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(01/29/08 4:19am)
WASHINGTON – Senate Democrats will move to add to a $150 billion economic stimulus package, including rebates for senior citizens living off Social Security and an extension of unemployment benefits, setting up a clash with the White House and House leaders who are pushing a narrower package.\nAs the House planned a vote Tuesday on a plan that would speed rebates of up to $600 to most income earners – more for couples and families with children – the Senate was planning to draft its own measure with the add-ons, said senior Senate aides in both parties, speaking on condition of anonymity because the package is not yet final.\nThe move was in defiance of admonitions from the Bush administration not to risk derailing the deal with changes, and it threatened to slow what was shaping up as an extraordinarily rapid trip through Congress for the stimulus measure. The president and House leaders agreed last week on a proposal to provide rebates to 117 million families and to give businesses $50 billion in incentives to invest in new plants and equipment. The goal is to help head off a recession and boost consumer confidence.\nA meeting of the Senate Finance Committee to draft a new version of the bill could come as early as Wednesday.\nAdding rebates for senior citizens living solely off Social Security checks – who are ineligible under the plan hatched by House leaders and the White House – would likely mean doling out smaller rebates overall, shrinking the size of the payments from $600 to $500, according to aides familiar with the emerging proposal.\nPresident Bush planned to use his State of the Union address on Monday night to call on Congress to move quickly on the agreement, the White House said.\nBush will tell “Congress, and specifically the Senate, not to delay or derail this agreement,” said Dana Perino, the White House spokeswoman.\nStill, pressure from the elderly and labor unions – both politically potent forces – is spurring senators from both parties to call for the extras.\nThe House plan leaves out some 20 million seniors, according to the AARP.\nThe Senate measure is likely to include a 13-week extension of unemployment benefits and a 26-week extension in states where the unemployment rate exceeds 6 percent, the aides said.\nThe White House has warned against tinkering with the agreement reached with House leaders last week.\n“I don’t think the Senate is going to want to derail this program,” Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson, Bush’s pointman on the deal, told CNN on Sunday. “And I don’t think the American people are going to be anything but impatient if we don’t enact this bipartisan agreement quickly.”\nBut Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., has said the Senate would consider adding to that plan, including extending unemployment benefits, boosting home heating subsidies, raising food stamp benefits and approving money for public works projects.\nSenate Republicans and Democrats – kept on the sidelines as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and Minority Leader John A. Boehner, R-Ohio, cut the deal with Paulson last week – were eager to put their stamp on the high-profile package. Several wish-lists were floating around Capitol Hill, but the unemployment extension and rebates for seniors appeared to have the most bipartisan appeal.\nSome senators also were pressing to add to the business tax breaks in the package, including restoring a measure dropped during the House negotiations that would let businesses suffering losses now to reclaim taxes previously paid.
(01/25/08 1:57am)
Congressional leaders announced a deal with the White House on Thursday regarding an economic stimulus package that would give most tax filers refunds of $600 to $1,200, and more if they have children. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Congress would act on the agreement – hammered out in a week of intense negotiations with Republican Leader John A. Boehner and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson – “at the earliest date, so that those rebate checks will be in \nthe mail.”
(01/25/08 1:56am)
JACKSONVILLE, N.C. – A grand jury indicted a Marine on a first-degree murder charge Thursday in the death of a pregnant colleague, but a prosecutor said he wouldn’t seek the death penalty if the man is arrested \nin Mexico.\nAuthorities believe Cpl. Cesar Laurean has fled to his native Mexico, which refuses to send anyone back to the United States unless provided assurances they won’t face the death penalty.\n“The choices presented to me were either a possible life without parole sentence, or the defendant living in Mexico the rest of his life and never brought to trial,” Onslow County District Attorney Dewey Hudson said.\nThe remains of Lance Cpl. Maria Lauterbach, 20, were found with those of her fetus earlier this month in a fire pit in Laurean’s back yard. Lauterbach, who had once accused Laurean of rape, had been missing since mid-December. Military investigators are still working to identify the father of Lauterbach’s unborn child, Hudson said.\nBefore Laurean, 21, fled from Jacksonville in early January, he left a note for his wife, Christina, that said Lauterbach slit her own throat with a knife, and he then buried her in the woods near their home. Detectives have rejected that claim, and an autopsy found that Lauterbach died of blunt force trauma to the head.\nBut because authorities have determined that Lauterbach’s child had not been born at the time of her death, Hudson said, prosecutors can only charge Laurean with one count of murder.\nHudson said the grand jury also charged Laurean with robbery with a dangerous weapon and a charge involving an unauthorized financial transaction. The indictment states Laurean forced Lauterbach to remove money from her bank account Dec. 14, the same day authorities believe he killed her.\nBut because authorities have determined that Lauterbach’s child had not been born at the time of her death, Hudson said, prosecutors could only charge Laurean with one count \nof murder.\nLaurean is also accused of trying to use Lauterbach’s ATM card on Christmas Eve, and was charged with attempted card fraud and obtaining property by false pretenses.\nHudson said authorities believe Laurean entered Mexico on a bus Jan. 14, two days after he left Jacksonville. Earlier this week, a man identified as his cousin said Laurean walked into his liquor store in Guadalajara last week, but left without saying where he was headed.\n“Because of the all the attention, I hope (Mexican authorities) will move on this case very quickly,” Hudson said.\nHudson said Thursday that Christina Laurean is still cooperating with investigators, and she does not face charges. She learned of Lauterbach’s death roughly a day before Laurean fled, but only then told police and turned over the note he left behind, according to \ncourt documents.\nAlthough Laurean refused to speak with detectives looking into Lauterbach’s disappearance before he fled, authorities have said they didn’t consider him a flight risk because they had information the pair had a “friendly relationship” even after she reported the rape allegation to military authorities.
(01/24/08 5:00am)
Terrence Malick, one of America's greatest directors, has made only four films. His first, "Badlands," (1973) stars a young, James Dean-idolizing Martin Sheen in a classic lovers-on-the-run picture. His middle child, the somehow lesser-known "Days of Heaven," (1978) was such a masterwork that he didn't endeavor to make his next, the more recent "The Thin Red Line," (1998) until 20 years later. It's easy to see why.\n"Days of Heaven" stars a dreamy young Richard Gere as a "Chicaga" steel-mill worker on the lam, his girlfriend and little sister in tow. For reasons only alluded to, he and his girlfriend masquerade as brother and sister, and the three climb atop a smoke-billowing locomotive packed with other hobos heading south in search of a better life. When they find work for a pittance as shuckers on a sprawling wheat farm in the north Texan panhandle, the stage is set. The rich farm owner falls for Gere's girlfriend, initiates a love triangle and a dazzling pandemonium of Americana ensues: flying circuses, plagues, devastating wildfires, biplanes, Model Ts and shootouts. \nThrough an onslaught of gorgeous panoramic shots, Malick depicts America at its most operatic, making the Great Plains seem like a place out of the Bible or ancient Greece. Characters are bathed in perennial golden sunlight, their wind-cracked faces shot from below. This is mythic America, seen before in Thomas Hart Benton and Edward Hopper paintings. Here, even Gere's hellish steel-factory labor seems meaningful and heroic. Ennio Morricone channels Aaron Copland for the score, and a story emerges from a backdrop of laboring humans dwarfed by endless Texas horizon. The wind is so fierce that it drowns out conversations and so omnipresent that we're treated to hypnotic extended shots of it simply blowing the wheat around. Generous dissolves make dreamlike scenes seem to melt into one another.\nSound and visuals aren't the only artistically exploitable facets of the film -- Malick has the thick-accented, cigarette-smoking 13-year-old little sister, played by Linda Manz, carry the dreamy narration, and her distant commentary provides a surreal perspective on the very adult events that surround her. In the picture's larger effort to unite the two, her words drift between the commonplace and the poetic. \nThe lamentable thing about "Days of Heaven," though, is that it tries to pack the depth and complexity of a great novel into an impossibly short 90 minutes. Where many directors will take 10 minutes to explore and convey a character's reaction to something pivotal, Malick packs it into a fleeting facial expression and presses on. This obligation to be economical ramps up the film's melodrama and, as a result, will turn some viewers away. The constant stream of major events is so unlike the pace of real life that it overstimulates to the point of disorientation. But the overall effect is mesmerizing. Viewers will either be lost in "Days of Heaven" or lost to it.\nLike the characters it depicts, the film takes itself seriously and employs little restraint. That said, this is not a slow, ponderous European art film. There's something quintessentially American about it; something colossal seems to happen every 10 minutes. In turn, the hyper-romantic Gere over-acts as if he's on stage. (One of the few points of comic relief is a moment where the little sister, a quintessential sarcastic Midwesterner, effortlessly mocks her brother's grand self-image). These times are both heroic and dire. Though there are lighthearted moments, there's not much room for joking around.\nCompared to most nations across the pond, America's history is only a brief, poignant moment, but this film shows just how powerful and epic any fraction of that moment could have been. This is a story of larger-than-life people in a larger-than-life nation. The revelation of the film's final minutes is that this story, with all its weight and allegory, is a mere chapter in these characters' much longer lives. \nLike America, they're still young, and plenty of history remains to be written. By the time the credits roll, the world feels new, electric and bursting with possibility. After all, in 1911, our country might well have seemed like a dream world -- incomprehensibly vast, with promise of new life. The film's greatest achievement is making that century-old feeling so palpable to us today.
(01/24/08 5:00am)
Return of the living meat:\n"Aqua Teen Hunger Force" has made its triumphant debut this season, promising more glee for high-as-hell surrealists and total bewilderment for everyone else. Music snobs take note: Neko Case and Josh Homme of Queens of the Stone Age make cameo appearances.
(01/24/08 5:00am)
It's like something out of a movie: Kid's parents are out of town so he throws a huge party. Then more people show up than he expected. Then the cops come. Then there's a riot. ... Then he gives an interview in all his stunna-shaded, nipple-ringed glory. And he'd do it again.
(01/24/08 3:51am)
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Wednesday pressed Pakistani leader Pervez Musharraf to ensure that next month’s elections are free and fair and urged him to boost counterterrorism cooperation with the U.S. and neighboring Afghanistan. Meeting with Musharraf here on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum, Rice praised him as a steadfast ally in the war on terror whose country would continue to receive substantial U.S. support. But she stressed that Musharaf must uphold his stated commitment to democracy.
(01/24/08 3:50am)
WASHINGTON — The deficit for the current budget year will jump to about $250 billion under Congressional Budget Office figures released Wednesday, as a weaker economy and lower corporate profits weigh on the government’s fiscal ledger.\nAnd that figure does not reflect more than $100 billion in red ink from an economic stimulus measure in the works.\n“After three years of declining budget deficits, a slowing economy this year will contribute to an increase in the deficit,” the CBO report said.\nThe figure greatly exceeds the $163 billion in red ink registered last year. Adding likely but still unapproved outlays for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan brings its “baseline” deficit estimate of $219 billion to about $250 billion, the nonpartisan CBO said.\nHouse Budget Committee Chairman John Spratt Jr., D-S.C., said the 2008 deficit might reach $379 billion once the costs of an upcoming economic stimulus measure under negotiation between the Bush administration and Congress are factored in.\nThe CBO crunches economic and budget data for lawmakers.\nUnlike an increasing number of economists, CBO does not forecast a recession this year. It instead forecasts a growth rate of 1.7 percent, down from 2.2 percent real growth in the gross domestic product last year.\n“Although recent data suggest that the probability of a recession in 2008 has increased, CBO does not expect the slowdown in economic growth to be large enough to register as a recession,” the CBO report said. The CBO economic forecast was completed last month, before a recent spike in unemployment and the release of disappointing holiday retail sales figures.\n“A number of ominous economic signs have emerged since CBO finalized last month the forecast underlying today’s report,” Spratt said. “Today’s new economic forecast thus adds to the growing evidence that the economy has weakened, and that policymakers in Washington must take action.”\nCBO Director Peter Orszag recently testified before the House Budget Committee. He warned them again that regardless of the short-term fluctuations in the deficit, the longer-term picture remains bleak due to expected spiraling costs of Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security as the Baby Boom generation retires.\n“A substantial reduction in the growth of spending, a significant increase in tax revenues relative to the size of the economy, or some combination of the two will be necessary to maintain the nation’s long-term fiscal stability,” Orszag said.\nOfficially, CBO predicts the 2008 deficit at $219 billion, but that figure fails to account for at least an additional $30 billion in war costs and the likely infusion of deficit-financed economic stimulus measures such as income tax rebates, business tax breaks and help for the unemployed now under discussion on Capitol Hill and at the White House.\nThe deficit seems to be an afterthought as lawmakers race toward agreement with President Bush on a plan to pump perhaps $150 billion worth of deficit spending into the economy. The bulk of the plan would come as tax cuts, though Democrats are pressing for additional help for the unemployed and people on food stamps. Constituency groups in both political parties are pressing for even more, such as Democratic-sought aid to cash-strapped states and people with high heating bills.
(01/23/08 3:40am)
The United Nations Security Council’s permanent members and Germany agreed Tuesday on the contents of a new draft resolution on sanctions against Iran after talks on its nuclear program, the German foreign minister said. A European diplomat and a U.S. official, both speaking of condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue, said the draft resolution would moderately expand existing sanctions, but would not feature new economic sanctions.
(01/23/08 3:39am)
NEW YORK – Wall Street struggled to steady itself Tuesday, climbing back from an early plunge after the Federal Reserve implemented an emergency interest rate cut in hopes of restoring stability to a faltering U.S. economy. The Dow Jones industrials, down 465 points at the start of the session, recovered to a loss of more than 180 points.\nThe U.S. markets joined a global sell-off amid growing fears that a recession in the United States could send economies around the world into a downturn. Though stocks regained ground as investors digested the Fed’s move to cut its benchmark federal funds rate by 0.75 percentage point and as bargain-hunters entered the market, trading remained volatile and the major indexes fluctuated sharply, at times approaching the break-even point before heading down again.\nThe Fed’s move was unusual, coming between regularly scheduled meetings and just a week before the next gathering of the central bank’s policy-making Open Markets Committee. It was also larger than the half-percentage point that was widely anticipated to be announced at the end of that two-day meeting, and the largest cut in the fed funds rate on records going back to 1990.\nBut it created little, if any, optimism on Wall Street, in part because some analysts were predicting at the end of last week, when the Dow suffered back-to-back triple digit drops, that the Fed might act sooner rather than later. And stocks have been falling steeply for months because of the ongoing housing, mortgage and credit crisis and its impact on the overall economy; many investors believe much more is needed to right the markets and the economy.\nThe rate cut helped stanch the stock drop because “the equity markets are so used to the kneejerk reaction that if it’s cheaper for companies to borrow, earnings will go up,” said Daniel Alpert, managing director of Westwood Capital LLC. “But throwing more cheap money into the equation doesn’t help the fact that we have a credit crisis on our hands.”\nFor the market to truly gain a foothold, investors need to see strong economic data in the coming weeks and solid earnings reports and forecasts this week from big multinational companies like Microsoft, AT&T, Caterpillar and Honeywell International. The market also needs to hear that financial institutions like Citigroup and Merrill Lynch & Co., which have lost billions due to investments in failed mortgages, are on their way to solid earnings as well.\n“If that doesn’t happen, then all this is a short-term bottom before a resumption of selling,” said Peter Boockvar, equity strategist at Miller Tabak.\nU.S. bonds were mixed, with investors seeking safer investments as stocks declined. The price of oil, meanwhile, fell amid expectations that a downturn would depress demand for energy.\nThe Fed lowered the target federal funds rate, or the interest banks charge one another for overnight loans, to 3.50 percent and the discount rate, the interest the Fed charges banks directly, to 4 percent.\nIt can take months for an interest rate cut to work its way through the economy. In the short term, it makes borrowing cheaper, but the billions of dollars in failed mortgages over the past year have made lenders wary of writing loans to almost anyone — consumers or corporations. And if consumers and companies aren’t spending more, an economic recovery can be slow.\nThe Dow was down 184.04, or 1.52 percent, at 11,915.26. The Dow was last below 12,000 in March 2007.\nThe broader Standard & Poor’s 500 index was off 22.70, or 1.71 percent, at 1,302.49, while the Nasdaq composite index fell 54.35, or 2.32 percent, to 2,285.67.
(01/23/08 3:38am)
MIAMI – Jose Padilla, once accused of plotting with al-Qaida to blow up a radioactive “dirty bomb,” was sentenced Tuesday to 17 years and four months on terrorism conspiracy charges that don’t mention those initial allegations.\nThe sentence, imposed by U.S. District Judge Marcia Cooke, marks another step in the extraordinary personal and legal odyssey for the 37-year-old Muslim convert, a U.S. citizen who was held for three-and-a-half years as an enemy combatant after his 2002 arrest amid the “dirty bomb” allegations.\nProsecutors had sought a life sentence, but Cooke said she arrived at the 17-year sentence after considering the “harsh conditions” during Padilla’s lengthy military detention at a Navy brig in South Carolina.\n“I do find that the conditions were so harsh for Mr. Padilla ... they warrant consideration in the sentencing in this case,” the judge said.\nCooke also imposed prison terms on two other men of Middle Eastern origin who were convicted of conspiracy and material support charges along with Padilla in August. The three were part of a North American support cell for al-Qaida and other Islamic extremists around the world, prosecutors said.\nThe jury was told that Padilla was recruited by Islamic extremists in the U.S. and filled out an application to attend an al-Qaida training camp in Afghanistan.\nCooke said that as serious as the conspiracy was, there was no evidence linking the men to specific acts of terrorism anywhere.\n“There is no evidence that these defendants personally maimed, kidnapped or killed anyone in the United States or elsewhere,” she said.\nPadilla was added in 2005 to an existing Miami terrorism support case just as the U.S. Supreme Court was considering his challenge to President Bush’s decision to hold him in custody indefinitely without charge. The “dirty bomb” charges were quietly discarded and were never part of the criminal case.\nCooke sentenced Padilla’s recruiter, 45-year-old Adham Amin Hassoun, to 15 years and eight months in prison and the third defendant, 46-year-old Kifah Wael Jayyousi, to 12 years and eight months. Jayyousi was a financier and propagandist for the cell that assisted Islamic extremists in Chechnya, Afghanistan, Somalia and elsewhere, according to trial testimony. Both also faced life in prison.\nPadilla’s mother, Estela Lebron, smiled at reporters in the courtroom when the sentence was announced and questioned outside the courthouse whether the Bush administration had misplaced its priorities in prosecuting her son.\n“This is the way they are spending our money? Hello?” she said.\nBut she was also pleased he didn’t get the maximum sentence. “I feel good about everything. This is amazing.”\nThe men were convicted after a three-month trial based on tens of thousands of FBI telephone intercepts collected over an eight-year investigation and a form Padilla filled out in 2000 to attend an al-Qaida training camp in Afghanistan. Padilla, a former Chicago gang member with a long criminal record, converted to Islam in prison and was recruited by Hassoun while attending a mosque in Sunrise, a suburb of Chicago. \nPadilla’s arrest was initially portrayed by the Bush administration as an important victory in the months immediately after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, and later was seen as a symbol of the administration’s zeal to prevent homegrown terrorism.\nCivil liberties groups and Padilla’s lawyers called his detention unconstitutional for someone born in this country.\nJurors in the criminal case never heard Padilla’s full history, which according to U.S. officials included a graduation from the al-Qaida terror camp, a plot to detonate the “dirty bomb” and a plot to fill apartments with natural gas and blow them up. Much of what Padilla supposedly told interrogators during his long detention as an enemy combatant could not be used in court because he had no access to a lawyer and was not read his constitutional rights.\nAttorneys for Hassoun and Jayyousi argued that any assistance they provided overseas was for peaceful purposes and to help persecuted Muslims in violent countries. But FBI agents testified that their charitable work was a cover for violent jihad, which they frequently discussed in code using words such as “tourism” and “football.”
(01/18/08 3:39am)
WASHINGTON – President Bush and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke on Thursday embraced calls for an economic stimulus package to avert recession. Bernanke said such a plan should be aimed at quickly getting cash into the hands of people, especially those with low and moderate incomes.\nThe Fed chief, in testimony to the House Budget Committee, said efforts that involve “putting money into the hands of households and firms that would spend it in the near term” would be more effective than other provisions, such as making Bush’s tax cut permanent. “Again, I’m not taking a view one way or the other on the desirability of those long-term tax cuts being made permanent,” he said.\nWhile shying away from endorsing a specific plan, Bernanke made clear his support for the general concept of an economic rescue package and that it be temporary that it won’t complicate longer-term fiscal challenges. It is likely that any such package would include tax rebates.\n“Fiscal action could be helpful in principle” and may provide “broader support for the economy” than the Fed can furnish alone through reductions in interest rates, Bernanke said. However, “the design and implementation of the fiscal program are critically important,” he said.\nBernanke forecast slower growth in 2008 but not a recession.\nWhen asked by lawmakers about the potential effect of a fiscal stimulus package totaling around $100 billion, Bernanke said the economic impact could be “significant” and not “window dressing.” Some have floated packages that would range in size from $50 billion to $150 billion – all of which are in the range of “reasonable,” Bernanke said.\nRebates can be useful, he added.\n“Getting money to low- and moderate-income people is good in the sense of getting a bang for the buck” because they tend to spend it quickly, Bernanke said. Research shows that the affluent spend some of their rebates, he said.\nTemporary expensing and depreciation provisions for businesses also could spur spending, which would help the economy, he said. As it puts together a package, Bernanke added, “Congress might want to consider a diversified mix of elements.”\nBut he warned: “I hope Congress can resist having a huge list of things” that would lard up legislation and might not do much to help bolser the economy in the short run.\nAt the White House, spokesman Tony Fratto said, “The president does believe that over the short term, that to deal with this softening in the economy, that some boost is necessary.” That marked the first White House confirmation that Bush, confronting a deepening economic crisis that has shaken much of the nation, supports government intervention. Until now, the White House said the president was just considering some type of short-term boost.\n“We do want to try to pass something quickly,” Fratto said later in the day. “I see no obstacle to that. It seems to me that both sides of the aisle in both houses of Congress want to try to get to an agreement,” he said.\nFratto would not divulge the details or what the stimulus would look like, other than to say all options are being considered.\nThe shaping of a stimulus package was expected to accelerate Thursday during a conference call between Bush and congressional leaders. “I would characterize it as a consultation,” Fratto said.\nFratto declined to say when the president could announce a package, or whether it would be before or after the State of the Union address later this month.\nThe fragile state of the economy has gripped Wall Street and Main Street and is a rising concern among voters. The situation has galvanized politicians – \nincluding those vying to be the next president – and poses the biggest test to Bernanke, who took over the Fed nearly two years ago.
(01/18/08 3:38am)
NEW YORK – Scientists in California say they have produced embryos that are clones of two men, a potential step toward developing scientifically valuable stem cells.\nThe new report documents embryos made with ordinary skin cells. But it’s not the first time human cloned embryos have been made. In 2005, for example, scientists in Britain reported using embryonic stem cells to produce a cloned embryo. It matured enough to produce stem cells, but none were extracted.\nStem cells weren’t produced by the new embryos either, and because of that, experts reacted coolly to the research.\n“I found it difficult to determine what was substantially new,” said Doug Melton of the Harvard Stem Cell Institute. He said the “next big advance will be to create a human embryonic stem cell line” from cloned embryos. “This has yet to be achieved.”\nDr. George Daley of the Harvard institute and Children’s Hospital of Boston called the new report interesting but agreed that “the real splash” will be when somebody creates stem cell lines from cloned human embryos.\n“It’s only a matter of time before some group succeeds,” Daley said.\nKorean scientist Hwang Woo-suk claimed a few years ago that he’d created such cell lines, but that turned out to be a fraud.\nDr. Samuel Wood, a co-author of the new paper and chief executive of Stemagen Corp. of La Jolla, Calif., said he and his colleagues are attempting to produce stem cell lines from the embryos.\nThe work was published online Thursday by the journal Stem Cells.\nScientists say stem cells from cloned embryos could provide a valuable tool for studying diseases, screening drugs and, perhaps someday, creating transplant material to treat conditions like diabetes and Parkinson’s disease.\nBut critics raise objections. The process “involves creating human lives in the laboratory solely to destroy them for alleged benefit to others,” said Richard Doerflinger, spokesman for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.\nCiting the earlier work in Britain, he also said that as a scientific advancement, the new work was “very limited.”\nOther objections to cloning include concerns about health risks and exploitation if large numbers of women are asked to provide eggs.\nThose objections are one reason that an alternative route to stem cells made headlines last November. Scientists reported a relatively simple way to turn skin cells directly into stem cells. This direct reprogramming carries a theoretical risk of cancer for the recipients of tissue from these cells, however, and many scientists have urged that work continue on the cloning technique as well.\nThe cloning approach involves inserting DNA from a person into an egg, and then growing the egg into an embryo about five days old before extracting the stem cells. At that stage, the embryo is a sphere of about 150 cells.\nIn the new work, researchers took skin cells from Wood and another volunteer and produced three embryos with DNA matching the men’s. Further DNA testing on one of these embryos strengthened the case that it was a clone, researchers said.
(01/18/08 3:26am)
Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Thursday that sending Marines to Afghanistan will keep pressure on the Taliban and doesn’t “reflect dissatisfaction” with NATO countries’ performance. He was trying to smooth over comments a day earlier that sparked an international furor. The Los Angeles Times reported Wednesday that Gates said U.S. forces in eastern Afghanistan are doing a terrific job but that he is concerned that NATO allies are not well-trained in counterinsurgency operations.
(01/16/08 4:20am)
WASHINGTON – Supporters of a third-party presidential bid by New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg launched a 50-state petition drive Tuesday, seeking to “draft” the billionaire who is edging closer to entering the race while continuing to deny he is a candidate.\nThe petition effort was announced by two veteran political hands who say the current system in Washington is broken and needs a nonpartisan, pragmatic leader like Bloomberg.\nGerald Rafshoon, a former spokesman for President Jimmy Carter, and Doug Bailey, a longtime Republican consultant, are not the first to launch an online petition drive for the mayor, but their move comes at the height of primary campaign season. The two filed papers with the Federal Election Commission and the Internal Revenue Service to start the draft Bloomberg effort.\n“He’d be a very unique candidate for a very unique time,” said Rafshoon.\nBloomberg, a 65-year-old Democrat-turned-Republican-turned-independent continues to maintain that he is not a candidate, but has quietly been polling and conducting a sophisticated voter analysis in every state as he decides whether to launch a presidential bid.\nIn New York, the mayor demurred Tuesday when asked about the new appeal.\n“It’s very flattering, but I am not a candidate for president of the United States. I’ve got a job, which I think is a phenomenal job,” he said.\nBloomberg’s supporters say part of his appeal is that he would not take campaign donations, and instead self-fund the bid by drawing on the billions he made building a media empire.\nThe nascent pro-Bloomberg group said it’s enthusiastic about the mayor not because of any position he has taken, but because of his resume as a CEO and elected official - particularly as the country moves closer toward a possible recession.\n“It’s the economy stupid, and I would put my chips on Michael Bloomberg with his experience and his ideas,” said Rashoon.\nIn a year where most voters say they are fed up with Washington and worried about the economic future, the 2008 election campaign has seen candidates of both parties sell themselves as the most likely to make significant changes as president.\nBloomberg, his backers argue, is the most likely to deliver on such promises.\nBailey, who founded a political consulting firm in 1968, said the mayor has too much money to be beholden to special interests.\nAsked why a billionaire politician would need help from a petition drive, Bailey said: “I’m not sure it is necessary. I hope it is helpful in convincing him.”
(01/16/08 4:19am)
BAGHDAD – Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Tuesday that Iraq’s national reconciliation has moved along “quite remarkably,” citing a new law that lets thousands of former members of Saddam Hussein’s Baath party reclaim government jobs or pensions.\nRice, who split off from President Bush’s Mideast tour for a visit to Baghdad, said the Iraqi parliament’s approval Saturday of the U.S.-sought benchmark law was a first step and showed that last year’s “surge” of American forces was paying dividends.\n“It is clearly a step forward for national reconciliation - a step forward for healing the wounds of the past, and it will have to be followed up by implementation that is in the same spirit of national reconciliation,” she said during a news conference with Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari.\nIraqi officials said Rice warned Iraqi leaders they should not pass up a “golden opportunity” during Bush’s last year in office to intensify their efforts for national reconciliation. Speaking on condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to share the information with the media, they said Rice also told them that the formation of a “national unity” government should be a top priority for Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.\nAl-Maliki’s government, dominated by Shiite Muslims, has promoted a Shiite agenda and has been slow to include Sunnis in the police and other national groups as they have formed groups to fight al-Qaida in Iraq.\nMeanwhile, in an interview published Tuesday by The New York Times, Iraq’s defense minister said the country would not be able to assume full responsibility for internal security until 2012 and would be unable to defend its borders until at least 2018.\n“In regard to the borders, regarding protection from any external threats, our calculation appears that we are not going to be able to answer to any external threats until 2018 to 2020,” the minister, Abdul-Qader Mohammed Jasim al-Obeidi, was quoted as saying.\nRice left Riyadh, the Saudi capital, to personally convey Bush’s encouragement about signs of progress in Baghdad.\nAlthough national reconciliation “has not always moved as fast as some of us sitting in Washington would like, it has certainly moved and, given the legacy, history and stains of tyranny, it has been quite remarkable,” she said.\nBush said Rice could “help push the momentum by her very presence” and that he himself would not go to Iraq while traveling in the region. There had been widespread speculation he would make a visit.\nRice met with al-Maliki, President Jalal Talabani and his two vice presidents, Adel Abdul-Mahdi and Tariq al-Hashemi, as well as Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim, leader of Iraq’s largest Shiite party and Massoud Barzani, president of the self-rule Kurdish region in northern Iraq.\nThe de-Baathification law is one of 18 steps that the United States considers benchmarks to promoting reconciliation among the country’s Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds.\nA senior aide to al-Maliki said Rice also encouraged the prime minister to promote the progress of the other benchmark legislation, including provincial elections, constitutional amendments and a law to share the country’s oil and gas resources among the different sects.
(01/16/08 4:15am)
Pakistan’s government urged opposition leaders Tuesday to refrain from holding rallies ahead of next month’s elections, citing an escalating terrorist threat. The party of opposition leader Nawaz Sharif quickly rejected the recommendation, accusing officials of trying block its campaign against President Pervez Musharraf. The political squabble comes in the aftermath of the Dec. 27 assassination of Benazir Bhutto,.
(01/15/08 3:23am)
Iraqi Arab lawmakers from rival sects joined forces Sunday to criticize what they claim is overreaching by the Kurds, alleging the powerful U.S.-backed minority’s go-it-alone style in oil and other major issues threatens national unity. The 145 Shiite, Sunni and other legislators signaled their opposition to Kurdish ambitions in the disputed northern city of Kirkuk and in negotiating deals with foreign oil companies without involving the central government.
(01/15/08 3:21am)
Republican Bobby Jindal, the nation’s first Indian-American governor, was sworn in Monday in Louisiana and moved quickly to make good on a campaign promise to clean up the corrupt image of this hurricane-battered state.\n“We have the opportunity - born of tragedy but embraced still the same - to make right decades of failure in government,” Jindal said in his inaugural speech, referring to hurricanes Katrina and Rita of 2005.\nJindal, a former congressman, became Louisiana’s first nonwhite governor since Reconstruction. He took the oath from the state Supreme Court’s chief justice, Pascal Calogero. Jindal’s wife Supriya held the Bible.\nHe said he will call a special legislative session Feb. 10 to address the state’s image as a haven for cronyism and self-serving politicians. In his speech, he made numerous references to a “new Louisiana” and a “new beginning” for the state.\n“We can build a Louisiana where our leaders and our people set the highest standards and hold every member of our government accountable, a Louisiana where incompetence is not a synonym for government, a Louisiana where corruption does not hold us back,” he said without providing specifics.\nJindal, 36, a conservative Republican, won more than 50 percent of the vote in October’s primary election. He takes over from Democrat Kathleen Blanco, who had defeated him four years earlier. Blanco chose not to run after heavy criticism of her performance after Katrina.\nWhile Jindal has focused on fixing the state’s shady reputation and overhauling ethics laws, he inherits an array of problems that have dogged his predecessors. Louisiana is among the nation’s most unhealthy and poorest states, its students still perform below average on national educational tests and its population is dwindling.\nWorsening the state’s long-term history of problems, back-to-back blows from hurricanes Katrina and Rita devastated much of south Louisiana and left New Orleans struggling to recover. The pace of hurricane rebuilding has been sluggish, with thousands of homes left abandoned, thousands of residents displaced and basic government services destroyed.\nThe boyish-looking Jindal will be the youngest U.S. governor in office, but he’s used to being among the youngest people in the room in his previous posts.\nBy the time he first ran for governor at age 32, Jindal already had served as Louisiana’s health care secretary, president of one of its university systems and an assistant secretary in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services under President Bush. Republican former Gov. Mike Foster tapped Jindal to be the state’s health secretary in 1996, when Jindal was only 24.\nEarlier Monday, newly elected legislators unanimously backed two of Jindal’s choices for leadership posts. Republican state Rep. Jim Tucker was elected speaker of the House, while Democratic state Sen. Joel Chaisson was elected president of the Senate. Both were elected without opposition.\nOn Sunday, Jindal attended a prayer service where churchmen from around the state read scripture and offered support. Jindal, a Roman Catholic who converted from Hinduism as a teenager, sat in a front pew next to wife and other family members at St. Joseph Cathedral in downtown Baton Rouge.
(01/11/08 2:18am)
NEW DELHI – For millions of people in the developing world, Tata Motor’s new $2,500 four-door subcompact – the world’s cheapest car – may yield a transportation revolution that has as great an impact as Henry Ford’s Model T, which rolled off an assembly line one century ago.\nThe potential impact of Tata’s Nano has given environmentalists nightmares, with visions of the tiny cars clogging India’s already-choked roads and collectively spewing millions of tons of carbon dioxide into the air.\nIndustry analysts, however, say the car may soon deliver to India and the rest of the developing world unprecedented mobility.\n“It is a potentially gigantic development if it delivers what has been promised,” said John Casesa, managing partner for the Casesa Shapiro Group, a New York-based auto industry financial advisory firm.\n“I think there is immense unmet demand for a vehicle of this type because it effectively eliminates the great leap currently required to go from a two-wheel to a four-wheel vehicle,” Casesa said. “They are creating something that has never existed before, the utility of a car with the affordability of a motorcycle.”\nThe basic model, expected to roll of assembly lines later this year, will sell for 100,000 rupees, or about $2,500, but analysts estimate customers could pay 20 percent to 30 percent more to cover taxes, delivery and other charges.\nCompany chairman Ratan Tata, who introduced the new car at India’s main auto show, has long promised a $2,500 “People’s Car” for India – a country of some 1.1 billion where only seven of every 1,000 people own a car. That vow has been much-derided by the global industry, which said it would be impossible without sacrificing safety and quality.\n“A promise is a promise,” Tata told the crowd after driving onstage stage in a white, luxury edition Nano, his head nearly touching the roof. Four company executives emerged from another. Tata says the Nano can sit five.\nThe company will not say how the price was kept so low on the basic version and won’t say how much the luxury Nano will cost until it hits showrooms toward the end of this year. The company also refused to let reporters sit in the car, let alone drive it.\nBut the basic version is austere: There’s no radio, passenger-side mirror, central locking or power steering and only one windshield wiper. Air conditioning that would spare motorists the brutal Indian summer is available only in deluxe models.\nThe Nano’s appeal, though, is not its pedigree but its price – targeting people moving up from the lower ends of India’s transportation spectrum, where two-wheeled scooters selling for as little as $900 are often crammed with entire families.\nIn terms of performance, it doesn’t offer much more than the Model T. The Nano has a two-cylinder 0.6 liter gasoline engine with 33 horsepower, giving it a top speed of about 60 mph, according to Tata. It gets 50 miles per gallon.\nAnalysts believe the Nano could transform the auto industry, forcing manufacturers to lower prices, and perhaps find cheaper ways to sell cars than in sprawling showrooms. French auto maker Renault SA and its Japanese partner, Nissan Motor Co., are trying to find ways to sell a compact car for less than $3,000.\n“Most of the other carmakers are watching this development very closely,” said S. Ramnath, an auto analyst at Mumbai-based brokerage firm SSK Securities Ltd.\nFor now, the car will be sold only in India, but Tata said it hopes to export it to developing nations across Asia, Latin America and Africa in two or three years.\nTata initially plans to manufacture some 250,000 Nanos per year. That would be about a quarter of all cars sold in India last year.