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Although it was not with hygiene in mind, the first records for the use of baths date back as far as 3000 B.C. At this time water had a strong religious value, being seen as a purifying element for both body and soul, and so it was not uncommon for people to be required to cleanse themselves before entering a sacred area. Baths are recorded as part of a village or town life throughout this period, with a split between steam baths in Europe and America and cold baths in Asia. Communal baths were erected in a distinctly separate area to the living quarters of the village, with a view to preventing evil spirits from entering the domestic quarters of a commune.

The Roman attitudes towards bathing are well documented; they built large purpose-built thermal baths, marking not only an important social development, but also providing a public source of relaxation and rejuvenation. Here was a place where people could meet to discuss the matters of the day and enjoy entertainment. During this period there was a distinction between private and public baths, with many wealthy families having their own thermal baths in their houses. Despite this they still made use of the public baths, showing the value that they had as a public institution. The strength of the Roman Empire was telling in this respect; imports from throughout the world allowed the Roman citizens to enjoy ointments, incense, combs, and mirrors.

NAIROBI, Kenya – Pirates off the coast of Somalia have attacked two vessels, and at least one of those has been captured.
The European Union's anti-piracy force says pirates hijacked a chemical tanker on Monday named the MV Theresa with 28 North Koreans on board.
In a second incident, pirates attacked a Ukrainian cargo ship. Cmdr. John Harbour, a spokesman for the EU force, says that private security guards on board fired on the pirates, wounding two. Harbour says the Ukrainian ship was not hijacked.
A Somali man who claims to be a spokesman for the pirates, Gedi Ali, told The Associated Press on Tuesday that pirates had captured the Ukrainian ship. Ali also says two pirates were wounded in the attack.

WASHINGTON – The Postal Service reported a loss of $3.8 billion last year, despite a reduction of 40,000 full-time positions and other cost-cutting measures.
The loss was $1 billion more than the year before despite job cuts and other efforts designed to save billions of dollars, postal officials said Monday.
"Our 2009 fiscal year proved to be one of the most challenging in the history of the Postal Service," Chief Financial Officer Joseph Corbett said.
"The deep economic recession, and to a lesser extent the ongoing migration of mail to electronic alternatives, significantly affected all mail products, creating a large imbalance between revenues and costs," he said.
The post office has been struggling to cope with a decline in mail volume caused by the shift to the Internet as well as the recession that resulted in a drop in advertising and other mail. Total mail volume was 177.1 billion pieces, compared to 202.7 billion pieces in 2008, a decline of almost 13 percent.
For the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30 the agency had income of $68.1 billion, $6.8 billion less than in 2008. Expenditures were down $5.9 billion to $71.8 billion.
Postmaster General John Potter is seeking permission from Congress to reduce mail delivery from six days a week to five, a move that could save the agency $3.5 billion annually.
Potter has said the post office does not plan to raise rates next year on the items most commonly used by the public such as first-class mail.
"We realize our customers are facing the same economic challenges," said Potter.
In addition the agency is consolidating mail facilities, looking to close some offices and looking for new sources of income.
The post office is required to make an annual contribution of about $5 billion to pay in advance for medical benefits for future retirees. Congress reduced that by $4 billion for 2009, but that change was for one year only.
The agency's independent auditor, Ernst & Young, questioned whether the post office would have enough money to make the next payment on Sept. 30, 2010, when $5.5 billion will be due.
For the current fiscal year, the post office estimated it will have a further decline in income of $2.2 billion and a net loss of $7.8 billion even with expected cost reductions of more than $3.5 billion. It expects a reduction in mail volume of another 11 billion pieces.
While there are signs of economic recovery, Corbett said the post office tends to lag two quarters behind the economy. In addition, he said, economists say the recovery is likely to be slow to add jobs and mail volume generally rises when more people are working.
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On the Net:
U.S. Postal Service: http://www.usps.com

WASHINGTON – Frustrated by court decisions that blocked the suspension of two football players who tested positive for banned substances, NFL commissioner Roger Goodell is asking Congress for help.
"We believe that a specific and tailored amendment to the Labor Management Relations Act is appropriate and necessary to protect collectively bargained steroid policies from attack under state law," Goodell said in testimony prepared for a House Energy and Commerce subcommittee hearing Tuesday.
Recent court decisions "call into question the continued viability of the steroid policies of the NFL and other national sports organizations," Goodell said. A copy of his testimony was obtained by The Associated Press.
The NFL had attempted to suspend Minnesota Vikings Pat Williams and Kevin Williams for four games, but the players sued the league in state court, arguing the league's testing violated Minnesota laws. The case was moved to federal court, and the NFL players union filed a similar lawsuit on behalf of the Williamses and New Orleans Saints players who were also suspended.
In May, a federal judge dismissed the union's lawsuit and several claims in the Williamses' case but sent two claims involving Minnesota workplace laws back to state court. A judge there issued an injunction prohibiting the NFL from suspending the players and has scheduled the trial for March 8. In September, a federal appeals court panel agreed with those decisions, essentially allowing the Williamses, who are not related, to continue playing while the case proceeds in state court.
The Vikings players tested positive in 2008 for the diuretic bumetanide, which is banned by the NFL because it can mask the presence of steroids. The players acknowledged taking the over-the-counter weight loss supplement StarCaps, which did not state on the label that it contained bumetanide. Neither player is accused of taking steroids.
The court ruling led the NFL to allow New Orleans defensive ends Charles Grant and Will Smith, who had also been issued four-game suspensions, to continue playing. Both players tested positive after using StarCaps.
DeMaurice Smith, executive director of the NFL players union, said this case differs from others. He said Dr. John Lombardo, who oversees the league's steroid policy, learned that StarCaps contained bumetanide but did not inform the players.
"Frankly, the fundamental failure of that doctor to ensure immediate disclosure of the fact that StarCaps included bumetanide violated his paramount duty as a doctor — to protect patients, in this case, our players," Smith said in his prepared testimony, also obtained by The AP. Smith called for changes to the league-union steroid policy that would mandate the NFL notify players when it learns that a product contains a banned substance.
Rob Manfred, Major League Baseball's executive vice president of labor relations, also discussed a legislative remedy in his testimony, saying "a narrowly drafted statute could solve the problem faced by professional sports" while preserving the role of collective bargaining in drug programs without interfering with states' prerogatives.
But Michael Weiner, general counsel at the Major League Baseball Players Association, said that legislation is unnecessary. A bill to pre-empt state law, he argued, "would stand for the unusual proposition that parties to a collective bargaining agreement can contract for that which is illegal under state law."

BEIJING (Reuters) –
Police have broken up a network of workshops and warehouses used to illegally smuggle 140 tons of used, foreign clothing through southern China, the official Xinhua news agency reported on Sunday.

Authorities detained 11 people involved in the smuggling ring in Lufeng City, a southern coastal area in Guangdong province, and raided more than 500 workshops and warehouses, according to the report.

The smugglers brought in used clothes, particularly from Japan and South Korea, to be reprocessed and sold to many inland Chinese areas, including the northeastern region and Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, authorities said.

It did not make clear when the raids took place but said they were part of an ongoing crackdown that began in early October.

Another raid in the area early this month turned up 120 tons of smuggled, used clothing that was confiscated and burned, Xinhua reported.

(Reporting by Ken Wills; Editing by Sugita Katyal)

Health Insurance Quote

Gamblers can continue spending, buying more risk than they can afford to pay for. Insurance buyers can only spend up to the limit of what carriers would accept to insure; their loss is limited to the amount of the premium.

Certain life insurance contracts accumulate cash values, which may be taken by the insured if the policy is surrendered or which may be borrowed against. Some policies, such as annuities and endowment policies, are financial instruments to accumulate or liquidate wealth when it is needed. See life insurance.

BARCELONA (Reuters) –
A company behind plans to open the first hotel in space says it is on target to accept its first paying guests in 2012 despite critics questioning the investment and time frame for the multi-billion dollar project.

The Barcelona-based architects of The Galactic Suite Space Resort say it will cost 3 million euro ($4.4 million) for a three-night stay at the hotel, with this price including an eight-week training course on a tropical island.

During their stay, guests would see the sun rise 15 times a day and travel around the world every 80 minutes. They would wear velcro suits so they can crawl around their pod rooms by sticking themselves to the walls like Spiderman.

Galactic Suite Ltd's CEO Xavier Claramunt, a former aerospace engineer, said the project will put his company (http://www.galacticsuite.com) at the forefront of an infant industry with a huge future ahead of it, and forecast space travel will become common in the future.

"It's very normal to think that your children, possibly within 15 years, could spend a weekend in space," he told Reuters Television.

A nascent space tourism industry is beginning to take shape with construction underway in New Mexico of Spaceport America, the world's first facility built specifically for space-bound commercial customers and fee-paying passengers.

British tycoon Richard Branson's space tours firm, Virgin Galactic, will use the facility to propel tourists into suborbital space at a cost of $200,000 a ride.

Galactic Suite Ltd, set up in 2007, hopes to start its project with a single pod in orbit 450 km (280 miles) above the earth, traveling at 30,000 km per hour, with the capacity to hold four guests and two astronaut-pilots.

It will take a day and a half to reach the pod - which Claramunt compared to a mountain retreat, with no staff to greet the traveler.

"When the passengers arrive in the rocket, they will join it for 3 days, rocket and capsule. With this we create in the tourist a confidence that he hasn't been abandoned. After 3 days the passenger returns to the transport rocket and returns to earth," he said.

More than 200 people have expressed an interest in traveling to the space hotel and at least 43 people have already reserved.

The numbers are similar for Virgin Galactic with 300 people already paid or signed up for the trip but unlike Branson, Galactic Suite say they will use Russian rockets to transport their guests into space from a spaceport to be built on an island in the Caribbean.

But critics have questioned the project, saying the time frame is unreasonable and also where the money is coming from to finance the project.

Claramunt said an anonymous billionaire space enthusiast has granted $3 billion to finance the project.

(Writing by Stuart McDill; Editing by Belinda Goldsmith and Miral Fahmy)

CHARLOTTE, N.C. – Gerald Wallace had 24 points and 20 rebounds and the Charlotte Bobcats held the New Jersey Nets without a point for more than 10 minutes in rallying for a 79-68 victory on Monday.
The Nets' ineptitude allowed Charlotte to go on a 24-0 run bridging the third and fourth quarters, wiping out the Bobcats' horrible offensive start. D.J. Augustin added 21 points in Raja Bell's return from a wrist injury.
The Nets dropped to 0-4 thanks to a brutal stretch where they lost Yi Jianlian to a sprained right knee and went nearly 11 1/2 minutes without a field goal. The Nets went 0-for-11 from the field with nine turnovers before Chris Douglas-Roberts' three-point play.
Douglas-Roberts had 20 points and Brook Lopez added 18.

MOUNT AIRY, N.C. – A soured love affair may have led an ex-convict to gun down four men in the town that inspired the idyllic community of Mayberry on the 1960s TV series "The Andy Griffith Show," police said Monday.
Marcos Chavez Gonzalez, 29, was charged with four counts of murder in the slayings late Sunday outside a television store in Mount Airy, about 100 miles north of Charlotte.
The four were shot with a high-powered assault rifle outside Wood's TV, in the shadow of a water tower that says "Welcome to Mount Airy" and has a picture of Griffith and Opie, his son on the show.
Police do not believe the shootings were random. Mount Airy Police Chief Dale Watson said officers are investigating several leads, including whether it was a contract killing or repercussions from a love affair gone bad.
"This is Mayberry ... Andy Griffith's house is in spitting distance here," said Michael Wood, one of the owners of Wood's TV.
The town, population 8,700, has built a tourist trade on nostalgia for the show that continues to thrive in syndication.
Watson identified the victims — all residents of the town — as Victor Alfonso Martinez-Jimenez, 22; Javier Manuel Martinez, 21; Juan Manuel Martinez, 26; and Marcos Oviedo Aguliar, 21.
Michelle Oviedo, 21, said her boyfriend and brother were among the dead and the alleged shooter is her mother's boyfriend. She said she was sitting on her porch not far from Wood's TV when she heard the gunshots.
"When I got there, Javier and my brother were already gone," she said. "They were on top of each other."
Jose Armando Hernandez, 46, said through a translator that three of the victims were his nephews. He said his family is "destroyed" over the deaths, which he said stemmed from a problem with a woman.
Gonzalez was arrested without incident at a motel about 50 miles northeast of the town, Henry County, Va., Sheriff Lane Perry said. He was unarmed when he surrendered just before 4 a.m. to officers who had surrounded the motel.
He was extradited from Virginia and was being held in the Surry County jail. Jail workers said it was not clear whether he had an attorney.
Watson said 16 shots were fired but the assault rifle had not been found.
"It was quite a crime scene," he said.
State prison records show Gonzalez was released more than two years ago after serving more than two years on a 2002 conviction for kidnapping a minor and a probation violation.
State records show the felony kidnapping charge required Gonzalez to register as a sex offender. North Carolina's post-release supervision of Gonzalez ended in June 2006 when he returned to prison after failing to stay in contact with a probation officer, Correction Department spokesman Keith Acree said.
Nursing supervisor Sue Coe at Northern Hospital of Surry County confirmed that two people died at the store around 2:30 p.m. Sunday. She said two who were wounded died at the hospital, just across the street from the store.
By Monday, someone had set up a makeshift memorial with flowers. Mourners gathered there and some women lay on the ground crying. Someone christened the memorial with a bottle of Corona beer, which sat half empty next to brightly colored candles with photos of saints on them.

Gary Chilton, an owner of Chilton Insurance Group, which shares the building with Wood's TV, said the crime is an anomaly. Andy Griffith doesn't live there any more, but the town is still quiet.

"I'm not sure it's totally sunk in because it's so unusual. On any given Sunday there is nothing here in this parking lot. There's nothing here at all," he said. "My biggest question is why in this parking lot at all. Why Wood's TV parking lot?"

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Associated Press writers Emery Dalesio in Raleigh and Mitch Weiss in Charlotte contributed to this report.

President Barack Obama will know by Friday whether he got the deal on Iranian nuclear material on which he has staked his engagement strategy. A third day of talks in Vienna ended inconclusively Wednesday, with the Iranian delegation requiring consultations with their government back in Tehran before signing off on a detailed plan to ship three-quarters of its current stockpile of enriched uranium to Russia for conversion into harmless reactor fuel. The parties to the deal have been given until Friday to report back, although reports from Vienna suggested that Tehran was pushing back against some of the terms being set for the deal by the U.S. and its partners - specifically over the timetable and scale of Iran's uranium delivery to Russia.
The points of contention not only highlight the differing objectives of the two sides in making a deal. They also serve as a reminder that as significant a confidence-building mechanism as the Vienna deal may be, it doesn't actually begin to address the deadlock between Iran and the West over whether the Islamic Republic will continue to enrich uranium. (See pictures of the world's worst nuclear disasters.)
The deal under discussion in Vienna was hatched when Iran approached the IAEA earlier this year for help in acquiring fuel for a medical research reactor in Tehran, which is not suspected of being part of any covert weapons program. U.S. officials took the opportunity to address "ticking clock" concerns that Iran had already amassed enough low-enriched uranium (LEU) that - if it expelled inspectors and reprocessed the material to weapons grade - could be fashioned into a single atomic bomb. So Washington proposed that Iran use its own stockpile of LEU as the basis for the reactor fuel, which would require shipping it to Russia and France for further enrichment and conversion into fuel rods that would be extremely difficult for Iran to weaponize. The deal obviously appealed to the West as a way to limit Iran's ability to potentially create a bomb; but the Iranians aren't viewing it as a concession. They see the deal as a tacit recognition that uranium-enrichment in Iran is an intractable reality, despite Western hopes of coaxing and cajoling Iran into abandoning it altogether in exchange for a package of political and economic incentives. (After all, the uranium that Russia and France would reprocess for Iran under the proposed deal was enriched in violation of U.N. Security Council resolutions.)
There's nothing unusual about a diplomatic solution containing elements that both sides can claim as a victory, but the competing agendas of Iran and its Western interlocutors may explain the disagreements currently clouding the talks. The West, eager to buy time for negotiations without Iran moving steadily closer to the capacity to make a weapon, wants the Iranian uranium that will be turned into reactor fuel under the deal to be delivered in a single shipment, and by the end of this year. But as much as Iran sees the agreement as an opportunity to build Western confidence in its intentions, and also acquire much-needed reactor fuel, it remains suspicious of foreign powers. Tehran sought this week to exclude France from participating in the deal on the grounds that it could not be trusted by Iran - and, indeed, President Nicolas Sarkozy has taken the hardest line among Western leaders on forcing a halt to Iran's uranium enrichment. But even Russia has been frequently accused by Tehran of dragging its feet over the construction of Iran's nuclear reactor at Bushehr. (See a graphic of the nuclear armed world.)
Iran plainly doesn't share the sense of urgency of the U.S. and its allies, and rejects the idea that its uranium stockpile represents a security threat. Its relatively low-level delegation in Vienna was not authorized to conclude an agreement. And reports from the talks suggest that the country was hoping to stagger its shipments into smaller parcels, and over a longer time frame. Western diplomats, however, are mindful of the fact that Iran will keep on enriching uranium - and fear that if its keeps its centrifuges running while shipping out smaller portions, it can maintain close to enough for a single bomb in its own stockpile.
Not surprisingly Friday's verdict remains uncertain. IAEA chief Dr. Mohammed ElBaradei says his "fingers are crossed" that the deal will be green-lighted, while U.S. officials warn that the offer is a key test of Iran's intentions. An Iranian rejection would pour cold water on the cautious optimism from the White House over the prospects for engagement. But even if Tehran agrees to the deal, it doesn't address the Western objective of ending uranium enrichment in Iran. The negotiations in Vienna, and on Oct. 1 in Geneva, have essentially sidestepped the issue of Iran's compliance with Security Council resolutions requiring that it suspend enrichment in order to strengthen safeguards against its nuclear material being used for military purposes.
Until now, the U.S. and its allies have insisted that Iran can't be allowed to possess enrichment capability even for peaceful purposes, because that gives it a "breakout" capacity to relatively quickly build nuclear weapons should it choose that option. Iran continues to insist that it has no intention of abandoning enrichment. But if Tehran combines its refusal to end enrichment with a more accommodating position on measures to safeguard against weaponization, it could put the West in a diplomatic bind - forced to choose between making progress on the basis of diminished goals, or facing an uphill battle to muster sufficient pressure to force Iran into retreat.
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View this article on Time.comRelated articles on Time.com:At Vienna Nuclear-Fuel Talks, Iran Snubs France, Sarkozy How Obama's Secret Iran Talks Set the Stage for a Nuclear Deal Iran's Geneva Offer on Nukes: Progress for All The Pentagon's Message on Iran: Don't Panic Why Iran Won't Budge on Nukes

LOUISVILLE, Ky. – KFC has cooked up another free offer to promote its grilled chicken, only this time, it promises, without the unwanted side of rainchecks.
The freebie is set for Monday, when more than 5,000 KFCs will give every U.S. customer a free piece of grilled chicken.
This will be the third time in six months that the chain famous for fried chicken is offering a giveaway to promote its Kentucky Grilled Chicken that debuted nationally last spring.
KFC's latest freebie will be minus Oprah Winfrey's star power from a May giveaway and, KFC President Roger Eaton promises, without the snafus when a free grilled chicken coupon on Oprah's Web site overwhelmed the chain, with some stores running out of the meals.
"Obviously, we had to deal with some tough stuff," Eaton said.
Still, KFC sees that May promotion, problems and all, as a net success. "We were the talk of the town," Eaton said.
This time, things will be orderly and efficient, he promised. "We gear the shifts up so we make sure we've got the staffing, we make sure we've got the chicken," Eaton said.
Conrad Lyon, a restaurant equity analyst with Global Hunter Securities, said the giveaways reflect a hyper-competitive fast-food sector where price is the biggest draw.
"It comes down to getting those bodies in the door," he said.
The newest offer is identical to KFC's first grilled chicken giveaway — a one-day-only offer in April when KFC handed out more than 4 million pieces to launch the product. That chicken handout went smoothly, company officials said.
KFC executives are pinning hopes on grilled chicken to build stronger U.S. sales by winning over health-conscious consumers turned off by the chain's fried offerings.
KFC is a part of Louisville-based Yum Brands Inc.
This month, Yum Chairman and CEO David C. Novak told industry analysts that grilled chicken gave KFC a badly needed "shot in the arm." He said grilled chicken accounts for over 30 percent of KFC's domestic sales.
Still, KFC had a 2 percent drop in sales at stores open at least a year in the third quarter ending Sept. 5.
Larry Miller, a restaurant analyst with RBC Capital Markets, said the sales mix for grilled chicken was high for a new product but KFC's last-quarter performance was disappointing. He said grilled chicken "needs to drive the overall business, otherwise they're not going to be any better off."
"I think people still think it's fried chicken first and not grilled chicken," he said.

Diabetes mellitus is a syndrome of disordered metabolism, usually due to a combination of hereditary and environmental causes, resulting in abnormally high blood sugar levels (hyperglycemia). Blood glucose levels are controlled by a complex interaction of multiple chemicals and hormones in the body, including the hormone insulin made in the beta cells of the pancreas. Diabetes mellitus refers to the group of diseases that lead to high blood glucose levels due to defects in either insulin secretion or insulin action.

Various hereditary conditions may feature diabetes, for example myotonic dystrophy and Friedreich's ataxia. Wolfram's syndrome is an autosomal recessive neurodegenerative disorder that first becomes evident in childhood. It consists of diabetes insipidus, diabetes mellitus, optic atrophy, and deafness, hence the acronym DIDMOAD.

Diabetic Test Strips

WASHINGTON – The government zeroed in on corporate excess and recklessness Thursday with deep, unprecedented cuts in executive compensation at companies living on taxpayer money and a move to wield veto power over pay policy at thousands of banks to limit risk-taking.
The Treasury Department ordered seven big companies that haven't repaid their government bailout money to cut their top executives' average total compensation — salary and bonuses — in half, starting in November. Under the plan, cash salaries for the top 25 highest-paid executives will be limited in most cases to $500,000 and, in most cases, perks will be capped at $25,000.
The Federal Reserve came at the issue from another direction. It proposed to monitor pay packages at thousands of banks — even those that never received bailout money — to ensure they don't encourage reckless gambles.
Neither plan, though, is expected to kill Wall Street's culture of lavish pay. The Fed proposal doesn't set specific limits on executive compensation, so it's unclear how it would actually affect pay. And the Treasury plan covers only 175 people, with the pay limits lasting only until the companies repay what they received from the $700 billion bailout fund.
For the already struggling companies, it also introduces a new concern: brain drain. The executives targeted by "pay czar" Kenneth Feinberg are among the most talented and productive at their companies.
"These people are considered the brains of the machine," said Steven Hall, who runs an executive compensation firm bearing his name. "They are who can pull you through the tough times. This will give them reason to leave."
The Treasury plan is limited to the seven bailed-out companies — Bank of America Corp., American International Group Inc., Citigroup Inc., General Motors, GMAC, Chrysler and Chrysler Financial. The Fed's proposal is much broader in scope, covering nearly 6,000 banks and a wider range of employees — from executives to traders to loan officers.
Rather than set pay levels at specific banks, the Fed would review — and could veto — pay policies. The plan is subject to a 30-day public comment period.
David Yermack, a finance professor at the Stern School of Business at New York University, called Treasury's pay curbs a "symbolic" act.
"I think the government is trying to make examples of some banks and hoping others will follow," Yermack said. "I think that's naive. Wall Street bankers and traders are motivated by money, and they're going to work for whoever pays them the most."
He predicted the seven firms would find ways to bypass the curbs through implicit promises that aren't written in contracts.
"They could say to someone, 'I'll give you a really big bonus three or four years from now. Just be patient,'" Yermack said. "There's an understanding that if you play the game, you'll be taken care of. That's been going on as long as there have been businesses, and Feinberg isn't going to be able to stop that."
Feinberg restructured the pay packages for top executives to provide a base salary and a portion described as "stock salary." The employees must hold the stock for two years. They can then sell only one-third of the stock payment each year for three years.
Feinberg said his goal was to tie compensation more closely to the long-term performance of the company.
In one pay plan, the three highest earners at Citigroup will receive a base salary of $475,000. Each executive also will be paid between $5.6 million and $5.8 million in company stock to be redeemed beginning in 2011. The third category of long-term restricted stock will equal $3 million for each executive.
The Feinberg plan provides an escape clause that might let some executives avoid the restrictions: It says the rules allow for "exceptions where necessary to retain talent and protect taxpayer interests."
According to Feinberg, base salaries above $1 million were approved for the new CEO of AIG, and for two employees of Chrysler Financial.
Under a package approved by Feinberg over the summer, AIG CEO Robert Benmosche will get a pay package of about $10.5 million.

Feinberg became pay czar earlier this year as Congress was responding to outrage about huge bonuses being paid to AIG. Lawmakers amended the bailout law to require that executive compensation at companies getting exceptional assistance be curbed. Feinberg has been reviewing compensation packages since August.

President Barack Obama welcomed Treasury's decision and urged Congress to pass legislation to give shareholders a voice in executive pay packages.

"It does offend our values when executives of big financial firms that are struggling pay themselves huge bonuses even as they rely on extraordinary assistance to stay afloat," Obama said.

In an interview with CNBC, Feinberg was asked if he thought the restrictions would influence pay at other Wall Street firms outside his authority.

"I hope so, but that would be voluntary," he said. "It's not the government's business."

Some observers said the changes could have a broader influence on pay beyond the seven companies.

"It's going to put them in a position of having to be more aggressive in defending their arrangements now that you've got an alternative out there that's been blessed by the government," said Mark Borges, a principal with Compensia, a Northern California compensation consulting firm.

It's also possible the restrictions could help govern pay at the thousands of banks that would be affected by the Fed's plan, said Charles Elson, director of the University of Delaware's Weinberg Center for Corporate Governance.

"It's highly probable that the Fed could use this as a model in their own guidelines, and yes, I think that would have a significant impact on pay," he said.

Some analysts saw the potential for restrictions to backfire. Yermack said linking pay to long-term incentives like deferred stock can encourage more excessive risk-taking, not less.

"If you want people to take more risks, pay them more in stock," he said. "It holds out the possibility of very big gains in a way that fixed contracts do not."

Others said the restrictions reinforced what many financial observers see as a banking system divided between the haves and have-nots. They wondered whether pay caps could jeopardize taxpayer money by making it harder for bailed-out firms to retain and hire top talent.

"You have got the companies that are unencumbered and can offer anyone anything they want, and you've got the other companies that are stuck with what they have," said David Schmidt, a senior consultant on executive pay at James F. Reda & Associates. "It creates a bit of a dilemma in banks' efforts to repay taxpayers."

A Bank of America spokesman complained that the restrictions would hurt its competitiveness.

"Competitors not subject to the pay restrictions already are exploiting this situation by identifying our top performers and using pay concerns to recruit them away for fair market compensation," spokesman Scott Silvestri said.

GM said it will adopt the compensation changes outlined by Feinberg by shifting its pay packages toward non-cash compensation tied to company performance.

CEO Fritz Henderson's base salary was cut 30 percent to about $1.3 million earlier this year when GM accepted government loans. Henderson received compensation valued at about $8.7 million in 2008, but much of that included stock and options that now are nearly worthless due to GM's bankruptcy filing.

Chrysler Group LLC CEO Sergio Marchionne and other Fiat executives who work for both Chrysler and Fiat were exempted from the pay cuts as part of the agreement with the U.S. government to take over management control of Chrysler.

Executives who work solely for Chrysler could be affected, but many of the top earners under Chrysler's former owner have left the company.

Under the Fed proposal, the 28 biggest banks would develop their own plans to make sure compensation doesn't spur undue risk-taking. If the Fed approves, the plan would be adopted and bank supervisors would monitor compliance.

At smaller banks — where compensation is typically less — Fed supervisors will conduct reviews. Those banks don't have to submit plans.

The Fed refused to identify the 28 banks that will have to submit plans. But Citigroup, Bank of America and Wells Fargo & Co. are usually included on such lists. Nearly 6,000 banks regulated by the Fed would be covered.

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Jacobs reported from New York. Associated Press Writers Daniel Wagner, Jeannine Aversa, Ken Thomas, Jim Kuhnhenn and Marcy Gordon in Washington, Ieva M. Augstums in Charlotte, N.C., and Tom Krisher in Detroit contributed to this report.

NEW YORK – The TLC network says it's suing Jon Gosselin (GAHS'-lihn) for breaching his contract as star of the reality show "Jon & Kate Plus 8."
The lawsuit, filed Friday in Maryland, alleges that Gosselin hasn't met the obligations of his contract as an exclusive employee, has appeared on other programs for pay and made unauthorized disclosures about the show.
Gosselin has starred for two years in "Jon & Kate Plus 8," which has been consumed in recent months by marital turmoil as Gosselin and his wife, Kate, feuded, then filed for divorce. The couple are the parents of young twins and sextuplets.
Recently, TLC announced the show would be renamed "Kate Plus Eight," with a reduced presence by Jon Gosselin. A TLC spokeswoman, Laurie Goldberg, has said the show's longtime future remains in question.
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TLC is owned by Discovery Communications, LLC.

More recent "old school" or "demostyle" MOD music, although sample-based, continues the style of the chiptunes used in these intros; new compositions in this style can still be regularly found at www.chiptune.com or www.chip-on.com (new chiptunes from old computers/formats can be found here as well).

The chip scene is far from dead with "compos" being held, groups releasing music disks and with the cracktro/demo scene. New tracker tools are making chip sounds available to less techy musicians. For example, Little Sound DJ for the Nintendo Game Boy has an interface designed for use in a live environment and features MIDI synchronization. The NES platform has the MidiNES, a cartridge that turns the system into a full blown hardware MIDI controlled Synthesizer. Recently, for the Commodore 64, the Mssiah has been released, which is very similar to the MidiNES, but with greater parameter controls, sequencing, analog drum emulation, and limited sample playback. On the DOS platform, Fast Tracker is one of the most famous chiptune makers because of the ability to create hand-drawn samples with the mouse.

Sound Chip

Oil prices hovered above $77 a barrel Friday, pausing after a weeklong rally amid an unexpected drop in U.S. gasoline inventories.
By midafternoon in Europe, benchmark crude for November delivery was down 37 cents at $77.21 in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Earlier in the session, it rose as high as $78.17. On Thursday, the contract rose $2.40 to settle at $77.58.
The Energy Information Administration said Thursday that U.S. gasoline supplies fell 5.2 million barrels, while analysts were expecting a jump of 1.6 million barrels, according to a survey by Platts, the energy information arm of McGraw-Hill Cos.
Crude supplies rose 400,000 barrels, the EIA said, while analysts had anticipated an 2.2 million barrel gain.
Until this week, oil had bounced between $65 and $75 since May.
"The transition to a $70 to $80 range is now in full cry," Barclays Capital said in a report. "We expect further transitions upward to occur in line with improvements in the underlying market data."
A falling U.S. dollar has also helped boost oil this week.
Still, other analysts noted that global demand continued to be frail and warned it would be premature to expect prices to keep rising or even to remain near current levels.
"The recent price rise has been very impressive and markets could well test $80, but in our opinion a correction next week is the likely scenario to back below $75 and even to the low $70s given oil fundamentals remain poor, global inventories are still high and demand recovery is far from convincing," said London's Sucden Research.
Petromatrix analyst Olivier Jakob concurred, saying he had "no confidence at all in the current oil rally" because of the weak fundamentals.
In other Nymex trading, heating oil fell 1.78 cents to $2 a gallon, while gasoline for November delivery slipped 1.90 cents to $1.9259 a gallon. Natural gas for November delivery lost 2.9 cents to $4.453 per 1,000 cubic feet.
In London, Brent crude for December delivery fell 26 cents to $75.98 on the ICE Futures. exchange.
___
Associated Press writer Alex Kennedy in Singapore contributed to this report.

BIGresearch conducted a survey for the National Retail Federation in the United States and found that 53.3% of consumers planned to buy a costume for Halloween 2005, spending $38.11 on average (up 10 dollars from the year before). They were also expected to spend $4.96 billion in 2006, up significantly from just $3.3 billion the previous year.

Scotland, having a shared Gaelic culture and language with Ireland, has celebrated the festival of Samhain (Pronounced Sow-win) robustly for many centuries. The autumn festival is pre-Christian Celtic in origin, and is known in Scottish Gaelic as Oidhche Shamhna the “End of Summer”. During the fire festival, souls of the dead wander the earth and are free to return to the mortal world until dawn. Traditionally bonfires and lanterns (samhnag) in Scottish Gaelic, would be lit to ward off the phantoms and evil spirits that emerge at midnight. The term Samhainn or Samhuinn is used for the harvest feast, and an t-Samhain is used for the entire month of November.

Halloween Costume

WASHINGTON – Former Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge claims in a new book that he was pressured by other members of President George W. Bush's Cabinet to raise the nation's terror alert level just before the 2004 presidential election.
Ridge says he objected to raising the security level despite the urgings of former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and then-Attorney General John Ashcroft, according to a publicity release from Ridge's publisher. In the end the alert level was not changed. Ridge said the episode convinced him to follow through with his plans to leave the administration; he resigned on Nov. 30, 2004.
Bush's former homeland security adviser, Frances Townsend, said Thursday that politics never played a role in determining alert levels.
Two tapes were released by al-Qaida in the weeks leading up to the election — one by terrorist leader Osama bin Laden and the other by a man calling himself "Azzam the American." Terrorism experts suspected that "Azzam the American" was Adam Gadahn, a 26-year-old Californian whom the FBI had been urgently seeking.
Townsend said the videotapes contained "very graphic" and "threatening" messages.
Townsend said that anytime there was a discussion of changing the alert level, she first spoke with Ridge and then, if necessary, called a meeting of the homeland security council comprising the secretaries of defense and homeland security, the attorney general and CIA and FBI directors. The group then made a recommendation to the president about whether the color-coded threat level should be raised.
"Never were politics ever discussed in this context in my presence," she said.
Asked if there was any reason for Ridge to have felt pressured, Townsend said: "He was certainly not pressured. And, by the way, he didn't object when it was raised and he certainly didn't object when it wasn't raised."
Ridge's publicist, Joe Rinaldi, said Ridge was out of town and was not doing interviews until his book, "The Test of Our Times: America Under Siege ... and How We Can Be Safe Again," is released on Sept. 1.
In 2004, Ridge explained why he didn't feel the alert should be raised. "We don't have to go to (code level) orange to take action in response either to these tapes or just general action to improve security around the country," he said then.
In 2005, months after he resigned, Ridge said his agency has been the most reluctant to raise the alert level. "There were times when some people were really aggressive about raising it, and we said, 'For that?'" he said during a panel discussion in May 2005. But his book appears to be the first time he publicly attributes some of the pressure to politics.
The Homeland Security Department, which Ridge was the first person to lead, faced criticism in 2004 from Democrats who alleged that raising the alert level was designed to boost support for the Bush administration during an election year.
Ridge, a former Republican congressman and governor of Pennsylvania, was widely named as a potential running mate to John McCain in 2008 before the GOP candidate chose Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin.

Lighting is the deliberate application of light to achieve some aesthetic or practical effect. Lighting includes use of both artificial light sources such as lamps and natural illumination of interiors from daylight. Daylighting (through windows, skylights, etc.) is often used as the main source of light during daytime in buildings given its low cost. Artificial lighting represents a major component of energy consumption, accounting for a significant part of all energy consumed worldwide.

Artificial lighting is most commonly provided today by electric lights, but gas lighting, candles, or oil lamps were used in the past, and still are used in certain situations. Proper lighting can enhance task performance or aesthetics, while there can be energy wastage and adverse health effects of lighting. Indoor lighting is a form of fixture or furnishing, and a key part of interior design. Lighting can also be an intrinsic component of landscaping.

Commercial LED Lighting

McLEAN, Va. – Jayson Blair knows his new profession — life coach — smacks some people in the face like a bad punchline.
"People say, 'Wait a minute. You're a life coach?' That makes no sense,'" says Blair, the ex-journalist best known for foisting plagiarism and fabrications into the pages of The New York Times. "Then they think about my life experiences and what I've been through and they say 'Wait a minute. It does make sense.'"
Blair, 33, resigned from the Times in 2003, leaving a journalistic scandal in his wake. The resulting furor led the paper's top two newsroom executives to resign. Blair wrote a book, then mostly disappeared from view.
For the past two years, he has been quietly working as a certified life coach for one of the most respected mental health practices in northern Virginia.
"He can relate to patients just beautifully," said Michael Oberschneider, the psychologist who hired Blair and urged him to become a life coach. "Sometimes you just meet people in life who have these electric personalities. Well, Jayson is now using his talents for good."
Oberschneider, director of Ashburn Psychological Services, took an interest in Blair after seeing him lead a support group for people with bipolar disorder that Blair founded in his hometown of Centreville after being diagnosed himself.
Oberschneider said he took a long, hard look at Blair before hiring him, in large part because of his past, which included substance abuse. But he was impressed at the rapport Blair had established with members of the support group.
"Very few people can go through what he did and come back," Oberschneider said. "He really is a success story."
Blair says his empathy for his clients is his biggest asset.
"They know I've been in their shoes," he said. "I think it can feel a little more authentic."
Blair said clients rarely know his history at first, but it inevitably comes up within a session or two as Blair relates his own experiences. Never has a client refused to work with him because of his past.
"I am open about all the details of my problems and that allows people to know who they are listening to," Blair said.
The job itself can be varied. Blair might have 25 or so clients at any given time. Some might be seeking career counseling, including corporate executives from the Dulles technology corridor seeking advancement — a natural for Blair, who schmoozed his way through newsroom politics to land a premier reporting gig in his mid-20s without a college degree.
Others might have substance abuse problems, and some might simply have motivational issues.
Blair said he has thought about going to school for a psychology degree, but isn't sure if it would be the best fit for him.
"I don't really think too much about the long term," he said. "I like the idea that I can help people avoid some of the mistakes I made."
___
On the Web: http://www.jayson-blair.com

They may not be the best-smelling homes, but Asian elephant dung piles provide certain frog species with shelter, one researcher has found.

Ahimsa Campos-Arceiz, of the University of Tokyo, found the dung-dwelling frogs in Sri Lanka's Bundala National Park, while searching for signs that Asian elephants acted as ecosystem engineers in their environments.

Ecosystem engineers are "organisms capable of controlling the availability of resources for other organisms by modifying the physical environment," Campos-Arceiz said. The beaver is probably the most well-known example of an ecosystem engineer, Campos-Arceiz said. "The construction of their dams modifies the landscape, creating a new type of ecosystem."

Big animals, such as elephants, are particularly good at ecosystem engineering, because they can have such a proportionately large impact on their environment, Campos-Arceiz said.

Previous studies have shown that African savanna elephants (Loxodonta Africana) impacted their ecosystem by creating refuges for tree-dwelling lizards - when the elephants broke off twigs and branches while feeding, they left behind crevices in the trees. The research showed that lizard communities were more diverse in places where elephants also lived.

Campos-Arceiz wondered if Asian elephants (Elephas maximus) might have a similar impact on their ecosystems.

During August 2008, Campos-Arceiz was in Bundala National Park inspecting Asian elephant dung piles looking for seeds (the feces can act as a nutrient source for plants and fungi, which will germinate and grow there). Instead, he found an amphibious surprise: six frogs representing three different species (Microhyla ornata, Microhyla rubra and Spaerotheca sp.) in five dung piles.

"I was looking for seeds in the dung. And was ready for some insects and other invertebrates. But I never thought about a vertebrate like a frog staying inside of the dung," Campos-Arceiz told LiveScience.

Accompanying the frogs in the dung piles were beetles, termites, ants, spiders, scorpions, centipedes and crickets, "suggesting that a dung pile can become a small ecosystem of its own," Campos-Arceiz wrote in the study, entitled "Shit Happens (to be Useful)! Use of Elephant Dung as Habitat by Amphibians," detailed in the journal Biotropica.

"I don't really remember how it came up, but it happened as soon as I decided to write a paper. I created a folder in my computer called 'Shit Happens!' and this project name made the work funnier for me," Campos-Arceiz said.

The frogs Campos-Arceiz found live among the leaf litter on the ground. But that litter can be scarce in the dry season (when Campos-Arceiz was visiting), so he suspects the dung may provide an alternative habitat for the frogs.

Campos-Arceiz suspects that Asian elephants may act as ecosystem engineers in their environment in other ways as well.

Video - Bees Scare Elephants
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Original Story: Frogs Find Home in Elephant Dung LiveScience.com chronicles the daily advances and innovations made in science and technology. We take on the misconceptions that often pop up around scientific discoveries and deliver short, provocative explanations with a certain wit and style. Check out our science videos, Trivia & Quizzes and Top 10s. Join our community to debate hot-button issues like stem cells, climate change and evolution. You can also sign up for free newsletters, register for RSS feeds and get cool gadgets at the LiveScience Store.

MOSCOW (AFP) –
A cargo ship whose mysterious disappearance sparked a massive naval hunt has been found and its crew transferred to a Russian military vessel, Defence Minister Anatoly Serdyukov said on Monday.

The Arctic Sea was located around 2100 GMT Sunday about 300 miles (483 kilometres) from the Cape Verde archipelago in the Atlantic, Serdyukov said, after intensive search efforts by Russian and NATO ships in the past 10 days.

"The crew has been transferred aboard our anti-submarine ship," Serdyukov told President Dmitry Medvedev in a meeting that was broadcast on Russian state television.

He said all members of the Russian crew were "alive, healthy and are not under armed guard."

Serdyukov made no mention however of the current whereabouts of the ship itself and his announcement did little to clear up the mystery over what happened in recent weeks to the Maltese-flagged, Russian cargo ship which was feared to have been hijacked.

"Debriefing is under way to clarify all aspects of the disappearance and loss of signal from this vessel," Serdyukov said.

"In the coming hours we will explain what happened with it, why communications with it were lost, why it changed its itinerary."

Medvedev called for a full investigation of the Arctic Sea mystery and vowed that "all interested parties" would be informed on the results.

The crew of the Arctic Sea was taken aboard the Russian submarine hunter Ladny, Serdyukov said. He offered no immediate further details on the operation that resulted in the crew being taken aboard the Russian warship.

The 3,988-tonne Russian-owned cargo vessel set sail from Finland on July 23 on its way to Algeria with a crew of 15 and a cargo of sawn timber estimated to be worth 1.16 million euros.

All contact with the ship however was lost shortly thereafter amid reports of multiple pirate hijackings, a zig-zagging itinerary and speculation that the vessel was carrying a secret, illicit cargo.

Finnish authorities on Sunday dismissed talk that the Arctic Sea was bearing a cargo of nuclear material.

Jukka Laaksonen, head of the Finnish Radiation and Nuclear Safety Authority, said firefighters conducted radiation tests on the ship at a port in Finland before it began its voyage.

Reports surfaced last week that the ship had been sighted off Cape Verde and that a Portuguese aircraft had overflown the vessel.

But Portuguese did not confirm the sighting and the Russian ambassador to Cape Verde said he had not been officially informed of the ship's whereabouts.

Authorities in Malta refused to comment on Monday after the announcement from Moscow.

Maltese officials said Sunday that a criminal investigation was under way into the alleged extortion and hijacking of the Russian cargo ship.

The probe was opened due to "the general characteristics of the aggravated extortion and the related significant threats to life and health" in connection with the ship, but did not elaborate, said a Maltese maritime spokesman.

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) –
Cable television's Sundance Channel on Monday unveiled a video-on-demand service offering documentaries and international films endorsed by Sundance festival founder Robert Redford and often available the same day the movies hit theaters.

Sundance Selects will make its debut on August 26 with Spike Lee's new documentary, "Passing Strange: The Movie." The service will be available on cable TV systems owned by three major operators -- Comcast Corp, Cox Communications and Cablevision Systems Corp -- reaching as many as 50 million U.S. households.

For Sundance Channel, which plays films and shows aimed at art-house and independent film fans and is owned by Cablevision unit Rainbow Media Holdings, a video-on-demand service provides new revenues in a growing business arena.

And indie movie fans who live in smaller cities or towns that may not have art houses can now access documentaries and foreign language films they only hear about from media coverage of festivals like Sundance.

"At Sundance, increasing the size of the market for independent film has always been our mission, in addition to just giving exposure to new voices, so this allows us to electronically take that vision to a broader group," Redford told Reuters.

The actor, filmmaker and creative director of the Sundance Channel said he would be instrumental in helping program the films that will be available on Sundance Selects.

"Passing Strange: The Movie," which premiered at the 2009 Sundance festival, captures on film the Broadway musical of the same name that tells of a young black man finding his way in life.

The service will launch with five other titles: animated film "Mary and Max" from Australian director Adam Elliot; "Unmade Beds" from Alexis Dos Santos; and documentaries "Complete History of My Sexual Failures," "Kassim the Dream" and "Nick Nolte: No Exit."

The number of titles will increase as the service reaches more homes, and the focus on nonfiction and foreign-language films is designed to tap an underserved market, Rainbow Chief Executive Joshua Sapan said.

"We think feature documentaries and world cinema are important parts of the landscape and ones that are underattended and undervalued," Sapan said.

He declined to give revenue forecasts, but the demand and use of VOD is rising with the deployment of new high-speed cable systems and sophisticated set-top boxes.

VOD transactions increased 20 percent from 2007 to 2008, and while the rate of growth slipped in the first six months of 2009, the increase was still 12 percent over the year-earlier period, according to industry tracker Rentrak Corp.

"I do see a time in the not too distant future when VOD sales for films like these dramatically surpasses theatrical revenue," Sapan said, "and some of these movies will be released with VOD only."

(Editing by Lisa Von Ahn)

MOSCOW – Russian news agencies quote the defense minister as saying a freighter that went missing nearly three weeks ago has been found near Cape Verde, and its crew is alive.
The reports say Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov told Russian President Dmitry Medvedev on Monday that the Arctic Sea was about 300 miles (480 kilometers) from the island nation off West Africa.
Serdyukov reportedly says the ship's 15-man Russian crew was taken aboard a Russian naval vessel.
The reports do not give details on what might have happened to the ship, which was last heard from on July 28. The ship's crew earlier had reported the freighter was raided by masked men, but that the attackers departed before the ship left the Baltic Sea en route to Algeria.

GENEVA – Liechtenstein's reigning prince has angered German Jews by invoking the Holocaust to defend his country's banking secrecy laws, drawing sharp reactions Monday.
The latest flare-up of fractious relations between the tiny Alpine principality and its much larger neighbor to the north stemmed from comments in a weekend interview Prince Hans-Adam II gave for Liechtenstein's national holiday.
The prince took aim particularly at Germany, which has been pressuring Liechtenstein to clamp down on confidential banking practices that it claims allow wealthy Germans to evade taxes.
"We and Switzerland saved many people, especially Jews, with banking secrecy," Hans-Adam II told the Liechtensteiner Volksblatt. "Germany should clean up its own act, and think about its past."
The prince noted how some Jews were able to buy their safety during the Holocaust by using money they had safely deposited in Switzerland or Liechtenstein. Secrecy rules also helped people persecuted by communist governments and "continues to save life ... in Third-World countries run by bloodthirsty dictators," he said.
"Beyond that, Germany and many other countries have an unbelievable mess with their state finances," Hans-Adam II said, referring to a traditional argument here that poor governance and high taxes lead to tax evasion, not banking secrecy. "These must first be put in order. They have been unsuccessful until now in doing this. The financial crash basically goes back to this alarming disability."
The comments were met with harsh criticism from Germany's Jewish community, which also slammed Hans-Adam II last year for describing modern-day Germany as a "fourth" Reich.
"The comments are a mockery of the Holocaust and its survivors," Stephan Kramer, general secretary of the German Central Council of Jews, told Bild newspaper. "It is historically incorrect for him to portray Liechtenstein as a merciful helper of the Jews. His highness would be better off retiring."
The Central Council did not answer a request for comment, while the Liechtenstein royal family's press office declined to respond to the criticism.
The prince, 64, has waged numerous legal battles in Germany to recover artwork he claims was looted from his family by the Nazis during the Second World War. More recently, Liechtenstein has been embroiled in a spat with Berlin over rich German citizens that have evaded taxes through the principality's banks.
Last year, German authorities paid a former employee of Liechtenstein's LGT bank to obtain the names of about 1,400 alleged tax cheats. The seizure provoked an angry response from the bank, which is wholly owned by the prince and his family, but also pushed the country toward reforming its financial sector.
Hans-Adam rejected the idea that his country was prospering because of tax evasion.
"What is demanded is high quality performance, and now we are offering that," he said in the interview. "There are clients who deposit money here completely legally, because they value our good service."
Still, he warned that Liechtenstein faced contraction over the next two or three years as "the market crash is hitting far more negatively than the whole tax debate."
___
Associated Press writer David Rising in Berlin contributed to this report.

Puzzles are often contrived as a form of entertainment, but they can also stem from serious mathematical or logistical problems — in such cases, their successful resolution can be a significant contribution to mathematical research.

The first jigsaw puzzle was made around 1760, when John Spilsbury, a British engraver and mapmaker, mounted a map on a sheet of wood that he then sawed around each individual country. Spilsbury used the product to aid in teaching geography. After catching on with the wider public, this remained the primary use of jigsaw puzzles until about 1820.

Photo Puzzles

MARTHA'S VINEYARD, MASSACHUSETTS (Reuters) –
Kenneth Feinberg, the Obama administration's pay czar, said on Sunday he has broad and "binding" authority over executive compensation, including the ability to "claw back" money already paid, and he is weighing how and whether to use that power.

Feinberg told Reuters that Citigroup Inc included the contract of energy trader Andrew Hall in submissions due Friday by seven major companies still locked in the federal government's TARP Program.

Feinberg said he hasn't looked at Hall's contract, which reports have said could pay him as much as $100 million this year.

"Whether I have jurisdiction to decide his compensation or not, we will take a look and decide over the next few weeks," Feinberg said after speaking at a public forum in Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts, part of a newsmaker series hosted by the Martha's Vineyard Times newspaper.

Feinberg has been consulting with seven companies that have yet to pay back money they borrowed from the government, including Citi, American International Group Inc, Bank of America Corp, Chrysler Financial, Chrysler Group LLC, General Motors Co and GMAC Inc.

Those companies faced a deadline of Friday of submitted proposals to Feinberg for their top 25 employees.

Feinberg said on Sunday that decisions he makes will be "binding," but the law limits his power over contracts signed before February 11, 2009.

He also said he has the authority to use a "clawback" provision to go after compensation for executives from any company that received money from the U.S. Treasury's Troubled Asset Relief Progr.am (TARP).

"I have the discretion, conferred upon by Congress, to attempt to recover compensation that has already been paid to executives not only in these companies, but in any company that received federal assistance," Feinberg said during his remarks.

Asked by Reuters if he could use that ability to target a firm like Goldman Sachs Group Inc, which paid back $10 billion in bailout money, Feinberg said: "Anything is possible under the law."

"I can claw back, but we haven't focused on that at all," he said.

"TOUGH DISAGREEMENTS"

Feinberg said he has been advising the seven firms under his jurisdiction on a daily basis, characterizing the meetings as "very amicable."

"There have been some tough disagreements, but everyone is trying to get to an end place in compensation that makes sense in a post-TARP world," Feinberg said.

Citigroup, in particular, has concerns about pay restrictions causing its top employees to leave, Feinberg said.

"Citibank says if you don't pay us x or y, the going rate for our senior officials, they will leave," Feinberg said. "They will go to Goldman Sachs. They will go to JPMorgan Chase & Co. Worse, they'll go to UBS or the Royal Bank of Scotland, or foreign banks."

Feinberg said the law requires him to take market forces into account, but also to consider performance and past deals between a company and an employee.

"The statute provides these guideposts, but the statute ultimately says I have discretion to decide what it is that these people should make and that my determination will be final," Feinberg said.

"The officials can't run to the Secretary of Treasury. The officials can't run to the court house or a local court. My decision is final on those individuals," Feinberg added.

Feinberg told Reuters he hasn't spoken with President Obama about his role as the administration's watchdog on pay, although he has been in touch with Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner.

Feinberg, who also served as the special master over the Federal September 11th Victim Compensation Fund and the Virginia Tech shooting fund, said compensation was an "emotional issue, but it doesn't rise to the level of those cases."

(Reporting by Steve Eder in Martha's Vineyard. Additional reporting by Anupreeta Das in New York. Editing by Ian Geoghegan and Valerie Lee)

The Nation -- When Barack Obama assumed the presidency, there was talk that former Democratic National Committee chair Howard Dean might be his Secretary of Health and Human Services.

That would have made Dean the administration's point-person in the fight for health-care reform.

It also would have increased the likelihood that reform would be real.

But Dean was rejected.

And, now, the prospect of real reform is fading fast.

Dean said last week at the "Netroots Nation" gathering in Pittsburgh that the only thing that made health-reform legislation proposed by House committees (and apparently backed by the administration) worth doing was the public option. In that legislation, the physician and former Vermont governor argued, "the last shred of reform is the public option."

Just days later, however, the administration appeared to be shredding that last shred of reform.

The Associated Press reports that, "President Barack Obama's administration signaled Sunday it is ready to abandon the idea of giving Americans the option of government-run insurance as part of a new health care system."

The woman who got the HHS job reform advocates had hoped would go to Dean certainly seemed Sunday to be jettisoning the idea of creating a government-organized alternative to private health insurance Sunday.

Appearing on CNN's "State of the Union" program, HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius dismissed the public option as "not the essential element" of the administration's health care agenda.

White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said pretty much the same thing when he appeared Sunday on the CBS News program "Face the Nation."

"What the president has said is in order to inject choice and competition. . . people ought to be able to have some competition in that market," said Gibbs.

Pressed on whether the administration was abandoning the public option, Gibbs would only say that, "The president has thus far sided with the notion that that can best be done with a public option."

Startlingly, the clearest signal that the administration is preparing to jettison the public option came from Obama himself. Speaking at a town hall event in Colorado referred to the public plan as merely a "sliver" of his reform agenda and said: "The public option, whether we have it or we don't have it, is not the entirety of healthcare reform."

On this, Obama is right.

The public option has already been so dumbed-down and neutered that it is little more than a sliver.

The problem is that it may be the only sliver of real reform in his program.

Even with a robust public option, the president's initiative looks a lot like a bailout for the insurance industry --in stark contrast to the a single-payer reform that would replace industry profiteering with a not-for-profit system like Medicare.

Without a public option, there is no real reform.

Dean argued in Pittsburgh that: "The public option is (incremental reform)... But there is no incrementalism without the public option."

In fact, without the public option, the Obama approach -- and that of compromise-prone Democrats in Congress -- looks increasingly like a step in the wrong direction.

That's because the "reforms" currently under consideration threaten to undermine Medicare and Medicaid -- with radical cost-cutting schemes -- while steering hundreds of billions in federal dollars into the accounts of for-profit insurers and the pharmaceutical industry.

This is not "change we can believe in."

This is change that serious reformers will find "very difficult" to support, as Congresswoman Eddie Bernice Johnson, D-Texas, said Sunday on CNN.

Johnson explained that progressives would have a tough time backing legislation that did not include a public option.

"The only way we can be sure that very low-income people and persons who work for companies that don't offer insurance have access to it, is through an option that would give the private insurance companies a little competition," explained Johnson, a former chair of the Congressional Black Caucus who once worked as the chief psychiatric nurse at the Veterans Administration Hospital in Dallas.

Johnson's right.

Without a robust public option, what the Obama administration and compromised Democrats in the House and Senate are talking about is not "health care reform."

It's "health care deform" that does not begin to address the crisis created by insurance-industry profiteering -- and that could well make the "cure" worse than the disease.

Like this article? Try 4 issues of The Nation at home (and online) FREE.

Folding bicycles typically cost more than non-folding bicycles of comparable quality, because they have more parts to allow folding. This results in a more complicated design, which is more complex to manufacture. There is also a smaller market for this type of bike. As an alternative to folding, some models achieve similar results by separating into two or more parts. These are sometimes grouped in the same category as folding bicycles but are also referred to as break-away, disassemblable, or separable bicycles.

Folding bicycles often separate or fold in the middle of the frame, which, depending on the design, can weaken the frame and cause more energy-absorbing flexing. Many have elongated seatposts and stems. These longer components, which project above the frame like masts, experience greater bending stresses where they meet the frame, compared to the shorter components of regular bikes. There have been sporadic reports of failure in these components in online message forums[citation needed], and at least one recall due the failure of the steering mechanism.[citation needed] Folding bicycles necessarily have more parts, to allow folding and to lock the frame when unfolded. This results in a more complicated design, with more parts that can potentially fail.

Folding Tandem Bike

Aug. 17 (Bloomberg) -- A columnist for the online news
magazine Slate once proposed the month of August be banned as
“it has a dismal history” and “nothing good ever happens.” A
week ago, President Barack Obama might have co-sponsored the
suggestion.

The first week of the month, congressional Democrats, on
their summer recess or district work period as some call it,
were on the defensive; the “Astroturf” anti-health-care-
overhaul demonstrators took over constituent sessions, forcing
Democratic members to cancel town-hall meetings. Republican
derision of the Obama stimulus plan dominated the political
debate.

By last week, the dynamic had shifted some. Democrats and
health-care proponents didn’t have the edge as angry
demonstrations against health care continued, but a
counteroffensive was gaining ground. On the economy, and to an
extent on health care, the president and Democrats were giving
as well as getting.

Congressman Joe Donnelly, a second-term Democrat who
represents an industrial slice of Indiana, says the passion in
his district is palpable. Last weekend, 300 constituents turned
up in the delicatessen section of a supermarket to discuss
health care. On Aug. 12, he expected 70 people in Kokomo; 500
showed up and the event had to be moved to the street.

‘More of a Balance’

Though the gatherings were intense, Donnelley says these
Hoosiers largely were “respectful” and there was “more of a
balance” on health care the past week: senior citizens worried
about Medicare cuts, parents worried about coverage for children
with pre-existing conditions and citizens who after many
travails -- unemployment ranges close to 20 percent in some of
his counties -- are “overwhelmed” at the notion of tackling
health care, too.

There are two likely causes for the more balanced
perspective, which was also observed by other lawmakers. One,
the administration caught a big break on the economy. The July
unemployment number was better than anticipated. The last two
Federal Reserve chairmen -- Ben Bernanke and Alan Greenspan --
along with Nouriel Roubini, the prescient prophet of gloom the
past several years, and Goldman Sachs Group Inc. all saw an
economy on the mend.

Stimulus Package

And the oft-ridiculed fiscal stimulus package is starting
to look like a winner. Mayors and local officials around the
U.S. now say the federal funds are demonstrably creating or at
least saving jobs.

Some of the Republican governors who initially talked of
rejecting stimulus money are either out of office (Alaska’s
Sarah Palin), discredited (South Carolina’s Mark Sanford) or
spending it freely while claiming credit for its effects in
their states (Rick Perry of Texas and Louisiana’s Bobby Jindal.)

With only 15 percent of the cash spent, the stimulus has
already saved more than 500,000 jobs, according to separate
estimates by Moody’s Economy.com and HIS Global Insight. “There
are clear signs the stimulus is working,” says Kenneth
Goldstein, an economist at the non-partisan Conference Board in
New York.

The fate of health care is inextricably linked to the
economy. It is a test of the administration’s competence: if
they can’t get a stimulus right, how do you expect them to
overhaul 17 percent of the nation’s economy? It also forms the
perception of the financial climate for any other measures.

Critics’ Overreach

The other factor that has neutralized the bleak situation
that faced Democrats is the overreach of critics. Some of the
opposition may be ginned up by conservative groups, but Obama
Democrats -- who faced accusations they orchestrated the huge
crowds for their candidate during the campaign -- invite
ridicule when they suggest the protesters at the health-care
gatherings are all puppets.

The opposition, however, has gone over the top. At a town-
hall meeting with Democratic Congressman John Dingell in
Romulus, Michigan, a woman with disabilities was shouted down by
health-care opponents; some lawmakers have been threatened
physically and a swastika was painted on the office of a
Democratic congressman in Georgia.

Demagogic misrepresentations that the health-care proposals
mandate euthanasia or are a magnet to attract illegal immigrants
abound. It’s not just from fringe groups. Palin, the 2008
Republican vice-presidential candidate, railed that “my baby
with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama’s ‘death
panel’” if the Democrats’ initiative is enacted. That canard is
offensive to families who have loved ones with disabilities.

Stephen Hawking

Then, Investors Business Daily, in criticizing Obama care,
charged that if famed scientist Stephen Hawking lived in Great
Britain its National Health Service wouldn’t save his life,
which “because of his physical handicaps is essentially
worthless.” Hawking, who has a motor neuron disease that is
like Lou Gehrig’s disease, is a British subject and has received
lifelong care from that nation’s health system; at 67, he was
one of 16 recipients of the Medal of Freedom from Obama this
week.

The White House, working with Democratic supporters, plans
to stay on the offensive for the next week, with more town halls
and by directly taking on the critics. Obama plans weekly phone-
ins for Democratic senators and House members to discuss
strategy.

Enacting a health-care overhaul still is a very tough slog.
Opponents have an easy, if sometimes false, target; Democrats
haven’t coalesced behind a consensus proposal yet, which creates
awkward dialogues and allows peripheral issues to dominate.

Budget Deficit

And while the economy is improving, new budget deficit
numbers out later this month aren’t likely to be confidence-
inducing. “We couldn’t pass a bill that adds to the deficit,”
says Congressman Donnelly.

Although the Obama economic plan may be succeeding, there
remain painful dislocations and 15 million jobless Americans.

That makes the president’s decision to vacation in Martha’s
Vineyard, Massachusetts, later this month puzzling. Certainly,
the Obamas need and deserve a family vacation. With the worst
economic situation since the Great Depression and joblessness
close to 10 percent, paying more than $25,000 in weekly rent to
hobnob with the elite seems off key.

Isn’t there something nice, a lot cheaper, on Lake
Michigan?

However well-deserved, Obama will have returned from that
vacation when the battle is fully joined in September. And while
he has been slow to react, history is encouraging to health-care
overhaul supporters. He initially was slow off the mark in the
presidential primaries, the general election and some of the
early moments of his presidency. When he gets going, though,
usually he’s more than a match for the opposition.

(Albert R. Hunt is the executive editor for Washington at
Bloomberg News. The opinions expressed are his own.)

To contact the writer of this column:
Albert R. Hunt in Washington at
ahunt1@bloomberg.net .