Bush 'pardons' turkeys for last
For the president of the United States, the annual 'pardoning' of the Thanksgiving turkey is dangerous ground. Photos of the event have ranged from the adorable to the goofy to the vaguely horrific, so it's always an event best approached carefully by any White House....
http://blogs.usatoday.com/ondeadline/2008/11/bush-pardons-tu.html
Researchers: 139 WWII Marines entombed on atoll November 26, 2008 - 3:30am
By MELISSA NELSON Associated Press Writer
PENSACOLA, Fla. (AP) - A Florida man's quest to find hundreds of U.S. Marines buried anonymously after one of World War II's bloodiest battles could lead to the largest identification of American war dead in history.
Researchers used ground-penetrating radar, tediously reviewed thousands of military documents and interviewed hundreds of others to find 139 graves. There, they say, lie the remains of men who died 65 years ago out in the Pacific Ocean on Tarawa Atoll.
Mark Noah of Marathon, Fla., raised money for the expedition through his nonprofit, History Flight, by selling vintage military aircraft rides at air shows. He hopes the government will investigate further after research is given to the U.S. Defense Department in January _ and he hopes the remains are identified and eventually returned to the men's families.
"There will have to be convincing evidence before we mount an excavation of any spot that could yield remains," said Larry Greer, spokesman for the Pentagon's Prisoner of War and Missing in Action Office.
U.S. government archaeologists would likely excavate a small test site first, he said.
James Clayton Johnson never met his uncle, James Bernard Johnson, who died on Tarawa at age 17. But Johnson, who was named for his father's brother, never forgot that young Marine.
Now 60 and living near Noah in the Florida Keys, Johnson learned of the effort to identify the burial sites of his uncle and 541 other missing U.S. Marines on Tarawa while researching his uncle's military records online.
More than 990 U.S. marines and 680 sailors died and almost 2,300 were wounded in the three-day battle, one of the first major amphibious assaults in the Pacific.
Johnson, himself a veteran who led special forces troops into Cambodia as a 21-year-old Army platoon leader during the Vietnam War, isn't sure having his uncle's body returned to the U.S. would provide any sort of closure.
"There aren't any open wounds for me that need fixing," he said.
But Johnson wants the world to know about the volunteers committed to preserving the names and stories of thousands of American soldiers.
"My problem is that people don't care," he said. "I get pumped up, and I want people to think and look at things like this."
Noah, a 43-year-old commercial pilot and longtime World War II history buff, raised the $90,000 for the Tarawa work by selling rides at air shows and partnering with The American Legion, VFW and other groups.
Noah and Massachusetts historian Ted Darcy of WFI Research Group reviewed eight burial sites they believe contain U.S. remains. They say the claim is backed by burial rosters, casualty cards and combat reports; interviews with construction contractors who found human remains at the sites and locals who have found American artifacts; and other information.
But they'll leave the digging to the U.S. government, so the archaeological integrity of the sites isn't spoiled.
The names of many fallen soldiers were lost as U.S. Navy crews rushed to build desperately needed landing strips on the tiny atoll after the Nov. 20, 1943, invasion. Many of the graves were relocated.
The military didn't focus on identifying the soldiers who died at Tarawa until 1945, when an Army officer was tasked with unraveling the hasty reburials.
"You could sense his frustrations in his reports," said Noah, who reviewed all the burial records.
The brief telegram James Hildebrand's grandmother received on Dec. 26, 1943, said her 20-year-old son died on Tarawa Atoll and included this line: "On account of existing conditions the body if recovered cannot be returned at present. If further details are received you will be informed."
James Hildebrand, now 65 and living in Gilroy, Calif., said his grandmother wrote letters to the Navy for years trying to recover his uncle's body.
He'd like to know whether the remains could be buried in a mass grave in a military cemetery in Hawaii with a group of unidentified U.S. soldiers taken from Tarawa many years ago. And he hopes the Defense Department will try to find his uncle's body on Tarawa.
"If he's still on the island ... there's space in our family plot in Tucson where he could be buried. It would mean a lot to our family," he said.
For 10 years, Merill Redman of Illinois has ultimately been encouraged by reports of efforts to find his brother's body on Tarawa. He's been disappointed each time.
Redman, now 79, was 14 when his older brother joined the Marine Corps and left their small town of Watseka. He's even traveled to Tarawa himself, trying to find his brother and bring him home.
"Each little thread," he said, "it drives me on in this project."
http://wtop.com/?sid=1526360&nid=104
FDIC's list of 'problem' banks swells to 171 NEW YORK – The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. said Tuesday the list of banks it considers to be in trouble shot up nearly 50 percent to 171 during the third quarter — yet another sign of escalating problems among the institutions controlling Americans' deposits.
The 171 banks on the FDIC's "problem list" encompass only about 2 percent of the nearly 8,500 FDIC-insured institutions. Still, the increase from 117 in the second quarter is sharp, and the current tally is the highest since late 1995.
"We've had profound problems in our financial markets that are taking a rising toll on the real economy," said FDIC Chairman Sheila Bair in a statement, adding that Tuesday's report "reflects these challenges."
Banks across the country have been hurt — and in some cases, devastated — by the collapse of the subprime mortgage market and subsequent problems across the lending spectrum. As the FDIC report shows, the number of hobbled institutions is rising at a quickening pace, a trend that has already begun to reshape the banking industry.
The FDIC said total assets held by troubled institutions climbed from $78.3 billion to $115.6 billion — a figure that suggests that the nation's top 20 banks aren't on the list, even though they are getting slammed, too, by the growing credit crisis. The FDIC does not reveal the names of the institutions it deems troubled.
Bert Ely, a banking consultant based in Alexandria, Va., pointed out that the assets held by problem banks represent less than 1 percent of those held by all U.S. banks. "We're still talking about a fairly small portion of the industry," he said.
And on average, only about 13 percent of institutions on the FDIC's list end up failing.
Still, banks that don't make the list can end up collapsing anyway — the two biggest bank failures over the past year, Washington Mutual Inc. and IndyMac Bancorp, had not been on the FDIC's list of troubled banks. Wachovia Corp., which nearly failed before it got bought by Wells Fargo & Co. in October, had not been on the list, either.
Nine banks failed in the third quarter, decreasing the FDIC's deposit insurance fund to $34.6 billion from $45.2 billion in the second quarter. This quarter, the pace appears to be picking up — nine banks have already failed since Sept. 30, including Downey Savings and Loan Association, based in Newport Beach, Calif.
"To some extent, a bank failure is a regulatory failure," Ely said. Regulators, if they address bank problems early on, can convince a troubled bank to sell off assets, raise capital or find a buyer, he said. "My hope is they're moving faster on these problems."
The FDIC said Tuesday that commercial banks and savings institutions suffered a 94 percent drop in third-quarter profits to $1.7 billion from $27 billion in the same period last year. Except for the fourth quarter of 2007, it was the lowest quarterly profit since the fourth quarter of 1990.
Those institutions wrote off $27.9 billion in loans as uncollectible during the quarter.
Recently, community banks — defined as those with assets under $1 billion — have started to show similar stresses as their larger counterparts, the FDIC said.
James Chessen, chief economist at the American Bankers Association, said in a statement that the banking industry as whole, however, "remains well-positioned to meet the credit needs of local communities." Since last year, bank lending to businesses has risen by more than 8 percent, while bank lending to individuals has risen by nearly 7 percent, he said.
The U.S. government has been guaranteeing and buying more and more types of debt in an effort to keep the financial system functional. Late Sunday, Citigroup Inc. got a government backstop for $306 billion worth of mortgages and other assets. On Tuesday, the Federal Reserve agreed to buy up to $600 billion in mortgage-backed assets.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081125/ap_on_bi_ge/problem_banks
If you have been watching the news alot of the events dealing with the economy have been likened to the events surrounding the depression of Germany under the Wiemar Republic.
Germany facing worst slump since 1949
Euro-zone industrial orders plunged 3.9pc in September and Germany's IFO index of business expectations has fallen to the lowest level since the survey began half a century ago, heightening fears of a severe slump across Europe next year.
French president Nicolas Sarkozy met Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel in Paris yesterday to plead for stronger German support for an EU-wide rescue package. The talks come as the European Commission adds the final touches to a €130bn (£110bn) fiscal stimulus plan.
Germany has clung steadfastly to budget orthodoxy but the downturn has now begun to engulf Europe's biggest economy with shocking speed. The Bundesbank is now expecting the worst recession since the terrible year of 1949, according to Deutsche Press Agentur.
Howard Archer, Europe economist at Global Insight, said the blizzard of dire data from the eurozone now points to a severe manufacturing slump. "Output, total orders, exports orders all contracted at record rates in November, which was alarming," he said.
The broad IFO index of German confidence fell to the lowest since 1993 in November, but it was the unprecedented slide in the expectations index that most worried economists.
"This is extremely bad, it's even worse than the dog days of early 1970s," Julian Callow, Europe economist at Barclays Capital. "German exports to the US, UK, Spain, and Italy have all collapsed, and the next shoe yet to drop is Eastern Europe," he said. Latvia has joined the queue waiting for an IMF bail-out, while Russia devalued the rouble again yesterday.
"The Euroepan Central Bank needs to cut rates very aggressively. They're trying to take this steady line, but this is a not the time for that. We think rates will be cut to 1.5pc by February," he said.
The ECB raised rates in a widely-criticized move in July has since cut by just 100 basis points to 3.25pc, largely staying aloof as the Anglo-Saxon central banks take drastic action to stop the downward spiral.
Adding to eurozone woes, the bloc's current account deficit doubled in September to €10.6bn despite the drop in the cost of imported oil. It is further evidence that the euro's surge to extreme levels of over-valuation in recent years has 'hollowed out' Europe's industrial base and inflicted damage that may a long time to unfold.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/germany/3511854/Germany-facing-worst-slump-since-1949.html
This something that bears watching if have viewed the blogs from the previous weeks you can see how this is playing out. Not so much different then might happen here in the US.
A near-riot and parliament besieged: Iceland boiling mad at credit crunch
Published Date: 24 November 2008
By Omar Valdimarsson
in REYKJAVIK
THOUSANDS of Icelanders have demonstrated in Reykjavik to demand the resignation of Prime Minister Geir Haarde and Central Bank governor David Oddsson, for failing to stop the country's financial meltdown.
It was the latest in a series of protests in the capital since October's banking collapse crippled the island's economy. At least five people were injured and Hordur Torfason, a well-known singer in Iceland and the main organiser of the protests, said the protests would continue until the government stepped down.As crowds gathered in the drizzle before the Althing, the Icelandic parliament, on Saturday, Mr Torfason said: "They don't have our trust and they are no longer legitimate."The value of the Icelandic krona has been cut in half since January.Four Nordic countries, as well as the International Monetary Fund (IMF), have pledged to lend the country a combined $4.6 billion to help revive its deflated economy. The loan would be the first by the IMF to a Western nation since 1976.One young man climbed on to the balcony of the Althing building, where the president appears upon inauguration and on Iceland's national day, and hung a banner reading: "Iceland for Sale: $2,100,000,000" – the amount of the loan the country is getting from the IMF.A separate group of 200-300 people gathered in front of the city's main police station, throwing eggs and demanding the release of a young protester being held there.Police in riot gear used pepper spray to drive back an attempt to free the protester during which several windows at the police station were shattered. The pro-tester was later released after his fine was paid.As daylight began to wane, demonstrators drifted away into the nearby coffee shops. Here, as currency tumbles, the price of a cup of coffee has shot up by about one-third since before the crisis struck.The demonstrators accuse the government – elected last year – of not doing enough to regulate the banking industry and have called for early elections. Iceland's next election is not required until 2011.Opposition parties tabled a no-confidence motion in the government on Friday over its handling of the crisis, but the motion carries little chance of toppling the ruling coalition which has a solid parliamentary majority.Gudrun Jonsdottir, a 36-year-old office worker, said: "I've just had enough of this whole thing. I don't trust the government, I don't trust the banks, I don't trust the political parties, and I don't trust the IMF. "We had a good country and they ruined it."BACKGROUNDICELAND'S three biggest banks – Kaupthing, Landsbanki and Glitnir – collapsed under the weight of billions of dollars of debts accumulated in an aggressive overseas expansion, shattering the country's currency. Iceland's government seized control of all three institutions in early October.This week, the North Atlantic island nation, which has a population of only 320,000, secured a package of more than US$10 billion (about £6.7 billion) in loans from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and several European countries to help it rebuild its shattered financial system.Despite the intervention, however, Iceland still faces a sharp economic slowdown and surging job losses while at least one-third of Icelanders are also at risk of losing their homes and life savings.Geir Haarde, the Icelandic prime minister, has promised that the government will use the IMF money to bring back a flexible interest rate scheme and rewrite financial laws, particularly legislation relating to insolvency.Iceland was the first country to ask the IMF for help as the turmoil in the credit markets in October hit home.The UK government used anti-terrorism legislation to freeze money deposited by UK savers in Icelandic banks in order to ensure that their money was protected.
http://news.scotsman.com/world/A-nearriot-and--parliament.4722970.jp
Thai Cabinet mulls state of emergency decree
Meeting with the prime minister in Chiang Mai, 350 miles north of Bangkok, the Cabinet will consider both an emergency decree or the use of a tough internal security law, government spokesman Nattawut Sai-kua said.
"We have to consider these legal options to solve the crisis," he said before the afternoon meeting.
Meanwhile, the government was drawing up plans to begin flying out thousands of tourists with "urgent needs" from one or two military bases in the next 48 hours. That could include parents with young children and people with medical conditions, said Weerasak Kowsurat, Thailand's tourism minister.
They would be flown on Thai Airways flights to Singapore or Malaysia, where they could catch connecting flights to their destinations. The planes could then return with incoming passengers, Weerasak said.
"It is a contingency plan so we will try to accommodate the airlines and the passengers' needs," said Chaisak Angkasuwan, director general of the country's Aviation Department.
The government also may use buses and trains to transport tourists to other airports in Thailand, Weerasak said.
A Thai Airways flight from Los Angeles landed Thursday at U-Tapao air force base, 140 kilometers (90 miles) southeast of Bangkok, the airline said.
Protesters demanding the resignation of the prime minister have occupied Bangkok's international airport since Tuesday night, forcing the cancellation of all flights. On Thursday, they also forced the domestic airport to close in a bid to prevent government ministers from getting to the cabinet meeting.
Some ministers were flown on military planes from a nearby base to Chiang Mai, where Prime Minister Somchai Wongsawat has been since returning from an overseas trip Wednesday night.
There was speculation in the Thai media that the prime minister might remove the powerful army chief, Anupong Paochinda, who called Wednesday for the dissolution of Parliament and new elections to resolve the deepening crisis.
But Nattawut said Anupong's removal is not on the Cabinet meeting agenda.
The protests, which gathered pace three months ago, have paralyzed the government, battered the stock market, spooked foreign investors and dealt a serious blow to the tourism industry.
The crisis worsened early Thursday as authorities shut down the Don Muang domestic airport, which had been receiving some diverted flights from Suvarnabhumi, the international airport.
Thousands of foreign tourists have been stranded, including Americans heading home for their Thanksgiving holiday Thursday.
Bart Edes, a 45-year-old American banker, had planned to spend Thanksgiving with his wife at a friend's home in Manila, where he lives.
"They're going to put on a traditional feast — roast turkey, sweet potatoes, all the things you crave when you're outside of the United States," he said.
But Edes said he still had much to be thankful for. "Look at what happened in Mumbai. This is an inconvenience, but it could be worse."
At least 100 people were killed in the Indian city of Mumbai by a series of overnight militant attacks that reportedly targeted Americans and Britons.
The protests are being led by a loose coalition known as the People's Alliance for Democracy. It accuses Somchai of acting as the puppet for former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, who was ousted in a September 2006 military coup after being accused of corruption and abuse of power. Thaksin, who is Somchai's brother-in-law, is in exile, a fugitive from a conviction for violating a conflict of interest law.
On Wednesday, a district court ordered the alliance leaders and their supporters to immediately leave Suvarnabhumi, calling the occupation "an infringement on other individuals who have freedom of movement."
There was no sign of the protesters leaving Thursday — a reflection of their boldness amid the government's unwillingness to use force for fear of causing bloodshed.
The prime minister is not budging. In a televised address to the nation, Somchai said his government was legitimately elected and that it has "a job to protect democracy for the people of Thailand."
The statement amounted to a rejection of Army Gen. Anupong's suggestion to quit, which seemed to put him on a collision course with the military, although the general has said he would not launch a coup.
An emergency decree would give the prime minister authority to use the military to restore order and allow authorities to suspend certain civil liberties.
The security law is separate measure that would enable officials to bar public assembly and "suppress" actions considered harmful to national security.
The People's Alliance for Democracy insists it will continue its airport occupation and other protests until Somchai resigns. It also has rejected the general's proposal for elections, pushing instead for the appointment of a temporary government.
On Thursday, the EU and the British Foreign Office expressed concern at the deteriorating situation.
"We urge all sides to this political dispute to resolve their differences peacefully and legally, respecting Thailand's democratic institutions," Foreign Office Minister Bill Rammell said.
The European Union said in a statement that "any anti-constitutional attempt to interfere in the democratic process would have a negative impact on EU-Thailand relations."
As the deadlock continued, political violence spread Wednesday to Chiang Mai, where government supporters attacked a radio station aligned with the protesters. Separately, there were unconfirmed reports that one man was killed and several people assaulted in an attack on the city's local airport.
The protest alliance launched its current campaign in late August, storming the grounds of the prime minister's office, which they continue to use as their stronghold. The group has also tried twice to blockade Parliament, in one case setting off a day-long street battle with police that left two people dead and hundreds injured.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2008-11-27-thailand_N.htm
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