The U.S. economy accelerated in the fourth quarter of 2010, driven by the biggest gain in consumer spending in more than four years and rising exports.
Final sales, which includes all categories except stockpiles, rose at a 7.1 percent pace, the most since 1984.
PRAGUE (AP) -- An international team of scientists opened the tomb of famous 16th-century Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe Monday in an effort to shed light on his sudden and mysterious death. It had been long thought he died of a bladder infection.
But tests conducted in 1996 in Sweden and later in Denmark on samples of his mustache and hair - obtained during a previous 1901 exhumation - indicated unusually high levels of mercury, leading to a theory of mercury poisoning, even possible murder.
They also are interested in Brahe's skull. He had part of his nose cut off during a duel with a fellow nobleman as a student and it was replaced by a metal plate. The plate was not found in 1901, but the tests should be able to determine what it was made of.
Oct. 29 (Bloomberg) -- The Obama administration cut taxes for middle-class Americans, expects to make a profit on the hundreds of billions of dollars spent to rescue Wall Street banks and has overseen an economy that has grown for the past four quarters.
Most voters don’t believe it.
A Bloomberg National Poll conducted Oct. 24-26 finds that by a two-to-one margin , likely voters in the Nov. 2 midterm elections think taxes have gone up, the economy has shrunk, and the billions lent to banks as part of the Troubled Asset Relief Program won’t be recovered.
The Obama administration has cut taxes -- largely for the middle class -- by $240 billion since taking office Jan. 20, 2009. A program aimed at families earning less than $150,000 that was contained in the stimulus package lowered the burden for 95 percent of working Americans by $116 billion, or about $400 per year for individuals and $800 for married couples.
Other measures include breaks for college education, moderate-income families and the unemployed and incentives to promote renewable energy.
Still, the poll shows the message hasn’t gotten through to Americans, especially middle-income voters. By 52 percent to 19 percent, likely voters say federal income taxes have gone up for the middle class in the past two years.
Oct. 5 (Bloomberg) -- AIG Chief Risk Officer Robert Lewis is stepping down after saying that the company underestimated the risk of bets tied to subprime mortgages. “We were wrong about how bad things could get,” Lewis told the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission in June. “What ended up happening was so extreme that it was beyond anything we had planned for.”
Chief Executive Officer Robert Benmosche is overhauling management at the insurer, which was bailed out in 2008 by taxpayers and posted the biggest quarterly loss in U.S. Benmosche said in a memo to staff today that Lewis will remain with AIG for “a period of time to ensure a smooth transition.”
Lewis joined New York-based AIG in 1993 and was named chief risk officer in 2004, according to the memo. He told the FCIC that responsibility for liquidity-risk management fell to others at the company.
Social conservatives are seeking to curtail references to Islam in Texas textbooks, warning of what they describe as a creeping Middle Eastern influence in the U.S. publishing industry.
The resolution cites world history books no longer used in Texas schools that it says devoted more lines of text to Islamic beliefs and practices than Christian beliefs and practices.
"Diverse reviewers have repeatedly documented gross pro-Islamic, anti-Christian distortions in social studies texts," reads a preliminary draft of the resolution. "Diverse reviewers have repeatedly documented gross pro-Islamic, anti-Christian distortions in social studies texts," reads a preliminary draft of the resolution.
