by Stephen Collinson
DENVER, Colorado (AFP) – Barack Obama took aim at John McCain before record crowds after his rival acknowledged sharing the same Republican party philosophy as unpopular President George W. Bush.
Just nine days before the presidential election, Democratic candidate Obama on Sunday again attempted to shackle McCain to Bush's shattered economic legacy and tried to rebut attacks on his own tax policy.
More than 150,000 people flocked to two Obama rallies on the campaign trail in Colorado, with a record crowd of more than 100,000 in Denver listening as the Illinois senator tore into McCain for his support of Bush.
"Just this morning, Senator McCain said that actually he and President Bush 'share a common philosophy,'" Obama said.
"That's right, Colorado. I guess that was John McCain finally giving us a little straight talk, owning up to the fact that he and George Bush actually have a whole lot in common," Obama said.
Obama then listed what he saw as deficiencies of the McCain-Bush philosophy, which encapsulated his main campaign themes heading into the election on November 4 as America battles its deepest economic crisis since the 1930s.
He said "the Bush-McCain philosophy" gave tax breaks to the wealthy and corporations and justified spending 10 billion dollars a month in Iraq "while the Iraqi government sits on a huge surplus and our economy is in crisis."
"We can't have another four years that look like the last eight. It is time for change in Washington," Obama said.
Obama spoke on the second day of a swing through vital western battleground states Colorado, New Mexico and Nevada, after a short break from the campaign trail to visit his ailing grandmother in Hawaii who turned 86 on Sunday.
If he can win all the states that Democrat John Kerry captured in his unsuccessful 2004 presidential bid and peel the three western states away from the Republicans, Obama will be assured of the White House.
In an appearance Sunday on NBC's "Meet the Press,", McCain argued that he had long had major differences with Bush on issues like climate change and government spending.
"Do we share a common philosophy of the Republican Party? Of course," McCain said. "But I stood up against my party, not just President Bush but others as well and I have the scars to prove it."
McCain also brushed off opinion polls indicating he is set to lose against Obama, insisting that his bid for the White House is still afloat.
McCain, who has been trailing Obama by more than 10 points in some national and state polls, told NBC that his campaign was "doing fine."
"We've closed in the last week and if we continue this close in the next week you're going to be up very late on election night."
Later McCain addressed rallies in Iowa and Ohio on a swing through the midwestern state where Obama holds the edge according to recent polls.
As he is expected to do throughout the remainder of the campaign, McCain relentlessly rammed home his contention that Obama is a closet socialist hellbent on raising taxes on ordinary Americans.
The 72-year-old former Navy pilot, speaking on the 41st anniversary of being shot down over Hanoi during the Vietnam War, also struck a defiant stance, casting himself as the underdog in the final stretch of the election race.
At one rally in Ohio late Sunday, McCain arrived to the theme tune from the boxing underdog movie "Rocky" to the delight of his supporters.
"I'm not afraid of the fight -- I'm ready for it," he exhorted.
He also repeated his claim -- angrily denied by the Obama camp -- that the Democratic nominee had already begun drafting his inauguration speech.
"What America needs now is someone who'll finish the race before starting the victory lap, not for himself but for his country," he said.
Earlier Sunday, McCain had issued a robust defense of running mate Sarah Palin after reports of bitter infighting within the campaign.
Asked on "Meet the Press" if he wanted to defend Alaska Governor Palin, who has been blamed for his sagging poll numbers , McCain replied: "I don't defend her -- I praise her. She needs no defense."
"She's a role model for millions and millions of Americans," said McCain. "She's just what Washington needs."
In another blow to the Republican campaign, The Anchorage Daily News, the biggest newspaper in Palin's home state of Alaska, endorsed Obama, saying he "truly promises fundamental change in Washington."
National polls have Obama up anywhere from four to 14 percentage points and with a solid lead in most battleground states, but some surveys show McCain has made up some ground in Ohio, Florida and must-win Pennsylvania.
By John Whitesides, Political Correspondent
DENVER (Reuters) – Democrat Barack Obama sharpened his criticism of rival John McCain Sunday, warning a huge crowd of more than 100,000 supporters that a McCain White House would mean four more years of failed Republican policies and broken politics.
The Illinois senator, concluding a two-day swing through the Western battlegrounds of Nevada, New Mexico and Colorado, renewed his favorite theme -- that McCain represents another term for Republican President George W. Bush.
"We're not going to let George Bush pass the torch to John McCain," Obama told audience estimated by Denver police at more than 100,000 -- the biggest crowd in a campaign that has already set records for fundraising.
The thunderous gathering, which Obama aides said exceeded the 100,000 who saw Obama at a recent rally in St. Louis, jammed a downtown Denver park and filled the steps of the Colorado state capital building.
"Just this morning, Senator McCain said that he and President Bush 'share a common philosophy,'" Obama told the crowd. "I guess that was John McCain finally giving us a little straight talk."
Obama repeated the criticism at a later rally in Ft. Collins, where about 50,000 supporters filled a campus yard at Colorado State University.
He said "the Bush-McCain philosophy" benefited the rich and promised the wealth would trickle down to everyone else. He noted Bush had voted for McCain last week.
"Well, Colorado, George Bush isn't the only one who gets to vote early -- you can vote early too. And you can finally put an end to the Bush-McCain philosophy," Obama said.
A spokesman for McCain, an Arizona senator, said Obama had not bucked the Democratic Party on major issues.
"John McCain opposed President Bush's wasteful spending policy, his Big Oil energy policy and his efforts to grow the federal government by 40 percent -- Obama supported Bush on all three," campaign spokesman Tucker Bounds said.
MCCAIN ON DEFENSIVE
Obama leads McCain in national opinion polls nine days before the November 4 election, and is hoping to put Colorado's nine electoral votes in his column. Colorado is one of about a dozen states won by Bush in 2004 that McCain is struggling to defend.
Obama has focused on states like Colorado that allow early voting, urging supporters to cast their ballots before November 4 in the hopes of luring first-time and infrequent voters to the polls.
Polls show Obama with a solid lead in Colorado, where the Democrats held their national nominating convention and Obama gave his acceptance speech before 75,000 in Denver's open-air football stadium.
"Do you guys ever have a small crowd in Denver?" Obama asked as he took the stage before the sprawling sea of supporters.
Colorado has been trending toward Democrats in recent years amid an influx of new residents and growth in the Hispanic population. Bush carried the state by five percentage points in 2004.
Obama plans to launch a tour of Ohio and Pennsylvania on Monday that will feature what aides called his "closing argument" to voters, making his case for change from Bush's Republican policies.
He told supporters McCain was cranking up his negative attacks in the race's final days in a desperate effort to catch up. "John McCain has been throwing everything he's got at us, hoping something sticks," he said.
Obama picked up the endorsement of Britain's Financial Times newspaper, which said in an editorial it was "confident that Mr. Obama is the right choice."
Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that he can “guarantee” a win on Nov. 4 in a squeaker victory that won’t be clear until late that night.
McCain spoke amid signs of a tightening race, and reports of renewed determination among his staff, which is badly outgunned in both money and manpower.
“I guarantee you that two weeks from now, you will see this has been a very close race, and I believe that I'm going to win it,” McCain told interim "Meet" moderator Tom Brokaw. “We're going to do well in this campaign, my friend. We're going to win it, and it's going to be tight, and we're going to be up late.”
McCain was down just 5 points in the Reuters/C-SPAN/Zogby poll released Sunday, with Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) leading by 49 percent to 44 percent among likely voters in the daily tracking poll, which has a margin of error of 2.9 points.
Reuters reported that Obama's lead has dropped over the last three days after hitting a high of 12 points on Thursday. Pollster John Zogby said: "Things are trending back for McCain. His numbers are rising and Obama's are dropping on a daily basis. There seems to be a direct correlation between this and McCain talking about the economy."
The Washington Post reported Sunday: "[I]nside the McCain campaign the mood remains one of gritty resolve. Top aides know they are behind, but they hold out hope and, like their candidate, stubbornly refuse to give up."
McCain told Brokaw in Waterloo, Iowa, that he feels "like Knute Rockne ... go out there and get one for the Gipper."
“We are very competitive in battleground states," McCain said. "Obviously, I choose to trust my senses as well as polls. The enthusiasm at almost all of our [events] is at a higher level than I've ever seen, and I've been in a lot of presidential campaigns, usually as the warm-up act. ... And I see intensity out there, and I see passion. So we're very competitive.”
McCain added: “We're going to have to just get out our vote, work hard over the next nine days, and make sure that people know that there'll be a better future. People are very worried now — very, very worried, and have every reason to be. I think it's all about who can assure a better future.”
On the endorsement of Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) by former Secretary of State Colin Powell, McCain said: "I'm disappointed in Gen. Powell, but I'm very, very happy to know that [I'm endorsed by] five former secretaries of states who I admire enormously.”
McCain defended Republican National Committee clothing purchases on behalf of his running mate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin. Politico revealed during the past week that the RNC spent $150,000 on designer outfits at Neiman Marcus and Saks Fifth Avenue for the vice presidential nominee and members of her family.
"She lives a frugal life,” he said. “She and her family are not wealthy. She and her family were thrust into this and there was some — and some third of that money is given back. The rest will be donated to charity. ... She is a role model to millions and millions and millions of Americans."
McCain appeared in a gracious mood, saying to Brokaw at the end: "I appreciate your many years of informing the American people. You've come a long way from South Dakota, but you have never forgotten where you come from.”
By Victor Epand
One of the longest surviving toys ever created is the crayon. Every single year over 2 billion crayons are manufactured.
Apparently, almost every child will work his or her way through with about 780 of these crayons by the time they are ten, and every child aged two to eight spends about 28 minutes every single day coloring with the help of these tools.
I'm not sure how people who work out these statistics managed to arrive at these figures. Ordinary people aren't always aware of the fact, how exactly the statistics can be 'about' 28 minutes. Surely, if the wording is 'about' half an hour - wouldn't that make more sense? Or, perhaps, having such a specific figure makes it sound more believable and precise. In any case, it does mean that we get through a huge amount of crayons.
Let's imagine for a minute that we deprived every single child in the world of their crayons, and stole every single crayon that was produced for an entire year. That puts us in possession of two billion crayons by the end of the year. Now, let's imagine that we lay these crayons end to end. Of course, we'd have to be quite sneaky or the children, who would still be sobbing with their sorrow at having been deprived of these artistic instruments, would pick them up and walk away with them.
But, we're in an imaginary world, so go in your imagination with me. We'll lay every
crayon one after another in a long
line. How far, do you think, our line would reach? Across America? Half way round the world? In fact, our line would manage to wrap itself right around the planet Earth - not once, or even twice, but a complete four and a half times!
Putting it another way, every decade enough crayons are produced to reach right from here to the moon, and if you consider the time since they first started manufacturing crayons, there would be enough crayons to complete a round trip to the moon and back five times!
So, what is our fascination with these crayons? They crack, snap, crumble and leave horrible marks on expensive furniture. Yet, somehow, holding a stick of color in your hand, you become the owner of a world not yet formed. The blank canvas in front of you hides a universe not yet born, but still drifting around in your mind just as your thoughts.
Like a god, you create a world out of nothingness, vibrant colors flaming their way across a sea of white. Castles, dragons, flowers and cute little houses with four windows and a door in the middle, complete with blazing sun and smoke, coming from the chimney. But, nevertheless, I don't know, why you'd have the fire on during what is clearly a hot summer day, but this is our reality, a world where we create the rules. The world, where we command existence with nothing more than a small stick of colour held together with glue.
We don't need to steal all those crayons. Every child has the power to reach the moon. And they only need one crayon to get there.
By Jennifer King
More and more acne sufferers are now turning to treating their skin condition naturally. This is because doctors are now too quick to prescribe an oral drug for a problem that can be controlled with a nutritious diet and a healthier lifestyle. No drug will cure anything if you're continually feeding the cause with poor lifestyle habits.
Doctors won't prescribe a healthy, natural approach to treating acne because prescribing drugs is what keeps them in their job. Continual use of drugs can cause unwanted side effects, and this is what is putting more an more people off of visiting their doctor for the treatment of their acne.
So what would be your best approach to treating your skin? First of it's important to keep your skin clean, and you can do this easily with a medicated, anti-bacterial soap. It doesn't need to be a prescription strength chemical based soap, it can be one that you can buy straight of the shelf in your local grocery store. As long as it kills bacteria and keeps your skin clean there's nothing else you need it to do.
All you need to do is wash your skin morning and night, and this is to wash away all the dead skin cells, oil and bacteria. Doing this gives your skin the room it needs to breath, and leaves less on your skin to clog up any pores.
Keeping your skin moist is very important. Dry skin can encourage acne, and cause the
pores to become more clogged. Drinking plenty of water every day will help your skin stay supple and moist. You should aim for at least 8 glasses of water spread out through the day. If you body becomes dehydrated your skin will become too dry, and then your acne can get worse.
Eat a diet that is filled with foods full of nutrition. Fresh fruit and vegetables are the foods you need your diet to consist of the most. Your body relies on vitamins and minerals to function properly, and your skin needs them for it to look good too.
If you want to eat junk food that is filled with fat, and has zero nutritional value then your skin will reflect what you're putting into your body.
A diet that is filled with these poor foods also puts more toxins into your body, and these toxins put a strain on your internal organs. When your internal organs have to work harder this has an effect on the way your skin looks, and also has an effect on your energy levels.
Regular exercise helps keep your skin clear. Exercise helps your body excrete toxins through sweating, and it also gives all of your internal organs a good workout. Your blood pumps faster, and exercise will release endorphins so you feel better, and when you feel better you look better.
Using these tips for clearer skin will have a much more positive effect on your life than taking drugs for a year or two that only mask a cause of your acne.
By Roger Kelley
Acne remains a very unsightly condition that can catch people off guard. Needless to say, when a person wakes up in the morning and looks in the mirror and sees unsightly blemishes, pimples, and blackheads the desire to get rid of them pretty much is the first thing that comes to a person's mind.
There are a number of treatments for acne, this much is understood. However, what also must be understood is the fact that sometimes the treatments need to be delicate depending upon the condition one may be in. For example, certain acne drugs are considered off limits to a person who is suffering from depression due to the effect these may have on a person's mental state.
Of the complexities regarding acne treatment there is nothing more delicate than acne treatment in pregnancy. The reason for this is that the potential for risks and complications can be magnified upon the presence of certain acne drugs. The highly controversial prescription drug accutane, for example, is probably the worst type of acne treatment in pregnancy mainly because it can cause a variety of birth defects. So, it
goes without saying that one needs to select a treatment with extreme care when the
patient is pregnant.
Acne and Pregnancy
When it comes to acne and pregnancy many of the breakouts on the skin occur when elevated hormone levels can lead to changes in the skin. Of course, no one wants to have to deal with acne whether they are pregnant or not, but acne treatment in pregnancy is not as easy as some would think. After all, most of the drugs that are used to treat a woman who is not pregnant can not be prescribed to a pregnant woman for a number of reasons.
Over the Counter Treatments
When it comes to effectively dealing with acne treatment in pregnancy it would probably be best to stick with over the counter topical solutions. These are generally little more than concentrated cleansers that clear out dirt in the pores and do not have the residual effects that an oral prescription drug would have.
Keep in mind, before undergoing any acne treatment in pregnancy (prescription, over the counter, herbal, etc) it is also best to discuss options with a doctor. This way, a number of potential problems can be avoided. After all, it would not be wise to do something that your doctor would consider a faulty course of action to take.
By Trevor Mulholland
Unfortunately, there are no "cures" for acne. A foolproof way to keep acne from coming back does not exist. However, there are therapies and skin care regimens that can help to treat acne. These are as close to acne cures as you will get and with some patience, you are sure to find one (or two) that work for you.
Clinical Cures for Acne
Dermatologists are now using FDA approved light and laser therapies that show real effects in the reduction of acne. Blue light therapy and a combination of pulsed light therapy and heat therapy kill the bacterium that causes the common type of acne. The combination light therapy also shrinks the oil glands in the skin, which reduces the production of oil.
Other treatments performed in the dermatologist's office are chemical peels, microdermabrasion, and diode laser therapy. Both chemical peels and microdermabrasion take off the top layers of skin and stimulate the renewal of skin cells. Chemical peels use a chemical combination that is applied to the skin. Microdermabrasion uses a device that blows tiny crystals onto the skin. This sloughs off
skin, clears the pores and then vacuums the crystals and refuse off the face. Diode
lasers penetrate to the middle layer of the skin and destroy the sebaceous glands, thus stopping the production of oil.
Over the Counter Acne Cures
Products that contain salicylic acid work to get rid of some acne as do those ointments containing benzoyl peroxide, retinol or sulfur. For the best results, use retinol with oral antibiotics (prescribed by your dermatologist) and benzoyl peroxide with topical antibiotics. These treat more than one cause of acne, which makes treatments more effective.
Proper Skin Care
Keeping skin clean is always important, but when you have acne, it is even more so. For most, oily skin comes along with acne and the pore-clogging oils can cause acne eruptions. To help reduce the oil without drying out the skin, you should wash the affected areas twice a day. Make sure to use a mild cleanser as harsher ones can cause your skin to be inflamed. For exceptionally oily skin, use an astringent every morning.
A weekly facial sauna helps to clear up acne. This involves holding your face over steaming water for several minutes to clear out pores and then splashing your face with very cold water several times to tighten the pores. You can use a shower to get the same results on the rest of your skin.
By ROBERT H. REID, Associated Press Writer – Wed Oct 22, 5:52 pm ET
Farmers tipped off authorities last week about the graves, located in the Euphrates River valley near Syria about 200 miles northwest of Baghdad, according to a local mayor, Farhan Fitaghan.
Fitaghan told The Associated Press that two of the remains were women.
Most of the victims were believed to have been army recruits from the southern Shiite city of Karbala who were traveling by bus in September 2005 to a training camp in an abandoned phosphate plant in Qaim when they were stopped by gunmen and taken away, the mayor said.
"We informed the Karbala authorities and invited their families to come and identify their relatives," said Fitaghan, the mayor of Qaim. "We held an official funeral procession today and paid all expenses to send the coffins to Karbala."
At the time, most Sunnis in the western province of Anbar refused to join the mostly Shiite army and police, forcing authorities to recruit volunteers from Shiite areas to the east and south.
The Qaim area had been among the most dangerous parts of the country for U.S. troops and their Iraqi allies. Al-Qaida in Iraq and other Sunni militant groups smuggled weapons and fighters from Syria, crossing the border near Qaim and heading for Baghdad and other major cities to the south.
Iraqi insurgents seized Qaim in April 2005, forcing U.S. Marines to recapture the town the following month in heavy fighting. The area became secure only after Sunni tribes in Anbar turned against al-Qaida in late 2006 and joined forces with the Americans.
Since then, authorities have been turning up more and more mass graves in former insurgent strongholds — testimony to the brutality of the nearly six-year war.
Although violence has dropped sharply across the country, attacks continue in Baghdad and northern areas where Sunni insurgents still operate.
A car bomb exploded Wednesday in the northern city of Mosul, killing four civilians, police said. The city has been plagued by attacks against Christians and other religious minorities despite months of U.S. and Iraqi military operations to chase out extremists.
Mosul officials said few of the nearly 10,000 Christians chased from their homes earlier this month are returning to the city, despite government pledges of financial support and protection.
Every Christian family that comes back to Mosul would receive 1 million Iraqi dinars — about $865 — on orders of the prime minister, said Jawdat Ismaeel, a local migration official.
Lt. Gen. Riyadh Jalal Tawfiq, the Iraqi military commander for Ninevah province, said the government would protect "every family that returns home." He said checkpoints and foot patrols were helping to improve the security situation in Mosul.
"We urge other families to come back," Tawfiq said. "We will ensure their protection."
Islamic extremists have frequently targeted Christians and other religious minorities since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion, forcing tens of thousands to flee Iraq. However, attacks had declined as areas became more secure after a U.S. troop buildup, a U.S.-funded Sunni revolt against al-Qaida and a Shiite militia cease-fire.
Sunni insurgents are believed to be behind the recent campaign that has driven out roughly half of the Christian population in Mosul, the country's third-largest city, located 225 miles northwest of Baghdad.
However, a message purportedly from one extremist group, Ansar al-Islam, denied involvement in attacks on Christians and instead blamed Kurdish militias — a charge the Kurds have denied but which has been widely rumored among Mosul's Arab community.
The message was posted on jihadist forums on the Internet and could not be authenticated, according to the SITE Intelligence Group which monitors extremist messages.
By JIM ABRAMS, Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON – House Republican leader John Boehner on Wednesday urged President Bush to block all federal funds to a grass-roots community group that has been accused of voter registration fraud.
"It is evident that ACORN is incapable of using federal funds in a manner that is consistent with the law," Boehner, R-Ohio, wrote Bush, saying that funds should be blocked until all federal investigations into the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now are completed.
ACORN, a group that has led liberal causes since it was formed in 1970, this year hired more than 13,000 part-time workers to sign up voters in minority and poor neighborhoods in 21 states. Some of the 1.3 million registration cards submitted to local election officials, using the names of cartoon characters or pro football players, were obviously phony, spurring GOP charges of widespread misconduct.
ACORN has said it was its own quality-control workers who first noticed problem registration cards, flagged them and submitted them to local election officials in every state that is now investigating them.
To commit fraud, a person would have to show up on Election Day with identification bearing the fake name.
Local law enforcement agencies in about a dozen states are investigating fake registrations submitted by ACORN workers and the FBI is reviewing those cases.
Boehner said his office had determined that ACORN had received more than $31 million in direct federal funding since 1998. He said the group had likely received far more indirectly through federal block grants to states and localities. "Immediate action is necessary to ensure that no additional tax dollars are directed to ACORN while it is under investigation," he wrote Bush.
Boehner said he and other Republicans were also asking the Justice Department to investigate ACORN's connections to the home mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, saying ACORN "appears to have played a key role in the irresponsible schemes that led to the current financial meltdown."
Republican presidential candidate John McCain has asked if ACORN, which he accused of perpetuating voter registration fraud, was "destroying the fabric of democracy." ACORN and other advocacy groups have suggested that Republicans are exaggerating the issue to keep the underprivileged, who tend to vote Democratic, from casting ballots.
NEW YORK – Wall Street tumbled again Wednesday as investors worried that the global economy is poised to weaken even as parts of the credit market slowly show signs of recovery. The major indexes fell more than 4 percent, including the Dow Jones industrial average, which finished off its lows with a loss of 514 points.
The Standard & Poor's 500 index was the worst performer among the major indexes with a 6.1 percent slide that left it at its lowest level since April 2003.
Corporate profit forecasts, a jump in the dollar and falling commodity prices signaled investors are fearful that an economic slowdown will sweep the globe even if lending begins to approach more normal levels as credit markets ease.
The dollar hit multiyear highs against several other major currencies, weighing on commodity prices. That hurt materials and energy companies, while the fall in oil gave a boost to airlines. Technology shares fared better than the broader market following quarterly reports from Apple Inc. and Yahoo Inc.
While reduced strains in global credit markets have eased some investors' nervousness about the economy, market anxiety remains as hundreds of companies this week report third-quarter results and issue somewhat murky forecasts that are stirring unease about the economic bumps that may lay ahead.
Wachovia Corp., which is being bought by Wells Fargo & Co., reported that it swung to a huge loss in the third quarter while the drugmaker Merck & Co. said its quarterly profit fell 28 percent and that it would cut more than 10 percent of its work force.
John Thornton, co-portfolio manager at Stephens Investment Management Group LLC in Houston, said investors' fear has shifted from the immediate concerns about tightness in credit and the resulting difficulty in borrowing to the broader economy as companies come out with their quarterly numbers.
"Even if it weren't for the credit crisis we'd probably be looking toward a pretty tough recession anyway," he said. "The third-quarter earnings are kind of uninspiring but third quarter hasn't been the real concern of people. I think the concern is the depth and duration of the downturn and the effect it's going to have on earnings."
The Dow fell 514.45, or 5.69 percent, to 8,519.21, after being down as much as 698 points in the final half hour of trading. Still, the Dow finished above its Oct. 10 closing low of 8,451. The Dow fell 232 points Tuesday after jumping 413 points Monday.
Broader stock indicators also fell Wednesday. The S&P 500 lost 58.27, or 6.10 percent, to 896.78, its lowest close since it finished at 892.01 on April 21, 2003. The decline leaves the index 42.7 percent below its record close of 1,565.15 in October last year.
The technology-heavy Nasdaq composite index fell 80.93, or 4.77 percent, to 1,615.75.
Lighter trading volume and the Dow's snapback — a rebound in the final 20 minutes that left the blue chips 183 points above the session's low — indicated that the trading was more orderly than it had been two weeks ago when waves of selling pounded the major indexes.
"I'm not as concerned about a pullback in the market when you have light volume," said Dave Hinnenkamp, chief executive KDV Wealth Management in Minneapolis.
Meanwhile, credit markets showed improvement after virtually freezing up in the past month. Bank-to-bank lending rates fell sharply from Tuesday to Wednesday, indicating that credit is becoming easier to obtain. The London Interbank Offered Rate, or Libor, on three-month loans in dollars fell to 3.54 percent from 3.83 percent, dropping for an eighth straight day.
Demand for Treasury bills, regarded as the safest assets around, grew slightly compared to the previous day as economic worries led investors to shun risky assets in favor of government bonds.
The three-month Treasury bill yielded 1.01 percent, down from 1.07 percent late Tuesday. The levels are a notable improvement from the 0.20 percent seen last Wednesday, when investors were willing to trade the slimmest of returns for a safe place to keep their money.
The yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury note, which also moves opposite its price, fell to 3.60 percent from 3.74 percent late Tuesday.
"We're making slow progress and confidence is returning but we're still not there yet," said Christopher Cordaro, chief investment officer at RegentAtlantic Capital LLC in Chatham, N.J.
He said the latest batch of quarterly results, which cover results through Sept. 30, don't reflect the full brunt of the credit freeze-up felt this month and the nervousness among some consumers following the stock market's swoon.
While he expects corporate results will continue to worsen, he also said the markets remain "in panic mode" and investors are perhaps being overly dour in their assessment of how the economy will perform in the next few years.
"When you look at the fundamentals of equities around the world, stocks are selling for very cheap prices," he said. "Behaviorally people project today's current bad news much further out into the future than they should."
Worries about the global economy helped the dollar. The greenback rose against currencies like the British pound and the euro as investors worried about sluggishness in overseas economies. The strong dollar helped drive down the price of oil, as did a government report that U.S. fuel supplies rose last week. Light, sweet crude fell $5.43 to $66.75 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange, after falling as low as $66.20.
Gold fell sharply as the dollar rose. Gold for December delivery fell $32.80 to settle at $735.20 an ounce on the Nymex, after dipping to a 13-month low of $735.20 during the session. Silver and copper also fell.
While the drop in oil and other commodities can be a welcome sign for consumers and many businesses it can also indicate that investors think economic activity is poised to shrink.
Still, Hinnenkamp said the extra money in drivers' wallets compared with when oil was at its high of $147.27 on July 11 could help prop up the economy. Consumer spending accounts for more than two-thirds of U.S. economic activity.
But materials companies fell as commodity prices tumbled. Aluminum producer Alcoa Inc. fell $1.63, or 13.4 percent, to $10.52, making it the steepest decliner among the 30 stocks that make up the Dow industrials. Miner Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold Inc. fell $5.82, or 17.8 percent, to $26.92.
Energy issues fell as oil slid to its lowest level in 16 months. Exxon Mobil Corp. fell $6.93, or 9.7 percent, to $64.57, while Chevron Corp. fell $5.06, or 7.6 percent, to $61.74.
The decline in oil helped airlines. JetBlue Airways Corp. rose 2 cents, or 0.40 percent, to $5.01, and United Airlines parent UAL Corp. rose 85 cents, or 6.2 percent, to $14.65.
In corporate news, AT&T Inc. said its third-quarter earnings rose 5.5 percent but missed analyst expectations in part because of strong sales of Apple's iPhone, which the carrier subsidizes. The stock fell $1.95, or 7.6 percent, to $23.78.
Wachovia fell 38 cents, or 6.2 percent, to $5.71 after reporting its results. Merck slid $1.96, or 6.5 percent, to $28.01.
Some tech names advanced. Apple rose after the company reported a 26 percent increase in its fiscal fourth-quarter earnings. The stock rose $5.38, or 5.9 percent, to $98.87. Yahoo reported a 64 percent drop in third-quarter profits but said it would cut at least 1,500 jobs, cost-cutting that appeared to please investors. The shares rose 32 cents, or 2.7 percent, to $12.39.
Thornton said the latest corporate forecasts are difficult to rely on because companies are grappling with many of the same unknowns that investors are struggling with, primarily the extent of weakness in the economy.
"These markets are making it difficult to gauge how much to read into management comments because clearly they're dealing with unprecedented change in fundamentals. It's hard to take their word on their outlook," he said.
Declining issues outnumbered advancers by about 5 to 1 on the New York Stock Exchange, where consolidated volume came to 6.06 billion shares compared with 5.09 billion traded Tuesday. The levels are lower than earlier in the month when volatility swept volume above the 10 billion mark.
The Russell 2000 index of smaller companies fell 28.68, or 5.40 percent, to 501.97.
Markets overseas fell sharply. Japan's Nikkei stock average fell 6.79 percent. Britain's FTSE 100 fell 4.46 percent, Germany's DAX index fell 4.46 percent, and France's CAC-40 lost 5.10 percent.
By ALICIA CHANG, AP Science Writer – Fri Oct 17, 11:29 pm ET
LOS ANGELES – A small NASA spacecraft embarks on a two-year mission this weekend to give scientists their first view of the happenings at the edge of the solar system. The Ibex probe, short for Interstellar Boundary Explorer, will study a chaotic region in space where the solar wind from the sun clashes with cold gases from interstellar space.
The solar wind, a stream of charged particles spewing from the sun at 1 million miles per hour, carves out a protective bubble around the solar system. This bubble known as the heliosphere shields against most dangerous cosmic radiation that would otherwise interfere with human spaceflight.
Scientists recently discovered that the solar wind pressure is at its weakest level in 50 years, although the exact reason remains a mystery. Ibex could help confirm whether the heliosphere is shrinking.
Observations from Ibex should help researchers in "unlocking the secrets of this important interaction between the sun and the galaxy," said David McComas of the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio. He is chief scientist for the $165 million mission.
Ibex, the size of a bus tire, will be launched aboard a Pegasus rocket that will be dropped from an aircraft over a Pacific atoll on Sunday.
The rocket will lift Ibex 130 miles above Earth and put it into orbit. The spacecraft will then fire its solid rocket motor to loft itself even higher, eventually to 200,000 miles above Earth.
Ibex will build on the discoveries of the long-running twin Voyager spacecraft launched in 1977 to explore the outer planets. The deep-space, manmade probes have since sailed past the outer planets and are headed out of the solar system.
Unlike the Voyager craft, Ibex will not barrel through space, but instead will do its job from high-Earth orbit. The probe carries two sensors that will collect information about the solar wind's mass and energy from all directions.
By MARCIA DUNN, AP Aerospace Writer – Sat Oct 18, 5:18 am ET
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. – NASA's efforts to get the ailing Hubble Space Telescope working again have hit a snag, and engineers are trying to figure out their next step.
Officials had hoped to have the 18-year-old observatory back in business Friday, after it stopped sending pictures three weeks ago. But a pair of problems cropped up Thursday, and now recovery operations are on hold.
It's unclear how long the telescope will be prevented from transmitting its stunning photos of the cosmos.
The soonest it could be operating fully again is late next week, said Art Whipple, a Hubble manager. At worst, the observatory might remain inactive until astronauts arrive with a replacement part next year.
"We're still optimistic," he told reporters Friday.
Flight controllers at Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., began the lengthy process of restoring data transmission on Wednesday. Everything was going well, until late Thursday afternoon.
First, a low-voltage power supply problem prevented one of Hubble's cameras from being rebooted properly, and then computer trouble struck and all efforts ceased.
It's too soon to know whether the two problems are related, said Whipple.
"We're in the early stage of going through a mountain of data that has been downloaded over the last 24 hours," he said at a news conference.
Hubble's command and data-handling system for science instruments failed late last month and prevented the telescope from capturing and beaming down data used to create the pictures for which Hubble is known.
Because of the breakdown, NASA delayed its final Hubble repair mission by shuttle astronauts that was set for October. The mission won't happen until at least February, possibly later.
The latest setback is not expected to further delay the shuttle mission, Whipple said.
The recovery efforts involved switching to a backup channel for the command and data-handling system that had been dormant since the telescope was launched in 1990. That part, at least, seemed to go well, Whipple said.
So far, this isn't the longest that Hubble has been inactive since NASA's 1993 mission to correct its blurred vision. In 1999, science operations were halted about six weeks because of gyroscope failures that were remedied by astronauts whose flight quickly followed the breakdown.
Tariq Malik
Senior Editor
SPACE.com – Sat Oct 18, 11:31 am ET
American space tourist Richard Garriott is settling into life aboard the International Space Station and learning firsthand the lessons learned by his astronaut father.
Garriott, 47, is a computer game pioneer and the son of former NASA astronaut Owen Garriott, a two-time spaceflyer who visited the U.S. space station Skylab and flew aboard the shuttle Columbia.
It was while aboard Columbia in 1983 that the elder Garriott used a ham radio to call Richard from space, and this week the son returned the favor.
"I'm very excited, Dad, to be able to ham contact with you," Richard Garriott radioed down to his father at Russia's Mission Control Center outside Moscow this week. "I think it's an interesting and historical moment."
Garriott is the first American second-generation astronaut, though he's flying alongside the space station's Expedition 17 commander Sergei Volkov, son of famed Russian cosmonaut Alexander Volkov. He is paying $30 million for his 10-day spaceflight under a deal between Russia's Federal Space Agency and the Vienna, Va.-based firm Space Adventures.
"We're having a very nice time up here and having a beautiful view of Russia right now," Garriott told his father.
Garriott is the sixth paying visitor to the space station. He launched into orbit on Oct. 12 aboard a Russian Soyuz TMA-13 spacecraft ferrying two professional astronauts to the orbiting lab. Joining him on the trip were Expedition 18 commander Michael Fincke, of NASA, and Russian flight engineer Yury Lonchakov.
The spaceflying trio arrived at the station on Tuesday, with Garriott due to return to Earth on Oct. 23 with Volkov and Expedition 17 flight engineer Oleg Kononenko who are completing their own six-month mission. Fincke and Lonchakov are replacing the returning cosmonauts and joined NASA astronaut Greg Chamitoff already aboard.
"It was so much fun watching him look at Earth for the first time in the Soyuz on our way up," Fincke said during a televised Thursday interview, adding that Garriott was quick to learn the fundamentals of eating, drinking and bathing in space. "He's picked up all the basics really quickly and I think he's really enjoying his mission so far."
On Friday, Garriott held a radio webcast with children at Challenger Centers across the country to answer questions as part of his educational campaign. He has packed his mission with a host of educational outreach events, science experiments and Earth observation targets.
Garriott told students that he did not suffer from motion sickness during his first taste of weightlessness after reaching orbit, but the lack of gravity did cause a fluid shift that gave him headaches at first.
"I'm finally beginning to adjust and I'm only about five days into my 10 days in space," he said.
Garriott compared floating in weightlessness to the sensation of scuba diving, only without the water, and compared the spacious interior of the space station to the main cabin of a 747 jumbo jet. He is the first space tourist to visit the station since the addition new rooms and laboratories over the last year.
"Here on board, we're kind of spread out," Garriott told his father, adding that the extra room makes for comfortable sleeping arrangements." Everybody kind of takes a module to themselves. "We have a pretty sizeable room, and of course in zero gravity it's very, very comfortable as you know."
In addition to enjoying his spaceflight, Garriott is hard at work with this many science experiments and enjoying the camaraderie of his fellow astronauts.
"He seems to be having a great time and we're having a great time hosting him up here," Chamitoff said of Garriott. "It's been a lot of fun so far just to have six people on board and he's very much part of the crew right now."
Richard Garriott is chronicling his spaceflight training and mission at his personal Web site: www.richardinspace.com.
By LYNN BERRY, Associated Press Writer – Sat Oct 18, 2:12 pm ET
A collar containing satellite-guided positioning equipment was slipped Friday around the neck of Putin's dog, Koni, who good-naturedly gave it a test run.
The technology is not new, and has been available around the world for many years through the U.S. Global Positioning System. But Russia wants its own system and has doggedly pushed ahead with a Soviet-era satellite navigation program, still determined not to be left behind in the space race.
One of Putin's deputies, Sergei Ivanov, briefed him Friday on the progress of the Global Navigation Satellite System. Then footage broadcast on Russian TV showed them putting the collar on Koni.
Ivanov said that the equipment goes on standby mode when "the dog doesn't move, if it, say, lies down in a puddle."
Putin interrupted him jokingly: "My dog isn't a piglet; she doesn't lie in puddles."
"She's wagging her tail, she likes it," Putin said after watching Koni outside his colonnaded residence on Moscow's western outskirts.
Putin had asked Ivanov for such a collar to help keep tabs on Koni when Ivanov briefed him on the navigation system back in December. Ivanov had promised Putin, who was president at the time, that dog collars with satellite-guided positioning equipment would be available for private consumers by the summer of 2008.
But the navigation system itself, known as GLONASS, which was supposed to be fully operational by the beginning of this year, was delayed by equipment flaws and other technical problems.
Ivanov told Putin on Friday that the system would have 21 satellites by the year's end — enough to provide navigation services over all of Russian territory. Ivanov said it would be available worldwide by the end of 2009, for which it would need to have 24 satellites.
If Russia trails behind the U.S. in developing a satellite navigation system, it was way ahead in putting a dog into space.
The Soviet Union launched Laika into orbit in 1957, only a month after stunning the world with Sputnik, the first artificial satellite to orbit the Earth. Laika's mission helped pave the way for human flight, but it ended sadly for the female terrier mix.
When she reached orbit, doctors were relieved to find that her pulse, which had risen during the launch, and blood pressure were normal. She ate specially prepared food from a container.
But with no re-entry vehicle for her satellite, Laika was doomed from the beginning and her mission drew a wave of protests from animal rights activists in the West.
At the time, the Soviet Union reported that the dog was euthanized after a week. It wasn't until after the Soviet collapse that some participants in the project told the true story: Laika indeed was to be euthanized with a programmed injection, but she apparently died of overheating after only a few hours in orbit.
Fortunately for Putin's dog and many others, the satellite-guided tracking systems carry no known health risks, according to People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.
"While PETA is not familiar with the actual device that Prime Minister Putin used on his dog, if the collar is similar to those used in the U.S., which are not shock collars, it is probably harmless," PETA spokesman Michael McGraw said in an e-mailed response.
The GPS tracking devices in the U.S. use the Global Positioning System to determine the precise location of an animal, person or vehicle. When put on wild animals, usually in a collar, they allow scientists to study their behavior and migration patterns.
By FRANCES ROMERO – 2 hrs 41 mins ago
Forget the jokes about sagging workbelts, dirty t-shirts and plungers - the day of the savvy, politically inquisitive plumber is now at hand. Much has already been said of Joe the Plumber's sharp ascent into the public eye over the past two days. Since the airing of the final presidential debate between Senators John McCain and Barack Obama on Oct. 15, reporters have discovered the following about Joe Wurzelbacher, 34, of Holland, Ohio: He owes some taxes, apparently is working toward his plumbing license - though he has worked in the industry for more than a decade - and he voted for McCain in the presidential primary.
After the debate, fact-checkers were in a frenzy correcting McCain on several tidbits concerning the man who's now the most famous plumber in the nation: his name, Samuel Joseph Wurzelbacher (not Joe Wurzelberger); that Wurzelbacher would face "much higher taxes" turns out would not be true after he admitted that the business he wants to buy likely wouldn't make enough to be taxed under Obama's plan; and more importantly, the fact that McCain apparently mistook Wurzelbacher's desired salary of $250,000 for his current salary, which the plumber says is far less. Which of course begs the question: How much do plumbers actually make? The standard assumption is that they earn a pretty decent wage. Americans want and need working pipes, just like they want and need their trash collected every few days - sanitation being another service always in demand by consumers and not always in demand by job-seekers, and typically pretty well paying as a result.
That said, a plumber's earnings vary widely depending on the region in which they work and whether a plumber owns a business that employs others. Journeymen in cities such as New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and Boston are in higher demand and command higher prices - up to about $250,000 a year. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics' 2006 National Compensation Survey, pipelayers, plumbers, pipefitters and steamfitters nationwide made an average of $23 an hour, or about $46,000 annually for a typical 40-hour workweek. But those numbers lump different occupations together and don't give a complete picture of the current market. A pipelayer, for example, mostly installs pipes, while pipefitters and steamfitters install, maintain and repair pipe systems.
Organizations such as the Plumbing-Heating-Cooling Contractors Association and The United Association of Plumbers and Pipefitters (UA) (which has endorsed Obama) don't keep statistics on how much members take home, or on industry earning standards. But a representative at the UA says that owners of plumbing businesses would likely take bigger hits in economic hard times because they incur the production costs of keeping a company running. Paul Abrams, a spokesman for Roto-Rooter, the nation's largest plumbing and drain service provider, says he has seen evidence of that. "We've had some people who owned businesses close up shop and come work for us," Abrams says.
He notes that some master plumbers (about five to seven years experience) at the Cincinnati-based company make in excess of $100,000 a year. "A good plumber can pretty much write his ticket and make a good living with a good amount of experience," Abrams says. The outsourcing boom that has sucked information technology jobs overseas, coupled with a dearth of workers in plumbing - a somewhat recession-resistant market - makes for an industry ripe for growth. As for Wurzelbacher, based on the region of the country he works in, the amount of experience he has, and the fact that he is unlicensed, he could be currently making anywhere between $40,000 and $70,000 - and no, he won't get stung by the Obama tax plan even if he buys that business. Still, not bad for an average Joe.
By DEBORAH HASTINGS, AP National Writer – Sat Oct 18, 12:37 pm ET
The stories are almost comical: Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck, registered to vote on Nov. 4. The entire starting lineup of the Dallas Cowboys football team, signed up to go the polls — in Nevada.
But no one in either presidential campaign is laughing. Not publicly, anyway.
Republicans, led by John McCain, are alleging widespread voter fraud. The Democrats and Barack Obama say the controversy is preposterous and is just political mudslinging.
In the middle is the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, known as ACORN, a grass-roots community group that has led liberal causes since it formed in 1970. This year, ACORN hired more than 13,000 part-time workers and sent them out in 21 states to sign up voters in minority and poor neighborhoods.
They submitted 1.3 million registration cards to local election officials.
Along the way, bogus ones appeared — signed in the names of cartoon characters, professional football players and scores of others bearing the same handwriting. And in the past few days, those phony registrations have exploded into Republican condemnations of far-ranging misconduct, and a relatively obscure community activist group took a starring role, right behind Joe the Plumber, in the final presidential debate.
Looking beyond the smoke and fire, the raging argument boils down to essentially this:
Is ACORN, according to McCain, perpetuating voter fraud that could be "destroying the fabric of democracy"? Or are Republicans trying to keep the disadvantaged, who tend to be Democrats, from casting ballots in a hotly contested presidential race that has drawn record numbers of new voters?
By legal definition, to commit voter fraud means a person would have to present some kind of documentation at the polls — a driver's license, a phone bill or another form of ID — that bears the name of Mickey Mouse, for example. To do so risks a fine and imprisonment under state laws.
Submitting fake registration cards is another matter. Local law enforcement agencies in about a dozen states are investigating fake registrations submitted by ACORN workers. Late last week, The Associated Press reported the FBI will be reviewing those cases.
Accusations of stolen votes have a long history in presidential elections. In the 2000 recount debacle, Republicans claimed illegal ballots were cast. Democrats contended that legal ballots were thrown out. In 2004, when Ohio gave the presidency to George W. Bush, Democrats charged that long lines and malfunctioning machines in that state led to an inaccurate count.
But in this contest, involving the first African-American in American history with a real chance at becoming president, the vitriol is particularly pointed.
"This is all just one big head-fake," said Tova Wang of the government watchdog group Common Cause. "What silliness this is, at this point. It's all about creating this perception that there is a tremendous problem with voter fraud in this country, and it's not true."
On Friday, during a campaign appearance, Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin repeated McCain's recent claims that Obama has close ties to ACORN.
"You deserve to know," Palin told thousands in a park north of Cincinnati. "This group needs to learn that you here in Ohio won't let them turn the Buckeye State into the Acorn State."
Obama helped represent ACORN in a successful 1995 suit against the state of Illinois, which forced enactment of the so-called motor-voter law, making it easier for people to register vote. Obama said this week that he had "nothing to do with" ACORN's massive voter registration drive.
ACORN spokesman Brian Kettenring retaliated this week in a series of conference calls and interviews. "What we're seeing is the manufacture of a crisis, and attempts to smear Sen. Obama with it. It gives you an excuse should you lose or if there's a contested outcome of the election."
Voter fraud is rare in the United States, according to a 2007 report by the nonpartisan Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University School of Law. Based on reviews of voter fraud claims at the federal and state level, the center's report asserted most problems were caused by things like technological glitches, clerical errors or mistakes made by voters and by election officials.
"It is more likely that an individual will be struck by lightning than he will impersonate another voter at the polls," the report said.
Alex Keyssar, a professor at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, calls the current controversy "chapter 22 in a drama that's been going on awhile. The pattern is that nothing much ever comes from this. There have been no known cases of people voting fraudulently."
"What we've seen," Keyssar said, "is sloppiness and someone's idea of a stupid joke, like registering as Donald Duck."
ACORN officials have repeatedly claimed that their own quality control workers were the first to discover problematic ballots. In every state investigating bad registrations, ACORN tipped off local officials to bogus or incomplete cards, spokesman Kettenring said.
Many states require that all registrations be submitted to local voting officials so that election directors are in charge of vetting problem ballots, not the groups collecting them.
Part-time ACORN workers receive one day of training and are paid $8 an hour to collect signatures, according to Kettenring. He blamed bogus cards on cheating and lazy employees trying to make a buck for doing nothing.
When caught, Kettenring said, those workers are fired. The group is in the process of tallying the number of bad cards ACORN flagged for election officials, he said. Kettenring said he doubted the percentage of such registrations would reach 2 percent.
But Republicans say any number of fake registrations is unacceptable and could affect the November election.
Signing up voters is a small part of ACORN activities. The group frequently leads challenges to minimum wage laws, predatory mortgage lending in poor and working-class neighborhoods and immigration policies.
Controversy is nothing new. Its leaders are currently locked in a legal dispute stemming from allegations that the brother of the group's founder misappropriated nearly $1 million of the nonprofit's money several years ago.
Since the 2004 election, ex-employees have been convicted of submitting false registrations in states including Florida and Missouri.
"There are certainly problems and I don't think anyone disagrees on that," said Wang of Common Cause. "But it doesn't get reported that ACORN finds these registrations errors themselves. They flag them as being no good, but they have to turn them in anyway."
"They don't get processed," she said. "And Mickey Mouse is not going to vote."
WOODBRIDGE, Va. – A top aide to John McCain said Saturday the Republican presidential nominee still has a strong chance of winning the state because of his support in "real Virginia," the downstate areas far removed in distance and political philosophy from the more liberal northern part of the state.
"As a proud resident of Oakton, Va., I can tell you that the Democrats have just come in from the District of Columbia and moved into northern Virginia," McCain senior adviser Nancy Pfotenhauer said on MSNBC. "And that's really what you see there. But the rest of the state, real Virginia, if you will, I think will be very responsive to Sen. McCain's message."
Program host Kevin Corke asked Pfotenhauer if she wanted to retract the comment, prompting her to reply, "I mean 'real Virginia' because northern Virginia is where I've always been, but 'real Virginia' I take to be the — this part of the state that is more Southern in nature, if you will. Northern Virginia is really metro D.C."
Earlier this month, McCain's brother, Joe, told those at an event for the Republican nominee that two Democratic-leaning areas in Northern Virginia, Arlington and Alexandria, were "communist country." He quickly apologized and called the remark a joke.
The senator's campaign headquarters is in Arlington, as is the home he uses while in Washington. McCain also attended high school in Alexandria.
Northern Virginia is the most populous in the state, so if McCain considers it enemy territory, he would have to run up large margins in the Hampton Roads and less populated areas of Virginia to win on Election Day. During a rally in the Washington suburb of Woodbridge, Va., on Saturday, McCain noted that his first posting in the Navy was in coastal Norfolk.
Democrats not only control the Virginia governor's office, but Democrat Jim Webb succeeded in 2006 in ousting Republican Sen. George Allen. Veteran Sen. John Warner, R-Va., is retiring this year and former Democratic Gov. Mark Warner is vying with former Republican Gov. Jim Gilmore to succeed him.
The popularity of Mark Warner has led some to suggest he may boost Democrat Barack Obama's chances, rather than the opposite.
One recent poll showed McCain trailing Obama by up to 8 percentage points in the Old Dominion, but political analysts believe the race may be closer. McCain was making a push to hold onto Virginia, which President Bush won in 2004.
Besides his rally in Woodbridge, McCain's campaign was launching a downstate bus tour on Sunday with Todd Palin, the husband of his running mate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin.
One of those attending McCain's rally said she wasn't sure about the geographical split of the state.
"I just hope that the state of Virginia will continue to support and continue to be a red state," said 45-year-old Diane Fuller of Manassas.
NEW YORK (Reuters) – The FBI, after years spent focusing on national security, is struggling to find agents and resources to investigate wrongdoing tied to the country's economic crisis, The New York Times reported in Sunday editions.
Citing current and former FBI officials, the Times said cutbacks in its criminal investigative workforce following the September 11 attacks left the FBI weaker in areas like white collar crime.
The cutbacks were the result of a shift in focus to terrorism and intelligence matters. More than 1,800 agents, or nearly one-third of all those in criminal programs, moved into those areas, the Times said.
"Clearly, we have felt the effects of moving resources from criminal investigations to national security," the newspaper quoted FBI Assistant Director John Miller as saying. "In white collar crime, while we initiated fewer cases over all, we targeted the areas where we could have the biggest impact. We focused on multimillion-dollar corporate fraud, where we could make arrests but also recover money for the fraud victims."
While the FBI plans to double the number of agents working on financial crimes, people within and outside the Justice Department question where the agents will come from and whether that will suffice, the Times said.
Records and interviews show that FBI officials have warned of a looming mortgage threat since 2004, and asked the Bush administration to fund such nonterrorism investigations, but the requests were denied and no new agents were approved for financial criminal investigation work, the newspaper said.
Internal FBI data shows the cutbacks were especially sharp in areas of white collar crime like mortgage fraud, with more than 600 agents lost, or more than one-third of 2001 levels.
According to Justice Department data, fraud prosecutions directed at financial institutions dropped by nearly one-half from 2000 to 2007, insurance fraud cases fell 75 percent and securities fraud decreased by 17 percent, the Times said.
"The administration's top priority since the 9/11 attacks has been counterterrorism," Justice Department spokesman Peter Carr told the paper. "In part, that's reflected by a significant investment of resources at the FBI to answer the call from Congress and the American public to become a domestic intelligence agency, in addition to a law enforcement agency."
According to the Times, several former law enforcement officials said that senior administration officials, notably those at the White House and the Treasury Department, made clear that they were concerned the Justice Department and the FBI were taking an anti-business attitude that could inhibit corporate risk-taking.
One former official said some in the administration characterized aggressive corporate prosecutions as "over-deterrence."
(Reporting by Chris Michaud)
Sat Oct 18, 5:42 PM ET
WASHINGTON (AFP) - French President Nicolas Sarkozy called for change in the global financial system before Saturday talks with US President George W. Bush, who is offering to host an international summit on the economic crisis.
Bush will make the summit announcement after Sarkozy and European Commission chief Jose Manuel Barroso arrive at the Camp David presidential retreat in Maryland, a senior administration official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
The official did not give a date for the gathering.
Bush, Barroso and Sarkozy -- who is armed with a mandate from his EU colleagues to push for an overhaul of the financial system -- are to discuss plans for coping with the most severe global economic crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930s.
Also on Saturday the United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon offered "strong support" for a financial crisis summit involving world leaders along with representatives from the IMF and World Bank, which Sarkozy proposed on Friday at the 12th Francophonie summit in Quebec City, Canada.
"We both agree that there is no time to lose, and therefore, I fully subscribe to your idea of convening such a forum in early December at the latest," Ban said in a letter to Sarkozy.
Ban said he supported holding the summit at the UN secretariat in New York "in early December," saying this would "lend universal legitimacy to this endeavor and demonstrate a collective will to face this serious global challenge."
The White House preemptively warned that the Saturday talks will yield no new policy proposals.
Fallout from the crisis grew Friday as fresh job losses were blamed on the turmoil and bank chiefs faced a backlash, while stocks closed a tumultuous week with more wild swings.
In the United States, key data showed starts on building new homes slumped an additional 6.3 percent in September to the lowest level since the recession in 1991.
The annualized rate of 817,000 was down 31.1 percent from a year ago in the latest evidence of the bursting of the housing bubble that has ravaged the US economy and led to the global financial crisis.
Unemployment has grown across Europe and the United States, with key sectors such as car-makers badly hit. Analysts forecast worsening economic conditions in most advanced economies.
The finance industry's reputation took a new blow in France where Caisse d'Epargne bank said it lost about 600 million euros (800 million dollars) in a trading "incident."
A company official told AFP that a group finance director had been sacked over the loss.
Swiss newspapers Saturday angrily called on former top managers of banking giant UBS to return bonuses after the bank had to be rescued by the state this week.
"Mr. Ospel, pay back your bonus! Now! Immediately!" screamed the front page of tabloid Blick, referring to former UBS chairman Marcel Ospel, who was forced to resign this year over billions in losses in the US subprime mortgage crisis.
The headline reflected widespread public anger in Europe and the United States about the massive bailout of troubled banks, whose bosses have pocketed millions in bonuses in recent years.
Christian Levrat, leader of Switzerland's Socialist Party told a newspaper Saturday he plans to lodge a civil complaint against Ospel.
In South Korea, Finance Minister Kang Man-Soo is expected to announce Sunday an extra 30 billion dollars to help banks, businesses and the currency market, South Korea's Yonhap news agency said.
Asia's fourth-largest economy has been hit by devastating currency falls and the departure of foreign investors from the local stock market.
Pakistan's central bank moved to inject liquidity into the country's struggling financial system by cutting the amount of cash commercial banks must hold in reserve.
In Germany, Europe's biggest economy, banks will discuss Monday whether to jointly demand state aid under a brand new 480-billion-euro rescue plan to streamline what could be a chaotic process, Focus magazine said.
Belgian Prime Minister Yves Leterme said his government is also working on a plan to soften the effects of the financial crisis on the nation's economy.
"We are a hair's breadth away from a serious economic crisis," he told Le Soir in an interview published Saturday.
Meanwhile the Saudi stock market, the largest in the Arab world, which uniquely opens its trading week on a Saturday, ended the first day down 5.23 percent, shedding some of last week's gains.
The latest fall followed modest Friday losses on Wall Street as US investors remained cautious about whether the hundreds of billions of dollars being injected into banks by US and European governments will be enough to stabilize the markets.
However most global stock markets were firm on Friday after wild swings in the past week as some analysts said there was evidence of a "bottom" from the market meltdown of the past few weeks.
CHICAGO (AFP) – John McCain and Barack Obama's campaigns swapped accusations of rampant and widespread voter fraud Friday as legal battles over who ought be allowed to cast a ballot ensnared the race to the White House.
An estimated nine million new voters have registered for the hotly contested November 4 election, and the Obama campaign says Democratic registrations are outpacing Republican ones by four to one.
The McCain campaign contends that an untold number of those registration forms are false and warned that illegally cast ballots could alter the results of the election and undermine the public's faith in democracy.
The Obama campaign's top lawyer, Bob Bauer, accused Republicans of recklessly "plotting" to suppress legitimate votes and to "sow confusion and harass voters and complicate the process for millions of Americans."
Republicans have launched a slew of lawsuits aimed at preventing false ballots from being cast, the most high-profile an attempt to challenge as many as 200,000 of the more than 600,000 new registrations submitted in the battleground state of Ohio.
That challenge was blocked by a Supreme Court ruling Friday.
Republicans said their fears were confirmed when investigations were launched last week in several states in the wake of revelations that the liberal-leaning community organization ACORN had submitted false voter registrations.
McCain said Wednesday the group is "on the verge of maybe perpetrating one of the greatest frauds in voter history in this country, maybe destroying the fabric of democracy."
A day later, senior officials at the Justice Department told reporters that the Federal Bureau of Investigation was investigating whether ACORN had systematically encouraged the creation of false registrations forms.
Bauer said the leak was a "brazen" violation of department policy not to discuss ongoing investigations, and accused Republicans of once again politicizing the Justice Department in an attempt to influence the election and "create an environment of fear and intimidation."
He said the matter should be turned over to a special prosecutor currently investigating allegations that US attorneys were fired by the Bush administration for failing to bring indictments of voter fraud and public corruption in the leadup to the 2006 election.
"What we're seeing is an unholy alliance of law enforcement and the ugliest form of partisan politics," Bauer said. "Nobody really expects thousands of Mickey Mouses or Tony Romos to show up at the poll and vote this fall."
ACORN, which has been a driving force in increasing voter registration among younger and low-income minorities, dismissed allegations of wrongdoing and said it was responsible for alerting election officials to the bulk of the suspect registrations.
ACORN said a standard internal review found that as many as 13,000 of the 1.3 million new voter registrations it collected could be false and blamed canvassers who were trying to get paid without bothering to sign up new voters.
To affect the election, those records would have to pass a screening process and people would have to succeed in voting with those false names, which is a serious crime and incredibly rare.
A 2007 study by the New York University School of law concluded that "it is more likely that an individual will be struck by lightning than that he will impersonate another voter at the polls."
But McCain campaign manager Rick Davis said even a small margin of voter fraud could change such a close election, particularly given that several states picked the president by a margin one percent or less in the past two elections.
"I don't think anybody at this time has any sense of how big this fraud has been," he told reporters on a conference call.
"It only takes a very little to undermine the public's credibility that these elections were honest, open and fair."
Davis also attacked Obama for failing to disclose his full relationship with the group - something McCain's running mate Sarah Palin highlighted on the campaign trail Friday - and said the scandal has cast a "cloud of suspicion" over the election.
"We think John McCain is going to win this election and we don't want a pall cast on it and I hope that the Obama people the day after the election understand we did everything we could to shine that the bright light of public scrutiny on all these issues," Davis added.
