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Wall Street’s massive selloff on Friday plunged the Dow into a bear market as investors appear resigned to the fact that the Fed has abandoned hopes for a “soft landing” and will continue to aggressively raise interest rates to fight inflation — even if it means a deeper recession. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell more than 700 points, while the S&P 500 dropped nearly 100, shedding 2.65% from its pre-market starting point. The tech-dominated Nasdaq Composite plunged more than 300 points, or 2.75%. The Dow is now 20% off its all-time high — which would officially place it in...

WASHINGTON (AP) — A leading Republican senator on Tuesday described controversial U.S. spy programs as looking far deeper into Americans' phone records than the Obama administration has been willing to admit, fueling new privacy concerns as Congress sought to defend the surveillance systems. Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-SC., says the U.S. intelligence surveillance of phone records allows analysts to monitor U.S. phone records for a pattern of calls, even if those numbers have no known connection to terrorism.

California's increasingly severe and largely self-inflicted economic crisis will deepen on May 19 if, as is probable and desirable, voters reject most of the ballot measures that were drafted as part of a "solution" to the state's budget deficit. They would make matters worse. ... Under Arnold Schwarzenegger, the best governor the states contiguous to California have ever had, people and businesses have been relocating in those states. For four consecutive years, more Americans have moved out of California than have moved in. California's business costs are more than 20 percent higher than the average state's. In the last decade,...

BERLIN (AFP) – Germany's environment minister warned on Saturday that if Washington does not go beyond its current greenhouse gas cutting commitments, agreement on a new climate pact this year will prove difficult. So far, the Obama administration has agreed to cut heat-trapping greenhouse gasses only to 1990 levels, far short of European Union commitments. "If the United States isn't ready to go further than that, things are going to be very difficult in Copenhagen," minister Sigmar Gabriel told AFP, referring to a key summit to be held in December which will look to draft a new version of the...

How deep should we look for evidence of first Americans? By Bill Young Three sites in Texas have been discovered and at least partially excavated in the past 15 years yielding evidence of at least one culture older than Clovis. Most of the Clovis sites have been firmly dated to around 12,500 to 13,000 years ago. Not only did these Clovis sites yield projectile points of the very distinct Clovis type, the sites also yielded true blades and very large well- made thin preforms diagnostic of only the Clovis people. The archeologists who have worked at some of these Clovis...

When budget negotiations between legislative leaders and Governor Schwarzenegger begin, the red ink will be a little deeper than was projected only a few weeks ago. Earlier today, the governor's budget team sent word to legislative leaders that early receipts from the month of May show that state revenues for the year are now $764 million behind projections. The mark appears to have been missed the most on personal income tax revenues... where projections for the month of May, alone, were $407 million too optimistic. Granted, the deficit for next year is still projected to be smaller than it has...

WASHINGTON - President Bush's budget would cut money for education, the second straight time has he has sought less school spending after a first term of steady increases. The Education Department would get $54.4 billion for discretionary spending in the fiscal year starting Oct. 1. That would amount to a cut of $3.7 billion, or 6.4 percent, from this year. Bush would eliminate 42 education programs deemed unnecessary or inefficient, including some money for the arts, technology, parent-resource centers and drug-free schools. Overall, Education Secretary Margaret Spellings said, education has fared well under Bush, with larger percentage increases than any...

HARARE (Reuters) - Zimbabwe is likely to sink deeper into crisis in 2006 as President Robert Mugabe continues hardline policies that have gutted the economy and isolated his government, analysts say. The southern African state is in the spotlight after plunging into a political and economic crisis five years ago that many critics blame on Mugabe, its only ruler since independence from Britain in 1980. Analysts say although Mugabe has consolidated his power this year with a big victory in parliamentary polls and the establishment of a new Senate dominated by his ruling ZANU-PF party, he still feels insecure and...

Until the 18th century, there was basically only one kind of Judaism, that which is now called Orthodox. It meant living by the religion's 613 laws, and doing so suffused Jews' lives with their faith. Then, starting with the thinker Baruch Spinoza (1632-77) and moving briskly during the Haskala, or "enlightenment," from the late 18th century, Jews developed a wide variety of alternate interpretations of their religion, most of which diminished the role of faith in their lives and led to a concomitant reduction in Jewish affiliation.These alternatives and other developments, in particular the Holocaust, caused the ranks of the...

The purpose of FreeRepublic.com's multiple message boards is to limit the topics for each board to particular topics. Posting the same message on all the boards defeats the purpose of multiple-boards for special topics. It is very annoying to see the same message on every bulletin board. PLEASE! DO THE READERS A FAVOR. STOP CROSS-POSTING YOUR MESSAGES!