– Report: Army tanks roll toward Bangladeshi capital (AP):
DHAKA, Bangladesh (AP) — Bangladeshi tanks rolled into the capital Thursday, according to local media reports, hours after the prime minister warned mutinous border guards she would “do whatever is needed to end the violence.”
– Bangladesh mutiny spreads, 50 feared dead (AFP):
DHAKA (AFP) — A mutiny by thousands of members of Bangladesh’s paramilitary border security force spread to areas outside the capital Dhaka Thursday, as officials reported nearly 50 army officers were feared killed.
– FDA ignored debris in syringes (News & Observer):
Complaints of filth came in 2005; plant’s microbiologist was a teenage dropout
– Israel blocks pasta shipment to Gaza, and tensions boil (McClatchy):
JERUSALEM — For more than seven weeks, the international aid group Mercy Corps has been trying to send 90 tons of macaroni to the isolated Gaza Strip as part of a global campaign to help the 1.4 million Palestinians there rebuild their lives after Israel’s recent devastating 22-day military operation.
– Obama forecasts $1,750bn deficit (Financial Times):
President Barack Obama on Thursday unveiled the most expansive blueprint for federal government involvement in the US economy in more than a generation in a ten-year budget outline that showed this year’s deficit quadrupling to $1,750bn. (Yes, we can … burst the bond bubble, devaluate the dollar and default on our debt. Yes we can!)
– Obama Seeks $1 Trillion Tax Increase in Budget Plan (Bloomberg):
Feb. 26 (Bloomberg) — President Barack Obama proposed almost $1 trillion in higher taxes over the next decade on the highest-earning Americans, Wall Street financiers, U.S.-based multinational corporations and oil companies. (There will be no ‘new decade’ for the U.S.)
– Fannie to Draw $15.2 Billion From Treasury After Loss (Bloomberg):
Feb. 26 (Bloomberg) — Fannie Mae, the mortgage-finance company seized by regulators in September, asked the U.S. Treasury for $15.2 billion in capital and raised the possibility of requesting more aid after a sixth consecutive quarterly loss drove its net worth below zero. (Giant black holes for taxpayers’ money everywhere.)
– US fund managers charged with fraud over multi-million dollar scams (Telegraph):
In the latest in a string of huge corporate fraud cases, James Nicholson, a New Jersey fund manager, was accused of cheating investors out of as much as $900 million since 2004. Prosecutors described it as “an egregious fraud of immense proportions”.
– 2 Money Managers Held in New Wall St. Fraud Case (New York Times):
For two decades, Paul Greenwood and Stephen Walsh looked like Wall Street wizards. Their supposed investment prowess lured hundreds of millions of dollars from public pension funds and universities and earned the two lavish trappings of success: stately homes, a stake in the New York Islanders and, for Mr. Greenwood, a horse farm that once belonged to Paul Newman.
– Japan to intervene as Nikkei hits 20-year lows (Telegraph):
Japan’s government is looking at stock buying and other methods to support the share market, Finance Minister Kaoru Yosano said on Tuesday, as fears grow about the economic impact of a slide in stocks to two-decade lows.
– Insurer RSA to axe 1200 jobs (AFP)
– 40000 jobs threatened as recession hits town halls (Times Online)
– The light dims at General Electric (Independent):
Once the world’s largest company, GE’s disastrous exposure to the banking crisis is now a major threat to its future.
– UK taxman takes 45pc of companies’ profits (Independent):
A report from the Hundred Group, the body that represents the finance directors of the UK’s top 120 to 150 companies, showed that their tax contributions rose from 34pc to 45pc of profits last year.
– Mervyn King: ‘Impossible to say’ how much capital needed to shore up banking system (Telegraph):
Mr King said it would take “many months” to establish the scale of toxic assets held by banks, and the scale of problems would change depending on the international economic outlook.
– US may break up AIG to keep it afloat: report (Reuters)
– Health spending takes rising share of US economy (Reuters):
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Health spending will hit $2.5 trillion this year, devouring 17.6 percent of the economy, as the White House and Congress consider major changes to the healthcare system, U.S. government economists said on Tuesday. (The U.S. is about to collapse.)
– Depression in the east points the way for the rest of the world (Guardian):
Anybody who doubts that the global economy is facing its most serious downturn since the 1930s should take a squint at the latest trade figures from Japan. Exports in January were 46% lower in January than they were a year ago – a phenomenal drop for a country that is so heavily dependent on sales of its industrial products overseas.
– Pakistan faces new political crisis as Nawaz Sharif banned from office (Telegraph):
Pakistan has been plunged back into political crisis after its Supreme Court banned its former prime minister, Nawaz Sharif, from holding political office.
– Iran says there will be no slowdown in its nuclear plan and urges US to ‘face reality’ (Guardian):
Uranium enriched to a low level is used as fuel in a reactor; further enrichment makes it suitable for nuclear weapons.
(Iran’s uranium is enriched at 3%, nuclear weapon grade uranium has to be enriched at 96%. This is almost never mentioned in the mass media and we should all ask ourselves why this is so.)
– Meningitis vaccine for babies recalled over contamination fears (Times Online):
Novartis, which manufactures the vaccine in Italy, said it had discovered traces of Staphylococcus Aureus in the aluminium hydroxide solvent in which the vaccine is suspended (Vaccines contain a lot of “healthy” incredients: Aluminum , mercury, foreign proteins etc. that are destroying the brain when it is the most vulnerable. Babies do not have the blood-brain barrier yet, which would at least protect the brain to some extent. Besides using a mobile phone opens the blood-brain barrier even in adults.)