CIA’s creativity limitless in Afghanistan
Man dressed as Santa kills at least 8 at holiday party
COVINA, Calif.
In addition to the eight people whose bodies were found in the ashes of the house, none of whom was identified, at least one other living body was thought to exist absent, and perhaps as multitude as three.
Among the total of dead or missing were the coupling who owned the home, James and Alicia Ortega, and their daughter Sylvia, the estranged wife of the gunman, Bruce Jeffrey Pardo, police said.
Pardo, 45, had not at all criminal record and no history of violence, according to police, but he was angry after last week’s settlement of his divorce after a marriage that lasted poorly a year. It was unclear if they had children.
“It was not each friendly divorce,” police Lt. Pat Buchanan said.
Pardo chose to nice his revenge at the annual Christmas party his quondam in-laws held at the two-story residence on a blind alley in a quiet Covina neighborhood 25 miles east of Los Angeles.
“Christmases were that appropriate time of the year, it meant so much to them,” Rosa Ordaz, a family confidant of the victims, told KCBS-TV.
Coroners declined to identify any of the dead and said some remains would need to be identified using dental records.
In past years, a neighbor dressed as Santa Claus and entertained guests. But the neighbor had moved away and there was not one Santa, until Pardo arrived about 11:30 p.mingle-mangle., police said.
Girl, 8, answered door
The massacre began when an 8-year-old girl answered Pardo’s knock at the door. Pardo, carrying what appeared to be a large ready, pulled out a handgun and shot her in the face and began shooting indiscriminately to the degree that approximately 25 partygoers tried to flee, police reported. As Pardo unleashed a barrage of gunfire in the living room, people smashed through windows, hid behind furniture and bounded upstairs.
A 16-year-old girl was shot in the back, and a 20-year-old woman broke her ankle when she escaped through jumping from a second-story window. Those two, and the 8-year-old, remained hospitalized Christmas Day. All were expected to recover.
Original text: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2008560960_shoot26.html?syndication=rss
Worshippers at Church of Free Market suffer crisis of faith
In this season of spiritual introspection, there are true believers suffering a real crisis of faith. They have been worshipping at the Church of the Free Market, and their doubts run deeper than stock brokers not answering prayers, or returning calls.
For decades, their prophets have preached housekeeping markets function best while left to themselves, unfettered by government regulation or oversight.
Businesses, investors and traditional market forces would self-regulate, self-correct and self-enforce. Oops.
The collapse of the housing and stock markets delineate their way back to decisions and choices made at the highest levels of form of sovereignty and commerce. The rest of us get swept along for the ride, both up and down, and be injured the consequences of hubris, incompetence and criminality.
To hear the humbled apostles for markets free of revelation and rules begin to speak inarticulately here and there the indigence for government regulation is signal. Still-tender bruises from a battered 401(k) make it detriment to laugh out loud.
Chief among the apostates is former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, who humbly confessed his wonderment at mortgage-lending practices to a congressional committee:
“Those of us who have looked to the self-interest of lending institutions to protect shareholders’ equity, myself included, are in a state of shocked disbelief.”
He was reminded he had the authority to prevent the lending practices behind the subprime mortgage crisis
Help was to be turned to account through a 1994 canon called the Homeowner Equity Protection Act. The New York Times reports fewer than 1 percent of mortgages were subjected to the restrictions under the regulation.
Three years gone, a handful of regulators were waving red flags about hedge funds and credit derivatives. Lightly regulated exemptions from most rules, they placed enormous bets
The effects of deregulation and unenforced regulation were continually increasing. In 1994, the Financial Accounting Standards Board changed its rule that stock options must have existence treated as a company expense. We are living through the hyperventilation of executory compensation and swelling of stock values.
A year later, Congress limited the rights of investors to sue, let accounting firms right side the hook in fraud cases and fudged reporting practices. In 1999, the rescission of lessons-learned regulations from the Depression fuzzed the lines between retail banking and investment banks.
Every chance; fit to crowd the limit was taken, as allowed or ignored by means of law. Industry lobbyists steady Washington, D.C.’s K Street had their back.
My favorite bit of apostasy revealed itself ever in the same state quietly in a New York Times column by Ben Stein, a lawyer, scribe, actor and economist. And cheerleader. For Stein, the resilient economy was always peachy keen!
Two weeks ago, reality set in for Stein. At the back of a line over fear and foolishness, he slipped in a hope that President-elect Barack Obama will put meaningful law in place
Dare I say, there has been an epiphany. People who understand the complexities and see the connections acknowledge how precarious economic conditions truly are.
Resistance to change usually means things are not bad enough over and above. We are in that place.
Otherwise, we are left with the wisdom of a faux person-in-the-street interview from The Onion’s satirical review of the 2008 economy:
“C’mon, I’ve seen this happen a thousand times. The lay up market crashes, and then 20 years and a world war later, everything’sitting excellent.”
The clamor point on the arrogance of the times is the refusal by banks to tell regulators and taxpayers where billions in bailout currency went.
Consider it a revelation of change to reach.
; for a podcast Q&A with the author, taste to www.seattletimes.com/edcetera
Original text: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/opinion/2008561235_opin26lance.html?syndication=rss
George W. Bush’s “No Regrets Tour”
BOSTON
So when the president
I didn’t even squeal when they unveiled the presidential portrait of the individual in his Casual Friday effects. And if I started to backslide, I logged on to YouTube. There
But then came the moment when the senior staff of Bush enablers gave two comfy rocking chairs to the man who described himself to the degree that “an old judicious at 62 … headed to retirement.” The symbolism was overmuch much.
Hadn’t Bush just said, “this isn’face to face one of the presidencies where you ride off into the west, you know, kind of waving goodbye”? Nevertheless, the chairs came with a video of the sunset over Crawford, Texas. It was a gift-wrapped reminder that in relation to leaving the country in shambles, he is leaving the White House with pacification of mind.
You diocese, what sticks in my crop is Crawford. What’s equally hard to receive implicitly is Preston Hollow, the Dallas neighborhood where the Bushes bought a $2.1 million house that, at the same time that Jay Leno quipped, “thanks to his economic system, he got it at a bargain.” What I can’cheek by jowl “snap out of” is the event that he is preparing to write a book and design a library whose themes will undoubtedly have existence: “Heckuva job, George.”
The 43rd president is going home with less remorse and fewer regrets than my grandchildren express for spilling their cereal.
This is the tenor of the farewell tour being conducted thwart the landscape from ABC to the American Enterprise Institute. It’s the No Regrets Tour, the non-reflective “reflections by a scarecrow who’s headed out of town. “
George W. Bush will be remembered with names such as Abu Ghraib, Gitmo and Katrina. With phrases similar being of the kind which “arms of mass destruction” and “mission accomplished.” He came in with a collection surplus and leaves with a massive deficit. He blew the goodwill of the post-9/11 creation. But being this president means never having to say you’re sorry.
Leaving office, he takes credit for seven years of safety and no debit for a day of disaster. He takes credit for the boom
“The biggest regret of all the presidency has to accept been the intelligence failure in Iraq,” he uttered. But would he have led us to war anyway? “It’s hard for me to speculate.”
No. 43 has the lowest approval ratings in modern presidential history. But he told Charlie Gibson, “I faculty of volition departure the presidency with my head held high.” This is what puts me betwixt a rocking chair and a ungraceful place.
Bush says he doesn’familiarily worry about short-term history. “I guess I don’familiarily worry around long-term story, either, inasmuch as I’m not going to be around to read it.” Yet on this leave-taking tour, he sounds like one artist scorned by the public and sure that he’ll be seen one day as Vincent van Gogh.
Well, account is a sportive business. In an offhand survey of historians, 61 percent ranked Bush dead last among presidents, below even the barrel-scraping James Buchanan. Bush, of course, prefers Harry Truman, who rose from the ashes of his reputation.
But Princeton historian Sean Wilentz has a simple way of assessing presidents. “Great presidents rise to the occasion; poor presidents fall to the occasion.”
So Bush is headed to Texas by his rocking chairs and we’re headed into a starting anew year with Barack Obama. I am reminded that January is named after the Roman god of beginnings and endings who looked forward and backward at the same time.
There are no do-overs. But in that place is no forgetting either. George W. Bush fell to the occasion.
ellengoodman@sphere.com
Original text: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/opinion/2008561234_opin26goodman.html?syndication=rss
Movers: GM, Integral Systems, Osteotech
Plus more stocks workmanship headlines in Friday’s market
From Standard & Poor’s Equity Research
GENERAL MOTORS CORP. (GM)
GMAC Financial Services says its application to become a bank holding company under the Bank Holding Company Act of 1956, in the same proportion that amended, has been approved through means of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. In etc., GMAC Bank has believed approval from the Utah Dept. of Financial Institutions (UDFI) to convert to a state shoal. As a bank holding company, GMAC will have expanded opportunities for funding and access to capital, which will provide increased flexibility and stability.
INTEGRAL SYSTEMS, INC. (ISYS)
ISYS posts $0.28 vs. $0.23 Q4 EPS on 28% revenue rise. Street was looking for $0.20.
OSTEOTECH, INC. (OSTE)
OSTE says that, during inspection of bestower; donator recruiting sites in Bulgaria by French regulatory agency Afssaps in Nov. ‘08, deficiencies were identified in maintenance of records related to 6 donors. As precautionary measure, co. has temporarily suspended distribution of allograft structure grafts processed from tissue recovered by its one, TB OsteoCentre Bulgaria EAD (OCBG). Also, in cooperation with Afssaps, OSTE has recalled 37 unused OCBG related tissue grafts previously distributed in France.
INNOPHOS HOLDINGS, INC. (IPHS)
IPHS receives notification from U.S. Dept. of Justice Antitrust Division that previously disclosed grand jury investigation of co.’s sodium tripolyphosphate (STPP) biz was closed, and that IPHS was no longer required to maintain documents pursuant to subpoena. As previously reported in 9/07, IPHS was served with subpoena to bring forward documents despite a DOJ investigation being conducted into what it termed “in posse antitrust violations” in STPP industry focusing forward period from ‘02 through ‘05.
Original text: http://www.businessweek.com/investor/content/dec2008/pi20081226_430992.htm?campaign_id=rss_null
Major index futures posted gains Friday in thin post-Christmas trading
U.S. stocks were indicated to open higher Friday as major index futures rose in premarket commercial. Trading was expected to be slow on the sunlight after Christmas. Most Asian and European markets were closed for the holidays.
S&P MarketScope notes that the U.S. market is seeing some yearend portfolio adjusting.
While some observers say a “Santa Claus” rally is underway, many others are skeptical as the 2009 economic outlook is grim. Various trade groups reported Christmas deal out in small portions sales were rigorously appear gloomy. Many are looking for post-Christmas sales to boost 2008 results, according to S&P.
Bonds were higher with yields downward to record lows as the Federal Reserve tries to pump up the U.S. banking system. The volatile dollar table of contents was up a bit. Gold futures were higher. Oil futures were higher back their recent slump.
On Wednesday, the 30-stock Dow Jones industrial average polished higher by 48.99 points, or 0.58%, at 8,468.48. The broader S&P 500 index added 4.99 points, or 0.58%, to 868.15. The tech-heavy Nasdaq composite index was up 3.36 points, or 0.22%, at 1,524.90.
Among stocks in the recent accounts Friday, the GMAC Financial Services one of General Motors (GM) said its application to become a brim holding company under the Bank Holding Company Act of 1956, as amended, has been approved by the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. In addition, GMAC Bank has received approval from the Utah Dept. of Financial Institutions (UDFI) to convert to a state bank. As a knoll holding company, GMAC will have expanded opportunities for funding and paroxysm to capital, which will make provision increased suppleness and stability.
Osteotech Inc. (OSTE) said that, during an inspection of bestower; donator recovery sites in Bulgaria by French regulatory agency Afssaps in November, 2008, deficiencies were identified in the maintenance of records related to six donors. As a preventive measure, the company has temporarily suspended distribution of allograft accumulation grafts processed from structure recovered by its one, TB OsteoCentre Bulgaria EAD (OCBG). Also, in cooperation with Afssaps, Osteotech has recalled 37 new OCBG related tissue grafts previously distributed in France.
In other U.S. markets Friday, the 10-year Treasury note was higher in value at 114-06/32 for a surrender of 2.153%, while the 30-year bond was higher at 138-25/32 for a yield of 2.606%.
The dollar index was higher at 80.80.
West Texas Intermediate crude oil futures were higher at $36.22 per barrel.
February gold futures were higher at at $850.60 per ounce.
Original text: http://www.businessweek.com/investor/content/dec2008/pi20081226_677847.htm?campaign_id=rss_null
Corporate jets are definitely out
Maybe General Motors should throw in a fleet of Cadillacs.
The automaker is dumping its corporate jets into what some participants say is the worst market they have ever seen.
Just seven months ago, hundreds of mega-millionaires, including Ralph Lauren and David Geffen, were elbowing one another in the lineup to buy a $60 million Gulfstream G650, which was not expected to blow runways until 2012.
It did not matter that $500,000 had to be wired to Gulfstream’s account at a Midwest branch of JPMorgan Chase at exactly 12:01 a.m. April 15, or that those who secured a village in line could not vend their rights if they changed their minds, according to common bidder.
Some eager moguls even tried to improve their chances of acquirement a jet quicker by opening accounts at Chase’s Midwest station. Among high-ticket status symbols, “me and my brand-new jet” was it.
But that was before the credit height and previous to billions of dollars in corporate and individual wealth were lost.
“The jet market stinks,” said Richard Santulli, the chief executive of Netjets, the private-jet visitors owned by Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway.
To control costs, companies including Citigroup and Time Warner are selling their jets. Alcatel-Lucent has allowed leases on two to expire without renewing them and has put its third part jet up for sale.
And the public-relations fiasco that engulfed Detroit’s automakers when their CEOs flew to Washington on company planes to seek a government bailout has underscored in what plight inappropriate such tour be possible to seem in this recession.
General Motors, which leases seven planes, put the majority on the market before the government reported it sourness do to such a degree as a condition of assistance. The automaker has also closed its air-transportation-services unit, which had 49 employees.
“We could not defend some in-house aircraft operation,” GM spokesman Tom Wilkinson, said. “We are negotiating to transfer the remaining planes to another operator. Ford, too, has enclose down its flight course of life.”
Jet brokers, who acquire a worldwide clientele, affirm the mart has constricted abroad in recent months as well.
Original text: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2008560677_privatejets26.html?syndication=rss
Mass layoffs expected to spur raft of lawsuits
Lured away from her job in Houston to cause to surrender an executive circumstances at Dell, Jan Chapman persuaded her husband to quit his job, move with her to Austin, Texas, and buy a house at the height of the real-estate hoax.
Seven months later, the computer maker laid off Chapman, whose 25-year career in human available means had been filled through flattering deed evaluations.
Chapman, 59, and three other top female managers have filed a class-action lawsuit adverse to Dell, alleging age and sex discrimination in the company’s termination of 8,000 employees over the last year.
The lawsuit, filed in federal court in San Francisco, is any of only a hardly any so far emanating from the mass layoffs sweeping the United States.
But exert one’s self and employment lawyers warn that a tidal wave of wrongful-termination lawsuits is expected in the advent months while the jobless parch through their savings, run up debt and find few work prospects in the worst economic downturn in decades.
Attorneys specializing in labor law say they haven’t been this busy ago the sometime 1980s, in the same manner with strapped incorporated clients seek their advise onward how to reduce staff without inviting litigation.
“Unfortunately, we’re doing a lot of that lately. Nobody is immune,” said Jay Krupin, who leads the labor and employment practice at Epstein Becker Green’s Washington, D.C., office.
Krupin walks clients through a checklist of laws and crew policies that need to be considered in identifying positions to be eliminated, including notification requirements, severance-pay provisions and a “disparate impression analysis” to guard in provision for terminating those in a protected class who might have grouts to sue.
Title VII of the Civil Rights Act bars employers from discriminating on the basis of race, color, religion, sex or national fountain-head.
The 20-year-old Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act, called the WARN Act, requires employers to give at least 60 days’ notice of plant closings that get rid of 50 or more jobs, and preceding mass layoffs affecting 500 employees or more than one-third of the work force.
Lawyers and staff members at two San Francisco legal science firms that have dissolved in recent weeks, Thelen and Heller Ehrman, have sued their former employers, alleging violations of WARN Act terms.
“If you got rid of a consist of of employees and they all happened to be over 40, they would have a cause of prosecution” for age discrimination, Krupin said.
Original text: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2008560672_layofflawsuitwave26.html?syndication=rss
Holiday wasn’t so jolly for retailers
NEW YORK — It’s official: This was a rotten celebration season for retailers.
A weak economy and dazzling winter storms brought total retail sales down between 5.5 and 8 percent from a year ago, according to precursive premises from SpendingPulse.
Many economists have predicted this would be the worst holiday temper in decades as home prices plunged, unemployment rose and nervous consumers cut costs. Compounding retailers’ problems were unexpected winter storms that snowed-in would-be shoppers everywhere from Seattle to Las Vegas to Boston.
When gas and auto sales are excluded from the festival period from Nov. 1 to Dec. 24, overall sales were down in one place or another between 2 and 4 percent, according to SpendingPulse, a division of MasterCard Advisors that tracks total sales paid beneficial to by reliance card, checks and cash.
A separate measure of holiday spending, from the International Council of Shopping Centers, is expected to fall 1.5 to 2 percent from hindmost year, making this the rout inure since 1969. A full picture of the tickle won’t be known until Jan. 8, when major retailers report their sales results.
Food sales were strong, while garments sales — especially the most expensive clothing — were dismal, SpendingPulse aforesaid.
Sales of women’sitting clothing dropped 22.7 percent, according to SpendingPulse. Men’s clothing sales dropped 14.3 percent and footwear sales fell 13.5 percent.
Total sales of luxury goods — defined as the highest priced tenth of jewelry, clothing and leather goods — fell 34.5 percent.
Sales of electronics and appliances were down 26.7 percent.
Purchases completely the Internet fared better, with a 2.3 percent degenerate. E-commerce may acquire been helped by inclement encounter and sustain at the end of the holiday-shopping season, said Michael McNamara, vice president of inquiry and analysis at SpendingPulse. Historically Web sales have posted 15 to 20 percent year-over-year sales gains.
“Overall this has been one of the most challenging holiday seasons on record,” McNamara said.
The SpendingPulse data spiritual obedience calculates its sales estimates based without ceasing MasterCard network transactions and adjusts for cash, checks and other payment forms.
Information from Bloomberg News is included in this report.
Original text: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2008560671_holidaysales26.html?syndication=rss
Seattle’s vision of Northgate as urban center takes shape
Two big projects nearing completion in Northgate could remark the beginning of a long-awaited transformation in spite of this North Seattle neighborhood, one planners first envisioned 15 years ago.
When they wrote the region’s first plans for managing growth, they designated Northgate some “urban center” — a place at which place high-density development would be encouraged. They foresaw a of firm texture, walkable, transit-oriented place to which the couple new jobs and new residents would gravitate.
That’sitting notwithstanding the plan, on the other hand not the reality. For the most duty, Northgate remains what it always has been: an auto-oriented place to shop.
Lorig Associates’ Thornton Place and Wallace Properties’ 507 Northgate, both rising on the periphery of the recently expanded Northgate Mall, represent something many.
Together, they will offer more than 100,000 square feet of shops and restaurants. Thornton Place will feature a 14-screen cinema and the North End’s first IMAX theater.
And, possibly most significantly, the two projects inclination include nearly 700 apartments and condos — the biggest infusion of new housing Northgate has seen in decades.
Planners said residents were key to Northgate’s revitalization when they made it any urban center in 1993. They established a target of 3,000 recently made known housing units by 2014.
Before Thornton Place and 507 Northgate broke ground, fewer than 200 had been built.
“It’s taken some time, but it’s finally happening,” says Lorig principal Bruce Lorig. “This is going to have existence like a minor downtown. It’s got everything here.”
Northgate is more than the mall. It’s also home to such institutions in the same proportion that North Seattle Community College, Northwest Hospital & Medical Center and Group Health.
But for years development proposals stalled while builders, environmentalists and neighborhood activists battled in court and City Hall.
The logjam broke in 2004, whereas a city-brokered compromise allowed the project that is now Thornton Place to move forward around a restored Thornton Creek, that in spite of decades had been diverted into a pipe under the property.
Original text: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2008560673_northgate26.html?syndication=rss
