USA UK and Malta News
11/04/2008 22:30

USA today Editoweb, 11 april 2008


Stocks fall as GE results disappoint - Clinton misstates wife's Bosnia tale - Internet Full of 'Black Holes' - Council approves salmon fishing ban - Gates: US troops won't drop to 100,000.



Stocks fall as GE results disappoint
Wall Street stumbled Friday after a disappointing first-quarter report from General Electric Co. surprised the market and stoked concern about the health of both corporate profits and the wider economy. The major indexes fell more than 2 percent, with the Dow Jones industrials giving up more than 250 points. A weaker-than-expected reading showing consumer confidence at a 26-year low subdued any positive sentiment.

Clinton misstates wife's Bosnia tale
Former President Clinton has added to the falsehoods surrounding his wife's tale of her trip to Bosnia 12 years ago.In Indiana on Thursday, Bill Clinton defended his wife's mistake in claiming that she landed under sniper fire in Bosnia, accusing the media of treating her like "she'd robbed a bank" for confusing the facts. The New York senator had repeatedly described a harrowing scene in Tuzla, Bosnia, in which she and her daughter, Chelsea, had to run for cover as soon as they landed for a visit in 1996. Video footage of the day instead showed a peaceful reception in which an 8-year-old girl greeted the first lady.

Internet Full of 'Black Holes'
You're pounding the keyboard, double-clicking away, sighing and grumbling, but to no avail: That devilish little hourglass icon refuses to give way to the Web site you're trying to reach. Most Internet users have encountered trouble reaching online destinations, but they often attribute the problem to their wireless network cutting out or a server momentarily going down. Sometimes, though, the problem is more mysterious. At any given moment, messages throughout the world are lost to cyber black holes, according to new computer science research.

Council approves salmon fishing ban
West Coast fisheries managers voted Thursday to cancel all commercial salmon fishing off the California and Oregon coasts this year. The Pacific Fishery Management Council decided to allow limited recreational fishing of coho salmon on holiday weekends off the Oregon coast, but no recreational fishing off California after several members of the panel argued that every salmon counts. Scientists and government officials are expecting this year's West Coast salmon season to be one of the worst in history, because of the collapse of Sacramento River chinook, one of the West Coast's biggest wild salmon runs.

Gates: US troops won't drop to 100,000
Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Thursday he sees no chance that the number of U.S. troops in Iraq will drop to 100,000 by the end of the year, guaranteeing a heavy American military presence as the war grinds into its sixth year to the end of the Bush presidency. President Bush said Gen. David Petraeus, his top commander in Iraq, can take "all the time he needs" to consider further withdrawals after the latest round of cutbacks is completed in July. In the meantime, Petraeus will continue what, until Thursday, had been secret visits to Middle Eastern countries to try to curb the influx of foreign fighters into Iraq.

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