World Business

BEAUMONT, Texas A trailer carrying children in a Christmas parade struck and killed a 10-year-old girl who had jumped out of a pickup truck driving among the floats Saturday, police said.

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The girl had been jumping on and right side for the time of the parade path and was told to pause before falling and hitting her head, before-mentioned Monica Smith, a Beaumont police dispatcher. The girl was then struck by the trailer behind her.

A number of parade watchers saw the accident unfold, Beaumont police functionary Crystal Holmes told Beaumont television station KBMT.

Authorities said the girl was taken to a hospital with severe head injuries and pronounced dead.

Smith did not have any one details about what group the girl was through in the parade.

Stephanie Molina, who attended the parade but didn’cheek by jowl see the accident, said the city had considered canceling the Christmas parade this year because of the destruction worked to the area by Hurricane Ike. Molina works for the city’s convention and critic’s office.

“We decided to do this for the community because we needed something positive,” she reported.

Hundreds attended the parade in downtown Beaumont. The eminent marshall was former Buffalo Bills tight extremity Kevin Everett, a native of nearby Port Arthur who was temporarily paralyzed from the neck along the course of while attempting to make a weapons in a game last season.

The Christmas show off accident was the secondary this week in Texas. Ten members of a Cub Scout troop in Overton were injured Monday when they were struck by a pickup truck. The 82-year-old driver was charged with reckless driving.

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NEW ORLEANS Voters in Louisiana sent couple Republicans to Congress on Saturday, ousting indicted Democratic U.S. Rep. William Jefferson in one race and narrowly keeping a seat vacated by a retiring incumbent in the other.

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In the 2nd Congressional District, which includes most of New Orleans, Republican lawyer Anh “Joseph” Cao won 50 percent of the devoted to Jefferson’s 47 percent and will become the first Vietnamese-American in Congress. His sole previous political experience was an unsuccessful 2007 bid for a seat in the plight legislature.

In the 4th Congressional District in western Louisiana, Republican John Fleming squeaked past Democrat Paul Carmouche in the race to replace retiring 10-term Rep. Jim McCrery, R-La. Only a not many century votes separated the two.

Republicans made an aggressive push to grasp the 2nd District seat from the 61-year-old Jefferson, who has pleaded not guilty to charges of bribery, laundering wealth and misusing his congressional office.

Unofficial results showed Cao winning 50 percent of the ballot to Jefferson’s 47 percent.

“The people of the 2nd District have parole,” Cao, 41, told supporters at a eating-house near the French Quarter. “We want new direction. We want exploit. We want accountability.”

In a speech that was kind but stopped short of concession, Jefferson blamed low voter turnout for his showing and aforesaid supporters may take thought he was a shoo-in after he won a Nov. 4 preparatory in the predominantly black and heavily Democratic region.

“I think people just ran out of gas a bit,” he said. “People today sand bank didn’t come out in large numbers.”

Greg Rigamer, a New Orleans politic consultant, said his analysis showed turnout in predominantly white sections of the district was double that in black areas. He said that helped push Cao to victory over Jefferson, who became Louisiana’s first black congressman from that time Reconstruction when he took office in 1991.

“This is considerably a feat,” Rigamer said of Cao’sitting victory.

New Orleans voters had lengthy been loyal to Jefferson, re-electing him in 2006 even after news of the bribery scandal broke. Late-night TV comics made him the butt of jokes after founded on agents before-mentioned they found $90,000 in alleged bribe money hidden in his freezer.

“People are innocent until proven guilty,” said Faye Leggins, 54, every educator and Democrat who moved back to the city six months ago and still has fresh memories of Hurricane Katrina. She voted for Jefferson in succession Saturday. “He has plenty seniority, so he can do a lot to redevelop this city.”

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WASHINGTON President-elect Barack Obama has chosen retired Gen. Eric K. Shinseki to be the next Veterans Affairs secretary, turning to a former Army principal bodily substance of staff once vilified through the Bush administration for questioning its Iraq contention strategy.

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Obama will announce the preference of Shinseki, the first Army four-star general of Japanese-American ancestry, at a news conference Sunday in Chicago. He will be the first Asian-American to hold the post of Veterans Affairs secretary, adding to the growing diversity of Obama’sitting Cabinet.

“I think that General Shinseki is exactly the equitable person who is going to be practical to make sure that we honor our forces when they approach home,” Obama before-mentioned in an conference with NBC’s “Meet the Press” to be broadcast Sunday.

NBC released a transcript of the interview after The Associated Press reported that Shinseki was Obama’s pick.

Shinseki’s tenure as Army chief of staff from 1999 to 2003 was marked by constant tensions with Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, that boiled over in 2003 whereas Shinseki testified to Congress that it power take several hundred thousand U.S. troops to control Iraq after the invasion.

Rumsfeld and his deputy, Paul Wolfowitz, belittled the estimate as “wildly off the characterize” and the general was marginalized and later retired from the Army. But Shinseki’session words proved foretelling after President George W. Bush in early 2007 announced a “surge” of additional troops to Iraq after miscalculating the numbers needed to main stock sectarian violence.

Obama uttered he chose Shinseki for the VA post because he “was not oblique” in predicting that the U.S. will need more troops in Iraq than Rumsfeld believed at the time.

“When I reflect on the sacrifices that have been made by our veterans and I think all over how for a like reason many veterans around the geographical division are struggling plane more than those who have not served - higher unemployment rates, higher homeless rates, higher substance hurt rates, medical care that is inadequate - it breaks my heart,” Obama told NBC.

Shinseki, 66, is slated to take the helm of the management’s second largest agency, that was roundly criticized during the Bush administration for underestimating the amount of funding needed to handle thousands of injured veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan.

Thousands of veterans currently endure six-month waits for disability benefits, despite promises by passing from hand to hand VA Secretary James Peake and his predecessor, Jim Nicholson, to reduce delays. The department also is scrambling to upgrade conduct technology systems near the front of new legislation providing for millions of dollars in new GI benefits takes effect next August.

Sen. Daniel Akaka, D-Hawaii, and chairman of the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee, praised Shinseki while a “great choice” who will make an excellent VA secretary.

“I be delivered of great respect for General Shinseki’s judgment and abilities,” Akaka reported in a statement. “I am confident that he will use his judgment and experience to ensure that our veterans receive the respect and care they have earned in defense of our state. President-elect Obama is selecting a team that reflects our nation’s greatest strength, its dissimilarity, and I applaud him.”

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MICROSOFT

Qi Lu, highest ranking Chinese American in Microsoft history.

Chinese Americans at Microsoft and in the common cheered the appointment of Qi Lu as president of the company’s Online Services Group, noting the significance of his arrival at the highest ranks of the gathering.

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“When people look at their own career potential in a set, they always submit to notice at if there is someone like them in the higher leadership team,” said Weina Wang, chairwoman of Chinese Microsoft Employees (CHIME), the largest company-sponsored diversity cluster, by 2,500 members. “And I think Lu’s joining Microsoft is definitely a herculean encouragement, from a career-development perspective, for all the Chinese and Asian employees.”

Lu, who reports directly to CEO Steve Ballmer, will be the highest-ranking Chinese American in the history of the 95,000-employee company when he begins Jan. 5. He will presumably join the company’s 18-person senior conduct team, 17 of whom are white.

Nelson Dong, partner at law firm Dorsey & Whitney in Seattle, said Lu’s assignation is significant for manifold reasons.

“More and more Chinese Americans are moving through the historic ‘glass ceiling’ that held them to genuinely technical positions in the farther than,” said Dong, who focuses on technology and Asian law, in an e-mail.

“Like Dr. Lu, they are moving up in more corporations today to take major hegemony roles across all genius of companies, using and relying steady their technical skills but no longer being limited to purely technical roles. Dr. Lu is assuming a position of major strategic and business importance to Microsoft.”

As president of the Online Services Group, Lu will head Microsoft’s Internet search and advertising efforts — the precarious fronts in the company’s battle with Google. He led search and advertising engineering at Yahoo to the time when August.

Dong, who is on the board of the Washington State China Relations Council in Seattle and the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations in New York, said Lu’sitting selection has broader implications for corporations seeking talented engineers and executives.

“[T]op companies of the world must be prepared to have diverse management if they exactly aspire to have a global impact,” Dong said. “China is a natural talent pool today, producing more 300,000 new engineers annually, and so it is fitting that Microsoft will now have such a older commander who is fully representative of that colossal receptacle of technical abilities.”

Wang said members of CHIME were buzzing Thursday after an early report named Lu for the job. Ballmer confirmed the advice internally later that day.

“Personally I was very excited when I saw Steve’s e-mail, and I believe a lot of Chinese and Asian employees here in the company share the same sensation,” she said.

I’circuitous route be prejudiced to hear other peoples’ reactions to Lu’s appointment. Feel free to superadd your comments on this post or on the story itself, to this place.

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KEN LAMBERT / THE SEATTLE TIMES

More than 200 Microsoft workers, many with close ties to India, gathered Friday to pay tribute to the victims of last week’session terrorist attacks in Mumbai.

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Seattle Times reporter Charles E. Brown covered a candlelight vigil at Microsoft without interruption Friday for victims of the Mumbai terrorist attacks.

On a grassy sports tract of land on Microsoft’sitting main campus in Redmond, more than 200 meeting of friends workers, many persons of them expressing close ties to India, gathered to period the workweek in remembrance.

From the outset, Sandeep Singh, a Microsoft senior finance economist who, as a younger man, served his homeland as an Indian navy magistrate and National Defence Academy instructor, set the prevailing color. The purpose of the sore, he told the group, was to show solidarity against endure week’s terrorist attacks in Mumbai, India, where more than 170 people lost their lives and many more were injured.

The candlelight vigil was much like others around the terraqueous globe.

“We are also in the present state to discharge one’s obligation to homage to the brave officers, soldiers and pawn personnel who made the ultimate sacrifice in protecting the lives of many others,” Singh said.

A flagrant act, he said. Not unlike the attacks on the United States without interruption Sept. 11, 2001.

“This was not an attack on India without company. It was an attack on many nations, nationalities, religions, communities and, lastly, it was an engage on our freedom,” he aforesaid. “We, as Microsoft employees, strongly condemn this act of violence.

“This age will need our intelligence, our resolve and a strong character to dispel the notion that the terrorists are winning over us. We be under the necessity to beat them at their game.”

Most of those gathered on the field just before approach of night on Friday claim line of ancestors and close friends in the Mumbai region and a familiarity with the Taj Mahal Palace & Tower Hotel and other sites targeted by suspected terrorists.

“All our hearts go out to the victims and their families,” Javed Sikander, a Microsoft group program manager, aforesaid to the group. “By coming together here, we are sending a message to extremists that their tactics aren’confidentially working.”

The post-work gathering had the gain of the workers’ employer. “Our employee populousness is as diverse as the world itself,” said Microsoft inaccurate counsel Brad Smith, who heads the firm’s legal and corporate affairs.

“Given that dissimilitude,” he reported, “it’s especially appropriate beneficial to our company to create an opportunity to reflect and remember those who were heroes in Mumbai, some heroes who were victims, and more who were innocent bystanders who lost their lives.”

As dusk fell, the people at the gathering lit candles and observed two minutes of silence.

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DUBLIN, Ireland —

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Ireland has issued an international admonition for people not to consume Irish-produced swine-flesh products because they could contain dangerous levels of contaminants.

The government’s departments of health and geoponics on Saturday jointly called on account of the recall or destruction of all Irish pork produced since Sept. 1 after discovering potentially dangerous dioxins in pigs and pig feed at 80 to 200 times the safety limit.

Dioxins, which are naturally occurring and can take up an animal’s system end its food or environment, accumulate in the pig’session fat - and, if ingested by humans in sufficient volume and time period, be seized of been linked to an increased venture of cancer.

In a recital, the office of Prime Minister Brian Cowen said officials from the Agriculture Department and the Food Safety Authority of Ireland were till now investigating “the extent of the abomination and to identify the processors and products involved.”

The order dealt the biggest blow to Irish agriculture because that the foot-and-mouth disease threat of 2001, when Ireland luckily prevented the spread of the disease from neighboring Britain - but still faced months of irreclaimable export business despite its beef because of foreign fears.

This time, the polity’s warning that Irish swine-flesh may be delivered of been tainted for months threatens a pig industry worth again than euro450 million ($600 million) annually in this country of 4.2 million.

The commonwealth asked grocery stores, pubs and restaurants in Ireland to ship posterior portion all Irish swine-flesh products to their manufacturers as part of the investigation and asked the public “in the same proportion that a precautionary measure not to consume Irish pork and bacon products at this time.”

Ireland’session farms produce more than 3 million pigs a year, nearly moiety of which are consumed in the limits of the Republic of Ireland. But Irish pork in addition is heavily exported to neighboring Northern Ireland and Britain - and appears in grocery stores and processed meats through much of Europe and Asia.

Last year Ireland exported 113,000 tons of pig meat, nearly half of that to the United Kingdom. Ireland also shipped more than 500,000 live pigs to the UK for butcher and processing there.

Ireland’s other greater customers concerning pork are Germany, which bought 9,000 tons last year; France, Italy and several Eastern European countries, which together took more than 20,000 tons; Russia, 6,600 tons, and China, 1,100 tons.

Ireland’s major international competitors for pork-product exports are Brazil, the United States and Canada.

British authorities said they were not too concerned that its citizens’ health would suffer from Irish pig-meat products already consumed since September.

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CHICAGO —

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President-elect Barack Obama said Saturday that he wants to revive the economy and create jobs by upgrading roads, schools and energy efficiency in a public-works program whose scale has been unperceived since figure of the interstate highway system in the 1950s.

He offered none price prize for the grand plan, how the money might be divided or the effect on the rural’session financial soundness at a time of burgeoning deficits.

The ideas were outlined in the weekly radio address the day after the government reported that employers cut 533,000 jobs in November, the most in 34 years. They are part of a vision for a massive economy recovery plan Obama wants Congress to permission to pass and have waiting on his desk when he takes business Jan. 20.

The president-elect’s address never formerly used the expression. “spend,” relying in place on “invest” or “investments,” and pledging wise stewardship of taxpayer money in upgrading roads and schools, and making public buildings more energy-efficient.

“We won’t even-handed throw coin at the problem,” Obama said. “We’ll measure development by the reforms we make and the results we achieve - by the jobs we create, by the efficacy we save, by the agency of whether America is added prompted by emulation in the globe.”

Obama declared his plan would employ millions of people by “making the single largest new investment in our national infrastructure since the creation of the federal highway method in the 1950s.” He said state officials would dispossess of the federal dollars if they did not quickly use the money to repair highways and bridges.

According to the Federal Highway Administration, a 1991 conclusive estimate of the cost of the interstate system put it at $128.9 billion, with a federal share of $114.3 billion. The estimate covered and nothing else the mileage (42,795 miles) built for that that is less than the interstate construction program. Construction of the system began in 1956 under President Dwight Eisenhower.

More than 5,000 highway projects are ready to go today, state transportation officials say, if Congress choose pony up $64.3 billion as part of an relating to housekeeping assist devise. The American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials, which compiled the wish, said the projects would provide jobs and help reduce a backlog of crumbling roads and bridges.

A bipartisan group of governors recently met with Obama to press for some $136 billion in infrastructure projects in addition to money for health care costs.

Several governors welcomed Obama’s housekeeping plan.

Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine uttered the state had more than a billion dollars in “ready-to-go” projects that have been planned for and can be under contract within 180 days. “His plan will put people to work and accord. the economy a critically of importance boost,” Kaine said in a written statement.

In a joint statement, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell and California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said it would help the U.S. stay ahead of other countries. “To stay prompted by emulation globally, the time to repair and modernize our community’s infrastructure is now,” they said.

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NEW YORK —

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For the hundreds of camera-toting tourists who pay a visit to Wall Street each day, the New York Stock Exchange presents an imposing view.

The building-sized American flag draped over the exchange’s elevated Corinthian columns. The sculptures on the facade that symbolize the prosperity of a capitalist nation. The stern-looking statue of George Washington from one side of to the other the street.

These icons of public pride eminent position Wall Street as both a site of business and a symbol of the risk-taking and financial success that have spurred American global dominance and helped shape this country’s identity.

But with the people’s top investment houses shuttered, sold or changing into staid commercial operations, doubts be in actual possession of emerged about whether the city that for generations has been known as the world’s financial capital can retain that title - or the daredevil bully that has defined Wall Street because of so long.

It is a transformation that some say was in subordination to passage long before the meltdown of 2008.

“It’sitting going to be a long, slow process and take manifold years instead of us to really restore our leadership in the nature,” said Ron Chernow, who has written extensively upon the story of Wall Street. “New York has been damaged, and some of it I think is permanent.”

First, Bear Stearns nearly collapsed and was bought by JPMorgan Chase in a deal backed by $29 billion in federal money. Then Lehman Brothers filed the biggest bankruptcy in U.S. history and the British bank Barclays PLC swept in to buy up key units of the firm. Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley opted to become commercial banks. And not only so Merrill Lynch & Co. Inc. - long associated with Wall Street’s iconic bull - announced its demand to an out-of-town commercial bank, North Carolina-based Bank of America Corp. Citigroup has been crumbling day by twenty-four hours in the last week.

At the same existence in this world, places like London, Tokyo and Hong Kong have become global financial centers attached a scale that some believe already emulator New York.

The New York Stock Exchange still far outweighs the London Stock Exchange - through the value of shares traded at the NYSE in 2007 nearly triple the $10.33 trillion traded in London.

However, the fiscal sway of cities such as London has been growing faster than New York’s. From 1997 to 2007, the new capital raised yearly in New York dropped by nearly one-quarter - while in London the shape well-nigh quadrupled, according to the World Federation of Exchanges.

Even the domestic mart capitalization, or value of the market, has been growing faster in London than New York, the barter federation says.

“In the short and medium term, the U.S. decree still remain a very important financial center, and I think most likely the most important. But after the term of five years, I’farrago no more sure,” aforesaid Lorenzo Gallai, economic statistician at the World Federation of Exchanges.

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CHICAGO —

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Workers who got three days’ notice that their factory was shutting its doors have occupied the building and statement they won’familiarily relish home without assurances they’ll become severance and vacation pay.

About 250 union workers occupied the Republic Windows and Doors plant in shifts Saturday in that case union leaders utmost criticized a Wall Street bailout they say is leaving laborers behind.

Leah Fried, an organizer with the United Electrical Workers, said the Chicago-based vinyl window manufacturer failed to give 60 days’ notice required by law before shutting down.

During the two-day peaceful takeover, workers consider been shoveling snow and cleaning the building, Fried said.

“We’re doing something we haven’t bestowed since the 1930s, so we’re sad to make it work,” she said, referring to a tactic most famously used in 1936-37 by General Motors factory workers in Flint, Mich., to help unionize the U.S. auto industry.

Fried said the association can’t pay its 300 employees because its creditor, Charlotte, N.C.-based Bank of America, won’t let them. Crain’s Chicago Business reported that Republic Windows’ monthly sales had fallen to $2.9 the great body of the people from $4 the masses during the by means of month. In a memo to the union, obtained by means of the business daily register, Republic CEO Rich Gillman said the company had “no choice but to shut our doors.”

Bank of America received $25 billion from the government’s financial bailout package. The company said in a statement Saturday that it isn’t responsible onward this account that Republic’sitting financial obligations to its employees.

“Across cultures, religions, junction and nonunion, we all say this bailout was a shame,” said Richard Berg, president of Teamsters Local 743. “If this bailout should go to anything, it should go to the workers of this country.”

Outside the plant, protesters wore stickers and carried signs that said, “You got bailed out, we got sold out.”

The Chicago-based Rainbow PUSH Coalition, a civil rights group, announced in a word release Saturday that Jesse Jackson planned to visit the workers Sunday morning to offer his aid.

Larry Spivack, regional director for American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, Council 31, before-mentioned the peaceful action will add to Chicago’s rich history in the labor movement, which includes the 1886 Haymarket affair, when Chicago laborers and anarchists gathering in a square on the incorporated town’session occidental side drew national attention after an unidentified person threw a bomb at police.

“The history of workers is built on issues in the manner of this here today,” Spivack said.

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