China's central bank is ordering commercial banks to keep more money on hand in an effort to stanch a flood of money into an economy wrestling with high inflation.
The People's Bank of China order Saturday raises the amount of deposits that banks must keep in reserve by 0.5 percentage …
Abstract
The objective of the study was to examine the feasibility of using routinely available assessment, Minimum Data Set (MDS), socio-economic, geographic and unit cost data to define a discrete number of clinically meaningful, cost-homogeneous Home and Community Care (HACC) client groups. Participants included new and existing Western Australian (WA) HACC beneficiaries from 1 January to 31 September 2001. Seventy two HACC agencies from metropolitan and rural regions participated, which represented 29% of the sector. A total of 9,404 quarterly periods of care contributed to the exploratory classification analysis and 12,697 to the confirmatory analysis. The final structure …
Deutsche Lufthansa AG said Tuesday its CityLine regional carrier will cut 20 percent of its 2,500-person work force and scale back the size of its fleet as it trims costs.
Lufthansa spokesman Patrick Meschenmoser said CityLine, which flies to smaller destinations within Europe, will reduce the number of its 50-seat CRJ-200 regional jets by 14 through 2010 from its overall fleet of 72 planes.
Meschenmoser said the cuts were being implemented to lower …
The northwestern United States enter wildfire season with drier-than-normal conditions following a mild winter that left little snow.
Robyn Heffernan, a deputy fire weather program manager at the National Interagency Fire Center in Boise, blames the El Nino weather pattern that suggests higher-than-normal fire wildfire potential for the northern Rocky Mountain states.
That includes Montana, Idaho, parts of eastern Washington, …
HUNTINGTON - Even though a body found in the Ohio River onSaturday has yet to be identified, the grandfather of a missing boysays his family feels a sense of relief.
"For so long, all the people's prayers have been for recovery,"said Steve "Poppy" Black. "Those prayers are answered."
Black is the grandfather of Justin Smoot, 15, one of two boys whodisappeared apparently while swimming in the Ohio River on May 21.
Barge workers at Kanawha River Terminals-Ceredo Dock found thebody of Smoot's friend, 14-year-old Randall …
MARIETTA, Okla. (AP) — An accident involving a barrel ride at an Oklahoma fairgrounds has killed an 8-year-old girl and left four other children seriously injured.
Love County Undersheriff Jason Bone tells television station KWTV that an all-terrain vehicle at the Love County Fairgrounds was pulling 55-gallon barrels that had been hollowed out so children could sit in them. He says the ATV was pulling seven barrels when the …
AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — The debate over teaching evolution in public schools flared up again at the Texas State Board of Education on Thursday, with supporters and opponents of the approach sparring at a meeting over supplemental science materials for the upcoming school year and beyond.
The Republican-dominated board drew national attention in 2009 when it adopted science standards encouraging schools to scrutinize "all sides" of scientific theory, a move some creationists hailed as a victory.
The board's new chairwoman, former biology teacher Barbara Cargill, disputes the theory of evolution. First elected in 2004, she was appointed chairwoman earlier this month by Gov. Rick …
D�SSELDORF
"Talking Pictures"
K21
When, in his 1967 article "Art and Objecthood," Michael Fried attacked the Minimalists for their theatricality, he could not have known that his critique would affect the dialogue between art and theater for decades to come. Even videos, performances, and installations became antitheatrical. But no more: Today's films and videos feature drama, role play, and pretense-a point underlined by K21 curator Doris Krystof in her wonderfully installed exhibition "Talking Pictures."
Theater is, above all, a form of social interaction, and as such, it has not only an aesthetic but an ethical component; both play a role in the works on …
Serbia has proposed the division of newly independent Kosovo along ethnic lines between the majority Albanians and minority Serbs.
The proposal, published by Belgrade media Monday, has been submitted to the United Nations which has administered Kosovo since the 1999 war there.
It says that Belgrade …
Us Toy firm Mattel is recalling 55,000 Chinese-made toys becauseof lead contamination fears.
The recall affects 12,000 toys in the UK and the Irish Republic,38,000 toys in the US and 5,500 …
The only problem is Ronald Burkhart was not the rental agent for the River Forest apartment, authorities said.
Burkhart, 47, a member of the Latin Disciples street gang, was arrested Wednesday.
Two victims identified him as the man who took a total of $2,550 in June while posing as a rental agent for an apartment in the 1500 block of North Harlem Avenue, police said.
Police say Burkhart was never on the apartment lease at the building, but had lived there with a girlfriend. After the woman was given an eviction notice, she abandoned the apartment but kept the keys.
Burkhart then placed an advertisement for the apartment and arranged meetings with two prospective renters. He allegedly took prepaid rent and deposits from both people after showing them the apartment, using his girlfriend's keys, police said.
Burkhart, who already was being held in lieu of $40,000 bail on unrelated theft charges, had another bond hearing Thursday morning in Maywood.
Burkhart has a criminal history dating back to at least 1992, when he pleaded guilty to aggravated criminal sexual assault and was sentenced to 12 years. He was sentenced to a year in prison in 2005 for failing to register as a sex offender.
In River Forest this week, he was charged with two counts of theft by deception, a Class 3 felony.
Color Photo: Ronald Burkhart
The NCAA tournament selection committee often tucks intriguing coaching matchups and festering feuds inside the brackets.
This year, though, it's all about the strange twists and turns of family.
In one game Friday, brother is pitted against brother _ Kris Joseph against Maurice Joseph, when No. 1 Syracuse plays No. 16 Vermont in a West Regional game in Buffalo, N.Y.
Another pair of brothers, Noah and Isaiah Dahlman, are also playing Friday on opposite sides of the country _ Noah for underdog Wofford in Jacksonville, Fla., and Isaiah for Michigan State in Spokane, Wash.
President Bush, in the Mideast to push along a peace deal by the end of his presidency, gave orders to both sides on Wednesday. He told Israelis that "illegal" outposts in disputed land must go and told Palestinians that no part of their territories can be "a safe haven for terrorists."
On that, Bush was echoing his ally and host, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, who said in their joint news conference that "there will be no peace" unless attacks are halted from all parts of the Palestinian territories, including those not controlled by his negotiating partners in the Palestinian leadership. Olmert, however, said that both sides "are very seriously trying to move forward" on a peace agreement.
"Israel does not tolerate and will not tolerate the continuation of these vicious attacks," Olmert said, after two and a half hours of talks with Bush. "We will not hesitate to take all the necessary measures. There will be no peace unless terror is stopped. And terror will have to be stopped everywhere."
On the first day of his eight-day Mideast trip aimed at pushing the Israelis and Palestinians toward an agreement, Bush said: "I'm under no illusions. This is going to be hard work."
Earlier Wednesday, an Israeli airstrike in northern Gaza killing one militant and two civilians, according to Palestinian medics. The Israeli army said the strike was needed because Palestinian militants had bombarded the rocket-scarred southern Israeli city of Sderot with rocket and mortar fire.
Bush said he and Olmert also discussed Iran's nuclear weapons ambitions and an incident Sunday when Iranian boats harassed and provoked three American Navy ships in the strategic Strait of Hormuz. U.S. officials said Iran threatened to explode the vessels, but the incident ended peacefully.
Bush said Iran continues to be a "threat to world peace."
The president said "all options are on the table to secure our assets." He said serious consequences would follow another Iranian provocation. "My advice to them is don't do it," he said.
Bush found himself challenged by his Israeli allies on a recent U.S. intelligence report saying Iran halted a nuclear weapons program in 2003. Tehran's nuclear ambitions are a chief fear in Israel, and the U.S. report led some in the region _ both Israelis and Arab nations concerned about rising Iranian influence _ to doubt the U.S. commitment to reining in Tehran.
"The fact that they suspended the program was heartening," Bush said. "The fact that they had one was discouraging because they could restart it."
Clearing up confusion about U.S. policy toward Iran is a key subtext of Bush's trip, which will also take him to Kuwait, Bahrain, United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Egypt. Bush knows he must explain the new U.S. intelligence report, whose findings undercut U.S. efforts to build support for sanctions against Iran.
Bush's arrival in Israel came amid ongoing land squabbles and fears of violence. There's been little headway since he hosted a splashy Mideast conference in November in Annapolis, which launched the first major peace talks in seven years.
But Olmert, despite his tough words on terror attacks, spoke optimistically as well.
"Your visit is timely and is very important to encourage the process that you and Secretary Rice helped start in Annapolis few weeks ago and that we, both sides I believe are very seriously trying to move forward with now in order to realize the vision of a two-state solution," the Israeli leader said.
Bush said he believes both Olmert and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas "are determined to make the hard choices necessary."
"Am I nudging them forward? Well, my trip was a pretty significant nudge because yesterday they had a meeting," he said.
On the eve of Bush's arrival, Olmert and Abbas pledged to have negotiators begin work immediately on the so-called final status issues. These include the final borders between Israel and a future Palestine, completing claims to the holy city of Jerusalem, the fate of millions of Palestinian refugees and Israeli security concerns.
Reaction to Bush's remarks came quickly from the Palestinians. Nabil Amr, an adviser to Abbas, said the United States needs to push, not coax, Israel.
"Having any achievements in the negotiations needs American pressure," Amr said "Israel is not willing to provide anything without pressure, and the pressure has to come from the U.S."
Bush and his team stepped into a tricky issue _ Palestinian anger about Israeli plans to build new housing in east Jerusalem and the West Bank. Those areas were captured by Israel in the 1967 Mideast war and are claimed by the Palestinians for their future state.
Of unauthorized Jewish outposts in the West Bank, Bush said simply: "The agreement was get rid of outposts -- illegal outposts. And they ought to go."
Amr said he thought Bush's comments were generally positive when he spoke of the settlements.
"But we expected him to say that we don't want any more settlement activity, because the Israelis are using the tactic of not building new settlements, but enlarging the current ones, and this is dangerous," Amr said.
Earlier, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice also said that Israeli construction in Palestinian-claimed east Jerusalem constitutes settlement activity and is opposed by the U.S. Rice's comments, published in The Jerusalem Post daily, marked the U.S. administration's strongest criticism yet of Israeli policies in disputed east Jerusalem. The Palestinians are expected to put settlements at the top of their agenda when they meet Bush on Thursday.
Said Olmert: "We must abide by our commitments and we shall do so."
Bush also indicated a willingness to address Israel's concerns with the Palestinians.
Upon arrival at the airport, he lent support to Israel on one of the core issues in the conflict. "The alliance between our two nations helps guarantee Israel's security as a Jewish state," Bush said.
Bush has referred to Israel as Jewish state in the past but the reference _ here in the region _ had special significance. Palestinians oppose calling Israel a Jewish state, saying it rules out the right of Palestinian refugees to return to lost properties in Israel.
And in the news conference with Olmert, Bush said he would tell Abbas that his territory "cannot be a safe haven for terrorists."
Israel has demanded that Palestinian forces do more to rein in militants in the West Bank. Since Olmert and Abbas last met, two Israelis were killed in the West Bank, and Israeli security forces say members of Abbas' Fatah movement were responsible.
Bush visits Abbas Thursday in the West Bank, a Palestinian territory. He will not stop in or near the Gaza Strip, the other Palestinian which is controlled by Islamic Hamas militants who are not a party to negotiations. It was from Gaza that militants launched rockets Wednesday into southern Israel.
It is Bush's first presidential visit to Israel. Unpopular at home, he was greeted here with smiles and warm handshakes.
Bush's first formal meeting was with Israeli President Shimon Peres, at his official residence. He was welcomed by several dozen school children wearing white shirts and waving Israeli and U.S. flags. Bush and Peres waded into the crowd, and slowly swayed to a disco medley of Israeli folk and peace songs.
Peres said the Annapolis conference started a one-year clock on the difficult Mideast peace process, underscoring Bush's hopes _ considered unrealistic by many in the Mideast and the United States _ to conclude a deal before he leaves office. "Time is so precious," Peres said.
"I also believe that the process may be slow, but the progress can be sweet," he said.
Oil prices dropped below $67 Monday in Asia as a rally that has roughly doubled the price of crude in four months lost some steam in the face of economic reality.
Benchmark crude for July delivery was down $1.50 at $66.94 a barrel by midday Bangkok time in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. On Friday, it settled down 37 cents at $68.44 after jumping as high as $70.32, the highest since October.
Crude prices have risen in tandem with global stocks as gloom about the global economy eased but many analysts say the oil market is overreaching.
"I don't see the rally that we've had over the last couple of months as being sustainable," said John Vautrain, energy analyst at consultancy Purvin & Gertz in Singapore. "Inventories are still growing and OPEC production cuts haven't been big enough to offset that," he said. "The major economies are still weak and we are still losing demand."
Oil's brief jump over $70 came after a U.S. Labor Department reported Friday that employers cut 345,000 jobs in May, the fewest since September, even as the unemployment rate rose to 9.4 percent in May, a 25-year high.
But some analysts have been quick to jump on the crude rally bandwagon, with Goldman Sachs last week predicting that oil would reach $85 by the end of the year.
Royal Dutch Shell Chief Executive Jeroen van der Veer warned Monday that oil prices would spike in the future without continued investment to meet demand once the global economy recovers _ and as the world's population grows to a projected 9 billion by 2050.
The drop in oil prices after last year's surge to $150 a barrel has delayed exploration and refinery projects.
"The oil and gas industry cannot supply all this additional demand ... this means the next price spike is in the making," he told more than 1,000 delegates at the Asia Oil and Gas Conference in Kuala Lumpur on Monday.
In other Nymex trading, gasoline for July delivery was down 2.6 cents at $1.9288 a gallon and heating oil was off 2 cents cents at $1.7478. Natural gas for July delivery was down 3.3 cents at $3.835 per 1,000 cubic feet.
In London, Brent prices lost $1.37 to $66.97 a barrel on the ICE Futures exchange.
PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) — A battle over fees between Dish Network and television station owner Lin TV Corp. caused 27 local stations to go dark for Dish subscribers Saturday.
The two companies faced a deadline that came and went at 2 a.m. EST Saturday without a resolution. The stations were still unavailable Saturday afternoon.
The companies traded accusations and gave conflicting versions of which pulled the plug.
Dish Network Corp. said Lin pulled its channels down at midnight, "holding viewers in 17 markets ... hostage" to coerce Dish to submit to Lin's demands for higher rates and that it refused to negotiate during the final hours.
Lin said it has "worked tirelessly" to negotiate with Dish. Lin also said that Dish removed the signals over its objection.
Both companies said negotiations were ongoing Saturday.
Neither side has said how many subscribers are affected. Lin stations are affiliates of CBS, Fox, NBC, ABC and the CW in 17 cities including Indianapolis; Providence, R.I.; and Buffalo, N.Y.
Such disputes have become increasingly common.
In October, a breakdown in negotiations between Cablevision Systems Corp. and News Corp.'s Fox network left 3 million Cablevision subscribers in the New York area without Fox programming for 15 days — including through two World Series games — after the broadcaster pulled its signal.
Lin is based in Providence. Dish Network Corp. is headquartered in Englewood, Colo.
It's hard not to be dazzled by the growth of the Internet. A novelty only a few years ago, it now has become pervasive and, some would argue, pivotal to our professional and personal lives. Just about everyone seems to surf the Web and send e-mail. An astounding amount of information already is available on-line. Still, Internet sites and services prodigiously proliferate, along with corporate internal networks (intranets). When will we reach saturation?
Certainly not for quite a while. Without a doubt, current on-line resources, as well as the capabilities and uses of the Internet, will appear rudimentary and unsophisticated not too many years from now.
Right now, for instance, chemical engineers rely on the Internet mainly to receive information and for e-mail, according to our recent survey (see p. 93), with e-mail considered the most-important use today. That is bound to change dramatically. Indeed, our respondents foresee the most-valuable long-term role of the Internet being that of enabling people to easily and effectively collaborate, regardless of where, when, and for whom they work.
Few of us probably would be flabbergasted in a few years to find that design projects involve extensive on-line collaboration among equipment vendors, engineering and construction firms, and operating companies. Likewise, it probably would be a safe bet to expect that plant operations will entail close on-line cooperation among plant owners, raw material and hardware suppliers, and customers. After all, such moves already are starting, and they promise dramatic economic benefits.
Similarly, we can reasonably anticipate that the ability to collaborate effectively on-line will translate into broad flexibility in the way that many chemical engineers do their jobs - but, also, that this will pose new burdens and will require more discipline to keep work from overwhelming personal life.
Yet, we shouldn't rule out some significant surprises.
After all, one of the wonders of the Internet is how rapidly it is evolving, not just in what it delivers, but how. We surely can expect much faster connections as well as powerful wireless devices. But, we probably can't foresee or even imagine some of the other developments that will occur in the technology underpinning the Internet. And, that new technology, in turn, undoubtedly will open up undreamt of opportunities for chemical engineers and chemical engineering.
Truly, we're now only witnessing the end of the beginning of our use of the Internet.
[Author Affiliation]
Mark Rosenzweig
Editor-in-Chief
markr@aiche.org
The government says it will rewrite rules for penalizing employers of illegal immigrants to try to satisfy a federal judge in San Francisco who put the crackdown on hold.
U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer stopped the Bush administration last month from going ahead with enforcement of regulations requiring employers to fire workers if their Social Security numbers did not match records and the discrepancies could not be addressed in 90 days. In issuing the temporary injunction, the judge said the Social Security database contained errors that could have cost many legal workers their jobs, and the government did not properly study the effect of the rules on business.
Late Friday, Breyer agreed to a request from the administration to put the case on hold while it reworks the regulations _ a process bound to put off enforcement until the spring. The judge stayed proceedings until March 24, when the government thought it could have new rules ready on how to enforce immigration laws in the workplace.
Business, labor and civil liberties groups had sued to stop the "no match" rules, arguing the plan would trap companies and workers in a costly bureaucratic nightmare.
In its motion, the administration acknowledged that the judge had found "serious questions on the merits" raised by the case. "A stay will prevent the waste of judicial resources in litigating over a rule that is in the process of being revised," the administration's brief said. "Defendants hope and anticipate that the amended rule will fully address the Court's concerns."
The plan is meant to expose illegal immigrants who get jobs by giving out fake Social Security numbers and penalize companies that employ them. Nothing in the brief suggested the government would ultimately back away from a "no match" plan as it looked for ways to make enforcement pass legal muster.
In September, a month after the plan was announced, the government had about 140,000 letters ready to be sent to employers, each identifying 10 or more employees with mismatches in their records. But the case stopped enforcement from proceeding. Breyer issued the injunction Oct. 10.
Such are the spars to which he clings in the shipwreck of hispresidency, now that the Washington Post, which opposes impeachment,dismisses his defense as "a compound lie" and the New Republic, whichopposes impeachment, calls him "a moral and cultural disaster."
Granted, Republicans have mixed motives, some ignoble, forfavoring impeachment. Still, savor the rarity of some peopleunwilling to palter with the truth in order to pander to publicopinion. And salute some of them for an understanding of the popularwill far more profound than polls communicate. The reason judicialreview - unelected judges invalidating acts of electedrepresentatives - can be compatible with popular government is thatthe Constitution is the fundamental, the permanent rather thanevanescent, will of the American people.Whoever is scripting Clinton's various contrition skits missesthis point: Serial contrition, carefully calibrated, is oxymoronic.Clinton's current confessional theme is: I am ashamed of what I didto conceal behavior I was ashamed of, so now I have nothing to beashamed of. If there were a parliamentarian controlling the currentdebate, he would declare such skits ungermane. Enough, already, ofClinton's bulletins on his inner life.Clinton, whose self-absorption is the eighth wonder of theworld, thinks the current controversy is about the purity of hisrepentance. He is encouraged to think so by those critics who,steeped in today's confessional culture, say we could "get thisbehind us" if only Clinton would come to the front of the tent andtestify to having testified falsely under oath. But this reduces anassault on the rule of law to a problem that is half aesthetic andhalf pastoral.The vote to impeach should proceed on the understanding thatimpeachment is not punishment, it is hygiene for the regime. Thevote should turn on three questions:First, is it seemly to spare a president even a Senate trial toconsider the Everest of evidence of crimes of a sort for which someAmericans are in prison?Second, is it necessary to avoid a Senate trial, lest the nationbe jeopardized? Such a judgment effectively amends the Constitutionby repealing the impeachment provision as inapplicable to the modernpresidency because the presidency has grown too great to discipline.Third, what standard of presidential behavior will be endorsedby the House if it votes that not even a Senate trial is warranted byClinton's sustained and calculated "private" behavior, whichconsisted of lying to the public and in two public (judicial)proceedings about behavior in the symbolic epicenter of the nation'spublic life, the Oval Office?Clinton might survive a Senate trial in which the nation'swelfare, not his soul, would be the proper subject. But even ifonly, say, 55 senators, rather than the required two-thirds, voted toremove Clinton, his survival would not mean (as one of his lawyerssays) that this all would have been "much ado about nothing." IfClinton clings to office after majorities of both houses declare himunfit to do so, that outcome can accurately be called: censure.But before assuming that Clinton's support cannot fall below 34senators, consider: There is scant affection for him among Democrats.Some senior Democrats loathe him for reducing their party, onceexemplified by Scoop Jackson, Hubert Humphrey, Mike Mansfield andPaul Douglas, to a party exemplified by Jerrold Nadler and BarneyFrank.And some Democrats have made themselves hostage to polls byciting them as sufficient reason not to remove Clinton. They haveplanted their feet on the shiftable sand of opinion, and the publicmay yet come to feel that Clinton has to go.
