News Special

The Dow broke through a bottom reached in November, pulled down by a steep drop in key financial shares. It was the lowest close for the Dow since Oct. 9, 2002, when the last bear market bottomed out.

The blue chips’ latest slide dashed hopes that the doldrums of November would mark the ending point of a long slump in the market, which is now nearly halfway below the peak levels reached in October 2007.

The Labor Department reported Thursday that the number of people receiving regular unemployment benefits rose by 170,000 to 4.99 million for the week ending Feb. 7, marking the fourth straight week continuing claims have hit a record.

The surge in joblessness has pushed those claims far above the 2.77 million people getting benefits a year ago. The number totals 6.54 million with the inclusion of an additional 1.5 million people who are getting extended benefits under a program passed by Congress last summer.

Nearly half of those surveyed said they worry about becoming unemployed – almost double the percentage at this time last year.

The poll released Wednesday also found public support dipped slightly in the past month for the $787 billion package of tax cuts and government spending President Barack Obama signed into law this week on the promise that it will save or create 3.5 million jobs and re-ignite the economy.

President Barack Obama and congressional Democrats also promise rigorous oversight, including a new Web site to help people track various projects funded by the massive bill. But the two parties will reap different political rewards if they find waste or abuse, which is virtually inevitable when the government tries to spend so much money so fast, authorities say.

Democrats want the plan to unfold as smoothly as possible, because voters see it as the product of their party and Obama. Congressional Republicans, however, opposed the bill almost unanimously, and any embarrassing examples of misused funds or other shortcomings will let them say, “I told you so.”

The assessment finds that the U.S. continues to face persistent terrorist threats, and the military is still stretched and strained from long and repeated tours to the warfront.

Senior military officials spoke about the report on condition of anonymity because it is a classified document.

“Outbreaks are dramatic instances,” says Dr. Robert Tauxe, a CDC expert on the subject. But they highlight a health threat that many people exaggerate and misunderstand, according to some experts.

Scientists have counted more than 250 food-related types of illness – from viruses to bacteria to parasites. Most common are Norwalk-like viruses – famous for sickening cruise-ship passengers. They account for about two-thirds of known food-poisoning cases, according to the CDC.

A state lawmaker is proposing to allow ordinary Texans with rifles and shotguns to shoot the voracious, tusked animals from helicopters.

For years, ranchers in the Lone Star State have hired professional hunters in choppers to thin the hogs’ fast-multiplying ranks. Now state Rep. Sid Miller of the Fort Worth area wants to bring more firepower to the task by issuing permits to sportsmen.

It was Muntadhar al-Zeidi’s first public appearance since he was arrested in mid-December for hurling shoes at Bush during a joint news conference with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. The act turned the obscure 30-year-old reporter into a cult hero throughout much of the Middle East.

“What made me do it was the humiliation Iraq has been subjected to due to the U.S. occupation and the murder of innocent people,” al-Zeidi told the court. “I wanted to restore the pride of the Iraqis in any way possible, apart from using weapons.”

Those are just two of the nearly 2,500 languages that UNESCO, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, says are in danger of becoming extinct or have recently disappeared. That’s out of a total of 6,000 world languages.

In a presentation Thursday of a new world atlas of endangered languages, linguists stressed the list is not restricted to small or far-flung countries. They also sought to encourage immigrants to treasure their native languages.

FBI spokesman Richard Kolko said the Federal Bureau of Investigation had acted at the request of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), and that Stanford had not been arrested. A law enforcement official said Stanford was making arrangements to surrender his passport.

The whereabouts of jet-setting, 58-year-old Stanford had been the subject of intense speculation since he failed to respond to a subpoena from the SEC to answer questions about his company’s operations.

The lawsuit filed in federal court in Miami came the day after UBS agreed to pay $780 million and identify certain U.S. clients in a deal to resolve criminal fraud charges that it assisted rich Americans to evade taxes.

The action came after U.S. tax authorities said a request for the records under a Swiss treaty may only result in the production of records for about 300 accounts.

“I think you’ll start seeing an immediate impact in the increase of meaningful loan modifications in March, when the program becomes effective,” Bair said on ABC’s “Good Morning America.”

The plan, unveiled on Wednesday, would allow up to 4 million borrowers facing foreclosure to get their payments reduced through modifications jointly paid for by lenders and the U.S. Treasury.

Warning of the price of failure in Afghanistan, where NATO has undertaken its biggest and most challenging mission ever, alliance Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer appealed for new efforts ahead of elections in August.

“It is not only a matter of more forces in Afghanistan, we need an equal civilian surge as well,” he told reporters in Krakow, southern Poland, after chairing informal talks between NATO defence ministers.

The elections in August are seen as a litmus test of NATO’s efforts to help spread security and democracy in Afghanistan, as well as President Hamid Karzai’s widely criticised government.

“Everybody understands with regards to Afghanistan that this is a priority, if not priority number one for 2009,” spokesman James Appathurai said as the ministers held informal talks in Krakow, southern Poland.

The verdict came after three months of hearings that failed to shed light on the crime.

None of the four accused had been charged with pulling the trigger or being the mastermind of the 2006 killing of the investigative reporter who was highly critical of Russia’s strongman and current Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.

Malaria claims more than a million lives a year — 800,000 of them African children aged under five — and sickens hundreds of millions more, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO).

The rapid drop in blood sugar that frequently accompanies severe malaria kills many children in remote parts of Africa before they can reach a clinic for an intravenous dose of glucose, the proven treatment for hypoglycaemia.

Union representative Jacques Bino, aged in his 50s, was shot dead overnight when he drove up to a roadblock manned by armed youths in Pointe-a-Pitre, the island’s main city.

It was not immediately clear who shot him, but he was the first victim of the escalating violence on Guadeloupe, normally a tourist-friendly island but crippled since January 20 by a general strike.

General David McKiernan, who commands US and NATO forces in Afghanistan, welcomed President Barack Obama’s Tuesday decision approving the deployment in coming months of 17,000 troops, increasing the current US force by about 50 percent.

But he warned there would be no quick victory in the campaign against Taliban insurgents and that the United States would have to keep the higher level of troops in place for an indefinite period.

A population explosion concentrated in poorly planned cities, deforestation driven by foreign markets for timber, cash crops and beef, and unprecedented levels of pollution have all taken a heavy toll on the planet’s largest forest basin, the United Nations Environment Programme said.

The report, which pooled research by more than 150 experts from the eight countries that straddle Amazonia, acknowledged that these governments have individually taken steps to address environmental degradation.

The aid measures worth 2.6 billion euros (3.3 billion dollars) were unveiled after a meeting at the Elysee Palace with labour leaders, two weeks after mass street protests caused major disruption across France.

But union leaders were not won over and said they would meet next week to discuss further strike action to force more concessions from the right-wing government.

Two days after the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) accused Stanford, 58, of perpetrating “a fraud of shocking magnitude,” officials were still in the dark about his whereabouts — as were close members of his family.

US officials have not yet charged Stanford with a crime, although the Federal Bureau of Investigation said it is “in contact” with securities regulators about the alleged 9.2 billion dollar fraud.

The president’s announcement yesterday answered a months-old request from Gen. David McKiernan, the top US commander in Afghanistan, who is trying to reverse a two-year slide in the battle with Taliban and Al Qaeda insurgents. Last year produced the most US combat fatalities, 155, of any single year of the Afghan war.

“This increase is necessary to stabilize a deteriorating situation in Afghanistan, which has not received the strategic attention, direction, and resources it urgently requires,” Mr. Obama said yesterday.

But a behind-the-scenes glimpse at the Early County Market Hog Show shows all is not well here.

Blakely is America’s peanut capital, the seat of the biggest peanut-growing county in the United States and “peanut proud,” as the motto goes. It’s also home to the now-infamous Peanut Corp. of America plant that allegedly sold salmonella-laced products and launched a deadly food-safety scandal.

The Interior Ministry said it had ordered Richard Williamson out of Argentina because he had failed to declare his true job as director of a seminary on immigration forms and because his comments on the Holocaust “profoundly insult Argentine society, the Jewish community and all of humanity by denying a historic truth.”

Williamson’s views created an uproar last month when Pope Benedict XVI lifted his excommunication and that of three other bishops consecrated by the late Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre as part of a process meant to heal a rift with ultraconservatives.

Some suggest a cosmic cleanup is the way to go. Others say time, energy and funds are better spent on minimizing the likelihood of future crashes by improving information sharing.

The informal discussions on the sidelines of a meeting of the United Nations Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space, which began Feb. 9 and ends Friday, arose from concern about the collision of a derelict Russian spacecraft and a working U.S. Iridium commercial satellite.

Wearing a blue apron with a white Hawaiian floral print, Xiong spent a recent day at a school for domestic workers practicing how to use a squeegee to clean a window without leaving streaks across the glass.

“I haven’t told anyone in my family, not even my husband, that I’m going to do this kind of work,” the petite 24-year-old woman said in a hushed voice as she looked down at the ground with a blank face.

The negotiations are a test of an agreement that has been much criticized as giving in to the demands of militants seeking to establish hard-line Islamic law and providing them a safe haven.

Islamic cleric Sufi Muhammad promised to use his influence to push the Taliban in the former mountain resort region of Swat to stop fighting in exchange for a public vow by the government to impose Islamic law in the region, where a brutal insurgency has killed hundreds and sent up to one third of the area’s 1.5 million people fleeing.

Deputies voted 78-1 with two abstentions for the government-backed bill to cancel the lease agreement on the Manas air base, a transit point for 15,000 troops and 500 tons of cargo each month to and from Afghanistan. The move follows Russia’s offer of $2.15 billion in aid and loans to the impoverished Central Asian country.

U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates, in Poland for NATO talks, said the United States would consider paying more rent to continue using the strategic base. Speaking after the parliament vote in Kyrgyzstan, Gates said he considers talks still open over the future of the base.

“Banking secrecy, ladies and gentlemen, remains intact,” President Hans-Rudolf Merz told reporters.

Merz said Swiss authorities handed over the files on 250 to 300 American clients of Swiss bank UBS AG who are suspected of committing tax fraud. The transfer took place in the middle of the night in the Swiss capital Bern, just ahead of a U.S. deadline for Swiss cooperation, he said.

The warning from Lobsang Gyaincain, published in the official Tibet Daily on Thursday, followed a reported crackdown earlier this week on Tibetan protesters in Lithang, a volatile traditionally Tibetan region of Sichuan province. Those protesters had praised the exiled Dalai Lama and called on Tibetans to abstain from celebrations of the Tibetan new year to mark the anniversary of the demonstrations.

Lobsang Gyaincain, who is a member of the standing committee of the regional Communist Party, also demanded that monks and nuns recognize what he called the “reactionary nature” of the Dalai Lama clique, as well as plots to use temples and clergy to carry out “infiltration and disturbances,” Tibet Daily reported.

Diplomats said the negotiations among the 192 U.N. member states were likely to stretch at least into next year and might not come up with a definitive solution even then.

The council, authorized by the U.N. charter to impose sanctions and dispatch peacekeeping forces, currently has five permanent veto-holding members — the United States, Russia, Britain, France and China.

Veteran U.S. diplomat Richard Holbrooke said in an interview with CNN that Zardari assured him the pact with Islamists was an “interim arrangement” to stabilize the restive Swat region north of the capital Islamabad.

“He (Zardari) does not disagree that the people who are running Swat now are murderous thugs and militants and they pose a danger not only to Pakistan but to the United States,” said Holbrooke, who returned to Washington this week after visiting Afghanistan, Pakistan and India as part of his new role coordinating U.S. policy in the region.

Muntazer al-Zaidi said on Thursday at the start of his trial in Baghdad on charges of assaulting a foreign leader that he took a recording of his shoe-throwing training two years ago and had hoped to accost Bush in Jordan but this did not take place.

Zaidi, who was hailed across the Middle East by critics of the Iraq invasion and who also called Bush a “dog,” told the court he had acknowledged making a training film under interrogation after his arrest at a Baghdad news conference.

U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said he would not seek a specific number of extra troops from a NATO defense ministers’ meeting in Krakow, but called for a short-term deployment of troops from the alliance’s rapid response force, the NRF, which has never been used.

“It is a new administration and is prepared to make additional commitments to Afghanistan. But there clearly will be expectations that the allies must do more as well,” he said.

U.S. President Barack Obama, who has been in office for nearly a month, has made Afghanistan his top foreign policy priority and on Tuesday ordered the dispatch of 17,000 extra troops which would increase the U.S. force size to 55,000 by the summer.

Pakistan and Afghanistan, both grappling with spiraling insurgency by the Taliban, are expected to discuss the review before their foreign ministers present their input next week in Washington.

Seven men armed with knives, guns and grenades broke into a hostel in the district of Lapa, famous for its Samba clubs and late-night parties, early in the morning and held some of the 34 foreign and Brazilian tourists hostage for at least an hour.

In the afternoon, 10 American and German tourists were held up as they visited tourist spots in the Sao Conrado area of the Brazilian city, police said.

Roy Bennett, named to be deputy agriculture minister in a new government, was arrested before ministers were sworn in last Friday. He has been charged with illegally possessing firearms to commit acts of insurgency, banditry and terrorism.

Bennett was due to be sworn in on Thursday but remains in prison after his lawyers failed to have terrorism and insurgency charges dropped against him.

The ceremony finalised the historic unity government formed last week after years of political turmoil between Mugabe and Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai, leader of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC).

MDC nominee Bennett, in custody on a charge of possessing arms, was not named as deputy minister nor was his designated post announced.

“We will pay every civil servant in foreign currency,” Finance Minister Tendai Biti told a news conference in Harare.

The armed forces had been paid on Tuesday, he said.

President Nicolas Sarkozy announced more than half and billion euros in new subsidies for the island, a tourist destination which suffers from the highest unemployment rates and most expensive living costs in France.

“Today we have a duty to listen to our fellow citizens and we have, at the same time, the duty to ensure the rapid return of civil order,” he said after holding crisis talks in Paris with lawmakers from the Caribbean.

“During the talks of 17 and 18 February in Geneva, the participants have discussed and agreed on consensus proposals for mechanisms of joint prevention and resolution of incidents,” said Pierre Morel, the EU’s envoy on the crisis in Georgia.

The proposals, which were still being detailed, would open up more immediate channels of communication between all security forces on the ground, diplomats from the European Union, the United Nations and Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe said.

“Today, the Chamber of Deputies granted its consent with the ratification of the Lisbon Treaty after a vote of 125 for and 61 against,” announced Alexandr Vondra, deputy prime minister for European affairs.

“I welcome this result as a significant step in the Czech Lisbon Treaty ratification process,” he said. “It is a responsible step preceded by a thorough, democratic debate.”

“It is the first time I will be in Minsk and I would like to pass the message that we would like to get closer to your country,” Solana told reporters in Brussels before heading for the capital of the former Soviet republic later Wednesday.

“Important decisions have been taken (by the Belarus authorities) but these decisions have to be accompanied by responsibility in all domains,” he added.

Qatada, once labelled Osama bin Laden’s right-hand man in Europe by a Spanish judge, was awarded 2,800 euros (3,500 dollars) by the Strasbourg court — which will also rule on a final appeal against his deportation from Britain.

Qatada is battling against being thrown out of Britain to his home country Jordan, saying he risks being tortured there, but suffered a blow this week when Britain’s top court ruled against him.

Preliminary results released early this month showed that Maliki’s State of Law coalition won a plurality in nine of the 14 provinces that voted, more than any other party. The success highlighted that voters want a strong central and secular-minded government, marking a departure from the religious parties that had enjoyed power. The incumbents, the Iranian-allied Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq , performed poorly.

The success of Maliki’s State of Law coalition – highlighted in oil-rich Basra province, where his party locked 20 out of 35 seats – will boost the prime minister’s popularity ahead of parliamentary elections slated for later this year. Maliki’s party also took 28 out of 57 seats in Baghdad province.

A U.S. pilot had spotted men burying what turned out to be a bomb by the road where Haight was stopping to ask how he could help poor farmers and jobless youths who were desperate for any kind of work, including setting explosives for the Taliban .

The stocky combat veteran from Fairfax, Va. , wasn’t buying what he was hearing about all the troublemakers being outsiders.

“He had an icy smile with no blood or spirit,” said Zaidi, who was enclosed in a wooden pen. “At that moment, I only saw Bush, and the whole world turned black. I was feeling the blood of innocent people moving under his feet.”

Zaidi’s testimony Thursday marked the opening day of the high-profile trial. He’s accused of assaulting a foreign head of state on an official visit when Bush made his widely televised farewell trip to Baghdad on Dec. 14 . Conviction could lock up Zaidi for 15 years.

The vote, a resounding 78-1, signaled that Kyrgyzstan’s government is ready to follow through on its president’s threat to close the Manas Air Base .

Now that the parliament has passed the measure, all that remains is for President Kurmanbek Bakiyev to sign it and his government to issue an eviction notice giving the Americans 180 days to pack up.

Iraq’s Jan. 31 provincial elections have been hailed as a sign that the country is putting its violent past behind it, is moving toward democracy and no longer is in need of a large U.S. military force. Along a 300-mile strip of disputed territory that stretches across northern Iraq , however, the elections have rekindled the longstanding hostility between Sunni Muslim Arabs and Sunni Kurds, and there are growing fears that war could erupt.

Al Hadbaa, an Arab nationalist party with some Kurdish and other members that vowed to retake disputed territory from the Kurdish security forces; halt Kurdish expansion and eject Kurdish militias, won 47 percent of the vote in predominantly Arab Nineveh, according to the preliminary election results. That means the Kurds will lose control of the provincial council.

The ruling applies to a group of Uighurs, a Chinese Muslim minority, who’ve been imprisoned since May 2002 . The men are among scores at the prison whom the military has cleared for release or transfer but who are stuck in limbo because the U.S. government can’t find a country to ship them to. The U.S. government and the Uighurs say the detainees can’t return to China because they’ll be tortured as political dissidents. So far, no other country has agreed to take them.

Judge A. Raymond Randolph of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit wrote in the majority opinion that courts don’t have the authority to order the transfer of foreigners into the United States ; only Congress and the executive branch do. A U.S. district judge last fall had ordered the men released and transferred to the U.S.