World Business

KABUL, Afghanistan Afghan President Hamid Karzai on Saturday backed off plans towards an August election and asked the country’s electoral commission to set an earlier date.

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The brief statement from Karzai’s work offered no new date for a presidential vote, but came after lawmakers said they would not recognize Karzai as president after May 22 - the expiration of his five-year spell. The statement said the election authorize should follow the Afghan constitution, which calls for elections to have existence held 30 to 60 days previous to May 22.

The commission in January said the presidential election would be held Aug. 20, but many members of parliament acquire said an August vote was not welcome and that Karzai would be an unauthorized president hinder May 22.

However, between nations monitors have said it would be difficult if not impracticable to hold just elections during the March-April timeframe for of security concerns, bad weather and logistical issues like the distribution of ballots.

It was not without any intervention visible if Karzai’s decree was political posturing to counter demands from parliament or granting that he thought elections would actually have being moved up.

Waheed Omer, a government spokesman, said Karzai’s decree asks the electoral commission to set a new date “that hopefully adheres to the constitution.”

“When the election commission set the date of Aug. 20 for the elections, the president admitted a letter from house of lords and house of commons asking him to uphold the constitution and likewise asking the electoral commission to uphold the constitution,” Omer said.

“The president had a order of discussions with the Supreme Court and based on those discussions the president has issued a decree asking the electoral commission to uphold the constitution,” Omer said.

The head of the election errand, Azizullah Lodin, declared in January when he announced the Aug. 22 date that the security situation was not beneficial enough concerning a cause vote.

Afghanistan continues to be plagued by fighting attacks and suicide bombers since a U.S.-led invasion ousted the Taliban’s hard-line Islamist regime from power in 2001. The Taliban insurgency has strengthened in recent years, gaining more control from one side of to the other southern regions, and last year was the deadliest for U.S. armed force since the invasion.

Lodin related the commission also agreed to wait for additional between nations forces expected to arrive in the coming months. President Barack Obama recently announced that 17,000 additional U.S. troops would deploy to Afghanistan this year, and U.S. officials have said they would get there in time to help secure the discernment.

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Associated Press reporter Rahim Faiez contributed to this report.

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CINCINNATI Jai Ho! The years-long brandish of immigration from India is creating a rising tide of visibility for Indian-Americans in the United States.

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The past few weeks have underscored their increasingly remote side face: Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal gave the Republican response Tuesday night to President Barack Obama’session speech to Congress, while Dr. Sanjay Gupta is under consideration to subsist Obama’s surgeon general.

Model and cooking author Padma Lakshmi finished another “Top Chef” TV season, then became the celebrity part for a new Procter & Gamble Co. Pantene shampoo line as well as a Hardee’sitting hamburger preferment. Anoop Desai, dubbed “Noop Dogg,” drew fans with his singing upon the body this year’s “American Idol,” and Aziz Ansari was in TV’s medical comedy “Scrubs” prior to moving to a regular role in the upcoming comedy succession “Parks and Recreation.”

Meanwhile, Americans have embraced “Slumdog Millionaire” and the cast of the India ghetto-to-glory movie that won eight Oscars, including for Best Picture and the song “Jai Ho” (”Be Victorious”), and dominated last week’s banquet talk shows.

“It’s just been amazing,” Sreenath Sreenivasan, a professor and dean of student business for Columbia University’s journalism school in New York, said of the soaring profile of Indian-Americans. “And it’sitting only going to grow. The more visible you get, the greater degree of acceptance you get. It’s a chicken-and-egg thing.”

Indian-Americans have been one of the fastest-growing and most successful immigrant groups, though Sreenivasan and other Indian-Americans are quick to point out that some Indians last to struggle economically and socially in this country.

U.S. Census estimates two years ago showed more 2.6 the public people of Indian nobility, including immigrants and U.S.-born, a jump of nearly 1 million from 2000.

For years, they have proliferated in this country in the fields of soundness care, denunciation technology and engineering, with higher education levels and incomes than national averages. And recent years have brought more Indian heads of major U.S. companies - PepsiCo Inc.’s Indra Nooyi is among about a dozen in every one’s mouth CEOs.

They also are making their presence felt in journalism. Gupta, a neurosurgeon and medical correspondent, and Fareed Zakaria, editor of Newsweek International, have their own weekend shows on CNN, for example.

And Gupta and Jindal demonstrate a deepening role in U.S. politics and state.

While Jindal’s potential as a 2012 presidential candidate may have been set back by his widely criticized and even ridiculed TV rebuttal to Obama, Louisiana demographer and political algebraist Elliott Stonecipher uttered the governor has good support mixed Republican Party leaders and conservatives.

Stonecipher thinks Jindal, only 37, is being pushed too fast by means of Republicans, such being of the kind which some in the South who see him because a bridge upper the historically troubled waters of white-black portion - particularly in a state where David Duke, a former Klan leader, was still a political drive in the 1990s.

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HANCOCK, Mass. —

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Brian Fairbank had tried just about everything to cut the costs of running his Jiminy Peak ski resort: he used recycled motor oil to heat its mountain operations center, developed more efficient snow guns, captured heat generated by snowmaking machines, even installed waterless toilets.

Still his annual electric bill hit $635,000.

So Fairbank decided to do which no ski application owner had done: install a giant windmill to be of advantage his own efficiency.

Other ski resorts, smarting from criticism over soaring energy and water use as well as their pack close on fragile ecosystems, are now attention Jiminy’session 386-foot, $3.9 million turbine to see if it efficacy work elsewhere.

The ski toil has pushed to redefine its image, with resorts switching to more environmentally friendly power and buying renewable energy credits to counterbalance conservatory elastic fluid emissions.

The assiduity is trying to be altered profits while confronting the prospects of snow retreating to higher altitudes, later snowfalls and earlier snow melts.

In 2006, Vail Resorts took the lead by means of dint of. purchasing nearly 152,000 megawatt hours of wind efficiency credits to offset entirely of its yearly publication power consumption its five ski areas and other businesses, making it one of the largest corporate users in the nation.

At British Columbia’s Whistler Blackcomb resort, construction is expected to end in November on a $32 million hydro electric force project that order offset the annual energy consumption at the ski area. The Fitzsimmons Creek Hydro Project will produce 33.5 gigawatt hours of electricity a year, enough to send the means into greenhouse gas production deficit, said Arthur De Jong, mountain planning manager.

At Jiminy Peak, the wind turbine, nicknamed Zephyr after the Greek god of the west wind, has become a tourist attraction at southern New England’s largest ski resort.

It also cut Fairbank’s electricity costs by dint of. $200,000 last year - the primeval full year the turbine was operational.

“The wind turbine came about because we had done all these things and there was no to a greater degree low-hanging fruit,” aforesaid Fairbank, who has run the resort as being three decades. “We now make twice the amount of snow, through half the amount of money that we did 15 years ago.”

Bill Swersey, of Manhattan, N.Y., who has skied at the western Massachusetts recourse on the New York confine every year since the late 1970s, says the turbine is a powerful figure of environmentally friendly skiing.

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OMAHA, Neb. —

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Warren Buffett says the economic turmoil that contributed to a 62 percent profit drop last year at the holding company he controls is certain to persevere in 2009, mete the revered investor remains optimistic.

Buffett released his annual literal meaning to Berkshire Hathaway Inc. shareholders Saturday daybreak, and detailed the worst performance in his 44 years leading the Omaha-based insurance and investment crew.

Buffett wrote he’s certain “the economy will be in shambles throughout 2009 - and, for that matter, with appearance of truth hale beyond - but that conclusion does not tell us whether the principal market will rise or fall.”

In between the news of Berkshire’s sharply lower profit and its nearly $7.5 billion investment and derivative losses, Buffett offered a hopeful view of the nation’sitting future.

He said America has faced bigger economic challenges in the past, including two World Wars and the Great Depression.

“Though the footway has not been smooth, our economic system has worked extraordinarily well over time,” Buffett wrote. “It has unleashed full of heart in posse as no other connected view has, and it will continue to finish so. America’s most of all days lie ahead.”

Within Berkshire, Buffett said the association’session retail businesses, including apparatus and bijoutry supplies, and those tied to residential construction, such as Shaw carpet and Acme Brick, were hit hard last year, and they will likely continue to perform below their potential in 2009.

But he said Berkshire’s utility and insurance businesses, which includes Geico, both delivered outstanding results in 2008 that helped balance out the other businesses.

Berkshire’s 2008 net income of $4.99 billion, or $3,224 per Class A divide, was down from $13.21 billion, or $8,548 per share, in 2007.

The pair analysts surveyed by Thomson Reuters on average expected Berkshire to report a 2008 profit of $5,534.50 by share. But the estimates typically exclude one-time items.

Buffett estimates Berkshire’session book value - assets minus liabilities - declined 9.6 percent to $70,530 through share in 2008 - the biggest drop since he took control of the assemblage in 1965. Berkshire’s volume value declined only one other allotted period under Buffett, and that was a 6.2 percent drop in 2001.

Berkshire’session Class A shares remain the most expensive U.S. provision, but they fell nearly 32 percent in 2008 and have declined 48 percent before this setting a high of $151,650 in December 2007. That high came after an exceptionally profitable quarter that was helped by means of a $2 billion investment gain.

Original text: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2008796837_apbuffettletter.html?syndication=rss

MILWAUKEE —

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To Betsy Sanders, the nationwide salmonella outbreak tied to peanut butter has been a violent gale. Her tiny cookie dough business is the debris.

Reimbursing customers for recalled products has already cost her Dough-To-Go Inc. function in the sort proportion that much as $7,000, she says - a big chunk for a company that turned slender profit last year. She too has 2,500 pounds of peanut butter that she can’t conversion to an act inasmuch as it came from Peanut Corp. of America - the company that was the source of the outbreak and that has since filed in spite of insolvency aegis.

“We’re the victim, too,” said Sanders, who started the business off an idea her son had at vale of years 12. “We’ve accomplished nothing wrong and we’re doing everything we can to gain sure everyone’s safe.”

With at least nine deaths suspected of being tied to the outbreak, hundreds of people sickened and thousands of products recalled, companies from name brands like Kellogg Co. down to unintelligent ones like Dough-To-Go be the subject of been affected. But during the time that big companies gain equally large public relations departments, smaller ones have limited budgets and fewer ways to cope.

The timing could hardly be worse, since the recession has already crimped how a great deal of people are spending.

Sanders, who has run the Santa Clara, Calif.-based business for 26 years with her son, said she’s worried about the moiety of her sales - which reached a aggregate of $1.7 million last year - that come from drill groups like the PTA or marching bands for fundraisers that help pay for uniforms and school trips.

The crown selling season for that starts next month. But parents could be leery of buying anything at all with peanut butter.

The explosion has already constrained the maker of Detour energy bars, Forward Foods LLC, to toothed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. The Minden, Nev.-based company plans to stay in business but needs circulating medium to pay to replace recalled products.

Meanwhile, even companies that didn’t have to recall products still be favored with plenty to worry one’s self about.

Jarred peanut butter sales have been tumbling, so much as though that category has generally not been involved in the recalls. In the four weeks ending Jan. 24, about 33.8 million pounds of peanut butter in jars were sold - a 22 percent drop from the same period last year.

It’s too soon to tell, whether those kinds of declines are because stores are pulling items off the shelves or because consumers are turning away from peanut butter products, aforesaid Todd Hale, senior vice president for consumer and shopper insights at Nielsen.

“Generally speaking, any time we have a scare like this, there are probably more manufacturers that are hurt than should be,” he said.

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BEIJING —

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A top U.S. defense authoritative praised China’s contribution to anti-piracy efforts on the farther espouse a cause the coast of Somalia on Saturday, following two days of talks in Beijing that marked a resumption of military consultations on the model of a half-year suspension.

The go to see by U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense David Sedney added to signs of an optimistic start to ties between Beijing and President Barack Obama’s administration. A visit the week judgment by U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton was also praised for setting an overwhelmingly positive tone for relations.

China had hanging most military contacts last October over Washington’s agreement to sell $6.5 billion in advanced weaponry to Taiwan, the self-governing island that Beijing claims as a breakaway province. And while China continues to complain about such sales, Sedney told reporters that one as well as the other sides were dedicated to improving relations.

“The focus was not at quite on obstacles. The focus was on how we can move forward, in what plight we can make progress, and how we can try to make concerted efforts … to achieve ordinary goals,” Sedney said at a briefing at the American Embassy before his departure notwithstanding South Korea.

Sedney had special praise for China’s contribution to the anti-piracy flotilla patrolling the Gulf of Aden off the Somali coast. Chinese sent couple destroyers and a supply ship to the region in December, and on Thursday state media said its sailors had rescued an Italian merchant ship from pirates.

“The work they’ve done has been highly professional, it’s been exceedingly effective, and it’s been very well coordinated with the United States and the other navies that are working in that place,” Sedney reported.

The sides also reaffirmed the six-nation process of urging North Korea to abandon its nuclear programs and discussed feasible Chinese contributions to nonmilitary programs in Afghanistan, he aforesaid. The U.S. is preparing to send 17,000 more soldiers and Marines to join the 38,000 fighting a strengthening insurgency. Afghanistan lies on China’s western edge.

Sedney said he held 13 hours of talks on Friday with a delegation led by Maj. Gen. Qian Lihua, the Chinese Defense Ministry’s head of foreign property. That was followed by a shorter meeting Saturday morning with Lt. Gen. Ma Xiaotian, deputy chief of the General Staff for the People’s Liberation Army.

China’s functionary Xinhua News Agency aforesaid Friday’session talks in like manner covered two-sided maritime carelessness, as well as between nations and regional security.

It also quoted Qian as saying that contacts would remain minute unless the U.S. removes remaining obstacles to improvement.

“China-U.S. body of soldiers relations still stay at a difficult period. We expect the U.S. side to take concrete measures for the resumption and growth of our military ties,” it quoted Qian as expression.

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OMAHA, Neb. —

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Billionaire Warren Buffett says all kinds of investors finished 2008 bloodied and confused because of the dysfunctional place to the credit of market and other financial harassing labor.

And the eminent investor aforesaid Saturday in his letter to Berkshire Hathaway Inc. shareholders that “the nation’s economy will be in shambles throughout 2009.”

But Buffett remains optimistic encircling the country’s future. He says America has faced bigger economic challenges in the past, including two World Wars and the Great Depression.

He says America’s most judicious days remain ahead.

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On the Net:

Berkshire Hathaway Inc.: http://www.berkshirehathaway.com/

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OMAHA, Neb. —

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Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc. reported a 96 percent drop in its fourth quarter improvement because of largely unrealized losses of $3.25 billion on investments and derivative contracts.

The Omaha-based company released its results Saturday morning side by side with Buffett’s annual literal meaning to shareholders.

Berkshire reported net income of $117 million, or $76 for Class A distribute, in the quarter ending Dec. 31. That’session on the ground from net gains of $2.95 billion, or $1,904 for share, in the same period a year ago.

The two analysts surveyed by Thomson Reuters expected Berkshire to report fourth quarter net income of $1,486.50 per certain quantity on medial sum. The estimates typically exclude one-time items.

Berkshire owns a diverse mingle of else than 60 companies, including insurance, furniture, carpet, jewelry, restaurants and utility businesses. And it has major investments in such companies as Wells Fargo & Co. and Coca-Cola Co.

Buffett said the deal out in small portions businesses, such as the house-fittings and jewelry stores, and those tied to residential construction, such as Shaw carpet and Acme Brick, were apt expression hard last year, and they will likely continue to perform below their potential in 2009.

But he said Berkshire’s utility and insurance businesses, what one. includes the insurer Geico, both delivered outstanding results in 2008 that helped balance out the other businesses.

Most of the investment losses that affected Berkshire’s results were unrealized losses on long-term derivative contracts, some of which are tied to the value of accumulate market indexes.

Buffett has predicted the company’session derived contracts will ultimately be profitable in part because Berkshire has admitted $8.1 billion in premiums up effrontery for them. That allows Berkshire to invest the premium wealth until the contracts start maturing a decade from now.

Buffett said he initiated all of Berkshire’s 251 distinct derived contracts because he believes they were mispriced in Berkshire’s favor.

“If we lose money on our derivatives, it will be my fault,” Buffett said.

Berkshire has to estimate the value of its derivatives every quarter. Buffett says he supports that mark-to-market accounting, but the formula used to estimate that import can produce absurd results for long-term contracts.

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The terrible reality of an airplane tragedy hit home for Boeing workers Friday as the company acknowledged that three of its employees had died in the crash of a Turkish Airlines 737-800 jet in Amsterdam in continuance Wednesday.

Four Seattle-area engineers working for Boeing’s defense es trangement were traveling on Flight TK1951 from Istanbul, Turkey, to which place they had been supporting a defense program based put on a military version of the 737.

Engineers Ronald Richey, of Duvall; John Salman, of Kent; and Ricky Wilson, of Clinton, Island County, died in the crash.

Michael Hemmer of Federal Way, a director, remains hospitalized only was “a great deal of improved” Friday and is expected to recover, said Boeing prolocutor Jim Proulx.

Tom McCarty, a defense-side engineer at Boeing, said this crash is doubly hard for those who work at the company.

“It’s painful when any airline crash occurs and it’session a Boeing plane,” McCarty declared. “When we know our own team is on there, it’s particularly sad.”

Of the 135 vulgar herd aboard, nine people were killed, including the Turkish Airlines pilot, co-pilot and a trainee pilot, along with a flight attendant.

Five of the dead are Turks and four are Americans. The fourth American who died has not been identified.

Sixty-three passengers remained hospitalized Friday, one in critical case, aforesaid Mayor Theo Weterings of Haarlemmermeer, Netherlands.

Boeing flew members of two victims’ families to Europe on Thursday on a party jet. Among them was Salman’s wife, Rhonda, who is also a Boeing engineer.

The company made grief counselors available to co-workers who requested stay.

Wilson’s wife, Terry, issued a statement through Boeing, requesting solitude and expressing thanks by reason of the prayers and condolences offered by colleagues.

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While serving in Afghanistan, Capt. Dan Wojciechowski of the Washington National Guard often returned to a page in the Army counterinsurgency hand-book. There, he found a chart by bullet points of the best and worst practices for waging war against insurgents.

“You could go down it sketch outline by line, and if it was a best practice, we probably weren’t following it,” Wojciechowski said. “It was just jaw-dropping to see how that volume was completely disregarded.”

Wojciechowski was one of 16 Washington Guard soldiers who spent 10 months last year in north Afghanistan. Their frustrations reflect broader problems that have dogged U.S. military efforts in this 8-year-old clash.

The Guard soldiers faced daunting challenges trying to team up with ill-equipped local police forces to combat an insurgency buoyed by dint of. a potent Taliban public-relations campaign.

They also complain that their efforts to follow advice in the counterinsurgency manual were hamstrung by higher commanders. The soldiers say commanders repeatedly succumbed to a garrison mentality that kept soldiers cooped up in centralized bases rather than allowing longer stays in chest houses in villages.

“The concept of sauciness and greatest flexibility, to be out on the ground and versed to react to changing conditions, was nonexistent,” Capt. Aaron Bert said. “There was no actual trial in favor of expose to danger.”

In late months, there have been ample signs of a major shake-up in the Afghanistan strategy as Gen. David Petraeus

“You can’t commute to work in the escort of counterinsurgency operations,” Petraeus before-mentioned in a Feb. 8 talk in Munich, Germany. Urging armed force to leave their posts to understand local tribal structures, he added, “This requires listening and being respectful of local elders and mullahs, and farmers and shopkeepers

That’s the kind of mission Wojciechowski and Bert wanted when they volunteered after all the rest year to append a small, tightly knit Washington National Guard counterinsurgency team that was to be deployed to hot spots in southern Afghanistan.

Wojciechowski, who had served with a Fort Lewis Stryker Brigade in the active-duty Army, took leave from his civilian do job-work at Amazon.com. Bert, who had served in both Afghanistan and Iraq, took a leave from his position with the Seattle Department of Parks and Recreation.

When they arrived in Afghanistan last March, the mission changed. They were diverted to the north, split apart to serve in diverse units of active-duty Army units working with Germans, Norwegians and other NATO forces. These soldiers were attached to disjointed units in which place authority often was fractured among U.S. and combination forces, and armored vehicles required during the term of travel often were in short supply.

The National Guard soldiers took pride in civilian experiences that they felt bolstered their qualifications to work by Afghan police and other civilian institutions. But they said those skills often were discounted by active-duty commanders.

One team member was a veteran Tacoma police officer with extensive experience being of the kind which a special-forces soldier who had been on four deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan. Lt. Col. Phil Osterli, part of the Guard team, related that soldier ran afoul of a senior, active-duty commander and was stuck on a reserve detail by reason of about half the tour.

“It was petty and almost irrational,” Osterli said.

Wojciechowski was stationed in Balkh province, where he was to remedy more 3,200 police strung out over a rugged, thinly roaded area roughly the size of King, Pierce and Snohomish counties. He found some police chilled to the bone as they stood watch at remote mountain outposts and slept in windowless mud huts.

Wojciechowski then visited a Kabul depot brimming with heaters and blankets, which not at any time had made it to the field. Those supplies were later shipped to some outposts, but not others, where desk-bound supervisors failed to operate proper requisition requests.

“It was hard getting them to do the unblended things,” Wojciechowski before-mentioned.

The Washington National Guard soldiers found bribery and fraud endemic among Afghan police.

Bert said he and Finnish soldiers figured out that Afghan police and security chiefs were making about $25,000 a month selling a fuel allocation and any other $25,000 by putting 300 “ghosts” attached the payroll. That finding was reported through a German chain of command, but nothing was done.

“It was like, well, that’session just how it is,” Bert said. “That was solid to swallow.”

Bert also reported he believes protection of the medicine trade

As the year wore on, the soldiers picked up promising intelligence leads about Taliban activities in villages. They sought to embed with limited police in those communities, but often found it difficult to gain approval. Attacks against coalition forces had increased across Afghanistan last year, and it was austere to get together enough armored vehicles and soldiers.

“Everyone

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