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A BUST of Russia's muscle-flexing strongman Vladimir Putin is being created as a gift for ex-Hollywood bodybuilder and California's current governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. The bust is currently being made in Putin's home city of Saint Petersburg on an order of Russia's Bodybuilding and Fitness Federation and will be delivered to the movie star-turned-politician in March. "Putin is such a complex personality. He's left no one indifferent," Alexander Chernoshchyokov, a Saint Petersburg-based sculptor who has been working on the Putin bust since June... In 1991 the Russian artist made a sculpture of Schwarzenegger and Vladimir Dubinin, the president of the bodybuilding...

CHARLOTTE -- A monument to the financial crisis is rising amid this city's thicket of skyscrapers: gleaming, glass-walled trophy tower that was intended as a fitting headquarters for Wachovia's national banking empire. It will open instead as the headquarters of a regional power company. Wachovia, unable to survive a run of bad decisions, was swallowed by San Francisco-based Wells Fargo during the depths of the crisis last year. Few American cities prospered more over the past two decades than Charlotte, its growth propelled and gilded by Wachovia and its crosstown rival, Bank of America. Executives shoehorned gaudy mansions into old...

Michael Crabtree celebrated his 22nd birthday Monday. As an unwanted gift, multiple reports surfaced that the 49ers are poised to drop their offer to the No. 10 overall pick out of Texas Tech. Citing team sources, Michael Silver of Yahoo! Sports wrote that Crabtree's continued absence makes him less valuable to the 49ers on a prorated basis and added, "Translation: The team just reduced its offer and will continue to do so with each passing week." A day earlier, Jay Glazer of Fox Sports reported that the 49ers sent a letter to Crabtree "modifying" their offer. Responding to the Fox...

It has been nearly a month since the car-buying frenzy of the Cash for Clunkers program ended, and many area auto dealers are longing for the good old days of July and August. Like consumers nationwide, Massachusetts residents rushed to take advantage of the federal voucher program, which offered them up to $4,500 on old gas-guzzlers to be put toward the purchase of new, more fuel-efficient vehicles. About $65 million worth of vouchers were handed out statewide during the monthlong program that ended Aug. 24. But once the federal money dried up, so did the sales rally. Now, customers at...

Finance ministers are now simply papering over cracks having squandered the opportunity to make real changes to the way the world economy works. There is a hideous hissing noise escaping from the world economy, the piercing sound of deflating ambitions. Any hopes that, in this crisis, we would find an opportunity to redesign our system of capitalism and finance are all but forlorn. Any prospect that the leading nations would overhaul either the banking system or the wider framework that ties our economies together, and so prevent another crisis, has pretty much disappeared. We know this because, this weekend, finance...

DEARBORN, Mich. -- The Arab American National Museum in Dearborn could land a sculpture of veteran White House correspondent Helen Thomas. ~snipMcElhinney sculpted a clay version of a Thomas bust.

MYFOXNY.COM/ AP - The arrests by the FBI of five ultra-Orthodox Jewish leaders in New York and New Jersey is making international headlines particualarly in Israel. All three of the country's major newspapers feature pictures of the men busted.

Nature, the biggest bank of all, could go bust, warns Prince Charles The Prince of Wales has said that "Nature, the biggest bank of all, could go bust" in an apocalyptic warning that the Earth is on the brink of environmental disaster. By Urmee Khan, Digital and Media Correspondent 08 Jul 2009 Nature, the biggest bank of all, could go bust, warns Prince Charles Delivering this year's Richard Dimbleby Lecture, the Prince said that the next generation will face a "living hell" unless governments urgently tackle climate change and stop plundering the Earth's natural resources. "In failing the Earth, we...

Santa Clara County Sheriff's deputies arrested one man and are searching for at least one other in connection with a secret pot garden bust that netted 6,100 marijuana plants with a street value of $18 million. Acting on a tip, deputies from the Special Operations Unit's Marijuana Eradication Team discovered the hidden grow Wednesday about 8 a.m. off Hicks Road in the foothills above San Jose, Sgt. Rick Sung said. As deputies approached two large gardens, they found a man tending to the plants. And they quickly arrested 24 year-old Jesus Ochoachacon, who has an unknown address and is now...

President Barack Obama acknowledged in a major economic speech Tuesday that "times are still tough" and warned that a culture of "instant gratification" had produced neglect of major national problems that wound up undermining the economy. "By no means are we out of the woods just yet," the president said in remarks at Georgetown University. "But from where we stand, for the very first time, we are beginning to see glimmers of hope. And beyond that, way off in the distance, we can see a vision of an America’s future that is far different than our troubled economic past. Obama...

Looking back three years ago, it is hard to fathom how much has changed from the frenzied pace of development then going forward. Land and housing prices were still rising, ever-larger development projects were being launched, and growth debates were raging across Southern California. That’s all gone now. As key real estate players suddenly find themselves without jobs, as more developers file bankruptcy, and more projects bite the dust, the depth of this “downturn” is sinking in. Many, of course, have “been through this before.” By that they mean, they’ve weathered the cyclical postwar busts that have intermittently interrupted the...

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Mexican police have captured a leading drug baron from the border city of Ciudad Juarez, the country's most violent town in a turf war that killed 6,300 people last year. Vicente Carrillo Leyva, a leader of the Juarez cartel, was seized while exercising in a park in an upscale residential district of Mexico City, police said on Thursday. The Juarez cartel is locked in a bitter war with traffickers from the state of Sinaloa for control of smuggling routes into Texas. The fighting forced the government to send 5,000 extra troops into Ciudad Juarez last month.

Barack Obama has sent Sir Winston Churchill packing and pulse rates soaring among anxious British diplomats. A bust of the former prime minister once voted the greatest Briton in history, which was loaned to George W Bush from the Government's art collection after the September 11 attacks, has now been formally handed back. The bronze by Sir Jacob Epstein, worth hundreds of thousands of pounds if it were ever sold on the open market, enjoyed pride of place in the Oval Office during President Bush's tenure. But when British officials offered to let Mr Obama to hang onto the bust...

Barack Obama loves Lincoln. It seems not a day goes by that he isn't quoting the Civil War icon or comparing himself to that great man. But it looks like we are finding one great leader that Barack Obama doesn't like so much: Winston Churchill. It appears that President Obama is dissing the Brit's most famous and stalwart leader by quickly returning the most famous bust of the man loaned to this country by the United Kingdom in the aftermath of 9//11. The return of the bust of Churchill flustered the British government because they didn't ask for it to...

Sam Zell’s Empire, Underwater in a Big Way The Worldwide Plaza building in New York, left, was part of Macklowe Properties. Center and right, the Chicago Title and Trust building and the Chicago Mercantile building are part of Tishman Speyer. In 2007, Sam Zell, the billionaire Chicago investor, sold a portfolio of 573 properties he had assembled over three decades, Equity Office Properties Trust, to the Blackstone Group for $39 billion. It was the largest private equity deal in history, but Blackstone did not stop there: it immediately flipped hundreds of the buildings for $27 billion. Today, the wreckage of...

HOUSTON -- As Barack Obama considers the pantheon of larger-than-life presidents who came before him, David Adickes pauses to consider Barack Obama. The Houston sculptor carefully examines the president-elect’s profile: his slightly furrowed brow, the firm mouth pursed somewhere between smile and frown, the expressive eyes. Adickes squints. Something is not quite right. “Looking at him, I see that his ears have to go back about a quarter of an inch,” Adickes says, then reaches to gently tweak the features on a life-size model of the president-elect’s head. The bust is the first step in plans for a replica of...

In 1847, a Dr Hyde Clark wrote a paper entitled Physical Economy - a Preliminary Inquiry into the Physical Laws Governing the Periods of Famines and Panics. His paper was published in the Railway Register. It opens with the comment: “We have just gone through a time of busy industry and are come upon sorrow and ill-fortune; but the same things have befallen us often within the knowledge of those now living...a period of bustle, or of gambling, cut short in a trice and turned into a period of suffering and loss, is a phenomenon so often recorded, that what...

Cedric Benson's time with the Chicago Bears is up.The troubled running back, whose relationship with the team soured further because of his second arrest in little more than a month Saturday, was waived by the team on Monday, sources told ESPN.com's John Clayton. Before his release, Benson made one last ditch effort to repair the situation, issuing an apology on Monday afternoon."I apologize for making the poor decision to drink and drive during the early morning of Saturday, June 7th," he said in a statement. "Given the incident last month, it was a particularly bad decision. I have no excuse...

PARIS - Divers trained in archaeology discovered a marble bust of an aging Caesar in the Rhone River that France's Culture Ministry said Tuesday could be the oldest known. The life-sized bust showing the Roman ruler with wrinkles and hollows in his face is tentatively dated to 46 B.C. Divers uncovered the Caesar bust and a collection of other finds in the Rhone near the town of Arles — founded by Caesar. Among other items in the treasure trove of ancient objects is a 5.9 foot marble statue of Neptune, dated to the first decade of the third century after...

Almost everyone's breasts look good in Hollywood. From Anne Hathaway and Victoria Beckham to Catherine Zeta-Jones, it doesn't matter if you're 20 or 50; when you get on that red carpet in your designer dress, you've got to get it right. C02 TREATMENTSSaid to be the biggest breakthrough since Botox, carboxy therapy can eradicate wrinkles and stretch marks on your de colletage and take years off your skin. It has recently been made available in Britain by Parisian doctor Jules-Jacques Nabet, who says: "Nothing else works like it for loose skin and stretch marks. It means there is no need...

This week opponents of the war were given a treat. They were told-in a single article-based on a single anonymous source-that a report which hadn’t been released said there was never any ties between Saddam Hussein’s regime and the al-Qaida network of terrorist groups. Millions of the war’s opponents were instantly elated with glee at the idea that the invasion of Iraq had nothing to do with the war against the al-Qaida terrorist network; that the invasion was completely disconnected from any threat to the United States. Disregarding the misplaced glee for a moment, let’s face some facts. The report...

Buffett's Insurance Bust Ruthie Ackerman, 02.29.08, 9:30 PM ET All good things must come to an end -- even billionaire investor Warren Buffett's success in the insurance business. On Friday in Buffett's eagerly awaited annual letter to shareholders, he acknowledged 2007 was a good year, thanks to Berkshire Hathaway's stable insurance operations in a disaster-free 12 months, but he's not expecting a repeat. "That party is over,” he wrote. “It is a certainty that insurance-industry profit margins, including ours, will fall significantly in 2008. Prices are down, and exposures inexorably rise.” He predicted that even with another catastrophe-free year, the...

Japain Feb 21st 2008 From The Economist print edition The world's second-biggest economy is still in a funk—and politics is the problem THE ghost of Japan's “lost decade” haunts the United States. As the consequences of America's burst housing bubble are felt through financial markets, it has become popular to ask whether Japan's awful experience of boom-and-bust has lessons for other rich countries facing, at best, sharp slowdowns. Japan's property-and-stockmarket bubble burst in 1990, creating bad loans equivalent in the end to about one-fifth of GDP. The economy began growing properly again only 12 years later, and only in 2005...

Banking Bust: More To Come Liz Moyer, 01.16.08, 4:30 PM ET Banks have written down more than $100 billion since the summer. Yikes. Now the bad news: There are still billions worth of potentially toxic securities sitting on the books. The additional $1.3 billion write-down disclosed by JPMorgan on Wednesday was just the latest loss big banks have reported in the fourth quarter. Merrill Lynch is expected to report a sizeable write-down when it reveals fourth-quarter numbers on Thursday, by some estimates in the neighborhood of $15 billion. Bank of America, Wachovia and other big lenders report next week and...

The price of ethanol has fallen by 30% over the past few months as a glut of the corn-based fuel looms, while the price of ethanol's primary component, corn, had risen. That is squeezing ethanol companies' profits and pushing some ethanol plants to the brink of bankruptcy. Some ethanol companies are "under deathwatch" now, says Chris Groobey, a partner in the project-finance practice of law firm Baker & McKenzie, which has worked with lenders and private-equity funds involved with ethanol. That could be fine for big efficient players like Archer-Daniels-Midland Co., one of the nation's biggest ethanol producers by output....

t was a slow Friday at Red Herring magazine. The receptionist at the Silicon Valley tech title had stepped away from her desk. So a messenger strolls in from the summer sunshine, finds a 20-something reporter on her first real job and hits her with an eviction notice. Red Herring has three days to pay the rent or get out. Word got around, fast. Then someone looked outside. There, driving up in a rented silver Mazda minivan is a correspondent with gossip blog Valleywag. Aaaaaaand she's got a camera. Silicon Valley is booming again. But if you work in tech...

During the height of the real estate bubble, I wrote a column saying that the crash was coming and suggested selling any piece of real estate that was overpriced, questionable, or non-performing. As expected, I received angry replies. Today, I'm predicting the next crash, what I believe will cause it, and why it'll be a severe blow to the global economy. The signs are already here. Busts Beat Booms First of all, it's no big deal to predict booms and busts. All markets boom and bust. It's just easier to predict a bust because the signs are so obvious --...

The man responsible for protecting Egypt's antiquities has said he will "fight" for the return of an ancient bust of Nefertiti, an ancient Egyptian queen, now housed in a Berlin museum. Zahi Hawass also requested the temporary return of other ancient Egyptian artifacts, including the Rosetta Stone which is housed in London's British museum. "Some people say, 'If we give this bust to Egypt for three months they will not return it'." Hawass said, regarding the bust of Nefertiti, in an interview on Wednesday.Zahi Hawass is seeking "unique artifacts" from at least 10 museums around the world [AP]Germany says the...

“Innovation has brought about a multitude of new products, such as subprime loans and niche credit programs for immigrants… With these advances in technology, lenders have taken advantage of credit scoring models and other techniques for efficiently extending credit to a broader spectrum of consumers… Where once more marginal applicants would simply have been denied credit, lenders are now able to quite efficiently judge the risk posed by individual applicants and to price that risk appropriately. These improvements have led to rapid growth in subprime mortgage lending,… fostering constructive innovation that is both responsive to market demand and beneficial to...

SAN DIEGO – Federal authorities Wednesday arrested dozens of individuals across the country suspected of bringing 18 tons of illegal drugs into the United States, Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales said in an afternoon news conference here. Members of the Victor Emilio Cazares-Gastellum drug trafficking ring were awakened in the early morning hours by federal, state and local law enforcement agencies who served simultaneous arrest warrants as part of a 20-month-long investigation into the ring's operations, Gonzales and other federal officials said. Gonzales said the Mexico-based organization acquired drugs from Colombia and Venezuela to Central America, then smuggled them into...

SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) -- Crude-oil futures tumbled as much as 3% Tuesday after Saudi Arabia's oil minister said major oil producers need not cut production further, disappointing hopes that the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries would intervene to prop up prices. Crude for February delivery was last down $1.39, or 2.6%, at $51.60 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The contract struck a 20-month intraday low of $51.25. Saudi Oil Minister Ali al-Naimi told reporters at an oil conference in India that the market is "significantly healthier" now than it was in October, when OPEC agreed to...

LONDON (Reuters) -- Oil prices plunged more than 3 percent back near $51 a barrel Tuesday after Saudi Arabia said OPEC production cuts were working well and that there was no need for an emergency meeting of the producer group. U.S. light crude for February delivery tumbled $1.78 to $51.21 a barrel after touching $50.93, the lowest since May 2005, in earlier New York Mercantile Exchange trading. In London, Brent futures shed 82 cents to $52.30. The price of crude has plunged more than 16 percent this year in part due to warm weather in the Northeast, the world's top...

Can't post but good news as Saudi Arabia's oil minister rejected calls for more production cuts... http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20602099&sid=ap9i3C_FTkR4&refer=energy

The Mortgage Bust Goes On Matthew Swibel, 12.19.06 WASHINGTON, D.C. - A record-high 19% of high-cost mortgages originated during the past two years will end in foreclosure, a consequence of the growth in risky mortgage products, according to new data compiled by an industry group. The nonpartisan Center for Responsible Lending predicts 2.2 million households in this mortgage segment, known as subprime borrowers, either have lost their homes or hold mortgages doomed for foreclosure in the next few years. This estimate comes a week after a grim survey from Fitch Ratings, which studies residential mortgage securities, showing a 16-fold increase...

GREELEY, Colo. - Federal agents on Tuesday raided six meatpacking plants across the country, targeting illegal immigrants who obtained jobs by stealing the identities of U.S. citizens. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents had surrounded the Swift plant in Greeley as well as five other Swift plants. It was not immediately known how many people were rounded up in the raids. Authorities say the investigation began in February and that they have identified hundreds of potential victims.

What Housing Bust? The bear forecast vs. the bull facts. By John Tamny Jan Hatzius, chief U.S. economist for Goldman Sachs, puts the odds of a consumer-led recession at one in three. His reasoning for this bearish assessment goes as follows: The current housing slump could negatively impact consumer spending which would bring down the economy. But there’s one glaring problem with this sequence of events: There simply is not a lot of evidence that real estate has hit a rough patch. Last month the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight (OFHEO) released its House Price Index. The index shows...

As I noted last week, Airbus is considering moving some manufacturing operations out of Europe, to countries where the dollar (not the euro) is is the currency, or linked to the currency. The Wall Street Journal reports that today’s meeting of the board of directors of parent company EADS will consider just such a move. Not exactly a triumph for Europe, the euro, or European workers. But potentially even worse news for the A 380 whale jet comes from a technical committee which includes both European and American regukators. They have handed down a decision which threatens the principal advantage...

Housing not facing bust, Just normalcy : experts By Patrick Rucker WASHINGTON (Reuters) - While the U.S. housing market is drifting down from stratospheric levels, the sector is just returning to normal and is not poised to crash, several economists and industry leaders told lawmakers on Wednesday. "True housing busts are a relatively rare event," Federal Deposit Insurance Corp chief economist Richard Brown said at a congressional hearing on the housing market. In a recent study of past housing trends, the bank regulator concluded sharp drops in housing markets are most often linked to "episodes of severe local economic distress."...

MEXICO CITY -- Mexico's attorney general said the arrest a group of corrupt cops along the border with California is imminent. Daniel Cabeza de Vaca told a Mexico City news conference today the cops protected a Tijuana cartel, the Arellano Felix gang, which smuggled tons of pot, cocaine and meth into the United States. Two were already arrested Saturday and charged with taking bribes to protect the gang. The attorney general said they worked at the Rosarito police department just over the border from San Diego border. The two are accused of decapitating three of their fellow officers. The news...

Cocaine seized, 4 arrested in bustBy Sonja Elmquist Staff Writer Sheriff Sam Page (left) displays weapons and cocaine that were seized. WENTWORTH -- Four illegal immigrants were arrested Tuesday in western Rockingham County and charged with trafficking nearly 18 pounds of powder cocaine valued at $800,000. Deputies seized the drugs, automatic weapons and two vehicles. Sheriff Sam Page said Thursday that he didn't know if the drugs were destined for Rockingham County or if the alleged traffickers were just passing through. Either way, Page said, it was a danger. "When you have 171/2 or 18 pounds of cocaine going through...

War On Drugs: While not the end of the tale, the crushing of the Javier Arellano Felix drug cartel is a victory that should be played up. By itself, the arrest is satisfying. Better still, it shows the U.S. can work with Mexico. That wasn't the case when Enrique "Kiki" Camarena, an agent with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, was murdered by drug traffickers in Guadalajara in 1985. Back then, Mexican authorities threw roadblocks at apprehending drug lord Miguel Angel Felix Gallardo, who was a leading member of the group that kidnapped, tortured and killed the agent. Mexican police told...

pair of illegal immigrants carrying drugs, weapons, and a suspicious liquid was busted on the border. Authorities say that suspicious liquid could be used to make liquid methamphetamine. It happened Thursday morning, in Santa Cruz County just outside Rio Rico and only a few miles from the Mexican border. "You can't be a hundred percent sure that's what's on the label is in the bottle," said Battalion Chief William Rowe with the Tubac Fire Department. Labels on bottles found read "ethanol." Officials say the lids had been tampered with, so no one could be sure exactly what was inside. The...

Britons go bust at rate of one per minute By Edmund Conway, Economics Editor (Filed: 05/08/2006) One person is falling victim to insolvency every minute of the working day and home repossession applications show the biggest rise since the early 1990s housing crash. Many are finding it impossible to pay record gas and electricity bills The Government figures issued yesterday, 24 hours after the Bank of England raised interest rates for the first time in two years, show that more and more families are being caught up in the ballooning debt crisis. Experts said that many families were finding it...

Now I'm thinking. When will we have our first famous "plastinized" celebrity? Will it be Michael Jackson albeit his missing nose? At least he wouldn't be frozen like a giant popsicle in a cryogenic chamber. What about Bill Clinton? Well, I believe he could become an instant hit given his history at the White House behind closed doors. I'm sure people will want to take a closer look at Bill Clinton's "plastinized" body and see what the big deal was about just like

Wichita Falls,TX(7News) A Wichita Falls convenience store owner is going to prison for life for selling ingredients to make meth. The bust happened at the Krystal Mart store in April of 2004. The drug task force says owner Reza Vafaiyan was selling more than 80,000 tablets of pseudoephedrine, which prosecutors say could have produced more than $4 million worth of meth. A Wichita County jury sentenced Vafaiyan to life in prison for the crime.

Tens of thousands of people in Europe and the Americas protested the war in Iraq on the eve of its third anniversary, with demonstrations in Europe drawing far greater crowds than those in the United States.Events in Washington, New York and Los Angeles drew approximately 1,000 people each, ÀFÐ reporters and police said. At a rally near New York's Times Square, speaker after speaker denounced the Bush administration and US troops in Iraq. The group Troops Out Now called for immediate, complete, unconditional US military withdrawal. "Public opinion is now overwhelmingly on our side as it becomes clearer every day...

The Legislature and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger have until March 10 to agree on any bond proposals for voters to consider on the June ballot. There is no shortage of bond proposals, from prison construction to coastal preservation. There is a shortage of time, however. And there is a shortage of political ability - among both the Democrats who lead the Legislature and the Republican governor - ... The only chance of success lies in narrowing the playing field. In the time remaining, the governor and lawmakers must focus on the one or two issues that seem doable. One is flood...

The Baby Bust In the 1970s, sociologists warned that overpopulation was the greatest threat facing humanity. Today, birth rates are dropping around the globe, and experts speak darkly of “depopulation.” What’s wrong with fewer people? 11/11/2005 How quickly is the birth rate declining? The global fertility rate now stands at 2.9 children for every woman of child-bearing age—a decrease of nearly 50 percent since 1972. According to the latest U.N. projections, the world’s fertility rate will fall below “replacement” levels by 2045, meaning that the human population will start shrinking. For a population to remain stable, the fertility rate must...

Ten Women Busted In Undercover Sting On Escort Services POSTED: 5:35 pm EST November 4, 2005 UPDATED: 7:12 am EST November 10, 2005 WEIRD PHOTOS: News Of The Strange Slideshow SIGN UP: Daily News Of The Strange Email FERN PARK, Fla. -- Nearly one dozen women were busted in an undercover sting on local escort services. Investigators say this year's hurricanes brought many of the women to the Central Florida area. Seminole County undercover agents busted ten female escorts on prostitution charges late Thursday night. They said a few of the women had come to Central Florida to work after...

Bernanke: There's No Housing Bubble to Go Bust Fed Nominee Has Said 'Cooling' Won't Hurt Ben S. Bernanke does not think the national housing boom is a bubble that is about to burst, he indicated to Congress last week, just a few days before President Bush nominated him to become the next chairman of the Federal Reserve. U.S. house prices have risen by nearly 25 percent over the past two years, noted Bernanke, currently chairman of the president's Council of Economic Advisers, in testimony to Congress's Joint Economic Committee. But these increases, he said, "largely reflect strong economic fundamentals," such...