Eeyores News and View

Brit's having problems with the worth of their currency also.
Pound Falls to 98 Pence Per Euro for 1st Time on Housing Slump
By Matthew Brown
Dec. 29 (Bloomberg) -- The U.K. pound weakened to a record 98 pence per euro after an industry report said house prices will probably extend declines next year, boosting the case for deeper interest-rate cuts by the Bank of England.
Britain’s currency also dropped versus 14 of its 16 most- traded counterparts, falling for a second day against the Swiss franc and tumbling to a 14-year low against Japan’s yen. Property research company Hometrack Ltd. said U.K. house values slid 8.7 percent this year, led by a 10.1 percent drop in London, and that prices will “inevitably” decline in 2009.
“Parity is ever more likely” between the pound and the euro, said Daragh Maher, deputy head of global foreign-exchange strategy in London at Calyon, the investment-banking unit of Credit Agricole SA. “If there’s going to be a turnaround in euro-sterling it needs to come from the euro.”
The pound depreciated as much as 2 percent to 98 pence per euro, its sixth straight daily drop, and was at 97.47 pence by 5:35 p.m. in London, from 96.10 pence at the end of last week. It sank 25 percent against the European common currency this year, the most since the euro was introduced in 1999.
Britain’s currency dropped as much as 1.3 percent versus the yen to 76.31 pence, the lowest since April 18, 1995, before paring declines to 76.06 pence. It slipped 2.5 percent to 1.5218 francs. The U.K. currency was little changed at $1.4573, near the lowest level in more than three weeks.
“Sterling’s had to contend with the soft house-price numbers overnight” and retailers haven’t “had a particularly good December,” said Maher.
More than 1,600 people will lose their jobs in the U.K. every day in 2009, the Daily Telegraph reported, citing a report by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development. A total of 600,000 face being put out of work next year, the newspaper said today.
Rate Cuts
The Bank of England cut its main interest rate to 2 percent from 5 percent this year as the British government nationalized Northern Rock Plc and Bradford & Bingley, and took stakes in Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc, HBOS Plc and Lloyds TSB Group Plc to prop up the financial sector. The U.K. economy is in its first recession in 17 years.
“There are very few people betting against a 1:1 rate now” between the pound and the euro, said Angus Campbell, head of sales at Capital Spreads. “Expectations for further cuts in interest rates are proving a serious negative for sterling and, with a shortened week once again, it’s not long before the next meeting.”
The U.K. central bank will cut its main rate a half-point to 1.5 percent at its meeting on Jan. 8, according to the median estimate of 38 economists surveyed by Bloomberg News.
Rebound Forecast
Even after its worst-ever year against the euro, Britain’s currency may rebound in 2009 as investors bet on a recovery in the U.K. economy, according to the world’s biggest currency traders.
The pound will strengthen 14 percent versus the euro next year, according to the median forecast of 42 analysts and strategists surveyed by Bloomberg. Deutsche Bank AG, the largest trader as measured by Euromoney Institutional Investor Plc, expects a 20 percent gain. At the same time, economists surveyed by Bloomberg before a Jan. 2 industry report estimated Europe’s manufacturing industries shrank for a seventh month in December.
‘Signs of Life’
“We’ll see some signs of life in the U.K. economy sooner than we do in the euro zone,” said Henrik Gullberg, a strategist at Deutsche Bank in London. “Even though we might be far away from a rate hike in the U.K.,” it may happen “sooner in the U.K. than in the euro zone,” he said.
The European Central Bank lowered its main refinancing rate by 0.75 percentage point to 2.5 percent on Dec. 4, its biggest- ever cut, as the euro region suffered the first recession since the introduction of its common currency.
U.K. government bonds fell, pushing the yield on the 10-year gilt up five basis points, or 0.05 percentage point, to 3.10 percent. The price of the 5 percent security due March 2018 slipped 0.45, or 4.5 pounds per 1,000-pound ($1,457) face amount, to 115.07. The two-year gilt yield increased three basis points to 1.17 percent. Yields move inversely to bond prices.
Gilts declined as gains in equity markets sapped demand for the safest assets. The FTSE 100 index of leading U.K. stocks advanced 2.4 percent, the most in three weeks.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=aDeya8Ha_0Vk

Holiday Sales Drop to Force Bankruptcies, Closings
Dec. 29 (Bloomberg) -- U.S. retailers face a wave of store closings, bankruptcies and takeovers starting next month as holiday sales are shaping up to be the worst in 40 years.
Retailers may close 73,000 stores in the first half of 2009, according to the International Council of Shopping Centers. Talbots Inc. and Sears Holdings Corp. are among chains shuttering underperforming locations.
More than a dozen retailers, including Circuit City Stores Inc., Linens ‘n Things Inc., Sharper Image Corp. and Steve & Barry’s LLC, have sought bankruptcy protection this year as the credit squeeze and recession drained sales. Investors will start seeing a wide variety of chains seeking bankruptcy protection in February when they file financial reports, said Burt Flickinger.
“You’ll see department stores, specialty stores, discount stores, grocery stores, drugstores, major chains either multi- regionally or nationally go out,” Flickinger, managing director of Strategic Resource Group, a retail-industry consulting firm in New York, said today in a Bloomberg Radio interview. “There are a number that are real causes for concern.”
Sales at stores open at least a year probably dropped as much as 2 percent in November and December, the ICSC said last week, more than the previously projected 1 percent decline. That would be the largest drop since at least 1969, when the New York-based trade group started tracking data. Gap Inc. and Macy’s Inc. are among retailers that will report December results on Jan. 8.
Women’s Clothing, Electronics
Consumers spent at least 20 percent less on women’s clothing, electronics and jewelry during November and December, according to data from SpendingPulse.
Retail Metrics Inc.’s December comparable-store sales index will drop an estimated 1.2 percent, or 5 percent excluding Wal- Mart Stores Inc. Retailers’ fourth-quarter earnings may fall 19 percent on average, the seventh consecutive quarterly decline, according to Ken Perkins, president of Retail Metrics, a Swampscott, Massachusetts-based consulting firm.
Probably 50,000 stores could close without any effect on consumer choice, Gregory Segall, a managing partner at buyout firm Versa Capital Management Inc., said this month during a panel discussion held at Bloomberg LP’s New York offices. Only retailers with healthy balance sheets will survive the recession, according to Matthew Katz, a managing director at consulting firm AlixPartners LLP.
Store Closings
The ICSC predicts, using U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data, that 148,000 stores will shut down in 2008. That would be the largest number since 151,000 closings in 2001, during the last recession, according to ICSC Chief Economist Michael Niemira. The total number of retail establishments will decline by about 3 percent this year, also taking into account locations that were opened, he said. The U.S. had 1.11 million retail locations in 2002.
Another 73,000 locations may shut their doors in the first part of 2009, Niemira said.
The U.S. economy shrank in the third quarter at a 0.5 percent annual pace, the worst since 2001, according to the Commerce Department. Economists surveyed by Bloomberg in the first week of December forecast the world’s largest economy will contract through the first half of 2009.
The Standard & Poor’s 500 Retailing Index has shed 34 percent this year, with only two of its 27 companies rising.
The index doesn’t include Wal-Mart, the world’s largest retailer, which fell 24 cents to $55.11 at 4:02 p.m. in New York Stock Exchange composite trading. Wal-Mart shares have gained 18 percent this year.
Discount Advantage
“If you’re going to be in retail right now, the discount space is where you want to be,” Patrick McKeever, a senior equity analyst at MKM Partners LLC, said today in a Bloomberg Television interview.
Discounts of 70 percent or more by Macy’s, AnnTaylor Stores Inc. and other retailers failed to prevent a spending drop of as much as 4 percent during the final two months of the year, according to data from SpendingPulse. Retailers’ pricing models are being challenged by consumers, according to Richard Hastings, consumer strategist at Global Hunter Securities LLC of Newport Beach, California.
“The whole pricing system is becoming an old-fashioned bazaar,” Hastings said today in a telephone interview. “They’re going into the stores and they’re looking at the stuff and they’re saying ‘You know what? I know that that price is way too high,’ and they have figured out that the signage doesn’t mean that much.”
Retail bankruptcies may help the industry in the long run, according to Flickinger.
“We’ll be going from a Dickens-esque worst of times this December to the best of times in future Decembers because we’ll rationalize out all the redundant retailers and retail space in shopping centers,” Flickinger said.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aGQ__icNMvzI&refer=worldwide

Researcher says Jell-O may eliminate lake trout
December 29, 2008 - 3:34pm
BOZEMAN, Mont. (AP) - A researcher at Montana State University said Jell-O, ultrasound, microwaves and electroshocking are among the possible solutions to eliminate lake trout in Yellowstone National Park.
Lake trout were introduced illegally into the park and threaten native cutthroat trout in Yellowstone Lake. To find the best way to destroy lake trout eggs, Al Zale received a grant from the National Park Service. Zale heads the Montana Cooperative Fishery Research Unit at MSU.
He and his collaborators will analyze several potential solutions and recommend the best.
If Jell-O is chosen, Zale says it would probably be unflavored. He says workers could spread it over the fish eggs to smother them.
Zale adds that it would seem efficient to get rid of the eggs during spawning season, which occurs primarily during late fall.
http://www.wtop.com/?nid=456&sid=1560661

I'm glad that i was never put in the position she was. I might have to do the same thing. They call her a "vigilante killer" because they are afraid to call her a hero or role model.
Vigilante killer Ellie Nesler dies at 56
FRESNO, Calif. (AP) — Ellie Nesler, who sparked a national debate about vigilantism after killing her son's accused molester in a courtroom in 1993, has died of cancer. She was 56.
Nesler died Friday morning at UC Davis Medical Center in Sacramento, according to hospital spokeswoman Phyllis Brown. She had battled breast cancer since 1994.
Nesler made headlines when she shot Daniel Driver five times in the head in a Tuolumne County courtroom during a break in his preliminary hearing for allegedly molesting four boys, including her then-6-year-old son William, at a Christian camp. Some hailed her for exacting her own justice, while others condemned her for taking the law into her own hands.
Nesler was convicted of voluntary manslaughter, but her 10-year sentence was later overturned because of jury misconduct. She cut a deal with prosecutors to plead guilty to manslaughter and get out after serving three years because she had breast cancer.
The case became a 1999 TV movie, Judgment Day: The Ellie Nesler Story, on the USA cable network.
After the shooting, the Nesler family remained entangled in the legal system. In 2002, Nesler was sentenced to six years in prison after pleading guilty to selling and possessing methamphetamine. Outside the courtroom, she maintained her innocence, saying she felt she couldn't get a fair trial in Tuolumne County.
She was released from a women's facility in Chowchilla in 2006.
Meanwhile, her son got into legal troubles of his own and was convicted of first-degree murder in 2005 for stomping to death a man hired to clean the family's property in Sonora. The 23-year-old said he believed David Davis was letting people pick through the family's belongings.
William Nesler killed Davis less than an hour after he was released from a 30-day sentence for an earlier assault on him. He is serving a 25-year-to-life sentence.
Prison officials allowed William Nesler to speak with his mother on the phone when she was hospitalized, and he spoke to family members Christmas night about her condition, said Terry Thornton, spokeswoman for the state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.
"He knew she was very ill, and he knew her death was impending," Thornton said.
William Nesler has asked for a temporary leave to attend the funeral, and the request is being reviewed by prison officials, Thornton said.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2008-12-29-obit-nesler_N.htm

Researchers unlock secrets of 1918 flu pandemic
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Researchers have found out what made the 1918 flu pandemic so deadly -- a group of three genes that lets the virus invade the lungs and cause pneumonia.
They mixed samples of the 1918 influenza strain with modern seasonal flu viruses to find the three genes and said their study might help in the development of new flu drugs.
The discovery, published in Tuesday's issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, could also point to mutations that might turn ordinary flu into a dangerous pandemic strain.
Yoshihiro Kawaoka of the University of Wisconsin and colleagues at the Universities of Kobe and Tokyo in Japan used ferrets, which develop flu in ways very similar to humans.
Usually flu causes an upper respiratory infection affecting the nose and throat, as well as so-called systemic illness causing fever, muscle aches and weakness.
But some people become seriously ill and develop pneumonia. Sometimes bacteria cause the pneumonia and sometimes flu does it directly.
During pandemics, such as in 1918, a new and more dangerous flu strain emerges.
"The 1918 influenza pandemic was the most devastating outbreak of infectious disease in human history, accounting for about 50 million deaths worldwide," Kawaoka's team wrote.
It killed 2.5 percent of victims, compared to fewer than 1 percent during most annual flu epidemics. Autopsies showed many of the victims, often otherwise healthy young adults, died of severe pneumonia.
"We wanted to know why the 1918 flu caused severe pneumonia," Kawaoka said in a statement.
They painstakingly substituted single genes from the 1918 virus into modern flu viruses and, one after another, they acted like garden-variety flu, infecting only the upper respiratory tract.
But a complex of three genes helped to make the virus live and reproduce deep in the lungs.
The three genes -- called PA, PB1, and PB2 -- along with a 1918 version of the nucleoprotein or NP gene, made modern seasonal flu kill ferrets in much the same way as the original 1918 flu, Kawaoka's team found.
Most flu experts agree that a pandemic of influenza will almost certainly strike again. No one knows when or what strain it will be but one big suspect now is the H5N1 avian influenza virus.
H5N1 is circulating among poultry in Asia, Europe and parts of Africa. It rarely affects humans but has killed 247 of the 391 people infected since 2003.
A few mutations would make it into a pandemic strain that could kill millions globally within a few months.
Four licensed drugs can fight flu but the viruses regularly mutate into resistant forms -- just as bacteria evolve into forms that evade antibiotics.
http://www.reuters.com/article/healthNews/idUSTRE4BS56420081229?feedType=RSS&feedName=healthNews

More gun shows = fewer murders
I'll bet that's a headline you've never seen before.
You will probably never see it, again.
But it's the truth.
With a new Congress and a new president taking office next month, you are bound to hear more calls for closing the so-called "gun-show loophole," that permits American citizens in many states to buy guns without ridiculous and counterproductive waiting periods.
There will be an all-out effort to renew the slow, plodding, incremental, long-term goal of banning and restricting the sale of as many firearms as possible. It will likely start with gun shows – one of the easiest targets of the gun-grabbers.
They will cite all kinds of bogus statistics to support their claims that gun shows spell nothing but death and destruction.
What they won't cite, however, is a groundbreaking study of the impact of gun shows on homicides. They can't – because it shows just the opposite of what they claim to be true.
Mark Duggan and Randi Hjalmarsson of the University of Maryland and Brian A. Jacob of the University of Michigan teamed up to examine the evidence in a scientific study of the impact of gun shows on murder and suicide and accidental deaths.
What they found is shocking because it supports the headline above.
They looked at 3,417 gun shows in two very different states – Texas and California – during an 11-year period. And they examined vital statistics data on suicides, homicides and accidental gun deaths in the weeks following them.
What were the results?
"We find a sharp decline in the number of gun homicides in the weeks immediately following a gun show," they concluded. Furthermore, in Texas they found "gun shows reduce the number of gun homicides by 16 in the average year."

Once again, here's hard evidence of the theory that more guns equals less crime. And it shouldn't shock us. It only does because we've been so conditioned to accepting the illogic of the gun-grabbers that states the opposite as fact – without any evidence to support it.

Think about it.
If you are a criminal, are you more likely to target someone who is armed or unarmed?
The answer is as obvious as the .45 on my desk.
Criminals seek out victims who are not going to fight back or offer resistance, let alone shoot them.
Guns in the hands of law-abiding citizens means they are less likely to become victims.
Anyone who disagrees with this simple, straightforward logic should be required to post a sign on the outside of their home or office that says: "Gun-free zone."
So far, I have not seen even one private citizen invite criminals into their home with such a ridiculous sign. Instead, governments post them around schools!
But now you know the facts – as inconvenient as they might be to the incoming administration and the new Democrat-stacked Congress.
There's only one thing that will prevent them from taking away your Second Amendment-guaranteed right to self-defense: the truth.
You will be hearing a lot of lies about firearms in the months ahead.
You need to be armed with the facts – as well as your trusty old firearms.
And you need to be prepared to fight back against attacks on what may well be your first freedom.
Remember, every totalitarian regime in the history of the world has succeeded in maintaining power by first disarming the citizenry.
Don't let it happen in the USA. Don't accede to any more efforts to ban classifications of firearms because they look like "assault weapons." Don't accept any more restrictions on gun shows, now that you know they actually reduce gun homicides. Don't believe any statistics you hear from Barack Obama or the Democratic leaders in the House and Senate about the need to reduce the availability of firearms or to make them "safer."
Get ready to protect your constitutional rights across the board, because they are about to come under fire from the worst assault weapon ever devised, a real weapon of Mass Destruction and Mass Distortion – Big Government.
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=84749