The Morning News

The president-elect set no goals for reducing the federal deficit – now in record territory and headed ever higher – an obvious contrast to Monday’s announcement that he hopes to create a recession-busting 2.5 million jobs by 2010.

He spoke as he appointed Peter Orszag, currently head of the Congressional Budget Office, to be his own budget director.

Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, who has been criticized for constantly revising the original $700 billion rescue program, said the administration was considering even more changes in its final two months in office.

Reports on the nation’s economic health weren’t getting any better. The Commerce Department said the overall economy, as measured by the gross domestic product, declined at an annual rate of 0.5 percent in the July-September quarter, even worse than the initial 0.3 percent estimated a month ago as consumer spending fell by the largest amount in 28 years.

Russian sailors dressed in black-and-white uniforms lined up along the bow of the destroyer Admiral Chabanenko as it docked in La Guaira, near Caracas, and Venezuelan troops greeted them with cannons in a 21-gun salute. Two support vessels also docked, and the nuclear-powered cruiser Peter the Great, Russia’s largest navy ship, anchored offshore.

Chavez, basking in the support of a powerful ally and traditional U.S. rival, wants Russian help to build a nuclear reactor, invest in oil and natural gas projects and bolster his leftist opposition to U.S. influence in the region.

Over the years the ship had been forgotten, said researcher Don Keith, so when the discovery connected the ship to current residents the first response “was a kind of shock, a lack of comprehension,” he explained in a briefing organized by the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

But after word got out “people really got on board with it,” he said, and the local museum has assisted the researchers. He said this is the only known wreck of a ship engaged in the illegal slave trade.

Drivers stuck behind such a truck should “pass them quickly,” advised study co-author Ana Rule, a researcher at Johns Hopkins University.

Even so, it’s not clear that germy debris will make you sick. None of the scientists who studied this problem got sick. And the disease-causing bacteria in question are normally spread by food or water, not air.

Through the Thanksgiving weekend, teams will be tagging more meat to throw at skeptical lawmakers who vilified the automakers’ top executives the last time they went to Washington. That means executive pay cuts, union concessions, and perhaps even higher fuel economy requirements and a glimpse at top-secret product plans.

At General Motors Corp., the largest of the Detroit Three and probably the most needy, teams are preparing a detailed plan, first for GM’s board on Monday, then for delivery to Congress by a Dec. 2 deadline. The House Financial Services Committee plans to hear testimony on the loan requests Dec. 5.

The 171 banks on the FDIC’s “problem list” encompass only about 2 percent of the nearly 8,500 FDIC-insured institutions. Still, the increase from 117 in the second quarter is sharp, and the current tally is the highest since late 1995.

“We’ve had profound problems in our financial markets that are taking a rising toll on the real economy,” said FDIC Chairman Sheila Bair in a statement, adding that Tuesday’s report “reflects these challenges.”

It was the boldest move yet by the People’s Alliance for Democracy in a monthslong campaign to topple Prime Minister Somchai Wongsawat, whom it accuses of being the puppet of a disgraced fugitive predecessor, billionaire Thaksin Shinawatra.

Tuesday’s events saw for the first time the open use of guns by the alliance’s so-called guards and the entanglement of foreigners – the thousands of tourists trapped at the international airport.

In Monday’s closing arguments, prosecutors stressed the emotional component – the suicide of Megan Meier, who was allegedly drawn into an Internet ruse devised by Lori Drew, the mother of Megan’s one-time best friend.

She is accused of conspiring with her daughter, Sarah, then 13, and her 18-year-old assistant to cause emotional distress to Megan.

“There’s no basis for concern because we’re talking about trace levels that are so low … that there’s absolutely no risk,” FDA spokeswoman Judy Leon said.

Melamine-tainted formula was found earlier this year in China, where thousands of children fell ill and several died. In September, the FDA sought to assure parents and said there was no similar contamination threat in the United States.

As the Fed announced its move, the United States posted the sharpest fall in gross domestic product since 2001, likely joining Europe in recession, while China’s economy is now expected to grow next year at the slowest pace since 1990.

Mining company BHP Billiton’s $66 billion bid for rival Rio Tinto became the latest corporate casualty of global economic turmoil, with BHP blaming the financial crisis and sliding metals prices.

Separate reports showed U.S. home prices continued their downward spiral, with the cost of single-family homes plunging by a record 17.4 percent in September from a year earlier.

The data painted a dismal picture of the troubled economy and backed views the Federal Reserve could push benchmark lending rates to an unprecedented zero percent by early 2009.

The American Automobile Association expects 600,000 fewer people to travel more than 50 miles from their homes this Thanksgiving, the fourth consecutive U.S. holiday where travel has declined.

“The overall state of the economy continues to present real challenges for some Americans looking to travel,” Chief Executive Robert Darbelnet said in a statement.

BHP’s shock decision on Tuesday to pull its $66 billion bid sent Rio’s London shares plunging by almost 40 percent, raising concerns that Rio would struggle to sell assets and bring down its $39 billion in net debt during a severe global economic downturn.

But Rio Chairman Paul Skinner, speaking at a scheduled business breakfast, said the group was comfortable with its financial position, dismissed market speculation that Rio would now need to raise equity and said it would make asset sales in the next few months.

Matthew Bryza, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs, said Moscow must pull back its forces as agreed in a French-brokered ceasefire that ended the war in August before there could be “business as usual.”

“I am worried that Russia is not fulfilling its most important obligations under the ceasefire agreement. There are many partners of ours who would like to sweep that all under the rug and return to some semblance of normal operations,” Bryza said in an interview with Reuters.

Inter-city bus service jumped 9.8 percent between the fourth quarters of 2007 and 2008, the highest growth rate in more than 40 years.

“The growth in intercity bus traffic is being driven by a number of factors, chiefly the spiking price of fuel over the past year,” said Joseph Schwieterman, professor of public service and director of the Chaddick Institute, who directed the study, released on Monday.

The decision whether to send more than 20,000 extra U.S. troops to Afghanistan to safeguard presidential polls next year is likely to be one of the first faced by President-elect Barack Obama when he becomes commander-in-chief in January.

“The main problem is that there aren’t enough troops. It’s just a big area and you need a boat-load more people,” a U.S. defense official said.

Some 49 million U.S. shoppers already plan to hit stores this coming holiday weekend, prompted by pent-up demand and lured by deep discounts, according to the BIGresearch study for the National Retail Federation (NRF).

An additional 79 million would-be shoppers are playing wait-and-see, planning to suss out the weekend promotions before deciding whether to shop, the survey found.

“What went wrong is we had tremendous concentration in the sense we put a lot of our money to work against U.S. real estate,” Pandit said in an interview on PBS’ Charlie Rose show. “We got here by lending money, and putting money to work in the U.S. real estate market, in a size that was probably larger than what we ought to have done on a diversification basis.”

The government late Sunday rescued Citigroup by agreeing to shoulder most potential losses from a $306 billion portfolio of risky assets, and by injecting $20 billion of new capital, in its biggest effort to prevent a large U.S. bank from failing.

Obasanjo, a former Nigerian president who undertook a first trip as UN envoy to the Democratic Republic of Congo on November 15-16, will arrive in Kinshasa on Saturday and hold meetings with President Joseph Kabila, the UN said.

Obasanjo will then travel to Goma, capital of eastern Nord-Kivu province and the frontline of the conflict between Laurent Nkunda’s rebels, the Congolese army and an assortment of militias.

The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) warned in Geneva that the outbreak could snowball across southern Africa, pointing to reports from South Africa’s health ministry of suspected cholera cases in Botswana.

“The cholera outbreak is not yet under control. Reported cases have reached 8,887, with 366 deaths as at 25 November. This is an increase of 1,604 cases and 53 more deaths,” said OCHA, reporting the new toll figures for Zimbabwe.

“On December 15 we will launch the most ambitious public works programs in memory,” said Kirchner, making the announcement at the closing ceremony of the trade association representing builders.

Argentina expects economic growth to slow to four percent in 2009, down from 6.5 percent expected for 2008. This follows years of growth nearing nine percent following the 2002 crisis.

He was taking part in an educational project aimed at introducing notions of personal finance and responsibility to middle grade and high school students by allowing them to become adults for a day.

The “JA Finance Park” aims to increase the awareness among young Americans about the cost of living by tasking them with managing a monthly budget that included transportation, lodging, utilities and outings.

The lawyer’s comments — which were based on files of the case that he had seen — came as the judge in the case decided to reopen the trial to the public just days after declaring it closed.

“In the files of the case, the motive and the individual who ordered the killing are mentioned,” said lawyer Murad Musayev, who is defending one of the four men charged in connection with the killing.

In a rare coordinated campaign, several cabinet members have publicly warned of dire economic repercussions and security woes if the deal isn’t approved and US forces begin decamping Jan. 1.

Iraq’s most influential Shiite spiritual leader, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, has called for politicians of all parties and sects to support the deal. But against a backdrop of parliamentary wrangling – which included a brawl in parliament – the government has lowered its expectations for a broad consensus.

Dan Dostine, a furnace repairman at Chrysler, is worried he may lose his $33-an-hour job, with few prospects for other decent-paying work in the area.

The mayor of Warren, Mich., is on pins and needles, wondering if his city’s already-strapped budget will take a hit in the event that revenues from automakers – which make up 15 percent or more of the total – slide precipitously.

As state and local revenue declines, officials are looking for the trims least likely to harm the quality of education. Although some districts have rainy-day funds to tap, concern is growing that students, particularly those who are struggling to learn or who are homeless, are going to feel the pinch.

Just over a third of superintendents in a recent national survey said they’ve already increased the size of classes because of the downturn, according to the American Association of School Administrators, an organization in Arlington, Va., that supports high standards for public education. Thirty percent of superintendents are considering layoffs. Of the two-thirds who said their districts are inadequately funded, 83 percent think it’s detrimental to their ability to close achievement gaps for minority groups.

That question, which has bedeviled Beatles’ fans for decades, may be answered in part by a 1911 hospital payroll sheet to be auctioned in London on Thursday.

The document, sent by Paul McCartney in 1990 to the director of a music charity who had asked for funding, contains the signature of a scullery maid named “E. Rigby” who worked in a Liverpool hospital.

A comfortable parliamentary majority would ensure the legitimacy of an agreement that sets a clear timetable for U.S. withdrawal after years of war and could lead to full sovereignty for Iraq.

But intense debate and backroom dealing continued over the pact, which has supporters and detractors from both Sunni and Shiite communities jockeying for political gain ahead of provincial and general elections next year.

On the other is a poor Himalayan region, home to some 5 million Tibetans. Its most prominent leader hasn’t been home in almost five decades, and its best-known politicians are in exile. When Tibetans tried to stand up to Beijing last March, the unrest was brutally quashed.

So the idea of hundreds of Tibetan exiles gathering from around the world to discuss the future of their freedom struggle might seem like an exercise in pointlessness. Or perhaps hopelessness.

“The people here look out for each other – Arabs, Christians, Kurds, Yazidis. If all of Iraq was like this, it would be a great place,” said 1st Lt. Jeremy Glosson, leading a U.S. Army patrol through Tal Kaeef’s medieval-like alleys.

And yet, many Christians here say they want to flee a town where their ancestors have lived for generations and, if possible, to abandon a country where their religion has survived for some 2,000 years – longer than in Europe – but one they fear is growing ever more violent.

The IMF loan program approved Monday banished the immediate risk of a currency crash and debt default in a country already creaking under the pressure of 25 percent inflation and slowing economic growth.

The Pakistani rupee had slid some 20 percent since March as economic storm clouds gathered around Pakistan, a nuclear-armed country increasingly seen as vital to stabilizing neighboring Afghanistan.

John Holmes made the comments as he visited Kalma camp, home to around 100,000 of the more than 2.5 million people displaced by fighting in the large region of western Sudan since 2003.

Earlier this month, Holmes appealed for $2.2 billion in donations to fund U.N. aid for Sudan, most of which would go to Darfur. The world body is providing food and other supplies not only to residents of camps but also to much of the remainder of Darfur’s 4.7 million population who still live in their homes.

The influx of people to the area has brought increased crime to the north face of Everest, and Chinese authorities last year pledged to boost the police presence following reports of thefts of food, oxygen tanks and climbing gear.

Visitors to Everest also complain about unethical guides, tricksters selling defective oxygen bottles, prostitution and gambling on the Tibetan side.

Gettelfinger spoke at a Detroit news conference just as reports surfaced that a bipartisan group of auto-state senators had reached a compromise on bailing out Chrysler LLC, Ford Motor Co. and General Motors Corp.

The union president called on Congress to vote on the loans on Thursday, but that appeared unlikely. Congressional officials say Democratic leaders have decided to put off a bailout vote until December and will insist that the automakers first come up with a plan showing how the money would help transform their industry.

They said one woman was killed by a stray bullet Sunday night in Kibati, a village north of the eastern provincial capital of Goma that has been overrun by about 70,000 refugees.

Patrice Sebahunde, 60, said he was awakened at 10 p.m. by four soldiers pointing guns in his face. They took his family’s food, clothes and their plastic water bucket.

The oil painting, which was stolen from a rich German Jewish family sometime after 1937 and kept by a Nazi officer responsible for delivering poison gas to Auschwitz, is to be given Thursday to a British charity that supports medical rescue in Israel.

The story of how “Le Mur Rose,” or “The Pink Wall,” made its way through the war to France is as surprising as the colorful painting itself, and steeped with death, mystery and injustice. Stolen from Jews, proceeds from the expected sale of the painting will go toward the Magen David Adom network of ambulances, paramedics and emergency treatment centers in Israel.

The shooting late Sunday stoked anger months after Georgia and Russia fought a brief war over the separatist region of South Ossetia. The August conflict worsened Moscow’s relations with the West.

It also left South Ossetia entirely under the control of separatist forces and Russian troops. Before the war, Georgian forces held parts of South Ossetia.

The Bush administration has supported putting the two former Soviet republics on a formal path, called a Membership Action Plan, toward joining NATO. But there is considerable European opposition, which has grown since Georgia’s war with Russia in August.

Rather than get into a “huge debate” next week, NATO should make it clear that Ukraine and Georgia are still welcome and the alliance stands ready to help them become members, Assistant Secretary of State Dan Fried said.

Russia says it intervened in ex-Soviet Georgia after Tbilisi began shelling the breakaway South Ossetia region. Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili accused Russia of invading and thus starting the war.

Erosi Kitsmarishvili, Georgia’s former ambassador to Russia, told the parliamentary commission he had received information “from high-ranking Georgian officials” that Tbilisi was preparing to “militarily storm” the South Ossetian capital, Tskhinvali.

Nkunda’s month-long campaign against chaotic government forces in the eastern province of North Kivu has displaced 250,000 people and prompted the U.N. Security Council to send 3,000 more troops to its biggest peace force.

The U.N. Human Rights Council said on Tuesday it would meet this week to discuss rights violations during the conflict.

The joint U.N.-African Union force now has about 12,000 soldiers and police, less than half of a promised 26,000, almost a year after it arrived in Sudan’s violent west.

Major General Emmanuel Karenzi told reporters the mission was severely short of equipment, including a total lack of transport and attack helicopters.

Security Council diplomats, most of whom spoke on condition of anonymity, said they hoped to agree a statement supporting the deployment of a European Union law and justice mission in Kosovo to be adopted by the council as early as Wednesday.

As with all things related to Kosovo, negotiations on the EU mission, known as EULEX, have been divisive.

The cabinet tendered its resignation as parliament was about to look into a request by three legislators to question the prime minister, a member of the royal family, over the visit of an Iranian Shi’ite cleric accused of offending Sunni Muslims.

But the three deputies had also wanted to question Sheikh Nasser al-Mohammad al-Sabah over a wide range of accusations including alleged corruption and mismanagement in the world’s seventh-largest oil exporter.

After all, one investor brings another and before you know it, there is thriving industry and jobs. Or so the story went throughout Romania in recent years as foreign manufacturers poured billions of euros into the new European Union state.

But for all of Romania’s economic progress made possible by foreign cash, last year’s EU entry and four years of structural reforms, thousands of villages and small towns like Bumbesti-Jiu have yet to benefit from modernization and wealth.

The explosion at Suvarnabhumi Airport happened a day after demonstrators stormed the airport, forcing it to close down and stranding thousands of passengers.

“At least two people were wounded by a bomb blast at Suvarnabhumi this morning,” Petpong Kamchornkitkarn, an emergency medical services official, told AFP.

Opinion polls had suggested that a large majority of Greenland’s 39,000 electorate would vote in favour of greater autonomy. The territory was granted semi-autonomy from Denmark in 1979, and withdrew from the European Union in a 1982 referendum.

Polls across Greenland’s 80 towns and villages had closed by 8:00 pm (2300 GMT), with final results expected around midnight (0300 GMT Wednesday).

It was a major victory in the White House’s legal “war on terror” and comes after a mistrial was declared last year in the case involving the now defunct Texas-based Holy Land Foundation, charged with funneling 12 million dollars to Hamas.

Family members could be heard sobbing in the Dallas courtroom as guilty verdicts were read on all 108 charges of providing material support to terrorists, money laundering and tax fraud.

Sunday’s attack punctured hopes that last week’s largely peaceful parliamentary elections would usher in a new period of stability.

It was widely condemned by the international community, with UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon joining other world leaders to denounce the assault.

Lukashenko, who has ruled this former Soviet republic of 10 million people for 14 years, also said that he planned to run for another presidential term in 2011 and that Belarus would retain “very strong relations” with Russia.

“You fly NATO planes near our country’s borders. Why? We begin strengthening our air defences. This is pushing a mini arms race,” Lukashenko said in an exclusive interview in the presidential administration in central Minsk.

Salim Hamdan’s repatriation represents a major breakthrough after three years in which Sanaa and Washington had been unable to reach a deal on the return of Guantanamo detainees.

It also brings to a close one of the most visible chapters in the US effort to detain and prosecute “enemy combatants” in the “war on terror” — marked by a series of setbacks for the US government.

These include a provision that bans the launch of attacks on other countries from Iraq , a requirement to notify the Iraqis in advance of U.S. military operations and the question of Iraqi legal jurisdiction over American troops and military contractors.

Officials in Washington said the administration has withheld the official English translation of the agreement in an effort to suppress a public dispute with the Iraqis until after the Iraqi parliament votes.

Europe’s largest city is in the midst of a physical transformation greater than any it’s seen since the post-World War II era. The museums, monuments, cathedrals, and palaces that have lured foreign tourists for centuries are still there, but new developments are changing London’s character in significant and controversial ways.

“Despite what visitors may expect, we’re not all thatched cottages, beams and Tudor,” says Peter Murray , director of the London Festival of Architecture.

It was a long journey for the destroyer Admiral Chabanenko, which docked at La Guaira port, near Caracas’ international airport, and Peter the Great, a nuclear-powered cruiser and one of Russia’s biggest vessels, which anchored offshore. Along with two other vessels, they traveled two months from their home port near Murmansk, Russia .

The visits by the warships and Medvedev mark a convergence of interests between two oil-producing nations – both of which want to be taken more seriously by the rest of the world, but especially by the U.S.

The move by John Brennan , a former senior CIA official and head of President-elect Barack Obama’s intelligence transition team, is the first personnel setback to hit what’s otherwise been a swift and smooth transition to the White House for Obama.

In a letter to Obama, a copy of which was obtained by McClatchy , Brennan denied involvement in the Bush administration’s detainee and interrogation policies and said he was taking himself out of the running to avoid entangling the new administration in unnecessary controversy. Brennan, who held a succession of CIA posts, was reported to have been under consideration as the successor to CIA director Michael Hayden .