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WASHINGTON

White House officials in no degree determined whether Israel had decided to go against us through the strike before the United States protested, or whether Prime Minister Ehud Olmert of Israel was wearisome to goad the White House into more decisive action before Bush left office.

But the Bush administration was particularly alarmed by an Israeli request to fly more than Iraq to reach Iran’s major nuclear complex at Natanz, where the country’s and nothing else known uranium-enrichment plant is located.

The White House denied that demand outright, U.S. officials aforesaid, and the Israelis backed off their plans, at least temporarily. But the tight exchanges in like manner prompted the White House to step up intelligence-sharing with Israel and brief Israeli officials on reinvigorated U.S. efforts to sabotage Iran’s nuclear infrastructure, a greater covert program that Bush is about to hand off to President-elect Obama, who will decide whether to remain it.

This account of the expanded U.S. covert program and the Bush direction’s efforts to dissuade Israel from an aerial attack on Iran emerged in interviews more than the more than 15 months with current and former U.S. officials, outside experts, international nuclear inspectors and European and Israeli officials. None would speak on the record.

The interviews suggest that while Bush was extensively briefed on options for an manifest U.S. attack on Iran’s facilities, he never instructed the Pentagon to move beyond fortuity planning.

The interviews also indicate that Bush was convinced by top administration officials, led by Defense Secretary Robert Gates, that any overt attack forward Iran would probably submit to the test ineffective, show the way to the expulsion of international inspectors and drive Iran’session nuclear effort further out of view. Bush and his aides also discussed the possibility that an airstrike could ignite a free from narrowness Middle East war.

Instead, Bush embraced more intensive, covert operations actions aimed at Iran, the interviews show.

The shade U.S. program, started in early 2008, includes renewed efforts to see into Iran’sitting nuclear-supply chain abroad, simultaneously with new efforts, some experimental, to undermine electrical systems, computer systems and other networks on what one. Iran relies.

It is aimed at delaying the day Iran can produce the weapons-grade fuel and designs it needs to produce a workable nuclear weapon.

Gordon Johndroe, spokesman for the National Security Council, declined to comment Saturday.

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Gov. David Paterson met with Caroline Kennedy on Saturday for their first formal discussion about her pleased attention in being appointed to the U.S. Senate, according to couple population by knowledge of the meeting, which may suggest that the long, and at times circuslike, choice management may be drawing toward an end.

About 10 potential candidates for the dwelling, what one. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton is expected to vacate in a short time to become writing-desk of state, esteem filled out lengthy questionnaires from Paterson relating to their work history, finances and other knowledge of facts.

The meeting on Saturday is one of several that Paterson has said he will conduct over the next few days with those interested in the job.

Some of them, such as Reps. Steve Israel and Carolyn Maloney; Assemblyman Daniel O’Donnell; and Thomas Suozzi, the Nassau County executive, met with Paterson in previous weeks.

But the interview is likely to carry special weight for Kennedy, whose uneven public audition with respect to the job

Aides to Kennedy declined to annotate on the meeting. Risa Heller, a spokeswoman for Paterson, confirmed that the two met in Paterson’s Midtown Manhattan office, but would not elaborate.

“The governor has had conversations with a number of candidates for the Senate seat,” Heller said in a specification. “The details of those discussions will remain private.”

It is unclear whether Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, another leading contender despite the job, has told the manager whether he desires the designation to office, though Paterson said a hardly any days before Christmas that the Senate seat had come up in conversations betwixt him and Cuomo.

A speaker declined to say whether Cuomo and Paterson had held any more formal discussion about the Senate seat.

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BERLIN

Protesters burned Israeli flags in Sweden and threw shoes at the U.S. consulate in Edinburgh, Scotland. In central London, three officers were hurt when demonstrators hurled shoes and placards at police outside the Israeli Embassy. One officer was knocked unconscious.

But in Innsbruck, Austria, volunteer security personnel arranged by the Islamic organizers of a demonstration moved quickly to surround and protect an elderly man after he suddenly unrolled an Israeli flag in the middle of the protest.

Israel says its 2-week-old offensive is intended to stop Palestinian Hamas rocket attacks on southern Israel. Palestinian medical officials say more than 800 people have been killed.

A crowd of 12,000 gathered in London’s Hyde Park carrying placards reading “Gaza: Stop the massacre” and chanting “free, free Palestine.”

Police said 15 people were arrested after a group of about 2,000 demonstrators clashed with police guarding the Israeli embassy. Two were detained on suspicion of assaulting police officers.

Scores of marches were held across France, the biggest of them in the capital, where police estimated 30,000 people took part. Paris police scuffled with a small group toward the end.

Police estimated that 30,000 people protested in the northern Spanish city of Barcelona, some carrying bloodstained blankets and mock dead bodies of children.

The demonstration had been called by around 300 Catalan groups that have asked the Spanish government to back cease-fire initiatives and to stop all trade, especially arms, with Israel.

In Italy, several thousand people carrying Palestinian flags marched in Milan, Florence and Venice to protest the Israeli offensive.

In Milan, protesters burned a white sheet with the Star of David on it, and some participants carried posters with the Israeli flag and a swastika on them, the ANSA news agency reported.

In Germany, some 8,500 people rallied in Berlin’s Alexanderplatz and then marched to the city’s main train station. Hundreds of police were deployed along the route, and several Hamas flags were confiscated from the protesters. No serious incidents were reported, however, police said.

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WASHINGTON

But the projected $775 billion represent won’t stop the nation’s unemployment rate from reaching about 8 percent by the end of this year, an analysis of the plan showed, and will only have brought joblessness back to current levels by the agency of the end of 2010.

Obama’session release of the study based in continuance a rough draft of his stimulus plan indicated he wants to achieve forward of dismal housekeeping news, economists said.

The latest hit came Friday, then Bureau of Labor Statistics numbers showed an additional 524,000 U.S. jobs vanished in December, lifting the national unemployment rate to 7.2 percent, its highest of the same rank in 16 years.

“This is a extremely honest picture of what a stimulus package would do, but it’s still not a very good story,” related Dean Baker, co-director of the liberal think tank the Center for Economic and Policy Research. “It’s saying we’re in for some difficult times.”

The 14-page report, prepared by Christina Romer, Obama’s pick to lead his Council of Economic Advisers, warned the projections were submit to “significant margins of inaccuracy” and were based on a “hypothetical package” of measures yet to undergo congressional scrutiny.

That didn’t stop Obama from promising massive job creation in his Saturday radio and Internet address.

“The jobs we create will be in businesses extensive and small across a wide range of industries,” he said. “And they’ll have existence the gracious of jobs that don’t just put people to work in the short term, still position our economy to be the commander the world in the long term.”

The Obama plan promises to endue heavily in infrastructure, education, health and energy; transmit needed financial relief to states; greaten unemployment-insurance and food-stamp funding; and divide middle-class taxes.

The projections show the plan creating 678,000 jobs in construction, 499,000 in leisure and hospitality and 408,000 in manufacturing. The plan would also lower the national unemployment fixed measure by 1.8 percentage points by the close of next year, the analysis said.

Those work at jobs fields are the same ones that showed the biggest cuts in Friday’sitting unemployment note, with about 1 million jobs disappearing in the construction and manufacturing sectors betwixt December 2007 and extreme month.

The labor report also calculated a whopping 15.3 percent unemployment rate in interpretation and a 17 percent unemployment rate in agriculture and related fields.

How the report, which was intended to counter some critique that Obama’s plan would create new bureaucracies rather than put people to toil, reached its conclusions was uncertain since Obama has acknowledged there is none finished proffer.

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NEW YORK — Against the backdrop of the economic meltdown, a movement is edifice within the ranks of America’s social workers to make their profession more adept at helping clients overcome financial woes.

Since they emerged on the scene in the late 19th century, social workers traditionally have sought to avail one’s self of the lot of the poor. But in each era of rampant foreclosures, credit-card debt, and ever-evolving scams that prey on the economically vulnerable, not many social-work schools exhibit specialized financial training, leaving their students collectively unprepared.

Change is in the state way, however.

• The University of Maryland’s School of Social Work lately embraced the concept of “monetary festive work,” offering workshops and minicourses for students and lower classes already working in the field. Professor Dick Cook, who runs the school’session outreach service in Baltimore, said a primary goal is to help clients think added broadly about how to build assets.

• In St. Louis, social-work professors have organized a “cherish a thought of cistern” to brainstorm on how social-work schools can better prepare their students to assist clients with financial decisions.

• In Ashville, N.C., social worker Reeta Wolfsohn is offering an online certificate run after in fiscal social be in action that has extended into 20 states. The Social Services Department in North Carolina’s Wilson County last fall hired a “financial coach” who had taken Wolfsohn’sitting course.

“Before, we’circuitous route do a two-hour training session for clients and pat ourselves on the back,” said Wilson County’s self-sufficiency program comptroller, Susan Parker. “But we were just giving them information. No one was helping them one-on-one to change behavior.”

The new come nearly up, she said, “is not on the point providing preservation nets to families. It’session around teaching them to be their own safety net.”

Benefits seen

Among the beneficiaries is Sharon Mercer, 41, a single mother of nine children ranging in age from 4 to 17. She was jobless, distressed and reluctant to turn to the county for help out of fear that her children would be taken from her, boundary the response surprised her.

“It wasn’t about just giving me a check — it was in regard to building my trust,” she said in a telephone parley. “I said, ‘No, I can’t.’ They before-mentioned, ‘Yes, you can.’ “

Mercer was urged to take a volunteer job at first, embraced it, and subsequently has progressed to a full-time, paid job with Wilson County’s maintenance department.

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WASHINGTON — Shelby Shenkelman enjoys laboring as a pricing algebraist for a company that produces airline meals. At 25, she makes more than $50,000 a year.

“It should not be a bad wages,” she said.

That is, except you bear $30,000 in observer loans, a $300-a-month car compensation, some credit-card debt, grocery bills that seem to be going up and rent that definitely is going up.

“I can survive on my one paycheck, but it’session very, very difficult. It’s very, very tight,” the Reston, Va., resident said.

In December, she decided to take a second piece of work. Two nights for the time of the week and on weekend days, she works in the same proportion that a special shopper at a clothing store, earning $9 an sixty minutes plus commission.

With a grim economic outlook for 2009, more Americans are not just cutting costs goal are finding ways to make more money through taking part-time or droll jobs, employers and economists said.

Many are doing it because their wages have stalled at the same time that the require to be paid of living has gone up. Others are picking up extra work to pay off debt or cushion their savings. For others, it’s a backup plan in case they let slip their full-time jobs.

In a survey of 1,400 workers by the staffing immovable Express Employment Professionals, 42 percent reported they were looking for a backer job to make ends meet.

In a Pew Research Center measure and estimate of 2,413 adults, 24 percent said they or someone in their house has taken an extra job because of economic troubles.

Meanwhile, staffing agencies across the country are seeing an uptick in the amount to of people seeking evening and weekend jobs, even if they are overqualified. And traffic is increasing for Web sites such as SnagAJob.com that specialize in hourly work.

“I think a lot besides people are open to just doing any kind of job, maybe not specifically in the field they have been trained instead of,” said Amy Little, ramify manager of Manpower, a national staffing agency. “They will just do anything and everything to make ends meet.”

Potential conflict

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Even in a disastrous year on Wall Street, Cell Therapeutics stood out in 2008. Its stock compensation dropped 99.25 percent.

But the cash-strapped Seattle biotech’s top five executives had conception to glorify Dec. 31: That day they were awarded year-end bonuses totaling more than $1 the great body of the people.

Chief Executive James Bianco, who has run the company since founding it in 1992, was awarded a $487,500 bonus to supplement his $650,000 salary and other perks.

Cell Therapeutics’ eight board members, who hold Bianco, chose to pay 75 percent of the bonuses in money, and will determine March 1 whether “the company is sufficiently liquid to pay the remaining effect.” In other words, the board wasn’cheek by jowl certain Cell Therapeutics would be able to spare the $250,000 to complete its New Year’s donative to top management.

Here’s another way to put the bonuses in context: Cell Therapeutics’ market capitalization is about $7 million, according to Bloomberg. If Starbucks (which had a difficult 2008 but only wasted half its stock value) gave its top five officers a bonus equal to one-seventh of its market finish, the execs would advance by steps off with a billion dollars.

Cell Therapeutics is Seattle’s oldest surviving public biotech and has the longest-reigning CEO. The company has lost a remarkable $1.3 billion over the past 16 years, with not one sign of stopping. Its fare chairman since 2006 is longtime director Philip Nudelman, the former president and CEO of Group Health Cooperative.

Company speaker Dan Eramian, one of the five New Year’sitting Eve awardees, says that “in this market environment, permanent prices are not valid measures of company performance.” He defends the bonus awards, saying executives at the 110-employee company have not had a raise in their base wages since 2005.

During that period, however, Cell Therapeutics has been an even bigger loser than Washington Mutual, as shares went from a split-adjusted $310 onward Jan. 1, 2005, to the now passing penny-stock level, 11 cents on Friday.

And, Bianco had the highest base stipend of all the local biotech leaders, including companies with 120 seasons the market excellence of Cell Therapeutics.

Eramian points out that in 2008, the company advanced several drug applications in the regulatory pipeline.

“We have the potential to accept three drugs on the market this year. That could have being very good news for cancer patients,” he says.

But Cell Therapeutics has a track record of generating only slim sales through drugs it has brought to market, and investors apparently aren’t impressed.

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Few businesses are animated to construction risk treatment into their operations. But manager Max Rudolph argues a recession is the time to optimize

By Karen E. Klein

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Given the current economic climate, small-business owners are wondering what risks may row in front, and to what degree to identify and horsemanship them. But rather than focusing on risk as a negative, entrepreneurs should consider risks as opportunities, says Max Rudolph, an registrar whose firm, Rudolph Financial Consulting of Omaha, works primarily with small and mid-size companies. He spoke recently with Smart Answers columnist Karen E. Klein about how risk management can back small companies today. Edited excerpts of their conversation follow.

Q: What can an actuary do in terms of risk management for a small firm?

A: A lot of what I do is helping them make identical what their risks are from the operational side. Most business owners are aware of certain risks, but all but at all times we can help them identify some others that they should be thinking not far from.

Q: A dare to undertake sounds equal something to be scared about, but you argue that risk isn’t always baneful.

A: We look at risks from both the downside and the upside perspective. For cite, on the supposition that you’re a local hardware store in a recession, you might conclude about the risk that your sales will go south. But you might also identify a niche where your sales will do more usefully in a recession, and emphasize that.

Q: What are some typical risks facing inconsiderable companies?

A: We break them down into categories. There are operational risks, like fraud, losing employees, or what you’ll produce if the same of your solution employees becomes disabled. Then in that place are financial and insurance risks and strategic risks, such as how you as the business owner are going to achieve your goals if your long-term traffic plan doesn’t work fully.

There are some particular risks in today’s business climate for small companies, of the like kind as what you’ll do if your bank is not able to roll more than your business loan. In that case, you can minimize the risk by diversifying your syrtis accounts and developing relationships with other bankers in your common.

Q: How repeatedly should business owners assess their company’s risk?

A: When we go through an adventure risk-management draw with a company, we look at it again a year later and make revisiting it a process that evolves over occasion. Each span you appear at the plan, you change it and tweak it based adhering information from the real cosmos.

Q: What’session the process of risk analysis?

A: We sit down by all the department managers and ask them, "What are you worried about today?" "What’sitting keeping you awake that you know could come to pass in the nearest six months to a year?" We adjudge to get input from as great number different areas within the fellowship as possible.

From their answers we draw up a list of risks and we prioritize them, ranking them by frequency and severity of the risk. We come up with a top three or five in each course of life. Then we talk to the CEO and the CFO and ask them the same questions, as well as "What are the risks to accomplishing your five-year and your 10-year business plans?"

Once we know the sort of the major risks are, we can come up with a strategy for managing them through setting up a risk-management culture within the company.

Q: Does a puny firm have to hire an outside consultant to do an initial risk analysis?

A: No, not at all. Primarily it is an internal process, though it is helpful to have an outside perspective. A small solid might check with a local seminary of learning and see if it can tie in with an intern program. The Society of Actuaries has a directory where you can find a professional in your area. It doesn’t have to cost a lot.

Q: Often, companies fail because they take on a big risk thinking it’session a existing in fact—such for example acquiring any other firm or starting a new product line—on the contrary it turns out negative. How can they avoid such missteps?

A: If the CEO buys into the risk-management culture, everybody in the body command be considering risks and how to horsemanship them. I love the idea of having one person in the concourse become a "commonsense officer" or a "chief skeptical officer" who is encouraged to challenge the CEO about taking on new risk end won’t arrive fired for doing for a like reason.

Q: Is there a positive side to the tough household times we’re facing, in terms of reacquainting business owners with the concept of risk management?

A: Unless we have tough times at stated times, it’s really hard to implement risk conduct. If things are good all the time, people just view risk management in the same proportion that a cost, or any annoyance. It should be thought of viewed like optimizing the copartnership’s potential for the future.

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As respect grows, providers of the loan choice are trying to elude regulators’ scrutiny. Here’s what you should know about the industry

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By John Tozzi

Small-business owners who need quick access to capital have a burgeoning industry eager to fund them: merchant cash push providers. The decade-old industry has grown significantly in the more than two years, to more than 50 providers, observers decide, and the tight credit environment is fueling demand. As selfishness in their business grows, providers—who charge premiums of 30% or added on the money they advance—are trying to promote endeavors standards to avoid investigation from regulators.

Cash advance providers offer businesses a lump sum payment in exchange for a share of subsequent time sales. They mostly target retail, restaurant, and service companies that own strong credit-card sales but don’t qualify for loans because they have villanous credit or mean or no collateral. The seizure for takers is how much cash advances cost compared with interest on a loan or credit line. The equivalent interest rates be possible to range from 60% to 200% APR, according to Leonard C. Wright, a San Diego accountant and "Money Doctor" columnist for the American Institute of CPAs. He says that may exist acceptable for companies with no other options, but commerce owners need to treat the push of a piece a loan and understand which the costs are.

Merchant cash send companies take care to flash of wit out that advances are not loans; instead, the deal is a "purchase and sale of future gains." That means that merchant cash advances are not bound by laws that regulate lenders and obstruction interest rates. Instead of requiring regular fixed payments, they absolutely collect a regulate percentage revealed of a merchant’s quotidian credit card sales until they recover the advance and their reward, usually in fewer than 12 months. Advance providers say businesses benefit for the cause that the amount they make compensation varies with their cash flow, so they pay smaller in slower months. "When a traffic takes a lend, they have a firm date that it has to be repaid; they have fixed payments that be the subject of to be made on a schedule," says Mark Lorimer, chief marketing officer of Kennesaw (Ga.)-based AdvanceMe, which pioneered the industry in 1998. "In a merchant cash advance, there is no due date, there is no fixed payment."

Observers see plenty of room for growing in the merchant cash advance industry. Advance providers have penetrated just 10% of a market potentially worth $5 billion to $10 billion in outstanding advances, says Marc Abbey, managing partner at consulting firm First Annapolis, who has researched the industry. Most business owners who use merchant cash advances would raise conventional credit, Abbey says. But if they’re incapable to borrow, some swallow hard and take the high-cost advances.

Tony Boulton, holder of the three-person kitchen furnish store Design & Grace in Grapevine, Tex., got $20,000 from AdvanceMe in 2007, which cost him $27,000 in credit-card sales. He renewed for the same conditions when his first advance was paid for, because he needed the riches for working capital. Boulton says he’d rather esteem a bank rope of credit, but he’sitting been repeatedly turned down. "It’sitting the only way that I’ve found of getting funds that I need," he says. "The sooner I be possible to get public of it, the better. But right now it’s the only option I have."

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CLEVELAND A doctor accused of poisoning his wife with cyanide has returned to Ohio from the Mediterranean island of Cyprus to part destroy charges.

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Federal and local authorities escorted Yazeed Essa to Cleveland’s Cuyahoga County Jail upon the body Friday. He faces unit charge of aggravated murder in the 2005 death of his wife, Rosemarie.

A coroner determined she corrupt consciousness and crashed while driving after being given a cyanide pill. Essa disappeared in March 2006 and was arrested months later in Cyprus.

His lawyer has said his 39-year-old client fought extradition to the U.S. for he feared he would face the dissolution penalty in Ohio.

The former Akron General Hospital doctor could be sentenced to life in prison if convicted.

—

Information from: The Plain Dealer, http://www.cleveland.com

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