Google: UN says poor nations on track to cut poverty
The global economic crisis has slowed the fight against poverty but the developing world is still on track to meet a key U.N. goal of halving the number of people living on less than $1 a day by 2015, according to a report released Wednesday.
The U.N. report cited new World Bank estimates suggesting that the crisis left an additional 50 million people in extreme poverty in 2009 and will leave some 64 million impoverished by the end of 2010, primarily in sub-Saharan Africa and eastern and southeastern Asia. Hunger may also have spiked in 2009 — with over 1 billion people undernourished — as a consequence of the global food and financial crises.
The effects of the crises are likely to persist with poverty rates slightly higher than they would have been had the world economy grown steadily at its pre-crisis pace, it said.
Nonetheless, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said the report shows that despite the financial, food and fuel crises, "the world is still making progress on reducing poverty, albeit more slowly."
WORLD
Reuters: Gillard becomes Australia's first female PM
Julia Gillard became Australia's first female prime minister on Thursday, as Kevin Rudd made an emotional and ignominious exit, saying she would call an election in coming months and asking voters to trust her.
Gillard immediately offered to end a bitter dispute over a controversial "super profits" resources tax, which is threatening $20 billion worth of investment and has rattled voters, saying she would throw open the door for fresh negotiations.
"I asked my colleagues to make a leadership change because I believed that a good government was losing its way," said Gillard.
The Australian dollar briefly jumped after the leadership change, while shares in BHP Billiton, the world's biggest miner, and Rio Tinto rose around 2 percent, on hopes of a mining tax compromise.
CBC: Earthquake rocks Quebec, Ontario
A 5.0-magnitude earthquake hit Quebec Wednesday, with tremors felt throughout southern Ontario and the northeastern United States.
Initial assessments measured its strength as being a magnitude 5.5, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.
The first tremor hit at 1:41 p.m. ET south of Echo Lake, Que., 61 kilometres north of Ottawa near the Ontario-Quebec border.
It was felt across southern and eastern Ontario and western Quebec, as well as in some U.S. states, including Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Vermont, New Jersey and New York.
BBC: Spanish train kills 12 on tracks near Barcelona
A high-speed train passing through a Spanish railway station has struck a group of people crossing the tracks, killing at least 12, officials say.
The train was travelling through Castelldefels Playa station near Barcelona when the incident occurred, civil protection officials said.
At least 13 other people are reported to have been injured.
Reuters: Israel launches spy satellite
Israel has launched its latest military spy satellite, boosting its intelligence-gathering capabilities in the face of Iran's nuclear program, a cabinet minister said on Wednesday.
The Ofek 9 was blasted into orbit by an Israeli-made rocket on Tuesday from the Palmachim air base south of Tel Aviv, joining three other Israeli spy satellites in space.
Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz told Israel Radio: "Israel's boosting of its intelligence capabilities is directed ... to a large extent toward the threat posed by Iran, first and foremost the nuclear threat."
Brigadier-General Nimrod Sheffer, deputy chief of the air force, said preliminary data had been received from Ofek 9 and it would transmit its first picture within days.
BBC: Kenya prisoners win right to vote in landmark ruling
A court in Kenya has ruled that prisoners will be allowed to vote in a referendum on a new constitution.
It is the first time that prisoners in the East Africa nation have been given the right to vote.
The ruling applies only to voting in August's referendum, but correspondents say it may lead to further concessions for future elections.
There will now be a rush to register an estimated 50,000 inmates in time for the referendum.
Economic Times: World's rich got richer amid '09 recession: Report
The rich grew richer last year, even as the world endured the worst recession in decades.The Power List of Top 100 CEOs | Methodology: How we did it
A stock market rebound helped the world's ranks of millionaires climb 17 percent to 10 million, while their collective wealth surged 19 percent to $39 trillion, nearly recouping losses from the financial crisis, according to the latest Merrill Lynch-Capgemini world wealth report.
Stock values rose by half, while hedge funds recovered most of their 2008 losses, in a year marked by government stimulus spending and central bank easing.
"We are already seeing distinct signs of recovery and, in some areas, a complete return to 2007 levels of wealth and growth," Bank of America Corp wealth management chief Sallie Krawcheck said.
UNITED STATES
Washington Post: Oil gushes into gulf following accident in containment effort
The gulf well is an uncapped geyser again after an accident forced officials Wednesday to remove the containment device that had been effectively capturing much of the gushing oil for weeks.
Separately, the response to the spill took a tragic turn when two people associated with the cleanup died in unrelated incidents, one a swimming pool accident and the other involving a person enlisted in the effort to skim oil, Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen announced. He had no further information about the deaths, which he learned about just before his noon briefing.
Precisely what went wrong with the containment operation is unclear. BP announced that, at 9:45 a.m. engineers aboard the drillship Discoverer Enterprise noticed "liquids" escaping from a valve inside the vessel. A BP spokesman said the company suspects that it was sea water flowing up into the ship. Allen gave a slightly different account: He said that hydrocarbons rose through a water line that had been pumping hot water down to the seafloor to prevent methane hydrates from clogging the cap.
Yahoo: Oil sludge washes in Florida, dolphin stranded
Florida saw its worst impact yet from the BP oil spill as thick oily sludge washed ashore on Pensacola Beach on Wednesday and emergency workers found an oil-covered dolphin stranded on the shore.
State emergency workers said the pudding-like mixture covered 3 miles of Pensacola Beach, a barrier island that is part of the Gulf Islands National Seashore.
"It's just a line of black all the way down the beach as far as you can see in both directions. It's ruined," said Steve Anderson, a Pensacola fisherman.
Small tar balls have washed ashore intermittently on beaches in the tourism-dependent western Florida Panhandle in the last couple of weeks, but large slicks of oil and tarry mats floated in on Wednesday.
ABC: Government Seeks Delay in Moratorium Ruling
The Obama administration on Wednesday night asked a judge to delay a court ruling that overturned a moratorium on new drilling in the Gulf.
In court papers filed with the U.S. District Court in New Orleans, the Justice Department said that it is seeking the delay while appealing the decision of U.S. District Judge Martin Feldman.
The Justice Department says a delay would serve the public interest by eliminating the risk of another drilling accident while new safety equipment standards and procedures are considered.
The Interior Department imposed the drilling moratorium last month in the wake of the BP disaster, halting approval of any new permits for deepwater projects and suspending drilling on 33 exploratory wells.
Yahoo: New Gulf spill cleanup head says job is to listen
The man who inherited the Gulf oil spill response from BP's embattled CEO said Wednesday that Americans have been too quick to blame his company for the environmental disaster now in its third month.
"I'm somewhat concerned there is a bit of a rush to justice going on around the investigation and facts," BP PLC managing director Bob Dudley said after touring a New Orleans wildlife conservation center where sea turtles sickened by the spill are being treated.
The Mississippi native said BP has been unusually open about making its internal investigation public and shared information that no other company would.
More work must be done, he said, before blame is assigned for the April 20 explosion of the offshore drilling rig Deepwater Horizon, which set off the worst oil spill in U.S. history. BP was leasing the rig from owner Transocean Ltd.
Los Angeles Times: Boat captain, despondent over spill, commits suicide
William Allen Kruse, 55, a charter boat captain recently hired by BP as a vessel of opportunity out of Gulf Shores, Ala., died Wednesday morning before 7:30 a.m. of a gunshot to the head, likely self-inflicted, authorities said.
"He had been quite despondent about the oil crisis," said Stan Vinson, coroner for Baldwin County, which includes Gulf Shores.
AFP: Fed maintains record-low rates
The US Federal Reserve has held its key interest rate at historic lows and has said the economy was continuing its modest recovery despite financial headwinds from abroad.
The Federal Open Market Committee said it was maintaining its federal funds rate target between zero and 0.25 percent, where it has been pegged since December 2008 to help the economy recover from its worst recession in decades.
CBS: Google Bests Viacom in Landmark Case
A federal judge in New York sided with Google Inc. in a $1 billion copyright lawsuit filed by media company Viacom Inc. over YouTube videos, saying the service promptly removed illegal materials as required under federal law.
Wednesday's ruling by U.S. District Judge Louis Stanton in the closely watched case further affirmed the protections offered to online service providers under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. The 1998 law offers immunity when service providers promptly remove illegal materials submitted by users once they are notified of a violation.
That safe harbor had helped persuade Google to buy YouTube for $1.76 billion in 2006, even though some of its own executives had earlier branded the video-sharing service as "a 'rogue enabler' of content theft," according to internal documents unearthed in the case.
Austin American-Statesman: Green Party signatures cost $532,500; were they legal?
A group with ties to Republicans paid $532,500 to gather petition signatures to land the Green Party of Texas on this year’s state ballot.
At least one high-ranking Green Party official thinks that money was a corporate donation.
The Texas Democratic Party, which contends that the money used to gather the signatures came from corporations and is therefore illegal, is suing to find out who put forth the money to gather the signatures.
The group behind the effort is called Take Initiative America, which does not disclose its donors. The Dallas Morning News reported earlier this month that Republican operative Tim Mooney of Arizona connected Take Initiative America to the Green Party after the group gathered the signatures.
CNN: Alleged bin Laden hunter returns to U.S.
An American man detained last week in Pakistan while on a hunt for Osama bin Laden arrived back in the United States Wednesday afternoon and promptly proclaimed, "We gotta protect our own!"
Gary Faulkner arrived in Los Angeles on a flight from Dubai, after being released in Pakistan without charge.
While heading to a car with family members he made brief, rambling remarks to reporters.
"It's not about me," he said. "What this is about is the American people and the world. We can't let people like this scare us. We don't get scared by people like this, we scare them. And that's what this is about. We've gotta take care of business, and we will take care of business."
Google: GOP sorry for 'chicken shack' quip about Ohio gov
A spokesman for Republican Ohio gubernatorial candidate John Kasich (KAY'-sik) is apologizing for taking aim at Gov. Ted Strickland's rural roots by saying he had "grown up in a chicken shack."
Spokesman Rob Nichols said Wednesday he shouldn't have referenced the Democratic governor's Appalachian upbringing when he criticized Strickland's handling of urban issues.
Nichols on Tuesday said, "Having grown up in a chicken shack on Duck Run, he has all but ignored our cities' economies and their workers."
Nichols said he realizes that the reference could be viewed as derogatory.
Detroit Free Press: Ex-Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick indicted by feds on 19 mail fraud, tax counts
Kwame Kilpatrick illegally used the nonprofit Kilpatrick Civic Fund like a piggy bank to pay for crisis consultants, a Cadillac, trips — even summer camp for his kids — a federal grand jury said today, charging the former mayor with 19 counts of fraud and tax evasion.
The indictment comes seven years after Internal Revenue Service and FBI agents began looking into the fund in the wake of a Free Press report that a homeless shelter operator gave the fund $50,000 during Kilpatrick’s first run for mayor in 2001. The newspaper reported that Kilpatrick then wrote a letter recommending the shelter receive for a multimillion-dollar public contract.
Despite Kilpatrick’s repeated claims to the contrary, the indictment says he used fund money for campaign and personal expenses, ranging from polling to yoga and golf lessons to college tuition for relatives.
New York Times: In Law Schools, Grades Go Up, Just Like That
One day next month every student at Loyola Law School Los Angeles will awake to a higher grade point average.
But it’s not because they are all working harder.
The school is retroactively inflating its grades, tacking on 0.333 to every grade recorded in the last few years. The goal is to make its students look more attractive in a competitive job market.
In the last two years, at least 10 law schools have deliberately changed their grading systems to make them more lenient. These include law schools like New York University and Georgetown, as well as Golden Gate University and Tulane University, which just announced the change this month. Some recruiters at law firms keep track of these changes and consider them when interviewing, and some do not.
SPORTS
Yahoo: Donovan injury-time goal puts US in 2nd round
But then, in one of the most stunning turnarounds in World Cup history, Landon Donovan scored on a lightning fast counterattack 45 seconds into 4 minutes of injury time. With the most amazing late-game moment in American soccer, the United States beat Algeria 1-0 and reached the World Cup’s second round.
"This team embodies what the American spirit is about," Donovan said. "We had a goal disallowed the other night, We had another good goal disallowed tonight. But we just keep going. And I think that’s what people admire so much about Americans. And I’m damn proud."
Former President Bill Clinton lingered in the locker room for 45 minutes after the game to congratulate the players. When Donovan scored, raucous cheers erupted on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange and even in White House auditoriums in Washington, D.C., according to e-mails sent to U.S. Soccer Federation president Sunil Gulati.
"That’s probably going to capture more people’s attention than if we won the game 3-0 and it was easy," American goalkeeper Tim Howard said. "That emotion, that passion is what American sports fans thrive on."
SI.com: Longest match in tennis history suspended at 59-59 in fifth set
On and on and on, and on some more, they played -- longer than anyone ever had before. And still there was no winner.
John Isner of Tampa, Fla., and Nicolas Mahut of France were tied at 59-59 in the fifth set at Wimbledon after exactly 10 hours of action when play was suspended because of darkness Wednesday night. It is by far the longest match in terms of games or time in the century-plus history of tennis.
"Nothing like this will ever happen again. Ever," Isner said.
The first-round match already had been suspended because of fading light Tuesday night after the fourth set.