An Illinois firm agreed to pay a $1.25 million settlement for importing and selling the popular Thomas & Friends children's toys that contained lead levels above legal limits and risked sickening children.Read More......
In agreeing to the penalty settlement, RC2 Corp. denied that it knowingly violated federal law as alleged by the Consumer Product Safety Commission, the agency said in a statement Monday evening.
The United States government had intelligence about a possible Al Qaeda attack around the holidays and had more information about where the suspect had been and what some of his plans were, an official said.Something didn't work. Someone better fix it. Read More......
Some of the information at the time was partial or incomplete and it was not obvious that it was connected, the official said, but in retrospect it now appears clear that had it all been examined together it would have pointed to a pending attack involving the Nigerian suspect, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab. Mr. Abdulmutallab allegedly tried to carry out a bombing on a Detroit-bound flight Christmas Day.
The official said the administration is “increasingly confident” that Al Qaeda had a role in the planned attack, as the group’s Yemeni branch has publicly claimed.
“I flew 265,000 miles last year,” said Bruce Schneier, a cryptographer and security analyst. “You know what really pisses me off? Making me check my luggage. Not letting me use my laptop, so I can’t work. Taking away my Kindle, so I can’t read. I care about those things. I care about making me safer much, much less.”Read More......
American International Group IncRead More......is preparing to pay its departing general counsel several million dollars in severance after she resigned over federal pay curbs, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday.
The insurer determined that Anastasia Kelly was entitled to the money under the company's severance plan, whose terms say certain executives can resign and collect severance if their pay is reduced significantly, the Journal reported, citing people familiar with the matter.
But Bruce Hoffman, a terrorism analyst at Georgetown University, called the suspect's ability to smuggle the device on board profoundly disturbing, given that the TSA has spent more than $30 billion on aviation security since 2004, the world's airlines collectively spend an additional $5.9 billion a year, and PETN is well-known as a favored material for terrorist suicide bombers.I can appreciate the privacy issues involved in using those devices that basically show you 100% nude. And spare me the explanations about how the guys watching you are in a secure room with no ability to copy your nude photo - it's called a cell phone camera. But what I can't abide is all this talk about the "cost" being prohibitive." The cost? You mean the Bush administration was happy to spend a couple of trillion on unnecessary tax cuts, another trillion on two wars, one of which was unnecessary, but they chose not to spend money on making sure another shoe bomber didn't try to blow us up, partly because of concerns about costs?
The machines currently cost $100,000 to $200,000 apiece, though they could replace other equipment. Deploying them throughout the U.S. aviation system could cost about $150 million.Ooh, $150m. I've seen bigger earmarks written by children on the Hill. In Washington terms, $150m is nothing. This is not about money. And I have a hard time believing that the Bush administration gave a lick about anyone's privacy. So why didn't George Bush and Dick Cheney go ahead and make the airways safer? Read More......
In Florida in October 2008, candidate Obama talked about a new set of priorities, investing $15 billion a year in renewable energy resources to create 5 million new green jobs in the next decade; putting 2 million people to work rebuilding schools, roads, communications networks - "an American infrastructure for the 21st century." He talked about early childhood education, an army of new, higher-paid teachers, and money for tuition assistance to any young person willing to serve the country. Candidate Obama stood for change, for rebuilding the economy from the bottom up, with "an economic recovery plan not just for the CEOs but for the secretaries and the janitors." He gave a worried and anxious America hope and a plan that called for restoring America's middle class. Remind yourself Democrats, THAT was the winning agenda; THAT was what attracted Independents and base Democratic voters in record numbers to the polls to vote for Democrats in 2008....Read More......
The frustration voiced by independents and Obama surge voters in 2009 should be of real concern. These voters are still looking for change to happen and will keep voting for change — regardless of party — or not voting at all, until something real happens. In the 2008 election what mattered most to voters was the candidate's ability to "bring change," and the 34 percent of voters who cited this quality in exit polls nationally voted 89 percent for Obama. Only a year later, in the New Jersey governor's race, 39 percent of voters cited the ability to "bring needed change" as the most important candidate quality, but these voters delivered a sharp rebuke to Democrats and 67 percent voted for Republican Chris Christie.
Listening to these "change" voters (or as a Republican acquaintance of mine calls them, "fix it" voters) it is clear they are frustrated, stressed, and just want things in the country to get back on track. They are not interested in political expediency. Independents, Democratic base voters and the Obama surge voters want action, and they want the change they voted for in 2008. They want to see real leadership, not legislative gridlock. They don't want their elected officials to go back to the days of legislating "small things" - school uniforms comes to mind. To win them back - to engage them at all in 2010, Democrats need to pass real health care reform, then move aggressively on a job, jobs, jobs (it cannot be said enough) program with strong workers' rights. Do as candidate Obama said, put people to work immediately to fix our schools, rebuild our transportation infrastructure and invest in green technology, energy efficiency and create more green jobs.
An attempt to blow up a trans-Atlantic flight from Amsterdam to Detroit on Christmas Day would be all-consuming for the administrator of the Transportation Security Administration — if there were one.It's not really going to matter if you can join a union if you're dead. Read More......
The post remains vacant because Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., has held up President Barack Obama's nominee in opposition to the prospect of TSA workers joining a labor union.
Welcome to what it's like to be gay in the military, Congressman Kirk (R-IL). To be more precise, welcome to what it's like for any military member, gay or straight, living under the military's anti-gay Don't Ask Don't Tell policy. People talk. And you spend a lot of time worrying what people are saying about you, whether you're going to lose your job, whether your career is now in doubt, rather than focusing on your job. Wouldn't it be nice if no one cared if you were gay, Congressman?
The custody battle between Levi Johnston and Bristol Palin became public last week when two Superior Court judges issued orders unsealing the court record and denying the use of pseudonyms to protect the feuding parents' identities.Read More......
A Dec. 23 order from Judge Kari C. Kristiansen denied Palin's motion to close the proceedings and opened the case file to public access, while an order issued the same day by Presiding Judge Sharon Gleason denied Palin's request to use John and Jane Doe in place of Johnston's and her own real names.
On Nov. 4, Palin filed for sole custody of Tripp Johnston-Palin, the former couple's son, who celebrates his first birthday today. Kristiansen initially issued temporary orders limiting access to the case file and allowing the parties to file under pseudonyms.
President Barack Obama is confronting a threat to his re-election as members of his base increasingly voice concern about his policies.It is, however, unclear from this article what exactly those steps are, besides a couple of emails sent to the DNC's Organizing for America list:
Obama has faced a mini-rebellion from liberals after he went along with a decision to drop a public insurance option — and then its substitute, a “buy-in” expansion of Medicare — from the Senate health care bill. Liberals are also concerned about the climate change deal that he agreed to in Copenhagen and his decision to inject 30,000 additional troops into Afghanistan.
But the White House has been taking steps to bandage the wounds.
The president and his aides are also moving to ensure that the activists who made up his own populist campaign organization — called Obama for America in 2008 and now housed in the DNC under the banner Organizing for America — do not stray from the fold.I don't think most of the OFA members expected Pharma and the insurance companies to be big winners.
Just two days after Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) sealed the Senate health care bill’s eventual passage by announcing on Dec. 19 that he would become the 60th Senator to back it, Obama fired off an e-mail to OFA members assuring them that this was the kind of legislation that they had worked hard to help him pass.
"Somebody in our government said to me in Sana'a, the capital of Yemen, Iraq was yesterday's war. Afghanistan is today's war. If we don't act preemptively, Yemen will be tomorrow's war," Lieberman said, during an appearance on "Fox News Sunday". "That's the danger we face."Lieberman was one of the biggest cheerleaders for the "yesterday's war" in Iraq -- and it's still not over. Thanks to Joe's buddies in the Bush/Cheney administration, we never finished "today's war" in Afghanistan. And, that long-ignored conflict is apparently deteriorating:
As the U.S. and its allies try to overcome logistical hurdles and rush some 40,000 more troops to Afghanistan in 2010, intelligence officials are warning that the Taliban-led insurgency is expanding and that "time is running out" for the U.S.-led coalition to prove that its strategy can succeed.I know we can't change history, but we can't ignore it. The U.S. should have finished the job against Al Qaeda eight years ago. Instead, Bush, Cheney, Lieberman and the rest got side-tracked by Iraq. Al Qaeda has moved on, but we're now bogged down in two wars, one that should never have been fought and one that should have ended years ago. Read More......
The Taliban have created a shadow "government-in-waiting," complete with Cabinet ministers, that could assume power if the U.S.-backed government of Afghan President Hamid Karzai fails, a senior International Security Assistance Force intelligence official said in Kabul, speaking only on the condition of anonymity as a matter of ISAF policy.
JPMorgan Chase Chief Executive Jamie Dimon expressed concerns to UK Finance minister Alistair Darling about the country's 50 percent tax to be levied on bankers' bonuses over 25,000 pounds, London's Telegraph reported.This amount is definitely a substantial sum. Of course, so are the trillions of dollars spent rescuing the industry. In that light, a couple of billion is chump change so get over it and quit yapping about it. Where else would JPMorgan go for their European HQ? It's not as though the continent is any more friendly to this industry. Read More......
In a recent phone call, Dimon spoke about the bank's plans to build its European headquarters in London's Canary Wharf for 1.5 billion pounds ($2.4 billion) as a way of demonstrating the bank's commitment to the city, the paper said.
China was this morning condemned for its human rights record after a British man who, his supporters say, had mental health problems, was executed for smuggling drugs.Read More......
Akmal Shaikh, 53, was shot dead by a firing squad at 10.30am local time (2.30am British time) after frantic last-minute pleas for clemency by the Foreign Office failed.
Britain had demonstrated its anger with Beijing over the treatment of Shaikh, who had smuggled 4kg (8.8lb) of heroin into China, when it summoned the Chinese ambassador for a diplomatic dressing down at the Foreign Office.
With a bend of the knees and an arch of the back, a Japanese engineer today set a world flight record for a paper plane, keeping his hand-folded construction in the air for 26.1 seconds.Read More......
Using a plane specially designed for "long haul" flights, Takuo Toda narrowly failed to match his lifetime best of 27.9 seconds, a Guinness world record set in Hiroshima earlier, but achieved with a plane that was held together with cellophane tape.
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