Friday, October 31, 2003
Haven't these people ever prepared a budget??
The Bush administration has doubled the value of a contract to rebuild Iraq's oil industry, to $2 billion, sharply driving up the projected cost of restoring the country's prewar capacity.
The decision gave fresh ammunition to critics of the president's postwar policies and came as questions surfaced about whether the franchise now held by a subsidiary of Halliburton Co., the oil giant once led by Vice President Dick Cheney, will be expanded to include the development of virgin petroleum fields. The subsidiary, Kellogg Brown & Root Services, was originally hired to help rebuild Iraq's petroleum sector.
1 + 1 = 750 million
posted by chris at 1:54 PM
The clones are coming
Cloned farm animals and their offspring pose little scientific risk to the food supply, the Food and Drug Administration has concluded in a new report that could pave the way for allowing products derived from clones or their offspring onto the nation's grocery shelves.
The draft report, to be released in summary form this morning and discussed at an FDA advisory committee meeting next week, is likely to kick off a fresh national debate about just how far to go in manipulating nature to achieve human ends. Nearly a year behind schedule, the report moves the agency closer to a formal declaration that cloning, the technology that produced Dolly the sheep, is permissible as a routine tool of American agricultural production.
Happy Halloween!
posted by chris at 1:53 PM
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Thursday, October 30, 2003
Spammers steal Orbitz email addresses
Online travel agency Orbitz has notified law enforcement authorities about a recent security breach that has allowed spammers to obtain customers' e-mail addresses.
"A small number of customers have informed us that they have received spam or junk e-mail from an unknown party that apparently used unauthorized and/or illegal means to obtain their e-mail addresses used with Orbitz," spokeswoman Carol Jouzaitis said in a statement.
There was no evidence customer password or other account information was compromised, she said.
The Chicago-based company, which says it has 18 million users, informed the FBI of the information leak and has launched its own investigation. Jouzaitis declined Wednesday to provide any further information on the breach, but described the spam as "typical marketing e-mails."
More.
posted by chris at 3:50 PM
No kidding
Private contractors that received billions in reconstruction contracts for Iraq and Afghanistan contributed significantly to President Bush's election campaign and stocked their staffs and governing boards with well-connected former federal officials, according to a report released today by a watchdog group.
The Center for Public Integrity matched companies with political donations to conclude that dozens of companies that won contracts had contributed to national political campaigns, with President Bush receiving more money than any other candidate since 1990--about $500,000.
The winners of the top 10 contracts for work in Iraq and Afghanistan contributed about $1 million a year to national political parties, candidates and political action committees since 1990, according to the group, which studies the links between money and politics.
Who says money can't buy politics?
posted by chris at 2:12 PM
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Wednesday, October 29, 2003
A glimmer of sense on Capitol Hill
Although Congress will probably grant Bush his $87 billion request for Iraq at the end of the week, it wasn't without some great fightin' words from Sen. Ted Kennedy.
"The trumped up reasons for going to war have collapsed. All the Administration's rationalizations as we prepared to go to war now stand revealed as "double-talk." The American people were told Saddam Hussein was building nuclear weapons. He was not. We were told he had stockpiles of other weapons of mass destruction. He did not. We were told he was involved in 9/11. He was not. We were told Iraq was attracting terrorists from Al Qaeda. It was not. We were told our soldiers would be viewed as liberators. They are not. We were told Iraq could pay for its own reconstruction. It cannot. We were told the war would make America safer. It has not.
"Before the war, week after week after week after week, we were told lie after lie after lie after lie.
"And now, despite the increasingly restless Iraqi population, despite the continuing talk of sabotage, despite the foreign terrorists crossing thousands of miles of border to attack U.S. servicemen and women in Iraq, the Administration still refuses to face the truth or tell the truth. Instead the White House responds by covering up its failures and trying to sell its rosy version of events by repeating it with maximum frequency and volume, and minimum regard for realities on the ground."
There's much, much more.
posted by chris at 8:54 PM
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Monday, October 27, 2003
Soon, all your money will be ours! Bwaahahaha!
The Bank of America Corporation said today that it had agreed to acquire the FleetBoston Financial Corporation for stock valued at $47 billion in a deal that would create the second biggest banking company in the world.
The deal would combine two institutions that have grown to their current size largely through acquisitions. . .
The combined bank would have operations in 34 countries and serve 2.5 million business clients. Once the merger is completed, the new Bank of America will have $68 billion in shareholders equity. Through the first nine months of this year, the combined companies have generated $10 billion in earnings.
The deal would create a retail banking powerhouse, with 5,700 branch offices and more than 16,500 automated teller machines. The company would occupy the first, second or third biggest market share in 21 of the nation's 30 biggest metropolitan areas. . .
After the acquisition, the new Bank of America will have total deposits of more than $541 billion, or 9.8 percent of all banking deposits in the United States.
Yep, the market sure does take care of itself, doesn't it? And just in case you're wondering, Citigroup is Number One.
posted by chris at 12:02 PM
Wal-Mart's employee benefit plan: $2/day
In a sweeping crackdown on undocumented workers, federal agents arrested more than 300 people at Wal-Mart stores in 21 states Thursday and raided the retail giant's world headquarters in Arkansas.
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The cleaning crews did not receive health insurance and were paid below the minimum wage, sometimes as little as $2 a day, a federal official said.
Jeanne at Body and Soul draws an interesing connection between this issue and the recent supermarket strikes across the country. As reported in USA Today:
Officials at Kroger and the nation's other dominant supermarket chains — Ahold, Albertsons and Safeway — often cite competition from Wal-Mart Stores and other box stores moving into the grocery business as a reason to hold the line on labor costs.
Those costs include health care benefits that are the sticking point in United Food and Commercial Worker strikes of 70,000 workers at three southern California chains; 10,000 workers at three chains in Missouri; and 3,300 workers at 44 Kroger stores in West Virginia, Kentucky and Ohio.
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Lower labor costs for non-union workers make up part of the advantage of box stores like Wal-Mart.
Or VERY low labor costs like two dollars an hour . . .
posted by chris at 11:49 AM
Nothing to see here! Move along, move along!
Despite the rosy forecasts that the Bush administration reports on the progress in Iraq, the reality is a bit different:
A series of suicide bombings shook Baghdad early today, including an attack on the offices of the International Committee of the Red Cross and blasts at four Iraqi police stations that punctuated two days of bloody violence in this capital city.
Iraq's police chief and deputy interior minister, Ahmad Ibrahim, said at a news conference that 34 people had been killed and 224 had been wounded in the attacks. He said 26 of the dead were civilians and 8 were police officers; 65 police officers and 159 civilians were wounded.
posted by chris at 11:26 AM
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