A former lobbyist and Monsanto employee who is credited with playing an instrumental role in introducing genetically modified milk and known carcinogens into the U.S. Food supply has been hired as a key advisor for the FDA.

Michael Taylor has been hired to advise Margaret Hamburg, the FDA’s commissioner of food and drugs. In his new position, Taylor will also work with the FDA Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition, the Center for Veterinary Medicine, the Office of Regulatory Affairs, Congress and the White House.

Source/Full Story: naturalnews.com
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An influential US Senate committee has proposed a sweeping overhaul of the country’s regulatory architecture that would strip powers from the Federal Reserve and create a single banking regulator.

Chris Dodd, chairman of the Senate banking committee, on Tuesday presented a more radical vision of regulatory reform than that proposed by the Obama administration. The move ushered into the open a behind-the-scenes struggle between banks, policymakers and regulators.

Democrats lined up behind Mr Dodd as he presented the bill. But senior Republicans were missing from a press conference in spite of attempts by President Barack Obama to secure their support for one of his most important legislative goals.

The proposal to consolidate regulators faces strident opposition from the Fed, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and smaller regulators, which argue they are best placed to supervise banks.

Mr Dodd said most institutions should benefit from a regulator that would provide “clarity, cut red tape and make it easier to compete”, but banks would “no longer be able to shop for the weakest regulator”.

Source/Full Story: FT.com
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So we have another thrice-named gunman. What happened to the initial reports of two gunmen, one dead and the other on the run?

A soldier suspected of fatally shooting 12 and wounding 31 at Fort Hood in Texas on Thursday is not dead as previously reported by the military, the base’s commander said Thursday evening.

A civilian officer who was wounded in the incident shot the suspect, who is “in custody and in stable condition,” Army Lt. Gen. Robert Cone told reporters.

“Preliminary reports indicate there was a single shooter that was shot multiple times at the scene,” Cone said at a news conference. “However, he was not killed as previously reported.”
…

A soldier who asked not to be identified told CNN that an e-mail went out to all base personnel instructing them not to speak to the media.

Source/Full Story: CNN.com
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Executives do not expect the U.S. commercial real estate market to emerge from critical condition any time soon, according to a survey by The Real Estate Roundtable.

Although the three indexes tracked by the “Sentiment Survey” have risen dramatically since the near-collapse of financial markets last year, they reflect the respondents’ collective sense of relief at having survived the worst of the turmoil, according to The Real Estate Roundtable.

The U.S. commercial real estate market has been in a downward spiral for more than two years. On the whole, U.S. commercial real estate values have fallen about 40 percent from their peaks in 2007. Borrowers face shortfalls in financings when loans come due, while other borrowers are struggling to meet even monthly payments.

The delinquency rate of U.S. commercial real estate loans that had been securitized into Commercial Mortgage-Backed Securities (CMBS) hit 4.8 percent in October, up from 4.36 the prior month and dwarfing the 0.77 rate a year earlier, according to Trepp, which tracks CMBS loans.

Source/Full Story: Reuters
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Contaminated fresh ground beef caused a possible E. coli outbreak that killed two people and sent 16 others to hospitals, federal health officials said Monday.

Twenty-eight people may have become ill after eating beef produced by Fairbank Farms of Ashville, N.Y., the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported. All but three of the suspected infections are in the northeastern U.S. and 18 are in New England, said CDC spokeswoman Lola Scott Russell.

Fairbank Farms recalled almost 546,000 pounds of fresh ground beef that had been distributed in September to stores from North Carolina to Maine. The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s recall notice, dated Saturday, said the possibly tainted meat had been sold in numerous ways, from meatloaf and meatball mix to hamburger patties.
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Some of the ground beef was sold at Trader Joe’s, Price Chopper, Lancaster, Wild Harvest, Shaw’s, BJ’s, Ford Brothers and Giant stores in packages that carried the number “EST. 492″ on the label. Those products were packaged Sept. 15-16 and may have been labeled with a sell-by date from Sept. 19 through Sept. 28, meaning they’re no longer being sold as fresh product in supermarkets, Fairbank Farms said.

The rest of the ground beef, packaged in wholesale-sized containers under the Fairbank Farms name, was distributed to stores in Maryland, Massachusetts, North Carolina, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania and Virginia. That meat was likely repackaged for sale and would likely have differing package and sell-by dates.

The USDA was urging customers with concerns to contact the stores where they bought the meat.

Ron Allen, Fairbank’s CEO, urged consumers to check their freezers for the recalled ground beef.

Companies subject to such recalls are allowed to cook tainted meat to kill the bacteria and then use it in other products, a common practice in the food industry.

That won’t happen in this case, the company said.

Source/Full Story: FOXNews.com
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In Ukraine, schools have been closed, all public events have been banned and restrictions imposed on people’s movements after the country confirmed its first death from H1N1 swine flu.

Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko announced a three-week period of precautionary measures and health officials are said to be considering introducing quarantine across the country..

An outbreak of flu and pneumonia has killed 30 people in western Ukraine since mid-October, but until now officials have been insisting the H1N1 strain was not the cause.

A health ministry spokeswoman said not all the dead were tested, but checks on one body have proved positive.

In western Ukraine more than 5,000 flu cases have been registered during the last week. Tests are now being carried out to determine the origin of the virus.

Source/Full Story:  euronews
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During that long summer between the collapse of Bear Stearns and the collapse of Lehman Brothers, Hank Paulson held a secret meeting with the board of Goldman Sachs in Moscow.
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Felix Salmon has the appropriate reaction:

How on earth did Paulson think this was OK? Goldman Sachs was a hugely powerful for-profit investment bank, and there he is, giving private chapter and verse on his opinions about the US and global economy, talking about internal Treasury matters, and previewing an upcoming (and surely market-moving) speech. All in secret, at a “social event” which somehow got kept off his official calendar. Oh, yes, and one other thing — the whole shebang took place in the Moscow Marriott Grand Hotel, in the context of Goldman directors joking about how all the Moscow hotels were surely bugged.

This is sleazy in the extreme, and will only serve to heighten suspicions that Paulson’s Treasury was rigging the game in favor of Goldman all along.

Source/Full Story: businessinsider.com
Technorati Tags: Hank Paulson, Goldman Sachs

The US government is preparing to order bailed-out banks and car companies to slash the cash salaries of their top executives by an average of 90% in an effort to quell outrage over multimillion-dollar boardroom excess.

Kenneth Feinberg, the US treasury’s so-called pay tsar charged with vetting remuneration, intends to tell seven struggling firms still dependant on taxpayer dollars that their 25 highest-paid executives must accept severe year-on-year cuts. The biggest drops will be in salaries. But after taking into account bonuses, stock options and other elements, total pay packages are set to fall by an average of about 50%.

Feinberg’s power only extends to companies that are yet to repay government aid. The firms concerned include the struggling banks Citigroup and Bank of America, plus the insurer AIG.

Also on the list are the Detroit car manufacturers General Motors and Chrysler, and the car companies’ financing arms, Chrysler Financial and GMAC.

A mediation specialist formerly responsible for settling compensation claims for victims of the September 11 terrorist attacks, Feinberg has spent the last two months scrutinising pay proposals submitted by bailed-out businesses. His findings, due to be formally released within the next week, were leaked to US media yesterday.

Several individuals have already acquiesced to Feinberg’s will. Bank of America’s soon to retire chief executive, Ken Lewis, last week announced that he will forgo his $1.5m (£900,000) salary this year, under pressure from Feinberg.

Other ordinances will require any “frills” worth more than $25,000, such as country club membership, limousines or private aircraft, to be subject to government approval. And Feinberg is likely to insist on a division between the roles of chairman and chief executive.

Source/Full Story: guardian.co.uk
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Bruce Wasserstein, the CEO of Lazard Ltd. and a prominent Wall Street dealmaker who helped negotiate some of the largest corporate takeovers in history, died Wednesday. He was 61. The death of the driving force behind Lazard raises questions about the future of one of Wall Street’s top mergers and acquisitions advisory firms.

Wasserstein was hospitalized earlier this week for an irregular heartbeat, with the company saying Sunday his condition was serious but he was “stable and recovering.” In a statement Wednesday, Lazard’s board said the cause of death had not yet been determined.

The New York-based firm named Vice Chairman Steven J. Golub as interim CEO, effective immediately. Golub, 63, has been with Lazard since 1984 and served in various senior leadership positions, including as CFO and chairman of Lazard’s financial advisory business.

But some say Lazard’s success was so tied to Wasserstein that the company could face a tough road ahead.

“Mr. Wasserstein was the main driver that created Lazard as a public company,” Rochdale Securities analyst Richard Bove said. “He forced the expansion of the business and his contacts brought in deals. He cannot be replaced easily or perhaps at all.”

Source/Full Story: The Associated Press
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Global warming will leave the Arctic Ocean ice-free during the summer within 20 years, raising sea levels and harming wildlife such as seals and polar bears, a leading British polar scientist said on Thursday.

Peter Wadhams, professor of ocean physics at the University of Cambridge, said much of the melting will take place within a decade, although the winter ice will stay for hundreds of years.

The changes will mean the top of the Earth will appear blue rather than white when photographed from space and ships will have a new sea route north of Russia.

Scientists say evidence of melting Arctic ice is one of the clearest signs of global warming and it should send a warning to world leaders meeting in Copenhagen in December for U.N. talks on a new climate treaty.

“The data supports the new consensus view — based on seasonal variation of ice extent and thickness, changes in temperatures, winds and especially ice composition — that the Arctic will be ice-free in summer within about 20 years,” Wadhams said in a statement. “Much of the decrease will be happening within 10 years.”

Source/Full Story: Reuters
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Roche (ROG.VX) beat forecasts with a 10 percent rise in third-quarter sales, helped by demand for Tamiflu due to the H1N1 swine flu pandemic, and the Swiss group now sees higher drug revenues for the full year.

Tamiflu outstripped expectations in the third quarter and Roche, the world’s largest maker of cancer drugs which has sealed a $47 billion buyout of U.S. partner Genentech, on Thursday raised its 2009 forecast for both overall drug sales and the flu medicine.

“Overall, a very good set of sales numbers,” said Jefferies International analyst Jeffrey Holford. “We continue to rate Roche as our favorite large-cap name in the European Pharma sector.”

Hefty drug price increases and windfall sales from H1N1 swine flu have helped Big Pharma to a more successful year than feared, though the sector still has long-term problems such as greater competition for its big-selling drugs and trades at a discount to the wider market.

Source/Full Story: Reuters
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A homeowner says a Phoenix police officer shot him six times in the back during a 911 home-invasion call, and the 911 tape recorded the officer’s partner saying, “That’s all right. Don’t worry about it. I got your back. … We clear?” The family says the officers were not aware that the 911 call was still recording as they spoke about covering up the shooting.

In their complaint in Maricopa County Court, Anthony and Lesley Arambula say an armed intruder “crashed through the front window” of their home on Sept. 17, 2008 and ran into one of their son’s bedrooms.

Anthony, worried about his son who was still in his bedroom, says he “held the intruder calmly at gunpoint” and called 911.

Phoenix Police officers already in the neighborhood heard the crash of the Arambulas’ window. When they approached the house, Lesley says, she told Sgt. Sean Coutts that her husband was inside holding the intruder at gunpoint. Lesley says Coutts failed to pass on that information to the two other officers.

Inside the house, the Arambulas say, Officer Brian Lilly shot Anthony six times in the back while he was still on the phone with the 911 operator – twice when he was on the ground.

The officers ran into the bedroom after Anthony told them, “You just killed … you just killed the homeowner. The bad guy is in there.”

Read the entire story @: Courthouse News Service
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Gold consumers across Asia greeted bullion’s run to a record high cautiously on Wednesday, with a few moving to cash in gains but the majority opting to wait for the rest of a rally they believe has only just begun.

In contrast to a second day of busy trade on global gold markets, the scene at shops and jewelry merchants from Sydney to Hong Kong to Mumbai was marked by a distinct lack of occasion, suggesting that the wave of retail scrap selling that greeted gold’s record run in March 2008 may not be quick to recur.

“Today’s been like any other day,” said David Carr, of KJC Coins Australia in Sydney, which deals in precious metal coins and bars. “No one’s coming in to sell gold because the price jumped overnight, it’s more wait and see, business as usual.”

Source/Full Story: Reuters
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It’s a huge price to pay for being a “suspicious” individual.

A Pensacola police officer was placed on administrative leave Saturday after his cruiser ran over and killed a young male in Brownsville.

Pensacola Police Department Chief John W. Mathis said Officer Jerald Ard, 35, had been placed on administrative leave pending the results of an investigation by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement.

“It’s obviously a very tragic and unfortunate incident,” Mathis said. “My heart goes out to the subject in this case and his family. We’ll just have to see how this plays out.”

According to a Saturday afternoon news release, Ard saw a suspicious man in a construction site about 1:50 a.m. Saturday, while he was on routine patrol near Cervantes and T streets.

The man left the scene on a bicycle and Ard pursued, attempting to stop him using verbal commands and blue police lights, the release said.

The officer also tried unsuccessfully to shock the fleeing man with a Taser stun gun, according to the release.

After the Taser was fired, the man turned into the parking lot of a vacant business near R Street, crashed his bicycle, and was run over by the pursuing police car, according to the release.

The man, who remained unidentified Saturday afternoon, was pinned beneath the car during the crash, and was pronounced dead at the scene.

Source/Full Story:  Pensacola News Journal
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The wrenching financial crisis of the past two years will provide the catalyst for a profound change in the global economy – which, according to the man running the World Bank, will see China and India become established centres of power, the dollar eclipsed as the sole reserve currency, and Latin America, south-east Asia and Africa emerge as new sources of growth.

But as he surveys the wreckage caused by what the bank and its sister organisation, the International Monetary Fund, agree is the most severe crisis since the devastation caused by the second world war, Robert Zoellick is surprisingly upbeat about the future.

Asked by the Observer how he envisages the global economy in 20 years’ time, Zoellick says: “There will certainly be a larger role for the emerging powers, there will be multipolar sources of growth, there will be more south-south trade between developing countries.

“The crisis gives us the opportunity to hasten this process. If we are concerned about the past reliance for growth on the US consumer, we have to make sure consumers in developing countries have enough finance to buy.”

Zoellick says that, while this does not mean the end of the US as a big player on the world stage, it has brought the curtain down on the unipolar world that followed the collapse of communism 20 years ago.

Source/Full Story: The Observer
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