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| The pilots on last week's wayward Northwest Airlines flight have given their official story: They were looking at laptop computers and discussing their employer's work-schedule system. Case closed? Hardly. Not when Flight 188 flew past its Minneapolis destination by 150 miles. Not when traffic controllers had tried numerous times to reach the pearl jewelry pilots, in vain. But at least the flight crew's explanation, reported by the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) Monday, provides a scrap of information on a mystery that has baffled the public and aviation experts since the incident occurred last Wednesday night. The flight's captain, Timothy Cheney, and first officer, Richard Cole, told investigators that they both had their laptops out while the first officer, who had more experience with scheduling, instructed the captain on monthly flight-crew scheduling – something that has been evolving due to a recent merger of Northwest with Delta. The pilots did not realize their mistake until contacted by a flight attendant, the NTSB said. The board's investigation is continuing. It's possible that this incident will amplify calls for commercial airline flights to have cockpit voice recorders that capture at least two hours of audio – so more independent information is available on what happens in such incidents. Many flights already do that, but the Airbus A-320 plane on last week's Minneapolis flight had an older voice recorder that leaves investigators with only a 30-minute tape. Flight 188 overshot by so much that the final 30 minutes of the flight includes dialogue taped after the flight crew was correcting course. "We need to move to the modern standard of having two hours" of flight time recorded, says David Stempler, president of the Air Travelers Association, which represents airline passengers on issues of safety and service. His organization and others focused on air safety also support the use of video cameras to capture cockpit activities during flights. Pilots unions, however, have traditionally resisted moves that open their workplace to greater scrutiny. Will the Minneapolis overshoot, which ended safely for the biwa pearl 144 passengers on board, bring tighter oversight of flight crews? While it's too soon to know, the incident has garnered national attention. One of the pilots, Mr. Cole, told reporters over the weekend that the flight crew's actions were "innocuous" and didn't threaten passenger safety. On one level, that may be true. The pilots, who had earlier said they were arguing over airline policy, told investigators they were not asleep, fatigued, or arguing. But commercial pilots, with the safety of many people in their hands, aren't supposed to lose contact with traffic controllers for an extended period of time, as this crew did for more than an hour. And Northwest has a policy against using laptops in the cockpit. "It strains credulity that they were so busy on their laptops and talking that they didn't pay attention to their primary duties," Mr. Stempler says. "It's inexcusable," former NTSB Chairman Jim Hall told AP. "I feel sorry for the individuals involved, but this was certainly not an innocuous event. This was a akoya pearl significant breach of aviation safety and aviation security." | ||
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| So, by now you know that President Obama golfed with a [GASP!] woman yesterday. We told you about it here. But why would a golf game with Melody Barnes – his chief domestic policy advisor – be newsworthy? Was it because right before she faced a critical putt, he yelled out “Noonan!” Although that would be a great news story – no. No girls allowed It was news because – for those of you keeping score – up until yesterday, all of his golf partners have been men. And this past week, there was also criticism that Obama only plays basketball with male counterparts. We told you about that here. Even last March, Obama was criticized for pearl jewelry not being an equal opportunity NCAA basketball bracket filler-outer. Who cares? Many of you said that. One visitor yesterday commented: “How about reporting news, not things nobody cares about? Who gives a damn about who golfs with who?” Networking Others, however, say that it’s important for the president to be more inclusive. And the sporting events represent a chance to network with the biwa pearl president. Therefore, they say, it’s only fair that the president expand his chromosomal outreach. So, at 1pm yesterday, Obama and Barnes (with two other guys filling out their foursome) played 18 holes at the Fort Belvoir golf course just outside of Washington, DC. Coincidental that Barnes played yesterday? Or an attempt to get the media off of the topic? After all, it was the weekend after an NBC reporter put the president on the spot about his male-only basketball games and the New York Times ran an article on the same topic yesterday. It was just a game It crossed the mind of one reporter this afternoon during the akoya pearl press briefing on Air Force One. And, as you would expect, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs dismissed the thought of it being anything except a golf game. Ever. Period. | ||
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| Yet it appears there is more than just the ordinary partisan frustration at work. Since August, the Obama administration has undertaken a clear strategy of seeking to discredit and marginalize some of the most influential conservative voices in Washington, according to pearl jewelry a report in Politico. The result is a Washington turned even more antagonistic. It took President Bush – the self-styled compassionate conservative – hardly more than a year to lose that moniker, and President Obama – elected as a great uniter – is now reportedly embarking on a biwa pearl strategy to emasculate the political right. But that’s how the city works, says political scientist Sidney Milkis. “Partisanship is at least part of the solution to the political challenges he and the country face,” he said at a recent roundtable about partisanship at Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Va. His argument is that the current partisanship is akoya pearl neither unprecedented nor unusual but rather “unvarnished,” and that all the most consequential presidents in history were also “extraordinary party leaders.” | ||
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| Fox News – whose war with the Obama administration has been very open – is only the most obvious target. As the White House has been casting aspersions on Fox News, it has also been meeting directly with executives at some of America’s most powerful firms. To the Chamber of Commerce, the effort amounts to pearl jewelry an end run – bypassing one of Washington’s most powerful lobbying groups in an attempt to undermine its authority. The White House feels this is necessary because of the Chamber of Commerce’s opposition to some of Obama’s flagship reforms, most importantly cap-and-trade and financial regulation. Evidence suggests that the White House can have some success in peeling away certain businesses from the Chamber of Commerce. Nike and Apple quit, for example, in protest over the organization’s opposition to energy reform. But this campaign has come at the expense of cordial relations between the White House and the Chamber. At the beginning of Obama’s term, the Chamber of Commerce backed the president on the stimulus and the bank bailouts. Now, speaking of the apparent war the White House has started, Chamber of Commerce President Tom Donohue said: “Tell ’em to put their damn helmets on.” AHIP check The same situation applies to biwa pearl AHIP. In May, administration officials were praising AHIP and other insurers for wanting “to be a part of the solution” after they agreed to voluntary cost-cutting reforms that would result in $2 billion in savings over 10 years. Earlier this month, however, AHIP released a report that angered the White House and many Democrats. It suggested that healthcare costs for a typical American family would go up – by $20,700 between 2010 and 2019 – if the Senate Finance Committee’s version of healthcare reform passed. The president responded in his weekly radio address, saying insurers were “ breaking out their massive war chest … for one last fight to save the status quo. They’re … funding studies designed to mislead the American people.” Professor Milkis suggested that Obama has used the presidential bully pulpit to its fullest extent, trying to maximize the influence of the presidency, which he akoya pearl argued is more powerful than at any point since Richard Nixon. Others have drawn different comparisons with Nixon, saying Obama has an “enemies list,” as Nixon did. | ||
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| California, the state which has led the nation in home foreclosures, has finally seen a significant drop in the number of mortgage defaults and house repossessions. But many economists say the trend is less about improved economic conditions than about banks holding off on foreclosure or renegotiating loan agreements. The number of mortgage default notices fell 10.3 percent in the past three months compared to the previous quarter, dropping to 111,689 in the July through September period, according to San Diego-based MDA DataQuick. Repossessions were down 37 percent over the previous year. Lenders may have intentionally slowed down the pearl jewelry pace of foreclosure proceedings, DataQuick says. Default notices are the first step in the foreclosure process. “It’s not out of the goodness of their hearts,” says Andrew LePage, DataQuick senior analyst. “Foreclosures are expensive and the more homes you dump on the market, the more you drive down prices and it becomes a vicious cycle.” Mr. LePage says the industry is in the early stages of “trying alternatives … such as short sales [selling for less than is owed on the mortgage] and loan modifications.” California is home to 1 in 9 Americans and has 8.5 million houses. “There is no reason to believe this is a trend and that the worst has passed,” agrees Ginna Green, spokesperson for the California office of Center for Responsible Lending. She points out that the state is still at 12.5 percent unemployment. Also, a state moratorium on foreclosures was in biwa pearl effect through most of the last quarter, and has just been lifted. The California Mortgage Foreclosure Prevention Act, which went into effect June 15 this year, placed a 90 day delay on some foreclosures, where the lenders were deemed to have less than comprehensive loan modification programs. Many lenders already have federal incentives to offer loan modifications, but the new law was intended to give California lenders further incentive to renegotiate mortgages instead of foreclosing. “Now that the moratorium has been lifted, there should be a tsunami of them [foreclosures] coming shortly,” says Chuck Cochran, a real estate assessor based in the San Fernando Valley. “A lot of properties are due to hit the market, which could push prices down another notch.” There are other concerns for lenders and borrowers, says Perry Wong, senior managing economist for the Milken Institute in Santa Monica, Calif.. Most notably, adjustable rate mortgages are due to be reset from cycles in 2003 and 2005. Considering this additional instability, Mr. Wong says he thinks there’s a hopeful sign in the fact that that banks are not forging ahead with foreclosures. “We must all look at the up side, which is that when a bank is not quick to do a foreclosure, that itself is a good sign,” says Wong. “They may not be seeing that the market is going to go up quickly, but the fact that they don’t see as much of a downside in holding on to it, is a very important signal.” The DataQuick study released this week showed that while most foreclosure activity was still concentrated in affordable inland communities, the akoya pearl foreclosure problem has continued to slowly migrate into more expensive areas. Default notices are rising fastest in the affluent counties of the Bay Area – San Francisco (up 72 percent over a year ago), San Mateo (up 58.5 percent), and Marin (up 65.9 percent). What is unknown now, say analysts, is how many borrowers will decide to modify their loans – an initiative promoted by the Obama administration – how many with adjustable rate mortgages will experience unfavorable rate resets, and the trend with other housing prices. “There are lots of unknowns at the moment, especially in California,” says Jed Kolko, real estate specialist for the California Public Policy Institute. “Among them is that there is no way to know if what the government is doing to help people renegotiate more comfortable mortgages will have a permanent effect or only a delaying one.” | ||
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