Daily News Channel
Energy giant BP’s second-quarter profits slumped 53 percent, with the firm’s chief executive warning he saw "little evidence" of growth in oil demand. A security agreement that went into effect at the start of the year mandated the withdrawal of U.S. combat troops from Iraqi cities and towns by June 30
If director Ron Howard hopes religious controversy will help sell tickets to "Angels & Demons" the way it boosted his "Da Vinci Code," the Catholic Church is not playing along with his script. Howard, who premiered the follow-up in Rome, Italy, this week, said there was “residual antagonism from ‘The Da Vinci Code,’ ” but Vatican officials ignored the movie by not responding to suggestions that the church was offended.
Even as the rest of Washington debated why the grave robbers of AIG should continue to profit from the carnage they helped cause, Senator Charles Grassley, Republican of Iowa, tended to the mob: He’d feel a little better, he said, if AIG’s executives would “follow the Japanese example and come before the American people and take that deep bow and say I’m sorry, and then either do one of two things: resign or go commit suicide.” Grassley’s spokesman later clarified that he was just “speaking rhetorically” as far as the suicide part went. I’d settle for a pageant of public shaming, in which the scoundrels must beg forgiveness and make amends; we’d claw back those bonuses, foreclose on their castles, auction their toys, watch the once mighty prowl a grocery aisle calculating whether they can afford the big box of cereal that is a better deal but ties up more capital