Category: News

Developers at the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology, a government-backed organization, said their “cybernetic human,” shown Monday, wasn’t ready to help with daily chores or work side by side with people – as many hope robots will be able to do in the future.

“Technologically, it hasn’t reached that level,” said Hirohisa Hirukawa, one of the robot’s developers. “Even as a fashion model, people in the industry told us she was short and had a rather ordinary figure.”

AIG is paying out the executive bonuses to meet a Sunday deadline, but the troubled insurance giant has agreed to administration requests to restrain future payments.

The Treasury Department determined that the government did not have the legal authority to block the current payments by the company. AIG declared earlier this month that it had suffered a loss of $61.7 billion for the fourth quarter of last year, the largest corporate loss in history.

AIG is paying out the executive bonuses to meet a Sunday deadline, but the troubled insurance giant has agreed to administration requests to restrain future payments.

The Treasury Department determined that the government did not have the legal authority to block the current payments by the company. AIG declared earlier this month that it had suffered a loss of $61.7 billion for the fourth quarter of last year, the largest corporate loss in history.

The key priority must be restoring frozen bank lending through cash infusions and dealing with the shaky assets souring bank’s balance sheets, the gathered finance ministers and central bankers from the Group of 20 countries said in a statement at the end of talks in southern England.

The statement did not back a U.S. push for concrete, coordinated efforts for governments to spend more money to boost their economies. It acknowledged the importance of the stimulus efforts already in place, and called for stronger financial regulation.

The spacewalk 220 miles up took place on the eve of space shuttle Discovery’s launch to the orbiting outpost.

American commander Mike Fincke and Yuri Lonchakov, a Russian, wrapped up all the chores left over from a spacewalk just before Christmas. They accomplished everything faster than anticipated, in well under five hours, and accepted congratulations from Moscow flight controllers as they floated back inside.

It wasn’t the Great Depression. It was the 1981-82 recession, widely considered America’s worst since the depression.

That painful time during Ronald Reagan’s presidency is a grim marker of how bad things can get. Yet the current recession could slice deeper into the U.S. economy.

But the economy always recovers. It runs in cycles, and economists are watching an array of statistics, some of them buried deep beneath the headlines, to spot the turning point. The Associated Press examined three markets – housing, jobs and stocks – and asked experts where things stand and how to know when they’ve hit bottom.

None of them expects it to come anytime soon.

The findings, issued by National Council on Radiation Protection and Measurement, add to already mounting evidence that doctors are ordering too many diagnostic tests, driving up the cost of healthcare in the United States and potentially harming patients.

While diagnostic scans give doctors valuable information and many times are necessary, doctors fear too much radiation exposure can cause cancer, especially in younger people.

The new infusion is intended to prop up AIG – once the world’s largest insurer – as it is expected to announce $60 billion in quarterly losses early Monday, the source said on the condition of anonymity because the discussions are still ongoing.

The company, which is considered too large to fail, previously received about $150 billion in loans from the government, which now has an 80 percent stake in the company.

In the short-term, the massive stimulus will help balance budgets and keep key services, such as Medicaid, going. But economists agree the money will not quickly eradicate high unemployment, low consumer spending or distress in the housing market – the triple threats behind a nationwide tax-collection shortfall that is expected to drag on even after the economy begins to rebound.

Without higher taxes, bigger cuts to government services – or yet more federal funding – states face budget gaps that could reach $120 billion nationwide in their 2011 budgets, according to an analyst at the Rockefeller Institute, a think tank in Albany, N.Y. James Diffley, managing director of Global Insight’s U.S. Regional Services Group, says it’s unlikely budget gaps will close before 2013.

Meanwhile, commanders will be shifting their attention to helping Iraqi forces take full control of their own security.

The Pentagon has not released the full details of President Barack Obama’s plan to end America’s combat role in Iraq by Aug. 31 of next year, but the broad contours are taking shape.