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(02/20/08 4:37am)
Amtrak will start randomly screening passengers’ carry-on bags this week in a new security push that includes officers with automatic weapons and bomb-sniffing dogs patrolling platforms and trains. The initiative, to be announced by the railroad on Tuesday, is a significant shift for Amtrak. Unlike the airlines, it has had relatively little visible increase in security since the 2001 terrorist attacks, a distinction that has enabled it to attract passengers eager to avoid airport hassles. Amtrak officials insist their new procedures won’t hold up the flow of passengers.
(02/20/08 4:36am)
WASHINGTON – The Supreme Court dealt a setback Tuesday to civil rights and privacy advocates who oppose the Bush administration’s warrantless wiretapping program.\nThe justices, without comment, turned down an appeal from the American Civil Liberties Union to let it pursue a lawsuit against the program that began shortly after the Sept. 11 terror attacks.\nThe action underscored the difficulty of mounting a challenge to the eavesdropping, which remains classified and was confirmed by President Bush only after a newspaper article revealed its existence.\n“It’s very disturbing that the president’s actions will go unremarked upon by the court,” said Jameel Jaffer, director of the ACLU’s national security project. “In our view, it shouldn’t be left to executive branch officials alone to determine the limits.”\nThe Terrorist Surveillance Program no longer exists, although the administration has maintained it was legal.\nThe ACLU sued on behalf of itself, other lawyers, reporters and scholars, arguing that the program was illegal and that they had been forced to alter how they communicate with foreigners who were likely to have been targets of the wiretapping.\nA federal judge in Detroit largely agreed, but the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals dismissed the suit, saying the plaintiffs could not prove their communications had been monitored and thus could not prove they had been harmed by the program.\nThe government has refused to turn over information about the closely guarded program that could reveal who has been under surveillance.\nACLU officials described the situation as a “Catch-22” because the government says the identities of people whose communications have been intercepted is secret. But only people who know they have been wiretapped can sue over the program.\nA lawsuit filed by an Islamic charity met a similar fate. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals last year ruled against the Oregon-based U.S. arm of the Al-Haramain Islamic Foundation, concluding that a key piece of evidence is protected as a state secret.\nIn that case, the charity alleged the National Security Agency illegally listened to its calls. The charity had wanted to introduce as evidence a top-secret call log it received mistakenly from the Treasury Department.\nA separate lawsuit against telecommunications companies that have cooperated with the government is pending in the San Francisco-based appeals court. A U.S. district court also is examining whether the warrantless surveillance of people in the United States violates the law that regulates the wiretapping of suspected terrorists and requires the approval of a secret court.\nThe administration announced in January 2007 that it would put intercepts of communications on U.S. soil under the oversight of that court, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.\nThe ACLU, in urging the justices to consider its case, said that because the administration voluntarily ended the warrantless wiretapping, it could easily restart it.\nThe administration acknowledged the existence of the program in late 2005, after the New York Times published an article about it.\nThe White House said the monitoring was necessary because the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act left dangerous gaps in the government’s eavesdropping authority.\nLast August, Congress made temporary changes to FISA that made the warrantless wiretapping legal in some instances and also extended immunity from lawsuits to telecommunications companies that help with the intercepts.\nThose changes expired over the weekend, amid disagreements between congressional Democrats and President Bush over the immunity issue.\nExisting wiretaps can continue and any new surveillance the government wants to institute has to follow the FISA rules, which could require court warrants.
(02/20/08 4:35am)
HAVANA – Fidel Castro, ailing and 81, announced Tuesday he was resigning as Cuba’s president, ending a half-century of autocratic rule that made him a communist icon and a relentless opponent of U.S. policy around the globe.\nThe end of Castro’s rule – the longest in the world for a head of government – frees his 76-year-old brother Raul Castro to implement reforms he has hinted at since taking over as acting president when Fidel fell ill in July 2006.\nPresident Bush said he hopes the resignation signals the beginning of a democratic transition, though he doubts that would come about under the rule of another Castro. The State Department denigrated the change as a “transfer of authority and power from dictator to dictator light.”\nCastro temporarily ceded his powers to his brother on July 31, 2006, when he announced that he had undergone intestinal surgery. Since then, he has not been seen in public, appearing only sporadically in official photographs and videotapes and publishing dense essays about mostly international themes as his younger brother consolidated his rule.\n“My wishes have always been to discharge my duties to my last breath,” Castro wrote in a letter published Tuesday in the online edition of the Communist Party daily Granma. But “it would be a betrayal to my conscience to accept a responsibility requiring more mobility and dedication than I am physically able to offer.”\nIn the pre-dawn hours, most Cubans were unaware of Castro’s message, and Havana’s streets were quiet. It wasn’t until 5 a.m., several hours after it was posted on the Internet, that official radio began reading the news to early risers.\nAs the news across the island, Cubans went about their business as usual, accepting the inevitable with a mix of sadness and hope.\n“It is like losing a father,” said Luis Conte, an elderly museum watchman. Or “like a marriage – a very long one that is over.”\nCuban dissidents welcomed the news as a possible first step toward change.\n“The change of a person does not signify the change of a system,” said Oswaldo Paya, whose pro-democracy Varela Project sought an unsuccessful referendum on civil rights and electoral reforms. “We have always maintained hope and today we are more hopeful.”\nReaction was subdued in Miami’s exile community. Dozens gathered in Little Havana, where motorists honked horns, but reporters nearly outnumbered the revelers who shouted “Free Cuba!” and sold little flags.\nIn Washington, the government said it had no plans to change U.S. policy or lift its embargo on Cuba.\nBush, traveling in Rwanda, pledged to “help the people of Cuba realize the blessings of liberty.” But he implied that wasn’t likely under Raul Castro.\n“The international community should work with the Cuban people to begin to build institutions that are necessary for democracy,” he said. “Eventually, this transition ought to lead to free and fair elections – and I mean free, and I mean fair – not these kind of staged elections that the Castro brothers try to foist off as true democracy.”\nIf Cuba remains much the same, “political prisoners will rot in prison and the human condition will remain pathetic in many cases,” Bush said.\nThe United States built a detailed plan in 2005 for American assistance to ensure a democratic transition on the island of 11.2 million people after Castro’s death. But Cuban officials have insisted that the island’s socialist political and economic systems will outlive Castro.\n“The adversary to be defeated is extremely strong,” Castro wrote Tuesday. “However, we have been able to keep it at bay for half a century.”
(02/20/08 4:34am)
KIGALI, Rwanda – On ground haunted by one of the worst atrocities of modern times, President Bush pleaded with the global community Tuesday for decisive action to stop grisly violence in African nations like Kenya and Sudan.\n“There is evil in the world and evil must be confronted,” said Bush, shaken by his visit to a museum that tells the story of Rwanda’s 1994 genocide in which more than 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus were slaughtered in just 100 days by extremist Hutu militias.\nBush, who famously once wrote “not on my watch” in the margin of a report on the Rwanda massacre, decided not to send U.S. troops into Sudan, focusing instead on imposing sanctions, applying diplomatic pressure and training and transporting other nations’ soldiers for peacekeeping.\nHe has been particularly frustrated at what he sees as sluggish efforts by other nations against the atrocities that have raged in Sudan’s western Darfur region for five years. Bush has called Darfur’s situation genocide, though others have not. Hoping that his campaign for increased involvement by others would gain more weight from the scene of another genocide, the president used strong language to blast the international effort.\n“If you’re a problem solver, you put yourself at the mercy of the decisions of others, in this case, the United Nations,” Bush said. “It is – seems very bureaucratic to me, particularly with people suffering.”\nAt least 200,000 have been killed in a campaign by militias supported by Sudan’s Arab-dominated government against black African communities in Darfur. Four cease-fires have gone unheeded. And only about 9,000 of an expected 26,000-troop peacekeeping force, a joint effort by the United Nations and the African Union, have been deployed. The Sudanese government has still not agreed to non-African troops and the U.N. has not persuaded governments to supply helicopters.\nBush hoped to spur the world into action with Rwanda’s history, and also its positive example. This tiny Central African nation of lush hills and rugged mountains – about the size of Maryland – was the first to commit peacekeepers to Darfur, and still has the largest contingent there.\n“My message to other nations is: ‘Join with the president and help us get this problem solved once and for all,’” Bush said after meetings with Rwandan President Paul Kagame.\nThe U.S. has spent $600 million on peacekeeping operations in Darfur, including to train and equip peacekeepers from several nations, transport troops and equipment back and forth and operate base camps, according to the White House. On Tuesday, Bush announced that $100 million would be made available for additional training and equipment.\nBush said Rwanda’s history also should serve as a grim warning as the world now watches Kenya disintegrate, with long-simmering ethnic hatreds playing a role in bloodshed that is shockingly brutal for a country once considered among Africa’s most stable.\nForeign and local observers say the December presidential elections that returned Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki to power were rigged. It unleashed weeks of fighting, much of it pitting other ethnic groups against Kibaki’s Kikuyu tribe that is resented for dominating politics and business.\n“I’m not suggesting that ... anything close to what happened here is going to happen in Kenya,” Bush said. “But I am suggesting there’s some warning signs that the international community needs to pay attention to, and we’re paying attention to it.”\nThe president and his wife, Laura, spent about 40 minutes at the Kigali Memorial Centre, where a trellis-covered hilltop houses mass graves for about 250,000 victims of Rwanda’s nightmare. Bush appeared sickened by what he saw, including stark stories of child victims – their innocent lives and brutal deaths.\n“It can’t help but shake your emotions to their very foundation,” Bush said. By Kagame’s side later, he said: “I just can’t imagine what it would have been like to be a citizen who lived in such horrors, and then had to, you know, gather themselves up and try to live a hopeful life.” \nAnd at the dedication of a new $80 million U.S. embassy here, Bush used the term “holocaust museum” to refer to where he had been.\nRwanda was Bush’s third stop in Africa after Benin and Tanzania. He flew to Ghana on Tuesday and will visit Liberia on Thursday.
(02/20/08 4:33am)
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan – Pakistan’s ruling party conceded defeat to the opposition Tuesday in parliamentary elections that could threaten the rule of President Pervez Musharraf, a key American ally in the war on terror.\nThe party of former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, who was ousted in Musharraf’s 1999 coup, scored a stronger-than-expected showing with a campaign that called for Musharraf’s ouster. After the vote, he called for the president to step down.\n“We accept the election results, and will sit on opposition benches,” Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain, head of the ruling Pakistan Muslim League-Q, told AP Television News. “We are accepting the results with grace and open heart.”\nThe results cast doubt on the political future of Musharraf, who was re-elected to a five-year term last October. With the support of smaller groups and independent candidates, the opposition could gain the two-thirds majority in parliament needed to impeach the president.\nSen. Joseph Biden, a Democrat who chairs of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and one of several U.S. lawmakers who observed the election, said the results mean the United States can shift its Pakistan policy.\n“This is an opportunity for us to move from a policy that has been focused on a personality to one based on an entire people,” Biden said, adding that Washington should encourage more deeply rooted democracy in Pakistan.\nAlthough fear and apathy kept millions of voters at home Monday, the elections for national and provincial assemblies were a major step toward democracy in Pakistan, which has been under military rule for the past eight years under Musharraf and for over half of its 60-year history.\nA win by the opposition is likely to restore the public’s faith in the political process and quell fears that the results would be rigged in favor of the pro-Musharraf forces.\nThe private Geo TV network said the party of slain former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto and another group led by Sharif had so far won 153 seats, more than half of the 272-seat National Assembly.\nThe ruling party was a distant third with 38 seats and a number of party stalwarts and former Cabinet ministers lost in their constituencies.\n“All the king’s men gone!” proclaimed a banner headline in the Daily Times.\nFinal results were not expected before Tuesday evening but the election’s outcome appeared to be a stinging public verdict on Musharraf’s leadership. His popularity had plummeted following his decisions late last year to impose emergency rule, purge the judiciary, jail political opponents and curtail press freedoms.\nSharif reminded reporters Tuesday in Lahore that Musharraf had said he would step down when the people wanted him to do so.\n“And now people have given their verdict,” Sharif said, adding that political parties should “work together to get rid of dictatorship.”\nThe president has angered many Pakistanis by allying the country with Washington in 2001 to fight al-Qaida and the Taliban after the Sept. 11 attacks in the United States.\nThe White House declined to comment until the final results were announced.\nMusharraf has promised to work with whatever government emerges from the election. But the former general is hugely unpopular among the public and opposition parties that have been catapulted into power are likely to find little reason to work with him – particularly because he no longer controls the powerful army.\nSharif has been especially outspoken in demanding that Musharraf be removed and that the Supreme Court justices whom the president sacked late last year be returned to their posts. Those judges were fired as they prepared to rule on whether Musharraf’s re-election last October was constitutional.\nIf the opposition falls short of enough votes to remove Musharraf, the new government could reinstate the Supreme Court justices and ask them to declare the October election invalid.\nMusharraf, at best, faces the prospect of remaining in power with sharply diminished powers and facing a public hostile to him. Last year, he stepped down as army chief, and his successor has pledged to remove the military from politics.\nThe results could have far-reaching implications for the U.S.-led war on terror, especially Pakistani military operations against al-Qaida and Taliban-style militants in border areas of the northwest.
(02/19/08 3:47am)
Former President George H.W. Bush endorsed Sen. John McCain on Monday, a nod of approval from the Republican political dynasty’s patriarch that sends a strong signal to a GOP establishment wary of the Arizona senator. “No one is better prepared to lead our nation at these trying times than Sen. John McCain,” Bush said, standing alongside the Republican nominee-in-waiting in an airport hanger.
(02/19/08 3:46am)
PRISTINA, Kosovo – The U.S. and major European powers recognized Kosovo on Monday, a day after the province’s ethnic Albanian leaders declared independence from Serbia. Ecstatic Kosovars danced in the streets when they heard of the endorsements.\nKosovo’s leaders sent letters to 192 countries seeking formal recognition and Britain, France, Germany and the U.S. were among the countries that backed the request. But other European Union nations were opposed, including Spain, which has battled a violent Basque separatist movement for decades.\n“The Kosovars are now independent,” President Bush said during a trip to Africa. \nSecretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Bush “has responded affirmatively” to Kosovo’s request to establish diplomatic relations.\n“The establishment of these relations will reaffirm the special ties of friendship that have linked together the people of the United States and Kosovo,” Rice’s statement said.\nSerbia withdrew its ambassador from Washington over the U.S. decision to recognize Kosovo.\nAs word of the recognition spread, ethnic Albanians poured into the streets of Kosovo’s capital Pristina to cheer and dance.\nThe republic’s new flag – a blue banner with a yellow silhouette of Kosovo and six white stars representing each of the main ethnic groups – fluttered from homes and offices. But Serb-controlled northern Kosovo was tense with thousands demonstrating against independence and an explosion damaging a U.N. vehicle. No one was hurt.\nBy sidestepping the U.N. and appealing directly to the U.S. and other nations for recognition, Kosovo’s independence set up a showdown with Serbia – outraged at the imminent loss of its territory – and Russia, which warned it would set a dangerous precedent for separatist groups worldwide.\nRussia persuaded the U.N. Security Council to meet in emergency session Sunday in an attempt to block Kosovo’s secession. The council was to meet again later Monday.\nKosovo had formally remained a part of Serbia even though it has been administered by the U.N. and NATO since 1999, when NATO airstrikes ended former Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milosevic’s crackdown on ethnic Albanian separatists, which killed 10,000 people.\nNinety percent of Kosovo’s two million people are ethnic Albanian – most of them secular Muslims – and they see no reason to stay joined to the rest of Christian Orthodox Serbia.\nDespite calls for restraint, tensions flared in northern Kosovo, home to most of the territory’s 100,000 minority Serbs. An explosion damaged a U.N. vehicle outside the ethnically divided town of Kosovska Mitrovica, where thousands of Serbs demonstrated, chanting “this is Serbia!”\nThe crowds marched to a bridge spanning a river dividing the town between the ethnic Albanian and Serbian sides. They were confronted by NATO peacekeepers guarding the bridge, but there was no violence.\nIn a first sign that Serbia was attempting to retake authority in the north of Kosovo, some Serb policemen started leaving the multiethnic Kosovo police force on Monday and placed themselves under the authority of the Serbian government in Belgrade, a senior Kosovo Serb police official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject.\nAbout 320 Serb policemen are part of the U.N.-established force that has run Kosovo since 1999. The departure of Serb policemen in the force would likely trigger a confrontation with the U.N. administration.
(02/15/08 4:54am)
A senior Justice Department official told Congress on Thursday that laws and other limits enacted since three terrorism suspects were waterboarded have eliminated the technique from what is now allowed. “The program as it is authorized today does not include waterboarding,” Steven G. Bradbury, acting head of the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, told the House subcommittee on the Constitution. “There has been no determination by the Justice Department that the use of waterboarding under any circumstances would be lawful under current law,” he added.
(02/15/08 4:53am)
WASHINGTON – President Bush, at loggerheads with House Democrats over how closely the government can eavesdrop on U.S. citizens, warned Wednesday that terrorists were planning fresh assaults that would make the Sept. 11 attacks “pale by comparison.”\nBush called on the image of planes crashing into the twin towers of the World Trade Center in 2001 as he pressured lawmakers to rewrite the intelligence rules governing how phone calls and e-mails are monitored for terrorist activity. Democrats and others fear the changes Bush and his Republican allies support would unduly encroach on civil liberties.\nThe House is considering the Senate version of the bill that Bush favors, one that includes retroactive protection from lawsuits for telecommunications companies that cooperated with government eavesdropping following the Sept. 11 attacks. The House bill does not provide telecom immunity.\nRather than wait for the House and Senate to negotiate differences in their versions of the intelligence legislation, Bush wants a rubber-stamp of the Senate bill so he can sign it into law immediately. The current law expires at midnight Saturday, and Bush said he wouldn’t approve another extension. The House wouldn’t either – Republicans led a 229-191 vote, turning down a 21-day extension.\n“At this moment, somewhere in the world, terrorists are planning new attacks on our country,” the president said. “Their goal is to bring destruction to our shores that will make September the 11th pale by comparison.”\nAbout 40 lawsuits have been filed against telecom companies by people alleging violations of wiretapping and privacy laws.\n“In order to be able to discover ... the enemy’s plans, we need the cooperation of telecommunication companies,” Bush said. “If these companies are subjected to lawsuits that could cost them billions of dollars, they won’t participate. They won’t help us. They won’t help protect America.”\nCaroline Fredrickson, director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s legislative office in Washington, accused Bush of “fear mongering,” and she urged the House not to pass the Senate bill. The ACLU is particularly opposed to the Senate bill’s immunity to phone companies.\n“The people whose private phone calls and e-mails were turned over deserve to have their day in court against the phone companies. Let the American system of justice decide this case,” Fredrickson said.\nThe 68-29 Senate vote Tuesday to update the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act belied the nearly two months of stops and starts and bitter political wrangling that preceded it. The two sides had battled to balance civil liberties with the need to conduct surveillance on potential adversaries.\nWhile giving the White House what it wanted on immunity for the phone companies, the Senate also expanded the power of the court to oversee government eavesdropping on Americans. An amendment would give the FISA court the authority to monitor whether the government is complying with procedures designed to protect the privacy of innocent Americans whose telephone or computer communications are captured during surveillance of a foreign target.\nThe Senate bill would also require FISA court orders to eavesdrop on Americans who are overseas. Under current law, the government can wiretap or search the possessions of anyone outside the United States – even a soldier serving overseas – without court permission if it believes the person may be a foreign agent.\nSenate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., accused the president and Senate Republicans of being more interested in politicizing intelligence than resolving the debate. Reid said the issue would not even be before Congress if Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, “in their unyielding efforts to expand presidential powers,” had not created a system to conduct wiretapping, including on U.S. citizens, outside the bounds of federal law.\n“The president could have taken the simple step of requesting new authority from Congress ... but whether out of convenience, incompetence, or outright disdain for the rule of law, the administration chose to ignore Congress and ignore the Constitution,” Reid said.\nReid said if the president chooses to veto a short-term extension, he, not Congress, will have to take the blame for any gaps in collecting intelligence of terrorists’ communications.\nExpiration of the current Protect America Act would not mean an immediate end to wiretapping. Existing surveillance could continue under the law for a year from when it began – at least until August. Any new surveillance the government wants to institute could be implemented under underlying FISA rules, which may require warrants from the secret court.
(02/15/08 4:52am)
DEKALB, Ill. – A former student dressed in black opened fire with a shotgun and two handguns from the stage of a lecture hall at Northern Illinois University on Thursday, killing five students and injuring 16 others before committing suicide, authorities said.\nThe gunman fatally shot four women and a man in a “brief, rapid-fire assault” that sent terrified students running for cover, university President John Peters said. Four died at the scene, including the gunman, and the other two died at a hospital, he said.\nWitnesses in the geology class said “someone dressed in black came out from behind a screen in front of the classroom and opened fire with a shotgun,” Peters said.\nStudent Jerry Santoni was in a back row when he saw the gunman enter a service door to the stage.\n“I saw him shoot one round at the teacher,” he said. “After that, I proceeded to get down as fast as I could.”\nSantoni dived down, hitting his head the seat in front of him, leaving a knot about half the size of a ping-pong ball on his forehead.\nThe teacher, a graduate student, was wounded but was expected to recover, the school president said. He did not give details of the injuries.\nPeters said the gunman was a former graduate student in sociology at NIU, but was not currently enrolled at the 25,000-student campus about 65 miles west of Chicago.\n“It appears he may have been a student somewhere else,” University Police Chief Donald Grady said, adding that police had no apparent motive.\nSeventeen victims were brought to Kishwaukee Community Hospital in DeKalb, according to spokeswoman Theresa Komitas. One died, two were admitted and three were discharged; five are being evaluated and six others were transferred to other hospitals in critical condition. At least one male died at OSF Saint Anthony Medical Center in Rockford, an official said.\nMichael Gentile was meeting with two of his students directly beneath the lecture hall when the shootings happened. He could hear the chaos a few feet above his head.\n“There was a pretty quick succession ... just pow, pow, pow,” said Gentile, who didn’t leave his office for about 90 minutes. He used a surveillance camera just outside his office to confirm that the people knocking on his door were police.\nGeorge Gaynor, a senior geography student, who was in Cole Hall when the shooting happened, told the student newspaper the Northern Star that the shooter was “a skinny white guy with a stocking cap on.”\nThe federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms sent 15 agents to the scene, according to spokesman Thomas Ahern. He said information about the weapons involved would be sent to the ATF’s national database in Washington and given urgent priority. The FBI also was assisting.\nAll classes were canceled Thursday night and the campus was closed on Friday. Students were urged to call their parents “as soon as possible” and were offered counseling at any residence hall, according to the school Web site.
(02/13/08 4:52am)
DETROIT – General Motors Corp. reported a $38.7 billion loss for 2007 on Tuesday, the largest annual loss ever for an automotive company, and said it is making a new round of buyout offers to U.S. hourly workers in hopes of replacing some of them with lower-paid help.\nThe earnings report and buyout offer came as GM struggles to turn around its North American business as the economy weakens.\nGM Chairman and Chief Executive Rick Wagoner said the company made significant progress in 2007, reducing structural costs in North America, negotiating a historic labor agreement and growing aggressively in Latin America and Asia.\nDuring a conference call with analysts and media, Chief Financial Officer Fritz Henderson said 2008 will be difficult, but the company sees the potential for significant earnings increases by 2010 or 2011 after it reduces its work force and labor costs and transfers its retiree health-care costs to a new UAW-run trust.\nThe Detroit-based automaker said it was offering a new round of buyouts to all 74,000 of its U.S. hourly workers who are represented by the United Auto Workers.\nGM won’t say how many workers it hopes to shed, but under its new contract with the UAW, it will be able to replace up to 16,000 workers doing non-assembly jobs with new employees who will be paid half the old wage of $28 per hour.\nFord Motor Co. and Chrysler LLC already have announced similar buyout offers.\nHenderson said GM’s offer is “reasonably attractive,” and the company raised the amount it was offering to match Ford and Chrysler. He said GM wants to implement lower wages as well as lower its overall worker headcount.\n“We have a substantial amount we can do in terms of transformation of the work force,” he said.\nGM shares rose 44 cents to $27.56 in late morning trading.\nGM’s annual loss of $38.7 billion was largely because of a third-quarter charge related to unused tax credits.\nThe 2007 loss topped GM’s previous record in 1992, when the company lost $23.4 billion because of a change in health care accounting, according to Standard & Poor’s Compustat.\nExcluding the tax charge and other special items, GM lost $23 million, or 40 cents per share, for the year, compared with a net income of $2.2 billion in 2006, beating Wall Street’s expectations. Analysts polled by Thomson Financial expected GM to post a full-year loss of 95 cents per share.\nFor the fourth quarter, GM posted a loss of $722 million, or $1.28 per share, compared with a net income of $950 million in the year-ago quarter. Fourth-quarter charges included $622 million to Delphi Corp., GM’s former parts division, for its restructuring efforts, and a gain of $1.6 billion because of tax credits related to GM’s pension liabilities and the sale of GM’s Allison Transmission unit.\nGM reported $181 billion in revenues for the year, down from $206 billion in 2006. Its automotive business saw record automotive revenues of $178 billion in 2007, up $7 billion from a year ago thanks to growth in emerging markets and favorable exchange rates.\nGM was profitable in every region outside North America. GM’s Latin America, Middle East and Africa division reported a record $1.3 billion in earnings, more than double that of 2006. GM’s Asia Pacific division earned $744 million, up from $403 million in 2006, while GM Europe reported a profit of $55 million, down from a profit of $357 million in 2006.\nGM’s North American division continued to struggle, posting a $1.5 billion loss for the year, nearly identical to its $1.6 billion loss in 2006. GM’s North American division also reported a loss of $1.1 billion in the fourth quarter, compared with a loss of $129 million in the year-ago quarter.
(02/13/08 4:51am)
Armored U.N. vehicles guarded East Timor’s leaders Tuesday under a state of emergency declared after rebel soldiers critically wounded the Nobel Peace Prize-winning president and fired at the prime minister’s convoy. The army chief blamed the United Nations, which oversees a 1,400-member international police force, for failing to protect the country’s two top leaders and demanded an outside investigation.
(02/13/08 4:50am)
WASHINGTON – More than half of all veterans who took their own lives after returning from Iraq or Afghanistan were members of the National Guard or Reserves, according to new government data that prompted activists on Tuesday to call for a closer examination of the problem.\nA Department of Veterans Affairs analysis of ongoing research of deaths among veterans of both wars –obtained by The Associated Press –found that Guard or Reserve members accounted for 53 percent of the veteran suicides from 2001, when the war in Afghanistan began, through the end of 2005.\nThe research, conducted by the department’s Office of Environmental Epidemiology, provides the first demographic look at suicides among veterans from those wars who left the military.\nJoe Davis, public affairs director for the Veterans of Foreign Wars, said the Pentagon and VA must combine efforts to track suicides among those who have served in those countries in order to get a clearer picture of the problem.\n“To fix a problem, you have to define it first,” Davis said.\nAt certain times in 2005, members of the Guard and Reserve made up nearly half the troops fighting in Iraq. Overall, they were nearly 28 percent of all U.S. military forces deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan or in support of the operations, according to Defense Department data through the end of 2007.\nMany Guard members and Reservists have done multiple tours that kept them away from home for 18 months, and that is taking a toll, Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., said in a statement Tuesday.\n“Until this administration understands that repeated and prolonged deployments are stretching our brave men and women to the brink, we will continue to see these tragic figures,” Murray said.\nPaul Rieckhoff, executive director of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, said the military’s effort to re-screen Guard and Reservists for mental and physical problems three months after they return home is a positive step, but a more long-term, comprehensive approach is needed to help them.\n“National Guardsman and Reservists are literally in Baghdad in one week and in Brooklyn the next, and that transition is incredibly tough,” Rieckhoff said.\nThe VA has said there does not appear to be an epidemic of suicide among returning veterans, and that suicide among the newer veterans is comparable to the same demographic group in the general population. However, an escalating suicide rate in the Army, as well as high-profile suicides such as the death of Joshua Omvig – an Iowa Reservist who shot himself in front of his mother in December 2005 after an 11-month tour in Iraq – have alarmed some members of Congress and advocates.\nIn November, President Bush signed the Joshua Omvig Suicide Prevention Bill, which directed the VA to improve its mental health training for staff and do a better job of screening and treating veterans.\nAccording to the VA’s research, 144 veterans committed suicide from the start of the war in Afghanistan on Oct. 7, 2001, through the end of 2005. Of those, 35 veterans, or 24 percent, served in the Reserves and 41, or 29 percent, had served in the National Guard. Sixty-eight–or 47 percent –had been in the regular military.\nStatistics from 2006 and 2007 were not yet available, the VA said, because the study was based in part on data from the National Death Index, which is still being compiled.\nAmong the total population of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans who have been discharged from the military, nearly half are formerly regular military and a little more than half were in the Guard and Reserves, according to the VA.\nAmong those studied, more than half of the veterans who committed suicide were aged 20 to 29. Nearly three-quarters used a firearm to take their lives. Nearly 82 percent were white.\nAbout one in five was seen at least once at a VA facility.\nLast year, the VA started a suicide hot line. The VA and the military have also made other improvements in suicide prevention care, such as hiring more counselors and increasing mental health screening.\n“The challenge is getting people to come to us before they commit suicide, knowing they can come and get help and knowing they have access to those resources,” said Alison Aikele, a VA spokeswoman.\nThe VA study does not include those who committed suicide in the war zones or those who remained in the military after returning home from war.\nLast year, the Army said its suicide rate in 2006 rose to 17.3 per 100,000 troops, the highest level in 26 years of record-keeping. The Army said recently that as many as 121 soldiers committed suicide last year. If all are confirmed, the number would be more than double the number reported in 2001.\nSome mental health advocates have complained that there is no comprehensive tracking in one place of suicide among those who served in the wars, whether they are still in the military or discharged.\nIn October, the AP reported that preliminary VA research found that from the start of the war in Afghanistan in October 2001 and the end of 2005, a total of 283 troops who had served in the wars and later were discharged from the military had committed suicide.\nThe VA later said the number was reduced to 144 because some of the veterans counted were actually in the active military and not discharged when they died.
(02/13/08 4:49am)
BAGHDAD – The speaker of Iraq’s fragmented parliament threatened Tuesday to disband the legislature, saying it is so riddled with distrust it appears unable to adopt the budget or agree on a law setting a date for provincial elections.\nDisbanding parliament would prompt new elections within 60 days and further undermine Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s shaky government, which is limping along with nearly half of the 40 Cabinet posts vacant.\nThe disarray undermines the purpose of last year’s U.S. troop “surge” – to bring down violence enough to allow the Iraqi government and parliament to focus on measures to reconcile differences among minority Sunnis and Kurds and the majority Shiites. Violence is down dramatically, but political progress languishes.\nIraq’s constitution allows Mahmoud al-Mashhadani, the hot-tempered speaker and a member of the minority Sunni faction, to dissolve parliament if one-third of its members request the move and a majority of lawmakers approve. Al-Mashhadani said he already had sufficient backing for the move from five political blocs, but he refused to name them.\nAl-Mashhadani said the Iraqi treasury had already lost $3 billion by failing to pass the budget before the end of 2007. He did not explain how the money was lost.\nHe blamed the lack of a budget on Kurdish politicians who have refused to back down from a demand that their regional and semiautonomous government be guaranteed 17 percent of national income.\nThe 17 percent formula for Kurds was applied to past budgets, but some Sunni and Shiite lawmakers sought to lower it to about 14 percent. The argument is that the Kurdish population is closer to 14 percent of Iraq’s total than 17 percent as Kurds insist. There has been no census in decades.\nShiite lawmakers walked out of the rare night session Tuesday when the Kurds refused to drop their demand to lump the budget vote together with two other contested measures. The Kurds said they feared being double-crossed on the budget, which now calls for restoration of the 17 percent Kurdish share, if parliamentarians voted on the laws separately.\n“We believe the crisis of trust continues to grow and will affect the work of government. We have to admit now that the political process has failed and call for the disbanding of parliament and early elections,” Sadrist lawmaker Bahaa al-Araji said after the fractious session.
(02/12/08 5:00am)
East Timor’s President José Ramos-Horta was treated for serious chest wounds in an Australian hospital Monday after rebel soldiers shot him and attacked the prime minister during a failed coup attempt. The country’s top fugitive was killed in one of the attacks. The strikes against the two independence icons were a striking reminder of the bitter rivalries beneath the surface in Asia’s newest nation and could trigger more unrest and political turmoil.
(02/12/08 5:00am)
By Jeannine Aversa\nThe Associated Press\nWASHINGTON – President Bush, acknowledging that the country is suffering through a period of economic uncertainty, called on Congress Monday to do more to help people and businesses hurt by the housing slump and credit crunch.\nIn a brief introduction to his annual economic report, Bush said the $168 billion economic rescue package passed by Congress last week will keep “our economy growing and our people working.”\nStill, other steps need to be taken to strengthen the economy, he said. The president exhorted lawmakers to make his tax cuts permanent and do more to help struggling homeowners at risk of losing their houses.\nBush is expected later this week to sign an economic stimulus package that includes rebates of $600 to $1,200 to most taxpayers and $300 checks to disabled veterans, the elderly and other low-income people. \n“Money will be going directly to American workers and families and individuals,” he said.\nIn addition, the package includes tax breaks for businesses and would take some steps to boost the ailing housing market.\nTo that end, the legislation would temporarily raise to $729,750 the limit on Federal Housing Administration loans and the cap on loans that mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac can buy. Raising that cap on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac should provide relief in the market for “jumbo” mortgages – those exceeding $417,000. The credit crunch hit that market hard, making it very difficult, if not impossible, for people to get those loans. And, that has plunged the housing market even deeper into turmoil.\nBush urged Congress to pass additional legislation that would revamp Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and modernize the Depression-era Federal Housing Administration, which insures mortgages for low- and middle-income borrowers. The president also said Congress should approve legislation allowing state housing agencies to issue tax-free bonds to help squeezed homeowners refinance their mortgages.\nThese and other steps could help struggling homeowners “weather turbulent times in the market,” Bush said.\nDescribing the report to reporters, Bush said the stimulus plan is “going to help deal with the uncertainties.” As for the broader economic assessment, he said it indicates “our economy is structurally sound in the long term and that we’re dealing with uncertainties in the short term.” The question, Bush added, is what can be done about it.\nFallout from the housing bust and harder-to-get credit has catapulted home foreclosures to record highs, has forced financial companies to rack up multibillion-dollar losses in bad mortgage investment, has rocked Wall Street and has dealt a powerful blow to the national economy.\nThe economy nearly stalled in the final three months of 2007, growing at a pace of just 0.6 percent. The odds of a recession have grown considerably during the last year, and an increasing number of analysts believe the economy may actually be shrinking now.\n“Our economy is undergoing a period of uncertainty, and there are heightened risks to our near-term economic growth,” Bush said in his economic report to Congress. \nHe said the stimulus package should “insure against those risks.”\nThe administration is hopeful the country will skirt a recession. The last one was in 2001, shortly after Bush first took office.
(02/08/08 5:40am)
CIA Director Michael Hayden cast doubt on the legality of waterboarding on Thursday, a day after the White House said the harsh interrogation tactic has saved American lives and could be used in the future. Hayden told the House Intelligence Committee that he officially prohibited CIA operatives from using waterboarding in 2006 in the wake of a Supreme Court decision and new laws on the treatment of U.S. detainees. Iraqi and U.N. officials
(02/08/08 5:38am)
WASHINGTON – Senate Democrats, under pressure from party colleagues in the House of Representatives, agreed Thursday to an economic rescue package that would add checks for Social Security retirees and disabled veterans but leave out extended jobless benefits and additional business subsidies.\nThe package would rush tax rebates of up to $600 for individuals and up to $1,200 for couples to most taxpayers and grant businesses tax cuts in hopes of reviving the economy.\nLeaders in both parties and in both chambers of Congress had agreed by Wednesday night on the idea that 20 million seniors whose sole or main income is Social Security and 250,000 veterans living off disability benefits should be added to those getting rebates under the $161 billion stimulus bill, first negotiated by House Democrats and \nPresident Bush.\nSenate Democrats led the way in covering those two politically powerful groups – while the White House and Senate Republicans pressed to have the House measure passed by the Senate without change. But Senate Democrats also had insisted on adding 13 weeks of added jobless benefits, home heating subsidies and new tax refunds for coal producers and struggling corporations.\nNow, Democratic senators are backing away from those additional demands, paving the way for a Senate vote as early as Thursday.\n“Discretion is the better part of valor. The best thing for us to do is declare a big victory that we’ve achieved, namely getting the rebate checks to 20 million seniors and 250,000 disabled veterans,” said Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont.\nAdding all of the Senate Democrats’ demands plus the rebates for seniors and veterans would have boosted the stimulus package’s total cost to $205 billion, an amount likely to have produced a record federal deficit this year.\n“We’re getting close to finalizing what I think is an agreement everyone can feel comfortable with,” said Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., the minority leader.
(02/08/08 5:38am)
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. – After two months of delay, shuttle Atlantis blasted off Thursday with Europe’s gift to the international space station, a $2 billion science lab named Columbus that spent years waiting to set sail.\nAtlantis and its seven-man crew roared away from their seaside launch pad at 2:45 p.m., overcoming fuel gauge problems that thwarted back-to-back launch attempts \nin December.\nThe same cold front that spawned killer tornadoes across the South earlier in the week stayed far enough away and, in the end, cut NASA a break. All week, bad weather had threatened to delay the flight, making liftoff all the sweeter for the shuttle team. The sky was cloudy at launch time, but rain and thunderstorms remained off to the west.\n“All systems are go,” launch director Doug Lyons told the astronauts. “I’d like to wish you a successful mission and safe return.”\nReplied shuttle commander Stephen Frick: “Looks like today’s a good day, and we’re ready to go fly.”\nProbably no one was happier than the 300 Europeans who gathered at the launch site to see Atlantis take off with their beloved Columbus lab.\nTwenty-three years in the making, Columbus is the European Space Agency’s primary contribution to the space station. The lab has endured space station redesigns and slowdowns, as well as a number of shuttle postponements and two shuttle accidents.\nIt will join the U.S. lab, Destiny, in orbit for seven years. The much bigger Japanese lab Kibo, or Hope, will require three shuttle flights to get off the ground, beginning in March.\nFrick, and his U.S., German and French crew will reach the space station on Saturday and begin installing Columbus the very next day. Three spacewalks are planned during the flight, scheduled to last 11 or, more likely, 12 days.\nBesides Columbus, Atlantis will drop off a new space station resident, French Air Force Gen. Leopold Eyharts, who will swap places with NASA astronaut Daniel Tani and get Columbus working. Tani will return to Earth aboard the shuttle, ending a mission of nearly \nfour months.\nTo NASA’s relief, all four fuel gauges in Atlantis’ external fuel tank worked properly during the final stage of the countdown. The gauges failed back in December because of a faulty connector, and NASA redesigned the part to fix the problem, which had been plaguing the shuttles for \nthree years.\nNASA was anxious to get Atlantis flying as soon as possible to keep alive its hopes of achieving six launches this year. The space agency faces a 2010 deadline for finishing the station and retiring the shuttles. That equates to four or five shuttle flights a year between now and then, something NASA Administrator Michael Griffin considers achievable.\n“We’re coming back, and I think we are back, from some pretty severe technical problems that led to the loss of Columbia. We understand the foam now,” NASA Administrator Michael Griffin said, referring to the chunks of insulating foam that kept breaking off the fuel tanks.\nBarring any more major mechanical trouble or freak hailstorms like the one that battered Atlantis’s fuel tank one year ago, “this should be like some of those earlier times when we had some fairly interrupted stretches with no technical problems where we could just fly,” Griffin said in an interview with The Associated Press. “That’s what I’m looking forward to.”
(02/08/08 5:37am)
WASHINGTON – John McCain effectively sealed the Republican presidential nomination on Thursday as chief rival Mitt Romney suspended his \nfaltering campaign. \n“I must now stand aside, for our party and our country,” Romney said in a speech Thursday. \n“If I fight on in my campaign, all the way to the convention, I would forestall the launch of a national campaign and make it more likely that Senator Clinton or Obama would win. And in this time of war, I simply cannot let my campaign be a part of aiding a surrender to terror,” Romney told the Conservative Political Action Conference \nin Washington.\nRomney’s decision leaves McCain as the top man standing in the GOP race, with Mike Huckabee and Texas Rep. Ron Paul far behind in the delegate hunt. It was a remarkable turnaround for McCain, who some seven months ago was barely viable, out of cash and losing staff. The four-term Arizona senator, denied his party’s nomination in 2000, was poised to succeed George W. Bush as the GOP standard-bearer.\nRomney launched his campaign almost a year ago in his native Michigan. The former Massachusetts governor and venture capitalist invested more than $40 million of his own money into the race, counted on early wins in Iowa and New Hampshire that never materialized and won just seven states on Super Tuesday, mostly small caucus states.\nMcCain took the big prizes of New York and California.\n“This is not an easy decision for me. I hate to lose. My family, my friends and our supporters ... many of you right here in this room ... have given a great deal to get me where I have a shot at becoming president. If this were only about me, I would go on. But I entered this race because I love America,” Romney said.\nThere were shouts of astonishment, with some moans and others yelling, “No, No.”\nRomney responded, “You guys are great.”\nMcCain prevailed in most of the Super Tuesday states, moving closer to the numbers needed to officially win the nomination. Overall, McCain led with 707 delegates, to 294 for Romney and 195 for Huckabee. It takes 1,191 to win the nomination at this summer’s convention in St. Paul, Minn.\nBy suspending his campaign, Romney holds onto his delegates, at least until the party convention this summer.\nRomney claimed he was the true conservative in the race while McCain has been criticized by some on the right. McCain acknowledged the \nrocky relationship.\n“I am acutely aware that I cannot succeed in that endeavor, nor can our party prevail over the challenge we will face from either Senator Clinton or Senator Obama, without the support of dedicated conservatives,” McCain said in prepared remarks to the same conference.\nRomney acknowledged the obstacles to beating McCain.\n“As of today, more than 4 million people have given me their vote for president, that’s of course, less than Senator McCain’s 4.7 million, but quite a statement nonetheless. Eleven states have given me their nod, compared to his 13. Of course, because size does matter, he’s doing quite a bit better with the number of delegates he’s got,” Romney said.\nRomney’s departure from the race came almost a year after his formal entrance, when the Michigan native declared his candidacy on Feb. 12, 2007, at the Henry Ford Museum of Innovation in Dearborn, Mich.