friday’s jobs number, which can signal whether consumer spending will continue apace. Wall Street had little reaction to a report that the nation’s service sector, whose industries account for 80 percent of U.S. economic activity, showed a decline last month.
About 3,000 miners were trapped underground Wednesday when a water pipe burst and probably caused a shaft to collapse in a South African gold mine, union officials said. An official with Harmony Gold’s Elandsrand Mine near Johannesburg said the company would be able to evacuate the trapped workers over the next 24 hours. Harmony’s acting chief executive, Graham Briggs, said on MSNBC that officials have been in contact with the trapped workers and have been sending them food and water. He said the company could evacuate the miners over the next day using a smaller cage in another shaft, but the process would be a slow one.
As the chief federal trial judge in Manhattan, Michael Mukasey approved secret warrants allowing government roundups of Muslims in the days after the Sept. 11 attacks. Six years later, the man President Bush wants to be attorney general acknowledged that the law authorizing those warrants “has its perils” in terrorism cases and urged Congress to “fix a strained and mismatched legal system.” Mukasey’s caution about the material witness law probably will please Democrats who control the Senate Judiciary Committee. At confirmation hearings set to begin Wednesday, they plan to press the retired federal judge about the Bush administration’s terrorist detention policy.
U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice played down expectations for breakthroughs as she opened a critical round of Mideast shuttle diplomacy Sunday and warned Israel against moves that might erode confidence in the process. As she flew into the region from Russia, Rice said she hoped to help narrow gaps between the Israelis and Palestinians, who are trying to forge an outline of an eventual peace deal in a joint statement to be presented at a U.S.-hosted international conference next month. But she said she did not believe her visit would produce that statement or bring it to a point where invitations for the conference, expected to held in Annapolis, Md., in late November, could be issued.
Myanmar’s ruling junta lashed out Sunday at global efforts to bring democracy to the tightly controlled nation, timing its message for the day a U.N. envoy headed to Asia to rally the country’s neighbors for help with its crisis. U.N. special envoy Ibrahim Gambari was flying into Bangkok ahead of Monday talks with Thailand’s leaders. He was then to travel to Malaysia, Indonesia, India, China and Japan before returning to Myanmar, where the junta faces growing pressure to halt its crackdown on pro-democracy protesters and open talks with the democratic opposition. Gambari met with the junta’s leaders earlier this month during a four-day trip to Myanmar after troops opened fire on peaceful protests in Yangon. Gambari’s mission this time around is aimed at coordinating efforts among key governments in the region to help resolve the crisis.
