News Special

The president’s comments, made with new Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner at his side, came in swift response to a report that employees of the New York financial world garnered an estimated $18.4 billion in bonuses last year. The figure, from the New York state comptroller, drew prominent news coverage.

Yet Obama’s stand also came just one day after he surrounded himself with well-paid chief executives at the White House. He had pulled in those business leaders and hailed them for being on the “front lines in seeing the enormous problems in our economy right now.”

“The results of the two recent elections are real, and so are the obstacles we face as a party,” Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., told the Republican National Committee on Thursday. “My concern is that unless we do something to adapt, our status as a minority party may become too pronounced for an easy recovery.”

“The situation is challenging, but it’s far from irreversible,” McConnell added, a dash of optimism in an otherwise stark assessment of where the Republican Party went wrong as he provided a road map for how it can right itself.

A new training and prevention effort will start next week. And Col. Elspeth Ritchie, a psychiatric consultant to the Army surgeon general, made a plea for more U.S. mental health professionals to sign on to work for the military.

…

The new suicide figure compares with 115 in 2007 and 102 in 2006 and is the highest since record keeping began in 1980. Officials calculate the deaths at a rate of roughly 20.2 per 100,000 soldiers – which is higher than the adjusted civilian rate for the first time since the Vietnam War, officials told a Pentagon news conference.

The bogus offer – signed by “Thrift Savings Plan Account Coordinator” – was sent two weeks ago and directed employees to a Web site and asked them to plug in account information by Jan. 31.

…

On Wednesday, a memo was circulated by Ted Shelkey, assistant director for information systems security, explaining that the savings plan e-mail was a hoax.

The brain chemical serotonin has been linked to mood in people. It plays a role in sexual desire, appetite, sleep, memory and learning, too.

Under certain conditions, locusts triple the amount of serotonin in their systems, changing the insects from loners to pack animals, Burrows and his co-authors report in Friday’s edition of the journal Science.

But Blackwater founder Erik Prince told The Associated Press that while losing the State Department contract would hurt the company, the move would cause more harm to the diplomats it has protected since soon after the U.S.-led invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein.

“Our abrupt departure would far more hurt the reconstruction team and the diplomats trying to rebuild the country than it would hurt us as a business,” Prince said Thursday in an exclusive interview with the AP.

News that unemployment claims reached a record high and that new home sales hit a record low forced the major stock indexes to give back all of Wednesday’s gains, and then some. The Dow Jones industrial average sank 226 points, or 2.7 percent, while other indicators tumbled more than 3 percent.

Volatility still has a grip on the Street. While stocks had soared Wednesday on hopes that the government will take bad debt off banks’ books, investors retreated in response to some harsh reminders that it might be a while before the nation’s 14-month-old recession ends, even if banks get more aid.

The packed audience, which included President Barack Obama’s close adviser Valerie Jarrett, appeared stunned as Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Israeli President Shimon Peres raised their voices and traded accusations.

Peres was passionate in his defense of Israel’s three-week offensive against Hamas militants, launched in reaction to eight years of rocket fire aimed at Israeli territory. As he spoke, Peres often turned toward Erdogan, who in his remarks had criticized the Israeli blockade of Gaza, saying it was an “open air prison, isolated from the rest of the world” and referred to the Palestinian death toll of about 1,300, more than half of those civilians. Thirteen Israelis also died.

The Labor Department reported that the number of Americans continuing to claim unemployment insurance for the week ending Jan. 17 was a seasonally adjusted 4.78 million, the highest since records started in 1967. That’s an increase of 159,000 from the previous week and worse than economists’ expectations of 4.65 million.

As a proportion of the work force, the tally of unemployment benefit recipients is the highest since August 1983, a department analyst said.

The second-largest U.S.-based automaker on Thursday reported a $14.6 billion net loss for 2008, beating its old record of $12.6 billion set two years earlier. Ford lost $5.9 billion in the fourth quarter, but more importantly it spent $5.5 billion more than it took in, dropping its cash reserves to $13.4 billion at year’s end.

The company, like other automakers, predicted a slow start to the year with a small recovery in the second half aided by government stimulus packages. But Ford is behaving like it’s expecting things to get worse. The company told lenders Thursday that it wants to borrow the remaining $10.1 billion of its secured credit line. The money is to arrive Tuesday, but Ford executives said they don’t plan to use it for operating expenses.

Now it’s inspired a work of art.

A sofa-sized sculpture – a single copper-coated shoe on a stand carved to resemble flowing cloth – was formally unveiled to the public Thursday in the hometown of the late Iraqi ruler Saddam Hussein.

The site, Measurement Lab, addresses a need among academics who want to gather data on how Internet connections work in practice. While the workings of the core Internet “highways” are well known and standardized, it’s difficult to find out what happens on the network of an Internet service provider, between the “highway” and the customer’s home.

Internet service providers say they increasingly find it necessary to act as traffic cops on this stretch of the Internet to make sure that heavy users don’t slow down their neighbors’ connections. But the traffic management systems can have unintended consequences, and ISPs have been secretive about their workings for fear that subscribers will circumvent them. The Federal Communications Commission sanctioned Comcast Corp. last year for secretly stifling one particular form of traffic without telling subscribers.

Charles Diebel, whose labs conducted tests for Peanut Corp. of America, said that if 100 containers were tested and only one or two turned up salmonella, the company should “throw the whole lot out.”

Federal health officials say Peanut Corp. shipped tainted peanut products from its Blakely, Ga., facility after retesting them and getting a negative result for salmonella.

The source, who spoke anonymously because the plan is still being finalized, said the options are likely to include a “bad bank” that could soak up mortgage securities and other distressed investments weighing down banks’ balance sheets and holding back new lending.

The plan would also include government insurance on a select portfolio of banks’ troubled assets to help shield banks from future losses.

The surprise ruling could force the Pentagon to withdraw the charges, though they could be refiled later if the Obama administration decides to keep the special tribunals at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Hours after taking office last week, Obama ordered Guantanamo prosecutors to seek 120-day delays in all pending cases to give his administration time to decide whether to scrap the widely criticized tribunals created by the Bush administration to try suspected terrorists outside the regular U.S. court system.

The Army said it did not agree with the conclusion by the Pentagon’s inspector general and has asked Deputy Secretary of Defense Gordon England to adjudicate.

But it said it would replace the armor currently used in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere in the world, until the dispute was resolved. It said the sets to be replaced represented 1.6 percent of its total body armor inventory.

“We have busted a gang of nine high-profile terrorists, who were involved in several high-profile attacks in recent times,” said Rao Iqbal, police chief in Rawalpindi — the garrison city close to the Pakistani capital, Islamabad.

A senior police investigator told AFP the nine were linked to Al-Qaeda and Taliban insurgents in Pakistan’s lawless tribal areas, which US officials say have become a safe haven for hundreds of extremists fleeing Afghanistan.

Those decisions will have a profound impact on the future of Iraq and the fragile state of security here. While freeing many of the 15,100 detainees who remain in US custody is key to national reconciliation, it could also feed an insurgency that has largely been defeated.

What’s more, while Iraqi courts have made great strides, some international observers question whether the system that is notorious for torturing prisoners is ready for a massive influx of detainees.

About 8,000 plaintiffs are lined up to sue Big Tobacco in the Florida court system, a conveyor belt of cases that is likely to clog the calendars of state and federal judges for months, if not years, to come.

This wave of lawsuits from smokers, or their estates, stems from a 2006 ruling in the Florida Supreme Court that broke up a class action suit of more than 700,000 plaintiffs and quashed a $145 billion award against the tobacco industry, the biggest penalty in US civil court history.

At a time of economic slump, and with an oddball matchup on the gridiron, that municipal appeal has suddenly taken on unintended meaning for residents like Leonard Johnson, hawking T-shirts to the empty streets of Tampa’s Ybor City neighborhood Tuesday night. “I’m nervous,” he said. “This place should have been a party by now, and it’s not.”

Coming only a few months after Tampa hosted the worst-rated World Series of all time, the lead-up to the Super Bowl has been noticeably subdued. That’s testing not only the game faces of the area’s boosters, but also a National Football League that, some critics say, has sacrificed fan passion for a 15-year effort to achieve competitive parity among the teams.

Amid the profound pain of the financial meltdown enveloping the globe, this week’s World Economic Forum might have been expected to feature apologies – even a massive mea culpa from the movers and shakers of the financial community that created the crisis.

There have been plenty of excuses, recriminations, hand-wringing and analysis. But scant few have owned up to the pervasive effects of bad business decisions that cost hundreds of thousands of jobs and brought the world economy to its knees.

“There’s a tremendous arrogance about the whole process,” Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz told The Associated Press. The top bankers “think that it just happened, that it was nobody’s fault. But they should feel sorry.”

NATO commanders and lawmakers meeting in Iceland’s capital said the Arctic thaw is bringing the prospect of new standoffs between powerful nations.

“I would be the last one to expect military conflict – but there will be a military presence,” NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer told reporters. “It should be a military presence that is not overdone, and there is a need for political cooperation and economic cooperation.”

The level of violence around Iraq is significantly lower than in past years, but Saturday’s election is seen as an important test of Iraqi self-reliance and competence as the U.S. military turns over more authorities to local forces.

Blanket security measures were scheduled to take effect beginning Friday, including closing Iraq’s international borders, ordering traffic bans across Baghdad and major cities and halting air traffic. Hundreds of women, including teachers and civic workers, have been recruited to help search women voters after a rise in female suicide bombers last year.

He’s already taken over the Saidat clan’s 250-strong militia force. His father, an influential sheik, has schooled him in the nuances of local politics in their district south of Baghdad.

But when it comes to Iraq’s central government, he complains about feeling helpless and bullied.

Zimbabwe has the world’s highest official inflation, with its currency now printed in the trillions of dollars. This month, the central bank introduced a new 100 trillion Zimbabwe dollar note.

The announcement by acting Finance Minister Patrick Chinamasa acknowledged the black market practices that have been a reality for months because of Zimbabwe’s economic meltdown.

More than 1 million protesters took part, with tens of thousands of youths, retirees and unemployed people marching across towns and cities, police said.

The powerful CGT – one of eight unions that called the one-day “black Thursday” strike – claimed that 2.5 million people took part.

But Britons’ collective passion for beer, ale and hard cider wasn’t enough to save the centuries-old Mortlake Brewery. The brewery is scheduled to close next year, putting roughly 300 workers out of work and depriving London of the last major brewer set on the banks of the River Thames.

The demise of Mortlake follows the recent closure of several other breweries in Britain. The breweries are victims of changing times: Beer sales are falling nationwide, and pubs, like breweries, are closing across the country.

The inspection deal with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is a precondition of a United States-led agreement allowing nuclear nations to supply India with nuclear material and technology for its domestic power sector.

“We have set some time aside for this on Monday,” Saurabh Kumar, India’s ambassador to the Vienna-based IAEA said on Thursday, referring to the signing of the pact.

There are 14 candidates running in the election, which is being held in neighboring Djibouti because the lack security at home has scuppered hopes parliament could assemble there.

The president will be chosen by a new, expanded assembly which includes moderate Islamist opponents sworn in this week at a U.N.-brokered peace process in Djibouti.

President Hamid Karzai has strongly hinted he will run for re-election saying he still has “a job to complete,” but his popularity has waned both among Afghans and his Western backers due to rampant corruption and weak government outside Kabul.

President Barack Obama has ordered a comprehensive review of U.S. strategy in Afghanistan, which a White House official said would have a “significant non-military component,” a reference to a likely increase in development aid.

“The five representatives of the chief rabbinate who were due to meet five Vatican representatives in Rome in March will not be able to participate in this meeting in the current state of affairs,” the rabbinate’s director general Oded Wiener told AFP.

“The dialogue that we began in 2000 following the visit of former Pope John Paul II cannot continue as if nothing has happened after such a decision, announced nearly on the day that the international community commemorates the Holocaust,” he said.

Although the blood is gone and so are the bodies, residents of Baqouba still look away when they pass the square where al Qaida in Iraq killed hundreds of people.

Diyala was once the bloodiest of the 14 provinces where Iraqis will vote Saturday for new provincial councils. Shiite Muslim Arabs, Sunni Muslim Arabs and Kurds rub against each other, and their battles transformed Baqouba from the city of oranges to the city of death. Just last week, a family of nine was slaughtered in their home, and two other people were taken. They’re still missing.

Badriya Waleh Habab , 62, lives in a low-slung home, barren except for a carpet on the concrete floor and two wooden benches. The Shiite Muslim woman is alone. Her first son was killed in the eight-year war with Iran in the 1980s. Her husband died four years ago, and masked gunmen from al Qaida in Iraq dragged her last son, Mohammed, from her home in 2006 as he was eating dinner.

She kissed the gunmen’s feet and begged them to leave her only son. They took him away anyway, and now she has no one left.

“We have been informed that Blackwater’s private-security company operating license will not be granted,” a U.S. Embassy official in Baghdad said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because the official wasn’t authorized to talk on the record. “We don’t have specifics about dates. We are working with the government of Iraq and our contractors to address the implications of this decision.”

A new U.S.- Iraq security agreement that took effect Jan. 1 lifts immunity from prosecution for contractors, including Blackwater .

On the streets and in shelters, volunteers conducting the count in the wintry dead of night have found an untold numbers of hard-luck stories from those homeless for the first time, working poor victimized by the foreclosure and unemployment crises.

“I call it the double trouble,” said Philip F. Mangano, executive director of the United States Interagency Council on Homelessness. “You would have to be naive to believe that the loss of over 850,000 homes and over two million jobs wouldn’t have an impact.”

Supporters of the Proposition 8 initiative, which overturned a state Supreme Court ruling that allowed gay marriage, had sought a preliminary injunction to remove the identities of those who contributed to their campaign from the secretary of state’s Web site. The initiative was approved by voters in November.

They also had asked U.S. District Judge Morrison England Jr. to block the Monday release of the names of donors who either gave money two weeks before the election or shortly afterward. Those names will be publicly released in postelection campaign finance reports.

The legal loophole surfaced this week when federal investigators disclosed internal Peanut Corp. of America reports that documented at least 12 positive tests for salmonella between 2007 and 2008 at their Blakely, Ga., plant, which has been identified as the source of the nationwide outbreak. In each case, the plant did not alert state or federal regulators.

The flaw has infuriated regulators and food safety experts, who are pushing legislation that would require the alerts at the first sign of contamination. They say stricter requirements could have stemmed an outbreak, which may have started months ago and has sickened at least 500 people and may have led to eight deaths.

But at the Super Bowl, it’s perfectly OK: Go ahead and grab Larry Fitzgerald or Troy Polamalu by their long hair, then yank ’em down.

“It’s legal. It is a body part, like someone’s arm or leg,” NFL head of officials Mike Pereira said.

Mahony told KNX radio that he would gladly testify before a grand jury, but that he believed investigators were looking into issues that have been thoroughly dealt with.

“Well, basically we were mystified and puzzled by the whole thing,” Mahony said. “We have been through these investigations for years now.”

The probe is being conducted by the U.S. Attorney’s office in Los Angeles through a federal grand jury, according to the Los Angeles Times and Wall Street Journal. If Mahony were charged he would be one of the highest-ranking Catholic church officials to face prosecution in U.S. clergy sex scandals.

A spokesman for the Attorney’s office, Thom Mrozek, declined to comment on the reports.

Agape World Inc chief executive officer Nicholas Cosmo, 37, was arrested on Monday night and charged with wire fraud, one of a rash of Ponzi schemes investigators across the United States say they have uncovered in the wake of the market meltdown.

Authorities on New York’s Long Island accused Cosmo of using investor money for personal expenses such as jewelry, limousine rides and hotel stays, and to pay more than $212,000 in court-ordered restitution to investors following a prior fraud conviction.

The New York Times reported on Thursday that JPMorgan Chase & Co suddenly began pulling its money out of two hedge funds that invested with Madoff last fall before Madoff was arrested, but did not tell investors.

According to the newspaper, JP Morgan said its potential losses related to Madoff are “pretty close to zero.”

Some 81 percent of patients in the early phase study showed signs of improvement with the treatment, which used chemotherapy to destroy the immune system, and injections of the patient’s bone marrow cells taken beforehand to rebuild it.

“We just start over with new cells from the stem cells,” said Dr. Richard Burt of Northwestern University in Chicago, whose study appears in the journal Lancet Neurology.

They’re the once-pampered — now highly disgruntled — women partners of U.S. bankers and they’re speaking out about how the financial meltdown has changed their lives and their relationships.

Dating A Banker Anonymous (http://dabagirls.wordpress.com), a blog started by two New Yorkers, has made waves on the blogosphere this week with its tales of woe.

When the Super Bowl between the Pittsburgh Steelers and Arizona Cardinals kicks off on Sunday, the league will tackle the problems of boosting its appeal to Hispanic sports fans.

Of all the major North American sports leagues, “football is probably going to be the toughest sell for the Hispanic market,” said Richard Ettenson, marketing professor at the Thunderbird School of Global Management in Glendale, Arizona.

But now, with unemployment on the rise all around him, such as the 8,000 new cuts announced this week by Overland Park, Kansas, based Sprint Nextel, competition for ever fewer jobs is growing — and desperation is setting in.

“Anybody who is looking for a job now is feeling an economic tsunami,” said 48-year-old Wilson, who says he has exhausted his family’s savings and now spends most days searching for jobs at an area employment-assistance center. “It feels like all of a sudden, it has just fallen apart.”

The Museum of Modern Art and Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation will battle the scholar, Julius Schoeps, in court for the ownership rights to the paintings, “Boy Leading A Horse” and “Le Moulin de la Galette.” The trial is due to begin on Monday in Manhattan federal court.

In December 2007, the two museums sued Schoeps, who says he is the heir of wealthy German Jewish art collector and banker Paul Robert Ernst von Mendelssohn-Bartholdy. Schoeps contends the banker, his great uncle, was forced to pass on the paintings under duress in Nazi Germany.

The SEC said Nashville, Tennessee-based Gordon Grigg and his firm ProTrust Management defrauded clients out of at least $6.5 million by telling them their money was invested in the federal TARP financial bailout program and other securities that do not exist.

The agency filed in federal court for disgorgement of ill- gotten profits and financial penalties against Grigg and his firm. A U.S. district judge has issued an order freezing the defendants’ assets.

Unions representing state workers had gone to court to try to block the move, saying Schwarzenegger had exceeded his authority and that only state legislators could approve the cuts to the working week.

But Judge Patrick Marlette said the state’s fiscal emergency justified the governor’s executive order, which translates into a pay cut of around nine to 10 percent for affected workers.

The latest is Long Island financier Nicholas Cosmo, arrested Monday and told by a court Thursday that he must remain in detention while lawyers and prosecutors negotiate bail terms.

Cosmo’s alleged 370 million dollar pyramid, or Ponzi fraud, would be peanuts compared to Madoff’s alleged 50 billion dollar scam.

Rice, who was national security advisor to President George W. Bush in 2001-2005 and then secretary of state during Bush’s second term, will return to the campus’s Hoover Institution in the next few months.

She started teaching political science at the university in 1981, but said this week that she might not return to teaching right away — instead focusing at first on writing books, doing lectures and pursuing business activities.

The Screen Actors Guild (SAG) and Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) issued a terse joint statement saying representatives of the two bodies would meet for two days from Tuesday.

“We will have no further comment about the meeting,” the statement said.