Tag: Weekend News Digest

When Palin needed to sell her house during her last year as Wasilla mayor, she got the city to sign off on a special zoning exception – and did so without keeping a promise to remove a potential fire hazard.

She gladly accepted gifts from merchants: A free “awesome facial” she raved about in a thank-you note to a spa. The “absolutely gorgeous flowers” she received from a welding supply store. Even fresh salmon to take home.

The list of companies facing potential recalls grew Friday as reports of foods tainted with the industrial chemical melamine, which has been blamed in the deaths of four Chinese infants, spread to a widening range of products.

Food companies around the globe are rushing to assess their products and in some cases setting new strategies to prevent problems.

Speaking at the World Economic Forum in the port of Tianjin, Wen did not announce new initiatives but he said the government would work to instill business ethics in light of the milk contamination and a string of earlier product safety disasters.

“We plan not only to revitalize the food industry and the milk powder industry, we will try to ensure that all China-made products are safe for consumers and consumers can buy with assurance,” he said.

“The credit markets are still very fragile right now and frozen,” Paulson said in an interview on NBC’s Meet the Press. “We need to deal with this and deal with it quickly.”

Paulson made the rounds of the television talk shows to stress the need for speed in getting the bailout package approved. The administration spent the weekend negotiating the details of the proposal with members of Congress with the expectation that it can be passed in the next week.

“This is not something that we wanted to do. This was something that was very necessary,” Paulson said on the NBC Sunday program “Meet the Press.”

“We did this to protect the taxpayer.”

Dramatic footage of Saturday night’s attack showed the carnage could have been far worse, but the attacker failed to get through a secondary barrier when he crashed his explosives-laden truck into the hotel’s security gates.

The interior ministry said the truck was packed with 600 kilos (1,300 pounds) of explosives, and pointed a finger at Taliban militants allied with Al-Qaeda who are based in the remote areas along the border with Afghanistan.

The plan to move toxic mortgage-related debt off the balance sheets of U.S. banks and other institutions, and into a massive government portfolio, represents an all-out attack on the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression.

Under authority sought by the U.S. Treasury Department, the government could purchase as much as $700 billion in mortgage-related assets from U.S.-headquartered institutions.

Decisions by the treasury secretary related to the buyback program could not be reviewed by any court, according to a copy of the department’s draft legislation obtained by Reuters.

Britain’s Barclays Plc (BARC.L), which had appeared to be the frontrunner to take over Lehman — excluding its bad mortgage-related assets — pulled out of the bidding early in the afternoon, according to a person familiar with the matter.

Among those spotted arriving in black limousines at the fortress-like headquarters of the New York Federal Reserve in downtown Manhattan early Sunday were Citigroup CEO Vikram Pandit (C.N) and Steve Black, who is co-CEO of JPMorgan Chase & Co’s (JPM.N) investment bank.

An official from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, who asked not to be named due to the sensitivity of the talks, said deliberations have resumed with leading Wall Street executives and top U.S. financial officials.

They include Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, Timothy Geithner, president of the New York Fed, and Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Christopher Cox. They were meeting on the heels of an emergency session convened Friday night by Geithner – the Fed’s point person on financial rises.

“Our economy and our markets will not recover until the bulk of this housing correction is behind us,” U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said at a news conference. “Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are critical to turning the corner on housing.”

The two companies, publicly traded but also serving a government mission to support housing, were put in a conservatorship that allows their stock to keep trading but puts common shareholders last in any claims.

The low-profile vetting allowed McCain to spring Palin onto the national scene uncolored by media scrutiny. But it has left the campaign open to criticism that McCain did not fully explore her qualifications.

“I haven’t heard of anybody being contacted, not that that’s bad,” said John Harris, speaker of the state House of Representatives. “I just haven’t heard of anybody.”

“I pledge that tomorrow night, and if necessary throughout our convention, we will act as Americans and not as Republicans because America needs us now,” McCain said.

McCain, his wife Cindy, and his running mate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, toured the emergency management center in Mississippi, a state that could be hit hard by the approaching hurricane.

Gustav already has killed 78 people in the Caribbean and the U.S. National Hurricane Center in Miami said it could strengthen even more after hitting Cuba and entering the warm Gulf of Mexico on a projected course for the Katrina-battered U.S. coast.

Cuba grounded all national airline fights, though planes bound for international destinations were still taking off at Havana’s Jose Marti International Airport. Authorities also canceled all buses and trains to and from the capital, as well as ferry and air service to the Isla de Juventud, the outlying Cuban island-province next in Gustav’s path.

Former Prime Minster Nawaz Sharif, who heads the junior partner in the coalition, demanded the dominant Pakistan People’s Party slash the president’s powers before he would support its candidate.

Asif Ali Zardari, head of the PPP and widower of the party’s assassinated leader Benazir Bhutto, agreed Saturday to run for the presidency.

In a yearlong review of levee work here, The Associated Press has tracked a pattern of public misperception, political jockeying and legal fighting, along with economic and engineering miscalculations since Katrina, that threaten to make New Orleans the scene of another devastating flood.

Dozens of interviews with engineers, historians, policymakers and flood zone residents confirmed many have not learned from public policy mistakes made after Hurricane Betsy in 1965, which set the stage for Katrina; many mistakes are being repeated.