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NEW YORK, July 22 (Reuters) - Moody's Investors Service on Tuesday said it may cut its ratings on Washington Mutual Inc.'s senior unsecured debt into junk territory, after the largest U.S. savings and loan posted a $3.33 billion second-quarter loss. The net loss equaled $6.58 per share as souring mortgages forced it to set aside more money for loan losses. "WaMu's asset quality issues primarily relate to the company's residential mortgage portfolio, but deterioration is also being experienced in the company's credit card portfolio," Moody's said in a statement. "To establish the necessary provisioning for this asset quality deterioration, Moody's...

House members spent $20.3 million on mailings to constituentsFriday, December 28, 2007 By DENNIS CONRAD ~ The Associated Press Pieces of mass mailings from Congressmen were seen Dec. 19 on Capitol Hill in Washington. Gerald Herbert Associated Press WASHINGTON -- U.S. House members spent $20.3 million in tax money last year to send constituents what's often the government equivalent of junk mail -- meeting announcements, tips on car care and job interviews, surveys on public policy and just plain bragging. They sent nearly 116 million pieces of mail in all, many of them glossy productions filled with flattering photos and...

B&F System Inc. Recalls Emergency Tool Kits Due to Fire and Shock Hazards WASHINGTON, D.C. - The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, in cooperation with the firm named below, today announced a voluntary recall of the following consumer product. Consumers should stop using recalled products immediately unless otherwise instructed. Name of Product: Emergency Tool Kits Units: About 43,000 Distributor: B&F System Inc., of Dallas, Texas Hazard: Booster cables in the recalled kits can have undersized wiring and inadequate connections, posing a fire and shock hazard to consumers. Incidents/Injuries: None reported. Description: The recalled emergency tool kits have booster cables in...

50 Cent believes his new album will outsell Kanye West's upcoming disc, and he's betting his solo career on it. Both 50 Cent and West have albums due out Sept. 11. 50 Cent, who has sold better than West, has been riled by forecasts that sales of West's "Graduation" could rival those for his "Curtis" CD. "Let's raise the stakes," the 31-year-old rapper told hip-hop Web site SOHH.com in an interview posted Friday. "If Kanye West sells more records than 50 Cent on September 11, I'll no longer write music. I'll write music and work with my other artists, but...

Children find food in McDonald's packaging up to six times more appetising than the identical snacks in plain wrappers, research shows. The study, designed to gauge the power of advertising, revealed that boys and girls as young as three found food tastier when they thought it was made by a big brand. The phenomenon is not just restricted to fast foods, with youngsters finding that milk and carrots tastier when they believed they had been bought at McDonald's. The research, carried at Stanford University in the US, comes amid growing concern about the influence of advertising on children's health. Child...

Huntington, WV businesses told to stop selling junk food to fat people The Asssociated Press HUNTINGTON, WV -- Ten Huntington businesses have been put on notice: Do not sell junk food to 19,000 grossly obese Huntington citizens or you could be fined. Attached to the warning letters mailed earlier this month are photos of the 19,000 fat people targeted by city officials. Assistant City Attorney Lora Mayonaise said the Huntington Police Department identified people who have body fat contents of 30% or more. "These people have rights as well, but it's not OK for them to lounge around the downtown...

WASHINGTON – In the latest scare involving products imported from China, the Consumer Product Safety Commission has recalled millions of toys believed to contain dangerous amounts of lead paint. The biggest single recall by the CPSC this month was for 1.5 million Thomas and Friends wooden railway toys containing lead paint that poses special hazards to children. The toys are wooden vehicles, buildings and other parts for a train set that bears the logo "Thomas & Friends Wooden Railway" in the top left-hand corner of the package. The toys that could contain poisonous amounts of lead in their surface paint...

ndustrial waste, including dirty carpet fluff, paper and used instant-noodle packaging, was found stuffed inside some toys made by factories in the northern province of Hebei and sold at rock-bottom prices nationwide, the newspaper added. "These fluffy toys with bacteria or even viruses in them could cause children to itch if they touch them for a short time, or even cause disease over the long term," the newspaper said, citing a research report by the quality authorities.

LONDON - Advertisements for flights, or holidays that include flying, should carry a tobacco-style health warning to remind people of the global warming crisis, a leading British think-tank said on Thursday. Using the traditional Easter holiday getaway to highlight the issue, the Institute for Public Policy Research said such health warnings would make people think twice about the impact their journey would have on the environment. "The evidence that aviation damages the atmosphere is just as clear as the evidence that smoking kills," IPPR climate change chief Simon Retallack said. "We know that smokers notice health warnings on cigarettes, and...

Has anyone else had this problem? How do you block spam that spoofs your own e-mail address as the sender? Of course, it makes it through every filter and it is an illegal operation to block your own e-mail address. Does anyone know a way around this?

Ford will announce on Wednesday plans to rename its Five Hundred mid-size sedan "Taurus," according to a report by Dow Jones Newswires. The name change will be announced at the Chicago auto show. A month ago, a report in BusinessWeek suggested Ford could revive the Taurus name, but it seemed unlikely at the time. CEO Alan Mulally was quoted as saying Ford should have never dropped the nameplate in the first place. "I havent had time to do the deep dive on why we stopped investing in Taurus, but I'd like to," said Ford CEO Alan Mulally. "The Ford Five...

Oxygen may be the clue to first appearance of large animals, says Queen’s prof The sudden appearance of large animal fossils more than 500 million years ago – a problem that perplexed even Charles Darwin and is commonly known as “Darwin’s Dilemma” – may be due to a huge increase of oxygen in the world’s oceans, says Queen’s paleontologist Guy Narbonne, an expert in the early evolution of animals and their ecosystems. In 2002, Dr. Narbonne and his research team found the world’s oldest complex life forms between layers of sandstone on the southeastern coast of Newfoundland. This pushed back...

1. "We're making a mint on your 401(k) — even if you're not." The number of 401(k) investors has soared in the past decade, to nearly 50 million from 28 million, according to Cerulli Associates. That torrid growth has created impressive efficiencies for the folks who run your plan. But it doesn't mean those savings show up in your account; in fact, they could be coming straight out of it. In a practice known as revenue sharing, providers get a cut of the expense ratio on the funds in your 401(k) to cover day-to-day "administrative costs." Since the fee is...

In the past, what we've learned about dinosaurs has been mostly based on bones. That might soon change with the recent discovery of an extremely well preserved, 67-million-year-old duckbilled dinosaur found with fossilized skin in the Hell Creek Formation of Montana, according to a North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences press release. The near-complete remains may yield precious soft tissue, thanks to a technique that recovered structures resembling blood cells in a Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton last year. "We've only been looking at one thing in the past, the dinosaur skeletal system, but we could learn so much more if we...

YET more evidence is in that the Ebola virus is spreading in a wave across Africa - putting the world's last big populations of lowland gorillas directly in its path. In 2003, an outbreak of Ebola struck gorillas living in the Congo. Bats in the area at that time were also carrying the virus, researchers recently discovered (New Scientist, 3 December 2005, p 20). That meant either the virus had always been lurking in bats, and spread to the gorillas, or that the bats were newly infected as the epidemic crossed their territory. Now researchers have found that the bat...

Modern Humans, Neanderthals May Have Interbred By E.J. Mundell HealthDay Reporter Mon Oct 30, 5:03 PM ET MONDAY, Oct. 30 (HealthDay News) -- There may be a little Neanderthal in all of us. That's the conclusion of anthropologists who have re-examined 30,000-year-old fossilized bones from a Romanian cave -- bones that languished in a drawer since the 1950s. According to the researchers, these early Homo sapien bones show anatomical features that could only have arisen if the adult female in question had Neanderthal ancestors as part of her lineage. The findings may answer nagging questions: Did modern humans and Neanderthals...

A 380 million-year-old fossil found in Australia has filled a gap in the understanding of how fish evolved into the first land animals. John Long, lead researcher at Museum Victoria, said the perfectly preserved skeleton has revealed that fish developed features characteristic of land animals much earlier than once thought. Long said: "We've got a fish from the Devonian period about 380 million years ago and preserved in three-dimensional stunning perfection. "It has revealed a whole suite of characters that link it to the higher land animals or tetrapods, so it's filling in a blank in evolution we didn't know...

An anti-poverty campaigner and a bank in Bangladesh have won this year’s Nobel Peace Prize. The purpose of the prize has become muddled. It may be better to withhold it next time. BRAVERY is a characteristic shared by most winners of the Nobel Peace Prize. On Friday October 13th, the Norwegian part of the Nobel Institute (a Swedish body that dishes out the other coveted prizes, for science and literature) named the recipient of the 2006 peace award. An unofficial shortlist included a pair of Irish rock stars who have received a lot of attention for trying to promote development...

You don't have to be a biologist or an anthropologist to see how closely the great apes—gorillas, chimpanzees, bonobos and orangutans—resemble us. Even a child can see that their bodies are pretty much the same as ours, apart from some exaggerated proportions and extra body hair. Apes have dexterous hands much like ours but unlike those of any other creature. And, most striking of all, their faces are uncannily expressive, showing a range of emotions that are eerily familiar. That's why we delight in seeing chimps wearing tuxedos, playing the drums or riding bicycles. It's why a potbellied gorilla scratching...

A comprehensive review by leading scientists about our Solar System which speculates on the possibility of life on other planets has been published.Solar System Update brings together the work of 19 physicists, astronomers, and climatologists from Europe and the USA in 12 chapters on the sun, the main planets and comets.The book, co-edited by Dr Philippe Blondel, of the University of Bath, highlights the many recent discoveries and in particular the amount of water, one of the essentials for life, found in the Solar System.Recent studies have revealed ice in craters on Mercury, the closest planet to the sun, and...

GW PROFESSOR JAMES M. CLARK LEADS DISCOVERY OF THE OLDEST-KNOWN CERATOPSIAN, AN ANCESTOR OF TRICERATOPS AND OTHER HORNED DINOSAURS New Find is Evolutionary Link Between Ceratopsians and Pachycephalosaurs, the "Bone-Headed" Dinosaurs WASHINGTON -- James M. Clark, Ronald B. Weintraub Associate Professor of Biology at The George Washington University, and Xu Xing of the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology (IVPP) in Beijing, have discovered the oldest-known ceratopsian, a finding that solidifies the close evolutionary evidence between ceratopsians and pachycephalosarians, the "bone-headed" dinosaurs. Roaming the earth 160 million years ago, the new basal ceratopsian dinosaur, Yinlong downsi, appeared 20 million years...

Molecular techniques confirm fin theory Performance on the dance floor may not always show it, but people are rarely born with two left feet. We have genes that instruct our arms and legs to grow in the right places and point in the right directions. They also provide for the spaces between our fingers and toes and every other formative detail of our limbs. Evolutionarily speaking, the genetic instructions used to construct and position our limbs were being perfected more than half a billion years ago in fishes, not along the sides of the body where the fins that preceded...

The ability to spot venomous snakes may have played a major role in the evolution of monkeys, apes and humans, according to a new hypothesis by Lynne Isbell, professor of anthropology at UC Davis. The work is published in the July issue of the Journal of Human Evolution. Primates have good vision, enlarged brains, and grasping hands and feet, and use their vision to guide reaching and grasping. Scientists have thought that these characteristics evolved together as early primates used their hands and eyes to grab insects and other small prey, or to handle and examine fruit and other foods....

Finches on the Galapagos Islands that inspired Charles Darwin to develop the concept of evolution are now helping confirm it — by evolving. A medium sized species of Darwin's finch has evolved a smaller beak to take advantage of different seeds just two decades after the arrival of a larger rival for its original food source. The altered beak size shows that species competing for food can undergo evolutionary change, said Peter Grant of Princeton University, lead author of the report appearing in Friday's issue of the journal Science. Grant has been studying Darwin's finches for decades and previously recorded...

In the 1993 movie Jurassic Park, one human character tells another that a Tyrannosaurus rex can't see them if they don't move, even though the beast is right in front of them. Now, a scientist reports that T. rex had some of the best vision in animal history. This sensory prowess strengthens arguments for T. rex's role as predator instead of scavenger. Scientists had some evidence from measurements of T. rex skulls that the animal could see well. Recently, Kent A. Stevens of the University of Oregon in Eugene went further. He used facial models of seven types of dinosaurs...

Roots of Human Family Tree Are ShallowRoots of the Human Family Tree Are Remarkably Shallow - All Alive Today Share 1 Common Ancestor By MATT CRENSON AP National Writer Jul 1, 2006 (AP)— Whoever it was probably lived a few thousand years ago, somewhere in East Asia Taiwan, Malaysia and Siberia all are likely locations. He or she did nothing more remarkable than be born, live, have children and die. Yet this was the ancestor of every person now living on Earth the last person in history whose family tree branches out to touch all 6.5 billion people on the...

University of California, Berkeley, physicist Saul Perlmutter has been awarded the 2006 Shaw Prize in Astronomy for his role in discovering that the universe is expanding faster than previously thought. Perlmutter is a UC Berkeley physics professor, an astrophysicist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and leader of the international Supernova Cosmology Project. He shares the $1 million prize with Adam Riess of NASA's Space Telescope Science Institute and Brian Schmidt of Australia's Mount Stromlo Observatory, all recognized for their leadership of two teams, the Supernova Cosmology Project and the High-z Supernova Search. In 1998, the teams reported the acceleration...

This flies in the face of such challengers as professor Bob Carter of the Marine Geophysical Laboratory at James Cook University, in Australia who said: "Gore's circumstantial arguments are so weak that they are pathetic. It is simply incredible that they, and his film, are commanding public attention." Famed climatologist and internationally renowned hurricane expert Dr. William Gray of the atmospheric-science department at Colorado State University went even further, calling the scientific "consensus" on global warming "one of the greatest hoaxes ever perpetrated on the American people." ......

Former German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer has accepted a teaching gig at Princeton. Starting this fall, he will teach international crisis diplomacy to the next generation of American elites. The Bush administration didn't much like what Joschka Fischer had to say during the Iraq war. So what will Washington say now that the former German foreign minister is trading his parliament seat for a professor's cap at Princeton? This fall, Fischer will teach the next generation of American elites about international crisis diplomacy at the university.

SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) -- Moody's Investors Service late Tuesday downgraded Tribune Co.'s (TRB) senior unsecured long-term debt ratings to Baa1. The outlook is negative. The agency said the downgrade results from the company's ongoing share repurchase activity, increased debt balances, and weaker-than-expected operating performance. Moody's said the negative outlook recognizes ongoing event and execution risks facing the Chicago-based media company and the media sector in general.

When ancient whales finally parted company with the last remnants of their legs about 35 million years ago, a relatively sudden genetic event may have crowned an eons-long shrinking process. An international group of scientists led by Hans Thewissen, Ph.D., a professor of anatomy at Northeastern Ohio Universities College of Medicine, has used developmental data from contemporary spotted dolphins and fossils of ancient whales to try to pinpoint the genetic changes that could have caused whales, dolphins and porpoises to lose their hind limbs. More than 50 million years ago the ancestors of whales and dolphins were four-footed land animals,...

NEW YORK, April 20 (Reuters) - Moody's Investors Service on Thursday cut both Knight Ridder Inc. (KRI.N: Quote, Profile, Research) and McClatchy Co. (MNI.N: Quote, Profile, Research) to junk status, citing McClatchy's acquisition of its bigger rival newspaper publisher. In mid-March, No. 9 U.S. newspaper publisher McClatchy said it would buy Knight-Ridder Inc. for $4.5 billion to become the second-largest U.S. newspaper chain. Downgrades, particularly to junk, tend to raise a company's borrowing costs. Moody's cut both Knight Ridder and McClatchy's bond ratings to the top junk level of "Ba1" from the bottom investment-grade rating of "Baa3." The new combined...

My web site JunkScience.com celebrated its 10th anniversary on April 1, 2006. To mark the event, this column spotlights 10 big junk science stories of the last 10 years. In no particular order, they are: 1. The most toxic manmade chemical? That’s what some called dioxin, a by-product of natural and industrial combustion processes and the “contaminant of concern” in the Vietnam-era defoliant known as Agent Orange. Billions of dollars have been spent studying and regulating dioxin, but debunking the scare only cost a few thousand dollars. Keying off Ben & Jerry’s claim on its ice cream packages that “there...

Microsoft's Anti-Spyware program is causing troubles for people who also use Symantec's Norton Anti-Virus software; apparently, a recent update to Microsoft's anti-spyware application flags Norton as a password-stealing program and prompts users to remove it. According to several different support threads over at Microsoft's user groups forum, the latest definitions file from Microsoft "(version 5805, 5807) detects Symantec Antivirus files as PWS.Bancos.A (Password Stealer)." When Microsoft Anti-Spyware users remove the flagged Norton file as prompted, Symantec's product gets corrupted and no longer protects the user's machine. The Norton user then has to go through the Windows registry and delete multiple...

Blanco: Netherlands trip could help with future flood protection U. S. Congressman, William Jefferson, D-La., right, pauses during a press event at Kurhaus in Scheveningen, the Netherlands, Tuesday, Jan. 10, 2006. At left are, Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco and U.S. Sen. David Vitter, R-La., center. (AP Photo/Bas Czerwinski) BATON ROUGE, La. Governor Kathleen Blanco says a trip to the Netherlands to study the flood control systems for the below sea-level nation showed Louisiana officials engineering marvels that could be used in future flood protection for the New Orleans area. Blanco returned a day earlier from her visit to the country...

Dear Annie: I have to pay restitution for a crime I committed, along with court fees and attorney fees. How in the world am I to get a job to do that? I know I should have thought of that before committing the crime, but I didn't. It was a non-violent crime, and I just wasn't thinking. And there is nothing I can do about that now. The detectives arrested me at my job, so I lost my excellent-paying position. I currently am out on bail and hoping to get work so I can defer some of the costs, but...

OK, here's something weird. Every week in Bad Science we either victimise some barking pseudoscientific quack, or a big science story in a national newspaper. Now, tell me, why are these two groups even being mentioned in the same breath? Why is science in the media so often pointless, simplistic, boring, or just plain wrong? Like a proper little Darwin, I've been collecting specimens, making careful observations, and now I'm ready to present my theory. It is my hypothesis that in their choice of stories, and the way they cover them, the media create a parody of science, for their...

Robert George Schulze showed up in Dakota County District Court on Tuesday to explain why, two years after he was cited by the city of South St. Paul, piles of wood still litter his back yard. Instead, Schulze, 88, was booked and placed in the county jail, where he is being held without bail for 30 days — or until he cleans up the clutter. "He's never been in prison before," said his wife, Mary, 84, standing in the offending back yard. "It will either kill him, or he's going to make a big story out of it later. I...

Conn. Gov. Vetoes School Junk Food Bill 2 hours, 30 minutes ago HARTFORD, Conn. - The governor vetoed a bill Tuesday that would have banned most soft drinks and junk food from Connecticut schools. Soft drink companies had lobbied fiercely against the bill, and schools expressed concerns about losing revenue from sales. Republican Gov. M. Jodi Rell said the effort to impose state standards on school districts for nutrition and physical education "undermines the control and responsibility of parents with school-aged children." The bill would have banned sodas and snacks deemed unhealthy by the state Department of Education from school...

Russia to test PAK-FA in 2007KUBINKA, Moscow Region, June 8 (Itar-Tass) -- The development of the fifth generation fighter proceeds in strict compliance with the schedule and the plane will be flight-tested in 2007, the commander-in-chief of the Air Force, Vladimir Mikhailov has said.About the condition of the Russian Air Force’s fleet of aircraft Mikhailov said, “the Air Force receives planes in sufficient numbers, there are aircraft at the reserve bases, too.”“We are also receiving new planes, including Su-34 and Su-27SM, and others still being tested. There is nothing we can criticize these planes for.”Russian presidential adviser Alexander Burutin told...

IN 1913, THE ARRIVAL IN AMERICA of a simple idea drastically revolutionized the Art World. The occasion was the Armory Show in New York, the first exhibition of Modern Art in this country, and the simple idea was this: The proper role of the artist is to express himself. That was utterly new. It turned all the preceding centuries of Art History on their head. Fast-forward to the end of the same century: that same simple idea, that the proper role of the artist is to express himself or herself, was being taught as gospel in virtually every college...

PARIS (Reuters) - Airbus said on Wednesday deliveries of its 21st-century flagship, the double-decker A380 superjumbo, would be delayed by up to six months, taking the flourish off one of the most trumpeted aviation launches in decades. Disgruntled airlines, at least one of which intends to seek compensation, announced the delay in delivering the largest passenger jet ever built just weeks after its maiden flight.

Hey, this message is for any and all conservatives who enjoy politics and would be interested in participating in a game that simulates the United States Government. New players start off in the House of Representatives, and can work their way up into the Senate, Governors Mansions, and even the White House. If you are interested, go to the home page. Also, I would encourage any prospective players to contact me either through email (rpickett@purdue.edu) or AIM (nerdzy152) to discuss the creation of your character

S&P cuts GM and Ford credit ratings to 'junk' 5/5/2005, 5:25 p.m. ET By JOHN PORRETTO The Associated Press DETROIT (AP) — A New York rating agency declared billions of dollars of debt owed by General Motors and Ford to be "junk" on Thursday, a significant blow that will increase borrowing costs and limit fund-raising options for the nation's two biggest automakers. Shares of GM fell almost 6 percent and Ford shares declined 4.5 percent after Standard & Poor's Ratings Services downgraded the debt to below investment grade, which is commonly known as junk or high-yield status. Both companies responded...

<p>Worries about tightening credit, a slowing economy and the financial health of some major debtors have made for a rough two months in the corporate junk bond market, and the turmoil may not end soon.</p> <p>Junk bonds ? those considered below investment grade ? have been a popular choice for many investors for the last decade because of their high interest rates, or yields. They have generated hefty returns in the last three years as the economy has rebounded and companies' finances have improved.</p>

Ford and General Motors saw their credit rating cut to junk status by Standard & Poor's yesterday, increasing the pressure on the two biggest carmakers in the US. S&P cut GM two notches from BBB- to BB and said the outlook was negative. It added that the downgrade "reflects our conclusion that management's strategies may be ineffective in addressing GM's competitive disadvantages. "Of greatest immediate concern is that GM's sport utility vehicles will no longer be as profitable as they have been in recent years. Sales have plummeted and industrywide demand has stalled." In a brutal assessment of GM's prospects,...

Asbestos and Alar are only two of many instances where vast sums were spent on hypothetical risk while science was ignored. In the past we used our natural resources freely. We took great pride in our ability to convert resources into products with a direct benefit to the public. We turned trees into houses, coal and iron into automobiles. Today we hear that we must stop using our economic resources. Scale back! Harvest fewer trees. Drill fewer oil wells. Use less fertilizer. Build no new power plants. Encourage the government to buy back land it once offered to its people,...

I just saw this on DUmmies, they're loving it. Show is on now. I've been turning him off since I saw how badly he wants Terri to die.

Recently, in a tête-à-tête with fans, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger said he wants to ban all sales of junk food in California schools. He disclosed he wanted vending machines that dispense fresh fruits, vegetables and milk in their place. Radical? Not really. Talk to dieticians, school counsellors, even educationists, and you will find that Schwarzenegger has probably said something very close to their heart. Says Swati Popat, director, Podar Jumbo Kids, Mumbai, "We have a whole generation of kids with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. And the reason for this is largely [the kind of] food [that children eat]." If you...

NEW YORK - Rappers 50 Cent and former protege The Game are calling a truce. The Game has a foundation, Black Wall Street, which empowers the community through business development. 50 Cent said he's launching a new foundation, G-Unity, to help people overcome obstacles. The two will donate to the Harlem Boys Choir and Compton Unified School District Music Program. "I realized that if I'm going to be effective at that, I have to overcome some of my own. Game and I need to set an example in the community," 50 Cent said in a statement. It comes a week...