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WASHINGTON – Ski bums would have called it a "powder day" and blown off work.
Not so senators, who strapped on their snow boots, grabbed their parkas and headed off to a Capitol engulfed in a blizzard.
Only two out of 100 weren't there: Joe Lieberman, a Connecticut independent and Orthodox Jew who caucuses with Democrats, was in his home state for Hanukkah with his family. Republican Judd Gregg, who actually is a skier, was in New Hampshire for a family commitment.
In the ornate Senate, heavy brown boots were as common as wing tips, particularly for the many senators with homes on Capitol Hill, including Sen. Kent Conrad, D-N.D.
"It looks like Vermont out there," said Sen. Pat Leahy, D-Vt. He walked to the Capitol from his nearby home, as did a host of others.
Voting started at 7:20 a.m., as daylight broke.
Senators were offered chauffeured rides in Chevrolet Suburbans if their homes were too socked in. Some are driven every day, including Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., and 92-year-old Robert Byrd, D-W.Va. As president pro tempore of the Senate, Byrd, requires special security because he is third in the presidential line of succession.
Byrd entered the chamber to applause from his fellow Democrats.
Hawaii's Daniel Inouye, the second most senior member of the Senate, was taking no chances as the Senate passed his cherished defense appropriations bill, which is loaded with pet projects for his state.
"I stayed in a hotel," Inouye said. "It cost me a few bucks."
Others weathered the storm.
"Thirty miles an hour down I-95," said Baltimore native Barbara Mikulski, D-Md. "It was as slippery a slope as passing health care legislation."

GENEVA – Roman Polanski is finishing the edit of his latest movie "Ghost" from his house arrest in Switzerland, surrounded by family and bombarded by telephone calls of support, French philosopher Bernard-Henri Levy said in an interview Sunday.
Levy, a friend of the 76-year-old director, told the Lausanne-based weekly Le Matin Dimanche that he visited Polanski in his chalet in the luxury Swiss resort of Gstaad about 10 days ago and found him like "a rock," working and confident even though his family is worried about the U.S. extradition request hanging over him.
"It's in fact very impressive. He is in the process of finishing at a distance the editing of his next film, which I understand will be in the official selection at the next Berlin Festival," Levy said.
He said he was able to have a friendly dinner with Polanski in the chalet. Being able to entertain at home was one of the privileges the director received after his Dec. 4 transfer to house arrest from a Swiss jail after more than 60 days of detention.
Polanski has to wear an electronic monitoring bracelet around his ankle to guard against his leaving the grounds of the chalet, but he is able to receive guests inside or outside the house, work on his films, make telephone calls and send e-mails as much as he likes.
"The telephone doesn't stop ringing, the messages of support are pouring in, especially from his Swiss friends," Levy said.
He said Polanski told him Swiss officials were only doing their job in arresting him Sept. 26 and holding him in detention, but that all of them had treated him with kindness and appeared "extraordinarily embarrassed" by what he was going through.
Swiss authorities have said they will decide early next year whether to extradite Polanski the United States where he is wanted in Los Angeles for sentencing for having sex in 1977 with a 13-year-old girl.
If Polanski breaks the conditions for his house arrest, the Swiss government would confiscate the $4.5 million bail he deposited. That substantial amount was a key element in granting the house arrest — a first in Switzerland for a detainee in an extradition case.
Polanski's two children — Elvis, 9, and Morgane, 16 — and his wife, French actress Emmanuelle Seigner, have been staying in the chalet with him.
The Oscar-winning director of "Rosemary's Baby," "Chinatown" and "The Pianist" was arrested as he arrived in Zurich to receive a lifetime achievement award at a film festival.
Polanski was initially accused of raping the girl after plying her with champagne and a Quaalude pill during a 1977 modeling shoot. He was indicted on six felony counts, including rape by use of drugs, child molestation and sodomy, but he pleaded guilty to the lesser charge of unlawful sexual intercourse.
In exchange, the judge agreed to drop the remaining charges and sent him to prison for a 90-day psychiatric evaluation. The evaluator released Polanski after 42 days, but the judge said he was going to send him back to serve out the 90 days.
The filmmaker fled the U.S. on Feb. 1, 1978, the day he was to be formally sentenced. He has lived since then in France, which does not extradite its citizens.
Polanski has been getting help from his victim in the California case in a bid to have sex misconduct charges against him dismissed. The attorney for Samantha Geimer, who long ago publicly identified herself, argued earlier this month for an end to the case, saying she has repeatedly said she wants it dropped.
The California Second District Court of Appeal is being asked to decide if it should order a lower court to consider dismissing the case without Polanski's attendance in court.
Polanski claims that the U.S. judge and prosecutors acted improperly in his case.

The third millennium B.C. was the "Age of Cleanliness." Toilets and sewers were invented in several parts of the world, and Mohenjo-Daro circa 2800 B.C. had some of the most advanced, with lavatories built into the outer walls of houses. These were "Western-style" toilets made from bricks with wooden seats on top. They had vertical chutes, through which waste fell into street drains or cesspits. Sir Mortimer Wheeler, the director general of archaeology in India from 1944 to 1948, wrote, "The high quality of the sanitary arrangements could well be envied in many parts of the world today."

Nearly all of the hundreds of houses excavated had their own bathing rooms. Generally located on the ground floor, the bath was made of brick, sometimes with a surrounding curb to sit on. The water drained away through a hole in the floor, down chutes or pottery pipes in the walls, into the municipal drainage system. Even the fastidious Egyptians rarely had special bathrooms.

Here

WASHINGTON – The top U.S. military officer said recent computer hacking of information from U.S. drones caused no significant military damage.
Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, confirmed that hackers obtained data from drones flying over Iraq.
He is in Iraq Friday for talks on the coming U.S. withdrawal.
Mullen said he is very concerned about the issue of hacking and cybersecurity in general.
Insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan have intercepted live video feeds from Predator drones. The vulnerability caused by the recent drone incidents has been fixed.

The earliest historical record of a reservoir fountain pen dates back to the 10th century. In 953, Ma'ād al-Mu'izz, the caliph of Egypt, demanded a pen which would not stain his hands or clothes, and was provided with a pen which held ink in a reservoir and delivered it to the nib via gravity and capillary action.

Rollerball pens were introduced in the early 1980s. They make use of a mobile ball and liquid ink to produce a smoother line. Technological advances achieved during the late 1980s and early 1990s have improved the roller ball's overall performance. A porous point pen contains a point that is made of some porous material such as felt or ceramic. A high quality drafting pen will usually have a ceramic tip, since this wears well and does not broaden when pressure is applied while writing.

Personalized Pens

As a result many of the smaller, and perhaps questionable brokers are now gone. It is not widely understood that retail brokers and market makers typically trade against their clients and frequently take the other side of their trades. This can often create a potential conflict of interest and give rise to some of the unpleasant experiences some traders have had. A move toward NDD(No Dealing Desk), And STP(Straight Through Processing) has helped to resolve some of these concerns and restore trader confidence, but caution is still advised in ensuring that all is as it is presented.

The exception to this is EUR/JPY, which is an established traded currency pair in the interbank spot market. As the dollar's value has eroded during 2008, interest in using the euro as reference currency for prices in commodities (such as oil), as well as a larger component of foreign reserves by banks, has increased dramatically. Transactions in the currencies of commodity-producing countries, such as AUD, NZD, CAD, have also increased.

Forex Trading System

COPENHAGEN (AFP) –
The first cracks appeared among developing countries at the UN climate talks on Wednesday, revealing divisions between emerging giants and nations most exposed to the ravages of global warming.

Tensions surfaced despite efforts to restore calm to the 12-day negotiations after a row over an early draft text proposed by Denmark, the conference's chairman.

The tiny Pacific island nation of Tuvalu drove a wedge in the bloc of developing nations by calling for discussions on an amendment to the Kyoto Protocol.

For the first time, it would require China, India and other fast-growing high-population nations to take on legally-binding commitments to slash CO2 pollution after 2013.

The move was swiftly opposed by the big developing countries, ripping open a faultline within the so-called G-77 plus China bloc of 130 nations.

Until now, the group has stood by a diplomatic axiom that has prevailed since the UN climate convention came into being in 1992: rich countries caused global warming, and it was their responsibility to fix it.

According to this stance, only rich nations should be required to sign up to legally-binding emissions curbs under Kyoto.

But small island states and least developed countries -- which supported Tuvalu's move -- have become increasingly worried that such an approach will not rein in a dangerous surge of emissions in the future.

This pollution will come not from the industrialised world but from the high-population economies of China, India and Brazil.

Taukiei Kitara, head of Tuvalu's delegation, told AFP that the proposed constraints "would mostly remain on developed countries but also, partly, on big developing economies as well."

Kitara acknowledged that the proposal marked the first serious breach in a hitherto united front.

"We know the implementation of the Kyoto Protocol is not complete and we want to create an impulse for a stronger commitment," Kitara said, referring to the landmark treaty that, under its present commitment period, imposes emissions cuts on rich nations up to 2012. Related article: Sweden announces climate aid to poor countries

The 42-member Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS), including Tuvalu, and the bloc of mainly African Least Developed Countries, have rejected the widely held goal of keeping global temperatures from rising more than 2.0 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) as inadequate.

Only a cap of 1.5 C (2.7 F) compared to pre-industrial times would give these nations a chance of fighting off rising seas or crippling drought, they say.

The Copenhagen conference is taking place under the 194-nation UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

If all goes well, more than 110 leaders from around the world, including US President Barack Obama, Premier Wen Jiabao of China, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and leaders of the European Union (EU), will seal a historic deal at the climax on December 18.

A framework accord would spell out national pledges for curbing heat-trapping carbon emissions and pump hundreds of billions of dollars in aid to poor countries, providing them with newer technology and the means to toughen their defences against the impact of climate change.

Further talks would be needed, probably throughout 2010, to fill in the details of the skeletal agreement.

Negotiators had sought to restore calm after a row on Tuesday over a leaked 11-day-old early text, proposed by Denmark, that apparently sought to sound out opinion amongst a select number of countries.

The G77 lashed it as an attempted stitch-up that was skewed in favour of rich nations.

But UNFCCC Executive Secretary Yvo de Boer insisted the draft was out of date and had no chance of being endorsed as the final version.

Many delegates expressed exasperation over the row, which they described as bogus or a distraction from the negotiations themselves.

The Climate Pool

WASHINGTON – The refurbished Hubble Space Telescope has spotted the oldest galaxies yet, scientists reported Tuesday.
A newly installed wide field camera on Hubble this summer captured several thousand never-before-seen galaxies, which were formed 600 million years after the Big Bang. Scientists believe that massive explosion led to the creation of the universe.
The galaxies are about 13 billion light years away. Each light year is about 6 trillion miles.
The image was taken in a region of space that Hubble scanned in 2004. Since the new camera has a near-infared channel, it allows the orbiting telescope to peer deeper into the universe and spot distant galaxies.
The camera was installed in May by NASA spacewalking astronauts as part of a mission to upgrade and repair the aging telescope.
Hubble is a collaboration between NASA and the European Space Agency.
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On the Net:
http://hubblesite.org

LAUSANNE, Switzerland – Olympic leaders reallocated two individual medals stripped from Marion Jones because of doping on Wednesday, but withheld the 100-meter gold from Greek sprinter Katerina Thanou because of her "disgraceful" behavior in evading drug tests.
Nine years after the Sydney Games, the International Olympic Committee executive board awarded Jones' gold in the 200 meters and bronze in the long jump to the next place finishers, but denied Thanou the 100 gold because she was at the center of her own drug scandal in 2004.
Thanou never tested positive and was not linked to doping in Sydney, but was accused along with fellow Greek sprinter Kostas Kenteris of evading tests at the Athens Olympics and faking a motorcycle crash as a cover-up.
The decision means the gold medal in sprinting's marquee event will remain vacant.
"It was disgraceful behavior by her and this is a unique situation," IOC spokesman Mark Adams said. "The IOC feels we have a strong moral and a good legal case for that."
While the race results and rankings are up to the International Association of Athletics Federations, the IOC controls the Olympic medals. Thanou's lawyers have indicated they could sue or appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport if she isn't awarded the gold.
"The actual awarding of a gold medal is not a right," Adams said. "Therefore, in this case it will not happen. It's felt that by her conduct she didn't deserve to be honored with this recognition."
Adams said it's believed to be the first time the IOC has chosen not to award a gold medal.
"We have a sound legal basis," Adams said. "We are not legally bound to give medals. This is a case of taking no action. We have decided not to give her an honor that we don't think she deserves."
Thanou and Kenteris missed drug tests on the eve of the Athens opening ceremony, claiming they were injured in a motorcycle accident and spent several days in a hospital. They pulled out of the games and were later banned for two years by the IAAF.
Thanou and Kenteris — the men's 200-meter winner in Sydney — are still awaiting trial in Greece on misdemeanor charges of staging the crash.
The IOC barred Thanou from last year's Beijing Games, saying she caused a "scandalous saga" in Athens that brought the Olympics into disrepute.
"You must remember the circumstances surrounding Thanou in 2004," Adams said. "She disgraced herself and the Olympic movement by avoiding three doping tests and, according to Greek authorities, she faked a motorcycle accident ... and she admitted anti-doping rules violations when she accepted a two-year ban from the IAAF."
Tanya Lawrence of Jamaica, who finished third in the 100 in Sydney, will move up to second and become the duplicate silver medalist with Thanou. Merlene Ottey, who competed for Jamaica but is now a Slovenian citizen, goes from fourth to third and will get her sixth career bronze medal to go with two silvers in seven Olympics.
Pauline Davis-Thompson of the Bahamas is promoted from silver to gold in the 200, with Sri Lanka's Susanthika Jayasinghe moving up from bronze to silver and Jamaica's Beverly McDonald from fourth to third.
Russia's Tatyana Kotova is upgraded from fourth to bronze in the long jump.
Jones had long denied doping, but admitted in 2007 that she used steroids at the time of the Sydney Games, where she became the first woman to win five medals at a single Olympics.
She served a six-month prison sentence last year for lying about doping and her role in a check-fraud scam.

The IOC stripped Jones of her five medals, which also included gold in the 4x400 relay and bronze in the 4x100 relay, in December 2007.

Still undecided is the fate of the medals held by Jones' relay teammates.

The IOC stripped those medals in April 2008 but the relay runners appealed to CAS, arguing it was wrong to punish them for Jones' violations. CAS is due to release its verdict by Dec. 18, and the IOC will wait until then before making a decision.

KABUL – The mayor of Kabul continued to run Afghanistan's capital city Wednesday despite being sentenced to four years in jail for corruption, raising questions about President Hamid Karzai's campaign to prove he's serious about tackling graft and bribery in the government.
Mayor Abdul Ahad Sahebi was found guilty Monday of awarding a contract for a city project without competition. An Afghan court sentenced him to four years in jail and ordered him to repay more than $16,000 involved in the contract.
The mayor, who insists he is innocent, is free pending his appeal to a higher court.
"I am mayor. I am continuing my job," the 63-year-old said at a news conference Wednesday — the second since his conviction.
He said he has asked Karzai, members of parliament, the attorney general and the chief of the Supreme Court to investigate the case.
"I don't accept the court's decision," he said about his conviction. "There is a conspiracy against me."
Hafizullah Hafiz, chief of investigation at the Afghan attorney general's office, said the mayor wrote a letter to the attorney general pleading with officials not to incarcerate him because he was ill. The attorney general forwarded the mayor's request to the court that issued his sentence.
Still, law enforcement officials in Kabul wonder why the mayor is still running the city.
The attorney general's office on Tuesday sent city administration officials a letter stating that the mayor no longer had the right to run the city.
"From the eyes of the attorney general, he is not mayor of Kabul," said Enyatullah Kamal, judicial investigation chief in the Afghan attorney general's office. "It was a surprise that he has gone back to his job — that he dared to give a press conference. The court is the court in this country and nobody can stop the decision of the court. The court made a decision."
Mohammad Qasim Halimi, chief of administration for the Afghan Supreme Court, agreed.
"The court made a decision. The court decision was legal," Halimi said. "Why is he released? Why is he having press conferences? I don't know, but again I say, the court decision was legal."
On the other side of the city Wednesday, government officials held a news conference to talk about steps the government was taking to combat corruption.
Mohammad Yaseen Usmani, the top official in the Afghan government's High Office of Oversight and Anti-corruption, said four of the Karzai government's 25 ministers were behind in making financial disclosures required by law. He said that will not be allowed for incoming ministers of Karzai's new Cabinet, which is expected to be announced on Saturday. He said the new members of the Cabinet will have to complete financial disclosures before they can be approved by the parliament.
Not surprisingly, however, the anti-corruption news conference was dominated by reporters' questions about the mayor.
Usmani said the mayor's release did not violate any law.
The top U.N. official for Afghanistan did not address the mayor's case directly, but did stress that the fight against corruption in Afghanistan will be won not so much through new strategies, but through the implementation of existing law.
"The decisive element in order to fight corruption in Afghanistan is not the constant discussion of new mechanisms and new structures and new commissions," Norwegian Kai Eide told reporters. "We may need that. But structures do exist. A legal system does exist that is able, to a large extent, to address corruption."

COPENHAGEN (AFP) –
A leaked Danish proposal triggered outrage at Copenhagen climate talks, with developing nations condemning a draft deal that they argued would consign most of the world's poor to permanent penury.

The "draft political agreement" circulated informally by the host government exposed the deep faultlines besetting a 192-nation conference aimed at averting the potential planetary catastrophe of global warming.

The cost of failure in Copenhagen was underlined by the UN's World Meteorological Organisation, which said the current decade was shaping up to be the hottest since accurate records began in 1850.

However, the G77 group of emerging nations denounced the Danish text as a backroom stitch-up that favoured rich countries on the pivotal issues of emissions curbs and financing to combat climate change.

The text is a "serious violation that threatens the success of the Copenhagen negotiating process", said Sudanese envoy Lumumba Stanislas Dia Pin, who heads the G77 bloc including top polluter China and India.

"The G77 members will not walk out of this negotiation at this late hour because we can't afford a failure in Copenhagen," he told journalists.

"However, we will not sign an unequitable deal. We can't accept a deal that condemns 80 percent of the world population to further suffering and injustice."

The Danish draft, seen by AFP, states the conference's parties have a "shared vision" for limiting warming to a maximum of two degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial times.

Emissions pledges are not detailed but, among other things, the draft points to a year by which developing countries, which are the big emitters of tomorrow, would see their emissions reach a maximum.

Chinese negotiator Su Wei said he had not seen the text, but added: "It is too early to talk about a peak year for developing countries."

The text also makes no mention of extending post-2012 commitments under the Kyoto Protocol, which mandates emissions curbs for developed nations but does not impose legally binding action on poorer economies.

"Like ants in a room full of elephants, poor countries are at risk of being squeezed out of the climate talks in Copenhagen," said Antonio Hill of Oxfam International.

Developing countries, several of which are already big polluters, are refusing to budge unless rich nations slash their emissions by at least 40 percent by 2020 over 1990 levels.

And rich countries are under pressure to kick in 10 billion dollars a year in "fast-track" funding from 2010 to 2012 to transfer anti-warming technology and expertise to poorer ones.

UN climate chief Yvo de Boer and Danish conference chairwoman Connie Hedegaard sought to still the ruckus, insisting the text dated November 27 was informal and simply aimed at sounding out opinion.

"Under no circumstances is this a 'secret Danish draft' for a new climate change agreement. Such a text does not exist," Hedegaard said, stressing that multiple negotiating papers would be "used for testing various positions".

UN chief Ban Ki-moon said earlier he was "optimistic" that the 12-day negotiations climaxing in a summit of some 110 world leaders would yield a "robust agreement".

Prospects of a breakthrough were bolstered late Monday when the United States declared it would start to regulate carbon dioxide, the principal greenhouse gas, as a dangerous pollutant.related article: US takes action on CO2

President Barack Obama is due to join the closing summit. But highlighting the domestic political constraints he faces, Obama will be trailed in Copenhagen by Republicans adamant that climate change is science fiction.

Members of Congress's minority party vowed to go to Denmark to highlight a scandal over leaked emails from leading climate scientists, which they said backed their suspicions that the global warming threat was overblown.Related article: US Republicans to rain on summit

"I will not be one of the sycophants that says climate change is the biggest problem facing the world and we need to do all these draconian things that cost jobs," said Joe Barton, the top Republican on the House energy committee.

ARLINGTON, Tenn. – A Tennessee mayor is apologizing for writing on his Facebook page that President Barack Obama deliberately timed a speech last week to block the "Peanuts" Christmas special.
Russell Wiseman, mayor of the Memphis suburb of Arlington, also said the president is Muslim. Obama is Christian.
The Commercial Appeal reports Wiseman e-mailed the media Monday to say he regrets offending anyone with what he described as a "poor attempt at tongue-in-cheek humor amongst friends." He also says he allowed things to go too far.
The town issued a statement on its Web site saying the mayor's views do not reflect its official ideals and beliefs. Wiseman has since deleted his Facebook account.

George Smith, a London taxi driver, was the first person to be convicted of drunk driving, on 10 September 1897. He was fined 20 shillings.

There are many ways that a person could give themselves the illusion that they are more sober. Drinking coffee increases awareness; therefore, the drinker believes that they are more sober. In reality, the person is still impaired for the purposes of driving, as their coordination, reaction time, etc. are still affected by the alcohol. Eating various dehydrated and salty products such as crackers, chips and pretzels may settle the stomach allowing the consumer to feel more sober when, in reality, they are simply keeping their blood sugars from crashing, as drinking without the consumption of food would.

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LONDON (AFP) –
A Briton killed his wife in his sleep, after dreaming that she was an intruder in their camper van, a court heard on Tuesday.

Brian Thomas, who suffers from a sleep disorder, admits killing his wife Christine while they spent a night on a car park in west Wales in July last year, Swansea Crown court was told.

But the 59-year-old, who has two grown-up daughters with his 57-year-old wife, is pleading not guilty due to insanity, a lawyer said.

The court heard the couple had stopped for the night in a car park, but their sleep was disturbed by young men who gathered there with their cars, revving their engines and screeching their tyres.

So Thomas decided to move the van to another car park. But at 3.49am the following morning he called police to say he thought he had killed his wife.

He said he had been dreaming that he was fighting with the "boy racers" who had disturbed the couple earlier that night. He thought he had put one of them in a headlock, but when he woke up he realised it was Christine.

Prosecution lawyer Paul Thomas said sleep experts who assessed the accused concluded he had killed his wife while in the midst of a sleep disorder and that his behaviour had been involuntary.

The lawyer told the jury it was a "highly unusual" case and the prosecution was not seeking a verdict of guilty to murder or manslaughter, but would accept "a special verdict of not guilty of murder by reason of insanity".

The court was adjourned until Wednesday.

MEXICO CITY – Northern Mexico's Yaqui Indians buried their lost warriors after a two-year effort to rescue the remains from New York's American Museum of Natural History, where the victims of one of North America's last Indian massacres lay in storage for more than a century.
The burial Monday capped an unprecedented joint effort by U.S. and Mexican Indian tribes to press both governments to bring justice and closure to a 1902 massacre by Mexican federal troops that killed about 150 Yaqui men, women and children.
"They would not be at peace with their souls and conscience until they got their people back to their land," said Jose Antonio Pompa of Mexico's National Institute of Anthropology and History.
The 12 skulls and other blood-spattered remains interred in Vicam, a traditional Yaqui town in western Sonora state, carried some of the first forensic evidence of Mexico's brutal campaign to eliminate the tribe.
As if the horror of the massacre weren't enough, U.S. anthropologist Ales Hrdlicka came upon some of the bodies while they were still decaying, hacked off the heads with a machete and boiled them to remove the flesh for his study of Mexico's "races."
He sent the resulting collection to the New York museum. On Monday afternoon, on the slope of a mountain near the Yaqui village of Vicam, the 12 sets of remains were "baptized" to give them names that have been lost to history.
They were given a warriors' honor guard, and amid drumming, chants and traditional "deer" and "coyote" dances, each was laid to rest in the ground they had been striving to return to when they were slaughtered.
Perhaps best known for the mystical and visionary powers ascribed to them by writer Carlos Castaneda, the Yaquis fought off repeated attempts by the Mexican government to eliminate the tribe.
But they were largely defeated by 1900, and dictator Porfirio Diaz began moving them off their fertile farmland to less valuable territory or to virtual enslavement on haciendas as far away as eastern Yucatan state.
In 1902, about 300 men, women and children escaped from forced exile and started walking back to their lands in Sonora. They were stopped in the mountains near the capital of Hermosillo by 600 heavily armed soldiers, who attacked them from behind. What ensued, long known as "the Battle of the Sierra Mazatan," is now considered one of the last large-scale Indian massacres in North America.
"What soldiers were doing was — instead of wasting ammunition — turning the rifle around and hitting people in the head who were down, to make sure they were dead," said anthropologist Ventura Perez, who did a trauma investigation on the skulls for the American Yaqui tribes.
Some bore execution-style gunshot wounds to the back of the head. Cut marks on the bones indicated troops took ears as trophies, said Perez, a professor at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.
The bones were forgotten in museum storage until Perez and anthropologist Andrew Darling, who works for the Gila River Indian Community in Arizona, started to study them in 2007 and realized their gruesome story.
The Pascua Yaqui tribe of Arizona took up the fight to have the bones returned.
"The approach we use is that we are one people ... the border is just an artificial concept," said Robert Valencia, vice chairman of the Pascua Yaquis.
U.S. Indian remains are protected under the North American Indian Graves Protection Act. But because the law doesn't cover Mexican remains held in the U.S., the Arizona tribe contacted the Mexican Yaquis and they in turn contacted the Mexican government, which also decided to get involved.
The museum agreed the bones and other artifacts — including blood-spattered blankets and a baby carrying-board from which Hrdlicka dumped an infant's corpse — should go back, saying "cultural sensitivities and values within the museum community have changed" since Hrdlicka's era.
Mexico's National Institute of Anthropology and History decided the real owners were the Yaquis and handed over the remains and artifacts last month for burial. The tribe held a memorial ceremony in a wood-paneled hall at the New York museum on Central Park with incense, drums and chants.

"This is the first time that the (natural history museum) has turned over cultural patrimony to a foreign government that immediately returned it to the indigenous people," the museum said in a statement.

The remains were honored by Yaqui on both sides of the border, spurring the tribes' hopes for recognition of their status as a single people who have long lived in both countries — in Sonora and in southern Arizona near Tucson.

The remains were packed into ceremonial wooden boxes and taken first to Tucson, where they were given a hero's welcome by Pascua Yaquis, including an honor guard of Indian veterans of the U.S. Army.

"That is why the warriors' role is important, because when we make territorial claims, it is because Yaqui blood was spilled there," said Mexican Yaqui elder Ernesto Arguelles, 59. "This is the first opportunity we have had to stop and mourn."

DETROIT (Reuters) –
Ford Motor Co (F.N) posted a $1 billion quarterly profit on Monday, defying Wall Street forecasts of a loss, as it cut costs and gained market share, leading it to raise its 2011 outlook to "solidly profitable" from break-even.

Ford's shares surged 8 percent as the surprising profit and increased outlook overshadowed news that the United Auto Workers union rejected a tentative cost-cutting deal with the automaker that would have brought its labor costs in line with U.S. rivals.

The only large U.S. automaker not to file for bankruptcy in 2009, Ford also said later on Monday it is seeking to extend its revolving credit facility from 2011 to 2013 and raise another $3 billion of capital through convertible debt and equity offerings.

The quarterly results provided more evidence that Ford has distanced itself from U.S. rivals General Motors Co (GM.UL) and Chrysler, which have struggled to complete restructurings after emerging from government-funded bankruptcies earlier in 2009.

Ford seized North American market share from GM and Chrysler when they halted most production to prepare and execute their bankruptcy cases.

"We're creating a very strong business and we are not taking taxpayer money," Mulally said on a conference call with analysts. "So the advantages clearly outweigh any potential disadvantage."

Ford reported $1.3 billion of positive cash flow in the third quarter, its first positive quarter since the second quarter of 2007, and forecast positive cash flow in the fourth quarter. It burned through $4.7 billion of cash in the first half of 2009.

The company also reported its first quarterly operating profit in North America since the first quarter of 2005.

Ford said it was confident the global economy would be improving by 2011, but it added the near-term growth outlook "remains rather uncertain."

Some analysts believe Ford will be profitable in 2010.

"As the market starts to turn and sales volumes start to recover, Ford should be solidly in the black next year, certainly ahead of schedule," Autoconomy.com analyst Erich Merkle said.

CREDIT ARM'S PROFIT MORE THAN QUADRUPLED

Ford reported a net profit of $997 million, or 29 cents per share, for the third quarter, compared with a net loss of $161 million, or a 7 cents per share, a year earlier. Revenue fell $800 million to $30.9 billion.

Operating profit was 26 cents per share excluding one-time items. On that basis, analysts on average expected a loss of 12 cents per share, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.

The automaker's results were boosted by Ford Motor Credit Co, which reported that profits rose to $427 million in the third quarter from $95 million a year earlier.

From its automotive business, Ford reported a $446 million pretax operating profit worldwide, including positive results in all four of its regions.

Mulally said he was "cautiously optimistic" and some financial market indicators were returning to levels seen before the Lehman Brothers collapse in September 2008, but consumer confidence and high unemployment remain a drag on the U.S. and UK economies.

"We're just not sure about the strength of the recovery," Mulally said.

Ford posted losses totaling $30 billion from 2006 through 2008 and remains saddled with a much heavier debt load than GM or Chrysler following their bankruptcy reorganizations.

Ford and other automakers are fighting through a plunge in auto sales in North America due to the recession. The company left its 2010 U.S. auto industry sales forecast at 12.5 million vehicles, including medium and heavy trucks, but said it would give an updated outlook early next year.

Until a U.S. economic recovery takes off, cash will remain king for Ford, which borrowed more than $23 billion in late 2006 to finance its turnaround and believes it has enough money to complete its restructuring.

The automaker received $500 million of annual labor cost savings from concessions negotiated with the UAW in February, but said it needed more cuts to align long-term costs with those of GM and Chrysler.

Analysts said the relative health of Ford compared with GM and Chrysler was a key factor in the rejection.

"The positive quarterly results released by Ford this morning are further evidence of the contributions that Ford workers have made," UAW President Ron Gettelfinger said, announcing the rejection of the proposed concessions.

Ford and UAW leaders reached the agreement in mid October, but the vote among some 41,000 Ford UAW workers met stiff opposition over a "no-strike" clause on wages and benefits.

Ford's union workers in Canada ratified a cost-cutting deal over the weekend to preserve most of the Ford jobs in Canada.

Ford shares ended up 58 cents, or 8.3 percent, at $7.58 on the New York Stock Exchange.

(Reporting by David Bailey and Soyoung Kim; Editing by John Wallace, Maureen Bavdek, Tim Dobbyn and Steve Orlofsky)

WASHINGTON (Reuters) –
An outbreak of food-borne illness, linked to dangerous bacteria in ground beef, sickened 28 people and may have caused two deaths in the U.S. Northeast, health officials said on Monday.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said all but three of the illnesses were in the Northeast and 18 were in the six New England states. A common strain of E. coli bacteria was involved so tests were under way to see if all of the reported cases have the same cause.

State officials said a death in New Hampshire was linked to the ground beef that is being recalled by Fairbank Farms of Ashville, New York. The New York State Health Department said a death in the Albany area from E. coli O157:H7 bacteria was being investigated to see if it is linked.

New Hampshire officials did not release information about the death in their state. The death in New York state last month involved an adult with underlying medical conditions, said the CDC. Two people were hospitalized in New Hampshire.

Fairbank Farms announced the recall on Saturday of 545,699 lbs (248,450 kg) of fresh ground beef products. The beef was produced in mid-September and probably was labeled for sale by the end of the month, said USDA.

The Agriculture Department, which oversees meat safety, said an investigation led it to conclude "there is an association between the fresh ground beef products and illnesses in Connecticut, Maine and Massachusetts." USDA worked with state and federal officials in examining a cluster of E. coli O157:H7 illnesses.

A potentially deadly bacteria, E. coli can cause bloody diarrhea, dehydration and, in severe cases, kidney failure. The very young, the elderly and people with weak immune systems are the most susceptible to foodborne illness.

USDA said it would examine Fairbank Farms' food safety plan this week.

A string of food-borne safety scares led the U.S. House of Representatives to pass legislation this summer to require more inspections and oversight of food manufacturers and would give the government new authority to order recalls.

The Fairbank Farms beef went to retailers including Trader Joe's, Price Chopper, Lancaster and Wild Harvest, Shaw's, a unit of Supervalu, BJ's, Ford Brothers and Giant, a unit of Ahold, in eight states -- Connecticut, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Virginia.

A complete list of products is available at:

http://link.reuters.com/vyx27f

The beef was produced September 14-16, and the company urged consumers to check their freezers for products listed in the recall. Labels of the recalled packages will say EST 492 inside the USDA seal.

(Reporting by Charles Abbott; Editing by Christian Wiessner)

ST. LOUIS – The founder of the online gambling site BetOnSports.com was sentenced Monday to more than four years in prison, ending a lengthy investigation and prosecution into one of the world's largest offshore sports gambling companies.
Gary Kaplan, 50, must also forfeit $43.6 million in illegally obtained revenue as part of a plea agreement. He also has agreed not to block another $7 million being forfeited by associates. Prosecutors said Tuesday that Kaplan still has tens of millions in Swiss bank accounts.
Kaplan pleaded guilty in August to racketeering conspiracy, violating the Wire Wager Act and conspiring to violate it. Prosecutors had been investigating offshore sports gambling since 1997, and BetOnSports since 2001.
Kaplan, sentenced to four years and three months, could end up spending another year behind bars. He has been jailed for two years and seven months since his March 2007 arrest in Puerto Rico.
Kaplan's attorneys had argued for leniency, including home confinement, and said he would like to pursue charitable projects to help the community.
But U.S. District Judge Carol Jackson said Kaplan's two prior felonies, bookmaking and forgery, and a misdemeanor showed her he "continued to disrespect" the law. She said he broke laws he didn't agree with, knowing his activity was illegal.
"Mr. Kaplan made an educated decision, a gamble if you will," she said. "Now, here's the payoff."
She also ordered him to substance and mental health counseling, and to earn a high school diploma. And she said Kaplan may not launch or run a business without the permission of the probation office.
Online gaming is illegal in the U.S., and in 2006, a federal grand jury indicted Kaplan, his company and several associates. Three other former executives, including two of Kaplan's siblings, have pleaded guilty and will be sentenced Tuesday. A fourth will be sentenced later.
Kaplan, a high-school dropout who started out as a New York bookie, founded the offshore betting company in 1995, setting up entities in Aruba, Antigua and eventually Costa Rica. The firm solicited U.S. citizens to place sports wagers by phone and over the Internet directly from their accounts.
In his guilty plea in August, Kaplan said BetOnSports had 1 million registered customers and accepted more than 10 million sports bets worth more than $1 billion in 2004 alone. His company, by then based in Costa Rica, employed 1,700 people.
Kaplan took BetOnSports public on the London Stock Exchange's Alternative Investment Market in 2004, which netted him more than $100 million that was deposited in Swiss bank accounts. For the next two years, he served as a BetOnSports consultant.
Prosecutors said the company falsely advertised that its gambling operations were legal, and misled gamblers into believing that money transferred to BetOnSports was safe and available to withdraw at any time. Instead, investigators said, the money was used to expand operations, including purchase of a rival betting firm.
When BetOnSports ceased operation in 2006, customers lost more than $16 million.
Kaplan told Jackson in August that he initially believed that adhering to the laws in Aruba, Antigua, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic and the United Kingdom kept him in good stead with U.S. laws. But he said he became aware as early as 2000 that such dealings violated U.S. law, and got confirmation in a legal opinion in 2002. Yet, he kept operating.
Kaplan apologized to the judge Monday for the "pain and embarrassment" he caused to his family, and said he'd "paid a monumental price for poor decisions." His attorneys said that Kaplan, from his jail cell, has made six-figure contributions to St. Louis-area charities in recent months.
The case could have been filed anywhere in the U.S., but the Eastern District of Missouri's former U.S. Attorney, Catherine Hanaway, was aggressive in going after online gambling operations.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Steven Holtshouser said the case sends a message that the government is serious about enforcing sports-betting laws, tracking violations "even when they're carried on off shore, and especially when U.S. citizens are trying to evade them."

U.S. attorneys in New York, Pennsylvania and California have pursued other lesser figures in sports booking. A Kaplan business partner, Norman Steinberg, fled to Costa Rica after pleading guilty in Pennsylvania. Another associate, Gregory Haggard, is a fugitive, Holtshouser said.

NEW YORK – Remember Ida, the fossil discovery announced last May with its own book and TV documentary? A publicity blitz called it "the link" that would reveal the earliest evolutionary roots of monkeys, apes and humans. Experts protested that Ida wasn't even a close relative. And now a new analysis supports their reaction.
In fact, Ida is as far removed from the monkey-ape-human ancestry as a primate could be, says Erik Seiffert of Stony Brook University in New York.
He and his colleagues compared 360 specific anatomical features of 117 living and extinct primate species to draw up a family tree. They report the results in Thursday's issue of the journal Nature.
Ida is a skeleton of a 47 million-year-old cat-sized creature found in Germany. It starred in a book, "The Link: Uncovering Our Earliest Ancestor."
Ida represents a previously unknown primate species called Darwinius. The scientists who formally announced the finding said they weren't claiming Darwinius was a direct ancestor of monkeys, apes and humans. But they did argue that it belongs in the same major evolutionary grouping, and that it showed what an actual ancestor of that era might have looked like.
The new analysis says Darwinius does not belong in the same primate category as monkeys, apes and humans. Instead, the analysis concluded, it falls into the other major grouping, which includes lemurs.
Experts agreed.
"This is a rigorous analysis based on many features," said Eric Sargis, an anthropology professor at Yale. He said he'd found the argument of the Darwinius researchers unconvincing, so the new result came as no surprise.
In fact, it confirms what most scientists think, said David Begun, a paleoanthropologist at the University of Toronto.
Jorn Hurum of the Natural History Museum in Oslo, Norway, an author of the Ida paper, said he welcomed the new analysis.
Darwinius is an example of a group of primates called adapoids, and "we are happy to start the scientific discussion" about what Ida means for where adapoids fit on the primate family tree, he wrote in an e-mail.
___
On the Net:
Nature: http://www.nature.com/nature

Third party administrators are companies that perform underwriting and sometimes claims handling services for insurance companies. These companies often have special expertise that the insurance companies do not have.

Financial stability and strength of an insurance company should be a major consideration when purchasing an insurance contract. An insurance premium paid currently provides coverage for losses that might arise many years in the future. For that reason, the viability of the insurance carrier is very important. In recent years, a number of insurance companies have become insolvent, leaving their policyholders with no coverage (or coverage only from a government-backed insurance pool or other arrangement with less attractive payouts for losses). A number of independent rating agencies, such as Best's, Fitch, Standard & Poor's, and Moody's Investors Service, provide information and rate the financial viability of insurance companies.

Florida Homeowners Insurance

MADRID – The European Union has launched an investigation into a prized Spanish wetland that has turned bone dry through mismanagement of water resources and is now on fire underground, white smoke now rising from areas where fish once swam.
The EU wants the Spanish government to explain how it plans to save Las Tablas de Daimiel National Park in the central Castilla-La Mancha region, European Commission spokeswoman Barbara Helfferich told The Associated Press on Thursday.
The park, one of Spain's few wetlands, is classified as a UNESCO biosphere site and an EU-protected area because of its birdlife.
But it has been drying up for decades, largely because of wells dug by farmers on the edges of the park to tap an aquifer that feeds the wetland's lagoons. Many of the wells are illegal. Environmentalists call this case a particularly glaring example of how a natural resource can be abused.
In August, intense summer heat and parched soil caused the peat just under the surface of the soil to spontaneously ignite. Now, several areas of the park are on fire underground and white smoke seeps out of deep cracks in the parched soil.
"We have seen a situation where there is continuous degradation of territory," Helfferich said from Brussels.
The EU told the Spanish government about its investigation last week and Spain has 10 weeks to explain how it plans to respond to the crisis, Helfferich said.
"Underground fires at the moment cannot be extinguished," she said, adding that the 27-nation bloc has asked Spain how it plans to deal with it.
In a worst-case scenario, the EU could punish Spain with a hefty fine if it deems that the government's management of the wetlands was insufficient.
Josep Puxeau, the Environment Ministry's top official on water issues, said the government has an emergency plan to pump in torrents of water from a river to put out the fires and restore the acquifer.
It will also continue with a policy of buying up land and farms outside the park to halt water being drawn from wells, he told reporters.
The park lies 90 miles (150 kilometers) south of Madrid. Not all of it is wetland. The area capable of holding water covers about 4,500 acres (1,800 hectares) but less than 1 percent of that actually has water.
Park ranger Jesus Garcia Consuegra, who grew up in the area, remembers lusher times. He would go fishing there as a boy, venturing out at night in a rowboat equipped with a lantern to draw fish to the surface.
"It was so clear you could see to the bottom. You could see the fish there. You could watch them and it was simply marvelous," he said in a documentary on the park's Web site.
Jose Manuel Hernandez, spokesman for the environmental group Ecologists in Action, placed the blame for the wetland's demise squarely on excessive use of underground water tables for irrigation. He said climate change has nothing to do with the problem because La Mancha is dry anyway and rain levels have not dropped that much.
Rather, the culprit is a government policy over the past 20 years that allowed farmers to shift from non-irrigated crops like olive groves and wheat to thirsty ones like grapes and melons, he told the AP.
The Guadiana River, for instance, which once flowed through La Mancha, has essentially vanished for this reason and peat fires like the ones in Las Tablas de Daimiel have been common in that riverbed for years.
"The Guadiana has been burning for 20 years," Hernandez said. "People are just waking up now because the fires have cropped up in a national park."

He called the idea of bringing in huge amounts of water to put out the fires and restore the acquifer a pointless stopgap measure: the land is so dry and the water table now so low that water brought in from outside will simply get sucked up by the soil and not reach the acquifer.

It is artificial to try to save a wetland this way, and better to manage the existing water more efficiently by cutting down on use of wells, Hernandez said.

"What we need to do is recover the dynamics of the ecosystem."

MOUNTAIN HOME, Idaho – If Marion Lewis had his way, he'd take Washington, D.C.-area sniper John Allen Muhammad into the Idaho desert near his home and kill him slowly, over three days.
"He would be screaming the whole time. That's why I can't claim to be a good Christian," said Lewis, whose 25-year-old daughter was killed in Maryland in the 2002 sniper spree.
But instead of personal retribution, Lewis would settle for being present in the Virginia death chamber Nov. 10 when Muhammad is scheduled to die.
He doesn't have the money for the trip to see his daughter's killer breathe his last breath. The 57-year-old construction worker says he has been waylaid by the recession, hasn't held a steady job for two years and has been collecting unemployment on-and-off since 2007. He's trying to unload a house near Boise in a short sale.
Though Lewis acknowledges he feels "a little ghoulish," he called syndicated news program Inside Edition looking for help to pay for a journey he believes will put some semblance of closure on his daughter's murder. He has learned that justice has its price.
On Thursday morning, he said the New York-based show has agreed to finance a four-day trip to Virginia, in exchange for interviews before and after Muhammad's execution. Lewis says he'll return about $900 in donations he received from private citizens since his story started getting attention this week, along with sending the donors thank-you notes.
"There's never been any question about watching that animal die, for me," said Lewis, who lives with his wife, Jo, and two beagles in a scruffy home two miles from the tidy cemetery where his daughter is buried.
His daughter, Lori Ann Lewis-Rivera, was vacuuming her minivan Oct. 3, 2002 at a gas station near where she lived in Silver Spring, Md., when Muhammad and his young accomplice, Lee Boyd Malvo, gunned her down. She was one of 10 people killed in the three-week killing spree.
Lewis' living room walls are covered in pictures reminding him of the tragedy: Lori on her wedding day; Lori and Nelson Rivera, the Honduran landscaper she met at a Mormon church and married; their daughter, Jocelin, now 10.
Patricia Allue, director of the Prince William County Victim/Witness Program in Virginia, said Lewis contacted her office looking for assistance but she didn't have funds available. Officials in Maryland, where Lori Rivera was killed, didn't immediately return a phone call seeking comment.
And the Virginia Department of Corrections doesn't provide financial assistance to victims' families to attend executions. Officials there have been in contact with relatives of Muhammad's and Malvo's victims, including those killed in Maryland and Washington, D.C., in part because the facility in rural southern Virginia where the execution will take place has limited capacity for those wanting to watch Muhammad die.
Larry Traylor, a prisons spokesman, said his agency does help families like Lewis' with logistics: Directions to the execution spot, nearby hotels, details about how family members enter execution viewing rooms after other witnesses, then leave first after it's over, to protect their privacy.
"We try to chat with them, to explain what the process is, to put their mind at ease and help them make the decision as to whether they want to attend," Traylor said. "Then, it's really up to them."
Fearful he'd miss the execution, Lewis called Inside Edition, a 20-year-old news program that mixes celebrity news, investigations and human-interest stories.
The show will pay for Lewis to fly to Virginia on Nov. 8, attend the execution two days later, and then return to Idaho after Muhammad is dead. Lewis said he isn't quite sure what attending will bring, but he doesn't want to miss it.
"As far as closure, this will never be closed," he said.
Lewis said his daughter's death has changed his family in ways both big and small. Jocelin, Lori's daughter, lives with her father and his new wife in Northern California. Her mother was murdered when the then 3-year-old was too young to understand she was never coming back, Lewis said.
Lewis quit a job four years ago working at a gravel pit near Boise. The lulls between each new load of rock into the crusher he was operating gave him too much time to think about his daughter.

The only thing better than being in the death chamber Nov. 10 would be to personally execute Muhammad, he said.

"Pushing the button, yeah," Lewis said. "During the trial, I never went to the court because I didn't figure I needed to end up in jail. His guards wouldn't have been able to keep him from me."

WASHINGTON – In the largest single strike at Mexican drug operations in the U.S., federal officials on Thursday announced the arrests of more than 300 people in raids across the country aimed at the newest and most violent cartel.
La Familia has earned a reputation for dominating the methamphetamine trade and displaying graphic violence, including beheadings. U.S. officials said the cartel, based in the state of Michoacan, in southwestern Mexico, has a vast network pumping drugs throughout the United States, specializing in methamphetamine.
The arrests took place in 38 cities, from Boston to Seattle and Tampa, Fla., to St. Paul, Minn., in 19 states.
Attorney General Eric Holder pledged to keep hitting La Familia and the cartels responsible for a wave of bloodshed in Mexico. He said the U.S. would attack them at all levels, from the leadership to their supply chains reaching far into the United States.
"To the extent that they do grow back, we have to work with our Mexican counterparts to cut off the heads of these snakes, to get at the heads of the cartels, indict them, try them, if they're in Mexico, extradite them to the United States," Holder said at a news conference.
Michele Leonhart, who heads the Drug Enforcement Administration, said La Familia's power has grown quickly, in part due to its quasi-religious background. DEA officials say the cartel professes a "Robin Hood mentality" of aiding the poor by stealing from the rich. Some drug proceeds are used to give bibles and money to the poor, according to investigators.
The Obama administration has directed more agents, resources and money to fight the cartel's presence along the Mexico-U.S. border. But the arrests over the past two days occurred far beyond that region.
"The problem is not just along the southwest border, it is all over our country now," said Kenneth Melson, head of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives.
In Dallas alone, 77 people were charged by a number of different federal and local law enforcement agencies.
On Wednesday and Thursday, more than 3,000 federal agents and police officers carried out arrests in more than a dozen states, as part of a long-running effort that has netted nearly 1,200 arrests over almost four years.
The suspects face a combination of federal and state charges.
In the latest legal assault on La Familia, a New York grand jury has indicted an alleged cartel leader, Servando Gomez-Martinez. He is linked to one of the more brazen acts of cartel violence.
In July, after a dozen Mexican police officers were found murdered, officials say Gomez-Martinez publicly proclaimed his membership in La Familia and said the cartel was locked in a battle with Mexican police.
Many of the new charges are centered on the cartel's methamphetamine distribution, but other charges involve cocaine and marijuana, the officials said.
The officials said states where arrests were made or charges filed include Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Kansas, Illinois, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Oklahoma, Nevada, New York, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Washington state.
___
On the Net:
Justice Department: http://www.justice.gov/

Drug Enforcement Administration: http://www.dea.gov

Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives: http://www.atf.gov/

WASHINGTON – Two agencies with oversight of the financial markets on Friday proposed changes to eliminate their differences in regulating similar securities and futures investments.
The recommendations to Congress on "harmonizing" regulations by the Securities and Exchange Commission, the government's primary markets watchdog, and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission are part of the plan to overhaul the nation's financial rules called for in the Obama administration's blueprint.
The explosive growth of the unregulated market for derivatives — the complex financial instruments blamed for precipitating the financial crisis — has made the need to fix gaps and overlaps in the two agencies' regulations especially critical, government officials say.
The House Financial Services Committee voted Thursday to impose regulation for the first time on derivatives, which helped bring down Wall Street's Lehman Brothers and nearly toppled insurance conglomerate American International Group Inc. as the crisis struck last fall.
The bill must be reconciled with a proposal by the House Agriculture Committee and faces scrutiny by the full House as well as in the Senate, where business-friendly Republicans are likely to wield more influence.
CFTC Chairman Gary Gensler has argued for a tougher proposal. He said in a statement Thursday that he wants to work with Congress "to complete legislation that covers the entire marketplace without exception and to ensure that regulators have appropriate authorities to protect the public."
The report released Friday makes recommendations for legislation to expand the agencies' authority in certain areas and increase their enforcement powers by, for example, establishing protections for whistleblowers. It also recommends new rules to improve their coordination.
"These recommendations will help to fill regulatory gaps, eliminate inconsistent oversight and promote greater collaboration," SEC Chairman Mary Schapiro said in a statement.
The SEC and the CFTC, which oversees the trading of oil, gas and other commodities as well as financial instruments, have battled in the past over regulatory turf. But they recently agreed on sharing regulation of the $600 trillion over-the-counter derivatives market.
The value of derivatives hinges on an underlying investment or commodity, such as currency rates, oil futures or interest rates. They are designed to reduce the risk of loss from the underlying asset.
The report also recommends legislation to provide for speeded judicial review of any jurisdictional disputes regarding new financial products. Many extended legal disputes over whether specific products should be regulated as securities or futures resulted from the agencies' overlapping authorities, the White House said in June.
The two agencies held joint public meetings and solicited views from investors, industry experts and market participants in developing the recommendations.

The Nation --

We've got a new "Think Again" column called, believe it or not, "I'll See Your Testicles...' (Catfight on the Right)" and it's here. (though perhaps they changed the title later in the day)

Also, I did an op-ed on the move away from AIPAC-style politics for American Jews for the IHT, which is up on the NYT site, here.

Classified section: I'm selling fifty or so Miles Davis cds--everything on Columbia during the key period--mostly in beautiful box sets, etc, and would love to sell the whole thing as a package. Email if genuinely interested. Also, I have two lousy seats for Bruce on 11/8 and one for 11/7 I need to get rid of. Email below....

Ok, here's Pierce

Charles Pierce Newton, MA.

Hey Doc:

"Daddy ran whiskey in a big black Dodge/Bought it at an auction at the Masons lodge."

Weekly WWOZ Pick To Click: "My Mama Told Me So." (The B-3 Organ Summit): Price Waterhouse couldn't fake the numbers to calibrate exactly how much I love New Orleans.

Short Takes:

Part The First: Considering that the money behind the sainted American Football League fifty years ago belonged to the Hunt family in Dallas, the pre-eminent wingnut sugar daddies of the 1950's and '60's, it's pretty rich that, even in the beginnings of what may be a collective-bargaining armageddon, both the labor and management sides of the modern NFL have declined to be associated with the former Jeff Christie. The weeping in the wingnuttosphere leaves me strangely unmoved. It does, however, move me to gales of helpless laughter. Dude, I am not. You are not. You are, however, an idiot.

Part The Second: There is no way I am not buying this. "Here comes Santa Claus/Here comes Santa Claus/Right down Highway 61."

Part The Third: My knowledge of Russian libel law is admittedly limited, but I'm thinking this case is kind of a longshot.

Part The Fourth: Good nominees, I think this is a good list. But, check out the list of judges in the nonfiction category. Apparently, Waldo The Drunk Security Guard at Salon has a brother who works for the National Book Foundation. We're damned lucky Glenn Beck isn't a finalist, I guess.

Part The Penultimate: this was the best treatment of the whole Nobel business that I read anywhere. The Pooka McPhellimey and I will brook no debate on this point.

Part The Ultimate: The ongoing scandal in Texas regarding that state's eminently successful execution of Cameron Willingham has begun to fascinate me, even at a considerable distance. (For those of you who want to get up to speed quickly, Josh's joint has done an exemplary job of aggregating the local reporting.) In brief, it appears that Texas, over the signature of Governor Rick (Goodhair) Perry--pace, Molly I.--executed a fellow who was most likely innocent and did so on the basis of cheesy arson science apparently drawn from the extended research of Professor Otto Yerass. It also appears that Perry signed off on the execution despite his being aware of the fact that the evidence was so full of holes you could use it for a flute. I say these things "appear" to be true because there's an investigation going on down there, but it's being hamstrung because, every time the probe gets too close to his own personal nether regions, Perry fires another couple of the investigators. Perry, it should be recalled, is currently running for re-election in a hot Republican primary against Senator Kay Bailey Hutchinson (R-Token.)

What's disturbing--if undeniably compelling--about the case is the self-evident fact that Texas is apparently governed at the moment by a complete fucking barbarian. The evidence suggests quite clearly that Perry didn't give the hindquarters of a rat as to whether or not he was signing the death warrant for an innocent prisoner. And the evidence quite clearly suggests that Perry further will defy any attempt to judge his conduct in the matter. What is even more disturbing is that there is almost no chance that the state-sanctioned murder of Cameron Willingham, an innocent man, will be any kind of an issue in that aforementioned primary hooley. (They're kinda/sorta upset about the cover-up ( but not the crime itself.) The Texas GOP is exclusively the province of the party's knuckle-dragging base--Check out the state party platform sometime. It will curl your hair--and that base doesn't care how many mistakes are made in the death chamber as long as it keeps humming.

In that sense, it was the stormy petrel of what came to pass for the national Republican party once its various deals with various devils came due. For the conservative "movement," the death-penalty never has had anything to do with criminal justice. It was always about boosting your political testosterone count, or denigrating that of your opponents. It's about killing people to make yourself feel strong, or safe, and about bravely hiring people to do the killing for you. (Come to think of it. That's pretty much what the "movement" has for a foreign policy, too.) The governor of Texas likely arranged the death of an innocent man, either through deliberate neglect or through the abject dereliction of his constitutional duties. He is now engaged in a public cover-up that would have embarrassed H.R. Haldeman. That he still has a chance to stay in office is an indictment of our politics far beyond anything else that happened this week.

Name: Ed TraceyHometown: Lebanon, New Hampshire

Professor, it's not on-line as near as I can tell -- but Terry Adams once explained why NRBQ hired Lou Albano as a 'manager' of sorts: "Some situations in life are challenging to deal with -- but The Captain knows how to handle things".

I, too, will "stick with the Guiding Light".

Like this article? Try 4 issues of The Nation at home (and online) FREE.

SYDNEY (AFP) –
A six-month-old baby boy whose pram rolled onto railway tracks in front of an oncoming train has survived with only a bump to the head, officials said Friday.

The child, who was strapped into his stroller when the accident occurred, was dragged about 35 metres (yards) by the train as it pulled into Ashburton station in Melbourne's east on Thursday afternoon.

"The pram rolled a very short distance straight over the edge of the platform and onto the tracks right as the train was coming in," Connex trains spokesman John Rees told AFP.

"The baby has gotten away with just a cut on the forehead."

Rees said the driver slammed on the brakes as hard as possible as soon as he saw the pram tumble in front of him, and was aided by the fact that the train was slowing down as it entered the station.

Paramedics, who arrived to find the baby being comforted by his mother, confirmed the child received a bump on his head.

"Luckily he was strapped into his pram at the time, which probably saved his life," paramedic Jon Wright said in a statement.

The accident occurred one day after Connex issued a child safety awareness campaign focusing on warning parents to keep infants strapped into their prams at all times while on train platforms.

WASHINGTON – Early estimates from congressional budget umpires show that House Democrats are close to President Barack Obama's $900 billion target for health care legislation, a spokesman for Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Friday.
The House versions, including a government-run insurance plan as an option for consumers, would cost under $900 billion over 10 years, said Brendan Daly, a spokesman for Pelosi, D-Calif. But, he said, "No final policy decisions have been made on how to proceed."
Preliminary cost estimates from the Congressional Budget Office show the evolving legislation is already within range of Obama's target. The numbers remain in flux, however, because House leaders are still tinkering with details and sending in new policy ideas to budget analysts.
The ballpark figure of $900 billion reflects the cost of expanding coverage by providing tax credits to help people buy health insurance, and also by broadening the Medicaid health program to reach more low-income people, Daly said.
It does not include some $240 billion over ten years that lawmakers want to spend to address a shortfall in Medicare payments to doctors. The White House says those costs should not be included in the pricetag for the health care overhaul. But the Medicare provision was part of the original House bill.
The final House bill is expected to include a government-sponsored insurance plan that would compete with private health insurers. Leading Democratic lawmakers say support is building for a Medicare-like plan in which the government would set the payment levels for medical providers, instead of negotiating.
Health care legislation is expected to be on the House floor in early November. In the Senate, Democratic leaders hope to be on the floor at around the same time, but they must first reconcile differences between two committee-passed versions.

KABUL – Four more American troops died in a bombing in southern Afghanistan, the U.S. military said Friday, as a U.N.-backed panel completed most of its investigation into whether the level of fraud in the August presidential election would require a runoff.
Afghanistan's ambassador to the United States says he expects a second round vote will be required.
Rising death tolls and the political crisis brought on by a fraud-marred election have prompted the Obama administration to review its entire Afghanistan war strategy.
Two of the U.S. service members were killed instantly in the Thursday blast and two others died of their wounds, the U.S. said in a statement. No further details were released.
The deaths bring to 25 the number of American service members killed in Afghanistan this month, according to an Associated Press count.
Elsewhere, four Afghans, including at least two civilians, died during a firefight Friday between militants and a joint international-Afghan force in Ghazni province. There were conflicting accounts of the gunbattle.
The NATO-led coalition said two militants fired from a two-story building and troops returned fire, killing a pair of gunmen. "When the joint force entered the building, they discovered two civilians who subsequently died from their wounds," the coalition said in a statement. "It is unclear if the enemy militants or the joint force are responsible for the deaths."
Ghazni police chief Gen. Khail Buz Sherzai said the dead were all civilians from the same family. A native of Mangor village, Mohammad Sarwar, said the operation began late Thursday when U.S. and Afghan forces raided several houses overnight, blowing apart doors and window with explosives. He also said four civilians were killed in the operation and several were beaten.
Insurgent violence has increased across Afghanistan this year, coinciding with a boost in U.S. military numbers. President Barack Obama is now considering whether to commit still more American troops to the about 65,000 already here.
The White House is considering various options, including a sharp increase in the number of U.S. troops or shifting the focus to missile strikes and special operations raids against al-Qaida members hiding in neighboring Pakistan.
Obama is not expected to decide until after the Afghans determine whether they must hold a runoff election between President Hamid Karzai and his top challenger, Abdullah Adbullah.
Preliminary results from the Aug. 20 poll had put Karzai in the lead with 54.6 percent of the vote compared to about 28 percent for Abdullah. The fraud rulings could eliminate enough Karzai votes to push him below the 50 percent threshold to force a second round.
A spokeswoman for the Electoral Complaints Commission said the panel has completed the bulk of its investigation but commissioners are still analyzing complaints and calculating figures before deciding on a runoff.
Investigators late Thursday completed an audit of 3,377 polling stations that returned unlikely results showing 100 percent turnout or a single candidate receiving 95 percent of the vote, said Nellika Little, a commission spokeswoman.
But the panel is still investigating individual fraud complaints. "We are still working on the numbers," Little told The Associated Press. "We haven't figured out a percentage."
An announcement could come at any time, possibly as early as Friday night. Once the country's Independent Election Commission confirms the new tallies, a runoff is supposed to be held within two weeks. But many fear winter snows and insecurity could make the vote difficult or impossible.
In Washington, Karzai's ambassador to the United States, Said Tayeb Jawad, said Thursday that a runoff vote was very likely. He was the first official from Karzai's government to predict publicly that the challenger, Abdullah Abdullah, will have enough support to force a runoff.
Jawad said all sides should work hard to hold the runoff vote swiftly — ideally within a month.

A two-week deadline mandated in the country's constitution is "impossible," Jawad said. He worried that if the deadline slipped far into November, the weather will be too cold in parts of the country. Voters in Afghanistan, a country of great distances and few roads, often must travel long distances and spend significant time outdoors.

Jawad spoke at the U.S. Institute of Peace, and afterward with The Associated Press.

Citing anonymous sources it said were familiar with the results, The Washington Post reported Friday that Karzai's share of the vote had dropped to 47 percent. Little disputed that report, saying the commission's decisions have not been released.

Uncertainty over the election outcome has eaten away at Karzai's legitimacy, leaving Afghanistan in limbo as the Taliban-led insurgency in the countryside deepens and the Obama administration debates its strategy in a war that has become increasingly unpopular in the U.S.

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Associated Press Writer Rahim Faiez contributed to this report.

One noticeable advantage that the grand piano action has over the vertical action is that all grand pianos have a special repetition lever in the playing action that is absent in all verticals. This repetition lever, a separate one for every key, catches the hammer close to the strings as long as the keys are played repeatedly and fairly quickly. In this position, with the hammer resting on the lever, a pianist can play repeated notes, staccato, and trills with much more speed and control than is possible on a vertical piano.

Irving Berlin played a special piano called the transposing piano, which was invented in 1801 by Edward Ryley. It had a lever under the keyboard used to alter the music to any key. One of Berlin's pianos is in the Smithsonian Museum. For much of his career, Berlin only knew how to play the black keys. But with his 'trick piano' he was no longer limited to the key of F-sharp.

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