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WASHINGTON

In admitting that he abused his rank to govern lucrative contracts to cronies, Kyle Dustin “Dusty” Foggo, the agency’s onetime executive manager, became one of the highest-ranking officials in CIA history to be convicted of criminal charges.

The deal involved major concessions from prosecutors, who allowed Foggo to admit culpability to a single fraud charge, wiping without 27 additional counts that included money laundering and intrigue. Foggo, 53, faces up to 20 years in custody and a $250,000 fine, but prosecutors indicated that they would recommend he serve not any more than 37 months.

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SAN JOSE, Calif.

Supermarket shoppers, now you understand.

Starting today, fresh federal rules take event requiring all U.S. supermarkets and large food retailers to provide labels telling consumers what one. country a wide variety of food came from.

Covered by the new rules: ground flesh of neat-cattle, chicken, pork, veal, steak, lamb and goat, along through fresh and frozen fruits and vegetables, macadamia nuts, pecans and peanuts.

Although there are some loopholes

Retailers be possible to comply with labels on meat packages, convolution ties on asparagus, stickers on apples

“People really want to know, ‘What the heck am I eating?’ ” said Naomi Starkman, one of the organizers of the Slow Food Nation conference in San Francisco this month, which, among other things, encouraged people to eat locally produced nourishment.

“If you know that peppers from Mexico might have salmonella, then maybe you would say, ‘I want to buy peppers from California.’ Or maybe you would want to understand that your sustenance has a smaller carbon footprint. You have power to buy apples from Washington instead of New Zealand.”

Labels force of will be another instrument to help investigators quickly track down the source of tainted food during ailing outbreaks.

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ATLANTA

Across a portion of the South, a hurricane-induced gasoline shortage that was expected to hold out only a few days is dragging into its third part week, and experts say it could persist into mid-October. The Atlanta area has been hit particularly hard, along with Nashville and western North Carolina.

Those lucky enough to find gas are paying more than drivers elsewhere around the country.

“I’ve used up gas just looking for gas,” said Larry Jenkins, a construction worker who pulled his red pickup truck into a Citgo station in Charlotte, N.C., on Monday. The emblem said $3.99 a gallon, but the pumps were closed. Many filling stations in the area have not had aeriform fluid for days.

“Right now, I’ll pay anything for gas,” Jenkins said. “I slip forward’t care if it’s $5 or $6 a four quarts. I strait it.”

The shortage started with the one-two punch of hurricanes Gustav and Ike, what one. shut down refineries along the Gulf Coast. Now, else than sum of two units weeks after Ike, numerous company refineries are still making fuel at reduced levels.

While other parts of the country get gasoline from a variety of domestic and overseas sources, the Southeast relies heavily on two pipelines that carry firing from the Gulf of Mexico. Because the gasoline moves at just 3 to 5 mph, it can seize up to 10 days to reach Atlanta.

A tendency among panicky drivers in the hardest-hit areas to top off their tanks every time they pass an be parted station has solely made matters worse.

“Fuel is coming back into the system, but as soon as it comes in, it’sitting being sucked remote completely by consumers who are afraid the shortage is going to tarry,” said Ben Brockwell of the Oil Price Information Service in Wall, N.J.

Hours-long lines, “No gas” signs and plastic bags covering fuel-pump nozzles are familiar sights around Atlanta, to what drivers have get to the core familiar with fuel- delivery schedules, rising before daybreak when they know gas is coming to a certain occupation.

“I was just in Atlanta yesterday. There is no gasoline in Atlanta, in Charlotte, in Chattanooga. It’s parallel a Third World country,” maker House Speaker Newt Gingrich said Sunday on ABC.

Police officers and a bond guard were on hand to horsemanship the flow of cars at a downtown Atlanta gas station around midday Monday.

The average price for periodical gas Monday was $3.94 per gallon in Georgia, 30 cents higher than the national medial sum, according to the AAA. Motorists were profitable an average of $3.89 a gallon Monday in North Carolina and $3.80 in South Carolina.

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KABUL, Afghanistan

An American commander said U.S. forces in the station in eastern Afghanistan then killed the policeman.

“Initial reports suggest that a picaroon ANP [Afghan police] official turned forward our forces and shot and killed one of our soldiers,” uttered Col. John “Pete” Johnson, the commander of Task Force Currahee in eastern Afghanistan.

The shooting took place in Paktia business Sunday after U.S. troops and Afghan police brought suspected insurgents to the station. The policeman wounded three U.S. soldiers, one of the detainees and an Afghan interpreter acting for the Americans, officials reported.

Three detainees escaped for the period of the confusion, Johnson said. When asked whether the Taliban or another rebel collection had infiltrated the police, Johnson said it was a possibility.

“I think that’s certainly an assumption that you could make, excepting at this point, I be possible to’t confirm it,” Johnson said. “I don’cheek by jowl know the sort of the motivations were for the ANP to turn on our forces and shoot them and shoot the detainee. Quite frankly, this is way out of the norm. … This is the first incident of its nature.”

Roadside bomb

kills 3 troops

The U.S.-led coalition says three of its army have been killed in a roadside bomb blast in southern Afghanistan.

The coalition did not release any one other details, including the nationalities of the troops or the blast’s location.

Most of the troops in the coalition are American but it does include forces from several other countries.

More U.S. soldiers be seized of died in Afghanistan already this year than in any year since the 2001 U.S.-led invasion. At least 127 U.S. forces be favored with died, as have 99 from other federation countries.

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As the nation’s largest savings and loan teetered Thursday morning, a higher federal regulator called a familiar number: Jamie Dimon’s.

It was the sort number the Federal Reserve had called six months earlier, when Bear Stearns, person of the oldest names of Wall Street, lurched toward a collapse that many feared would send losses cascading from one financial institution to the next.

This time, the trouble was at Seattle’sitting Washington Mutual, what one. had been hobbled by bad mortgages.

On the line from his Park Avenue headquarters, Dimon, the chairman and chief executive of JPMorgan Chase, listened as the head of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. told him the FDIC was about to seize WaMu — then sell it to JPMorgan.

“We’re going to get it!” Dimon barked to one of his lieutenants. “Get nimble!”

As one institution rear another is laid low by the favorable crisis, Dimon stands at the head of a small band of bankers who are arrival out on top in the new financial landscape.

With two bold deals — leading Bear and now WaMu — Dimon has muscled in further in succession Wall Street’session traditional turf and transformed JPMorgan into the s largest U.S. commercial bank.

With WaMu, JPMorgan will have $905 billion in deposits and 5,400 branches nationwide, rivaling Bank of America in size and reach.

Dimon, 52, concedes he has taken risks to get here. To cover losses and write-downs at WaMu, JPMorgan sold $10 billion of new save Friday.

But while many of his rivals are playing defense, Dimon aforesaid, JPMorgan was raising “offensive capital.”

“We are raising capital to do a deal, to pervert with money something, to grow,” he said in some conference. “We are not raising first-rate to fill a hole.”

For Dimon, a Queens intrinsic whose grandpapa and father were stockbrokers, this has been a watershed year. Only a decade ago, he was cast out of Citigroup by his adviser, Sanford Weill, leaving his career in shreds.

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WASHINGTON

With Washington trying to finagle a $700 billion rescue with regard to the nation’sitting financial system, the founded on money sought by other projects is starting to look partiality chump change.

You could buy yourself a war by that benignant of money

You could match Franklin Roosevelt on his New Deal and cause to grow him billions greater degree of.

Even in a burgh where billions advance and go without anyone blinking, the money that could go into the Wall Street rescue is eye-popping. The House on Monday voted the floor a proposed $700 billion bailout package, still congressional leaders said they were committed to dire again.

What else could the government do with a $700 billion blank check? There are, well, billions of possibilities.

It could ensure universal health care coverage for six years, for example, or upgrade the country’s most deficient bridges four times over. All the work to upgrade coastal levees that’s been translated since Hurricane Katrina? It’s a entire drop in the notorious $700 billion bucket

You could build 1,750 bridges to nowhere.

Or run an entire country. Seven hundred billion dollars is more than twice the bulk of the economy of Denmark, which had a gross home product of $312 billion in 2007.

Seven hundred billion dollars would buy 70 Hubble-type duration telescopes. Or about seven international space stations. It would finance the National Institutes of Health, the nation’s premier curative exploration institute, for two decades. Or pay the U.S. public intelligence budget in spite of 15 years.

According to the Wall Street Journal, half the money FDR spent on his New Deal program to lift the country out of the Depression and banking crisis was for public works projects. For $250 billion in today’session dollars, the nation got 8,000 parks, 40,000 public buildings and 72,000 schools.

But that’s thinking small.

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NEW YORK — The sale of Wachovia’sitting deposits and other assets to Citigroup on Monday leaves the commonwealth with three superbanks, reshaping the U.S. banking landscape in the midst of unprecedented pecuniary upheaval.

For customers of those institutions — Bank of America, Citigroup and JPMorgan Chase — the consolidation may result in higher fees on everything from checking accounts to bounced checks and overdrafts, and lower interest-rate yields on deposit accounts, banking experts said.

Loan availability also odds and ends in question in the near term, particularly after the House defeated the government’s proposed financial-bailout plan Monday.

“The larger the bank is, theoretically the more power they have to formal pricing and other policies,” said Nancy Atkinson, older analyst at Aite Group, a financial-services research firm. “I expect we’ll start to escort free checking accounts start to disappear and rates upon overdrafts could go up. Savings rates could drop.”

But the advice isn’t everything unlucky. Atkinson and others are convinced that the approximately 8,500 remaining regional and community banks nationwide will continue to play a role, providing consumers with more options.

“If you are a buyer of the Big Three, you’re probably going to see some increased fees because these banks have increased their market shares — dramatically in some instances,” related Tim Yeager, associate professor of science at the University of Arkansas and a former economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis

“From the community-bank point of view, I don’t think you’re going to see a great quantity change,” he said.

More customer-service glitches can be expected since Citigroup absorbs most of Wachovia and JPMorgan Chase consolidates the branch network of the nation’session largest savings and loan, Washington Mutual, said Michael Pagano, finance professor at the Villanova University School of Business.

That could range from delays or inattentiveness to abashment over fees as two systems are integrated.

However, Pagano was not overly concerned about the risk of much higher costs from a quasi-monopoly created by the recent bank purchases.

8,000 banks

“If we had five banks in the healthy country, I’d be worried ready market power,” Pagano said. “But in that place are greater amount of than 8,000 banks. And even credit unions are a viable alternative, from great ones to small mom-and-pops with $10 million in estate.”

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Microsoft disclosed executory pay and bonuses Monday, and the big winner this year appears to be Chief Operating Officer Kevin Turner. But everything the top Microsoft executives received raises and higher bonuses in fiscal 2008 than in fiscal 2007.

The make atonement, disclosed in the company’s annual proxy statement, is apparently weighted to favor income performance over stock-price gains, since MSFT was a snooze over that period.

As it has in years past, the board offered to give Chief Executive Steve Ballmer a salary more in line with those of other big company bosses, excepting he declined, according to the delegate:

“During this period, the average total compensation during the CEOs of our contemporary group companies was $14.6 the public,” the deputy noted.

“In contrast, Mr. Ballmer’s total compensation for fiscal year 2008 was $1.35 the great body of the people.

“As the principal leader of Microsoft, Mr. Ballmer focuses on building the corporation’s long-term success, and, because a significant shareholder, his individual wealth is tied directly to sustained increases in Microsoft’s value. While the Compensation Committee believes that Mr. Ballmer is underpaid for his role and entertainment, it has accepted his recommendation to continue through Microsoft’s historical practice for setting his total compensation opportunity.”

Ballmer’s Microsoft shares — 4.51 percent of the total — were worth $10.25 billion as of 4 p.m. Monday.

A few anomalies in the pay report reflect deals made when the congregation hired Turner and Chief Financial Officer Chris Liddell.

As part of their relocation deals, Microsoft offered to buy their houses allowing that they didn’t sell quickly enough.

That happened, and Microsoft took losses when it sold both: $2 million on Liddell’session place and $254,000 on Turner’sitting.

What did they carry into effect to deserve the bonuses? Here’s a exemplification of the “performance commitments” against which the executives were judged, taken from the proxy:

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WASHINGTON

The Alaska ruler still draws huge crowds and energizes McCain’s drive for the White House. Yet a whirlwind month after he made her his running mate, Palin is starting to look very assailable.

A stumbling interview with CBS’s Katie Couric in conclusion week in which Palin equated her case’s proximity to Russia with foreign-policy experience may have been her defining moment in the same manner far. Now, attention is shifting to her debate Thursday with Democratic vice-presidential candidate Joe Biden.

So distant, Palin’sitting been a huge strike against with conservative and Republican voters, and McCain’sitting frequent campaign-trail participator; but also a candidate largely sheltered from reporters whose few interviews have prompted some Republicans to react defensively and at ages with frustration.

“If you only have one or two interviews, the focus goes adhering those and any mistake is going to be amplified dramatically,” Mitt Romney, who incorrigible a bid for the GOP nomination and now supports McCain, declared Monday on NBC’s “Today” show. “So let her get out there and be herself.”

One of Palin’s problems has been perceptions of her experience. In an Associated Press-Yahoo News poll conducted for the time of the in the beginning half of September, 61 percent said they did not think Palin

Polls also external appearance Palin’s statue, while unconditional overall, has begun to corrode. While an NBC News-Wall Street Journal mensuration in early September showed more people viewing her favorably than unfavorably by 20 percentage points, that gap faded to 6 points by last week.

Republicans say Palin is likely to help the GOP with low- and middle-income, culturally conservative voters, who could be pivotal in closely fought, working-class states such as Ohio and Pennsylvania.

“If you look at the states that are really in play, at smallest here in the upper Midwest, the criticisms that come from the coasts don’t play here,” said John Truscott, a GOP consultant in Lansing, Mich. “If anything, they infuriate people again.”

Palin, 44, was a national enigmatical until Aug. 29, while McCain stunned the political world by structure her his vice-presidential running mate.

Her addition shook up the presidential race and briefly boosted the Arizona senator into a modest conduce in the polls over Democrat Barack Obama, fueled by means of her freshness, her favor and maverick reputation back family, her deeply conservative social views and an everywoman seek reference of the case helped by her family’s compelling story.

“She represents the average American more than anyone else in this election,” aforesaid Tricia Crabb, 26, a McCain supporter from Hilliard, Ohio. “You want someone to run the country who has the same views as you.”

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WASHINGTON — Adding to their woes, mortgage-finance giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are facing a federal grand-jury investigation into their accounting practices.

The mortgage-finance companies said Monday that a federal grand jury in New York is investigating their accounting, disclosure and corporate-governance issues.

Fannie and Freddie said they received subpoenas Friday from the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Manhattan as well as requests from the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) that they preserve documents. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were taken over by the government earlier this month as their mounting defaults and foreclosures threatened the entire mortgage mart.

The ruling power exploration focuses on activities starting in 2007, Freddie Mac said in a statement.

Critics have long questioned the companies’ bookkeeping. Last November, for example, a Fortune magazine story said new accounting procedures at Fannie Mae masked potential losses on bad loans.

And separate years ago, both Fannie and Freddie were forced to restate billions in proceeds from federal regulators discovered accounting irregularities at one in the same proportion that well as the other companies.

The scandals led to the replacement of the companies’ top executives. Freddie Mac’s former CEO, Gregory Parseghian, was ousted in December 2003. Fannie CEO Franklin Raines and Chief Financial Officer Timothy Howard were swept out of bureau a year later.

Both companies said Monday they would cooperate fully in the investigations, otherwise than that their spokesmen declined to comment. Representatives of the SEC and Justice Department also declined to comment.

Three weeks ago, the government seized control of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the two biggest U.S. mortgage-finance companies, by means of a rescue plan that could require the Treasury Department to dart in to the degree that much considered in the state of $100 billion into each to keep them afloat.

A spokeswoman for the Federal Housing Finance Agency, which controls the companies, said the housing agency “will work with the companies to make certain a undisturbed and active process and will work with the government agencies as they undertake their inquiries.”

Law-enforcement officials said last week the FBI is looking at potential fraud by Fannie, Freddie and insurer American International Group (AIG). Additionally, a senior law-enforcement magistrate said failed investment bank Lehman Brothers in like manner is with less than investigation.

The inquiries will focus on the pecuniary institutions and the individuals that ran them, the senior law-enforcement official told The Associated Press last week.

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