U.S. stocks reach new highs
after Fed takes no action


U.S. stock prices reached new highs Wednesday after the U.S. Federal Reserve said it would stay the course on efforts to stimulate the economy. And that rally could continue, despite the central bank's conclusion that the U.S. economic recovery still has a way to go before it becomes fully sustainable. Many economists were expecting the Fed to start scaling back its bond purchases this month as the economy recovers from the worst recession in decades.

Top central bank officials concluded two days of meetings Wednesday by doing something completely unexpected - nothing. 

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke summed up their findings saying there would be no immediate change.

“As you already know from our statement, the committee decided today to keep the target range for the federal funds rate at zero to one-fourth percent and to make no change in either its asset purchase programs or its forward guidance regarding the federal funds rate target," said Bernanke.

The Federal Reserve has been buying $85 billion in bonds a month to stimulate the economy by keeping interest rates low. 

Financial markets reacted almost instantly sending stock prices sharply higher.

Not surprising says economics professor Steven Kyle. 

“Well, in the stock market, they’re happy because that means that long-term interest rates will stay low.  That’s a good thing for stocks, and they can keep the party going a while longer," said Kyle.

But the decision to maintain the stimulus package confirms that the U.S. economy is not as robust as many hoped.  Bernanke says the job market remains weak.

“Notably, at 7.3 percent, the unemployment rate remains well above acceptable levels.  Long-term unemployment and underemployment remain high," he said.
 
Economist Joseph Gagnon at the Peterson Institute had predicted the tapering would not happen this month, partly because of intense market speculation, and partly because of the tepid economy.

“Things are not looking as good as they were three months ago, the last time they did a forecast.  And part of that is the higher interest rates, which have risen because of this talk about tapering itself, is making the economy worse," said Gagnon.

Some say it’s not a question of when the Fed will start tapering but by how much.

That could be more difficult given expectations that Bernanke will step down as Fed chairman when his term ends in January - says the Concord Coalition's Robert Bixby.

“It’s going to be a difficult job because you’re essentially unwinding a policy that somebody put in place and that’s a difficult challenge," said Bixby.

Market experts say a more immediate problem may not be the size of the taper but whether Congress is able to agree on government spending levels or the size of the U.S. debt when budget negotiations begin later this month.


Defense Secretary Hagel orders
review of U.S. base security


U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel has ordered a security review of U.S. military facilities worldwide following the mass killings at the Washington Navy Yard this week.
 
Hagel said warning signs about gunman Aaron Alexis were missed, including his mental illness and legal problems.
 
"When you go back in hindsight there were some red flags, of course there were, and sure, should we have picked him up. Why didn't we. How could we have. All those questions need to be answered," said Secretary Hagel.
 
Alexis, a former Navy reservist and military contractor, shot 12 people before he was shot dead by police Monday at the Navy facility.
 
His mother would not speak on camera, but read a statement to the families of the victims.
 
"Aaron is now in a place where he can no longer do harm to anyone, and for that I am glad.  To the families of the victims, I am so very sorry that this has happened. My heart is broken," she said.
 
Monday's violence is the latest in a rash of deadly mass shootings in the United States. During an interview on the Spanish language television network Telemundo, U.S. President Barack Obama called on Congress to approve new gun control measures to keep guns out of the hands of the mentally ill.
 
"The fact that we do not have a firm enough background check system is something that makes us more vulnerable to these kinds of mass shootings. And I do get concerned that this becomes a ritual that we go through every three, four months, where we have these horrific mass shootings and yet we're not willing to take some basic actions that we know could make a difference," said Obama.
 
President Obama says the fact a firm enough background check system is not in place is something that makes the country more vulnerable to mass shootings like the one at the Washington Navy Yard.


Gun violence called threat
to public health after shooting


Gun violence in the United States has claimed the lives of more than 30,000 men, women and children in recent years, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Doctors and public health specialists say gun violence is at epidemic levels, calling it a major public health threat.

Americans stayed riveted to news channels Sept. 16. A gunman shot and killed 12 people at the Navy Yard in Washington before he was shot and killed. Mass shootings in the U.S. happen so frequently they are no longer unimaginable.

President Barack Obama lamented this latest one. "We're confronting yet another mass shooting. This one happened on a military installation in the nation's capital."

An organization of U.S. mayors reports that there have been more than 50 mass shootings in the past four years.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, killers used guns to murder 11,000 people in 2010 in the U.S., the latest year for which statistics are available. Twenty-thousand others used guns to commit suicides that year, and another 73,000 people were rushed to hospital emergency rooms for gunshot wounds.

Dariush Mozaffarian from the Harvard School of Public Health says the problem is partly due to gun violence displayed in the media.

"We have a culture that really glorifies gun violence to a level and a depth and an intensity that's actually never been in place before in the United States," said Mozaffarian. He supports laws to reduce gun violence.

"We can make guns safer by having automatic security locks so only the owners can use them. We could pass policies that require certain gun storage safety the same way that we require kids to sit in child seats to make cars safer. We can require that guns be stored in locked, safe cabinets so kids can't reach them," said Mozaffarian.

Obama is again calling on lawmakers to act on gun control. Legislation did not make it through Congress following the mass shooting of 20 school children and six adults last December in Newtown, Connecticut.

Research shows that many Americans agree that something has to be done. Colleen Barry at Johns Hopkins School of Public Health said, “Our study showed that there was broad support among gun owners and non-gun owners alike for a spectrum of different types of policies aimed at restricting gun ownership from potentially dangerous people."

The CDC reports that initiatives to reduce gun-related violence can draw upon growing research about behavior and environmental factors associated with this type of violence.


Ken Norton, boxing champ,
dies recovering from stroke


Former U.S. heavyweight boxing champion Ken Norton has died at the age of 70.

His friend and former manager says Norton passed away at a rehabilitation center in Arizona. He was living at the center after suffering a stroke last year.

Norton took up boxing while serving in the U.S. Marine Corps in the 1960s and turned professional after his release from duty in 1967. His victory over boxing legend Muhammad Ali in 1973, during which he broke Ali's jaw, elevated him to the top ranks of heavyweight contenders. He lost a rematch to Ali six months later, then again in 1976 during a bruising title match in Yankee Stadium.

Norton was named the World Boxing Council heavyweight champion in 1977 after Leon Spinks refused to fight him, but he lost the title the next year in an epic 15-round match to Larry Holmes.

Norton retired from boxing in 1981 with a career record of 42 wins, seven losses and one draw.

One of his sons, Ken Norton, Jr., was a star defensive player in the National Football League and now coaches for the Seattle Seahawks.


Facebook tag protected,
U.S. court says of symbol


Facebook users who employ the Web site's like feature to show support for a political candidate engage in legally protected speech, a U.S. appeals court said, reviving a lawsuit examining the limits of what people may constitutionally do online.
 
The Fourth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in favor of a former deputy sheriff in Hampton, Virginia, who claimed he lost his job in retaliation for his liking the Facebook page of a candidate running against his boss for city sheriff.
 
"Liking a political candidate's campaign page communicates the user's approval of the candidate and supports the campaign by associating the user with it," Chief Judge William Traxler wrote for a three-judge panel of the Richmond, Virginia-based appeals court. "It is the Internet equivalent of displaying a political sign in one's front yard, which the Supreme Court has held is substantive speech."
 
The case had been brought by six former employees of Hampton Sheriff B.J. Roberts, who claimed they were fired in violation of their First Amendment rights in retaliation for their having supported his opponent Jim Adams in a 2009 election.
 
Wednesday's decision revived claims by three of the six employees. It partially reversed an April 2012 ruling by U.S. District Judge Raymond Jackson in Newport News, Virginia, who called the liking of a Facebook page "insufficient speech to merit constitutional protection."


China cracking down on fines
issued in single-child program


China will crack down on penalties paid by families flouting strict family planning rules after a National Audit Office probe found $260 million in fines had been levied illegally, state media reported.
 
Public anger has been growing over the one-child policy, which was introduced in the late 1970s to prevent population growth from spiraling out of control.
 
The policy covers 63 percent of China, although family planning rules have been loosened over the years to allow some couples to have a second child.
 
The audit office's investigation of 45 counties in nine provinces and municipalities from 2009-12 found that 1.6 billion yuan ($260 million) in fines had been given out in contravention of the rules, Chinese newspapers said on Thursday.
 
The social support fee, as the fine is called, is meant to go towards the government budget to compensate for resources and public services the child would use.
 
National Health and Family Planning Commission spokesman Mao Qunan said the fines are “a means to ensure the implementation of the one-child policy,” according to the official Xinhua news agency.
 
His department is now pushing “related local family planning departments to rectify misconduct in the collection and management of such fines,” the report said.
 
The ministry “will take effective measures to address problems uncovered from the auditing process and improve the system on the collection and management of fines,” Xinhua said.
 
“The commission will tighten supervision and guide local family planning departments to publish information for public scrutiny,” it went on.
 
The audit office found that problems included inaccurate reporting of the number of extra children parents had, some fees not being successfully collected and officials handing out higher fines than they should have.
 
However, the figure reported for the amount of fines illegally collected falls far short of the more than 16.5 billion yuan activists say provincial governments have failed to account for.


Survey in Vietnam studies
purchasers of rhino horns


One of the biggest markets for illegally poached rhino horns is Vietnam. Now, a new study profiles the consumers driving that demand and how they view the horns as symbols of status and power.

It’s easy to grasp just how big the demand is. In the first half of this year, hundreds of rhinos have been killed in South Africa alone.

“South Africa is home to about 75 percent of the world’s rhinos. And since 2008, has been experiencing quite a dramatic increase in the poaching of rhinos for their horns, up from less than 20 a year to 668 in 2012 and already 635 in 2013,” said Jo Shaw, rhino coordinator for the World Wildlife Fund South Africa.

She said that demand for rhino horns existed long before the huge spike in trafficking to Vietnam and China.

“Earlier demand for horn for dagger handles in the Yemen had a very serious, negative impact on rhino populations throughout eastern and central Africa through the 60s and 70s. But since about 1994, rhino numbers have been increasing. The populations have been growing again. So I think everyone was hit a little bit by surprise by this new wave in the poaching epidemic.”

That new wave in the poaching epidemic led the Wildlife Fund to sponsor a consumer research study, which was then coordinated by a Vietnamese branch of the conservation group TRAFFIC. It surveyed 720 people in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City.

“With the goal of developing a very targeted demand reduction campaign in that country, we wanted to better understand exactly who it was that was using the horn and why, so that we could begin to try and bring about behavior change,” said Shaw.

The study also shows that buyers of rhino horns are often women in their 50s, who are giving them to family members.

Ms. Shaw said, “The finding from the research about this most significant user group to be addressing shows that it’s the wealthy, older businessmen, who are very successful. They still have some belief in the medicinal and functional properties of the horn. It’s seen as a kind of panacea, a cure all often given as a gift to other family members or particularly to business associates or people within your peer group to show one’s wealth and status.”

Only 35 percent of the people surveyed said they would never buy or consume rhino horn.

“Underneath these current users, the current target group, is another group of slightly younger, very aspirational, upwardly mobile people within the same community, who aren’t able to afford to buy rhino horn at the moment, but are very much intending to do so in the future as soon as their economic situation allows it,” she said.

The conservation groups will now use the data to develop an awareness campaign that’s not only effective, but culturally sensitive to Vietnamese. The research indicates that while rhino horn consumers are aware that many animals are being killed, they still feel very disconnected from the issue. They do not see themselves as catalysts for the current poaching crisis.

“We need to think carefully about how we run campaigns around behavior change. And understand that being culturally sensitive and speaking in the most influential way to the most influential people is really what will give us the biggest impact,” said Ms. Shaw.

The World Wildlife Fund and TRAFFIC will work closely with Vietnamese agencies in designing the rhino horn awareness campaign.

While efforts increase to reduce demand for rhino horns in Asia, much still needs to be done in Africa. The U.S. and others have launched new programs to improve anti-poaching efforts. Currently, poachers are often better armed and better equipped than game park rangers. Also, local communities will be encouraged to report any poaching they see.


Canadian passenger train
destroys double-decker bus


A passenger train and a double-decker city bus collided on the outskirts of Ottawa Wednesday, killing six people on the bus and injuring 30 others, emergency officials said.
 
The front of the red double-decker bus was sheared off and the engine of the VIA Rail train had derailed, but the train cars remained upright with little noticeable damage.
 
“Paramedics had to declare five persons deceased on scene, nothing could be done. And of the 31 that were transported, we've just been advised that one was deceased in hospital, for a total of six deaths at this point,” Anthony DiMonte, chief of Ottawa Paramedic Services, told a news conference.
 
He said 11 of the people taken to hospital had been in critical condition.
 
Ambulances and fire trucks swarmed the scene in the rural west end of Canada's capital city as emergency workers helped train passengers disembark past the wreckage of the bus. Five bodies appeared to be wrapped in yellow tarps beside the train track. One had a purse and a backpack next to it.
 
One passenger on the bus said the driver did not seem to notice the oncoming train or that the track-level signals were flashing. He said some passengers tried to warn the driver before the collision.
 
“From what I can tell the bus driver did not notice that these train-tracks signal lights were on and the gates were down. People screamed on the bus shortly before the crash because he was not stopping,” Gregory Mech, a passenger on the top level of the double-decker bus, told CBC Television.
 
“I could see that there were bodies on the train tracks. It was horrible. There's just no other way to explain it. Some people were upset and crying.”
 
Ottawa emergency officials said the collision occurred at 8:48 a.m. eastern. VIA Rail, which operates national rail passenger service in Canada, said there were no major injuries reported on the train.
 
Passengers on the train, which was heading to Toronto, said they felt a small impact.