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A Tucson hospital's health-care package promises affluent Mexican women the chance to have their babies in posh surroundings with access to the latest medical equipment. But the marketing materials leave out a key draw in the arrangement: U.S. citizenship for the newborn. Tucson Medical Center's "birth package" gives an official nod to a generations-old practice of wealthy Mexican women coming to U.S. hospitals to give birth. Mexican families do the same thing at all local hospitals, but TMC is the only one actively recruiting their business. The practice is legal, but offensive to some advocates of tougher U.S. immigration standards.

A group of private investors agreed today to buy IndyMac Bank, the Pasadena specialist in exotic home loans that collapsed in July and became the third-largest bank to fail since the government began insuring deposits in 1934. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., which has run IndyMac since its collapse, said the bank would be purchased by IMB Management Holdings, a New York-based partnership led by buyout expert J. Christopher Flowers, hedge-fund operator John Paulson and Steven Mnuchin, chairman of private equity firm Dune Capital Management. IMB Management Holdings and the investor group will inject about $1.3 billion in new capital...

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Governor says deal curbs the growth of Indian gamblingOLYMPIA -- Gov. Chris Gregoire is benefiting from more than $650,000 in campaign contributions from Indian tribes that hit the jackpot in 2005 when she killed a gambling compact potentially worth more than $140 million a year to the state. Unlike 22 other states that collect millions from revenue sharing agreements for tribal gambling, Washington gets no money from tribal casinos under the compact that Gregoire renegotiated with the Spokane Tribe. Gregoire backed away from the 2005 agreement that included revenue sharing in an attempt to keep gambling from expanding too quickly...

Granted, McCain has some flaws, but consider the alternative... McCain on lower right In August of 1968, a program of vigorous torture methods began on McCain, using rope bindings into painful positions and beatings every two hours, at the same time as he was suffering from dysentery.[84][79] Teeth and bones were broken again, as was McCain's spirit; the beginning of a suicide attempt was stopped by guards.[79] After four days of this, McCain signed and taped[94] an anti-American propaganda "confession" that said, in part, "I am a black criminal and I have performed the deeds of an air pirate. I...

Sam Zell, a flamboyant Chicago real estate tycoon who has never run a newspaper, has won the battle of the billionaires for the Tribune Company, meeting the company’s demand for a higher bid to match one from Ronald W. Burkle and Eli Broad. Tribune announced that its stockholders will receive $34 a share, or $8.2 billion. Mr. Zell is supporting the deal with a $315 million investment and will join the board. The centerpiece of his proposal is a complex financial structure known as an employee stock ownership plan, which is to pay for much of the deal. Separately, the...

Karachi - A Pakistani man sold his 10-year-old daughter for $500 to pay for his eye operation, a police official in the southern province of Sindh said on Friday. The father Noor Mohammad had agreed to hand his daughter over to a fellow villager, Gul Mohammad Kalohi, once she reached puberty, according to Abdul Hadi, district police officer for Badin, about 250km east of Karachi. "It is a shameful incident and has taken place," said Hadi. "We were informed about this incident from a complaint made by a relative of the father." Police have completed their investigation of the case,...

McClatchy Co. said it plans to sell the Star Tribune of Minneapolis to a private-equity firm for $530 million, in a move to reduce debt. McClatchy said it decided to sell the newspaper to Avista Capital Partners through a private bidding process "after a strategic reevaluation of its portfolio of holdings" following McClatchy's purchase of Knight Ridder earlier this year. McClatchy said it expects a future cash tax benefit equal to about $160 million related to the sale, putting total cash proceeds at about $690 million. McClatchy purchased the Star Tribune from Cowles Media in 1998 for a total of...

LOS ANGELES - Like a train wreck or a car accident, when rich people do battle, everybody stops to watch. Billionaires Ronald Burkle, Eli Broad and David Geffen haven't taken off the gloves but all signs point to them fighting for ownership of their troubled hometown newspaper, the Los Angeles Times. The fortunes of the Times, the nation's fourth-largest daily newspaper, are being watched closely by a newspaper industry beset by sales, staffing cutbacks and circulation drops. Last week Burkle and Broad teamed up to bid for Chicago-based Tribune Co., which acquired the paper in 2000 when it bought Times...

THE NEW WORLD DISORDER Foreign ownership of U.S. airlines? Bush ready to defy Congress' ban despite pilots' fears of another Dubai ports deal The Department of Transportation, acting under President Bush's orders, is preparing to issue an administrative ruling that would open U.S. airlines up to foreign ownership, despite specific prohibitions and warnings from Congress, as well as predictions by pilots that another Dubai ports controversy is in the offing. The proposed ruling puts the Air Line Pilots Association, or ALPA – the largest airline pilot union in the world representing 61,000 pilots who fly for 40 U.S. and Canadian...

PSYCHIC Uri Geller and two partners have bought the Tennessee house Elvis Presley lived in before moving to Graceland, with a winning bid of $US905,100 ($1.18 million) on eBay, he said today. "We are unbelievably pleased. This is a piece of history," Geller said by phone from England. "We intend to restore it to its old glory. We would like to bring sick children there (for tours), Palestinian children, Israeli children, American children," the Israeli-born Geller said. "Hopefully one day we might get approval to turn it into a museum." Presley bought the four-bedroom, two-bath house at 1034 Audubon Drive...

TRENTON – As the U.S. Senate continued debates on how to handle the nation's estimated 12 million illegal immigrants, more than 100 people rallied outside the State House on Thursday to demand that undocumented students be allowed to pay in-state college tuition rates. The protesters, mainly Latino college students and undocumented immigrants from around the state, expressed frustration over a bill in the Education Committee of the state Senate that has languished since 2003. The bill would allow illegal immigrant students to pay in-state tuition rates. A similar legislative proposal, known as the DREAM Act, is pending at the federal...

White House report alleges Belarus has sold arms to Iran By Adrian Blomfield in Minsk (Filed: 19/03/2006) Belarus moved closer to international isolation yesterday after the White House submitted a largely classified report to Congress accusing the country's president of illegally selling weapons to Iran. The report, prepared on the eve of an election in Belarus widely denounced as a sham, comes amid condemnation of a brutal crackdown on his opponents by President Alexander Lukashenko, labelled Europe's last dictator by the Bush administration. According to United States officials, the report accuses the 51-year-old president of turning himself into "one of...

HONG KONG — Even in China, where local Communist Party officials asked for his autograph, California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger could not escape being master of a traveling celebrity opera in which politics frequently gave way to simply being famous. Schwarzenegger ended his six-day trade mission to Beijing, Shanghai and Hong King on Saturday without any substantial business agreements for California firms. A Riverside County pump company could soon have an announcement on expanding its China business. And there may be news from Aeros, a Tarzana blimp maker already established here. That company wants to sell more dirigibles to the authoritarian...

TRENTON, N.J. - Democratic gubernatorial candidate Sen. Jon Corzine (news, bio, voting record) no longer holds shares in Goldman Sachs, his former employer, according to his campaign. The disclosure regarding Corzine's finances came Tuesday after two lawyers alleged the senator had potential conflicts of interest because the Wall Street firm does business with the state. In response to media inquiries about the allegations, Corzine spokesman Tom Shea said the senator had directed the trustees of his blind trust to immediately divest Goldman Sachs shares from his portfolio. The campaign then learned, Shea said, that Corzine's trust had already been divested...

NEW YORK (AP) – Toys ‘R’ Us is reportedly being sold. The Wall Street Journal and New York Times today report the retail chain is being bought up by a consortium of two private-equity firms and a real estate developer for more than $5.5 billion. Toys ‘R’ Us is the nation’s second-biggest toy retailer. An official announcement is expected today. Last night’s deal ends a 7-month-long auction that had been expected to end with the sale of only the company’s toy division. The New Jersey-based firm reportedly wanted to hang on to its more lucrative Babies ‘R’ Us stores, but...

Hillary Clinton, the action hero SUNDAY, OCTOBER 03, 2004 02:36:49 PM LONDON: She might not be Arnold Schwarzenegger, but Hillary Clinton has surely inspired an action figure. According to Ananova , a new action figure of Hilary Clinton will be available from November 1. The doll can be pre-ordered on the internet from the US makers, hero builders for $19.95 dollars. The doll comes with a navy blue suit and shoes with a light blue blouse and lily white underwear.

Scientists Find 75 Percent Of Red Snapper Sold In Stores Is Really Some Other Species CHAPEL HILL ? While learning in a course how to extract, amplify and sequence the genetic material known as DNA, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill graduate students got a big surprise. So did their marine science professors. In violation of federal law, more than 75 percent of fish tested and sold as tasty red snapper in stores in eight states were other species. How much of the mislabeling was unintentional or fraud is unknown, said Dr. Peter B. Marko, assistant professor of marine...

Obviously, the Left wants everyone to be casual when he or she talks about the Clintons. It's like someone who lets out a table-rattling fart, they hope everyone laughs it off. But Clinton is no mere passing of the wind. The name, Clinton, deserves many labels: nuclear treason, the Ron Brown coverup [with 35 mysterious deaths], Waco, Vince Foster, pardoning bomb terrorists just prior to 9-11, pardoning crack dealers to line the pockets of his brother-in-law, Tainted Blood, impeachable and power-hungry executive orders, and even the strange death of Betty Currie's brother. Most conservatives have fallen into a very simple...

Sold for a Mere Pittance Works of art worth tens of millions of pounds today have been sold off quietly by museums over the past 50 years for a few pounds. British art institutions such as the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge and the Exeter City Museum have disposed of pictures by masters such as Van Dyck and Henri Fantin-Latour. They were sold without public notice, dismissed as too unimportant to keep. Among the most serious cases is a painting by the 19th-century master, John William Waterhouse. In 1965, the Royal Cornwall Museum in Truro sold it for £200 ($300) to...

An Israeli Arab with intimate ties to Hizbullah allegedly "sold" Elhanan Tannenbaum to the group in October 2000 for as little as $150,000, sources told The Jerusalem Post. On Monday, the Supreme Court stayed the lifting of the gag order on the full discloser of the events surrounding Tannenbaum's abduction and those directly implicated in the kidnapping, pending an appeal by the family. However, attention is now being focused on Kais Obeid, 30, of Taiba, the grandson of Diab Obeid, who served as a Labor MK from 1961 to 1973. Obeid anchored Hizbullah's financial connections in the territories and headed...

ATLANTA - A 7,000-piece collection of the writings of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., which spent four decades in his widow's basement, is ready for sale after being on exhibit for two weeks at a New York auction house. The items - appraised at $30 million - went on display Aug. 26, and hundreds of people have strolled through Sotheby's in Manhattan to get a glimpse into King's literary mind. Sotheby's said several potential buyers have come forward, but officials would not reveal them. The collection includes speeches, letters, sermon notes and even King's college transcripts. The King estate,...

UN security officer gave information to bombers: Iraqi TV (9:58 am) BAGHDAD -- An Iraqi security guard at the UN headquarters in Baghdad helped attackers launch the suicide bombing there which killed 23 people, including the world body's top envoy to the country, US-run Iraqi television reported Sunday. "Iraqi official sources confirmed a security agent had given information to the plotters of the attack in which a car laden with explosives (was detonated) next to the office of Sergio Vieira de Mello," the UN special envoy, the Iraq Media Network television channel said. The television did not say if the...

KENT - Virginia Ramsey was sentenced in Kent Friday for selling her 3-month-old son. She will spend 15 days in jail, 75 days in electronic home detention and 30 days of community service. King County Superior Court judge Richard McDermott also sentenced her to a year of probation, saying, "I still find it amazing, to some degree inexplicable," that she could give a child away or sell it. The 29-year-old Kent woman had admitted in court that she would be found guilty, but insists she thought the transaction was a kind of adoption. She says the $2,000 she received was...

Receipt for girl reveals Roman slave secrets By David Derbyshire, Science Correspondent (Filed: 22/03/2003) The first evidence of Roman Britain's slave trade has been unearthed: a receipt for a young French girl bought for the equivalent price of a small sports car today.Faint scratchings on a wooden writing tablet show that a wealthy slave working for the imperial household bought a girl named Fortunata (Lucky), a member of a Celtic tribe living on the borders of Normandy and Brittany. The silver-fir tablet had been preserved in wet London soil for 2,000 years.Although many Roman slaves were forced to work...

Capitol Hill Blue, the oldest daily news site on the Internet, has been sold to a group of working Washington journalists. Doug Thompson Media, owner and operator of the web site since its debut on the Web on October 1, 1994, announced today that it has agreed to sell the site to Capitol Hill Journalism Partnership. "Capitol Hill Blue is a pioneer in web-based journalism," said partnership spokesman William J. Lowrey. "We intend to honor that tradition and improve upon it." The partnership is composed of working, Washington-based journalists who work for print, broadcast and web-based media outlets. "We intend...

Portugal sold arms to Iraq - report February 27 2003 at 03:48PM Lisbon - Portugal sold weapons to Iraq, including missiles and mines, in 1993 in violation of a UN arms embargo imposed on Baghdad following its invasion of Kuwait, a Portuguese magazine reported on Thursday. State controlled arms manufacturer INDEP sold Baghdad €50 000 worth of weapons, from torpedoes to bullets, according to trade office documents obtained by the weekly Visao. In addition, Portuguese firms exported €100 000 worth of goods to Iraq, including electric transformers and mechanical parts which could be used to build planes, the magazine added....

Russian 'sold smallpox strain' to Iraq By Toby Harnden in Washington (Filed: 04/12/2002) Saddam Hussein was given a virulent strain of smallpox suitable for use as a biological weapon by a Russian scientist who visited Iraq in 1990, an informant has told the CIA. The information was considered credible enough to be presented to President George W Bush and hastened White House plans to inoculate a million Americans with the smallpox vaccine. Britain is also planning to inoculate squads of emergency workers, including health professionals and Servicemen. Nelja Maltseva, a virologist, worked in Moscow's Research Institute for Viral Preparations for...

<p>SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - A former San Francisco Immigration and Naturalization Service official was sentenced in federal court Wednesday to six months in a halfway house for taking money in exchange for citizenship application favors.</p> <p>According to prosecutors, Ruben Banda, of Fremont, took unauthorized fee payments from those seeking citizenship who thought Banda could expedite their requests for a price.</p>