Daily News Channel
Hey Morgan Stanley, dost thou protest too much? The financial firm was the first to announce this week that it was among the ten banks approved to repay $68 billion in rescue money the companies had received from the Treasury Department last October. Since then, executives of Morgan have said that they thought the Stress Test was “appropriate” and that the financial crisis has bottomed.
After waiting half an hour in a line of 20 people at the dusty ATM, Eduard Markov finally walks away with his old leather wallet bulging with rubles. Like thousands of others in the northern Russian industrial town of Pikalyovo, the 44-year-old clay quarry worker had not been paid in three months. But now he at least has enough to buy the basics — meat, vodka, noodles, oil and fruit — from shops that just a few days ago were empty of customers.
Three of five Americans contractors detained in Baghdad have been ordered released by an Iraqi judge, because of insufficient evidence, a court spokesman said Thursday. The other two other contractors remain in custody, according to Judge Abdul Sattar al-Beeraqdar, a spokesman for Iraq’s Higher Judicial Council.
As Gabon begins a month of mourning and condolences pour in for President Omar Bongo, the world’s longest serving President, who died on Monday at 73 in his 42nd year in power, it’s worth remembering that Bongo was precisely the kind of leader Gabon, and Africa, could have done without. Gabon has a tiny population and vast oil reserves, and after four decades of exporting hundreds of billions of dollars of crude, the biggest testament to the corruption and ineptitude of Bongo’s rule is that he somehow contrived not to turn his country into an African Kuwait. A third of all Gabonese still live on less than $2 a day, and as the oil fields begin to dry up, Bongo’s subjects are facing up to the reality that he sacrificed the country’s future to fund his own fantastically opulent lifestyle.
California corrections officials released a startling new prison mug shot of Grammy-winning music legend Phil Spector, convicted last month of second-degree murder and serving 19 years to life in prison. Spector, 69, is being held at North Kern State Prison, where he is being evaluated before receiving a permanent prison assignment, corrections spokesman Gordon Hinkle said. The process could take up to 70 days
All 19-year-old Maria Hernandez wanted to do was escort her grandparents, visiting from Puerto Rico, through a museum whose displays had so impressed her during her previous visit. But their tour of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum ended abruptly just before 1 p.m
— An elderly gunman opened fire with a rifle inside the crowded U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum on Wednesday, killing a security guard before being shot. Authorities said they were investigating a white supremacist as the suspect.
A lone gunman wounded a security guard at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum on Wednesday before being injured by return fire, according to police and a museum statement. The suspect was identified as James von Brunn, an 88-year-old white supremacist from Maryland, two law enforcement officials told CNN.
In the early days of the Iraq war, the analogy of choice for the Bush Administration was the post-World War II occupations of Japan and Germany. They had been bitter enemies of the United States; were both destroyed in a merciless world war; and eventually turned into peaceful, democratic allies of the first order. Anyone who said democracy couldn’t come at the barrel of a gun was denying the obvious.
It started with angry old people.