Soaring Food Prices To Persist

From the AP

Even with bigger crops, soaring food prices that have sparked unrest across the globe are likely to persist, threatening millions of people worldwide, a U.N. agency said Friday.

Prices of bread, rice, milk, cooking oil and other basic foodstuffs have sharply increased in the past months in many developing countries, according to a report by the Rome-based Food and Agriculture Organization. Prices of wheat and rice have doubled compared to last year, while those of corn are more than a third higher.

Grain prices have risen as a result of steady demand, especially from China and India, supply shortages and new export restrictions, FAO said.

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Wall Street Stumbles After GE Reports A Disappointing First Quarter

From the AP

Wall Street stumbled Friday after a disappointing first-quarter report from General Electric Co. surprised the market and stoked concern about the health of both corporate profits and the wider economy. The major indexes fell more than 2 percent, with the Dow Jones industrials giving up more than 250 points.

A weaker-than-expected reading showing consumer confidence at a 26-year low subdued any positive sentiment.

GE, which is regarded as a bellwether of big business, said its financial-services divisions have been challenged by the slowing U.S. economy and difficult capital markets. The company, whose orbit extends into entertainment, consumer and industrial manufacturing, finance and health care, also lowered its projections for the entire year.

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Wall Street Investment Firms Pull Back Slightly On Borrowing From Fed Reserve

From the AP

Big Wall Street investment companies are pulling back slightly on their borrowing from the Federal Reserve’s emergency lending program.

A central bank report Thursday said they averaged $32.6 billion in daily borrowing over the past week. That compares with $38.1 billion in the previous week and $32.9 billion before that.

T.J. Marta, a fixed-income strategist at RBC Capital Markets, viewed the pullback as a positive sign. “Conditions in this particular part of the financial markets are easing up somewhat,” he said.

The program, which began March 17, is part of the Fed’s effort to aid the troubled financial system, whose problems threaten the nation’s economic health. In the program’s first week, investment firms borrowed $13.4 billion.

The Fed has agreed, for the first time, to let big investment houses temporarily get emergency loans right from the central bank. This mechanism, similar to one available for commercial banks for years, will continue for at least six months. It was the broadest use of the Fed’s lending authority since the 1930s.

Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke and his colleagues started the program as policymakers raced to deal with the sudden crash of the venerable Wall Street firm Bear Stearns Cos., which was on the brink of bankruptcy.

The Fed feared that other investment houses could be in jeopardy given the intense fear that gripped the markets at that time. So the Fed acted to give them a place to go for overnight cash loans.

The program is seen as similar to one the Fed has for commercial banks, where the Fed acts as a lender of last resort. Commercial banks and investment companies pay 2.5 percent in interest for overnight loans from the Fed.

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Naked Woman Reflected In Dick Cheney’s Sunglasses?

From Foxnews.com

The Virgin Mary on a grilled cheese and the Illinois-shaped corn flake appear to have new competition for webbies’ fascination: Dick Cheney’s mysterious sunglasses.

An undated photo of the vice president on the White House Web site has caused a stir on the Internet, causing some people to wonder if he’s in eyeshot of an unclad female.

The White House says it’s just someone holding an innocuous fishing rod (the veep — allegedly — is fly fishing in Idaho).

Click here to see the White House photo essay containing the photo.

“Clearly the picture shows a hand casting a rod,” Cheney spokeswoman Meagan Mitchell said, according to the McClatchy newspapers.

By punching in “Cheney” and “sunglasses” into a Web browser, FOXNews.com viewed these headlines, among many:

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Dethroned Miss California Alleges Racial Bias

From the AP

A Hispanic woman who won the Miss California USA contest only to have her crown yanked days later sued the pageant Thursday for half a million dollars, alleging rigging and racial bias.

The pageant director rejected the claims, saying winners during his tenure have been some of the pageant’s most racially diverse ever.

Christina Silva, 24, was crowned Miss California USA on Nov. 25. Three days later, the pageant’s executive director, Keith Lewis, told her “there has been a mistake and you are not the winner,” according to the lawsuit filed in Superior Court.

Raquel Beezley, 21, was subsequently crowned.

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Stacey Marie Oberley Stole An Autistic Woman’s Identity To Buy A BMW And Maserati

From Foxnews.com

Police are searching for a Houston stripper who stole the identity of a disabled Wisconsin woman to buy a BMW and a Maserati, according to officials and reports.

Stacy Marie Oberley, 28, is wanted on a warrant for giving a false statement to obtain credit, according to the Harris County Sheriff’s Office in Houston.

Oberley, a dancer at Houston area men’s clubs, allegedly stole the Social Security number of an autistic woman in her 20s and used it to buy a 2006 BMW as well as a 2005 Maserati, police told the Houston Chronicle. Both cars are valued at more than $113,000.

The dancer was already on probation for narcotics trafficking, but that probation is being revoked, the paper said.

Oberley is described as 5-foot-8 and 115 pounds. Anyone with information is asked to call Crime Stoppers at 713-222-8477 or the Harris County Sheriff’s Office at 713-755-6055.

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Neil King Loses 140lbs In Nine Months On A Diet Of Baked Beans

From skynews

A diet of baked beans helped Neil King to lose 140 pounds in nine months. In fact, since June 2007, he’s eaten more than half a ton of them, about 1,500 cans.

Prior to dieting, King ate a full English breakfast, which at its heart consists of bacon and eggs and may include sausage, toast, and stewed tomatoes, for lunch, and drank eight pints of lager in the pub after tea.

King, from Halstead in Essex, England, made the switch from boozing to beans after being told he was at risk for bowel cancer.

And his high fiber diet has been gas-free since he stopped having toast with his beans, it is reported. The diet helped King go from 420 pounds to 280 pounds.

Speaking to Britain’s Mirror, King said, “Some people think I’m mad but I love the taste and the weight has been dropping off.”

King apparently eats six cans of beans each day, and has them with rice for lunch and with potato for his afternoon tea.

His wife Cheryl told the Mirror, “He’s like a new man.”

Baked beans contain little fat and are full of fiber, although it is best to go for a low-salt variety.

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Joseph Manzanares Arrested After Arguing With Girlfriend Over Which Gang The 4 Year Old Son Should Join

From Foxnews.com

A couple can’t agree on which gang their 4-year-old toddler should join.

A fight about the decision led to a public disturbance with the father’s arrest. Joseph Manzanares went to the video store where his girlfriend worked, threatened to kill her and knocked over several video displays, police told KMGH Denver.

Police arrested Manzanares at his home, Commerce City police Sgt. Joe Sandoval told KMGH Denver.

The girlfriend told authorities they were fighting over which gang their son should join. The girlfriend, who is black, is a member of the Crips while Manzanares, who is Hispanic, belongs to the Westside Ballers.

“They have different ideas on how the baby should be raised,” Sandoval said. “Basically, she said they cannot agree on which gang the baby would ‘claim.’

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President And Laura Bush Paid $221,635 In 2007 Taxes

From the AP

President Bush and his wife paid $221,635 in federal taxes on an adjusted gross income of $923,807 for the year 2007.

The income total includes a $150,000 advance received by Laura Bush for the children’s book she co-authored with her daughter, Jenna.

Last year, the president and Mrs. Bush paid $186,378 in federal taxes on their income of $765,801.

Bush’s salary as president is about $400,000.

Also Friday, the White House reported that Vice President Dick Cheney and his wife, Lynne, had an adjusted gross income of $3.04 million in 2007.

The Cheneys owed $602,651 in federal taxes on that income. They have paid $466,165 through withholdings and estimated tax payments, and will pay the remaining $136,486 upon filing their tax return.

The Cheneys’ income includes the vice president’s salary and a pension he gets as a former director of Union Pacific Corp. It also includes Lynne Cheney’s book royalty income, a salary from her work at the American Enterprise Institute and a pension she gets as a former director of Reader’s Digest.

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Barack Obama Would Have Fired Mark Penn Too

From Foxnews.com

Barack Obama got personal Friday, saying Hillary Clinton’s former chief strategist Mark Penn, who was demoted earlier this week, deserved what he got.

In Indianapolis, reporters asked Obama about Penn, who left his campaign post Sunday after being harshly criticized for meeting with Colombian officials to discuss advocating a free-trade deal that Clinton vehemently opposes. Penn is the CEO of a public relations firm that represents Colombia on this issue.

“I think it was surprising to me that a high-ranking, if not the highest-ranking, member of Senator Clinton’s team would be engaged in business activities and lobbying that was directly contrary to the position Senator Clinton had taken,” Obama said Friday.

“Let me put it this way: I’m not surprised that Senator Clinton found herself in an uncomfortable position as a consequence. And I know that if staff of mine were putting me in that kind of position, I would get rid of them.”

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Grounded Flights To Potentially Catastrophic To US Economy

From the AP

It’s not just angry passengers who are suffering. The grounding of thousands of flights is disrupting cargo, mail and other crucial business for financially strapped airlines, and that means painful new strains on a U.S. economy teetering on the edge of recession.

Apologetic airlines suggest the cancellations won’t extend beyond this weekend. But there are indications the problems may just be beginning as federal regulators step up their scrutiny of carriers’ compliance with safety rules.

Air traffic systems, computers and other crucial equipment are aging, as are many of the planes themselves. Critics of the industry say that cutbacks on maintenance and inadequate government safeguards are starting to take a toll.

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American Airlines Grounds Another 595 Flights

From the AP

Air traveler angst was sure to continue Friday as American Airlines grounded hundreds more flights. The financial toll and loss of goodwill likely would grow as well, as the inspection-related mess spread further to other carriers and hurt an industry already bleeding cash thanks to high fuel costs.

Lawmakers were asking questions and some fed-up air travelers headed for trains. Others gave the airlines a pass, saying the companies were doing the best they could.

“If somebody’s got a choice between being in a plane crash and being late, is there a choice?” Jane Bernard, a writer from New York who was delayed by at least three hours en route from LaGuardia Airport to Miami, said Thursday.

Mingo Valencia, a 60-year-old stuck at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport while heading home to Midland, Texas, wasn’t so gracious.

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Yearning For Zion Ranch Raided; Men Surrounded Temple And Prayed

From CNN.com

Nearly 60 men surrounding the temple of a polygamist sect in Texas dropped to their knees, prayed and wept openly — but never violently resisted — as law enforcement officers raided the building they hold sacred.

Authorities on Thursday wrapped up nearly a week at the YFZ (Yearning For Zion) Ranch, where they say a 16-year-old girl had called social workers and timidly recounted being beaten, choked and sexually assaulted by the 49-year-old man who had fathered her child after their “spiritual marriage” last year.

Two people were arrested and 416 children were taken into state custody at the ranch — which is run by founder Warren Steed Jeffs’ Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. At the ranch, authorities say, men routinely took multiple wives, and girls as young as 13 were forced into sexual relationships with adult men.

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Randolph College Students Toured Nevada Brothel

From the AP

Nicki Amouri hands her camera to a friend, throws her arm over another and smiles wide as she leans in for a shot with the monument her class came to visit.

It’s a typical field trip memento — except that Amouri is in a brothel. The monument is a fluffy, queen-sized bed in a Western-themed party room reserved for VIPs and big spenders.

Amouri was one of a dozen Randolph College students who toured the Chicken Ranch, a legal bordello in the desert 60 miles outside Las Vegas. Thursday’s class trip, which included seminars from the working girls, capped a course on American consumption and “the ideas that consume us.”

“I think it’s fascinating, this is fun for me,” said Amouri, a junior at the private liberal arts school in Lynchburg, Va., that until last year admitted only women. “Not many people get to do this.”

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Dalai Lama In Seattle

From the AP

The Dalai Lama arrived in the United States on Thursday for the first time since the recent turmoil in Tibet, serenaded by fellow Tibetans as he prepared to anchor an ambitious conference on compassion.

The exiled Tibetan spiritual leader came to Seattle a day after demonstrators disrupted the Olympic torch run in San Francisco in a protest of China’s treatment of his people. The Dalai Lama will be attending a five-day conference that begins Friday.

With the Dalai Lama in town, some community leaders said they expected counter-demonstrations from pro-China groups.

In Tibet, the recent protests against five decades of Chinese rule have been the largest and most sustained in almost two decades. China has accused the Dalai Lama of being involved in the uprising. The Tibetan leader has said that he wants greater autonomy for the remote mountain region but is not seeking independence.

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Fire Destroyed Hillary Clinton’s Indiana Campaign Office

From the AP

Fire destroyed a campaign office of presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton in western Indiana early Friday.

Two people were inside when the fire broke out but escaped without injuries, said Terre Haute Fire Department spokesman John Gardner.

Gardner said nothing so far had indicated the fire was arson.

“But we’re doing a full investigation on it like any other commercial structure fire,” he said.

Clinton’s campaign had no immediate comment.

A volunteer firefighter driving past the building in a commercial district along U.S. 41 south of the city’s downtown spotted flames on the roof shortly after midnight and warned those inside, Gardner said.

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Obama’s Fundraising Machine Isn’t All Small Givers

From Washingtonpost.com

Sen. Barack Obama credits his presidential campaign with creating a “parallel public financing system” built on a wave of modest donations from homemakers and high school teachers. Small givers, he said at a fundraiser this week, “will have as much access and influence over the course and direction of our campaign that has traditionally been reserved for the wealthy and the powerful.”

But those with wealth and power also have played a critical role in creating Obama’s record-breaking fundraising machine, and their generosity has earned them a prominent voice in shaping his campaign. Seventy-nine “bundlers,” five of them billionaires, have tapped their personal networks to raise at least $200,000 each. They have helped the campaign recruit more than 27,000 donors to write checks for $2,300, the maximum allowed. Donors who have given more than $200 account for about half of Obama’s total haul, which stands at nearly $240 million.

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Cesar Laurean Captured And Arrested In Mexico

From the AP

A Marine wanted in the brutal slaying of a pregnant colleague who had accused him of rape was arrested Thursday night in Mexico after a three-month international manhunt, authorities said.

FBI agents and Mexican authorities arrested Marine Cpl. Cesar Laurean around 7 p.m. EDT. He is charged with first-degree murder in the death of Marine Lance Cpl. Maria Lauterbach, whose burned remains were found in January in the backyard of his home near Camp Lejeune.

“You know my name. You know who I am,” Laurean told The Associated Press while being held at the Michoacan state Attorney General’s Office in Morelia, the state capital.

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4.3 Billion Barrels Of Oil In North Dakota And Montana

From the AP

The government estimates up to 4.3 billion barrels of oil can be recovered from the Bakken shale formation in North Dakota and Montana, using current technology.

The U.S. Geological Survey calls it the largest continuous oil accumulation it has ever assessed.

An assessment by USGS in 1999 found the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge had 10.3 billion barrels of recoverable oil, said Brenda Pierce, a geologist for the agency

The Bakken Formation encompasses some 25,000 square miles in North Dakota, Montana, Saskatchewan and Manitoba.

About two-thirds of the acreage is in western North Dakota, where the oil is trapped in a thin layer of dense rock nearly two miles beneath the surface.

Companies use pressurized fluid and sand to break pores in the rock and prop them open to recover the oil.

Donald Kessel, vice president of Houston-based Murex Petroleum Corp., said he believes the Geological Survey’s assessment of how much oil can be recovered in the Bakken may be a little on the high side.

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Frontier Airlines Files For Bankrupcy

From the AP

Frontier Airlines Holdings Inc. has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, but unlike other airlines filing for bankruptcy in recent weeks, it plans to keep running while it reorganizes.

The low-fare carrier said its filing Friday came after an unexpected attempt by its principal credit card processor to start withholding significant proceeds from the sale of Frontier tickets, which threatened to hurt Frontier’s liquidity.

The Chapter 11 filing in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in New York prevents the credit card processor from increasing its “holdback,” Frontier CEO Sean Menke said.

“By filing for Chapter 11, we will now have the time and legal protection necessary to obtain additional financing and enhance our liquidity. Fortunately, we believe that we currently have adequate cash on hand to meet our operating needs while we take steps to further strengthen our company,” Menke said in a statement.

Frontier, whose major hub is in Denver, has been affected as other airlines have by rising fuel costs and the credit crisis in financial markets.

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