Two interest-free loans totaling $66,885 that the Toledo Area Regional Transit Authority provided in 2007 and 2008 to the campaign committee for a transit levy are illegal and must be paid back, according to a finding by Ohio Auditor Dave Yost.The “finding for recovery” accompanying the auditor’s review of TARTA audit reports for 2008 and 2009 declares that the loans represent an impermissible “use of public funds to support or oppose the passage of a levy or bond issue.” The finding directs Citizens for TARTA to repay the money, and if the campaign committee fails to do so, holds TARTA General Manager James Gee financially responsible.The report noted that, as of the close of TARTA’s 2009 books, none of the money had been repaid to the transit authority.“It’s gratifying that Auditor Yost has validated my complaint,” said Waterville Mayor Derek Merrin, who in January protested to the Lucas County Board of Elections, Mr. Yost, and several other officials about the loans. Mr. Merrin said he discovered the loans by reviewing Citizens for TARTA campaign-finance reports.Mr. Gee, who is the transit authority general manager and the campaign committee treasurer, said the ruling mystified him, since the transit authority in 2008 had obtained an opinion from the Ohio secretary of state’s office indicating such loans were proper, and the loans were also shown repeatedly on campaign-finance reports and other documents without controversy.“We’re just really surprised by this,” Mr. Gee said. “This was disclosed on reports, and through previous audits with previous auditors. We’ve always made full disclosure on everything.”An e-mail that the transit manager cited to support the loans’ legality, however, reveals that the secretary of state’s office may have mistaken the transit authority for a private corporation instead of a public agency.TARTA received the opinion indirectly, through a request to the Lucas County Board of Elections. In the July 9, 2008, e-mail, elections board representative Olga Vallejo advised Mr. Gee that the secretary of state’s office had cited Section 3599.03 of the Ohio Revised Code, which governs political use of corporate funds.“Basically, they informed me that since the Ballot Issue PAC was supported by the Corporation such as TARTA, there is nothing in the code that says the Committee could NOT take a loan from TARTA,” Ms. Vallejo wrote. “This part of the code considers the loan from TARTA to the Citizens for TARTA PAC a contribution until the loan is paid back to TARTA.”TARTA, however, is not a private corporation, but rather a public jurisdiction, which collects a significant portion of its income from its two levies on real property in its service area.Mr. Gee said his office did not question whether the secretary of state’s advice, as relayed by the elections board, was valid for an agency like his.“I don’t know why the secretary of state’s office gave the opinion they gave, but we relied on it,” he said.Mr. Gee then repeated that the loans had been shown in TARTA’s annual financial statements, reviewed by the agency’s hired auditors, for several years without any exception being taken.But he said he did not know if the state auditor’s office, in reviewing the hired auditor’s work, had seen the detailed accounting that showed the loans. A summary report Mr. Yost issued along with his findings made no specific mention of the loans; Mr. Gee said they would be covered in the summary under “accounts receivable.”“In my mind, they are one and the same,” Mr. Gee said. “The contract auditor shared the information about the loans to the [state auditor’s] Toledo regional office in 2008 as a part of the 2007 audit.”Carrie Bartunek, a spokesman for Mr. Yost, said Friday the state auditor was conducting “further research” about the matter and was unavailable to comment.Ms. Bartunek said, however, that the issue was not one of the loans having gone unpaid, but that they were ever granted.“It’s just not supposed to happen at all,” she said.Mr. Yost’s finding was announced Thursday.The matter now goes to the Lucas County Prosecutor’s Office, which has 120 days to decide whether it will take action against Citizens for TARTA.While confirming that no payments against the 2007 and 2008 loans had been made by the end of 2009, Mr. Gee said Citizens for TARTA had in January begun making payments of $250 per month. He declined to link those payments’ start to Mr. Merrin’s complaint, since “I don’t know when that was written.”At that rate, the campaign committee would need more than 22 years to pay off the debt.“It has started modestly, but that could change,” Mr. Gee said. “Our intent is to repay quicker than that. The committee needs to fund-raise and develop a repayment plan that meets the auditor’s needs here. … There’s always been the intent to repay. That’s why we’ve shown it as a loan.”Mayor Merrin questioned the loans’ sincerity, and said that regardless, the money needs to be paid back promptly. Repayment could start with more than $21,000 that Citizens for TARTA had in its bank account the last time it filed a campaign finance report, he said.“The TARTA trustees need to do a thorough investigation of Mr. Gee,” Mr. Merrin said, questioning the propriety of having the general manager also be the campaign committee treasurer. “I really, truly believe they [Citizens for TARTA] had no intention of paying it back.”Mr. Gee said the campaign committee had held onto its bank account as capital for organizing fund-raising events.“We didn’t want to drain the account, and have nothing left to continue fund-raising to pay off the rest of the loan,” he said.James Bohn, president of the TARTA trustees, said he believes the transit authority “would have to get its money right away” in response to Mr. Yost’s finding, but he also considered Mr. Gee to have acted in good faith and does not consider him to have been “in the wrong for disciplinary purposes.”“My understanding is that it was all approved by the secretary of state three years ago,” Mr. Bohn said. “I knew the loan was out there. … I’m going to make sure it gets paid back.”Contact David Patch at: dpatch@theblade.com or 419-724-6094.

In 1832, a war broke out in Illinois between the American settlers and the Sauk under the leadership of Black Hawk. The war lasted 15 weeks and resulted in the deaths of 70 non-Indians. While historians often call this Black Hawk's War, it was not an invading force of Sauk warriors, but rather a migration of men, women, and children.

In many respects, Black Hawk was an unlikely leader. He was not a physically attractive, charismatic leader who could inspire his people with his words. He was in his sixties at the time of the war. He was a traditionalist who honored the old customs and ways, never wearing white people's clothing or tasting alcohol in any form.

Background:

In 1828, the Indian agent told the Sauk that their village of Saukenuk had been sold and that it was time for them to move west of the Mississippi River. Mess-con-de-bay (Red Head) was adamant that the Sauk did not want to leave the bones of their ancestors. Mess-con-de-bay, a chief and a man of considerable standing, was simply dismissed by the agent as a "vile unprincipled fellow" and as a "poor trifling, mean, insignificant old man".  

In Illinois, both the Secretary of War and the state governor called for the removal of all Indians from the state. American squatters then took over a Sauk village while the Sauk were on their winter hunt. The American squatters were told that the Sauk were not going to return to the village.

Later that winter, Sauk warrior Black Hawk, concerned about rumors that the Americans had occupied their village, traveled alone through the cold, snow-filled countryside, to see for himself. He found an American family occupying his own lodge. Through an interpreter he told them to leave and not to trouble Sauk lands. The family ignored the demand.

By spring, squatters who had moved into the Sauk village turned their cattle loose into the Sauk cornfields. Black Hawk talked with the American Indian agent and was told that the Sauk should give up all notions of ever returning to Saukenuk again. The agent recommended that the Sauk establish a new village west of the Mississippi.

Disturbed by the agent's advice, Black Hawk went to talk with Wabokieshiek, the Winnebago prophet. Wabokieshiek, who was in his mid-forties, presided over a village that was generally described as a mixture of many nations. He told Black Hawk that the Sauk should return to their village and that there should be no trouble between the Indians and the American settlers.

Sauk leader Keokuk then attempted to persuade the Sauk at Saukenuk to join the new Sauk community on the Iowa River. Black Hawk looked upon Keokuk as a traitor to his own people and refused the invitation. Black Hawk and his people attempted to live in their traditional village in a peaceful manner.

In 1830, the Indian agent for the Sauk expressed the hope that the government would provide justice for the Sauk and prevent squatters from taking over their land. The government, however, put the Sauk homelands in Illinois up for sale. When the Sauk returned from their winter hunt, they found settlers with legal titles plowing up the graves of Sauk ancestors.

In 1831, Black Hawk's Sauk returned to their village of Saukenuk following their winter hunt. The Sauk numbered 1,200 to 1,600 people with an estimated 300 to 400 warriors. In previous years, the Sauk had returned to their village after the winter hunt in a peaceful manner. In spite of this peaceful past, the Americans responded by calling up a force of 700 militia volunteers to protect the citizens of the state from the Sauk invasion.

Once again, Black Hawk consulted with Wabokieshiek, the Winnebago prophet. The prophet told him to stay calm and peaceful. If they offered no resistance to the soldiers, the prophet told him, the soldiers would not force them to abandon their land.

The Sauk met in council with the Americans. Before General Gaines could make his opening remarks, Kinnekonnesaut jumped to his feet and spoke. Gaines became visibly irritated. He then simply read his prepared address. It seemed to the Sauk that he was unwilling, or perhaps unable, to talk with them from the heart.

Keokuk complained to the Americans that the Sioux make life difficult and dangerous for them west of the Mississippi. He also pointed out that it was too late in the season to plant crops. He suggested that the Americans allow Black Hawk's people to remain in the village so that they could harvest the corn which they had planted.

When Black Hawk addressed the council, General Gaines demanded:

"Who is the Black Hawk that he should assume the right of dictating to his tribe? ...I know him not-he is not a chief-who is he?"

Black Hawk told the general that the women owned the fields, not the men. Then a woman selected by the other women addressed the Americans. She explained that the women owned the land and that they had never sold any of it, nor had they consented to transfer any of it to the United States. Gaines dismissed her comments and said that the President did not send him to make treaties with women nor to hold council with them.

The general ordered the Sauk to move within three days. He did, however, agree to provide them with corn to replace the corn which they would be unable to harvest. Twenty-eight chiefs and warriors signed the Articles of Agreement dictated by General Haines. The Sauk were to cross the Mississippi and never return to Saukenuk.

In order to avoid any confrontation with the state militia, Black Hawk left the state, leading some of his people to Iowa. Here they found little food and starvation began.

As soon as Black Hawk left, the American militia moved into their old village of Saukenuk and burned many of the lodges. The volunteer soldiers also vandalized the Sauk cemetery.

The War:

Black Hawk led about 400 Sauk warriors and their families back into Illinois in 1832. Their goal was to reclaim their traditional village of Saukenuk. The result of this move was a series of conflicts known as the Black Hawk War. The initial response by the Governor of Illinois was to mobilize the state militia, and President Jackson was determined to crush Black Hawk. Indian agent William Clark (of Lewis and Clark fame) writes of the Sauk:

"a War of Extermination should be waged against them. The honor and respectability of the Government requires this: -- the peace and quiet of the frontier, the lives and safety of its inhabitants demand it."

A force of 275 American volunteers overtook Black Hawk who had only 40 warriors with him. Facing odds that seemed to spell disaster, Black Hawk sadly sent out a delegation to discuss surrender. Even though the Sauk delegation was carrying a flag of truce, the Americans opened fire. Black Hawk decided that if he was going to die, he would die fighting. Rallying his warriors, they made a suicidal attack against the larger force. They ran shouting into certain death, and then, to their surprise, the American volunteers broke and ran. In memory of the American commander, the battle became known as Stillman's Run.

Following their victory at Stillman's Run, Black Hawk led his warriors through the countryside, burning farmsteads and taking scalps.  In Illinois, they attacked the American fort on the Apple River. Following this they battled a militia force at Kellogg's Grove, killing five Americans.

At the oxbow lake of the Pecantonic in present-day Wisconsin, Black Hawk's warriors battled American militia troops. The eleven Indians in the war party were defeated in a matter of minutes. Militarily this was a minor skirmish, but psychologically and symbolically it showed the Americans that the Indians could be beaten.

At Wisconsin Heights the Americans again engaged the Indians in battle. The Americans estimated that they killed 40-68 Indians, though Black Hawk later claimed that he lost only six warriors. Unknown to the Americans, some Kickapoo had joined the fight and nearly all of their warriors were killed at Wisconsin Heights.

At the Battle of Bad Axe the Sauk were finally defeated. At this battle, more than 1,300 Americans attacked the Sauk. When the Indians tried to surrender, the troops set upon them clubbing, stabbing, and shooting. It is not known how many Indians died in the massacre.

About 200 Sauk escaped from the massacre at Bad Axe by making their way across the Mississippi River where they were attacked by a Sioux war party.

Black Hawk, Wabokieshiek, Chakeepashipaho, Little Stabbing Chief, and about 25 others slipped away from the band before the beginning of the massacre.  They made their way through Winnebago country and established a clandestine camp on Day-nik (Little Lake) near present-day Tomah, Wisconsin. They were discovered by the Winnebago traveler Hishoog-ka who then notified his village chief, Karayjasaip-ka, of the band's presence. The Winnebago sent a delegation which included Chasjaka, who was Wabokieshiek' brother, to persuade Black Hawk to end his struggle and turn himself in to the Americans. The Sauk returned to the Winnebago village where they were greeted cordially.

Black Hawk gave his medicine bag to Karayjasaip-ka. His medicine bag had been passed down from Muk-a-ta-quet, his great-great-grandfather, to Na-na-ma-kee, his great-grandfather. For Black Hawk, this medicine bag symbolized the very essence of the soul of the Sauk people.

Together with Wabokieshiek, Black Hawk set off for Prairie du Chien to turn himself in. At the Indian agent's house, an hour before noon, on Monday August 1832, Black Hawk and Wabokieshiek appeared at the door as if they had materialized out of nowhere. Thus ended the Black Hawk War.

Aftermath:

Following his surrender at Prairie du Chien, Black Hawk, the Winnebago prophet Wabokieshiek, Sauk chief Neapope, and several others were sent to Washington, D.C. This journey would greatly enhance Black Hawk's fame and reputation.

They had a brief meeting with President Andrew Jackson. While Black Hawk attempted to explain to the President why he had gone to war-saying that he had been driven to war by the injustices against his people-Jackson was disinterested.

The party was then sent to Fort Monroe in Virginia where they were to be imprisoned. While at Fort Monroe, there was a procession of well-known artists who painted their portraits.

After only four weeks at Fort Monroe it was decided to release the prisoners, but only after they had been taken on a tour of the United States to impress them with the immense size and power of the country. Throughout the tour of the eastern cities, the group was met by large crowds and were treated as celebrities.

In 1833, Black Hawk told his life story to government interpreter Antoine LeClaire who published it as Life of Ma-ka-tai-me-she-kia-kiak, or Black Hawk. The book became a best seller and went through five editions during the first year.

(John)

For quite a few years, May Day was big among Communists. Every May 1, the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Union of Socialist Republics and some of his henchmen would be in Red Square, watching a procession of ICBMs and goose-stepping Red Army soldiers pass by. Those were the days! Communism collapsed, and for a while we would snicker at the few remaining countries that were benighted enough to cling to their socialist pasts--Cuba, North Korea, Albania. Now, even Albania is no longer Communist. So the glory days for Communist parades on May 1 are gone, right?

Not quite. Zombie documents an extraordinary May Day display in Los Angeles, where unions, most prominently the Service Employees International, teamed up with the Communist Party USA and other Commie groups. I love the "from Wisconsin to Libya" theme:

Note the innocuous-looking "PLP" on that poster. It stands for Progressive Labor Party. Quite a coincidence: I noted within the last day or two that long ago, I used to hang out in PLP circles. I had no idea the party still existed. In my day, it was known for believing that Mao's China wasn't radical enough.

Here is another PLP member; note the large SEIU banner just behind him:

As labor unions become increasingly marginalized, they have gotten radical to the point of parody. It seems like a good way to ensure their continuing irrelevance and likely extinction.

Jonathan Kislak, General Partner, Antares Capital Corporation

Mr. Jonathan I. Kislak, General Partner, is an experienced banker, mortgage banker, and investor with an extensive background in business and government. In 1991, Mr. Kislak founded Kislak Capital Corporation, a successful investor in start-up and early stage companies. From 1989 to 1991, Mr. Kislak was Deputy Under Secretary for Small Community and Rural Development at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, where he was responsible for policy development and management oversight for three USDA agencies: Farmers' Home Administration, Rural Electrification Administration, and the Federal Crop Insurance Corporation. Mr. Kislak is currently on the board of directors of Micro Networks/Andersen Laboratories and Let's Talk Cellular (LTCW). Mr. Kislak also serves as Chairman of the Board of Kislak National Bank, a community bank with seven offices in Miami-Dade and Broward Counties, Florida, and is Chairman and President of the bank's holding company, Skylake Bankshares, Inc. Mr. Kislak received a B.A. degree in economics from Harvard College.

Antares Capital Corporation
Antares Capital Corporation is a private venture capital firm investing equity capital in developmental and expansion-stage companies and in management buy-out opportunities.

Our partners are highly-experienced operating managers and entrepreneurs, willing to be constructive and helpful to the management teams running the companies in our portfolio. Our investments are concentrated in the Southeast and Texas in order to facilitate a healthy interaction between portfolio company managers and Antares' partners. We have a broad background in a variety of industries and business models.

Candidates for investment should have good management teams in place, established sales, and serve large and growing markets. There are no industry restrictions with the exclusion of real estate, distribution, franchisees, and mineral exploration projects.

Some Previous Investments:
Neotonus, Inc.
Marietta, GA; medical devices utilizing a proprietary, non-invasive technology known as Extracorporeal Magnetic Innervation, or ExMI(tm), initially targeted at urinary incontinence.

SportsLine USA, Inc.
Fort Lauderdale, FL; sports media company providing information, entertainment and merchandise to sports enthusiasts over the World Wide Web. SportsLine USA completed an initial public offering co-managed by BancAmerica Robertson Stephens, Cowen and NationsBanc Montgomery in November 1997, and a secondary offering led by BancAmerica Robertson Stephens in April 1998.

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3:23 P.M. CDT

THE VICE PRESIDENT:  Hey, it’s good to be back with you all. I’ll tell you what.  I want to thank General Colt for accompanying me up here.  I get the honor of introducing the General.

I was back here on February 11th, to welcome home members of the 3rd Infantry Brigade Combat Team in Afghanistan -- 155 of you got off that plane in the middle of the night, and the only thing that was more exciting than seeing you getting off is watching your families watch you all get off.  So it’s an honor to be back here so soon.

I know many of you have just gotten home in the past few weeks -- so welcome home.  And I know from experience that your families want more than anything to spend time with you.  And so, every time I show up at a welcome home ceremony, I’m always worried about getting in the way.  Because I remember when my son came back home from Iraq after a year, there were all these ceremonies.  And I kept saying, hell, man, stop, I want to see my kid.  (Laughter.)

So, anyway, I get it.  So let me just say how much gratitude the President and I have, and all Americans do, for you all.  You guys have been in the fight from the beginning.  And the risk you’ve taken, the incredible sacrifices you’ve made, the comrades you’ve lost, the losses you’ve personally endured -- you’ve been in some of the most inhospitable terrain in the world.

I’ve been there a number of times, back up those damn mountains.  I’d get a helicopter to go down 9,800 feet, and all I got on is a vest -- a bulletproof vest and a helmet and I’m out of breath climbing up about 40 clicks -- 40 feet.  And you guys are up there, 60 to 80-pound packs running around.  God, you’re amazing.  You just are amazing.  I’m in awe of the job you do, in awe of the job you do.  (Applause.)

As I said back in February, I want to also thank your families.  They made sacrifices as well, those intangible sacrifices -- those missed births and those missed birthdays, those missed graduations, those missed -- an occasional funeral. Perhaps more than anything else, just being missed, just not having you home.

The famous poet -- there was a famous poet I like to quote, John Milton, who said, “They also serve who only stand and wait.” Your families serve as well.  And the rest of America owes your families a debt of gratitude as well.  (Applause.)  And so, to all the families that are listening, I want to say their service is as real as yours and it’s as appreciated.

To the soldiers here, you are the most capable warriors.  Let me say this without any fear of contradiction, you’re the most capable warriors in the history of the world.  There has never, never, never, never been a fighting force as capable as you are.

It’s my job today and my honor to talk a little bit about the man that I get to work with every day.  We’ve just got to spend time with the assaulters who got bin Laden.  (Applause.)

By the way, I shouldn’t say this, but I’m going to tell you anyway -- the President is going to be mad I’m taking so long -- (laughter) -- but today was “Grandfather’s Day,” so I went by earlier this morning before I came out here to my granddaughter’s little spring play.  And after it’s all over she said, “Pop, come back to my classroom with me.”  I said, “I can’t, honey.”  She said, “Are you going someplace on Air Force Two?”  I said, “Yeah, I am, babe.”  She said, “Where are you going?”  I said, going to -- true story -- I said, “I’m going to Fort Campbell.”  I said, “We’re going to see the guys out there who got Osama bin Laden.” Absolutely true story.  She said, “Pop!” and then she grabbed a little friend of hers and she said,  “My Pop is going out to see the whales.”  (Laughter.)  Not the SEALs, the whales  (Laughter.) Because if they’re that good they got to be big, man.  They got to be big.  (Laughter.)  Well, you guys are the gorillas, I’ll tell you.

I want to tell you, look, I’ve watched -- I’ve been around a while with eight Presidents, so I’ve watched Presidents make some difficult decisions.  They’ve all had to make difficult decisions.  But sitting in every meeting getting ready and planning for this mission and assault, for the mission to get bin Laden, I saw something extraordinary.  I saw a President who was told the odds -- told the odds weren’t but much more than 50/50 that he’d be there and we could do this, but they were considerably less than 100 percent.

And I, along with the all the rest of his national security team and Secretary of Defense, stayed -- everyone else, we sat around there and he asked our advice and we gave him our advice, and we told him told him a little this and that.  And finally, he just looked at all of us and said, I got faith in the -- I got faith in these guys.

He walked off on his own without anybody giving him any guarantees at all and he decided -- because he believed in not only the SEALs, but believes in all of you.  He has absolute total faith in all of you.  And he made that determination, and it was an amazing thing to watch.  But it was because he had the absolute confidence that you were there.

And so he decided, when he got into office, because of the fight you all were in from the beginning, that the number one priority was to get Osama bin Laden.  And he knew the risks, he knew there were significant risks, and more importantly, special operations risks to the people who were risking their lives getting there.  But he didn’t hesitate, nor did your guys.

Bob Gates said something interesting.  I’ve known Bob for a long time.  He said, it was one of the gutsiest decisions I’ve ever seen made and one of the gutsiest raids.  This is going to go down in history, what happened.  This is going to go down in history.

And here to introduce your Commander-in-Chief, the guy that I’m proud to serve with, is one of the country’s leading warriors himself, Deputy Commanding General of the 101st Airborne Division, General Jeffrey Colt.  Ladies and gentlemen, General Colt.  (Applause.)

GENERAL COLT:  Thank you, sir.

I can only try to tell you today just how proud of you that this Division and this local community are.  But more importantly, today, you’re going to get to hear from the Commander-in-Chief just how appreciative he is of all of your service and your sacrifices.

Please join me in this great privilege of welcoming the President of the United States, Barack Obama.  (Applause.)

THE PRESIDENT:  Hello, Fort Campbell!  (Applause.)  101st Airborne Division—Air Assault, hello!  (Applause.)

General Colt, thank you for that great introduction -- it was great because it was brief.  (Laughter.)  More importantly, thank you for the extraordinary leadership that you’ve shown here at one of the largest Army bases in America.  (Applause.)

And let me just say, I make a lot of decisions; one of the earliest and best decisions I made was choosing one of the finest Vice Presidents in our history -- Joe Biden, right here.  (Applause.)

Chaplain Miller, thank you for the beautiful invocation.

I want to thank General Colt for welcoming me here today, along with your great Command Sergeant Major, Wayne St. Louis.  (Applause.)  The Quartet and 101st Division Band.  (Applause.)  All these troopers behind me —- you look great.  (Applause.)  You noticed they kind of hesitated.  (Laughter.)  

We got a lot of folks in the house.  We’ve got military police and medical personnel.  We’ve got the Green Berets of the 5th Special Forces Group.  I think we’ve got a few Air Force here.  Ohh -- (laughter.)  Well, we thought we did.  There they go -- okay.  Come on.  (Applause.)  And, of course, the legendary Screaming Eagles.  (Applause.)  And although they’re not in the audience, I want to acknowledge the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment —- the Night Stalkers -— for their extraordinary service.  (Applause.)

Now, I’ve got to say, some of you are starting to look a little familiar -- because last December, when we were at Bagram, I was out there to thank you for your service, especially during the holidays.  And we had a great rally, a big crowd -- it seemed like everybody was there from the 101st.

And since then, I know we’ve had quite a few homecomings.  The Rakkasans.  (Applause.)  Destiny.  (Applause.)  Strike.  (Applause.)  Bastogne.  (Applause.)  And some of the Division Headquarters —- the Gladiators.  (Applause.)  On behalf of a grateful nation —- welcome home.  (Applause.)   

Of course, our thoughts and prayers are with General Campbell, Command Sergeant Major Schroeder, and all of the Screaming Eagles and troops that are still risking their lives in theater.  And I’m so pleased that Ann Campbell and Marla Schroeder, and some of the inspiring military spouses are here.  Where are they at?  Right over there.  (Applause.)  We are grateful to you.  God bless you.  There they are.  Thank you so much.  (Applause.)  This happens to be Military Spouse Appreciation Day.  (Applause.)  And we honor your service as well.

Now, I didn’t come here to make a really long speech.  I know you're hearing that.  (Laughter.)  It’s like, yeah, it’s hot!  (Laughter.)  What I really wanted to do was come down and shake some hands.  I came here for a simple reason —- to say thank you on behalf of America.  This has been an historic week in the life of our nation.  (Applause.)  Thanks to the incredible skill and courage of countless individuals -— intelligence, military —- over many years, the terrorist leader who struck our nation on 9/11 will never threaten America again.  (Applause.)

Yesterday, I traveled to New York City, and, along with some of our 9/11 families, laid a wreath at Ground Zero in memory of their loved ones.  I met with the first responders —- the firefighters, the police officers, the Port Authority officers —- who lost so many of their own when they rushed into those burning towers.  I promised that our nation will never forget those we lost that dark September day.   

And today, here at Fort Campbell, I had the privilege of meeting the extraordinary Special Ops folks who honored that promise.  It was a chance for me to say —- on behalf of all Americans and people around the world —- “Job well done.”  Job well done.  (Applause.)

They’re America’s “quiet professionals” -- because success demands secrecy.  But I will say this.  Like all of you, they could have chosen a life of ease.  But like you, they volunteered.  They chose to serve in a time of war, knowing they could be sent into harm’s way.  They trained for years.  They’re battle-hardened.  They practiced tirelessly for this mission.  And when I gave the order, they were ready.

Now, in recent days, the whole world has learned just how ready they were.  These Americans deserve credit for one of the greatest intelligence military operations in our nation’s history.  But so does every person who wears America’s uniform, the finest military the world has ever known.  (Applause.)  And that includes all of you men and women of 101st.  (Applause.)

You have been on the frontlines of this fight for nearly 10 years.  You were there in those early days, driving the Taliban from power, pushing al Qaeda out of its safe havens.  Over time, as the insurgency grew, you went back for, in some cases, a second time, a third time, a fourth time.

When the decision was made to go into Iraq, you were there, too, making the longest air assault in history, defeating a vicious insurgency, ultimately giving Iraqis the chance to secure their democracy.  And you’ve been at the forefront of our new strategy in Afghanistan.

Sending you -- more of you -- into harm’s way is the toughest decision that I’ve made as Commander-in-Chief.  I don’t make it lightly.  Every time I visit Walter Reed, every time I visit Bethesda, I’m reminded of the wages of war.  But I made that decision because I know that this mission was vital to the security of the nation that we all love.

And I know it hasn’t been easy for you and it hasn’t, certainly, been easy for your families.  Since 9/11, no base has deployed more often, and few bases have sacrificed more than you.  We see it in our heroic wounded warriors, fighting every day to recover, and who deserve the absolute best care in the world.  (Applause.)  We see it in the mental and emotional toll that’s been taken -- in some cases, some good people, good soldiers who’ve taken their own lives.  So we’re going to keep saying to anybody who is hurting out there, don’t give up.  You’re not alone.  Your country needs you.  We’re here for you to keep you strong.

And most of all, we see the price of this war in the 125 soldiers from Fort Campbell who’ve made the ultimate sacrifice during this deployment to Afghanistan.  And every memorial ceremony —- every “Eagle Remembrance” —- is a solemn reminder of the heavy burdens of war, but also the values of loyalty and duty and honor that have defined your lives.

So here’s what each of you must know.  Because of your service, because of your sacrifices, we’re making progress in Afghanistan.  In some of the toughest parts of the country, General Campbell and the 101st are taking insurgents and their leaders off the battlefield and helping Afghans reclaim their communities.

Across Afghanistan, we’ve broken the Taliban’s momentum.  In key regions, we’ve seized the momentum, pushing them out of their strongholds.  We’re building the capacity of Afghans, partnering with communities and police and security forces, which are growing stronger.

And most of all, we’re making progress in our major goal, our central goal in Pakistan and Afghanistan, and that is disrupting and dismantling -- and we are going to ultimately defeat al Qaeda.  (Applause.)  We have cut off their head and we will ultimately defeat them.  (Applause.)

Even before this week’s operation, we’ve put al Qaeda’s leadership under more pressure than at any time since 9/11, on both sides of the border.  So the bottom line is this:  Our strategy is working, and there’s no greater evidence of that than justice finally being delivered to Osama bin Laden.  (Applause.)

But I don’t want to fool you.  This continues to be a very tough fight.  You know that.  But because of this progress, we’re moving into a new phase.  In the coming months, we’ll start transferring responsibility for security to Afghan forces. Starting this summer, we’ll begin reducing American forces.  As we transition, we’ll build a long-term partnership with the Afghan people, so that al Qaeda can never again threaten America from that country.

And, as your Commander-in-Chief, I’m confident that we’re going to succeed in this mission.  The reason I’m confident is because in you I see the strength of America’s military -- (applause) -- and because in recent days we’ve all seen the resilience of the American spirit.

Now, this week I received a letter from a girl in New Jersey named Payton Wall.  She wrote to me on Monday after the news that bin Laden had been killed, and she explained how she still remembers that September morning almost 10 years ago.  She was only four years old.  Her father, Glen, was trapped inside the World Trade Center.  And so, in those final, frantic moments, knowing he might not make it, he called home.  And Payton remembers watching her mom sobbing as she spoke to her husband and then passed the phone to Payton.  And in words that were hard to hear but which she’s never forgotten, he said to her, “I love you Payton, and I will always be watching over you.”     

So yesterday, Payton, her mom, and her sister, Avery, joined me at Ground Zero.  And now Payton is 14.  These past 10 years have been tough for her.  In her letter, she said, “Ever since my father died, I lost a part of me that can never be replaced.”  And she describes her childhood as a “little girl struggling to shine through all the darkness in her life.”

But every year, more and more, Payton is shining through.  She’s playing a lot of sports, including lacrosse and track, just like her dad.  She’s doing well in school.  She’s mentoring younger students.  She’s looking ahead to high school in the fall.  And so, yesterday she was with us —- a strong, confident young woman -— honoring her father’s memory, even as she set her sights on the future.

And for her and for all of us, this week has been a reminder of what we’re about as a people.  It’s easy to forget sometimes, especially in times of hardship, times of uncertainty.  We’re coming out of the worst recession since the Great Depression; haven’t fully recovered from that.  We’ve made enormous sacrifices in two wars.  But the essence of America -- the values that have defined us for more than 200 years -- they don’t just endure; they are stronger than ever.

We’re still the America that does the hard things, that does the great things.  We’re the nation that always dared to dream.  We’re the nation that’s willing to take risks -- revolutionaries breaking free from an empire; pioneers heading West to settle new frontiers; innovators building railways and laying the highways and putting a man on the surface of the moon.

We are the nation -- and you’re the Division -- that parachuted behind enemy lines on D-Day, freeing a continent, liberating concentration camps.  We’re the nation that, all those years ago, sent your Division to a high school in Arkansas so that nine black students could get an education.  That was you.  Because we believed that all men are created equal; that everyone deserves a chance to realize their God-given potential.

We’re the nation that has faced tough times before -- tougher times than these.  But when our Union frayed, when the Depression came, when our harbor was bombed, when our country was attacked on that September day, when disaster strikes like that tornado that just ripped through this region, we do not falter.  We don’t turn back.  We pick ourselves up and we get on with the hard task of keeping our country strong and safe.

See, there’s nothing we can’t do together, 101st, when we remember who we are, at that is the United States of America.  (Applause.)  When we remember that, no problem is too hard and no challenge is too great.

And that is why I am so confident that, with your brave service, America’s greatest days are still to come.  (Applause.)

God bless you.  God bless the 101st.  And God bless the United States of America.  (Applause.)

END
3:47 P.M. CDT

Ramesh in his order on Friday noted that besides the chief minister of Madhya Pradesh pleading for the ban order to be revoked, Congress general secretary and ex-chief minister of MP, Digivijay Singh too had lobbied to revoke the orders and the PMO had taken active interest in the case.

Elizabeth Rubin

Osama bin Laden’s death in a mansion in exclusive club house territory of retired Pakistani officers has exposed the terrible paradox at the heart of our war in Afghanistan—Pakistan’s hypocrisy and our acquiescence. Bin Laden’s Pakistani hosts, two rich businessmen called Arshad and Tariq Khan who owned the house and were killed with him, hail from Charsadda, 15 miles north of Peshawar. Their uncle was a retired Brigadier. (Arshad was apparently the courier, Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti, who led intelligence officials to the compound.) This is not a lawless land. This is highly controlled territory.

We give billions in aid to Pakistan’s military and civilian government. Yet Pakistan is harboring our enemies and even the enemies, one could argue, of its own healthy survival. Portions of our money are being funneled into the variety of insurgent networks whose fighters are killing American soldiers, Afghan soldiers, American civilians, Afghan civilians, European civilians, Pakistani civilians—mothers, fathers, children on multiple continents. Why, asks a US army major, did all his friends die in Afghanistan’s Helmand Province when the real problem is on the other side of the border? Why, asks a twelve-year-old Afghan girl in Kandahar whose family has been wiped out by US air strikes, are you bombing us? How has this come to pass?

In 2006, I traveled through Baluchistan and the North West Frontier Province of Pakistan, meeting with many Taliban fighters. I described it at the time as a kind of Taliban spa that offered them rest and rehab between battles in Afghanistan to which they would be returning. But it was more than that. I met Afghan Taliban who’d tried to make a deal with the Afghan government to get back to a life without fighting. One told me he was then arrested by Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence, the ISI, and blackmailed—they would release him if he would resume fighting and dispense with notions of reconciliation. He rose up the ranks of the Taliban command, traveling freely between Quetta in Pakistan and Zabul, a province in Afghanistan, where he was an intelligence commander for Afghan Taliban fighting coalition forces.

Another young Afghan Taliban I met in Peshawar was involved in the production and distribution of propaganda and recruiting DVDs—beheadings, inspirational music videos, and killings of American soldiers, all set to Pashtun war songs. But after spending hours and hours with him, I noticed his anti-infidel rhetoric beginning to subside, and when the subject of the ISI’s operatives came up, his whole demeanor changed. “Snakes,” he called them. Their first offense, he said, was trying to oust Mullah Omar and create a more obedient Taliban leader—like Jalaluddin Haqqani, an old jihadi we once financed to fight the Soviets but who has now set up shop in Waziristan under ISI protection. (Along with his son Sirajuddin, Haqqani stages the big-media-grabbing attacks in Afghanistan but seems to abide by the rules of his hosts—no attacks against Pakistan. He also runs a virtual kidnapping factory in Waziristan and the Pakistanis have done nothing to stop it.)

Then he said:

I told you that we burn schools because they’re teaching Christianity, but actually, most of the Taliban don’t like this burning of schools or destroying of roads and bridges, because the Taliban, too, could use them. Those acts were being done under ISI orders. They don’t want progress in Afghanistan.

He told me about ISI orders to behead an Indian engineer who was captured (and these orders were later corroborated). “People are not telling the story, because no one can trust anyone,” he told me. “And if the ISI knew I told you, I’d be fucked.”

That was 2006. Since then, just about everyone has learned the rules of the game: The ISI will continue to support the various jihadi groups (like Lashkar-e-Taiba) in order to attack and intimidate India, and get what it wants in Afghanistan—more or less a semi-independent extension of Pakistan. In 2008, American intelligence even proved definitively what Afghans and Indians on the ground already knew: that the deadly attack on the Indian Embassy in Kabul was planned with the help of the ISI.

And it isn’t just the ISI that is supporting the Taliban. During my travels through Pakistan, I had a long discussion about the Pakistan Army’s conflicted loyalties with Najam Sethi, the longtime editor of Lahore’s Friday Times. What does it want? Where does it stand? The Pakistani military retains a secular strain, but religion is central to its ideology. Since its inception in 1947, its raison d’etre has been to defend the Muslim world. This mission, however, is constantly undermined by the fact that, while Pakistan was founded as a refuge for South Asia’s Muslims, more Muslims live in India, and most of the attacks by the militant groups it supports have ended up killing fellow Muslims. There is a contradiction at the heart of the Pakistani Army and it’s expressed in what everyone has come to call Pakistan’s “double game.”

The military officers I met—many of them retired, living better than bin Laden, in lavish Latin-American style mansions with pure-bred dogs, English-style cooks, and manicured lawns—spoke to me as if they envied the jihadists’ clarity of purpose, their moral vision. In Sethi’s view, the military also harbors “a degree of self-disgust for selling themselves” to the Americans. They are still angry with the US for abandoning them after the Afghan jihad, and for sanctioning them over the nuclear program. The standard army phrase about their treatment by the Americans was, Sethi said, “They used us like a condom.”

Despite these widely held sentiments and the evidence against a strong alliance, US diplomats and generals have tried to sustain the image of close cooperation.

In 2010, I had the chance to ask Secretary of Defense Robert Gates about the US relationship with Pakistan. He’d just been to the country to urge its generals to go after the jihadists, the Taliban, and the Haqqani network. I asked Gates how he could possibly consider Afshaq Kayani, the chief of the Pakistani army, an ally. “It’s frustrating,” Gates told me. I waited for more, but nothing came. Your silence says a lot, I said. “Well, I was very specific in a couple of my meetings in looking at them point-blank and saying, ‘Haqqani and his people are killing my troops. I’ve got a problem with that,’” Gates responded. And what did they say, I asked. Gates is all control, but he cracked a small smile as he said: “They listened.”

Admiral Mike Mullen has spent the better part of the first two years of the Obama administration—hours and hours of flight time, face time, and phone time—cultivating a strong relationship with Kayani. Up until recently, Kayani’s Wikipedia entry said that he counted Admiral Mike Mullen, Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, as a close friend and ally. That line has now been removed. US officials maintain they don’t think that Kayani or ISI chief Ahmed Shuja Pasha had direct knowledge themselves about bin Laden. But even before Sunday’s assassination of bin Laden, a friend of mine told me that when he recently saw Mullen the admiral seemed puzzled by the breakdown of the relationship. “What relationship?” my friend asked. “[Kayani] was never on your side.”

Or as an advisor to Ambassador Holbrooke told me not long before Holbrooke died: “We see Pakistan as a flawed ally and the Afghan Taliban as our enemy. The truth is the reverse.” It is the Taliban, the advisor suggested, who can be worked with; they who distrust—and in many cases despise—the ISI overlords they depend on for safe havens and support. All along they’ve let it be known through different channels that they want to talk directly to the Americans. The question is how?

Will the revelation that bin Laden and family were dwelling in a newly built Pakistani Army mansion not far from the capital finally change the nature of the strange dance between the US and Pakistan? One wonders how good and smart men and women are taken in by diplomatic friendships, how they allow themselves to believe lies they know to be lies, or worse, settle for the lie because it seems there’s no way out, no creative solution to change the trusted old forms of diplomacy or the definitions of enemy and ally.

Of course at the heart of the problem lies Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal. We’d rather our Pakistani army enemy controls it than our Pakistani Taliban enemy. But will we ever know who is who, and can we tell them apart? And so our policy in Pakistan has collided with the Lot equation: How many righteous men must there be for God to save Sodom and Gomorrah, asks Abraham. And when God says fifty, Abraham keeps lowering the number. What if there is just one? How many American, Afghan, Pakistani, European casualties are worth keeping this Catch-22 policy alive?

And that's not even mentioning the deaths we're inflicting on the civilian population:

WASHINGTON -- White House Press Secretary Jay Carney reiterated on Thursday that the killing of Osama bin Laden would not alter the president’s policy with respect to the war in Afghanistan.

Speaking to reporters en route to the president’s Ground Zero visit, Carney said that strategy regarding the Afghan war “remains unchanged.”

“In many ways,” he elaborated, “while the mission against bin Laden was a singular event, it was part of a general intensification of our focus on the AfPak region, on the need to disrupt, dismantle and defeat al Qaeda, which was the primary goal of the president’s policy in the AfPak region, and it was reflective of a general success that we've been having in taking out al Qaeda members and terrorists in the region.”

"Success"? An economic black hole that's crippling our economy in a country called "the graveyard of empires" is a success? "Taking out" al Qaeda members and terrorists? Come on, Mr. President, it's time to get the hell out of there. Stop channeling Richard Nixon.

The public line is at odds with several reports that have surfaced in the immediate aftermath of bin Laden’s death in Pakistan. The Washington Post’s Rajiv Chandrasekaran, one of the most respected reporters on the beat, wrote on Tuesday evening that the Obama administration was “seeking to use the killing of Osama bin Laden to accelerate a negotiated settlement with the Taliban and hasten the end of the Afghanistan war.”

Several anti-war lawmakers, meanwhile, have heightened their calls for a more precipitous withdrawal of troops -- the process of which is set to begin in July 2011. At least one aide to an on-the-fence congressmember said that bin Laden’s death would encourage his boss to at least re-think his position. Another, Rep. Cliff Stearns (R-Fla.), has acknowledged that he is readjusting his position.

The death of bin Laden would, indeed, seem like an opportune break point at which the Obama administration could make major readjustments in its AfPak strategy without eliciting domestic criticism. A drawdown of forces would be a logical option. So too would be readjusting budget priorities to reflect the growth of al Qaeda’s presence in Pakistan.

• NBC’s Meet the Press: Tom Donilon, White House National Security Adviser; Rudy Giuliani, Fmr. Mayor of New York City; Michael Chertoff, Fmr. Homeland Security Secretary; Gen. Michael Hayden, Fmr. CIA Director; Bob Woodward, The Washington Post; Doris Kearns Goodwin, Presidential Historian; Katty Kay, The BBC; Mike Murphy, Republican Strategist.

• CBS’s Face the Nation: Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) and Donald Rumsfeld, former Secretary of Defense.  

• ABC’s This Week: Tom Donilon, National Security Advisor; Condoleezza Rice, Former U.S. Secretary of State; Husain Haqqani, U.S. Ambassador to Pakistan; Liz Cheney, Co Founder, Keep America Safe; Tom Ricks, Foreign Policy Magazine; Lawrence Wright, The New Yorker; Jake Tapper, Senior White House Correspondent; Martha Raddatz, Senior Foreign Affairs Correspondent; Pierre Thomas, Senior Justice Correspondent; George Will, ABC News.

• CNN’s State of the Union with Candy Crowley: Tom Donilon, National Security Adviser; Sen. Richard Lugar (R-IN); Anders Fogh Rasmussen, NATO Secretary-General; Anita Dunn, former White House communications director; Tom Davis (R), former U.S. Representative.

• CNN’s Reliable Sources with Howard Kurtz: Jamie McIntyre, LineofDeparture.com; Peter Baker, The New York Times; Jane Hall, American University; Frank Sesno, The George Washington University; Brian Ross, ABC News; Matt Lewis, DailyCaller.com; Dana Milbank, The Washington Post; P.J. Crowley, former State Department spokesman.

• Washington Week with Gwen Ifill and National Journal: James Kitfield of National Journal, Martha Raddatz of ABC News, Peter Baker of The New York Times, Charles Babington of the Associated Press.

• Bloomberg’s Political Capital with Al Hunt: Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels.

• NBC’s The Chris Matthews Show: Richard Stengel, Managing Editor, TIME; Helene Cooper, White House Correspondent, New York Times; Elisabeth Bumiller, Pentagon Correspondent, New York Times; and David Ignatius, Washington Post columnist.

• Washington Watch with Roland Martin: Deputy National Security Advisor Denis McDonough, U.S. Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis, U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, and Executive Director of the National Football League Players’ Association (NFLPA) DeMaurice Smith.

•Platts Energy Week: former Shell Oil President John Hoffmeister.

• C-SPAN’s Newsmakers: Jack Gerard, President & CEO, American Petroleum Institute.  Guest reporters are Dina Cappiello of the Associated Press and Jim Snyder of Bloomberg News.

•Bloomberg & WJLA’s energyNOW!: Jeremy Anwyl, CEO of car rating website Edmunds.com and Mary Beth Stanek, Director of Environment and Energy at General Motors.

•Politico’s “Turn the Table” after the jump.

We’ll update as we get ‘em.

continued…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner met with the CTA (Argentine Workers Central) in Casa Rosada, and its secretary general Hugo Yasky said "the president is concerned about the general rise in prices."

Representatives of trade union organizations and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) from across Europe are meeting in Brussels today to discuss serious violations of human and workers’ rights by the government of Georgia.

Among the countries of the former Soviet Union, only in Georgia has the once government-dominated union federation reformed and become a truly free trade union federation. However, since 2008, the Georgian government has waged a wholesale and vicious attack against the Georgian Trade Union Confederation (GTUC) and many of its affiliates.

The country’s labor laws were gutted in 2006. Meant to attract investment, the new code leaves workers and trade unionists with few rights on the job in law or in practice.  For example, in the public sector, the government has blocked dues deductions from union members to the unions, starving the organizations of funds. The government  has installed police watchdogs in schools and intimidated union representatives and teachers, all while promoting a fake, government-controlled union and encouraging or threatening members of the legitimate union to disaffiliate.

As a result of Georgia’s anti-worker actions, the AFL-CIO filed a petition with the U.S. Trade Representative to remove trade benefits for Georgia.

“Ten years ago we witnessed in the post-Soviet union area the same brutal union busting as we now see in Georgia,” says Sharan Burrow, general secretary of the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC).

Georgia is seeking to become a member of the European Union. But workers say behind then country’s façade of democracy and economic growth lie a growing number of human rights violations and total disregard and ignorance of health and safety issues.

 GTUC President Irakli Petriashvili says:

 European decision makers should not have any illusions that behind the democratic façade there is a government that is devoted to busting the democratic values and interests of workers. We cannot accept the increasing insecurity and lack of rights and the fact that workers are risking and losing their lives at work and that their organizations are being attacked by the authorities.

• Lib Dems wounded as UK votes to maintain first-past-the-post
• No campaign establishes unassailable lead of 69% to 31%

Supporters and opponents alike have acknowledged that the alternative vote would never be introduced for Westminster elections after the proposal received a thumping defeat in the national referendum.

With three-quarters of the votes counted, the no campaign had established an unassailable lead of 69% to 31%, another wounding blow to Nick Clegg, whose Liberal Democrats had secured a referendum as one of their cherished prizes in negotiations with the Conservatives when they formed the coalition last year.

Chris Huhne, the Lib Dem energy secretary and prominent campaigner for a yes vote, accepted that there would be no further attempt to introduce voting reform during this parliament and that it was "over" for the alternative vote. But he suggested he thought another question on electoral reform might one day be put to the electorate.

"I think it is very clear that the people have spoken, that the alternative vote is not a runner and we must respect that decision."

But voters had not expressed an opinion on proportional representation, he said. "The question on the ballot paper was 'Do you support AV?' and we must respect that."

The former Labour cabinet minister Lord Reid, a no vote campaigner, said the public had delivered a resounding rejection of AV and warned the Liberal Democrats not to look for any "backdoor" introduction of voting reform.

"Anyone who now wants to find some sort of backdoor method to bring something in that is not first past the post will be seen to have snubbed the clear wishes of the electorate," he said.

"The British constitution is not some bauble to be handed out as a consolation prize. It would be an outrage if such a resounding vote was to be ignored by the Liberal Democrats."

Nick Clegg called on fellow electoral reformers to "get up, dust ourselves down and move on" as he and David Cameron, a partner in coalition government but an opponent during the campaign, absorbed the result of the referendum that had become so central to the government in its first year in office.

The Electoral Commission said a total of 18.6 million votes were cast across Great Britain, giving a provisional turnout of 41.8%, higher than many had predicted. Only a smattering of 440 voting areas came out with a majority for a yes vote, including Cambridge, Glasgow Kelvin, and the London boroughs of Camden, Haringey, Islington, Lambeth and Southwark.

London, as predicted, had a relatively low turnout in a year where there were no other elections. But in Scotland, where voters were also electing members of the Scottish parliament, turnout reached 50.7%.

A spokesman for the yes campaign said: "Clearly it is a very disappointing day for us. We're very proud of the campaign we ran but we acknowledge that the overarching political circumstances of the country meant we couldn't get the message across. it is difficult to sell a solution when the British people don't see a problem."

There is an assessment that being associated with the Lib Dems was toxic and as soon as Cameron got involved, it was game over for the yes campaign. Some campaign managers have tried to ease unhappiness in the team by saying that it was a credit to them that Cameron felt he had to get involved. But they described the prime minister as a "game changer".

Labour's Lord Mandelson, a keen supporter of electoral reform, said: "I think that's very disappointing, but I'm equally entirely unsurprised by it. Nobody could have foreseen the extent to which the whole vote over the last 24 hours has become a referendum on the Liberal Democrats in general and Nick Clegg in particular.

"We paid a big price for combining the AV referendum with the first elections to be held after the general election last year."

He was critical of how the yes campaign had been run. "The groundwork was not done for this referendum. I think that the public felt the thing had come out of the blue as the result of some arrangement between the coalition partners and they didn't see why AV was such a big deal.

"I don't think they felt AV was the solution to many of the problems they feel are in our political system."

Results at a glance

323 of 440 districts declared at 7.15pm

Yes 31.6% 3,905,343 votes

No 68.3% 8,427,622

Scottish parliament (seats)

SNP 69 (+23)

Labour 37 (- 7)

Conservative 15 (+ 5)

LibDem 5 (- 12)

Other 3 (+ 1)

Welsh assembly

Labour 30 (+4)

Conservative 14 (+2)

Plaid Cymru 11 (– 4)

LibDem 5 (– 1)

Other 0 (– 1)

English councils

With 238 of the 279 councils declared, results so far are:

Conservative 131 councils (+5) 4,015 councillors (+56)

Labour 54 councils (+24) 2,130 councillors (+711)

LibDem 8 councils (– 9) 898 councillors (– 599)

• Uefa urges its 53 memebers to vote for Sepp Blatter
• Endorsement signed by Uefa president Michel Platini

Sepp Blatter's chances of remaining as Fifa president for another four years have been boosted by the endorsement of Uefa's executive committee, which urged its 53 member associations to vote for him in next month's election.

The endorsement, signed by the Uefa president Michel Platini and the other 15 members of the committee including England's Geoff Thompson, "strongly recommended" that they side with the 75-year-old president over the challenger Mohamed bin Hammam in the 1 June vote.

Uefa's support is not unexpected as Platini is widely expected to run for Fifa president in 2015 and could see that ambition thwarted if Bin Hammam wins. Blatter has promised to serve only one more four-year term.

However, the Qatari challenger – who backed Blatter's campaigns in 1998 and 2002 and is a longstanding Fifa executive committee member but says it is time for a change at the top and promises to usher in a new era of transparency – had entertained hopes of doing a deal with Platini.

The Uefa endorsement caps a good week for Blatter's campaign after visa problems meant Bin Hammam was unable to address Concacaf's congress in Miami.

Blatter left the congress convinced that Concacaf's controversial president Jack Warner would deliver the region's pivotal bloc of 35 votes for him and while Bin Hammam has been promised a later audience in Trinidad, he will not meet all 35 member associations.

Blatter is also believed to be confident of the vast majority of Uefa's 53 votes and has received pledges of support from the confederations in South America and Oceania.

Both candidates have made financial promises to the 208 Fifa members entitled to vote. Blatter, stung by fierce criticism and corruption allegations against Fifa during the bidding process for the 2018 and 2022 World Cups, has promised to improve transparency amid a blizzard of new policy initiaves.

He said he would overhaul the World Cup bidding process, establish a new board to improve Fifa's credibility and review calls to introduce goalline technology.

Next week, he will announce a crackdown on match fixing alongside Interpol and launch a taskforce featuring Franz Beckenbauer, Pele, Sir Bobby Charlton and the FA general secretary Alex Horne that is supposed to help improve the standard of play and entertainment value in international football.

Uefa's directive, plus the likelihood that the other home nations will vote for Blatter and the endorsement of Thompson, could leave the English FA in a difficult position.

There are those on the FA board who would find it unpalatable to back Blatter given his role in undermining England's 2018 World Cup bid, which ended in humiliation with only two votes.

The FA board has hosted both Blatter and Bin Hammam, and is expected to discuss the issue at its board meeting on 19 May. An alternative option would be to abstain, but that would yield the FA little political benefit.

Bin Hammam's well-funded campaign will hope to build on support in Asia and parts of Africa, where there are a combined 99 votes on offer, and continue to work to undermine Blatter's support base elsewhere.

Speaker of the House John Boehner recently returned from Iraq with the message that he would support keeping some U.S. troops in Iraq after December 2011.  While this surely reflects what he heard from the American officials he saw in Baghdad, it distracts attention from a more important question about the future U.S. relationship with Iraq in the primary area where Rep. Boehner could actually help:   halting short-sighted plans to slash the State Department budget which could cripple the civilian mission to Iraq at an exceptionally delicate transitional moment.

Rep. Boehner can not control whether Iraq requests a new SOFA to allow troops to stay. In fact, keeping a small number of U.S. troops in Iraq is not the most important issue for the future American role in Iraq, and the trends in Iraqi politics make it increasingly unlikely that the long-expected request to renegotiate the Status of Forces Agreement will be forthcoming regardless of what Americans want.  But Congress does have a decisive role in determining whether to support and fund the civilian mission in Iraq.    Rep. Boehner can do virtually nothing about whether or not Iraqis decide to request a renegotiation of the SOFA, but he can work to ensure that Congress funds the civilian part of American foreign policy which are so urgently needed at this historical moment. He should.  

[[BREAK]]

It is understandable why the question of whether U.S. troops will stay in Iraq dominates what remains of the debate about Iraq, but it really shouldn't. I don't think that a few thousand U.S. troops remaining in Iraq at the invitation of the Iraqi government would be that big a deal -- the removal of 140,000 troops would satisfy the Obama campaign's commitment to withdraw, and the clear commitment to that withdrawal has already had the necessary effect on reshaping Iraqi politics.  The Pentagon has long thought that a small residual force would be a safety blanket against a resurgence of civil war, provide necessary logistical support and training, and signal continued U.S. commitment. There's just a world of difference between a few thousand American trainers and the kind of eternal, large-scale troop presence which used to be proposed.

The U.S. assumption that eventually Iraqi politicians would step up and ask for an extension always seemed to ignore the importance of the political obstacles posed by hostile public opinion. Whatever private support for a longer-term U.S. role exists among Iraqi politicians (and I've heard a fair amount of it), that never extended to public discourse or public opinion. Electoral incentives and the importance of public opinion meant that virtually no politicians have been willing to publicly support revisiting the SOFA -- an important lesson to those trying to understand the likely effects of the changes in Egypt and the region on their foreign policy.  The growing power of public opinion and protest movements certainly won't make Iraqi politicans any more willing to broach such a controversial subject.

If the SOFA is not renegotiated, and no other workaround is found, then the U.S. will have to withdraw all of its troops from Iraq by December 31, 2011 just as promised. Frankly, I don't think that the presence of U.S. troops is really a decisive strategic factor anymore. Iraqi security forces have long-since taken the lead role, and despite the ongoing assassinations and explosions and general violence there have been few signs of a return to civil war dynamics.  Similarly, as expected, the Iraqi political system has eventually found its own balance as it has adapted to the declining American role -- not an especially attractive political balance,with many enduring issues surrounding the centralization of power and inefficient services and power-sharing and unfilled top government jobs and more, but reasonably robust (I keep hearing Iraqis jokingly brag about how they now have the most stable politics in the region). 

Iraq is slowly evolving into a position to be a player in regional politics, rather than an arena where others wage their proxy wars.  Whether that Iraq becomes an effective, independent partner of the United States or develops an alliance with Iran, and how Iraq relates to its Arab neighbors, are among the most crucial variables shaping the the future regional order in the Middle East -- as important as consolidating Egyptian democracy or the Iranian nuclear program.  There will be powerful forces pulling Iraq towards Iran, including not only religious ties but also economic interests and personal relationships.  Rising sectarianism across the region fueled by the Saudi crackdown in Bahrain risks pushing it ever further from the Arab states in the Gulf; it is alarming to see Allawi's Saudi-backed Iraqiyya list denouncing Kuwait as "an enemy of the Iraqi people and its new democratic system".  

As it becomes more of an independent actor, Iraq's foreign policy, like that of the new Egypt or of Erdogan's Turkey, will be strategic and interest-based but also responsive to public opinion.  The U.S. needs to build enduring relationships and engage across all sectors of political society if it hopes to deal effectively with this new Iraq.  The civilian side of the U.S. foreign policy machine has never been more important across the entire Middle East: understanding and engaging newly empowered publics, building connections with emergent civil society movements, partnering on economic development projects,supporting police training and rule of law development.  And that requires thinking past the military mission and devoting adequate resources to the civilian sector --- something which Secretary Gates and the U.S. military clearly understand, but which Congress still seemingly does not. If Rep. Boehner wants to help Iraq and the U.S. engagement in the broader Middle East, this is where he should turn his attention.

• Only seven areas out of 379 back electoral reform
• Turnout highest in Scotland
• Mandelson says poll centred on Clegg
• AV results map

The Liberal Democrats faced a further blow tonight as polling results showed that the UK is on course to emphatically reject AV as a system to elect MPs.

On a day in which hundreds of Lib Dems lost their seats in the local and devolved elections, the party had its hopes of changing the electoral system dashed. Early results showed the no camp had won in all but seven of the 379 areas to have declared so far. The overall majority so far was put at 68.3% to the yes camp's 31.7%.

Danny Alexander, a Liberal Democrat cabinet minister, conceded that the party's attempt to replace the first-past-the-post system with the alternative vote had failed, with the no camp outperforming the opinion polls by some distance in the UK's first national referendum since 1975.

Alexander, who was involved in drafting the coalition deal in which the Lib Dems stipulated the referendum as part of their deal with the Conservatives, said: "It looks like we are going to lose quite handsomely. It will be a victory for the no campaign. We wanted to have a referendum. We wanted to give the people the chance to vote on transforming our voting system, helping to put more power in people's hands.

"It is disappointing that people have chosen to vote the way they have. I think there is a whole number of reasons for that, but I think the most important thing is to accept with good grace the verdict of the people and say, 'That's that'."

The Electoral Commission said 18.6 million votes had been cast across the UK, a provisional turnout of 41.8%, although this figure does not include Northern Ireland.

With such a strong showing for the no campaign, the postmortem has started, with some campaigners saying the vote has put back electoral reform for a generation.

Lord Mandelson, a former Labour minister and a keen proponent of electoral reform, said AV supporters had paid a "big price" for staging the national poll on the same day as the first elections since the general election. He also criticised the yes campaign for failing to do the "groundwork" and paid tribute to David Cameron for some "very bold leadership".

The prime minister had "mobilised" his support effectively, even at the expense of coalition unity, said Mandelson.

Describing himself as disappointed but "entirely unsurprised" by results coming in, Mandelson said: "Nobody could have foreseen the extent to which the whole vote over the last 24 hours has become a referendum on the Liberal Democrats in general, and Nick Clegg in particular."

He added: "I think that the public felt the thing had come out of the blue as the result of some arrangement between the coalition partners and they didn't see why AV was such a big deal. I don't think they felt AV was the solution to many of the problems they feel are in our political system."

The highest turnout (50.7%) was in Scotland, which held the devolved Scottish elections on the same day. The lowest turnout was in London (35%).

Predictions that the capital would produce a turnout as low as 15% – being the only region without other elections taking place – proved wide of the mark, with more than twice that number casting their vote.

Some of the first results in the AV referendum came from areas held by Lib Dems at Westminster – all of them delivering an emphatic rejection of the constitutional change that the party has championed. The Isles of Scilly was first to declare, with 65.3% support voting no, followed by the Lib Dem-held Orkney Islands, with 60.2% for no. The no campaign won all of the first nine areas to declare, with a thumping 70.27% to the yes campaign's 29.73%.

Jeremy Browne, a Lib Dem minister, acknowledged the yes campaign had failed to make "a sufficiently compelling case".

Browne told the BBC: "It already looks like there is a pattern in place. I do think there is an onus on the people who want to make a change to make the case for the change, and the yes campaign ultimately didn't make a sufficiently compelling case."

The turnout figures were published amid bitter recriminations within the Lib Dem camp over the tactics of their Tory coalition partners leading the no campaign.

Lord Ashdown, a former Lib Dem leader, who appeared effectively to concede defeat in the AV battle, said the Tories were also guilty of "bloody stupidity" for failing to prevent the no campaign – mostly funded by its supporters – targeting Nick Clegg personally.

"I don't put that in the box marked betrayal but I put it in the box marked bloody stupidity. And the truth is there are consequences for that," he said.

Moving his sights toward Cameron, Ashdown said any other prime minister would have dissociated himself from the "lies" produced by the no campaign.

"This is a triumph for the regiment of lies. We live with pretty strenuous political campaigns in Britain, but these were downright lies," he told the Guardian.

"David Cameron is the prime minister. He sets the tone of politics in this country. It is an unhappy fact that when he was asked to dissociate himself from a campaign that was run on the basis of personalisation and personal attacks, and messages that were far more than some subtle bending of the truth, he refused to do that."

Cameron sought to build bridges by insisting earlier that there would be "no celebrating, no congratulations" if the British public rejects AV.

He said he wanted a "clear result" but tried to play down the implications for the coalition, saying: "Whether [the result] is a 'Yes' or a 'No' there will be no celebrating, there will be no congratulations, the issue will be settled and we can get on with the vital work we're doing as a coalition, governing in the national interest."

But the Lib Dems signalled that tensions were far from resolved. Chris Huhne, the energy secretary, said there was "extraordinary anger" about the Tory behaviour in the no campaign "from top to bottom of the Liberal Democrats".

The crushing no vote follows large-scale Lib Dem losses in local and devolved elections, which Clegg branded "a real knock".

The Lib Dem deputy leader, Simon Hughes, told the BBC that the no camp had conducted a "fundamentally fallacious campaign" which would affect the coalition.

Hughes said that the five-year coalition deal would not change, but he added: "It will mean, from now on, we are very clear that we will keep to what the coalition has agreed in the coalition agreement – that other stuff will not be allowed in as policy unless our party has agreed to it, and I guess that the same will apply for the Tory party."

He said the party would now assert its independence in Westminster by extracting concessions on issues such as House of Lords reform and the expansion of private healthcare provision in the NHS. Hughes told BBC Radio 4's PM programme: "Lords reform is a done deal – that was part of the coalition agreement.

"NHS reform is absolutely the area that is now in the frontline. It is absolutely clear that what has been proposed in [Health Secretary] Andrew Lansley's Bill is not what was agreed in the coalition agreement and is not what our party members and supporters have agreed to.

"That will be changed and if it is not sufficiently changed it will not happen."

He dismissed suggestions that Clegg's position might be challenged, insisting the Lib Dem leader was "personally and politically as strong as when he joined the government".

But Tory backbencher Mark Field said Cameron's position had been "very much strengthened" by the results and the prime minister would not be in a mood to make "undue concessions" to Liberal Democrats following their "catastrophic" showing.

Field told the PM show: "Clearly there will be an effort to try and shore up Nick Clegg's position, but the idea that there will be a whole lot of policy concessions allowing the liberals to look good in the months to come is way, way short of the mark."

The final AV result will be formally announced by the Electoral Commission later tonight.

Coroner critical of MI5, but clears them of blame as families of 7/7 bombing victims call for overhaul of security services

Esther Addley Richard Norton-Taylor

Families of the victims of the 7 July attacks have called on the government to overhaul Britain's security services after the inquest coroner yesterday described their handling of a critical piece of intelligence as "dreadful" and suggested another failure could have had "dire consequences".

Returning verdicts of unlawful killing on each of the 52 victims of the attacks, Lady Justice Hallett also expressed concerns about MI5's recordkeeping and about "confusion" in its system of assessing targets at the time of the attacks.

But, crucially, she exonerated the domestic intelligence service of any blame in failing to prevent the 2005 bombings, stressing that the evidence she had heard over 75 days at the high court in London "does not justify the conclusion that any failings on the part of any organisation or individual caused or contributed to any of the deaths".

The coroner also found that the emergency services' response to the bombings, which has been heavily criticised for being too slow at several of the sites, had not contributed to any of the deaths. "I am satisfied on the balance of probabilities that each of [the victims] would have died whenever the emergency services reached them," she said.

She saw no grounds for any future public inquiry, she indicated. "I am not aware of our having left any reasonable stone unturned," she said. "One would hope, therefore, that these proceedings will be an end to the investigation of what happened on 7/7."

Speaking after the verdicts, however, Graham Foulkes, whose son David was killed in the Edgware Road bombing, said the inquest "causes a lot more questions to be asked than it answers". "It really must compel [the Home Secretary] Theresa May to review the whole operation of the security services in the UK, not just MI5."

He called for an independent inquiry into the killings, with a broader remit than the tightly constrained inquest.

At an emotional press conference after the verdicts were returned, Ros Morley, widow of Edgware Road victim Colin Morley, called for an apology from MI5, saying: "In any other organisation, if huge mistakes were made and lives were lost, people feel there's a duty to look into that, to have a degree of humility, which I feel has been lost."

June Taylor, the mother of Carrie Taylor, who died at Aldgate, was overcome by emotion and collapsed at the press conference after declaring that the family "still have no positive answers".

But other family members said they felt the conclusion of the inquest, which opened in October, should represent the end of the investigation into the events of 7 July, when four suicide bombers detonated devices on the London transport network.

Grahame Russell, whose son Philip died in the bus bombing at Tavistock Square, said: "There are still issues. The problem I have is that if I continue to hold concerns about issues, then my life would become very bitter." The coroner's recommendations "can help people in the future, one would hope," he said. "But they help me not at all. They do not bring my son back."

The coroner made nine recommendations which she believed could help prevent future deaths, encompassing improvements in training and communication for paramedics and other emergency responders, and a suggestion that Transport for London look at putting first aid equipment on underground trains. Two of the recommendations related directly to the security services.

Hallett said MI5 must review its procedures on showing photographs to informants after poorly edited images of two of the bombers — "they were dreadful" — were shown by intelligence officers to a key Islamist informant in US custody.

"Given the confusion that reigned within the Security Service about these photographs," she added, "it was not clear to me what records were kept of the procedure."

Similarly, she was troubled, she said, that the MI5 spokesman Witness G gave evidence that it was not normal practice to revisit photographs when new sources became available. So poor were the records from the time of the investigation, she said, "Witness G himself had to visit retired desk officers at their homes to discover as best he could what they had done, and why."

She instructed the MI5 director general Sir Jonathan Evans to investigate the service's documentary procedures, "given the possibly dire consequences of a flawed decision which cannot be properly supervised".

The coroner also expressed concern about MI5's failure to investigate the 7 July ringleader Mohammad Sidique Khan in detail after undercover teams observed him repeatedly meeting the fertiliser bomb plot mastermind Omar Khyam more than a year before the atrocities.

"I am concerned about the fact that the Security Service's other commitments prevented a more intense investigation of a possible terrorist, who made long and suspicious journeys to meet known terrorists at a time when they were obviously planning an attack."

The coroner also identified weaknesses involving the Intelligence and Security Committee of MPs and peers, which was shown to have been misled, albeit "inadvertently", by MI5.

She repeatedly emphasised there was no evidence that the attacks could have been prevented. Even the badly cropped photo, in the end, had "played no causative part in the failure to identify Khan or [Shehzad] Tanweer".

In a statement, the home secretary, Theresa May, said the inquest process had been "vitally important" and said she would "carefully consider" its recommendations.

"I am pleased that the coroner has made clear there is simply no evidence that the Security Service knew of, and therefore failed to prevent, the bombings on 7/7." The government and security services were "always looking to learn lessons", she said. "This includes learning from the 7 July attacks and from other incidents, and there have been a considerable number of improvements put in place since 2005."

Her Labour opposite number, Yvette Cooper, said the ongoing terrorist threat that Britain faced "makes the lessons from the past even more important".

By Sir Hilary Synnott
Best Defense guest diplomatic columnist

The notion that Pakistan has, in Western eyes, been a treacherous ally since 2001 is well-founded and not new. The world has recently been reminded of the conflicting interests and practices by recollections of Prime Minister David Cameron's declaration that Pakistan has been 'looking both ways' and by former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage's references to the duplicity he encountered when he was a frequent visitor to Islamabad in 2001-02, when I was High Commissioner there and had similar experiences.

But the revelation of the presence in Abbottabad, one of the country's most militarised cities, of the world's most wanted criminal 'on the run' for ten years, suggests a new and different order of magnitude of perfidy.

And international reaction will have been sharpened by the Pakistan establishment's astonishingly inept attempts at self justification: Prime Minister Gilani's accusation that any failing on the part of Pakistan reflected the failings of other countries' intelligence services; and Foreign Secretary Bashir's exhortations that we should put the episode behind us and look forward. This last is reminiscent of General Musharraf's attempts to deal with the reaction to his land grab in Kargil in Kashmir in 1999.

So there will be a natural temptation to contemplate a wholesale shift in the United States' and others' relationship with Pakistan, perhaps the cessation of all aid, including the Kerry-Lugar-Berman packages for the social and educational sector.

This would be a mistake. While the status quo may no longer be acceptable and the U.S.-Pakistan relationship needs to and should be recalibrated, it will do no good to cut off hope for economic improvement and employment opportunities in a nuclear armed country with a population six times that of Afghanistan and an exploding demographic profile.

Rather, the United States should continue, resolutely, steadily and with no false expectations, to try to disburse assistance for social development. It should target and account for its military-related assistance much more carefully than hitherto. And it should close off Pakistan's access to big-ticket arms contracts, paid for from Pakistan's own sparse funds, which can only be used against India while, if possible, liberalising access to U.S. markets for Pakistani textiles.

Sir Hilary Synnott was British High Commissioner to Pakistan 2000-2003. He is author of Transforming Pakistan: Ways Out of Instability and a memoir of his service in Iraq, Bad Days in Basra.

EU to impose asset freezes and travel restrictions on Syrian officials involved in operation which has killed 500 people

The EU agreed on Friday to impose sanctions on Syria next week to step up pressure on the regime as it persisted with its violent crackdown on protesters, killing at least 16 during a "day of defiance".

European countries will formally announce the sanctions on Monday, imposing asset freezes and travel restrictions on top Syrian officials involved in a seven-week crackdown that has killed more than 500 by some estimates.

The crackdown has tested the courage of protesters and some in the movement had warned that it might even break their resolve. But many thousands turned out in 65 towns and cities across the country on Friday, according to activists. Video footage from several cities showed large crowds chanting "the people want to topple the regime" and "the martyr is loved by God".

Perhaps the biggest protest was reported in the south, in the town of Jassem, close to the troubled city of Deraa. One video purportedly from the town showed thousands gathering and calling out "He who kills his people is a traitor" and "We sacrifice our blood and souls for you Deraa".

State media have reported that the army is ending its military operation in Deraa, but the city is still shut off. A 15-member delegation from the International Committee of the Red Cross was allowed rare access to the city on Thursday. The UN said it had persuaded Syria to allow its teams to check on humanitarian conditions after the UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, personally called the country's president, Bashar al-Assad.

Death tolls have been hard to quantify. The London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said at least six people had been shot dead after security forces opened fire in Homs and Hama. The National Organisation for Human Rights in Syria put the toll at 16 people nationwide.

Syrian state television said an army officer and four policemen were shot dead by a "criminal gang" in Homs.

The regime also moved to round up prominent activists. Dissident and former political prisoner Riad Seif was arrested in the Damascus area of Midan, where protests broke out for the third week in a row. "My father was shoved into a bus with other protesters who were detained during the demonstration near the al-Hassan mosque," his daughter Jumana told Reuters.

As long as no member state objects, the EU's decision to impose asset freezes and travel bans will go into effect next week. Like the US sanctions imposed last week they do not target Assad himself.

Katherine Marsh is a pseudonym for a journalist living in Damascus

Following World War II, the United States wanted to get out of the Indian business: that is, to sever all relationships with Indian tribes. In the spirit of assimilation and with the intent of reducing government's role in Indian affairs, Congress passed the Indian Claims Commission Act in 1946 as a vehicle to extinguish all pending Indian claims and thus end the federal government's obligation to provide support for the tribes. In other words, it would act as a kind of severance package which would help Indians to abandon their collective traditions and enter into American society as individuals.

In 1951, the Menominee were awarded $8.5 million to settle historic grievances regarding the mismanagement of their timber resources. Being awarded the money, however, does not mean receiving the money. Before the Menominee can receive this money, it must first be appropriated by Congress.  
Two years later, without consulting any Indians, House Concurrent Resolution 108 called for the termination of Indian tribes. The Resolution called for the unilateral withdrawal from treaty obligations to Indian nations as soon as possible. Utah Senator Watkins was one of the leaders of Indian termination in Congress. He felt that the 1924 citizenship act had ended all special federal relationships with Indian tribes.

The Resolution also called for the rapid termination of five large tribes-Flathead, Klamath, Menominee, Pottowatomie, and Turtle Mountain Chippewa. The United States, and the west in particular, was in the midst of an economic boom and non-Indian economic interests wanted to open up Indian reservations for corporate economic development. Two of the reservations singled out for termination-the Klamath and the Menominee-just happened to have timber resources which corporate interests desired.

In the spirit of termination, Utah Senator Arthur V. Watkins placed an amendment on a bill regarding the distribution of money awarded to the Menominee that called for the tribe to be terminated before the money could be distributed. While the Senator did not feel that the consent of the Menominee was required for their termination, he did agree to speak to the Menominee General Council.

In addressing the Menominee General Council, Senator Watkins informed them that Congress had already decided to terminate them and that they would not receive their money until after termination. The General Council then voted 169 to 5 in favor of the principle of termination. Many of the Menonimee chose to be absent from the meeting as a way of expressing their opposition to termination.

In 1954, the Menominee were officially terminated by the federal government. Prior to termination, the Menominee had timber which had been valued at $36 million in 1936.  Each tribal members was to be paid $1,500 of tribal money and the tribe was required to pay for the administrative costs of termination. In voting for termination, many tribal members thought that they were voting on the distribution of the money which they had been awarded. The impact of termination was a fast slide into poverty.

Menominee Enterprises, Inc. (MEI) was created to oversee Menominee resources and tribal assets. All tribal members became MEI shareholders, but they had little control over the organization. The board of directors was composed of both Menominee and non-Menominee with a majority of the board being non-Menominee. The Indians were told that this is to show the state that MEI has stable management.

By 1961, MEI was administering all tribal assets, including land, forest, and the sawmill. Each of the 3,270 tribal members received a receipt for 100 shares of common stock in MEI. The actual shares, however, were issued to the corporation's Voting Trust, which was empowered to elect the MEI Board of Directors.

The First Wisconsin Trust Co. of Milwaukee was assigned guardian powers to act as a trustee for all tribal minors and incompetents. Tribal members could be determined to be incompetent by the Secretary of the Interior without any judicial hearings and legal process.

By 1963 it was evident to many, if not most, of the Menominee that termination had not benefitted them, and 800 Menominee adults-a majority of the tribe's adults-signed a petition asking the federal government to end the termination of the tribe. The federal government ignored the petition.

In 1969, the Menominee Indian Study Report found that the state had gained ownership of more than a million dollars of Menominee income bonds as needy families were required to assign their bonds to the state in order to receive welfare.

DRUMS - Determination of Rights and Unity for Menominee Shareholders-was organized by Ada Deer in 1969 to seek the full repeal of termination and the restoration of federal recognition and the reservation.  The first two chapters of DRUMS were organized in Chicago and Milwaukee, the two largest centers of Menominee population outside of Menominee County.

With regard to DRUMS in Menominee County, Chicago chapter president Jim White reported:

"We figured that MEI would threaten and harass people in Menominee County with loss of jobs if they started a local Chapter, so we knew it would be difficult to organize up there."

At the first DRUMS meeting in the county, MEI hired 25 millhands to break up the gathering. In spite of death threats, the DRUMS chapter was organized and Laurel Otradovecs is elected president.

In 1971, DRUMS conducted a march to Madison to petition the Governor to end the welfare program that was taking tribal assets from the Menominee. In Madison, the Governor was presented with a list of eight requests. As a result of the march, the Governor toured Menominee County. In his meeting with the Menominee, the Governor realized that the Menominee want restoration of their tribal status.

Congress repealed the Menominee termination in 1973 and restored the tribe to federal status. The return to federal status did not erase the loss of tribal resources and the poverty that termination created. In 1970, President Richard Nixon spoke to Congress about termination:

"Because termination is morally and legally unacceptable, because it produces bad practical results, and because the mere threat of termination tends to discourage greater self-sufficiency among Indian groups, I am asking the Congress to pass a new Concurrent Resolution which would expressly  renounce, repudiate and repeal the termination policy as expressed in House Concurrent Resolution 108 of the 83rd Congress."

In the years that follow, many of the tribes which were terminated during this era have their federal recognition restored.  

Aboard Air Force One
En Route Indianapolis, Indiana

10:36 A.M. EDT

MR. CARNEY:  I just want to mention a couple of things before I get started here.  First, as you all know, we had an employment report today that showed private sector payrolls increasing by 268,000 in April, which makes 14 consecutive months of private sector employment growth.  During that period, the economy added 2.1 million private sector jobs, including more than 800,000 jobs since the beginning of the year.

This is obviously good news.  The February number was revised upwards to 261,000 private sector jobs created, and the March number was estimated upward to 231,000 -- very, very solid; an average of approximately a quarter of a million private sector jobs created each month for three straight months. 

We're pleased about that.  We obviously have a lot more work to do.  The recession cost the American labor force 8 million jobs and we're still digging ourselves out of that hole. 

Next I'd like to just remind you about where we're going today.  The President will first visit Allison Transmission, which is a leader in hybrid technology and the world’s largest manufacturer of fully automatic transmissions for medium and heavy-duty commercial vehicles, tactical military vehicles, and hybrid compulsion systems.  This visit is meant to highlight the President’s commitment to diversifying our energy requirements, to reduce our dependence on imported oil, and to ensure that we are leaders in clean energy technology in the 21st century.

Finally, I just wanted to note that when we go to Fort Campbell today, the President and Vice President will be visiting with members of the 101st Airborne Division, which, if you don't know, has such a remarkable history, beginning in World War II, where they were the first allied forces to set foot on occupied France territory; fought valiantly through World War II; were a vital division during the Cold War, Vietnam, Operation Desert Storm and then obviously in the Iraq war, and most recently in Afghanistan.  Extraordinary service, extraordinary sacrifice.

What is less known is that it was elements of the 101st Airborne Division who were sent by President Eisenhower to Little Rock to ensure that the “Little Rock Nine” attended Little Rock Central High School.  It was also elements of the 101st that were sent to help make sure that James Meredith was able to attend as the first African American at the University of Mississippi.  So it is a noble, noble history.  And both the President and Vice President look forward to that visit.

With that I will take your questions.

Q    Jay, the President has said he doesn't want to spike the ball.  But he’s speaking to troops.  Doesn't he expect a celebratory mood there in the wake of bin Laden’s death?  And does that kind of go against that mood that he’s trying to -- a non-gloating mood?

MR. CARNEY:  Well, I don't expect you’ll hear the President spiking the ball or gloating when he speaks to troops returning from Afghanistan today.  The point he will make is that while the successful mission against Osama bin Laden was an historic and singular event, it does not by any means mean that we are finished with the war against al Qaeda.  The fight goes on.

And one of the reasons why the President refocused our resources and attention on the Afghanistan-Pakistan region, increased our commitment there in terms of troops -- which these troops represent -- is because he believed very strongly that al Qaeda central was the number one target -- should be the number one target of that effort.

He’s going to speak to these troops to thank them for their service.  They have fought valiantly and incurred significant casualties in that effort.  So there’s nothing -- there’s no intent to gloat at all in that regard.

Q    Is he meeting with members of the teams that carried out the operation to get Osama bin Laden?

MR. CARNEY:  What I can say is that he is meeting with special operators -- some special operators who were involved in that, but that is all I can say.

Q    On the bin Laden operation, Al Arabia is reporting that al Qaeda is now -- may not come as a shock -- threatening to attack the U.S. in retaliation for killing bin Laden.  Is the President aware of that?  And what’s his thinking on that?

MR. CARNEY:  Well, we are aware of it, seen the reports.  What it does do, obviously, is acknowledge the obvious, which is that Osama bin Laden was killed on Sunday night by U.S. forces.

Q    Is there any more concern now that there’s been --

MR. CARNEY:  We're being extremely vigilant.  You can ask questions of the Department of Homeland Security as well, but the -- we’re quite aware of the potential for activity and are highly vigilant on that matter for that reason. 

One of the things we saw I think last night was the notice that DHS put out with regard to the information collected about the consideration at least of a terrorist plot against American railways back in February of 2010.  The fact that the world’s most wanted terrorist might have been considering further terror plots against the United States is not a surprise, but it reminds us, of course, that we need to remain ever vigilant.    

Q    Jay, can you at least tell us whether this group of special operators that you referred to will include Navy SEALs or helicopter pilots --

MR. CARNEY:  I’m not going to say anything more about that.  It is extremely important that I say nothing more.

Q    If we’re done with the bin Laden questions, or are you not?  On another matter, the Republican congressional leaders appear to be backing away from attempting to pass their Medicare plan prior to the 2012 election it’s widely reported today.  What does the President think about that?

MR. CARNEY:  Well, I would say simply that the talks that the Vice President led yesterday, the initial meeting of the members of Congress and team from the administration, was productive.  And we certainly think that it’s a good thing if those who are participating in those negotiations understand that in order to achieve compromise, we need to find common ground. 

We obviously have -- the President has laid out his plan, and there are elements of stark contrast with the House Republican’s budget that passed.  What we’re looking for now is where we can find some common ground to achieve a goal that Republicans and Democrats share, which is reducing the debt significantly, getting our fiscal house in order and, as the President sees it, while making sure that we protect the investments we need to protect in order to continue to grow the economy, continue to create jobs and educate our children.

Q    Does the President have any reaction to the report today that CEO pay is up 25 percent over last year  --

MR. CARNEY:  I haven’t heard him react to that, no.

Q    Jay, can you tell us anything about the President’s immigration speech next week and any other events from the week ahead?

MR. CARNEY:  What I can say is that the speech will reflect the President’s continued commitment to find a bipartisan way to create a bipartisan -- rather comprehensive immigration reform.  As I think I said earlier this week, the fact that we were not able to achieve that in the first two years only means that we need to refocus our efforts and try to find that compromise.  In the past, obviously there has been Republican support for the kind of comprehensive immigration reform that is necessary and we hope that there will be again in the future.  

Q    -- rest of the week ahead?

MR. CARNEY:  I do have that, if you’re ready for it.

Q    Can you field more questions after?

MR. CARNEY:  Do you want to ask those questions first, and then I’ll do --

Q    In April of 2008, President Obama -- or then candidate Obama appeared at a gas station in Indiana -- gas was at $3.60 a gallon -- said we need to vote for change, a new set of policies. He’s returning to Indiana now with gas well over $4.00 a gallon. What does it say about the success he has had over the last three years in dealing with the fuel issue, the gas issue?

MR. CARNEY:  Well, I think you’ve heard the President speak quite a lot lately about the impact of high gas prices on Americans’ pocketbooks and wallets.  We’re very concerned about it.  We do note the steep drop in oil prices in the last couple of days.  And I would also note that one of the things the Attorney General task force will be looking at is coordinating with state attorneys general to make sure that we don’t have a what I’ve heard described as a “rockets-and-parachutes phenomenon,” where prices at the pump rocket up when oil prices rocket up, and yet they come down in a parachute fashion when oil prices go down.  So we want to make sure that a drop in oil prices is appropriately reflected in a drop in gas prices at the pump.

Q    Does the President believe gas prices will drop in the coming months?  The futures market seem to be indicating they will.

MR. CARNEY:  We don’t predict markets here, obviously.  And we have seen a drop.  We have -- but they go up and down.  The President, as you know, has said many times that there are no silver bullet solutions here, no short-term solutions, and that’s why he is committed to -- while we are doing the things in the short term that we hope can provide some relief, the big challenge is the long-term solution that weans us off our dependence on foreign oil, that diversifies our energy supply, that allows us to build clean energy industries in the United States that both enhance our national security and provide quality jobs in this country. 

So that’s been his commitment; you’ve heard him speak about that many times.  You’ll hear him speak about it again today in Indiana.

Q    What does the President think about all the Monday morning quarterbacking on the Osama bin Laden operation?  Does he think it’s helpful -- all the criticism and the questioning about how it went down?  Does it --

MR. CARNEY:  I haven’t heard much criticism about how it went down.  What I’ve heard is a pretty universal acclamation of the fact that a remarkable team of U.S. personnel conducted one of the most -- one of the riskiest operations imaginable flawlessly, and limited collateral damage and civilian casualties, achieved their goal of bringing Osama bin Laden to justice, and returned safely every single American.

So I think that is what most people have focused on, appropriately, because it was a remarkable achievement that was the product of years of intelligence work, years of training in the case of the personnel involved in the actual mission, and some very bold decision-making by the President and others to bring this about.

Q    Jay, how did he feel about yesterday’s events in New York?

MR. CARNEY:  He felt very good about it.  I think he -- the meetings with firefighters, with the police, with families and loved ones of victims were powerful events.  And I think he understands that this is a bittersweet moment, especially for those who lost loved ones in 9/11, both in New York, in Pennsylvania and at the Pentagon.  And he was very glad he made the trip.

Q    Jay, the President won Indiana by less than 30,000 votes in ’08.  Does he think that it’s as tough or even tougher political environment right now for him to get support for his agenda or even win reelection?

MR. CARNEY:  Well, I think that it’s a long time before next year’s election, and he’s focused on the things that a President needs to be focused on -- our national security -- his focus on that I think has been quite evident in the last several days; and the economy, which is what he’ll be focusing on today in Indiana.

I think that the President firmly believes that making the right policy decisions tends to be beneficial come political season, but for him, at least, political season is a long way off.

Q    -- we’re flying into another swing state.

MR. CARNEY:  The fact is that this -- Allison Transmission is, as I just read to you, a major manufacturer of the kind of the technology that the President believes is going to help us win the future in the 21st century.  So I think we go where the action is, and in this case, this company is where the action is.

Q    Did the President watch the Fox News Republican debate last night?

MR. CARNEY:  I haven’t asked him.  I don't know.  I think there was some basketball on last night -- maybe there wasn’t, maybe that's tonight -- so I don't know.  I think the Bulls are playing tonight, is that right?  Well, come on, guys. 

Yes.  Okay, I can do the week ahead if you don't have any more questions.

On Monday, the President will meet with heads of the Chinese Strategic Economic Dialogue delegation at the White House. 

On Tuesday, the President will travel, as you know, to the El Paso, Texas area to deliver a speech on comprehensive immigration reform.  He will then travel to Austin, Texas, before returning to Washington, D.C.

On Wednesday, the President will participate in a CBS Town Hall at the Newseum.  In the evening, the President and the First Lady will host a celebration of American poetry and prose by welcoming accomplished poets, musicians and artists, as well as students, from across the country to the White House.

On Thursday, the President will deliver remarks at the National Hispanic Prayer Breakfast. 

And on Friday, the President will attend meetings at the White House.

Q    The town hall is Wednesday, not Thursday?  Initially it was --

MR. CARNEY:  That’s correct, it’s Wednesday. 

All right, thanks, guys.

END
10:52 A.M. EDT

There's no two ways about it: the 2011 elections have been a bloodbath for Lib Dems.

We always knew Nick Clegg's party would take a pounding, but somehow the situation seems grimmer than ever now those cold, hard results are coming through.

The key question is, what next for the Lib Dems?

The first option is for the party to overhaul how the Coalition is run - or in other words, to start throwing their weight around.

There's lots of tough talk coming out of the Lib Dems now.

The Coalition is entering a "new phase". They will be more "robust" standing up to David Cameron. It will "no longer be a coalition of hearts, but heads." The Conservative's health reforms "won't go through without major surgery."

The pro-coalition lobby of Nick Clegg, Danny Alexander et al are hoping they can cling on until 2015 if they emphasise their differences with the Tories, claim ownership over popular policies and keep warning David Cameron would be the new Margaret Thatcher if it wasn't for their restraining influence.

If this doesn't work, the second option is the nuclear one.

The sharks are already circling for Nick Clegg.

Rumours the coalition is on the brink of collapse are unfounded - but suddenly the 2015 election date looks a long, long way off.

This morning the Energy Secretary Chris Huhne - the biggest threat to Nick Clegg - said "now is not the time for a leadership challenge."

That's not exactly a ringing endorsement - and immediately poses the question, if now is not the time, when is? Next month? Next year?

One senior Conservative source told me he's "pretty sure the Coalition will last at least until Christmas." Blimey.

Friends of Chris Huhne have told me he won't make a move to challenge Nick Clegg... yet. Tim Farron is clearly laying the ground for a leadership bid by buttering up the right people. And I understand Vince Cable (formerly Saint Vince, now Vince "I can bring down the Government" Cable) is likely to throw his hat in the ring too.

But the problem is - if the Lib Dems throw their weight around enough, the Tories might actually call their bluff.

Today's results show the Conservative vote is more resilient than people thought. Ed Miliband isn't making the inroads Labour hoped for. And as for the Liberal Democrats....

Are they sure that general election is really such a good idea?

Union urges meeting with London Underground after one of two drivers whose sacking sparked planned strikes wins tribunal

Tube union chiefs have demanded a meeting with London Underground in an effort to avert strike action after one of two drivers at the centre of an employment row won his claim of unfair dismissal.

Eamonn Lynch, a Bakerloo line driver sacked for breaking safety rules, took his case to an employment tribunal, claiming his dismissal was based on his trade union activities.

London Underground said on Friday that a meeting with the Rail Maritime and Transport (RMT) union could not be held before the tribunal released its ruling on whether Lynch should be reinstated, expected on 3 June.

The first of six planned walkouts, which threaten travel chaos for millions of passengers, is scheduled for 16 May.

The RMT has backed the case of the second sacked driver, Arwyn Thomas, who is claiming unfair dismissal after being sacked for "unacceptable and abusive behaviour" towards colleagues. His tribunal result is expected later this month.

Bob Crow, general secretary of the RMT, said: "We welcome Eamonn's victory in the tribunal and we are calling for an immediate meeting with London Underground in the light of the ruling that he was unfairly dismissed for his trade union activities.

"With the clear parallel with Arywn Thomas's case, there is now an urgent need for London Underground to meet with the RMT to set out a plan for a return to work that can avoid plunging London into two blocks of strike action that everyone knows will lead to massive disruption.

"The tribunal has found in favour of the RMT, justice has been done and now we need to meet with the company to finalise arrangements that can enable us to move forwards as quickly as possible."

An RMT spokesman said: "London Underground has no excuse not to reinstate these two drivers. It will ultimately be a decision for our executive, but if we can get these guys back to work we can move on with looking again at these dates for industrial action."

London Underground said it would study the outcome of the employment tribunal judgment and "carefully consider our next steps".

It added in a statement: "Whilst the tribunal has made a finding of unfair dismissal, it has also found that on 9 August 2010 Mr Lynch breached an established and significant safety rule and was in part culpable or blameworthy for his actions."

London Underground urged the RMT to call off the threatened strikes. Its managing director, Mike Brown, said: "As we have always said, disputes involving individuals should be dealt with through the mechanisms established for that purpose.

"While that process takes its course, there remains no reason whatsoever for the RMT leadership to seek to disrupt Londoners by threatening strike action."

The first set of strike dates are:

• 9.01pm on Monday 16 May to 11.59am on Tuesday 17 May

• 12 noon on Wednesday 18 May to 11.59am on Thursday 19 May

• 12 noon to 9pm on Friday 20 May

The second set of dates are:

• 9.01pm on Monday 13 June to 11.59am on Tuesday 14 June

• 12 noon on Wednesday 15 June to 11.59am on Thursday 16 June

• 12 noon to 9pm on Friday 17 June

The move follows a 2-1 vote in favour of industrial action over the sackings by RMT members.

They held a 24-hour strike in January over their dismissals and several other stoppages have taken place in recent months.

Lynch is the RMT's health and safety representative for Bakerloo line drivers and Thomas is a longstanding RMT activist.

Transport for London (TfL) alleged Lynch breached safety rules while Thomas was abusive towards colleagues. The RMT said Lynch had an "unblemished" 15-year service record while Thomas had been an RMT member for 29 years and both were "clearcut cases of victimisation on the grounds of trade union activity".

Brown said on Wednesday that only 29% of the 1,300 drivers balloted had voted in favour of strike action. "The RMT leadership seems determined to disrupt London and its economy over several days. As ever, London Underground and TfL will work to keep London moving if the strikes go ahead," he said.

Meanwhile, the threat of further disruption to tube travellers grew on Friday when the RMT said it would ballot Jubilee line drivers for industrial action over changes to safety procedures.

Lady Justice Hallett has produced a series of recommendations under rule 43 of the Coroners Rules 1984

Following are the main recommendations made by the coroner after she returned an unlawful killing verdict for the 52 victims of the London bombings in 2005.

Emergency response

Lady Justice Hallett found that none of the victims died because of the delays in the emergency response, but called for improvements in communication between transport bosses and the emergency services in a crisis.

The findings also raised concerns about the funding available to respond to major crises.

She said the London Resilience Team, which heads responses to crises in the capital, should review "the provision of inter-agency major incident training for frontline staff, particularly with reference to the London Underground system".

Hallett said a review was needed of how Transport for London, which runs the underground network, "is alerted to major incidents declared by the emergency services" and how it "informs the emergency services of an emergency on its own network (including the issuing of a 'code amber' or a 'code red', or the ordering of an evacuation)".

Hallett demanded improvements in London's emergency medical response, given the fact that it is to host the 2012 Olympics.

She called for a review of the level of cover the London Air Ambulance is able to provide and its funding, noting its reliance on volunteers and the vital role it played in tending to the injured on 7 July. "I am concerned that London, a major global capital, host to the Olympics in 2012 and a prime terrorist target, should find itself dependent upon corporate funding and charitable donations, and upon professional volunteers giving up their limited free time in order to provide life-saving emergency medical care. It is equally concerning that the capability to provide such care is limited."

Security services

The inquest recommended that MI5 improve procedures aimed at getting the best intelligence from supergrasses, and that the service keeps better records of how it assesses who poses a threat to national security.

Hallett found MI5 could not have prevented the attacks in 2005, but used her powers to ask Britain's domestic security service to learn further lessons. She warned of potential "dire consequences" if her recommendations were not acted upon.

The first of two recommendations for MI5 concerned undercover photographs taken before the attacks of the ringleader, Mohammad Sidique Khan.

Some had said MI5 had enough clues before Khan struck to assess that he was a dangerous terrorist, which the security service has denied.

Pictures of Khan and another of the bombers, Shehzad Tanweer, were obtained by MI5 in February 2004 as part of an investigation into another major terrorist plot.

In April 2004 copies of the pictures were sent to the US to be shown to a terrorist-turned-supergrass, Mohammed Junaid Babar. But the coroner said the quality of the pictures was dreadful, with one of Khan not even being shown to Babar. This was potentially important because Babar had met Khan at a terrorist training camp in Pakistan.

Hallett ruled: "I recommend that consideration be given to whether the procedures can be improved to ensure that 'human sources' who are asked to view photographs are shown copies of the photographs of the best possible quality, consistent with operational sensitivities."

In her findings Hallett said: "On 6 April 2004 Babar was shown one of the pictures of unidentified male D (Tanweer) that had been taken on 2 February 2004 at Toddington Services. However the photograph had been cropped in such a way as to render him virtually unidentifiable.

"A photograph of E (Khan), cut in half, was not shown to Babar at all and thus no opportunity was presented to him to identify him."

The inquest heard evidence from a senior MI5 official, called witness G, who had defended their actions.

Hallett's findings said: "He speculated that the cropped photograph of E (Khan) was of such poor quality that it was not deemed worth showing to Babar. This, of course, begs the question of why the photographs of D and E were cropped in this way. They were dreadful."

Hallett found that Babar failed to identify Khan and Tanweer when he was later shown better quality photographs, meaning the original error "had little or no practical effect".

But she said: " I have expressed my concerns, given the serious possible consequences of any failings in this respect and I have been assured through counsel that the point is well understood by the Security Service."

Hallett's second recommendation for MI5 concerned how it prioritised the level of threat posed by terrorist suspects and the records kept of how it reached those decisions.

Hallett found confusion about the level of priority given by MI5 to investigating Khan, but crucially refrained from criticising it for not treating him as more of a threat.

She found that inadequate recording of decisions risked "dire consequences" if potential errors could not be picked up by supervisors at MI5.

"There was very limited recording of the decisions in relation to D and E available to any reviewer and I heard little if anything from witness G on how the system has improved in this respect.

"Given the importance of these decisions, and the uncertainties and inconsistencies in the evidence, there may well be a case for a better recording of decision making ...

"I feel unable to accept Mr Eadie [representing MI5] and witness G's assurances that all is now well, without more.

"In this respect, therefore, I still have a concern. I should like the director general to allay that concern given the possibly dire consequences of a flawed decision which cannot be properly supervised."

Hallett's findings, which will be sent to the head of MI5 and the home secretary, said: "I recommend that procedures be examined by the Security Service to establish if there is room for further improvement in the recording of decisions relating to the assessment of targets."

In the May 4 "Politics," John Dickerson incorrectly described President Bush's 2004 poll numbers as being from 2003. In the May 4 "Press Box," Jack Shafer misspelled the last name of Neda Salehi Agha Soltan. In the May 3 "Jurisprudence," Simon Lazarus incorrectly referred to Rep. Paul Ryan's budget resolution, passed by the House in April. All such references should have been to Ryan's "Roadmap for America's Future," an earlier proposal that is more detailed than the budget resolution.In a May 3 "XX Factor" post, K.J. Dell'Antonia misspelled the name of Atlanta law firm King & Spalding.In the May 2 "Explainer," Brian Palmer incorrectly identified Yuri Andropov as Soviet premier in 1970. In fact, he was head of the KGB at that time, and did not become general secretary of the Communist Party until 1982. In the May 2 "Politics," John Dickerson described Osama Bin Laden's compound as being "35 minutes outside Islamabad." It's 35 miles from the city but would require a considerably lengthier trip.In the April 29, "Science," Brian Palmer noted that, in the development of written communication, individual characters eventually came to stand in for "letters" rather than syllables. To be more precise, individual characters came to stand in for the sounds with which modern speakers identify letters.In an April 27 "XX Factor" post, K.J. Dell'Antonia misspelled the first name of Garry Trudeau.In an April 26 "XX Factor" post, Jessica Grose misidentified the Beastie Boys album Licensed To Ill as License To Ill.

[more ...]

In spite of the prime minister's expression of anger on prisoners' votes, the government is expected to do as it is told

In 1979, John Hirst killed his landlady with an axe. During 25 subsequent years in prison, he became Britain's most litigious prisoner, submitting up to nine written complaints a day – including one about the UK's ban on prisoners voting.

This grievance was to have a far-reaching effect. Hirst's eventual victory at the European court of human rights (ECtHR) in Strasbourg – where he had appealed after losing his case in the high court – has seen the UK ordered to overturn the ban. David Cameron says the prospect of doing so makes him feel "physically ill".

The prime minister's scope for manoeuvre is limited, though. Although the ECtHR is not technically part of the European Union, its decisions are treated as such by the main European court, the European court of justice. The close relationship between the two bodies was further enshrined by the Lisbon treaty, which incorporated ECtHR case law into EU law in 2009 . To defy the ECtHR's orders would have major repercussions – not just in Strasbourg, but also in Brussels.

Accordingly, in spite of Cameron's public expression of anger, the government is expected to do as it is told, with senior figures such as attorney general Dominic Grieve and justice secretary Ken Clarke impressing the importance of the UK meeting its legal obligations.

This has left many concerned about the extent to which British national sovereignty is compromised by our European commitments. Last month, the Institute for the Study of Civil Society (Civitas) released a report calling for "urgent reform of human rights legislation to keep European judges from deciding British law".

It is not an issue on which Europhiles like to dwell, with most viewing national sovereignty as an awkward sacrifice – ideally not mentioned too much – on the road to a single Europe. This attitude was borne out at this week's conference called Building a European Area for Justice, which was held in Brussels by the European commission and the European Journalism Centre to publicise a host of policies being driven by Viviane Reding, the European commissioner for justice, fundamental rights and citizenship.

When the topic of sovereignty was broached, speakers tended to bristle. Asked about member state objections to the imposition of an EU-wide framework to counter discrimination against the Roma community – an area over which Reding recently clashed with the French president, Nicolas Sarkozy – Sixto Molina of the Council of Europe responded tetchily: "This is a simple question of whether you believe human rights to be universal or not. I hope everyone does."

Others, such as Laura Corrado, deputy head of the commission's data protection unit, stuck cautiously to the official EU line that sovereignty flare-ups could be minimised by "achieving consensus between member states and the EU at the policy-making stage".

The reality, however, is that much of Reding's forward-thinking, yet controversial, agenda is destined for a rough ride from member states keen to preserve their own decision-making powers. Alongside greater protection for Roma, she is promoting pan-EU divorce law rules and a campaign to increase the numbers of women on corporate boards.

The women on boards campaign, in particular, looks likely to stir up tension on these shores. Reding has suggested she will push for legislation to force publicly listed companies to increase the proportion of women in their boardrooms to 30% by 2015 and 40% by 2020 if they fail to respond to her calls to do so voluntarily.

"I will assess the situation and see whether there is significant progress in enhancing women's participation in decision-making," she said. "If this has not happened, I will be ready to present measures at EU level."

With just 12.5% of UK board positions currently held by women, and a strong prevailing sentiment against positive discrimination, a Brussels-imposed gender quota could cause a backlash similar to the one that has greeted prisoners' votes.

Of course, the EU, with its democratically elected parliament, has a remit to legislate in a way the ECtHR does not. But the fundamental problem facing any steps towards "building a European area of justice" is the same: many of us don't like being told what to do by Europe.

Certainly, it is easy to feel protective towards good old Blighty after spending a few days listening to aloof Eurocrats utter Eurotruisms inside a building dotted with conspicuously expensive modern art.

On the whole, though, co-operation beats the conflict that defined European relations in the centuries that preceded European union. And with the UK due to assume chairmanship of the Council of Europe (of which the ECtHR is a part) later this year, the government's stated aim of reform from within looks realistic.

Indeed, the 140,000-strong backlog of cases faced by the ECtHR – a situation widely regarded as unsustainable – means Cameron and co could find themselves with the leverage to enact substantial changes.

"Physically ill" Dave's conspicuous demonstration of alliance with the public mood on prisoners' votes may turn out to be a clever primer. Coming soon: "Better again" Dave, heroic tamer of those pesky, interfering Europeans.

Alex Aldridge is a freelance journalist who writes about law and education

The Canadian Press

Freedom, security NATO's mission Atlanta Journal Constitution Atlanta has an international reputation as an economic and media hub, and as the host of the Olympic Games and perhaps less as an international security center. But, as Secretary General of NATO, I consider it is important to ... NATO soldier killed in IED blast in S. AfghanistanPhilippine Star all 76 news articles »

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• Syrian regime tries to prevent 'day of defiance' protests
• Nato pledges to up the military pressure against Libya

8.45am: Welcome to our live coverage of the unrest in the Middle East on a key day for the protest movement in Syria.

The opposition is planning to take to the streets after Friday prayers in a "day of defiance" against the regime.

The government has been arresting hundreds of people in and around Damascus to try to head off demonstrations in the capital.

Leading Syrian dissident Ammar Abdulhamid writes:

The inhabitants of the Damascene suburb of Saqba tell of security forces conducting house-to-house raids over the last three days leading to hundreds of arrest. The campaign is taking place under the supervision of units affiliated with Maher Al-Assad's the 4th Division, according to eyewitness reports.

Observers described today as a "trial of strength" between the two sides. Wissam Tarif, of the human rights group Isan, said the regime is desperate to prevent the protesters taking control of a central square in Damascus.

They are also keen to avoid significant demonstrations in the northern city of Aleppo. Amateur video from the city suggest there was a heavy security presence on the streets of Aleppo last night.

The ministry of interior has urged people to abstain "from holding any rallies, demonstrations or sit-ins under any title without getting an official license."

Elsewhere, Nato has pledged to step-up the military pressure against Libya, after an international meeting of the Libya contact group in Rome.

Nato secretary general Anders Fogh Rasmussen said: "Our mission will continue until the mission goals are fulfilled. We all share the desire to see this sooner rather than later. A sustained coordinated international effort, comprising both political and military means, will help bring an end to this crisis and the suffering of the Libyan people."

More women die in childbirth in Afghanistan than anywhere else in the world. Global attention since 9/11 has led to more desperately needed midwives – will that change as troops pull out?

Roya, a midwife in Guldara, north of Kabul, is on the frontline of what may no longer be a war zone, but is still a killing field for women. Afghanistan has the highest proportion of women who die in childbirth of any country in the world.

"It is very common that women give birth at home and either the mother or the child dies," Roya says. "Mothers at home mostly deliver in a sitting position, which can cause the baby's body to end up in the wrong position during delivery. Because the mother doesn't have enough milk in the first three days after delivery, they give butter to the child. Often when they deliver the baby, they don't cut the umbilical cord properly with a clean instrument, which means it gets infected and the child dies."

According to figures from the Institute of Health Metrics in Seattle published last year, 1,575 women died for every 100,000 births in Afghanistan in 2008 – the equivalent figure for the UK is eight. Unicef says 52 babies out of every 1,000 die within two weeks of birth and 134 before their first birthday. A third of the deaths are caused by obstructed labour, in which years of heavy toil, having too many children too young, and possibly vitamin D deficiency as a result of purdah (which forces women to stay indoors), may all play a part.

The vast majority of women – around 87% – deliver with no skilled help, partly because of the paucity of health centres and midwives, partly because of the harsh terrain, and partly because male honour still demands women stay in their homes.

Just before 9/11, Brigid McConville of the White Ribbon Alliance for safe motherhood visited Kandahar province to see how women gave birth there. She visited a compound full of women, girls and babies who, from the age of 11, were not permitted to leave without a male family member as escort. "Giving birth was within that compound, with a neighbour or relative to help," she says. "They gave birth on a cloth over a dung heap, which absorbs the blood. The source of water was the stream running down the hillside behind. The toilets were also on that hillside. Women could only go there under cover of darkness. The stream was polluted. No wonder so many babies die."

The hunt for Osama bin Laden, which recently came to a bloody end, brought soldiers but also unprecedented aid to Afghanistan. The country's tragic record on childbirth triggered international support for a government initiative to train new midwives in remote rural areas. World Health Organisation estimates suggest Afghanistan needs 4,546 midwives to cover 90% of pregnancies – although USAid says it needs 8,000. In 2002, it had just 467.

Save the Children, which runs a college in Jawzjan province, says 2,400 midwives have been trained since the government launched these 18-month community courses and there are 31 schools instead of the six that existed in the cities before 2002. Linda Doull, Merlin's director of health and policy, talks of the sheer physical difficulty in Afghanistan's mountainous regions of accessing any sort of healthcare. "Some women travel three days by donkey over mountain ridges," she says. The need is to get care closer to them. "We choose women to train as midwives from the remote rural villages so that they go back there," she says.

Lima, 25, has delivered more than 600 live babies at the Uruzgan provincial hospital since qualifying in 2007. Women travel many miles, she says, and sometimes are robbed or punished for making the trip by people she calls "militants". "One of the sad cases happened last month," she says. "I received a woman who had delivered at home. When she came to the hospital she was bleeding and had lost a lot of blood. My colleague and I couldn't save her and she died. She left eight children behind her."

According to Save the Children, which published a major report, Missing Midwives, this year, there are just 13 midwives in Uruzgan province where 12,000 women deliver every year and 300 die. Afghanistan has now trained between half and a third of the midwives it needs – although there are still major issues around getting pregnant women to the clinics where they are based. But the worry now is that, as the pull-out of troops accelerates, the funding for training will dry up.

It appears to be happening already. A midwifery college in Kunar, in the heart of the mountainous, violent northeast of the country bordering Pakistan's tribal areas, has just closed. It was being funded by Gavi, the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunisations, but once one tranche of students had graduated, the money stopped and no other donors have come forward.

Those in the field say they are aware of a "rethink" towards funding. USAid, which has supported training, is looking at how best the money should be used. Funding for one of the Merlin schools, in Kunduz, ended in April because the midwife quota set for that region has been fulfilled. It is supposed to start again in two years.

It's a sensitive issue. Nobody wants to criticise donors over decisions concerning Afghanistan, but Unicef's deputy country representative, Gopal Sharma, says the job of training midwives is far from done. "There is a big gap in funding which needs to be filled."

Provision is dire in Afghanistan, but no country has enough midwives, according to campaigners such as the White Ribbon Alliance for Safe Motherhood, which estimates that at least 350,000 more are needed worldwide. In some countries they have been trained but the government-run health service cannot afford to employ them. Some blame the International Monetary Fund for its past edicts on public-sector employment. Some just point to the poverty of developing countries and the low priority of health in the government budget.

The dreadful conditions in Afghanistan are a far cry from hygienic NHS labour wards, although the UK is just 23rd in the global league table. Yet Professor Cathy Warwick, general secretary of the Royal College of Midwives, argues that even the UK is 4,500 midwives short. Current numbers failed to anticipate the rising birth-rate of the past 10 years, nor the increasing complexities of cases, as older women and those with other health problems such as obesity go into labour – nor the need for post-birth care over breastfeeding and the risk of infection, for example.

Campaigners say more midwives are critical if the world is to get anywhere near to meeting the two most failing UN millennium development goals of reducing maternal mortality by three-quarters and child deaths by two-thirds. Every day, 1,000 women and 2,000 babies die of infections and other complications of childbirth, according to childbirth campaigners. Trained midwives can identify potential problems in pregnancy and attempt to ensure women give birth in clinics where they have a chance. But one in three women (35%) still gives birth alone or with only friends or relatives on hand.

At the UN summit on the development goals in New York last September, government, private and charitable donors pledged $40bn (£23bn) to improve maternal and child health. "Now we have to make sure the promises are kept," says McConville, "and money goes on training midwives."

Friday afternoon there's supposed to be a deportation hearing in Newark for a couple some states, many countries, and all of us recognize as legally married. Josh Vandiver is an American, Henry Velandia is from Venezuela. Our country has not recognized the couple, legally married last year in Connecticut, as married enough to keep Velandia in this country with his husband.  Henry's visitor visa is expired. And because of DOMA, Josh isn't allowed to sponsor his husband for a green card. It's an outrage that DOMA applies, that the normal route this couple should be able to follow isn't available to them because Josh and Henry are the same gender. Josh and Henry's case has become a lightning rod for change, because no matter what happens in their case,  other same-sex couples from different countries will face the same crap as long as DOMA is allowed to stand.

What: Rally to Stop Henry Velandia's Deportation
When: Friday, May 6 at 11am
Where: Department of Homeland Security
Newark Immigration Court
Peter Rodino Federal Building
970 Broad St, Newark

Three months ago, President Obama made the decision to stop defending DOMA in federal court, and that makes right now a ripe time for change. Rep. Rush Holt seized that opportunity when he went on record with the Obama administration in a letter to US Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano calling on her to "immediately resolve" the deportation case Josh and Henry's case, and stop all deportations involving married gay and lesbian binational couples. Rush Holt letter, after the jump. US Attorney Eric Holder got into Josh and Henry's case today, and that's good news. But it's not enough. This shouldn't happen to anyone else, and it will as long as DOMA rules.

Backing up Friday's rally are groups both Jersey-based and national, including Garden State Equality, Princeton Equality Project, Courage Campaign, GetEQUAL, Stop the Deportations, All Out, Immigration Equality Action Fund, Marriage Equality USA, Out4Immigration, and Queer Rising.

Joining Holt are 64 other members of the House and Senate.

These hearings go on during the work day, so that's when the rally is. If you can make it to Newark Friday 11am, or show your support any other way, it strikes a blow for equality. Disclosure: I'm a board member of Garden State Equality. I'd be writing about this even if I wasn't.
Text of Rush Holt letter to Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano:

March 31, 2011

The Honorable Janet Napolitano
Secretary of Homeland Security
U.S. Naval Security Station
3801 Nebraska Avenue, NW
Washington, D.C.  20393

Dear Secretary Napolitano,

I write to you today to ask that you work with me to immediately resolve a deportation case that illustrates the injustice and unconstitutionality of the Defense of Marriage Act.

One of my constituents, Josh Vandiver married his husband, Henry Velandia, in 2010 in the state of Connecticut, where same-sex marriage is legal. Henry is from Venezuela and came to the United States in 2002 on a visitor visa. However, as a result of DOMA, Henry is ineligible for a spouse visa and will be deported unless the courts rule on the unconstitutionality of DOMA or a bill passes in Congress challenging DOMA. As a U.S. citizen, Josh should receive the full rights granted to all citizens and should not be singled out based on his sexual orientation, which is what is occurring by not allowing Josh to sponsor Henry for a visa.  Our immigration policies must work to unite families, not rip them apart.

In a statement released on February 23, 2011, Attorney General Eric Holder said, "After careful consideration, including a review of my recommendation, the president has concluded that, given a number of factors, including a documented history of discrimination, classifications based on sexual orientation should be subject to a more heightened standard of scrutiny. The President has also concluded that Section 3 of DOMA, as applied to legally married same-sex couples, fails to meet that standard and is therefore unconstitutional. Given that conclusion, the President has instructed the Department not to defend the statute in such cases."  I could not agree more and support efforts to repeal DOMA.  In the interim, you must not apply this unconstitutional law to tear apart families.
In 2009, the Department of Homeland Security made the decision based on humanitarian grounds to put a moratorium on deportations of the widows of U.S. citizen husbands who were killed during the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq before they received their green cards. In light of Attorney General Holder's new guidance, I am asking you to suspend the deportation of all spouses of citizens in a same-sex marriage until a decision is reached on DOMA.  This is the right thing to do for Henry, Josh and countless others who are being victimized by this discriminatory and unconstitutional law.
I appreciate your expeditious consideration of this matter, and my thanks for your dedicated service to our nation.

Sincerely,

RUSH HOLT
Member of Congress  

Editor's Note:  In light of the Goldman theft detailed last month, we are reposting this story. This is a brilliant attack.  Everything you read about AIG and Goldman yesterday pertains to this.  Paulson is annihilated by Congressman Cliff Stearns.

Awesome clip.  Please share it anywhere and everywhere across the net.  Our only hope to stop the heist will come from greater awareness.  Thank you.

 

     Please email to a Friend

---

Video - Cliff Stearns questions Hank Paulson - July 2009

Paulson gets abused in this clip, to the point of stuttering.   In a general sense, all pertaining to his role in certain decisions at Treasury that helped Goldman.

Everything is in here: the AIG-Goldman conduit, Lehman's failure, Paulson's tax-free $700 million stock sale, Geithner's role with AIG, various conflicts of interest, political capture, the TARP switcharoo and Goldman's FDIC debt guarantee.

---

From over 15,000 videos on the site this is still one of our favorites.  Until the day Paulson is indicted for crimes against humanity, this is the closest we'll see him to a courtroom.  Seeking revenge as we do, daily, ritualistically, painfully, we wondered how could we hurt him and move the court date closer.  The most effective strategy is an email campaign.  Like all campaigns, it requires a few workhorses in the beginning; some adept folks who are willing to send this link to hundreds of others, essentially to everyone in their email address books.  Copy/paste and blast away.  We thank each and everyone in advance for your help.  

Also check out video of Paulson and Marcy Kaptur... 

---

Meet Hank the Hammer...

Video:  Former Goldman Sachs CEO Henry Paulson has a message for you...

We haven't forgotten the crimes against humanity of former Goldman Sachs CEO Henry Paulson and his tax-free $700 million.  We put everything that's important about your former TARP-loving Treasury Secretary into a 90-second comedy short.  Take a look!

• A $700 Million Tax Loophole for Poor Mr. Paulson - Forbes

Read about Paulson's role in the SEC rule change that allowed leverage to explode on Wall Street.  This single act played a devastating, but rarely-mentioned role in bringing down the system.

• Paulson's Little-Known 2004 SEC Rule Change - Juicy Details
  

 

 

Background reading...

• EXPOSED: The Lies Of Hank Paulson

• The Mystery Man Behind The Goldman AIG Heist

 

 

 

• Slideshow - Anatomy of Foreclosure Fraud

 

• Slideshow - Inside Bernanke's Private Offices

 

• Slideshow - Airport Security Cartoons

 

Corporate Paralegal – Job code: #FS050511
Location: South San Francisco
Position type: Full time

Five Prime Therapeutics, Inc. is a clinical-stage, privately held, biotechnology company discovering and developing innovative protein and antibody therapeutics. Using its novel, high-technology discovery platform, FivePrime is building a strong pipeline of oncology, immunology and metabolic disease drug candidates. FivePrime mines its comprehensive library of secreted and extracellular human proteins to screen for medically relevant new therapeutic proteins and antibody targets. FivePrime has active collaborations with Pfizer, Inc. in the fields of oncology and diabetes and GlaxoSmithKline for skeletal muscle disorders and Human Genome Sciences, Inc. for development and commercialization in the United States, Canada and the EU of FP1039 for solid tumors. For more information about FivePrime, please visit FivePrime’s web site at www.fiveprime.com.

Position Description and Responsibilities

FivePrime seeks a corporate paralegal to join its Legal Department reporting to our Vice President, General Counsel and Secretary.

Qualified candidates would have the ability to:

• Manage FivePrime’s contracting process and contracts database;
• Prepare draft NDAs, consulting and service agreements, SOWs and other agreements as well as amendments to agreements;
• Manage and track the calendaring and fulfillment of periodic contract reporting obligations, including diligence reports under license agreements;
• Provide support for corporate transactions, including due diligence support;
• Manage general corporate files;
• Prepare and coordinate the filing of forms and applications;
• Assist in the preparation of, maintenance and organization of actions of the Board of Directors and its committees;
• From time to time, assist with the preparation of pre-read packages for meetings of the Board of Directors and its committees;
• Work without close supervision, be able to initiate new assignments and identify ways to improve processes and operations;
• Develop strong working relationships with functional groups;
• Maintain focus and composure amid pressure;
• Maintain and properly handle highly confidential information; and
• Exercise good judgment.

Qualifications

• B.A./B.S.
• Paralegal certificate from an ABA accredited institution is preferred
• 6 to 10 years of relevant experience as a corporate paralegal preferred, including experience working in a well-respected law firm and, preferably, in-house in the life sciences industry

To Apply
Please complete and online application here: https://home.eease.adp.com/recruit2/?id=586501&t;=1

• Principals only. Recruiters, please don't contact this job poster.
• Please, no phone calls about this job!
• Please do not contact job poster about other services, products or commercial interests.

Party loses control of Sheffield and Hull councils, blaming defeats on Labour's 'decapitation' strategy

Nick Clegg suffered a humiliating reverse in his Sheffield backyard when the Liberal Democrats were ejected from power in the city, amid heavy losses for the party across northern England.

As voters punished the Lib Dems for their performance after a year in government, the party blamed a "decapitation strategy" by Labour and the unions which saw it lose power in Hull and suffer big losses in Manchester and Liverpool.

In the first full result of the night, Labour held onto Sunderland where it gained four seats from the Tories. The party's vote was up by an average of 20 points on 2007, the last time the same seats were contested.

Senior Lib Dems also said the party was on course to lose between nine and 12 of the 15 seats it was defending in Sheffield.

A third of the seats on the council, which the party has run as a minority administration for the past year, were up for election. The Lib Dems had 41 seats, with Labour trailing by just one, on 40.

David Blunkett, the former Labour home secretary who is a Sheffield MP, said: "The Cleggmania of this time last year has turned into a kind of Clegg pneumonia. There is a great deal of pleasure [for Labour] in terms of winning the council but a great deal of challenge. Of course because Nick Clegg is deputy prime minister, because of the decisions he has taken over the last 12 months, because of the promises that were made exactly a year ago and were broken people have taken their revenge."

Simon Hughes, the Lib Dem deputy leader said his party had suffered a poor result in Sheffield – Clegg is MP for Sheffield Hallam. "Sheffield is going to be different from every other council because it is Nick Clegg's seat," Hughes told the BBC. "It is his city so any anti-Nick view will be exemplified most in Sheffield."

Hughes admitted the government's controversial decision to cancel an £80m loan to Sheffield Forgemasters was a factor. He said: "The combination of that and tuition fees mean that in the city Nick has become the issue despite of the fact that we have run the council extremely well. We haven't had mass redundancies, we have protected the frontline services."

The Lib Dems lost control of Kingston-upon-Hull after a strong recovery by Labour which saw it gain as many as 10 out of 12 seats from the Lib Dems. The Lib Dems were also on course for losses in Liverpool, where the party had 35 seats to 50 for Labour, after the former Lib Dem leader on the council Warren Bradley criticised Clegg's "record and perception". Bradley stood down before the election.

Lord Mike Storey, who led the city council from 1998-2005, lost his seat to an 18-year-old.

The Lib Dems were struggling in the Midlands. There was a strong swing from the Lib Dems to Labour in Birmingham. John Hemming, the Lib Dem MP for Birmingham Yardley, admitted that his party was experiencing a bad night in the city. The Tories were on course to overtake the Lib Dems as the largest party in Birmingham.

Jeremy Browne, the Lib Dem foreign office minister who is a close Clegg ally, said the party was suffering from its first year in government since the second world war. "We are now in government and are making difficult decisions," Browne told Sky News.

Browne dismissed criticisms that the Lib Dems have broken promises. "We had the general election a year ago. The Lib Dems finished third. We got 8% of the MPs in the House of Commons, so we won no mandate to implement our manifesto in full. I wish we had. We are the junior partners in the coalition. No party won the general election so no party has a mandate to implement its manifesto in full. We are putting into effect about two thirds of our policies. It is worth saying it is 66 years since the second world war [when the Liberals were in government]. Nick Clegg has achieved more in one year than the previous 65 years put together so we have a record to defend."

But John Leech, the Lib Dem MP for Manchester Withington, Tweeted: "We've taken a real kicking in the ballot box tonight."

Mike Hancock, the rebel Lib Dem MP for Portsmouth South, said the party should table tougher demands to the Tories. He called on Lib Dems ministers to "spell out to our Conservative colleagues that we are not going to take anything lying down, we are going to be there fighting our corner and if we don't like it we are not going to go along with it.

Hancock told the BBC: "I am sure that that is what the majority of people in the country who voted for us would expect us to do and what a lot of our members - some of whom will have loyally supported the party and will lose their seats in local government today - will also be saying."

Labour was working hard to play down expectations after Iain Duncan Smith, the work and pensions secretary, said the party should gain 1,300 seats nationally. Colin Rallings and Michael Thrasher, of Plymouth University, have said that Labour should be in the strongest position of the three main parties because the same seats were last contested in 2007, a month before Gordon Brown succeeded Tony Blair as prime minister.

Ed Miliband, the Labour leader, believes the Tory prediction overplays expectations for Labour.

Labour said it was performing in the south. It achieved strong gains in Exeter and was gaining in Swindon, Thanet and Gravesham, all key swing parliamentary seats.

Dollar Thrifty Automotive Group (DTG)

Q1 2011 Earnings Call

May 05, 2011 9:00 am ET

Executives

H. Buster - Chief Financial Officer, Senior Executive Vice President and Treasurer

Scott Thompson - Chief Executive Officer, President and Director

Vicki Vaniman - Executive Vice President, Secretary and General Counsel

Analysts

Fred Lowrance - Avondale Partners, LLC

Michael Millman - Millman Research Associates

Christopher Agnew - MKM Partners LLC

Sachin Shah - ICAP

Jason Miller -

John Healy - Northcoast Research

Unknown Analyst -

Neil Portus - Goldman Sachs Group Inc.

Stephen O'Hara - Sidoti & Company, LLC

Presentation

Operator

Welcome, and thank you for joining the Dollar Thrifty Automotive Group First Quarter Financial Results. [Operator Instructions] This call is being recorded. If anyone does have any objections, you may disconnect at this time. And now I'd like to turn the call over to Vicki Vaniman. You may begin.

Vicki Vaniman

Thank you.

We are a general practice law firm looking for a full-time bilingual receptionist/secretary. This is an entry level position so no experience is required, except basic knowledge with word and excel. Otherwise, the ideal candidate is detail-oriented, independent but a team player, prompt and professional.

Although any experience is a plus and compensation is based on experience. We are willing to train those interested in becoming a legal secretary / legal assistant. Furthermore, this position could grow into a legal secretary / legal assistant position.

ONLY bilingual Spanish and English speaking candidates will be considered.

Please send resume via e-mail.

• Location: LAKEWOOD, CA
• Compensation: Based on experience
• Principals only. Recruiters, please don't contact this job poster.
• Please, no phone calls about this job!
• Please do not contact job poster about other services, products or commercial interests.

WASHINGTON – Today, President Barack Obama announced his intent to nominate the following individuals to key Administration posts:

• Michael H. Corbin, Ambassador to the United Arab Emirates, Department of State
• Jeffrey DeLaurentis, Alternate Representative of the United States for Special Political Affairs in the United Nations, with the rank of Ambassador
• Jeanine E. Jackson, Ambassador to the Republic of Malawi, Department of State
• William H. Moser, Ambassador to the Republic of Moldova, Department of State

President Obama said, “These individuals have demonstrated knowledge and dedication throughout their careers. I am grateful they have chosen to take on these important roles, and I look forward to working with them in the months and years to come.”

President Obama announced his intent to nominate the following individuals to key Administration posts:

Michael H. Corbin, Nominee for Ambassador to the United Arab Emirates, Department of State
Michael H. Corbin, a career member of the Senior Foreign Service, currently serves as Deputy Assistant Secretary of State in the Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs.  Prior to this assignment, Mr. Corbin was Minister-Counselor for Political-Military Affairs at Embassy Baghdad from 2008 to 2009 and Charge d’Affaires in Damascus, Syria from 2006 to 2008.  Since joining the Foreign Service in 1985, Mr. Corbin has held various positions overseas and in Washington, including: Minister Counselor for Economic and Political Affairs at the U.S. Embassy in Cairo (2003-2006), Deputy Director of the Office of Arabian Peninsula Affairs (2001-2003), Director of the Counter-Narcotics Section at the U.S. Embassy in Caracas, Venezuela (1997- 2001), Political-Military Affairs Officer at the U.S. Embassy in Cairo (1994-1997) and at the U.S. Embassy in Kuwait (1987-1989).  Prior to joining the Foreign Service, he served in the Peace Corps from 1982 to 1984 in Mauritania. Mr. Corbin received a B.A. from Swarthmore College.  

Jeffrey DeLaurentis, Nominee for Alternate Representative of the United States for Special Political Affairs in the United Nations, with the rank of Ambassador
Jeffrey DeLaurentis, a career member of the Senior Foreign Service, currently serves as Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for the Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs.  Prior to this assignment, Mr. DeLaurentis served as Minister Counselor for Political Affairs and Security Council Coordinator at the U.S. Mission to the United Nations in New York.   Since beginning his State Department career in 1991, Mr. DeLaurentis has served in a number of overseas posts including Political/Economic Section Chief at the U.S. Interests Section in Havana, Political Counselor at the U.S. Mission to the United Nations in Geneva, and Political Counselor at the U.S. Embassy in Bogota.  In Washington, Mr. DeLaurentis served as Executive Assistant to the Under Secretary of State for Democracy and Global Affairs, Special Assistant to the Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs, Director of Inter-American Affairs at the National Security Council, and as an International Relations Officer in the Bureau of International Organizations.  Prior to entering the Foreign Service, Mr. DeLaurentis held a senior staff position at the Council on Foreign Relations.   Mr. DeLaurentis is a graduate of the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service and Columbia University Graduate School of International and Public Affairs.

Jeanine E. Jackson, Nominee for Ambassador to the Republic of Malawi, Department of State
Jeanine E. Jackson is a career member of the Senior Foreign Service and currently serves as the Minister Counselor for Management at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad.   Prior to this role, Ms. Jackson served as U.S. Ambassador to Burkina Faso.   Since joining the U.S. Foreign Service in 1985, her other overseas assignments included Management Counselor at Embassy Kabul; Supervisory General Services Officer at Embassy Nairobi; Personnel Officer at the U.S. Consulate in Hong Kong; Chief of the Consular Section at the U.S. Consulate in Jeddah; General Services Officer at Embassy Lagos; and Vice Consul at the U.S. Consulate in Zurich.  During Washington assignments, she served in the Bureaus of African, European and Near East Asian Affairs.  Ms. Jackson holds the rank of Colonel in the U.S. Army Reserve.  She earned a Master’s Degree in Business Administration from Florida Institute of Technology and a Bachelor’s Degree in Art Education from Hastings College.

William H. Moser, Nominee for Ambassador to the Republic of Moldova, Department of State
William H. Moser is a career member of the Senior Foreign Service and currently serves as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Logistics Management at the U.S. Department of State.   Since joining the U.S. Foreign Service in 1984, Mr. Moser’s domestic and overseas assignments have included:  Director of Global Support Services and Innovation; Management Counselor at Embassy Kiev; Post Management Officer in the Bureau of Near Eastern and South Asian Affairs; Energy Attaché/Economic Officer and Management Officer at Embassy Almaty; Political Military Officer in the Office of Regional Support and Security Assistance; Administrative Officer at Embassy Paramaribo; Disbursing/Financial Management Officer at Embassy Cairo; Consular Officer and Staff Assistant at Embassy Bonn; and General Services Officer at Embassy Bamako.   Mr. Moser received a B.A. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Ministers will return to business as normal, but the tensions will remain

With the polling stations open, one Liberal Democrat described the fight between the Lib Dems and the Tories as one that both parties needed to wrap up. "We're like Sherlock Holmes and Moriarty, fighting above the Reichenbach Falls. We've been fighting to the death, but if we go over the precipice, we'll probably both die."

Perhaps the sense of proportion is a smidgeon out, but there are quivers in Lib Dem voices suggesting that the Tories may be about to call the whole thing off.

Most Tories only wish it were possible to call an election, but an emerging theme from their side is that though their party could deal with a coalition collapse, the Conservatives could not be seen to have brought it about. They would be punished by the electorate for having gone into a five-year coalition in bad faith.

The Lib Dem problem is that they cannot afford a general election. Hence the precipice. Friday's weekly meeting of Lib Dem and Tory special advisers has been cancelled, possibly because it's not obvious they can yet be in the same room to agree joint lines. But there will be a document trumpeting co-authored successes, and next week Nick Clegg will make a speech telling his party what he believes they are still getting from the coalition.

In contrast to the referendum campaign, the Lib Dem cabinet ministers Chris Huhne and Vince Cable, both vocal and at times splenetic critics of David Cameron during the campaign, will dial things down a bit. Huhne will attend a meeting next week of Coalition 2.0, the cross-party attempt to drum up new ideas for the future – hardly the behaviour of a malcontent. Likewise, Cable, the business secretary, will go on the BBC's Andrew Marr programme on Sunday and push for action in areas in the coalition agreement where he believes there has been scant progress. Figures on bank lending have been lacklustre and Cable will want more.

A push for a formal midterm agreement, led by cabinet ministers Danny Alexander and Oliver Letwin, in which the two parties would agree a slate of new policies, is meeting resistance, both because of the tighter ideological co-operation it entails and because Lib Dems feel it suggests more of the coalition agreement is complete than is the case.

Instead, they want to focus on implementing the existing agreement and watering down Andrew Lansley's health shakeup (though Tories say the Lib Dems are proving backward about coming forward with actual demands).

Having achieved a rethink on the NHS changes, the Lib Dems' Lady Williams is said to be "in a state" over European legislation heading to the Lords – which would require a referendum if any further sovereign powers are handed to Brussels – and is keen to slow that down too. The Lib Dems also want to press pause on plans for elected police commissioners, although the difficulty here is that the proposals are in the coalition agreement.

Now AV is behind them for at least a decade, other items will be the object of their zeal: Lords reform ("one hell of a battle" as one Lib Dem put it on Thursday), and party funding. Lib Dems would like every voter to be given £3 when they vote to fund a party of their choosing.

But while ministers retreat back into day to day government and collective responsibility, gagged afresh, Lord Ashdown and Tim Farron, party heavyweights outside the cabinet, will be left to issue the philippics against the Conservatives.

"There is an old saying by Mark Twain: 'It is a swift little thing a lie, it's halfway round the world before it gets its boots on,'" Ashdown told the Guardian, condemning the Cameron-backed no campaign. "This referendum is going to be determined by the truth of that statement. We have set our hands to this task and now it must be completed, so the purpose of the coalition has not altered, but the mood music most assuredly has as a result of what has gone on in the past three weeks. I have always said when asked, I did not think the result of the referendum could affect the coalition, but I did say the way it was fought could."

Predicting a new, businesslike relationship, he said: "I think we should be much more straightforward where we disagree. That is not a criticism of Clegg. I think his attempt, along with the prime minister, who played a strong hand in this in the first few months, to give this some emotional quotient was absolutely right.

"He had to make this thing live in the minds of the British electorate – that this was something different. He had to capitalise on the mood of the country. Maybe the moment when that shifted to something more businesslike was always going to happen, and if it was, this is the moment when it does."

Away from coalition dynamics, there will be inquests on the AV referendum. Many in the yes campaign say they needed years to build a consensus for reform.

"A delay at least until October would have been better," Ashdown said. "There was no one single mistake. It was far bigger than that. We were offering a solution to a problem people simply did not recognise. Yes, some people were exercised over expenses, or did not like the state of British politics, but they did not see the connection to AV."

Some senior Lib Dems say the yes campaign was naive to think it could be won with non-politicians. An opinion poll in the Sun showed that only 25% of people knew Eddie Izzard was in the yes camp. It needed to have been a fully political campaign from the start. This was why Huhne and Cable stepped up their attacks 10 days ago, but it was too late. Before that point, they said, Clegg had not realised what it was like to fight Conservatives, having been a member of parliament only since 2005.

Ashdown said: "Did we get our messaging absolutely right? Probably not. At the end of the day too many of the public did not understand why this was an opportunity of a lifetime and why this was necessary, so I don't think we can exclude ourselves from some of the blame."

Moneycontrol.com

Vietnam Communist party assures Pranab on Tata proj, issues IBNLive.com PTI | 11:05 PM,May 05,2011 Hanoi, May 5 (PTI) General Secretary of Communist Party of Vietnam Nguyen Phu Trong today assured Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee that he will raise various bilateral issues, as well as Tata Steel project, ... Vietnam assures India of clearance to Tata steel projectEconomic Times Pranab takes up Tata project with VietnamBusiness Standard Tata Group: grass is not always greenerFinancial Times (blog) Press Information Bureau (press release) -Hindu Business Line -mydigitalfc.com all 36 news articles »

From 3 to 27 May 2011 Kazan, the capital of the Republic of Tatarstan, will play host to the participants of the Candidates Matches 2011. FIDE President Kirsan Ilyumzhinov attended the Opening Ceremony of the Matches. The first President of Republic of Tatarstan, Senior Advisor to FIDE President Mintimer Shaimiev delivered a greeting speech to all the participants of the event. 

Pictorial report:


Welcome speech of the FIDE President 


The drawing procedure was held at the Opening Ceremony - Vladimir Kramnik (RUS) and Teimour Radjabov (AZE)


FIDE General Secretary Ignatius Leong, Boris Gelfand (ISR) and Shakhriyar Mamedyarov (AZE)


A symbolic first move (Round 1)


Levon Aronian (ARM) - Alexander Grischuk (RUS)


Press conference

Follow the daily reports and results at http://kazan2011.fide.com/

MPs denied vote on enshrining military code in law as pressure mounts on David Cameron over promises to services

Ministers have shelved a key parliamentary debate on a bill covering the treatment of Britain's armed forces amid pressure to keep their promise to enshrine the military covenant in law.

Following attacks on David Cameron, not least from the British Legion which has accused the prime minister of reneging on a promise he gave last year, the Commons would have voted on Wednesday for the first time on a new armed forces bill.

Armed forces bills are normally uncontentious, setting out updated conditions of service for Britain's soldiers, sailors, and airforce personnel and their families. But the government is under pressure as the bill does not include the prime minister's pledge in a speech last year on the aircraft carrier, Ark Royal, to enshrine the military covenant in law.

The highly unusual step of withdrawing the bill was taken after Bob Ainsworth, the former Labour defence secretary, asked Cameron why he was "watering down" his earlier commitment.

The prime minister denied he was doing that. But he added that because military personnel were facing "so many changing circumstances", ministers were considering "all the things" they could do relating to healthcare, education, and council tax for soldiers serving overseas.

An amendment proposing to enshrine the core principles of a military covenant in law has been tabled by Philip Hollobone, Conservative MP for Kettering, supported by the British Legion and Labour's frontbench. The bill proposes only an annual report by ministers on the covenant – a set of principles recognising that the armed forces are sent to fight for their country risking their lives doing so. The covenant would not be defined in law.

Shadow defence secretary Jim Murphy said the decision was "extraordinary news". He added: "In the face of a massive rebellion from the defence community and MPs from all sides of parliament the government is running scared.

"I hope that this is a sign they are thinking again and will now honour their commitment to enshrine the covenant in law. If they do it will be a stunning but welcome U-turn".

During the bill's Commons committee stage, the British Legion's director general, Chris Simpkins, dismissed arguments that the armed forces should bear their fair share of cuts. "It is the government's job to prioritise budgets, this is nothing new. What we [the Legion] are asking, is for him [the prime minister] to honour his explicit commitment to enshrine the covenant in law."

The British Legion says that a definition of the military covenant, enshrined in law, would set out the armed forces' relationship with the state.

It would not go into detail about any particular benefits they should have. Defence officials argue that any attempt to enshrine a military covenant in law would become a "legal minefield".

A Ministry of Defence spokesman said annual reports on the covenant – dismissed by the British Legion as inadequate – would include "progress on healthcare, housing and education.

"This is the first time that the existence of the covenant will be recognised in statute," the MoD said.The MoD added: "We are in the process of finalising the text of the military covenant and once it is ready for publication, will look to hold the [bill's] third reading."

En Route New York, New York   

10:27 A.M. EDT

MR. CARNEY:  Good morning.  I don't have any announcements, so let’s get started.

Q    What does the President want to do today?  What does he want to see?

MR. CARNEY:  Well, the President believes it’s appropriate and fitting to travel to New York this week, in the wake of the successful mission to bring Osama bin Laden to justice, in order to recognize the terrible loss that New York suffered on 9/11, and to acknowledge the burden that the families of the victims, the loved ones of the victims, have been carrying with them since 9/11, almost 10 years, and in an effort to perhaps help New Yorkers and Americans everywhere to achieve a sense of closure with the death of Osama bin Laden.

Q    Can you talk about tomorrow’s troop rally in Kentucky and sort of the tone that the President is looking to strike there versus today?

MR. CARNEY:  What the President almost always says when he’s asked about the toughest decisions he has to make is that it’s sending men and women into battle, into harm’s way.  And the successful mission against Osama bin Laden is a monumental achievement, but the fact remains that we're still at war, that we have 100,000 combat personnel in Afghanistan, we have troops in a support-and-assist role in Iraq, and we have U.S. military men and women in other places around the globe and, in some cases, in difficult situations.

So it’s important to acknowledge that, and for Americans to remember that despite the elimination of bin Laden, we're still extremely dependent upon and grateful to our military men and women for what they do.

Q    Will there be a status update on the efforts in Afghanistan or any sort of policy discussion?

MR. CARNEY:  I don't expect the President to make any policy announcements about Afghanistan or AfPak, as we say.  As I've said, and others, that the President’s policy remains unchanged. In many ways, while the mission against bin Laden was a singular event, it was part of a general intensification of our focus on the AfPak region, on the need to disrupt, dismantle, and defeat al Qaeda, which was the primary goal of the President’s policy in the AfPak region, and it was reflective of a general success that we've been having in taking out al Qaeda members and terrorists in the region.

Q    Jay, you used the term, “closure,” there in your first answer.  Does the President think that coming to New York, meeting with first responders, going to Ground Zero, can add to a sense of closure for New Yorkers that they wouldn't have if he simply made his statements from the White House?

MR. CARNEY:  I think that it’s important for the President of the United States, given the traumatic events that New York suffered on September 11, 2001, to return in the wake of the successful mission against bin Laden.  He will be back for the 10-year anniversary.  And this is a significant event this week, and he looks forward to meeting privately with family members, meeting with first responders, in what is a bitter-sweet moment in many ways.

Q    Can you talk about the latest revision to the Sunday narrative that in fact it was not a 40-minute firefight, as White House officials had initially said?

MR. CARNEY:  I don't have any updates on the narrative.  As I said yesterday, we've been extremely forthcoming in trying to provide as many facts as we could to you as we’d gotten them.  The nature of the mission, the nature of what happened Sunday, combined with the effort to get that information quickly resulted in the need to clarify some facts, which I think, honestly, is to our credit that when we discovered that clarification was needed we did put them out.  But the --

Q    But the White House has not clarified this point on the record.

MR. CARNEY:  Again, as I said yesterday, the Defense Department can take questions about -- you have about further details on the mission or clarifications.  We're still in a process of gathering all the facts of that operation.  And the broader point here is that a group of extraordinary U.S. personnel flew into a foreign country at the dead of night and executed a mission and achieved a goal -- executed a mission flawlessly and achieved a goal that had eluded the United States of America for almost 10 years.

Q    Can I ask you about the family members?  If any expressed a desire to see the picture of Osama bin Laden, would you be willing to provide it, and have you brought a picture today in case of that eventuality?

MR. CARNEY:  I'm not aware that anybody brought any pictures and I don't have any updates on that.

Q    Well, on the picture, yesterday in his interview that you shared with us, the President used the phrase, “spike the football,” in discussing his decision not to release the photos. Does the President believe that Americans who want to see the pictures are looking to do a victory dance?

MR. CARNEY:  No, but he believes that there is ample precedent or evidence in the past of pictures like this being used in a way that is not helpful to national security interests of the United States; that is not reflective of who the American people are, as the President said, that we don't trot out photos as trophies.  And since we established beyond any doubt the identity of Osama bin Laden, the fact that he was killed, there is no need to release those photos.  And on balance, as I said, there are certainly arguments for -- and reasonable arguments to be made for release, but on balance, the President feels very strongly that the cons outweigh the pros.

Q    Any updates to the schedule at this point?

MR. CARNEY:  We will provide you updates as we move along throughout the day.  If there are changes to the schedule that you already have we’ll provide you that information as we go along.

Q    Any updates to the search for a Commerce Secretary?

MR. CARNEY:  I do not.

Q    There were reports today about -- on the budget talks, that Republicans were kind of seemingly downsizing some of their ambitions on what they were going to seek from these talks that are beginning today.  Do you have any indication of Republicans backing away from Medicare demands or any reaction to some of the stories that were out there today?

MR. CARNEY:  I read those stories.  All I would say is that the necessity to set aside maximalist positions is paramount if you’re trying to reach common ground and find a consensus around some achievable goal.  So we welcome any efforts, indications, that parties to these negotiations are searching for common ground, and look forward to these talks getting underway and to having them produce a result.

Q    Can you describe how the Vice President has prepared for the talks?

MR. CARNEY:  Well, having worked for him, I know he likes to dive deep and I’m sure he spent a lot of -- in terms of the issues, I’m sure he spent a lot of time with a lot of paper and with his Chief of Staff, Bruce Reed, and with the economic team, just mastering the facts of the situation.  That’s how he approaches these things.  So -- but beyond that, I don’t have any updates.

Q    Thanks.

END
10:37 A.M. EDT

WASHINGTON – On Friday, May 6, President Obama will tour Allison Transmission’s headquarters in Indianapolis and speak to approximately 750 workers and invited guests about his long term plan to protect consumers against rising oil prices and decrease oil imports while ensuring a cleaner, safer, and more secure energy future.
 
The President will be introduced by Allison Transmission Chairman and CEO Lawrence E. Dewey.
 
During his tour of Allison Transmission’s facility, the President will view each section of the assembly process for the 3000 Series transmission. This is the base transmission for the new hybrid propulsion system that will be in production in 2013, the H3000.  The H3000 propulsion system is being directly supported by an American Recovery and Reinvestment Act Matching Grant through the Department of Energy.
 
Also, on Friday May 6, Deputy Transportation Secretary John Porcari and Assistant Secretary of Energy for Policy and International Affairs David Sandalow will tour Baltimore’s Mondawamin Transit Center, where hybrid buses and light rail are providing families affordable transportation alternatives as gas prices rise.  Since Maryland invested in 181 buses which use Allison Transmission hybrid technology, fuel mileage is up by 20%, distance traveled between breakdowns has more than tripled, and Baltimore commuters enjoy buses that are 50% quieter than diesel buses.
 
12:15 PM EDT
President Obama’s Remarks at Allison Transmission
Allison Transmission
4700 West 10th Street
Indianapolis, IN 46222
 
Background on Allison Transmission
Allison Transmission is a leader in hybrid technology and the world’s largest manufacturer of fully-automatic transmissions for medium- and heavy-duty commercial vehicles, tactical military vehicles and hybrid-propulsion systems.  Allison employs approximately 2,500 workers in Indiana and recently announced a plan to expand its Indianapolis operations that allowed for the hiring of 50 new employees last month and will create up to 205 new jobs in total by 2013. The company’s hybrid-propulsion systems for buses are used across the country and have saved more than 17 million gallons of diesel fuel.
 
Allison is now ready to apply their hybrid expertise to the commercial truck markets.  With a $62.8 million cost-share grant from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act funding, Allison is currently working to bring to production this hybrid system that would be available to commercial trucks. Using a parallel hybrid system architecture, Allison estimates that these vehicles—often used as pick-up & delivery trucks, general distribution trucks, utility trucks, and refuse trucks— could reduce diesel fuel consumption by 25 to 35 percent.
 
Commercial trucks are prime candidates for hybrid systems because of their frequent stop-and-go driving needs as in metropolitan area package delivery. When vehicles slow down or stop, the system will use an electric motor-generator within the transmission to slow the vehicle and capture much of its “kinetic” energy to convert to electricity. The electric energy is stored in an on-board battery and then re-used later to either speed up the vehicle or power vehicle equipment.  Transit buses purchased by cities or counties are often purchased with some federal assistance.  These new commercial truck hybrid systems will offer a value proposition that doesn't rely on federal assistance.
 
Background on Securing America’s Energy Future
In 2009, the Administration announced groundbreaking joint national fuel efficiency and greenhouse gas standards for cars and light-duty trucks built in 2012-2016. Together, these national standards will raise average fuel economy to 35.5 miles per gallon by 2016, while maintaining consumer choice. This national car rule alone is estimated to save 1.8 billion barrels of oil over the life of the program and save the average vehicle owner $3,000.
 
In July, the Administration plans to finalize the first-ever national fuel economy and greenhouse gas emission standards for commercial trucks, vans and buses built in 2014 to 2018, saving hundreds of millions of barrels of oil. The Administration is also developing the next round of the national car rule for Model Years 2017-2025 and expects to announce the proposal in September 2011.