Hillary Supporters

At that time they were written in Hebrew dialects with bird feathers or quills. After the fall of the Roman Empire, Europeans had difficultly in obtaining reeds and began to use quills. There is a specific reference to quills in the writings of St. Isidore of Seville in the 7th century. Quill pens were used until the nineteenth century.

In the 1960s the fibre, or felt-tipped pen was invented by Yukio Horie of the Tokyo Stationery Company, Japan. Papermate's Flair was among the first felt-tip pens to hit the U.S. market in the 1960s, and it has been the leader ever since. Marker pens and highlighters, both similar to felt pens, have become popular in recent years.

Personalized Pens

PRAGUE – A Czech court struck down a complaint against the EU reform treaty on Tuesday, removing the proposed charter's last legal hurdle and intensifying pressure on President Vaclav Klaus to sign it.
The Constitutional Court's chief judge, Pavel Rychetsky, said the Lisbon Treaty, which has already been ratified by other member nations, "does not violate the (Czech) constitution."
At the end of the ruling, whose reading took almost two hours, Rychetsky said all formal obstacles for ratification "are removed."
Klaus is the last obstacle to the full ratification of the treaty, which is designed to transform Europe into a more unified and powerful global player. The charter, which was bogged down in negotiations for almost a decade, has been ratified by all other 26 EU nations.
In Brussels, European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso said he was "extremely pleased" with the verdict.
"Together with the commitments given by all member states to the Czech government at the European Council last week, I believe that no further unnecessary delays should prevent the entry into force of the Lisbon Treaty," Barroso said.
"I hope that we can now move forward as quickly as possible on the nomination of the president of the European Council and vice president of the Commission High Representative," he said, referring to the newly-created post of president, who will chair EU summits, and the bloc's new foreign policy chief, who will represent the EU abroad.
"The decision clears the way for President Vaclav Klaus to sign and finalize the ratification of the treaty and I am very confident he will do so," said Jerzy Buzek, president of the European Parliament. "The Treaty of Lisbon should now enter into force by the end of the year."
Klaus was awaiting the Brno-based court's ruling before deciding whether to endorse the treaty. It is not clear when that could happen.
Prime Minister Jan Fischer welcomed the verdict.
"The last hurdle has been cleared," Fischer said in a statement. He said he now expects Klaus to sign the treaty. He previously said he hoped Klaus could do that by the end of the year.
The court was asked to rule by a group of senators who filed a motion arguing the treaty was not in line with the constitution. Last year, the court dismissed a similar complaint.
Failure of the treaty would send the EU into an unprecedented crisis. Negotiators say its reforms — creating a new EU president post, giving more power to the foreign policy chief and streamlining EU decision-making — are needed to make the EU more effective.
Last week, EU leaders agreed to Klaus' last-minute demand — an opt-out from the treaty's Charter of Fundamental Rights in return for his signing of it. Klaus said he was not planning to make any further demands.
The Czech leader asked for the option over worries of property claims by ethnic Germans stripped of their land and expelled after World War II.
But it was considered Klaus had used the demand for the opt-out to try to scuttle ratification of the treaty, which he opposes. He fears the treaty would hand over too many national powers to EU institutions in Brussels.
Both houses of the Czech Parliament already have ratified the treaty.
___

Associated Press writers Robert Wielaard and Constant Brand in Brussels contributed to this report.

WASHINGTON – The health care bill headed for a vote in the House this week costs $1.2 trillion or more over a decade, according to numerous Democratic officials and figures contained in an analysis by congressional budget experts, far higher than the $900 billion cited by President Barack Obama as a price tag for his reform plan.
While the Congressional Budget Office has put the cost of expanding coverage in the legislation at roughly $1 trillion, Democrats added billions more on higher spending for public health, a reinsurance program to hold down retiree health costs, payments for preventive services and more.
Many of the additions are designed to improve benefits or ease access to coverage in government programs. The officials who provided overall cost estimates did so on condition of anonymity, saying they were not authorized to discuss them.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has referred repeatedly to the bill's net cost of $894 billion over a decade for coverage.
Asked about the higher estimate, Pelosi spokesman Brendan Daly said the measure not only insures 36 million more Americans, it provides critical health insurance reform in a way that is fiscally sound.
"It will not add one dime to the deficit. In fact, the CBO said last week that it will reduce the deficit both in the first 10 years and in the second 10 years," Daly said.
Democrats have been intent on passing legislation this year to implement Obama's call for expanded coverage for millions, curbs on industry abuses and provisions to slow the rate of growth of health care costs nationally.
"Now, add it all up, and the plan I'm proposing will cost around $900 billion over 10 years," the president said in a nationally televised speech in early September.
Whatever the final cost of legislation, the calendar is working increasingly against the White House and Democrats. While a House vote is possible late this week, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., may not be able to begin debate on the issue until the week before Thanksgiving. Additionally, the Republican leader, Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, has hinted at efforts to extend the debate for weeks if not months, a timetable that could extend into 2010.
One casualty of the time crunch and threatened Republican delaying tactics may be formal House-Senate negotiations on a final compromise. An alternative is a less formal hurry-up final negotiation involving the White House and senior Democrats.
Pelosi and her lieutenants worked on last-minute changes in the measure to ease concerns among opponents of abortion and a contentious provision relating to illegal immigrants. Conservative Democrats have expressed concern about the cost of the bill, and an evening closed-door meeting gave the leadership its first chance to hear their response.
The bill includes an option for a government-run health plan.
The leadership can afford more than two dozen defections and still be assured of the votes to prevail on the bill, one of the most sweeping measures in recent years.
Republicans put the cost of the bill at nearly $1.3 trillion.
"Our goal is to make it as difficult as possible for" Democrats to pass it, House Republican leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, said at a news conference. "We believe it is the wrong prescription."
One day after announcing Republicans would have an alternative measure, Boehner offered few details. He said it would omit one of the central provisions in Democratic bills — a ban on the insurance industry's practice of denying coverage on the basis of pre-existing medical conditions. Instead, he said the Republicans would encourage creation of insurance pools for high-risk individuals and take other steps to ease their access to coverage.
Boehner also said Republicans would propose limits on medical malpractice lawsuits in what he said was an attempt to reduce the cost of coverage.
Rep. Mike Pence, R-Ind., the third-ranking leader, said that Democrats looked at their bill as a way to advance universal coverage. In contrast, he said, Republicans "believe the real issue back home is cost" of insurance, and said their alternative would be designed to tackle it.

Democrats have made elimination of the industry's practice a linchpin of their drive to overhaul the health care system. The industry has said it would not fight the change, and an accompanying restriction on its ability to charge higher premiums for certain groups, as the legislation includes a requirement for individuals to purchase insurance. Lacking that, the industry says millions of relatively healthy individuals would refuse to pay for coverage until they became sick, and the cost of premiums would rise sharply for everyone else.

Republicans oppose any government requirements for individuals to purchase insurance or for businesses to provide coverage.

The Congressional Budget Office is seen by lawmakers as the arbiter of claims about the costs and effects of proposed legislation, and the agency has been under intense pressure in recent weeks to compete assessments on several bills circulating in House and Senate.

In a letter last week, the agency's director, Dr. Douglas Elmendorf, said the net cost of expanding coverage in the House measure was estimated at $894 billion over 10 years, a figure reflecting a gross total of $1 trillion in federal subsidies as well as other spending.

The letter contained no similar assessment for the balance of the legislation and it was not clear when or whether one would be forthcoming.

In a letter last week to Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., on the general subject of health care, Elmendorf cautioned that some provisions in legislation have elements that raise costs and elements that lower costs.

"Tabulating all of the aspects of the proposal that would, in isolation, increase federal outlays would be complicated and would require somewhat arbitrary judgments" about calculating overall costs, Elmendorf said.

The ancient South American Nasca civilization may have
caused its own demise by clear-cutting huge swaths of forest, a new study has
found.

The civilization disappeared mysteriously around 1,500 years
ago, after apparently prospering during the first half of the first millennium
A.D. in the valleys of south coastal Peru. Scientists have previously
suggested a massive El Niño event
disrupted the climate and caused the Nasca's demise, but new research suggests
that deforestation
may have also played an important role.

The Nasca are best known for leaving behind large geoglyphs
called Nazca lines carved into the surface of the vast, empty desert plain that
lies between the Peruvian towns
of Nazca and Palpa. Though the lines have spawned many interpretations, including
the suggestion that they were created by aliens, most scholars now think they
were sacred pathways that Nasca people followed during their ancient rituals.
The enigmatic society that once flourished apparently collapsed around 500 A.D.
after a bloody resource war. To investigate this event a team of archaeologists
led by David Beresford-Jones from the McDonald Institute for Archaeological
Research at the U.K.'s Cambridge University
gathered plant remains in the lower Ica
Valley. Based on this
evidence and pollen samples collected by co-researcher Alex Chepstow-Lusty of
the French Institute of Andean Studies in Lima,
the scientists found that the Nasca cleared huge areas of forest to make way
for agriculture. The native huarango tree, which once covered what is now a
desert area, was gradually replaced by crops such as cotton and maize.
This vital tree was a crucial part of the desert's fragile ecosystem, serving
to enhance soil fertility and moisture and help hold the Nasca's narrow,
vulnerable irrigation
channels in place.
Eventually, the people cut down so many trees that they reached a tipping point
at which the arid ecosystem was irreversibly damaged, the researchers found. At
this point a major El Niño event likely occurred, triggering floods made
much worse by the lack of forests that used to protect the delicate desert
ecology.

"These were very particular forests," Beresford-Jones
said. "The huarango is a remarkable nitrogen-fixing tree and it was an
important source of food, forage, timber and fuel for the local people.
Furthermore, it is the ecological 'keystone' species in this desert zone,
enhancing soil fertility and moisture, ameliorating desert extremes in the
microclimate beneath its canopy and underpinning the floodplain with one of the
deepest root systems of any tree known. In time, gradual woodland clearance
crossed an ecological threshold - sharply defined in such desert environments -
exposing the landscape to the region's extraordinary desert winds and the
effects of El Niño floods."
Without the huarango cover, when El Niño did strike, the river down-cut into
its floodplain, Nasca irrigation systems were damaged and the area became
unworkable for agriculture. This finding fits with other evidence that shows
that the generations that came afterwards did not fare as well as their
predecessors: infant mortality rose, while average adult life expectancy fell.
The crops cultivated by their ancestors disappeared in the lower Ica Valley
and the area was probably afflicted by a severe drought.

The research also stresses the importance of huarango
woodlands for sustaining livelihoods and creating fertile areas in these
environments. There are now no undisturbed ecosystems in the region and what
remains of the old-growth huarango forests is being destroyed in illegal
charcoal-burning operations.
"The mistakes of prehistory offer us important lessons for our management
of fragile, arid areas in the present," said co-author Oliver Whaley of the
Royal Botanic Gardens in Kew,
England.

The new study is detailed in the journal Latin American
Antiquity.

Earth
Checkup: 10 Health Status Signs

History's
Most Overlooked Mysteries

Quiz: The
Artifact Wars

Original Story: Ancient Civilization Cut Path to DemiseLiveScience.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.

PHILADELPHIA – Mike Richards and Jeff Carter scored two goals apiece and rookie David Laliberte and Scott Hartnell also tallied, leading the Philadelphia Flyers to a 6-2 win over the Tampa Bay Lightning on Monday night.
The Flyers' excitement over their victory was offset by the news that star winger Simon Gagne will miss six to eight weeks. He is scheduled to have hernia and hip surgery on Tuesday.
Without Gagne, who has one goal and four assists this season, the Flyers peppered Lightning goalie Antero Niittymaki, scoring two goals in the first period, three in the second and one in the third.
Steven Stamkos and James Halpern scored for Tampa Bay.
The Flyers (7-4-1) have scored 12 goals in the past two games, and won for the fourth time in the past six. Goalie Ray Emery stopped 26 shots.
Despite leading the team in goals this season, Richards had gone six games without scoring. His first goal came off a feed from Chris Pronger, who corralled a bouncing puck. Hartnell assisted on Richards' second score. Carter had gone seven games without scoring.
Laliberte, recalled from the AHL Philadelphia Phantoms last week to replace Gagne, become the first Flyer to score in his first two NHL games since Eric Lindros on Oct. 6 and 9, 1992. He's the fifth to do that in Flyers franchise history.
Stamkos scored the first goal for Tampa Bay (4-4-4), capitalizing on a Danny Syvret turnover. Halpern netted the second, late in the third period. The Lightning have lost three of four.
NOTES: The Flyers have scored the first goal in 10 of their past 12 games. ... Pronger has recorded at least one point in eight straight games. ... Carter has played in 225 straight regular-season games.

WASHINGTON — A plan by congressional Democrats and the White House to curb future bad behavior on Wall Street would fail to resolve the bureaucratic infighting that helped bring about the global financial crisis, critics warn.

Congress this week begins considering legislation designed to ensure that never again are federal bank regulators asleep at the switch, as they were before the 2008 financial meltdown. To that end, the bill before the House Financial Services Committee would create a Council of Regulators , headed by the Treasury secretary.

The seven federal regulators who'd be the voting members of this council collectively would be charged with determining when an investment bank, hedge fund or other type of financial firm posed a risk to the broader financial system.

The Federal Reserve would be charged with monitoring risks in the largest financial firms that commonly are considered "too big to fail" without harming the global financial system.

Most analysts see the need for much closer supervision, but some critics argue that, as written, the legislation would transfer important supervisory powers away from the independent Fed and create a council that's tough only on paper.

"Terrible idea! It's an awful idea . . . it's just folly, just idiotic," said Laurence Meyer , a normally soft-spoken former Fed governor and a highly regarded economic forecaster.

Meyer rarely speaks harshly, but thinks it's a big mistake to create an inter-agency committee comprised of regulators with differing missions, turf to protect and a mutual lack of respect — and then ask them to forge common policy.

"If you really want to have improved supervision, you give it to supervisors and regulators. You are playing with fire here," said Meyer, who was a Fed governor from 1996 to 2002.

Meyer fears that Congress , in trying to punish the Fed for not preventing the recent crisis, actually may create more inter-agency squabbling than existed in the run- up to the crisis, when individual regulators saw portions of the problems but failed to work together to prevent the crisis from exploding.

Douglas Elliot also questions the approach. A former Wall Street investment banker, Elliot is now a researcher at the Brookings Institution , a center-left policy research center. Like Meyer, he worries that the well-intended council effort may create more bureaucracy.

"In terms of dealing with more subjective systemic-risk type issues, I really doubt that you can have that many people find sufficient agreement on something so difficult" as determining when a financial institution poses risks to the broader financial system, he said.

The nine-member council may not be nimble enough to do anything about accumulating risks, such as when stock prices or home prices become inflated and large financial institutions grow more exposed to asset deflation, he said.

"It's always very difficult to act against a bubble: A committee of bureaucrats doing it? I don't see it happening. Bubbles are politically popular, they are always going to happen," said Elliot, a former executive for almost 20 years at what today is J.P. Morgan Chase.

For example, he said, there was plenty of concern expressed about rising home prices before they eventually triggered the worst financial meltdown since the Great Depression.

"It's hard to imagine the Fed stepping forward, say in 2005, and trying hard to stop the housing bubble. They might have tried, but they would have been backed off pretty hard by the political sector," Elliot said.

Other critics, such as Vincent Reinhart , a former top Fed economist, argue that the council should be headed by an independent, presidentially appointed chairman — perhaps one confirmed by the Senate — someone who isn't protecting turf.

Otherwise, he warned, "It doesn't create the right incentives to operate" properly.

That view's shared by Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. Chairman Sheila Bair .

"This would provide additional independence for the chairman and enable the chairman to focus full time on attending to the affairs of the council and supervising council staff," Bair said in prepared remarks to Congress last week.

As proposed, the council's members would include the Fed chairman, the FDIC chairman, the Securities and Exchange Commission chairman, the comptroller of the currency, the chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission , the head of the National Credit Union Administration and the director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency . A state banking supervisor and a state insurance commissioner each also would have a seat on the council, but as non-voting members.

ON THE WEB

Frank's legislation

Bair testimony

Elliot paper

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To ask a question about this story or any economic question, go to McClatchy's economy Q&A

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DES MOINES, Iowa (Reuters) –
The Obama administration wants more flexibility in how it allocates food aid dollars to complement its new strategy to help small farmers in poor countries boost their food production, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said on Friday.

Vilsack and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who is leading the administration's three-year, $3.5 billion global food security initiative, did not rule out using U.S.-grown food aid as a tool for development projects.

But they told reporters food aid funding should also be used to buy crops in or near poor countries as a way to benefit local farmers while supporting U.S.-led development projects.

"We've relied on food aid to fill our gap in support for agriculture, and most importantly, to reach the poorest people," Clinton said, noting government funding for overseas agriculture development dwindled over the past decades.

"We're seeking to close that gap between development and human assistance by dedicating development resources to engage the poorest in the growth process and to support community development," she said.

The United States will no longer rely on food aid as its primary tool to help reduce world hunger, Vilsack said, but will continue to use it where needed.

(Editing by David Gregorio)

NEW YORK (Reuters) –
Galleon Group founder Raj Rajaratnam and five others were charged with engaging in the largest ever hedge fund insider-trading scheme, generating profits of more than $20 million over several years, U.S. prosecutors, the FBI and the SEC said Friday.

Insider trading by hedge funds Galleon and New Castle and Intel's Intel Capital unit took place in shares of Hilton Hotels Corp, Google Inc, IBM, Advanced Micro Devices Inc and other stocks, according to two complaints filed in U.S. District Court in New York.

All six accused have been arrested, a spokeswoman for the federal prosecutor's office in Manhattan said. The case could represent an important development in the government's enforcement of securities laws, she said.

"This is not a garden-variety insider trading case," U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara told a news conference. Beyond the scale of the scheme, "It shows that we are targeting white-collar insider trading rings with the same powerful investigative techniques that have worked so successfully against the mob and drug cartels."

He also fired a warning shot for the rest of Wall Street.

"Today, tomorrow, next week, the week after, privileged Wall Street insiders who are considering breaking the law will have to ask themselves one important question: Is law enforcement listening?" he said.

Securities fraud charges carry possible maximum prison sentences of up to 20 years.

SRI LANKA TITAN

One of the criminal complaints accuses Rajaratnam, considered the richest Sri Lankan in the world, of conspiring with Intel employee Rajiv Goel and Anil Kumar, a director of powerful management consulting firm McKinsey & Co. The alleged offenses took place for about three years starting in January 2006.

Galleon had as much as $7 billion under management, the complaint said. Intel Capital is the investment arm of Intel Corp. Officials from Galleon did not return calls seeking comment.

Rajaratnam, born into a family of well-to-do Tamils in the Sri Lankan capital Colombo, is one of the largest investors on the Colombo Stock Exchange.

(Reporting by Grant McCool and Joseph Giannone; Additional reporting by Edith Honan, Walden Siew and Ritsuko Ando in New York, Clare Baldwin in San Francisco, and Bryson Hull in Colombo, Sri Lanka; editing by Gerald E. McCormick, Phil Berlowitz and John Wallace)

PARIS – Over the years, the chief sommelier had forgotten they were there. And when the four bottles of 1875 Armagnac Vieux were finally unearthed from the labyrinthine wine cellar this week, they were covered in a black fungus that looked like matted cat fur.
The landmark Tour d'Argent restaurant, which dates back to 1582, is cleaning out its 450,000-bottle wine cellar, considered one of the best and biggest in the world. It is putting 18,000 bottles up for auction in December, an event that has captured the imagination of French wine lovers.
The restaurant is selling mostly wine but also some very old spirits, like three bottles of a Clos du Griffier cognac from 1788, the year before the French Revolution, as well as the ancient Armagnac, valued at euro400-500 ($595-$743) a bottle. The fuzzy fungus is nothing to worry about — it thrives on the fumes of such spirits and is easily wiped away.
The restaurant wants to cut down on wines it has in multiple to vary and modernize its selection.
"You'll probably see, we've got too many bottles," jokes chief sommelier David Ridgway.
Unlocking a padlocked iron gate, the tuxedo-clad sommelier ushered visitors into the restaurant's underworld, where bottles are stacked floor to ceiling in a succession of caverns. Though everything is registered in a computer, there are occasional surprises, like the 1875 Armagnac, which Ridgway came across while looking for something else.
The wine cellar of the Left Bank restaurant, known for pressed duck and spectacular views of Notre Dame, is a part of its history. A sign marks the spot where a brick wall was built in 1940 to hide the best bottles during the Nazi occupation in World War II.
Visitors are offered sheepskin blankets for the chill: 14 degrees Celsius (57.2 Fahrenheit) this week, but dipping to 12 degrees Celsius (53.6 Fahrenheit) in winter.
"I like the wine to live a little bit of the seasons, even though it's temperature-controlled," said Ridgway, a Briton who has overseen the restaurant's wine menu since the early 1980s.
Times have changed since then, Ridgway says. Expensive jewelry or clothes no longer indicate what diners will pay for wine, and it's not taboo now for people to say what they want to spend. Still, he has to tread carefully: Propose a wine too inexpensive and some "people feel we have looked down on them, almost."
Estimated prices at the Dec. 7-8 sale by French auctioneer Piasa start at euro10 ($15) a bottle and go up to euro2,500-euro3,000 ($3,716-$4,459) for each 1788 Cognac, one of which will go to charity.
Among wines on sale are Chateau Lafite Rothschild (1970, 1982, 1997), Cheval Blanc (1928, 1949, 1966) and Chateau Margaux (1970, 1990). The total sale is expected to bring in around euro1 million ($1.5 million).
Buyers can rest assured the bottles aren't counterfeit — a major problem in the industry — because the restaurant bought them directly from vintners. As for the restaurant, the timing of the auction is right even as Europe struggles amid a global economic crisis.
"I'm sure there are some amazing treasures in that cellar, and it's a good time to sell because the wine auction market has really come storming back" after tanking during the early months of the financial crisis, said Michael Steinberger, Slate's wine columnist and author of "Au Revoir to All That: Food, Wine, and the End of France."
The restaurant, a family business, was once the summit of French gastronomy, attracting royalty, politicians and film stars. Each duck served comes with a certificate: U.S. President John F. Kennedy ate duck No. 245,200, while Mick Jagger feasted on No. 531,147 and Princess Grace of Monaco savored No. 496,516.
But recent years have brought setbacks. Longtime owner Claude Terrail died in 2006, and his 29-year-old son Andre now runs it. The restaurant, where a prix fixe lunch menu costs euro65 ($97) and a tasting menu at dinner goes for euro160 ($238), long held three Michelin stars but is now down to one.
The economic crisis has affected the restaurant's finances only "a bit," Terrail said, in part because of its name and diverse international clientele. While the kitchen was recently updated, the wine sale may fund more extensive renovations down the line.
The restaurant's name means "The Silver Tower" in French, and all the bottles for sale are stamped with the restaurant's insignia, a tiny tower.

On the Web:

http://www.piasa.auction.fr/UK/

JAKARTA (Reuters) –
Indonesia was hit by a strong quake off Java island, in the Sunda Strait, on Friday afternoon, causing buildings to sway in the capital, Jakarta, and sparking panic in some areas as people fled homes and offices.

Indonesia's meteorology agency did not issue a tsunami warning after the quake, and there were no immediate reports of damage.

The U.S. Geological Survey said the quake had a magnitude of 6.5 and was at a depth of 34.5 miles. The epicenter was 187 km (116 miles) west of the capital Jakarta.

Indonesia is situated in a belt of intense seismic activity known as the "Pacific Ring of Fire."

A powerful quake measuring 7.6 struck off West Sumatra last month, killing more than 1,000 people and destroying hundreds of buildings.

Carom billiards, referring to games played on tables without pockets, including among others balkline and straight rail, cushion caroms, three-cushion billiards and artistic billiards

Snooker, which while technically a pocket billiards game, is generally classified separately based on its historic divergence from other games, as well as a separate culture and terminology that characterize its play.

Pool Sticks

Photo Mugs

Though at first glance a very simple object, the mug serves a number of functions which make it especially suited to holding hot liquids:

A puzzle mug is a novelty that is counter-intuitive. It will usually have several holes in the rim, making it impossible to drink from in the normal way. Frequently the solution is to cover all the holes in the rim, and then drink via another hole in the hollow handle.

PEMBROKE PINES, Fla. – If her check were bigger, 76-year-old Agnes Conti might be able to spring for a better cut of meat for her pot roast. She could afford to send her nine grandchildren more than $20 for their birthdays and Christmas. She'd be able to buy some nice new clothes, like she sees on QVC, not what she settles for at Walmart.
If only. The government has said the Social Security checks Conti and tens of millions of other seniors rely on as their primary source of income will not increase next year as consumer prices have fallen overall. And while the retired hospital clerk will get by, she'll be watching her spending even closer, knowing she can't expect the annual raise she's been accustomed to.
"We were good citizens all our lives. We went to work, we lived by the book, we weren't on welfare, we didn't ask the city for anything," Conti said while taking a break from crafts at a senior center here. "And what do we get?"
At the Southwest Focal Point Senior Center in this Fort Lauderdale suburb, seniors lamented the cost-of-living freeze and praised a White House plan for $250 checks to soften the blow. But they took all of the news in stride, saying they've had a lifetime of experience living on a fixed income and would manage with the money they currently receive.
Frank Ferreira sits in the center's lobby, near a decorative fireplace and an autumn centerpiece. The 90-year-old retired truck driver loves to sing, even practicing on a karaoke machine at home, and loves to dance even more. He gets about $890 a month from Social Security, most of which he hands over to his daughter to help pay his share of the bills.
The money isn't the biggest issue, Ferreira said. It's the message the government is sending about caring for seniors.
"I could use a little more, but that's all right, I get along," he said. "But I think that we deserve it, the elderly. You can't just discard them. You've got to help them."
Nearby, 89-year-old Miriam Danzinger is shuffling along with a walker. She gets about $1,300 monthly in Social Security, and after rent and other expenses, including a MediGap plan, she has little to spare. Her daughter helps pay her bills.
When her Chevrolet Cavalier broke down a few months back, Danzinger was forced to give it up. When she goes to the store, she's thrifty, having learned how to cut grocery costs when she ran a coffee shop. She lives as simply as possible.
"Listen, there's no money. People are going hungry," she said. "But what can I say? I'm only a little ant."
The freeze in next year's checks is the first since automatic Social Security cost-of-living increases were adopted in 1975, and follows a 5.8 percent increase in January, the largest since 1982. By law, the adjustments are pegged to inflation, which is negative this year because of lower energy costs.
The Obama administration plan to send $250 stimulus payments to about 57 million seniors, veterans, retired railroad workers and people with disabilities, would amount to a roughly 2 percent raise for the average Social Security recipient. If approved, the checks would cost about $13 billion, though there is no plan yet how to finance them.
While seniors here have grown used to the annual raises, many of them said they're willing to cut the government some slack given the recession and the federal deficit.
"When they have the money, they give us the raise. If they don't have it, they don't have it," said Lucy Polieto, a retired waitress who lives in Southwest Ranches. She wears a glittery gold sweater and chains around her neck, and walks with a spry bounce that belies her 94 years. "Sometimes, I'm so surprised when I look at the check and I get a raise."
The news this week that checks would be stagnant is buffered by some positives: Seniors won't be getting any less than they already do, most recipients' Medicare part B premiums will freeze as well, and the president's plan could soften the blow. But because the one-time stimulus payments won't be a lifetime raise, it means many seniors will never see what amounts to thousands of dollars.
For those in poverty, the raise could have made a huge difference. But for the average senior simply living on a fixed income, it is seen less in dollars and cents, and more in the tangible costs they might be more careful with.
Polieto cooks eggplant, chicken cacciatori and pasta fazool. A raise could have given her more leeway with her grocery bill.
"Then I could buy some steaks, maybe," she said. "But I'd rather have a pork chop."

WASHINGTON – The Food and Drug Administration approved the new swine flu vaccine Tuesday, a long-anticipated step as the government works to get vaccinations under way next month.
Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius announced the vaccine's approval to Congress — and said she hopes to get the first limited supplies distributed early in October.
The bulk of vaccine will start arriving Oct. 15, and Sebelius said it should be available at 90,000 sites around the country.
"We will have enough vaccine available for everyone" eventually, Sebelius said — everyone who wants it, that is.
The government has ordered 195 million doses for now but may order more if needed, she said. Typically 100 million Americans seek flu vaccine every year.
But the vaccine, which protects against what doctors prefer to call the 2009 H1N1 flu strain, won't arrive all at once. About 45 million doses are expected by mid-October. That's why the government wants the people most likely to catch swine flu, and to suffer complications from it, to be first in line — including children and pregnant women.
FDA licensure means that the government has certified the vaccine is made properly and meets specific manufacturing and quality standards. Separately, the National Institutes of Health is studying the vaccine dosage and safety. Last week, the NIH announced that one dose appears to protect adults — and that that protection kicks in eight to 10 days after the shot.
Studies in children and pregnant women are continuing.
The vaccine approved Tuesday is made by CSL Ltd. of Australia; Switzerland's Novartis; Sanofi-Pasteur of France; and Maryland-based Medimmune, which makes the only nasal-spray flu vaccine.

Cap Cana is located in the Eastern region of the Dominican Republic known as Juanillo. The site was founded as a new and more ambitious touristic site with contributions from international investors and strategic partners such as Ritz-Carlton, Sotogrande, Donald Trump and many others. The site has a Marina, Large resorts, beaches, and many others. Primarily founded as a site to attract international visitors. The Cap Cana Championship, a Champions Tour golf tournament, is held at Punta Espada Golf Club in Cap Cana, a course designed by Jack Nicklaus.

Cap Cana's area includes more than one-hundred and twenty millon square meters of land, of which twenty-five million will be developed in its first phase. It also includes 8 kilometers of beach and coasts, 5 of which are considered to be among the most spectacular in the Caribbean, locally considered to be neck-in-neck to the beaches of Bahia de Las Aguilas (literally, Bay of the Eagles) located in the southwestern municipality of Perdernales- often referred by past visitors as some of the most beautiful in the world.

Cap Cana

TEL AVIV, Israel – Quentin Tarantino says the most important part of his first-ever visit to Israel is to gauge the Jewish audience's reaction to his latest boundary-breaking film.
"Inglourious Basterds" tells the fictional story of a band of World War II-era Jewish-American soldiers turned vigilantes, who slaughter and scalp Nazi soldiers as retribution for the Holocaust.
Tarantino, who also wrote the screenplay for the unconventional "Basterds," defended his work of historical fiction and called the bloodbath of its Nazi characters a different brand of World War II film.
"To me, taboos are made to be broken. They're meant to be pushed over," Tarantino said Tuesday at a news conference ahead of the film's Israeli premiere. "One of the things that I think is a drag a little bit about movies dealing with World War II for the last 20 years is that ... all the movies have really focused in on the victimization of World War II."
The controversial filmmaker said he wanted to create a Western-inspired adventure story instead. The unorthodox film depicts an alternate universe in which all the top leadership of the Nazi Party are brutally killed in a single night.
"I'll be seeing it for the first time in an Israeli cinema. I'll be seeing it for the first time with an Israeli audience," Tarantino said. "I'm interested to see, 'OK, are there laughs here? Does the suspense work here as well as it works somewhere else?'"
Tarantino was joined in Israel by the film's producer Lawrence Bender and one of its lead actors, Christoph Waltz, who plays an offbeat SS colonel dubbed "The Jew Hunter."
The group also traveled together in Israel and visited Jerusalem's Holocaust museum.
Bender, who has collaborated with Tarantino on several other projects including "Pulp Fiction," "Reservoir Dogs" and the violent pair of "Kill Bill" movies, was the first Jewish person to read the script after Tarantino completed the final draft.
"I told him, as a fan, I thank you. As a producer, I thank you. As a member of the Jewish tribe, I thank you," Bender said.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) –
The United States will probably need to deploy more troops to Afghanistan despite almost doubling the size of its force there this year, the top U.S. military officer said on Tuesday.

"A properly resourced counterinsurgency probably means more forces," said Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee. He did not say how many more forces would be required.

The United States currently has 62,000 troops in Afghanistan and that figure is expected to rise to 68,000 by the end of the year. There were around 32,000 U.S. troops in the country at the start of the year.

Mullen also called for patience with U.S. efforts in Afghanistan, as the American public and members of Congress -- particularly in President Barack Obama's Democratic Party -- are becoming increasingly uneasy about the war.

Fifty-eight percent of Americans now oppose the war while 39 percent support it, according to a CNN/Opinion Research poll released on Monday.

"We can get there. We can accomplish the mission we've been assigned," Mullen said.

"But we will need resources matched to the strategy, civilian expertise matched to military capabilities, and the continued support of the American people."

(Reporting by Andrew Gray; Editing by Doina Chiacu)

Cap Cana is located in the Eastern region of the Dominican Republic known as Juanillo. The site was founded as a new and more ambitious touristic site with contributions from international investors and strategic partners such as Ritz-Carlton, Sotogrande, Donald Trump and many others. The site has a Marina, Large resorts, beaches, and many others. Primarily founded as a site to attract international visitors. The Cap Cana Championship, a Champions Tour golf tournament, is held at Punta Espada Golf Club in Cap Cana, a course designed by Jack Nicklaus.

Cap Cana is a tourism development with an investment of upwards of two billion dollars in the eastern lands of the Dominican Republic. This area renown for its great hotels and beaches, lacks exclusivity to the high upper class which Cap Cana hopes, in part, to offer. The area was conceived with the backing both financially and publicly of "elites" such as Donald Trump, Jack Nicklaus, and other holders.

Cap Cana Villa

BANGALORE (Reuters) –
Top U.S. consumer electronics chain Best Buy Co (BBY.N) reported a lower-than-expected quarterly profit on Tuesday as weakness in the entertainment software and appliance categories offset market share gains.

The retailer, which has steadily gained market share after main rival Circuit City closed its doors, said net profit fell to $158 million, or 37 cents a share, in the second quarter that ended on August 29, from $202 million, or 48 cents a share, a year earlier.

Excluding a tax impact, the profit was 40 cents a share, a penny below analysts' average forecast of 41 cents a share.

Best Buy, whose total revenue rose 12 percent to $11.0 billion in the quarter, raised its outlook for the fiscal year.

The retailer's stock was down 3.8 percent at $38.86 in trading before the opening bell.

(Reporting by Dhanya Skariachan in Bangalore, editing by Dave Zimmerman)

BEIJING (AFP) –
Beijing lashed out at the US on Saturday after Washington slapped steep tariffs on imported Chinese tyres, calling the measure "protectionist" and threatening retaliation in China's first trade spat with the Obama administration.

"China is firmly opposed to this measure of serious commercial protectionism by the United States, which not only violates world trade rules but also the undertakings given by the US at the G20," commerce ministry spokesman Yao Jian said in statements posted on the ministry's website.

"In the context of the global economic crisis this sets a very bad example. China reserves the right to retaliate," he said.

The comments come after the White House announced punitive duties of an additional 35 percent on Chinese-made tyres just weeks before Barack Obama is due to host his Chinese counterpart Hu Jintao at the G20 summit in November.

"President (Obama) today signed a determination to apply an increased duty to all imports of passenger vehicle and light truck tyres from China for a period of three years," the White House said in a statement on Friday.

The decision was taken "in order to remedy a market disruption caused by a surge in tyre imports," the statement said.

Obama had been under pressure domestically to curb rocketing imports of Chinese goods that critics suggest have cost more than 5,000 jobs in the US.

The government-run US International Trade Commission (USITC) had urged duties of up to 55 percent after union leaders claimed cheap Chinese tyres had tripled over the last five years.

However, in a move aimed at minimising Chinese anger, Obama opted for a lower figure, whereby tariffs -- already at four percent -- will soar by an additional 35 percent in the first year, 30 percent in the second and 25 percent in the third.

Chinese ire was piqued earlier in the week when the US imposed tariffs on pipes used in the petroleum industry.

During a meeting Thursday with Wu Banguo, president of the Chinese parliament, Obama stressed the importance of relations between the two nations, according to a statement released by the White House.

And last month Beijing appealed to Washington to reject punitive tariff proposals to protect the developing relationship between the two capitals.

The United States has long grappled with a ballooning trade deficit with China amid allegations that Beijing has been manipulating its currency to make its exports more competitive.

Obama entered the White House in January after campaigning for a robust trade policy with China.

His administration has prodded Beijing, now the third-largest buyer of US exports, to act swiftly on market reforms, saying American producers needed enhanced market access now to save and create jobs at home.

The US ambassador to Beijing announced last month that Obama would make his first presidential visit to China in the middle of November.

NEW YORK – Puddles soaked the warning track and ponchos dotted the stands when Derek Jeter stepped to the plate in the third inning, hoping to give the soggy Yankee Stadium crowd a reason for showing up in all this rain.
With one of his classic, inside-out swings, Jeter sent a sharp grounder skimming through the infield. And there it was, the record-setting hit that pushed him past Lou Gehrig.
Jeter broke the New York Yankees' hit record held by Gehrig for more than seven decades on Friday night with an opposite-field single against Baltimore. It gave Jeter 2,722 hits, one more than Gehrig, whose Hall of Fame career was cut short by illness in 1939.
"The whole experience has been overwhelming," Jeter said. "This is more than I could've imagined."
The captain kept right on going, too, with an RBI single in the fourth that put New York up 4-1. He left the game after a 67-minute rain delay in the top of the seventh when manager Joe Girardi pulled most of his starters with the Yankees trailing 10-4.
"I didn't expect that many people to be out there after the rain delay considering how hard it was raining when we started the game," Jeter said. "But the fans were incredible. It says a lot about how they feel about their team and more importantly how they feel about the history of their team. I appreciate each and every one that was there."
Jeter's record-breaking hit was remarkably similar to the one that tied Gehrig on Wednesday night, a well-struck grounder inside the first-base line. After this one, Yankees players poured out of the dugout and engulfed Jeter at first base with hugs and pats on the back.
"I didn't know that they were going to do that, so that sort of caught me off-guard," Jeter said. "It's a special moment for me, it's a special moment for the organization. To get an opportunity to share it with my teammates was a lot of fun."
Jeter spread his arms wide after rounding first base on his record-breaking hit and gave an emphatic clap as he headed back to the bag.
Rain-drenched fans, many wearing bright ponchos, roared during an ovation that lasted about 3 minutes. Jeter twice waved his helmet to the crowd of 46,771 — just as he did after tying the record. Fans chanted his name and the ball was taken out of play as a souvenir.
"For those who say today's game can't produce legendary players, I have two words: Derek Jeter. Game in and game out he just produces," Yankees owner George Steinbrenner said in a statement. "As historic and significant as becoming the Yankees' all-time hit leader is, the accomplishment is all the more impressive because Derek is one of the finest young men playing the game today.
"That combination of character and athletic ability is something he shares with the previous record holder, Lou Gehrig," the statement said.
When his grounder got past diving first baseman Luke Scott, Jeter's parents raised their arms in excitement. Joining them in an upstairs box filled with family and friends were his sister and steady girlfriend, actress Minka Kelly.
Jeter tied Gehrig's mark Wednesday night, snapping an 0-for-12 slump with three hits against the Tampa Bay Rays. The Yankees were off Thursday, and Jeter resumed his pursuit Friday at soggy Yankee Stadium.
"I'm happy I was able to do it quickly," he said.
The start was delayed 87 minutes by heavy rain that had tapered off by the third inning. Jeter struck out swinging against Tillman in his first at-bat, but came through his next time up.
Gehrig's final hit came on April 29, 1939, a single against the Washington Senators. The Iron Horse had held the club record since Sept. 6, 1937, when he passed Babe Ruth.
Gehrig's career ended suddenly in 1939. Two years later, he died at 37 from the disease that would later bear his name.

Jeter got his first hit on May 30, 1995, at Seattle and set the Yankees mark with 14 seasons of splendid consistency. His two singles Friday night gave him 1,363 hits at home and 1,360 on the road.

Now, No. 2 in Yankees pinstripes is number one in the record book for baseball's most storied franchise.

The 35-year-old Jeter also moved past Gehrig for 53rd place on the game's career hit list. Roberto Alomar is 52nd at 2,724.

It was Jeter's 268th hit against Baltimore, his most against any opponent.

Jeter finished 2 for 4 and grounded into an inning-ending double play in the sixth.

It was a special night at Yankee Stadium in several ways. Both teams and the umpires wore red caps with stars and stripes inside the logos to commemorate the eighth anniversary of 9-11. Pregame ceremonies included a moment of silence to remember those who died in the attacks.

Dorine Gordon, president and CEO of The ALS Association Greater New York Chapter, also congratulated Jeter in a statement that was passed out in the press box at Yankee Stadium.

ALS, of course, is the disease that afflicted Gehrig.

WILLISON, N.D. – Staff members of Williston's Mercy Medical Center are investigating how the mother of a newborn went home with the wrong baby. The hospital said it happened last weekend, the mistake was discovered within an hour and the woman was quickly reunited with her own child.
Mercy Chief Financial Officer Kerry Monson would not release details about how it happened or what families were involved.
She read a prepared statement indicating hospital employees are disheartened by the incident, are investigating the facts surrounding it, are reviewing policies and procedures and will take appropriate action.
___
Information from: Williston Herald, http://www.willistonherald.com

Florida Life Insurance

Paragraph 10 of FAS 113 makes clear that the 9a and 9b tests are based on comparing the present value of all costs to the PV of all income streams. FAS gives no guidance on the choice of a discount rate on which to base such a calculation, other than to say that all outcomes tested should use the same rate.

Achaemenian monarchs were the first to insure their people and made it official by registering the insuring process in governmental notary offices. The insurance tradition was performed each year in Norouz (beginning of the Iranian New Year); the heads of different ethnic groups as well as others willing to take part, presented gifts to the monarch. The most important gift was presented during a special ceremony. When a gift was worth more than 10,000 Derrik (Achaemenian gold coin) the issue was registered in a special office. This was advantageous to those who presented such special gifts. For others, the presents were fairly assessed by the confidants of the court. Then the assessment was registered in special offices.

MADRID (AFP) –
Rafael Nadal has pulled out of Spain's Davis Cup semi-final against Israel because of lingering fears over the abdominal injury which has affected his US Open campaign.

Nadal will be replaced by veteran Juan Carlos Ferrero in the defending champions' squad for the semi-final which takes place from September 18-20, the Spanish tennis federation announced.

The decision was taken in New York by Spain captain Albert Costa after world number three Nadal indicated that he would prefer not to play because of the stomach muscle problems he has endured at the final Grand Slam event of 2009.

Ferrero will join a squad made up of David Ferrer, Tommy Robredo and Feliciano Lopez for the tie to be played in Murcia, south-east Spain.

The Spanish team are already without their number two player Fernando Verdasco.

Nadal was on Friday due to resume his US Open quarter-final clash against Chile's Fernando Gonzalez which had been halted by rain the night before with the Spaniard leading 7-6 (7/4), 6-6 (3/2).

However, torrential downpours at Flushing Meadows again on Friday caused play to be abandoned with Nadal having to return on Saturday to complete his last eight match.

The winners of the Spain-Israel Davis Cup tie will face either Croatia or the Czech Republic in the final in December.

RICHMOND, Va. – Carl Edwards grabbed the lead from Kevin Harvick on pit road with 24 laps to go Saturday night and won the NASCAR Nationwide Series race at Richmond.
The victory finished off a remarkable race for Edwards, who had to start at the back of the field after his team made adjustments to his Ford after the field was impounded.
The work and penalty were clearly worth it as Edwards steadily worked his way into contention, first challenging Denny Hamlin for the lead with 70 laps to go.
Edwards had faded afterward, but when a caution for debris on the track flew on the 226th lap, the leaders all headed for pit road, and Edwards beat Harvick back to the track.
Harvick finished second, followed by Kyle Busch, Brad Keselowski and Davis Reutimann.
Hamlin had one of the dominant cars and ran up front all night despite several bad pit stops that cost him position. Once he went in as the leader and came out third, and another time he went in running second and emerged sixth, then quickly began making up ground.
Edwards qualified 39th and started at the back of the field after having to make adjustments to his car after the field had been impounded by NASCAR. It hardly showed as he quickly worked his way up through the field and was on Hamlin's bumper by lap No. 180.
Edwards pulled alongside Hamlin trying to make the pass, but Hamlin wouldn't let him, and several laps later, Edwards gradually began to fade and Harvick passed him for second.
By lap 201, Harvick was the one stalking Hamlin's bumper. He tried to pass him on the inside, but Hamlin wouldn't yield, and Harvick gained the lead in a side-by-side dual.
One lap later, Hamlin retook it and the cars continued to race side-by-side or nose-to-tail until Hamlin's Toyota wiggled in the fourth turn, causing him to nudge Harvick to keep from crashing. Harvick continued on unscathed, and Hamlin headed to pit road for tires.

EVERETT, Wash. – As a candidate for judge, Joe Wilson didn't mind sharing the name of former Ambassador Joseph Wilson. Now, he says, being mistaken for a South Carolina congressman who heckled President Barack Obama has given him a backhanded bump.
Wilson opened his nonpartisan campaign for a vacant seat on the Snohomish County Superior Court bench Thursday, the day after his 49th birthday — and also the day after Republican U.S. Rep. Joe Wilson gained notoriety by blurting out "you lie" during Obama's health care address to Congress.
Despite the five-term congressman's subsequent apology, the judicial candidate's page on the social networking Web site Facebook.com has been deluged with angry posts, campaign manager Jennifer Rinaldi said Friday.
Initially, "it was quite funny," Rinaldi said. "Joe was, like, `Look at all those people who are interested in my campaign.' "
Campaign workers have had to scramble to remove all the 200 or more misdirected posts, "starting with the ones with obscenities," she added.
Practically everyone who mistook candidate Wilson, an Everett native whose father was a judge on the same bench, for the congressional heckler has been from outside the state, "from back east to Alaska," Wilson said.
During a campaign for the bench last fall, he said, he encountered former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, known for his criticism of the Bush administration's prewar intelligence on Iraq. After that criticism, the identity of the ambassador's wife, Valerie Plame, as a CIA operative was leaked, ending her career with the spy agency.
Any confusion then did Wilson the candidate little good, but he said publicity over the mixup with the congressman has given his current campaign a boost just from heightened exposure.
"I think it's good," he said. "It's interesting to see all this concern about civility in politics, especially in this kind of a race, where you expect there to be plenty of civility anyway."

WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama is getting no shortage of advice on what to say in his health care speech to Congress, and much of it conflicts.
Liberals want him to issue a call to action in his Wednesday address, clear and bold. Conservatives hope he'll back away from his push for sweeping changes this year and break health care legislation into smaller pieces.
Everyone is hungry for specifics about Obama's stand on major elements of the package.
The biggest challenge he faces is taking ownership of legislation that until now has been shaped by political conflicts in Congress. Lawmakers return this week from a summer break that saw contentious forums on the issue in their districts and eroding public support for an overhaul.
Obama was previewing his new health care theme during a Labor Day speech Monday in Cincinnati at an AFL-CIO picnic.
The president, admired the world over for his oratory, has struggled to find the right message on health care. Polls show Americans are losing confidence in his vision of a revamped system with guaranteed coverage and lower costs.
On the Sunday public affairs shows, political luminaries lined up to offer advice on Obama's speech.
"I'm hoping for wisdom on Wednesday night," said Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., appearing on CNN's "State of the Union." Klobuchar said some of the emotion of the August forums is dissipating and constituents are now focusing on how their costs will keep rising if Congress fails to act.
Former Democratic Party chairman Howard Dean said Obama must face political reality and recognize he's not going to get much support from Republicans. Instead, Obama should use his prime-time address to rally his party, he said.
"What people value more than anything else in a president is strength, and that's what we've got to see," Dean said on "Fox News Sunday."
Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., said going for broke would lead Democrats into a dead-end.
"He should say, `I'm going to clear the deck. ... Here are the four or five things that we can get done, and we can do them in a bipartisan way,'" Alexander said, also on Fox.
On at least one high-profile controversy, there was little clarity from the Obama administration Sunday. The president's bottom line on a government health insurance option remained blurry as White House officials stressed support but stopped of short of calling it a must-have.
Obama "believes it should be in the plan, and he expects to be in the plan, and that's our position," political adviser David Axelrod told The Associated Press.
Asked if that means Obama will only sign a bill with a public plan, Axelrod replied: "I'm not going to deal in hypotheticals. ... He believes it's important."
The idea of a public plan has become a symbol for government's reach.
Supporters say it would give people secure benefits like those older Americans get through Medicare, while leaving medical decisions to doctors and patients. The plan would be offered alongside private coverage through a new kind of purchasing pool called an insurance exchange. At least initially, the exchange would be open to small employers and people buying their own coverage.
Insurers say they couldn't compete with government's price-setting power. Employers contend it would undermine job-based coverage.

While many House Democrats support a public plan, Senate votes appear to be lacking.

PARIS – Afghan President Hamid Karzai says in an interview published in France that the United States is attacking him because it wants to him to be more "docile."
Karzai's re-election bid has faced controversy over alleged fraud. Le Figaro newspaper quotes him as saying that fraud is "inevitable in a budding democracy."
He says Americans who are "attacking Karzai secretly" are wrong to do so — and it's in no one's interest for the Afghan president to be a U.S. puppet.
He says he believes he has won the August election. The official outcome is not expected for weeks.
Karzai said in the interview from Kabul published Monday that he has sought in writing, but failed to obtain, U.S. proof of allegations that his younger brother Ahmed Wali Karzai is a drug trafficker.

A sales tax is a consumption tax charged at the point of purchase for certain goods and services. The tax is usually set as a percentage by the government charging the tax. There is usually a list of exemptions. The tax can be included in the price (tax-inclusive) or added at the point of sale (tax-exclusive).

Periodic review of procedures relating to Sales & Use Tax data gathering and retention so that proper supporting documentation, including exemption and resale certificates, are available in the event of a State audit.

Sales Tax

LOS ANGELES – As he reached the door of the chow hall, Henry Navarro looked to his right and uttered an expletive. Then he looked to his left and spat out an even stronger one.
Many of the inmate firefighters at Mount Gleason Conservation Camp had been training for just this scenario for years. But nothing could have prepared them for the gantlet of fire they must now run.
The chow hall was supposed to be the "safety zone" for the more than five dozen people at the station. But it and every other building in the ridgetop camp were now engulfed in flames.
And their leaders — Capt. Ted Hall and Foreman Arnie Quinones — were somewhere out there in the inferno.
The order was given to make a run for the crew carriers.
As a swamper, essentially the senior inmate, David Clary had a radio and rode up front with the foreman. When everyone was in the small buses, he made a head count.
Meanwhile, the foremen were checking in with each other over the radios. Someone tried calling for Hall.
"Supe 16?" the radio barked.
Silence.
"Supe 16?" the call went out again and again.
The men heard nothing except the pounding of their own hearts and the ferocious roar of seemingly insatiable fire.
___
Mount Gleason, or Camp 16, is located north of Los Angeles, outside the city of Palmdale. A cluster of about a dozen buildings perched at 5,500 feet on a ridge deep in the Angeles National Forest, it is one of six inmate fire camps in Los Angeles County run by the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.
Opened in 1979, it is on the site of a former Nike anti-aircraft missile installation, LA-04, one of more than a dozen such batteries built to defend the "City of Angels" from nuclear attack. Visitors can still see the sealed remains of empty missile silos.
Camp 16 housed 105 inmate firefighters and provided six fire crews in a partnership between corrections and the County of Los Angeles Fire Department. The camp's emblem is a snarling wolf, and its members call themselves "the wolfpack."
Capt. Tedmund "Ted" Hall, 47, had been with the fire department 28 years, the last eight of them in these wilderness camps. Firefighter Specialist Arnaldo "Arnie" Quinones, 34, joined in 1998, and had been supervising and training inmates at Camp 16 for nearly four years.
Much of the year, the inmate crews haul sandbags to protect against winter floods, clear recreational trails and perform any other necessary routine maintenance. During fire season, they help clear flammable brush and establish breaks to halt advancing flames.
Normally, inmates are paid up to $3.90 a day for their labor, depending on the position. But prisoners working the fire lines in an emergency receive an additional $1 an hour.

Shortly after the so-called Station Fire began on Aug. 26, about half of the camp's inmates were evacuated. The 55 who remained were trained in wildfire suppression.

But for whatever reason, the U.S. Forest Service ordered the wolfpack to stand down. Banished from the front lines, the men continued to fortify their camp against the fire's inevitable onslaught.

In addition to Hall, Quinones and the inmates, there were three other foremen, two five-person LA County engine companies, two corrections officers, and a visiting facility captain with no firefighting training at the camp that day.

On Aug. 30, the crews had just finished eating a Sunday dinner of salad, turkey and mashed potatoes with gravy when the fire appeared in a drainage area at the southwest edge of camp around 4:45 p.m. Within minutes, the officers decided the blaze had reached a "trigger point."

With a buffer of about 75 feet between the dining hall and the nearest building, it was considered the camp's Alamo. Hall ordered the crews to wait there, and he and Quinones jumped into the "supe truck" — the large, red 4X4 pickup — and raced down to meet the fire.

Firing a flare pistol into the brush below the camp, the two men attempted to set back fires in hopes they would burn down to the main conflagration and deprive it of fuel.

Around 5 p.m., Hall and Quinones radioed that they were heading back to the safety zone. They never showed.

Outside, the smoke had turned broad day into darkest midnight. The panicked inmates watched through the windows as the flames worked their way behind them on both sides.

The LA County officers' quarters — or "BOQ" as the inmates call them — were the first to catch fire. The blaze then flashed across the weightlifting area to the left of the kitchen and began chewing into the roof of the cinderblock dormitory where the inmates slept.

The flames had jumped from the ground to the treetops, what is called a "crown fire." The conflagration was creating its own weather.

What appeared to be little dust devils were swirling everywhere. Clary, 41, looked on in rapt fascination as wood chips spun into the air and ignited.

Inmate Christopher Buttner, 37, saw the flames leap over the top of the chow hall from both sides and meet overhead, their color changing from a wild yellow to a ravenous red.

Their safety zone had become an oven.

The building started to fill with thick, acrid smoke. Then the flames began erupting from beneath the eaves.

By now, Buttner was certain the fire had consumed most of the oxygen outside the building. Some people lay down on the floor to get below the smoke, while others began shaking open their emergency rescue shelters.

Made of a reflective material, these emergency tents are a last resort when a position is about to be overrun. Some firefighters ghoulishly refer to the bags as "the foil shake and bake."

Navarro, 28, who had only been at the camp for two months, began to wonder if they would make it. It looked like hell outside.

He began to pray.

With their captain absent, Crew 5 Foreman Kevin Taylor assumed command. He headed for the door.

"Get ready to leave," he shouted. "I'm going to get the crew carrier."

Miraculously, the fire began to lift slightly. Another foreman, Andrew Cardullo, lined the men up and began marching them outside single file, their shelters tucked under their arms.

Just as the last inmate went through the door, the roof collapsed.

When no one could raise Hall and Quinones, the decision was made to drive around the camp and search for them. When that failed, the crews looked for a safe spot to wait out the firestorm.

They found a place toward the back of the camp that had no buildings and had already been burned over. They parked and waited for the smoke to clear.

Searchers later found Hall's vehicle in a canyon 800 feet below the camp. The men had apparently driven off the road in a lefthand curve and plunged over the side.

The inmates would not say whether it appeared the crash or the fire had killed the men. They also refused to divulge Hall's last transmission, citing the ongoing investigation.

That night, the inmates were taken to the Prado camp in Chino. During the drive, they reflected on the two who were lost.

Clary had worked under Hall and Quinones for two years. Everything he knows about fires and fighting them, he owes to them.

Now, he believes, he owes them his life.

Buttner was angry. He couldn't help thinking that if they had been allowed to stay on the fire lines, none of this would have happened.

When the fire was over, all that remained of Camp 16 was the visitors' bathroom.

Although the Station Fire is the largest in Los Angeles County history, Hall and Quinones are the only fatalities. Hall left behind a wife and two grown sons; Quinones' wife, Loressa, is about to deliver their first child.

At the Chino camp, the prisoners and their keepers talked about their fallen leaders and prayed for their families. Then they did something that guards and inmates don't normally do — they hugged.

Four days later, they were back on the fire lines.