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LOS ANGELES – Karl Malden, the Academy Award-winning actor whose intelligent characterizations on stage, screen and television made him a star despite his plain looks, died Wednesday, his family said. He was 97.
Malden died of natural causes surrounded by his family at his Brentwood home, they told the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences. He served as the academy's president from 1989-92.
"Karl lived a rich, full life," Academy president Sid Ganis said. "He has the greatest and most loving family; a career that has spanned the spectrum of the arts from theater to film and television, to some very famous commercial work."
While he tackled a variety of characters over the years, he was often seen in working-class garb or military uniform. His authenticity in grittier roles came naturally: He was the son of a Czech mother and a Serbian father, and worked for a time in the steel mills of Gary, Ind., after dropping out of college.
Malden said he got his celebrated bulbous nose when he broke it a couple of times playing basketball or football, joking that he was "the only actor in Hollywood whose nose qualifies him for handicapped parking." He liked to say he had "an open-hearth face."
Malden won a supporting actor Oscar in 1951 for his role as Blanche DuBois' naive suitor Mitch in "A Streetcar Named Desire" — a role he also played on Broadway.
He was nominated again as best supporting actor in 1954 for his performance as Father Corrigan, a fearless, friend-of-the-workingman priest in "On the Waterfront." In both movies, he costarred with Marlon Brando.
"When you worked with him, he was the character," said Eva Marie Saint, who garnered a supporting actress Oscar for her role in "Waterfront." "He was the consummate actor and he loved acting. He was dear and smart. Whatever he did he enjoyed life."
Among his other memorable roles were: "Birdman of Alcatraz" opposite Burt Lancaster; "I Confess" with Montgomery Clift; "How the West Was Won;" and "The Cincinnati Kid" opposite Steve McQueen and Edward G. Robinson.
His more than 50 credits included "Patton," in which he played Gen. Omar Bradley, "Pollyanna," "Fear Strikes Out," "The Sting II," "Bombers B-52," "Cheyenne Autumn," and "All Fall Down."
One of his most controversial films was "Baby Doll" in 1956, in which he played a dullard husband whose child bride is exploited by a businessman. It was condemned by the Catholic Legion of Decency for what was termed its "carnal suggestiveness." The story was by "Streetcar" author Tennessee Williams.
Malden gained perhaps his greatest fame as Lt. Mike Stone in the 1970s television show "The Streets of San Francisco," in which Michael Douglas played the veteran detective's junior partner.
Douglas was 28 when he earned his first major break on the detective series with Malden, who was 60. He recalled that Malden often called him "buddy boy."
"He was fantastic. He just had a tremendous discipline, tremendous ethics," Douglas told AP Television News on Wednesday. "He insisted that next's week's script would be there when we was shooting that week's script. Every time between setups, between breaks, we'd go in the trailer and run lines for the next's week's show. That's the kind of discipline, training I got from Karl."
Douglas saluted Malden last month when he received the American Film Institute's Lifetime Achievement Award.
"It was Karl who, more than anyone, got me to understand that an actor is just one part of a whole team that makes a TV series or movie work," Douglas said at the event, which will be televised July 19 on the TV Land channel.
In the '70s, Malden gained a lucrative 21-year sideline and a place in pop culture with his "Don't leave home without them" ads for American Express.
"The Streets of San Francisco" earned him five Emmy nominations. He won one for his role as a murder victim's father out to bring his former son-in-law to justice in the 1985 miniseries "Fatal Vision." He and Saint played husband and wife.

Malden played Barbra Streisand's stepfather in the 1987 film "Nuts;" Adm. Elmo Zumwalt Jr. in the 1988 TV film "My Father, My Son;" and Leon Klinghoffer, the cruise ship passenger murdered by terrorists in 1985, in the 1989 TV film "The Hijacking of the Achille Lauro."

He acted sparingly in recent years, appearing in 2000 in a small role on TV's "The West Wing."

In 2004, Malden received the Screen Actors Guild's Lifetime Achievement Award, telling the group in his acceptance speech that "this is the peak for me."

Malden first gained prominence on Broadway in the late 1930s, making his debut in "Golden Boy" by Clifford Odets. It was during this time that he met Elia Kazan, who later was to direct him in "Streetcar" and "Waterfront."

He steadily gained more prominent roles, with time out for service in the Army in World War II (and a role in an Army show, "Winged Victory.")

"A Streetcar Named Desire" opened on Broadway in 1947 and went on to win the Pulitzer Prize and New York Drama Critics Circle awards. Brando's breakthrough performance might have gotten most of the attention, but Malden did not want for praise. Once critic called him "one of the ablest young actors extant."

Among his other stage appearances were "Key Largo," "Winged Victory," Arthur Miller's "All My Sons," "The Desperate Hours," and "The Egghead."

Malden was known for his meticulous preparation, studying a script carefully long before he stepped into his role.

"I not only figure out my own interpretation of the role, but try to guess other approaches that the director might like. I prepare them, too," he said in a 1962 Associated Press interview. "That way, I can switch in the middle of a scene with no sweat."

"There's no such thing as an easy job, not if you do it right," he added.

He was born Mladen Sekulovich in Chicago on March 22, 1912. Malden regretted that in order to become an actor he had to change his name. He insisted that Fred Gwynne's character in "On the Waterfront" be named Sekulovich to honor his heritage.

The family moved to Gary, Ind., when he was small. He quit his steel job 1934 to study acting at Chicago's Goodman Theatre "because I wasn't getting anywhere in the mills," he recalled.

"When I told my father, he said, `Are you crazy? You want to give up a good job in the middle of the Depression?' Thank god for my mother. She said to give it a try."

In 2005, the U.S. Postal Service honored Malden by naming the post office in Brentwood to honor his achievement in film and his contributions to the Citizens' Stamp Advisory Committee, which meets to discuss ideas for stamp designs.

Malden helped create the "Legends of Hollywood" stamp series that has featured Marilyn Monroe, James Dean and Gary Cooper, and another celebrating Hollywood's behind-the-scenes workers.

"As a kid, all the letters that would come from the old country, he would see the stamps and they always intrigued him," said David Failor, executive director of stamp services for the Postal Service. "He was such a regular guy."

Malden and his wife, Mona, a fellow acting student at the Goodman, had one of Hollywood's longest marriages, having celebrated their 70th anniversary in December.

"That was sort of the last goodbye," said Saint, who attended a party in the couple's honor. "His wish was, `After I die, I don't want you to do anything but have a party.' So another party is coming up."

Besides his wife, Malden is survived by daughters Mila and Cara, his sons-in-law, three granddaughters, and four great grandchildren.

___

Associated Press writer Polly Anderson in New York contributed to this report.

WASHINGTON – Mississippi's still king of cellulite, but an ominous tide is rolling toward the Medicare doctors in neighboring Alabama: obese baby boomers.
It's time for the nation's annual obesity rankings and, outside of fairly lean Colorado, there's little good news. In 31 states, more than one in four adults are obese, says a new report from the Trust for America's Health and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
And obesity rates among adults rose in 23 states over the past year, and no state experienced a significant decline.
"The obesity epidemic clearly goes beyond being an individual problem," said Jeff Levi, executive director of the Trust, a nonprofit public health group.
It's a national crisis that "calls for a national strategy to combat obesity," added Robert Wood Johnson vice president Dr. James Marks. "The crest of the wave of obesity is still to crash."
While the nation has long been bracing for a surge in Medicare as the boomers start turning 65, the new report makes clear that fat, not just age, will fuel much of those bills. In every state, the rate of obesity is higher among 55- to 64-year-olds — the oldest boomers — than among today's 65-and-beyond.
The report provides one of the first in-depth looks at obese boomers, and its implications are sobering. This first wave of aging boomers will mean a jump of obese Medicare patients that ranges from 5.2 percent in New York to a high of 16.3 percent in Alabama, the report concluded. In Alabama, nearly 39 percent of the oldest boomers are obese.
Health economists once made the harsh financial calculation that the obese would save money by dying sooner. But more recent research instead suggests that better treatments are keeping them alive nearly as long — but they're much sicker for longer, requiring such costly interventions as knee replacements and diabetes care and dialysis. Medicare spends anywhere from $1,400 to $6,000 more annually on health care for an obese senior than for the non-obese, Levi said.
"There isn't a magic bullet. We don't have a pill for it," said Levi. "It's not going to be solved in the doctor's office but in the community, where we change norms."
His group is pushing for health reform legislation to include community-level programs that help people make healthier choices — like building sidewalks so people can walk their neighborhoods instead of drive, and providing healthier school lunches to help fight the childhood obesity that turns into adult obesity. The pending House and Senate bills address obesity in different ways; one provision would particularly target baby boomers.
Many states have begun programs to try to tackle obesity, and there are hints of improvements, Marks said.
"We're still getting fatter, but maybe a little more slowly than before," he said: Last year's report found obesity rates rising in 37 states compared with 23 this time around.
He's encouraged that 19 states have implemented nutritional standards for school meals that are stricter than the federal government's; in 2004, just four states did. Some are requiring nutritional information for restaurant food, he added.
States "recognize the solutions will lie outside traditional medical care," Marks said.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has long said that nearly a third of Americans are obese. The Trust report uses somewhat more conservative CDC surveys for a closer state-by-state look. Among the findings:
_Mississippi had the highest rate of adult obesity, 32.5 percent, for the fifth year in a row.
_Three additional states now have adult obesity rates above 30 percent, including Alabama, 31.2 percent; West Virginia, 31.1 percent; and Tennessee, 30.2 percent.
_In 1991, no state had more than a 20 percent obesity rate. Today, the only state that doesn't is Colorado, at 18.9 percent.

_The South is the fattest region. The Northeast and West are slightly slimmer than the rest of the country.

_Mississippi also had the highest rate of overweight and obese children, at 44.4 percent in total. It's followed by Arkansas, 37.5 percent; and Georgia, 37.3 percent.

_Following Alabama, Michigan ranks No. 2 with fat boomers; 36 percent of its 55- to 64-year-olds are obese. Colorado has the lowest rate, 21.8 percent.

___

On the Net:

Trust for America's Health: http://healthyamericans.org/

Robert Wood Johnson Foundation: http://www.rwjf.org/

WEDNESDAY, July 1 (HealthDay News) -- Two drugs prescribed to
help people quit smoking, Chantix and Zyban, will now carry "black-box"
warnings on the potential risks of psychiatric problems, including
depression and suicidal thoughts, U.S. health officials said Wednesday.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration said it was mandating the
black-box warnings, the strictest possible, based on reports to the agency
of these side effects and on a review of clinical trials and scientific
literature.

"We are requiring the manufacturers of the smoking-cessation drugs
Chantix and Zyban to add a new boxed warning highlighting the risk of
serious mental health symptoms with use of these products," Dr. Curt
Rosebraugh, director of the FDA's Office of Drug Evaluation II, said
during a Wednesday teleconference.

The agency's review found that some people who used Chantix
(varenicline) and Zyban (bupropion) experienced unusual changes in
behavior, became depressed, or had their depression worsen and had
thoughts of suicide or dying, the FDA said.

Rosebraugh said there were reports of 98 suicides and 188 suicide
attempts involving Chantix, and 14 suicides and 17 attempts reported with
Zyban.

For many users, the problems started soon after they began taking the
drugs and ended when they stopped taking them. Some users, however,
continued to have symptoms even after stopping the drugs. In a few cases,
the problems started after the drugs were stopped, Rosebraugh said.

People taking these drugs who develop any of these symptoms should be
monitored until their symptoms clear up, even if symptoms develop after
stopping these drugs, Rosebraugh added.

The drugs don't contain nicotine, and some of the symptoms may be
caused by nicotine withdrawal. People who stop smoking can suffer from
depression, anxiety, irritability, restlessness, and sleep disturbances,
the FDA noted.

Some patients who were using the drugs experienced the side effects
while they were still smoking, the agency said.

Rosebraugh said the risk of using these drugs needs to be balanced with
the substantial benefits of quitting smoking, and these drugs can be very
effective.

"Stopping smoking is a goal we all want to work towards, and if people
need medication to do it they should have access to it. So we don't want
to scare people off from trying to use a medication to stop smoking; we
just want them to be carefully monitored," he said.

In addition to the warning, the FDA is requesting more prescribing
information in the warning section of the label, and new information in
the Medication Guide for patients that discusses the risk of mental health
events while using these products.

The makers of the drugs will also be required to do a clinical trial to
see how often serious psychiatric symptoms occur in patients using a
variety of therapies to help them quit smoking, including patients who
currently have psychiatric disorders, Rosebraugh said. Results of this
trial won't be known for several years, he added.

Chantix is manufactured by Pfizer Inc. Zyban is made by
GlaxoSmithKline.

"The labeling update underscores the important role of health-care
providers in treating smokers attempting to quit and provides specific
information about Chantix and instructions that physicians and patients
should follow closely," Dr. Briggs W. Morrison, senior vice president for
the Primary Care Development Group at Pfizer, said in a prepared
statement. "Quitting smoking is one of the best things people can do for
their health, but the quitting process is both difficult and complex."

The FDA's review of consumers using nicotine patches did not find a
link between patches and psychiatric side effects.

The antidepressant Wellbutrin, which contains the same active
ingredient as Zyban, already carries a black-box warning.

More information

For more on how to quit smoking, visit the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Los Angeles (E! Online) –
R. Kelly isn't having girl trouble. Literally.

A rep for the R&B star has vehemently denied a National Enquirer report that Kelly's home had been searched by Chicago-area police as part of their hunt for a missing 17-year-old girl.

"A wildly exaggerated and inaccurate report has been circulating on the Internet that Olympia Fields police showed up at R. Kelly's house with a search warrant just before the singer left for his three-week concert tour in Africa last month and then searched the place looking for a missing 17-year-old girl," rep Allan Mayer said in a statement.
"This is completely false. No police ever showed up at Kelly's house with a search warrant nor was his house ever searched. It is also not true, as the unsubstantiated report claimed, that any such girl ever stayed overnight in Kelly's house or that she had been there but left shortly before some mythical police search."

Meanwhile, the teen has since been located and the Olympia Fields Police Department says that it has been fielding calls for three days about the bogus story.

Kelly is not involved in any investigation, authorities said.

Good thing. The "Trapped in the Closet" artist was acquitted on child-pornography charges involving a 13-year-old girl barely a year ago.

··· THEY SAID WHAT? Get today's most commented stories now at www.eonline.com

Primarily, but not exclusively, the par of a hole is determined by the tee-to-green distance. A typical length for a par-three hole ranges between 91 and 224 metres (100–250 yd), for a par-four hole, between 225 and 434 metres (251–475 yd). Typically, par-five holes are at between 435 and 630 metres (476–690 yd), and nontraditional par-six holes are any longer distance.

A golf ball acquires spin when it is hit. Backspin is imparted for almost every shot due to the golf club's loft (i.e., angle between the clubface and a vertical plane). A spinning ball deforms the flow of air around it similar to an airplane wing; a back-spinning ball therefore experiences an upward force which makes it fly higher and longer than a ball without spin.

Branson Golf

The line is sold in upscale department stores (Bloomingdale's, Lord & Taylor,Nordstrom, Neiman Marcus, and Saks Fifth Avenue), as well as Juicy Couture flagship stores and boutiques. Juicy Couture is marketed as a high-end clothing line at an affordable price, and is aimed at women ages 14-26. Juicy Couture also has a line of men's clothing and accessories, although they are marketed as "JM," standing for "Juicy Men."

Their signature Juicy crest, as well as the phrases "Love, G&P" (formerly "Love P&G") are stitched on the inside tag of each item of Juicy apparel, as well as the shopping bags used at the boutiques and flagship stores. The order of the initials changed in early 2006 after a lawsuit by the Procter & Gamble corporation.[citation needed]

Juicy Couture Kids

ISLAMABAD (Reuters) –
Pakistani troops cleared on Wednesday the last Taliban stronghold in the Swat Valley, the army said, and appealed for public support to defeat militants in an Afghan border region.

The military went on the offensive in Swat two months ago after the Taliban seized a district just 100 km (60 miles) from Islamabad, raising alarm at home and among Western allies who need Pakistan's help to fight al Qaeda and to tackle Afghanistan's insurgency.

Nearing the end of its offensive in Swat, the military is set to launch a separate assault on Taliban chief Baitullah Mehsud in the South Waziristan region on the Afghan border.

On Wednesday, soldiers captured the town of Shah Dheri, the militants' last stronghold in the former tourist valley of Swat, a military spokesman said.

Five soldiers were wounded in a clash as troops consolidated their positions and searched the area, said the spokesman.

A resident of the area, Abdul Ghaffar, welcomed the troops and said the Taliban had fled into the mountains.

"Now you can see troops everywhere, on the streets, in the villages and on rooftops while the militants are hiding in the peaks," Ghaffar said by telephone.

But no Taliban leaders have been among the approximately 1,600 militants the army has reported killed in Swat. Independent casualty estimates are not available.

A Swat Taliban spokesman said this week his leaders were alive and determined to fight on.

The army's campaign has won the praise of close ally the United States which is sending many thousands of troop reinforcements to Afghanistan.

"TROUBLE-MAKERS"

The Pakistani army has been launching attacks on Mehsud in South Waziristan over the past couple of weeks but it has yet to launch a full offensive.

Trouble is also brewing in another region on the Afghan border, North Waziristan.

Militants allied with Mehsud ambushed a military convoy there on Sunday, killing 16 soldiers. The next day a spokesman for the faction said his men would now go on the offensive against the army.

Analysts say the army would be reluctant to open a new front while it is finishes off the offensive in Swat and is planning its assault on South Waziristan.

Army helicopters dropped leaflets over North Waziristan appealing for the support of the people and assuring them there would be no offensive there.

"It is requested that you all play your role in protecting peace in your areas and keep an eye on the trouble-makers," the leaflet said.

The army also appealed for any information about plans for attacks on the security forces.

"Don't allow your soil to be used against the government and the army ... the government has no intention of launching a military operation in North Waziristan," it said.

Nearly 2 million people have fled the fighting in Swat and other parts of the northwest since late last year and aid groups are struggling to find funds to help them.

(Additional reporting by Junaid Khan; Editing by Robert Birsel)

OXFORD, Fla. – A 12-foot pet Burmese python broke out of a terrarium and strangled a 2-year-old girl in her bedroom Wednesday at a central Florida home, authorities said.
Shaunnia Hare was already dead when paramedics arrived at about 10 a.m., Lt. Bobby Caruthers of the Sumter County Sheriff's Office said.
Charles Jason Darnell, the snake's owner and the boyfriend of Shaunnia's mother, discovered the snake missing from its terrarium and went to the girl's room, where he found it on the girl and bite marks on her head, Caruthers said. Darnell, 32, stabbed the snake until he was able to pry the child away.
"The baby's dead!" a sobbing caller from the house screamed to a 911 dispatcher in a recording. "Our stupid snake got out in the middle of the night and strangled the baby."
Authorities did not identify the caller and removed the person's name from the recording.
"She got out of the cage last night and got into the baby's crib and strangled her to death," the caller said.
Authorities removed the snake from the home Wednesday afternoon. Once outside the small, tan home, bordered by cow pastures, the snake was placed in a bag then inside a dog crate. The snake was still alive.
Darnell did not have a permit for the snake, which would be a second-degree misdemeanor, said Joy Hill, a spokeswoman with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. He has not been charged, but Caruthers said investigators were looking into whether there was child neglect or if any other laws were broken.
Hill said the snake will be placed with someone who has a permit, pending an investigation into the girl's death.
The Humane Society of the United States said including Wednesday's death, at least 12 people have been killed in the U.S. by pet pythons since 1980, including five children.
Burmese pythons are not native to Florida, but they easily survive in the state and can reach a length of 26 feet and weigh more than 200 pounds.
Some owners have freed pythons into the wild and a population of them has taken hold in the Everglades. One killed an alligator and then burst when it tried to eat it. Scientists also speculate a bevy of Burmese pythons escaped in 1992 from pet shops battered by Hurricane Andrew and have been reproducing since.
"It's becoming more and more of a problem, perhaps no fault of the animal, more a fault of the human," said Jorge Pino, a state wildlife commission spokesman. "People purchase these animals when they're small. When they grow, they either can't control them or release them."
George Van Horn, owner of Reptile World Serpentarium in St. Cloud, said the strangulation could have occurred because the snake felt threatened or because it thought the child was food.
"They are always operating on instinct," he said. "Even the largest person can become overpowered by a python."
Oxford is about 50 miles northwest of Orlando.
___
Associated Press writers Matt Sedensky, Antonio Gonzalez and Lisa Orkin contributed to this report from Miami.

COLUMBIA, S.C. – South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford has backed out of a promise to release personal financial records proving he did not use state money for trips to see his mistress.
A day after Sanford declared in an emotional Associated Press interview that his mistress is his soul mate, spokesman Joel Sawyer says the governor does not want to discuss personal matters in the media anymore. The state is investigating Sanford's travel to see the Argentine woman the governor identified as his lover.
Sanford agreed this week to provide the AP with proof of his payment for trips to New York and Argentina to see her.
His staff first said the records might be made available Tuesday, and then the governor's spokesman said Wednesday Sanford would not release them.

In the thousands of years that humans have spent constructing clothing, they have created an astonishing array of styles, many of which we can reconstruct from surviving garments, photos, paintings, mosaics, etc., as well as from written descriptions. Costume history serves as a source of inspiration to current fashion designers, as well as a topic of professional interest to costumers constructing for plays, films, television, and historical reenactment.

Traditionally Hindu women, once married, would wear sindoor, a red powder, in the parting of their hair. If widowed, they would abandon sindoor and jewelry and wear simple white clothing. Men and women of the Western world may wear wedding rings to indicate their marital status. Also women in the United States, depending on their heritage and/or religion, will usually wear a simple or extravagant white gown, although some movie stars have been known to wear a black party dress for their wedding. Observant Jewish women cover their hair if they are married. There is a sect of Judaism in which girls who are old enough to be looking for a husband wear their hair in two braids as opposed to the one braid they wore before they were of a marriagable age.

Womens Wholesale Clothing

Australia has a long tradition of post-basic courses, usually of a six month (minor) or twelve month (major) duration, which included midwifery, maternal and child welfare, psychiatric, peri-operative ("theatre nursing"), intensive care, and coronary care in later years, as well as a myriad of other courses. They are now provided by the university sector as postgraduate diplomas or post graduate certificates, depending on the length and complexity.

Some postgraduate nursing specialities include medical, pediatric, obstetric, surgical and community health nursing which are offered by a large number of colleges and universities throughout India. Some institutes such as the National Institute of Mental Health and Neurological Sciences (NIMHANS) offer specialization in psychiatric nursing, neurosurgical nursing.

Online Nursing Degree

The purpose of a diaper is to absorb moisture and contain mess so that the wearer can remain dry and comfortable after wetting or soiling themselves. When diapers become full and can no longer hold any more waste, they require changing; this process is often performed by a secondary person such as a parent or caregiver. Failure to change a diaper on a regular enough basis can result in diaper rash.

In the 20th century, the disposable diaper gradually evolved through the inventions of several different people. In 1942, a Swedish paper company known as PauliStróm created the first disposable diaper using sheets of tissue placed inside rubber pants.

Adult Diapers

NEW YORK – It's one of the biggest mysteries in the Michael Jackson saga: How much was the lavish-spending, massively debt-ridden pop icon really worth? In the most detailed account yet of the singer's tangled financial empire, documents obtained by The Associated Press show Jackson claimed to have a net worth of $236.6 million as of March 31, 2007.
But less than $700,000 of that amount was in cash — a relatively paltry sum given his opulent lifestyle, prodigious borrowing and seven-figure shopping sprees.
The dollar amounts, which previously consisted of estimates, are crucial because Jackson's estate is expected to become the focus of a legal battle between the singer's family and creditors.
The revelation came Tuesday as Jackson's family reversed itself and said the singer did in fact have a will — complicating a bid by Jackson's mother to take control of her son's finances.
Jackson had $567.6 million in assets, including his Neverland Ranch and his share of the Sony/ATV Music Publishing catalog, which includes the rights to songs by the Beatles, according to a statement of financial condition prepared by Washington, D.C.-based accounting firm Thompson, Cobb, Bazilio & Associates.
The report was prepared at a time when Jackson had large sums of debt coming due that had to be refinanced. The financial statement, which is not as thorough as an audit, was based in large part on estimates provided by Jackson's advisers that the accounting firm said it could not verify.
In the documents, the firm also said it omitted the amount Jackson owed in income taxes.
The documents do not show how much money he had coming in that year or how much he was spending, which makes it hard to estimate just how cash-poor he was. Still, the statement paints a picture of Jackson's tangled finances and the mountain of debt he left behind.
The five-page report says Jackson had debts of $331 million. The singer had just $668,215 in cash, according to the report.
The accounting firm did not return calls seeking comment.
The report puts a net value on Jackson's 50 percent stake in the Sony/ATV Music Publishing catalog — his most prized asset — at $390.6 million. The 750,000-song catalog includes music by the Beatles, Bob Dylan, Neil Diamond, Lady Gaga and the Jonas Brothers.
A separate document obtained by the AP details Jackson's dealings with Sony Music Entertainment Inc., which owns the other half of Sony/ATV. Jackson was guaranteed a cash distribution of $11 million a year from the venture through September 2011, according to the May 25, 2007, document that was signed by the pop star.
The document also detailed Sony's ability to buy an unspecified percentage of Jackson's remaining share in Sony/ATV.
It said Sony agreed to guarantee loans made to Jackson through September 2011 and to help him refinance his debts. Sony also agreed to advance Jackson money to help pay the interest to his main creditor at the time, Fortress Investment Group LLC, to avoid defaulting. Barclays Bank PLC took over the Fortress loan, which is now around $315 million, in December 2007.
The documents also show that Jackson gave his approval for Sony/ATV to use up to $400 million to purchase the 125,000-song Famous Music LLC catalog from Viacom Inc., which holds such songs as "Footloose" and "The Real Slim Shady" by Eminem. The deal was announced a week later.
A Sony/ATV spokesman declined to comment.
Another of Jackson's prized possessions, his Neverland Ranch, is valued at $33 million, according to the accounting firm's report. He also had $20 million worth of cars, antiques, collectibles and other property.
It's likely that Neverland, a 2,500-acre property in the rolling hills of Santa Barbara County, has dropped in value since 2007 along with the rest of the battered California housing market, experts said.

"The luxury market in the past year has really taken a hit in markets across the country," said Rick Goodwin, publisher of Ultimate Homes and its parent publication, Unique Homes.

The ranch in central California's wine country was set to be sold in March 2008 because of missed payments on a $24.5 million loan, but Jackson managed to cut an 11th-hour deal to keep it off the auction block.

The fact that few, if any, similar properties in the area are selling makes it even harder to determine Neverland's current market value. A couple of properties in the 500-acre range are on the market in the area for around $10 million, said Steve Schott, a real estate appraiser based in Santa Barbara.

Jackson died Thursday at age 50 of what his family has said was cardiac arrest. Medical examiners in Los Angeles are perhaps weeks away from determining the official cause of death.

The divvying up of Jackson's assets — and the settling of his debts — are likely to be hotly contested in court. On Monday, lawyers for Katherine and Joe Jackson won temporary custody of Michael Jackson's three children and moved to become administrators of his estate.

A judge granted 79-year-old Katherine Jackson temporary guardianship of the children, who range in age from 7 to 12. He also gave her control over some of her son's personal property that is now in the hands of an unnamed third party. But the judge did not immediately rule on her requests to take charge of the children's and Jackson's estates.

___

Associated Press writers Alex Veiga, Ryan Nakashima and Anthony McCartney in Los Angeles contributed to this report.

LONDON (Reuters) –
The promoter of Michael Jackson's planned run of 50 concerts in London wants his family to stage an all-star show in his memory and said on Tuesday he had discussed the idea with them.

Randy Phillips, chief executive of AEG Live, also said Jackson appeared to be fit and ready to perform the day before he died last Thursday, aged 50, after suffering cardiac arrest.

"At some point the world needs to see this production, and I would imagine if we could do it, it would be done as a tribute with the family ... but also other stars who loved Michael and were influenced by him," Phillips told Sky News.

"But the world needs to see this production, and it's done," he said, referring to the spectacular that Jackson and AEG Live created for the run of shows at London's O2 Arena which had been scheduled to open on July 13.

"We're discussing that with the family and obviously the sooner the better."

Countering suggestions that Jackson was in poor health and should not have been pushed to rehearse for a series of physically demanding concerts, Phillips said he had spoken to the star the day before he died.

"He gave me a hug and whispered into my ear: 'Now I know I can do this', he was that engaged."

Photographer Kevin Mazur told Reuters earlier that Jackson had been "full of energy" at rehearsals in Los Angeles.

"A picture tells a story," he said, referring to images he took in Los Angeles on Tuesday, June 23, two days before Jackson's death. They were released to the media this week.

"He was just the same old Michael and when he hit the stage he was full of energy, happy, very upbeat, having fun."

Phillips said AEG Live was considering releasing footage of Jackson rehearsing in order to prove this point.

FINANCIAL FALLOUT

Insurance experts have said AEG Live, which has offered full refunds to the 750,000 people who snapped up tickets to the Jackson shows, faced sizeable financial losses. Phillips conceded that hiring Jackson had been a risk.

"When you're in business like we are, you take risks all the time and in the case of Michael Jackson ... we thought it was an acceptable risk.

"We had (insurance) coverage and stuff like that. We probably will be fine financially from this but, right now, we're trying to do the best thing for the estate."

Phillips described what he saw at the Los Angeles hospital where Jackson was taken after falling ill.

"They brought him in on a stretcher and they put him into the emergency room," he said. "I was sitting in a chair right outside the ...operating room, and there was tons of activity, and they were trying to resuscitate him and save him and working really hard.

"I sat there ... it seemed, honestly, like an eternity. But it took about an hour, an hour and a half before the nurse came out and told (Jackson manager) Frank (DiLeo) and I that there was no hope."

He said Jackson's doctor Carlton Murray was one of the people who told the singer's children that he had died.

"I stood at the doorway when they went in and they told them and just the look of fear in their faces... it was hard. I'll think about that the rest of my life. But they seem to be doing really well."

He added that he had tried to dissuade Jackson from hiring Murray as his personal doctor, because of the costs involved.

"Michael told me ... 'you don't understand. My body is the machine that fuels this business and I need personal care and I want a doctor 24/7 like President Obama would have and this is my doctor'."

(Additional reporting by Avril Ormsby; editing by Robert Woodward)

WASHINGTON – The State Department on Monday warned U.S. citizens to avoid all nonessential travel to Honduras due to the "current unstable political and security situation" there.
Noting the ouster on Sunday by the Honduran military of President Manuel Zelaya, the department in a statement late Monday also recommended that American citizens residing in and visiting Honduras remain close to their homes or hotels "unless their travel is of a life or death nature," or for a scheduled departure from Honduras. It urged U.S. citizens to restrict travel within the country to necessary trips.
It said the U.S. Embassy has restricted the travel of its staff within Honduras to necessary trips.
"There have been regular demonstrations at the presidential palace in central Tegucigalpa, and streets in the vicinity of many government offices are blocked by police or military," the statement said. "In general, the streets of Tegucigalpa and San Pedro Sula are quiet. Reports from the rest of the country indicate that calm prevails, although there have been cases of occasional roadblocks."

The term became more well-known with the Mexican "muralista" art movement (Diego Rivera, David Siqueiros, or José Orozco). There are many different styles and techniques. The best-known is probably fresco, which uses water-soluble paints with a damp lime wash, a rapid use of the resulting mixture over a large surface, and often in parts (but with a sense of the whole). The colors lighten as they dry. The marouflage method has also been used for millennia.

[edit] Significance of murals
Jataka tales from the Ajanta caves, c. 200 BCE - 600 CE

Nursery Decor

Christian Financial Advisor

Capital, in the financial sense, is the money which gives the business the power to buy goods to be used in the production of other goods or the offering of a service.

Experimental finance aims to establish different market settings and environments to observe experimentally and provide a lens through which science can analyze agents' behavior and the resulting characteristics of trading flows, information diffusion and aggregation, price setting mechanisms, and returns processes.

Click Here

On desktop machines, KDE, GNOME and Xfce are the most popular user interfaces, though a variety of other user interfaces exist. Most popular user interfaces run on top of the X Window System (X), which provides network transparency, enabling a graphical application running on one machine to be displayed and controlled from another.

Many quantitative studies of open source software focus on topics including market share and reliability, with numerous studies specifically examining Linux. The Linux market is growing rapidly, and the revenue of servers, desktops, and packaged software running Linux is expected to exceed $35.7 billion by 2008.

A lantern is a portable lighting device used to illuminate broad areas. Lanterns may be used for signaling, or as general light sources for camping. Dim varieties are often used for decoration. The term "lantern" is also used more generically to mean a 'light source' or the enclosure for a light source, i.e., the housing for the lamp and lens -- that is the top section -- of a lighthouse

Many portable mantle-type fuel lanterns now use fuel gases that becomes liquid when compressed, such as propane, either alone or combined with butane. Such lamps usually use a small disposable steel container to provide the fuel. The ability to refuel without liquid fuel handling increases safety and additional fuel supplies for such lamps have an indefinite shelf life if the containers are protected from moisture (which can cause corrosion of the container) and excess heat.

Paper Star Lanterns

Flower Girl Dresses

Dresses increased dramatically to the hoopskirt and crinoline-supported styles of the 1860s; then fullness was draped and drawn to the back by any dresses had a "day" bodice with a high neckline and long sleeves, and an "evening" bodice with a low neckline (decollete) and very short sleeves.

One may usually wear a bra, but for modesty wearing a camisole / vest or full slip is also an option for the top. Dresses are sometimes worn with tights.

INDIANAPOLIS – The Indiana Pacers have made a qualifying offer to point guard Jarrett Jack, making him a restricted free agent.
Jack's agent, Jeff Schwartz, said Tuesday that his client has enjoyed playing for the Pacers.
Jack averaged a career-high 13.1 points per game last season while sharing the starting job with T.J. Ford. Team president Larry Bird said at the end of the season that he wanted to make the offer to Jack, but as the draft approached said the right point guard could make Jack expendable.
The Pacers did draft Connecticut point guard A.J. Price last week.
Free agents can begin officially negotiating with teams on Wednesday.

LONDON – The promoter who booked Michael Jackson for a sold-out comeback tour says a tribute show based on his canceled concerts is likely.
Randy Phillips, chief executive of promoter AEG Live, told Britain's Sky News television on Tuesday that the "world needs to see" the production Jackson had been working on.
He says members of the Jackson family, and other world music stars, could take part in a tribute show using routines and sets already created for the scrapped tour.
Phillips says he believes Jackson's comeback would have been one of the best arena shows ever produced. He says a video of Jackson's rehearsals for the tour does exist.
He says Jackson said he believed he was ready for the 50 sold-out performances at London's O2 arena.

BEIJING (Reuters) –
What do Johnny Depp, Garfield, Paris Hilton and roast pork have in common? In China, the answer is that a new government-mandated Internet filter rates some pictures of all four of them as bad for your moral health.

Beijing has ordered all personal computers sold in China from July 1 to be preinstalled with the Green Dam software, which it says is designed to block pornographic and violent images, and which critics fear will be used to extend censorship.

But a trial of the programme, which is available online for free download (http://www.skycn.com/soft/46657.html), suggested

its filters may be of limited use to worried parents.

When the software is installed, and an image scanner activated, it blocks even harmless images of a film poster for cartoon cat Garfield, dishes of flesh-colour cooked pork and on one search engine a close-up of film star Johnny Depp's face.

With the image filter off, even though searches with words like "nude" are blocked, a hunt for adult websites throws up links to soft and hardcore pornography sites including one with a video of full penetrative sex playing on its front page.

Green Dam has not detailed how it scans images for obscene content, but computer experts have said it likely uses colour and form recognition to zoom in on potential expanses of naked flesh.

Programme settings allow users to chose how tightly they want images scanned. When too much skin is detected, Green Dam closes all internet browsers with no warning, sometimes flashing up a notice that the viewer is looking at "harmful" content.

But the interpretation of obscene is apparently generous enough to include the orange hue of Garfield's fur and, on the highest security settings, prevent viewers clicking through to any illustrated story on one English language news website.

A programme to scan written content appears less sensitive, with a string of explicit words typed into a word document triggering no response, although some users have complained in online forums of shut-downs similar to those of web browsers.

SEX OR POLITICS?

The software also allows users to choose what they want to filter for, and besides adult websites and violence, categories include "gay" and "illegal activities."

Gay and health activists fear the blanket ban on "gay content," in a country where homosexuality is not criminalised, could damage projects including sexual health and AIDS education.

And government critics worry the "illegal activities" section will cover political and social activities Beijing objects to, tightening access to non-approved information, already filtered by censors and a firewall.

Another setting allows Green Dam to take regular snapshots of a user's screen and store them for up to two weeks -- ostensibly so parents can monitor computer use by minors.

But it could also potentially leave security officials a track of computer use by a suspected dissident, or be a gift to fraudsters hunting online bank details and private information.

Researchers in the U.S. have already said they are concerned Green Dam leaves users vulnerable to malicious sites that might steal personal data or install code on the personal computer.

Western governments and trade groups have also asked China to reconsider, based on concerns ranging from cyber-security and performance of the software to Internet freedoms.

"People say the software is not very stable and has many technological problems," said Joerg Wuttke, the president of the European Union Chamber of Commerce in China, which has dubbed the introduction of Green Dam "hasty."

China's foreign ministry on Tuesday declined to respond to criticisms of the software.

(Additional reporting by Maxim Duncan, Kirby Chien and Alan Wheatley; Editing by Jerry Norton)

As of the 2000 census, there were 42,807 people, 20,516 households, and 9,457 families residing in the city. The population density was 454.2 people per square mile (175.4/km²). There were 30,823 housing units at an average density of 327.0/sq mi (126.3/km²). The racial makeup of the city was 78.33% White, 3.93% African American, 0.94% Native American, 3.83% Asian, 0.14% Pacific Islander, 9.78% from other races, and 3.06% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 23.72% of the population.

The Agua Caliente band of Cahuilla Indians is composed of several small groups of Indians who were living in the modern day Palm Springs area when the Agua Caliente Reservation was established by the United States Government in 1896. Archaeological research has shown that the Cahuilla have lived in the area for the past 350-500 years. The reservation occupies 32,000 acres (130 km²), of which 6,700 acres (27 km²) lie within the city limits, making the Agua Caliente band the city's largest landowner. The reservation land was originally composed of alternating squares of land laid out across the desert in a checkerboard pattern. The alternating, non-reservation squares, were provided by the United States Government to the Southern Pacific Railroad as an incentive to bring rail lines through the open desert. Tribal enrollment is currently estimated at between 296 and 365 people. The Cahuilla name for the area was "Se-Khi" (boiling water).

Palm Springs Vacation Rental

NASHVILLE, Tenn. – Though most states have child abuse laws allowing religious exemptions for parents who shun medicine for their sick children, recent cases have raised the thorny legal issues for parents following less-recognized faiths.
Historically, many of the parents addressed by the laws have embraced faiths like Pentecostalism and Christian Science, while others are Jehovah's Witnesses — all established denominations that the law has gradually taken into account.
It's harder for judges to decide cases involving parents who don't belong to a well-known denomination, yet also don't believe in using medicine for their kids. Legal and religious scholars say it's becoming more difficult for courts to decide when to honor the religious beliefs of parents and when to order conventional medical treatment for extremely sick children.
The manslaughter trial of an Oregon couple who claim they were following their religious beliefs in the 2008 pneumonia death of their 1-year-old daughter was to begin Monday. Carl and Raylene Worthington are members of Followers of Christ Church, which has been investigated for past child deaths.
In Tennessee, Jacqueline Crank and her minister Ariel Sherman face child neglect charges in the death of her 15-year-old daughter Jessica, who died in 2002 with a basketball-sized tumor on her shoulder. Prosecutors say based on Sherman's advice, the girl's mother relied on prayer instead of medicine.
Sherman has been accused of being a cult leader whose Universal Life Church is not a legitimate religion. He has denied such charges and says the church is Christian-based and embraces the Bible.
Believers in faith healing point to a Biblical verse in the Epistle of James, which describes how church elders should be called in to pray over the sick. There's no mention of doctors, and literalists interpret it to mean medical treatment should be eschewed over prayer.
Gregory P. Isaacs, an attorney for Crank, who's out on bond, argues that Tennessee's religious exemption law is untested and too vague.
"It really has a tremendous amount of problems," Isaacs said. "What is an organized religion and what is an ordained minister? What illnesses can you attempt to heal by faith? Those are the two pitfalls in the statute. That's not what's really clear."
Jim Dwyer, a William and Mary Law School professor who's written articles about and participated in litigation on the topic, said it's often more complicated for courts to discern cases with unaffiliated religions because judges and juries aren't as familiar with them and are skeptical of their legitimacy.
"The Supreme Court has adopted a very broad definition of religion," Dwyer said. "But ... you have to show sincere religious beliefs. Some judges might be skeptical of sincerity if it's something they've never heard of, if the person says, 'I don't belong to a certain church. I just have some beliefs that I saw on the Internet,' or 'In our own home, we've developed this set of beliefs.'"
Dr. Ellen Wright Clayton, a pediatrician and co-director of the Center for Biomedical Ethics and Society at Vanderbilt University, says when treatment for an illness is very toxic and the prognosis is dire, courts tend to rule parents don't have to pursue medical treatment. If that's not the case, courts are likely to order the treatment.
"Until medicine became effective, there was no push to say we absolutely have to do medical treatment. There wasn't this notion of deference (to religion) until medicine began to work and to become institutionally powerful."
Besides the states that have religious exemption laws, five states — Hawaii, Maryland, Massachusetts, Nebraska and North Carolina — have repealed such laws.
Many of the exemption laws were enacted in the 1970s. Rita Swan, director of the Sioux City, Iowa-based advocacy group Children's Healthcare is a Legal Duty, which lobbies states to repeal such laws, said that since 1975, there have been at least 274 known cases of U.S. children who have died after medical care was withheld on religious grounds.
She says the majority of such cases are still associated with established denominations like Pentecostalism, though "the Internet has opened up some more possibilities than it did before" and there have been some cases involving unaffiliated denominations.
At least two recent high-profile cases involve parents whose beliefs were drawn from Internet-based religious groups.
Authorities in Minnesota convinced a judge to force 13-year-old Daniel Hauser into chemotherapy, prompting his mother Colleen to skip a court hearing and — with her son in tow — go on the run for nearly a week in May.

They headed to Southern California, where they considered a trip into Mexico for alternative cancer treatments, before eventually returning to the Hausers' home in Sleepy Eye, Minn., about 100 miles southwest of the Twin Cities. The boy has since received chemotherapy treatments, which appear to be working.

The family prefers natural healing practices suggested by an Internet-based group called the Nemenhah Band, which says it follows American Indian beliefs.

In Wisconsin, a jury convicted Leilani Neumann, of Weston, Wis., of second-degree reckless homicide in May for failing to rush her 11-year-old daughter Madeline Kara Neumann to a doctor. She died of untreated diabetes in March 2008.

Prosecutors argued she killed the girl by ignoring obvious symptoms — she couldn't walk or talk and was believed to be in a coma — until it was too late. The mother testified she didn't realize her daughter was so ill and did all she could to help, in line with the family's belief in faith healing.

Neumann sought the spiritual assistance of the online evangelical Christian ministry Unleavened Bread Ministries.

In the wake of the Wisconsin case, Swan said legislators there are considering a bill that would repeal the state's religious exemption to its child abuse and neglect law.

"In the U.S. under the First Amendment, we're not supposed to be establishing religion or carving out any preferences for prestigious religions," Swan said. "The courts should not be giving any kind of deference to established denominations and making any distinctions."

___

On the Net:

Children's Healthcare is a Legal Duty: http://www.childrenshealthcare.org/

Wireless Internet Radio

Rhapsody, SomaFM, Live365, MTV, Pandora, RauteMusik.FM, SHOUTcast, and Digitally Imported were among the participants in the Day of Silence. Last.FM and Slacker did not participate, saying that they did not want to punish their listeners for the station's problems. Supporters of the increase in royalty rates, however, point to the fact that CBS recently purchased Last.FM for 280 million dollars, and if internet radio is to build businesses off of the product of recordings, the performers and owners of those recordings should receive fair compensation. They also point to the fact that the rates were flat from 1998 through 2005 (see above), without even being increased to reflect cost-of-living increases.

On May 1, 2007, the United States Copyright Royalty Board approved a rate increase in the royalties payable to performers of recorded works broadcast on the internet. This was the result of a two year proceeding, with dozens of witnesses and hundreds of documents from over twenty different parties, including large and small webcasters, NPR, college stations, and SoundExchange. The CRB was privy to private financial records and business models of the webcasters, and after reviewing the evidence and testimony, issued their decision on May 1, 2007 (which is currently under appeal). If enforced, this decision will undermine the business models of many Internet radio stations, which had previously relied on the rate of $0.000768 per song that had been unchanged from 1998-2005. These rules were scheduled to go into effect on May 1, 2007, with the first due date being July 15, 2007, and apply retroactively to January 1, 2006.

WASHINGTON – Forty-four coal ash storage sites near 26 communities have been targeted for inspection after federal officials identified the ponds as potential threats to nearby residents.
The storage ponds, which are used to store waste from coal-fired power plants, are in 10 states, according to a list released Monday by the Environmental Protection Agency. The storage sites are similar to the one that flooded a neighborhood in Tennessee last year.
North Carolina has the most sites on the list, a dozen. The largest concentration is near Cochise, Ariz., where there are seven storage ponds.
The agency said it will inspect each of the 44 sites and already has visited about half. Because they are located near communities, the agency wants to make certain they are structurally sound. The sites are classified as potentially highly hazardous because they are near where people live and not because of any discovered defect.
"The high hazard potential means there will be probable loss of human life if there is a significant dam failure," said Matt Hale, director of EPA's office of research, conservation and recovery. "It is a measure of what would happen if the dam would fail. It is not a measure of the stability of the dam."
These ponds hold fly ash, bottom ash, coal slag and flue gas residues that contain toxic metals such as arsenic, selenium, cadmium, lead and mercury, although generally at low concentrations.
Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., who called on the EPA to disclose the high-risk coal ash locations, said it's essential that the public knows where the storage ponds are "so that people have the information they need to quickly press for action to make these sites safer."
Boxer's Senate Environment and Public Works Committee held hearings on the coal ash risks after the Tennessee Valley Authority coal ash pond broke. She also pressed for the release of the list of sites when the administration initially balked, citing security concerns.
Last year, two days before Christmas, an earthen dam broke at a coal ash pond operated by the TVA near Kingston, Tenn., sending 5 million cubic yards of ash and sludge across more than 300 acres, destroying or damaging 40 homes. The incident prompted a safety review of storage ponds that hold the waste byproduct near large coal-burning power plants.
Burning coal produces ash, which is kept in liquid, known as slurry, in containment ponds or dams. The EPA lists more than 400 such impoundments across the country, but the 44 singled out Monday represent those that are near populated areas, posing a higher danger.
Until now, the national coal ash site list has not been provided to the public. Earlier this month the Army Corps of Engineers said it didn't want the locations disclosed because of national security and that it could help terrorists target such facilities.
The EPA has been to half the 44 sites and expects to issue reports soon, Hale said, and other inspections are being scheduled. The EPA also is reviewing state inspection reports at some of the sites.
The seven ponds near Cochise, Ariz., hold material from the Apache Station Combustion Waste Disposal Facility operated by Arizona Electric Power Cooperative.
Two other utilities operate nearly half of the coal ash sites on the list and spokesmen for both companies said the sites are routinely inspected and are safe. American Electric Power., based in Columbus, Ohio, has 11 of the sites in Kentucky, Ohio, West Virginia and Indiana. "We go above and beyond to make sure our (coal ash) dams are safe," said AEP spokesman Pat Hemlepp. He said the sites are inspected annually by the corporation and more frequently by the individual power plant officials.
Duke Energy Corp., based in Charlotte, N.C., has 10 sites in North Carolina. "We are absolutely confident from our monitoring, maintenance and inspections that the dams have the structural integrity to protect the public and the environment," said Duke Energy spokesman Jason Wells.
The 10 states, the number of sites, and communities are:
_North Carolina, 12 (Belmont, Walnut Cove, Spencer, Eden, Mount Holy, Terrell and Arden).
_Arizona, 9 (Cochise, Joseph City).

_Kentucky, 7 (Louisa, Harrodsburg, Ghent and Louisville).

_Ohio, 6 (Waterford, Brilliant and Cheshire).

_West Virginia, 4 (Willow Island, St. Albans, Moundsville, New Haven).

_Illinois, 2 (Havana, Alton).

_Indiana, 1 (Lawrenceburg).

_Pennsylvania, 1 (Shippingport).

_Georgia, 1 (Milledgeville).

_Montana, 1 (Colstrip).

___

On the Net:

Environmental Protection Agency:

http://www.epa.gov/epawaste/nonhaz/industrial/special/fossil/ccrs-fs/index.htm

WASHINGTON – Monday brought some closure to Bernard Madoff's victims, who were swindled out of $65 billion in the largest recorded financial fraud — a scheme that was exposed in part because the plummeting stock market led investors to demand repayment of money that was long gone.
With Madoff on his way to jail, attention is shifting to the next fraud — and to the agency responsible for preventing it.
The Securities and Exchange Commission lost credibility when it emerged that a tipster had been trying to blow the whistle on Madoff for years but had been brushed off repeatedly. Since Madoff's case came to light, the agency has announced a series of changes it hopes will improve enforcement, making it easier to detect and root out fraud before it approaches this massive scale.
But obstacles remain, including the finding in a recent oversight report that agency lawyers lack necessary support staff and resources. And even with the benefit of hindsight, experts say, eliminating fraud is about as likely as eliminating greed.
Here are some questions and answers about what the SEC is doing to shore up its examination and enforcement actions, and how far these changes will go to prevent the next Madoff-style scandal.
Q: Could a Madoff-style fraud happen again?
A: Of course it could. Enforcement is by definition a backward-looking process, with officials exposing and punishing wrongdoing only after it's been committed. As far as the SEC knows, there are more Madoffs starting up right now.
But officials say fraud on Madoff's scale is unlikely because he was an uncommonly talented crook, quietly gaining the trust of investors, regulators and power brokers over decades in the financial world.
Q: Does that mean they're not doing anything to stop the next Madoff?
A: Regulators are doing quite a bit to prevent similar Ponzi schemes from bilking more investors.
The examinations division, which is responsible for day-to-day oversight, will be improving examiners' expertise in fraud detection and in complex financial products, looking more closely at firms deemed more likely to commit fraud and improving handling of tips and complaints. That's according to a speech this month by Lori Richards, who directs the SEC's Office of Inspections and Examinations.
SEC Chairman Mary Schapiro has installed a new director of the Division of Enforcement: Robert Khuzami, a former federal prosecutor. He has launched efforts to improve the SEC's enforcement capabilities, including streamlining key processes, and advocates pouring vast resources into hiring new staff.
Testifying before Congress in May, Khuzami said, "Not a day goes by that I don't think about how we can stop the next big fraud."
The agency also will introduce a new computer system intended to track and sift through the complaints that come in, which number between 750,000 and 1.5 million a year.
Q: That all sounds nice, but aren't there some concrete loopholes the SEC needs to close to prevent future scams?
A: Madoff exploited the opportunity to act as both investment adviser and custodian of his clients' assets. That meant there was no one to verify whether the assets existed, or whether he was making the trades he claimed.
The SEC proposed a new rule that would require third-party verification of the assets, effectively closing that loophole.
But closing loopholes doesn't prevent future abuses, warns Laura Unger, a former commissioner and acting chairman of the SEC.

"Disclosure and rules are always changed after the crisis," she says. "You're hard-pressed to prevent the next thing before it happens because it's always going to be something different."

Q: With so many attempts at reform going on all at once, how can we be sure the SEC even understands where the problems were?

A: In August, SEC Inspector General David Kotz is expected to release a long-awaited investigation of the breakdowns that allowed Madoff to pull off his scam undetected. It will examine information sharing between the examination and enforcement divisions, and attempt to explain why a tipster with information on Madoff's fraud was unable to attract the agency's attention for over a decade.

Even before the formal recommendations come out, Schapiro has said she will address any weaknesses that come to her attention.

Q: Now that the SEC is stepping up its game, can investors rest easy?

A: Never.

Investors who want to feel safe misunderstand the agency's role, says Unger, the former SEC commissioner. As more people have investments, "there's this increasing sense that there's no longer any risk in investing, that it's like putting money in a bank," she says.

But investments earn higher returns than savings accounts precisely because they carry risks — and fraud is one of those risks, Unger says.

"We can't end fraud because we can't end greed and stupidity," she says. "But you can make an impact in reducing it and make other people sensitive and thoughtful about it."

NEW YORK (Reuters) –
American International Group Inc (AIG.N), the insurer rescued by a series of federal bailouts, is set to pad out its shrinking board on Tuesday when a new slate of directors stands for election at its annual meeting.

The nominees will help rebuild a board decimated in the past year by seven resignations, one retirement and three other directors not standing for re-election.

The meeting, to be held on Wall Street, will be the first public opportunity for shareholders to vent frustration since the insurer's financial implosion last year.

Shareholders were all but wiped out as AIG recorded $99 billion in losses last year, largely stemming from a financial product unit's foray into risky derivatives. Shares have plummeted to just above $1 following the dilutive effect of the government's move to take majority ownership.

AIG had delayed its annual meeting, usually held in May, to allow time to reshuffle directors. The board that emerges will feature many new faces.

Apart from George Miles and Morris Offit, who have served as directors since 2005, the 11-member board will have been entirely elected within the last year.

Joining the board since 2008 were Suzanne Nora Johnson, a former Goldman Sachs (GS.N) vice-chairman; Dennis Dammerman, former General Electric Co (GE.N) finance chief, and Ed Liddy, chief executive and chairman, although he plans to stand down as soon as successors are found.

The rest of the board will be comprised of nominees: Harvey Golub, Laurette Koellner, Christopher Lynch, Arthur Martinez, Robert S. (Steve) Miller and Douglas Steenland.

GOVERNMENT MUSCLE

The new board reflects the muscle wielded by federal authorities since taxpayers ponied up billions of dollars to keep AIG afloat. Trustees appointed to have oversight of the government's 80 percent stake in AIG wanted to shake up the board to raise corporate governance standards, they said last month.

At least seven of the new directors were recommended by either the U.S. Treasury or the trustees.

In a May statement, Liddy said "adding these individuals to the AIG Board will help AIG achieve its goals of maximizing the value of AIG's core businesses and repaying U.S. taxpayers."

Dammerman, tapped by government officials to join AIG's board last November, is leading the search for a new chairman and CEO.

AIG is to hold the shareholder meeting at its 72 Wall Street building, adjacent to 70 Pine Street headquarters. It recently agreed to sell both buildings, although it still occupies them for now.

Alongside prime real estate sales, AIG has been trying to find buyers for many of its businesses around the world. It needs to raise enough to pay off some $83 billion in federal loans.

Last week AIG said it had finalized a deal to give the New York Federal Reserve stakes in two large life insurers, a development expected to reduce the debt eventually by about $25 billion.

The units are being positioned for initial public offerings, as is AIG's large global property-casualty division, AIU Holdings. Other AIG asset sales have included much of its stake in reinsurer Transatlantic (TRH.N), a U.S. personal lines business and other units in Switzerland, Mexico, Thailand and Russia.

(Reporting by Lilla Zuill, editing by Matthew Lewis)

In recent years, many economists have recognized that the lack of effective real estate laws can be a significant barrier to investment in many developing countries. In most societies, rich or poor, a significant fraction of the total wealth is in the form of land and buildings.

The core demographic variables are population size and population growth: the more people in the economy, the greater the demand for housing. But this is an oversimplification. It is necessary to consider family size, the age composition of the family, the number of first and second children, net migration (immigration minus emigration), non-family household formation, the number of double family households, death rates, divorce rates, and marriages.

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