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HERMANN MISSOURI OKTOBERFEST 2010
HERMANN MISSOURI OKTOBERFEST 2010 - CLICK ON PHOTO FOR THIS YEARS SCHEDULE OF EVENTS
The Missouri Labor Department's Division of Labor Standards (DLS) has ordered Pacific-based Klance Staging, Inc., to pay $12,597.70 in restitution to 51 workers who were denied overtime pay, in violation of the state’s wage law. According to the DLS, an employee of the company filed a complaint after noticing his paycheck did not reflect overtime pay.
“I am expected to do the work I’ve been asked to do and my employer is supposed to pay me for that work. It’s not fair when employers do not hold up their end of the deal and I found it is also against the law," the unnamed employee said in a statement. "Thanks to the Department of Labor, I was able to get the wages I earned."
State law requires employers to pay overtime when employees work more than 40 hours in a seven day work week.
“The Missouri Department of Labor is actively enforcing the wage and hour laws. In these difficult economic times, employers are not allowed to abuse their workers by not paying them the proper wages,” said Department Director Larry Rebman.
The Division of Labor Standards investigates all wage complaints. The agency received 732 wage complaints in fiscal 2010, found 147 violations and collected more than $199,185 in restitution, the DLS said.
Klance Staging Inc. provides labor for entertainment, trade show and other events.
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It's an old question, but we've been through enough of these interventions now -- from Vietnam to Kosovo to Afghanistan -- to insist on asking it once again: Is the United States on a slippery slope in Libya, one that will lead to American military involvement on the ground? The evidence, on balance, is that under President Obama the U.S. presence is going to expand quickl -- but covertly.
Intelligence experts both in and out of government caution that there is a long way to go, and that Obama is a very deliberative president who is informed by a half-century of mission creep dating back to Vietnam. One U.S. official who spoke to National Journal about the covert "finding" signed recently by Obama emphasized that it mainly authorizes contacts with, and intelligence gathering on, the Libyan opposition, and that a more robust assistance program requires yet another presidential decision. "It's a nonlethal finding. Nothing goes boom," said Vince Cannistraro, a former head of operations at the CIA's counterterrorism center who used to process such findings at the National Security Council -- and who spent a good part of his career dealing with Libya under Moammar Gadhafi. "It doesn't authorize any guns or arms. It's things like radios, cell phones."
Beyond that, the Obama administration has been extremely careful to take a step-by-step approach to Libya, often following the more aggressive French and British (whose Special Air Service teams are reportedly already in Libya). Defense Secretary Robert Gates and other top administration officials told U.S. lawmakers privately on Wednesday that Washington has made no decision on sending arms to the opposition forces.
Still, it's also fair to point out that Obama has shown a great partiality to enlisting the CIA and its paramilitaries to fight wars covertly that he doesn't want to commit the U.S. military to engaging in publicly. In Pakistan, Obama has stepped up the agency's activities, and last fall The Wall Street Journal reported that Obama was giving the CIA operational control over elite Special Forces teams secretly in Yemen. Senior U.S. intelligence officials also acknowledge that the CIA's task in Iraq will grow as the U.S. military departs this year.
A nonlethal "preliminary" finding like the one that Obama is believed to have signed is required because the CIA's activities in Libya go beyond the normal intelligence gathering it does around the world, said a former senior agency official who would discuss presidential findings only on condition of anonymity. "It's the difference between collection and influencing outcomes," he said. "If the CIA is taking part in activities which are potentially going to influence a change of government, it goes beyond collecting foreign intelligence. You need authority from the president."
The next step, actually providing arms or aiding them in any active way against Gadhafi, would probably require a "lethal" finding, he and other former intelligence officials said.
Other factors may come into play as well. Gates, who has been notably skeptical of a no-fly zone and other types of U.S. involvement, plans to leave office by the end of the year, and he might be replaced by a more aggressive champion of military or covert action.
Above all, now that Obama has openly staked his credibility on Gadhafi's departure, the president may have little choice but to arm and aid a badly outgunned and undertrained opposition, lest a long stalemate and a possible slaughter result. "The opposition isn't very much of a military force," Cannistraro said. "They're a bunch of kids, mostly. Some of them are looking at guns for the first time in their lives." The slope does seem slippery -- but it's not yet clear how steep it might be.
One in five of all American moms have kids who have different birth fathers, a new study shows. And when researchers look only at moms with two or more kids, that figure is even higher: 28 percent have kids with at least two different men.
“To put it in perspective, this is similar to the number of American adults with a college degree,” says the study’s author, Cassandra Dorius, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Michigan Institute for Social Research. “It’s pervasive.”
Dorius’ study, which was presented Friday at the annual meeting of the Population Association of America, examined data from nearly 4,000 U.S. women who had been interviewed more than 20 times over a 27-year period.
This phenomenon is important to study, Dorius says, because there are consequences to both the mom and her children. Women with children from multiple fathers tend to be disadvantaged compared to other moms. “They are more likely to be under-employed, to have lower incomes, and to be less educated,” Dorius says.
Further, this type of family structure can lead to a lot more stress for everyone involved, in part because the women need to juggle the demands and needs of more than one dad.
“Everyday decisions are more complex and family rules are more ambiguous,” Dorius says. “Families need to figure out who lives with whom and when, who pays for things like clothing, who is responsible for child support.”
Earlier studies that looked at women with children from different dads focused only on young or inner-city mothers.
The new data, pulled from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, shows that this kind of family structure is found at all levels of income and education. And it’s frequently tied to divorce and remarriage, not just to single motherhood, Dorius says. Forty-three percent of the women with kids with multiple dads were married when their first babies were born.
Dorius found that a multiple-father type of family structure was more common among minority women, with 59 percent of African-American mothers, 35 percent of Hispanic mothers and 22 percent of white mothers reporting children with more than one father.
Women with low income and little education were also more likely to have children with different birth fathers.
An important message that doesn’t appear to be getting through is just how hard it is to raise a child as a single pare
JEFFERSON CITY–Hunters in northern Missouri can expect to see a few more jakes during the spring turkey season, and hunters statewide will have more mature gobblers to hunt this year. Otherwise, the 2011 spring turkey hunting forecast from the Missouri Department of Conservation (MDC) looks a lot like those for the past few years.
Missouri’s spring turkey season opens April 18 and runs through May 8. The youth season is April 9 and 10. Details about bag limits and other regulations are found in the “2011 Spring Turkey Hunting Regulations and Information” booklet, which is available from permit vendors statewide or at www.mdc.mo.gov/node/4066.
Resource Scientist Jason Isabelle, MDC’s resident turkey expert, says he expects this year’s turkey harvest to be slightly lower than last year’s. He said the 2011 turkey season will be defined by two factors. One is a diminished but still robust turkey population. The other is the poor hatches that have occurred during the past several years.
“Our turkey population unquestionably is down in parts of the state from where we were five years ago,” said Isabelle, “but it’s still enough to make us the envy of most other states.”
Turkey harvest figures and population estimates compiled by the National Wild Turkey Federation back up Isabelle’s analysis.
2010 Spring Harvest 2011 Turkey Population
Wisconsin 47,722 not available
Missouri 46,000 308,000
Pennsylvania 42,478 360,000
Tennessee 37,000 310,000
Kentucky 36,000 220,000
Oklahoma 37,000 123,500
Arkansas 10,000 100,000
Nebraska 20,000 not available
Iowa not available not available
“I find those numbers very heartening,” said Isabelle. “Even with some challenging hunting conditions in parts of Missouri the past few years, it’s clear to see that we still have some of the best turkey hunting found anywhere in the country. Our turkey population is still very robust, and it will increase when we have a few years of good production.”
However strong it might be compared to other states, Missouri’s turkey population continues to suffer from several years of poor reproductive success, partly as a result of cold, wet weather during the nesting and brood-rearing season. The heaviest blow fell in 2007, when a freak Easter freeze killed eggs in the nest and stopped mating activity cold across most of the state. But the record rainfall of 2008 and 2009 was just as rough on turkey reproduction in many areas, and 2010 was not much better.
The good news, such as it is, took the form of slight improvements in nest success in the past two years.
“Production was up about 8 percent statewide in 2009 compared with 2008, so there should be a few more 2-year old gobblers in the woods this spring,” said Isabelle.
He said statewide wild turkey reproduction was about the same in 2010 as in 2009, but MDC did record some encouraging regional differences. Production was up 14 percent in northeastern Missouri and 34 percent in the northwestern portion of the state. Consequently, hunters in these regions should find more jakes than they did last year.
Hunters concerned with not hearing as many gobbling birds in their area may consider passing on jakes this spring, said Isabelle. “The more jakes that make it through the season, the more 2-year old gobblers there will be to hunt next year.”
“Two-year-old toms tend to be the most active gobblers,” said Isabelle, “and most hunters gauge the quality of hunting by the amount of gobbling they hear. Due to the relatively poor hatches that we’ve had the past few years, a larger proportion of our mature gobblers now are 3 years or older, and older birds are generally harder to fool. But if you outsmart one of those birds, you certainly have something to be proud of.”
Isabelle mentioned a few items that hunters should know before this year’s spring turkey season. Most significant is the change in tagging procedures under the new e-Permits system. E-Permits makes permit buying more convenient, allowing hunters to purchase turkey hunting permits using home computers and print and have the permits in hand immediately.
Tagging is different under e-Permits, because the self-adhesive transportation tags that formerly came with deer and turkey permits are gone. Instead, the permit itself is the transportation tag now. Hunters must notch the month and date on the edges of the tag that correspond to the date they killed a turkey and attach the notched permit to the bird.
The new tagging procedure requires care to protect permits from moisture or tearing. MDC suggests that hunters carry permits in zipper-type sandwich bags and use string, tape or other material to attach permits to harvested game. Hunters still must check turkeys through the Telecheck system by 10 p.m. the day the bird is killed.
Another of Isabelle’s noteworthy items is an error in the “2011Summary of Missouri Hunting and Trapping Regulations.” The summary of youth turkey hunting regulations on Page 19 says that young hunters who shoot turkeys during the youth season may not harvest a second turkey until April 26. The correct date is April 25. Information in the spring turkey booklet is correct.
Hunters also need to know that the refuge portion of Peck Ranch Conservation Area (CA) is temporarily closed to hunting and all other activity because of elk restoration work there. The portion of Peck Ranch CA outside the marked refuge fence – approximately 12,000 acres in all – remains open to hunting and other activities.
“We know this is an inconvenience for turkey hunters,” said Isabelle. “We hope they will remember the historic role Peck Ranch played in Missouri’s amazingly successful turkey restoration program and bear with us as we work to restore another native species to that part of the Ozarks.”
Finally, Isabelle mentioned that specific regulations for some CAs have changed this year. Those changes are outlined in the “2011 Spring Turkey Hunting Regulations and Information” booklet. He urges hunters to get copies of the booklet before the season and double-check the regulations on CAs where they plan to hunt.
Isabelle says better times are ahead for Missouri turkeys and turkey hunters.
“One of the things that we’ve learned about wild turkey populations is that they are dynamic in nature. They can increase fairly rapidly when conditions are favorable. I know this is cold comfort to hunters when we are several years into a population slump, but it’s true. With a couple years of improved spring weather, we can expect increases in production, and an increase in the state’s wild turkey population.”
Isabelle said he hears from hunters who want MDC to shorten turkey season or reduce bag limits, but those measures simply won’t help at this time.
“Production drives Missouri’s wild turkey population,” he said. “I know it seems logical to think that more restrictive regulations will help the population recover, but the truth is that those measures have little effect in situations like we are in right now. MDC will continue to monitor the turkey population very closely, and will be ready to make regulatory changes if we think that they would help the population. For right now though, we just have to be patient and wait for Mother Nature to deal turkeys a few good hands. That is the only thing that is going to turn things around.”
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One student is dead and at least 10 injured in the crash of a school bus and a tractor trailer on a rural Mississippi highway.
The Bolivar County Coroner's Office told Fox News that a 10-year-old female student died in the accident at about 7:20 a.m. Friday. Deputy coroner Murray Roark said several other children sustained life-threatening injuries in the crash.
St. Ann police: Man hits woman with hammer in fight over drugs
BY JOEL CURRIER post-dispatch.com April 1, 2011
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ST. ANN • A St. Ann man was charged today with assaulting a woman with a claw hammer in what police believe was a fight over drugs.
Dale P. Dixon, 50, of the 3500 block of Wright Avenue, struck a woman, 32, in the head with a claw hammer about midnight Thursday after she began fighting with another woman in a home in the 3900 block of Wright Avenue, said Aaron Jimenez, public information officer for St. Ann police.
Dixon has been charged with first-degree assault and armed criminal action. He is jailed in lieu of a $100,000 cash bail.
The fight started as the female victim was getting a tattoo on her shoulder to memorialize a friend who died recently of a drug overdose, Jimenez said. As a man inked the tattoo, the woman and Dixon's girlfriend, 37, started fighting.
Dixon grabbed a claw hammer from a workbench in the house, Jimenez said, and first struck a man was trying to break up the fight. He was not seriously hurt.
Dixon then struck the 32-year-old woman in the head once with the claw side of the hammer, causing severe bleeding, Jimenez said.
The wounded woman ran out to her car and fled down Wright Avenue toward St. Charles Rock Road, where a St. Ann police officer spotted the car and tried to pull it over for speeding, Jimenez said. The driver continued on to the St. Ann Police Department nearby for help.
From there, she was taken to a hospital for emergency surgery for skull fractures and brain swelling. She is expected to survive.
Back at the home, police seized paraphernalia for making and using methamphetamine. No one else in the home was arrested.
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(CNN) -- Prepare to be blown away -- again and again and again.
Yes, "Source Code" is that good. But it's also true in a literal sense: Being repeatedly blown away is part of the mission facing a disoriented and increasingly distressed U.S. Army officer named Colter Stevens (Jake Gyllenhaal) as he tries to find the terrorist who planted a bomb on a Chicago commuter train.
This is a most unusual suicide mission. For one thing, the bomb already went off, but Stevens is sent to relive the experience through a process that blurs the lines between ESP, time travel and quantum theory.
By tapping into the lingering short-term memory cells of one of the bomber's victims, scientists are able to "place" Stevens in the man's head -- and more than that, in his shoes -- for the eight minutes leading up to the blast. At the moment of death, Stevens re-emerges into what he thinks of as the real world, only to be sent back into the train with another eight minutes to fish out the killer.
The science is pure fantasy, the mother of McGuffins, but director Duncan Jones does his level best to keep us as off balance as his hero, whose grasp of the here and now seems to have been fried some time before the movie begins. At first he assumes he's in a training exercise, the Rolls Royce of role-playing simulations.
Yet it's too real, and too painful, for that. Each time he goes back into the train, the past becomes as malleable as the present -- except that as the timer ticks down, it always ends the same way. iReporter interviews the cast
Imagine a cross between "Groundhog Day" and "Murder on the Orient Express" and you're halfway there. Stevens has to negotiate his way through a set pattern of external events, including the conversation of the woman sitting across from him (Michelle Monaghan), and the progress of the conductor, while he tries to build up a mental dossier on each suspicious passenger in the crowded commuter car.
But Bill Murray wasn't blown to smithereens every eight minutes, and Ben Ripley's ingenious script isn't really a whodunit. That's the least satisfying aspect of the story, and only Stevens' disorientation excuses his poor deductive skills.
If you think of the film as a kind of recurring nightmare in the paranoid style of Philip K. Dick you're nearer the mark. Stevens' superiors (Vera Farmiga and Jeffrey Wright) try to keep him focused on their real world objectives, but he will keep drifting -- his fleeting connections with the doomed passengers somehow seem more important. iReport: 4 out of 5 for "Source Code"
As authoritative an exercise in fractured storytelling as Christopher Nolan's "Memento," "Source Code" represents a real advance for Jones, whose only previous film was the micro-budget sci-fi "Moon."
Impressive as that was on a technical level, "Moon" felt as emotionally remote as its marooned hero. "Source Code" is an altogether richer and more accessible experience -- the existential popcorn flick that Gyllenhaal's "Donnie Darko" director Richard Kelly hasn't quite been able to pull off. iReport: Moviegoers react after seeing the film
Investigations Find ‘Unprecedented’ Political Review of FOIA Requests by Homeland Security Department
Friday, April 01, 2011 By Fred Lucas
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Washington (CNSNews.com) – A political review of open records requests smacks of “Nixonian” tactics by the Department of Homeland Security, House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) said Thursday.
Two investigations found that Freedom of Information Act requests sent to the DHS were reviewed by Obama administration political appointees.
“Through the course of an eight-month investigation, the committee has learned that political staff under the DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano have corrupted the agency’s FOIA compliance procedures, exerted unlawful political pressure, on FOIA compliance officers, and undermined the federal government’s accountability to the American people,” Issa said.
“These events have nurtured a fragile – and at times hostile – work environment that does not serve to fulfill the department’s primary mission to secure the nation from the many threats we face,” he added.
The department’s Office of Inspector General found that many records requests were filtered through Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano’s office.
However, DHS general counsel attacked the House oversight report as biased, pointing out that the IG report never alleged direct wrongdoing.
“My initial reaction was one of concern because as you indicate these are very serious allegations,” DHS General Counsel Ivan Fong told the committee. “I take very seriously, as I should, any allegation of wrongdoing by my staff. On further examination, my concern frankly turned into indignation because I believe the report paints an unfair and irresponsible portrait of some people and events. The report reads more like an advocacy piece rather than a sober, substantive, dispassionate investigative report.”
The investigations found that information requesters were identified by party affiliation in some cases. During the hearing, Mary Ellen Callahan, chief FOIA officer and chief privacy officer for DHS, could not answer why.
Callahan said this is only the case with members of Congress.
“According to our weekly report, we are supposed to indicate who is a Democrat and who is a Republican,” Callahan told the committee. “I think that is how members of Congress are addressed. I don’t know why, but career staff added that in 2006.”
The House report found that by the end of 2009, “copies of all significant FOIA requests were required to be forwarded to the Secretary's political staff for review. The career staff in the FOIA Office was not permitted to release responses to these requests without approval from political staff.”
The House investigation further found “original versions of documents that were heavily redacted before being released to the Associated Press show the Office of General Counsel relied on exception (b)(5) – normally meant to protect pre-decisional records – to prevent the release of embarrassing records.”
The report also said that the secretary’s office stopped using e-mail in the second quarter of 2010, and instead contacted their career staff by phone.
The report from DHS Acting Inspector General Charles Edwards did not allege corruption, but did say the department must make changes.
“We also determined that the Office of the Secretary has had unprecedented involvement in the Freedom of Information Act process beginning in 2009,” the IG report said. “For several hundred requests deemed significant, components were required to provide for headquarters review all materials they intended to release.”
After DHS issued a report in 2009 about “right wing extremist groups,” the secretary’s office communicated its concern to the DHS FOIA office, according to the IG report. The secretary’s office asked, “Have we actually turned over any documents at this point?” and later asked the FOIA office for a list of all 33 organizations that requested the right wing extremist report.
The IG report also says, “Potentially embarrassing wording was redacted in other cases as well. In November 2009, a senior DHS official suggested limitations on the release of particular requests that a component was processing.”
Rep. Gerald Connelly (D-Va.) insisted that there was nothing wrong with the secretary’s office reviewing FOIA requests.
“The agency leadership simply wanted to know more about it. This actually represents laudable agency coordination, and a notable deconstruction of the usual bureaucratic stovepipes. If we assume FOIA requests can serve as a proxy for public interest in certain issues on which an agency is working, then agency knowledge about those requests means that the agency can be more responsive to the public it serves,” he said.
The DHS has taken unprecedented measures, John Verdi, director of open government for the watchdog group Electronic Privacy Information Center.
“We are not aware of any other program that has singled out FOIA requests based on politically sensitive content or the identity of the requestor,” Verdi told the committee. “Political review delays the release of records and raises the specter of wrongful performance.”
He further said that “federal law simply does not allow agencies to select” what requests to respond to based on political considerations.
Edwards, the inspector general, said his office had not determined that DHS has done anything illegal. But, he stressed much improvement needs to be made.
Callahan said the department has decreased its backlog of records under the Obama administration. “Two years ago, the department faced a backlog of more than 74,000 FOIA requests,” Callahan told the committee. “Under this administration, we have reduced the backlog by 84 percent, or more than 63,000 requests.”
However, Republicans on the committee pointed out that it was the Bush administration that hired a private contractor for $7.6 million to help relieve the department’s FOIA backlog. Further, the approximately 30,000 FOIA requests were shifted to the State Department.
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Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA), Chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, speaks to the politicized FOIA review process within the Department of Homeland Security.
House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform hearing entitled, "Why Isn't the Department of Homeland Security Meeting the President's Standard on FOIA?" The hearing examined the Department's Freedom of Information Act function and the role of political appointees in the FOIA response process. March 31, 2011
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If you want to understand better why so many states—from New York to Wisconsin to California—are teetering on the brink of bankruptcy, consider this depressing statistic: Today in America there are nearly twice as many people working for the government (22.5 million) than in all of manufacturing (11.5 million). This is an almost exact reversal of the situation in 1960, when there were 15 million workers in manufacturing and 8.7 million collecting a paycheck from the government. It gets worse. More Americans work for the government than work in construction, farming, fishing, forestry, manufacturing, mining and utilities combined. We have moved decisively from a nation of makers to a nation of takers. Nearly half of the $2.2 trillion cost of state and local governments is the $1 trillion-a-year tab for pay and benefits of state and local employees. Is it any wonder that so many states and cities cannot pay their bills? Every state in America today except for two—Indiana and Wisconsin—has more government workers on the payroll than people manufacturing industrial goods. Consider California, which has the highest budget deficit in the history of the states. The not-so Golden State now has an incredible 2.4 million government employees—twice as many as people at work in manufacturing. New Jersey has just under two-and-a-half as many government employees as manufacturers. Florida's ratio is more than 3 to 1. So is New York's. Even Michigan, at one time the auto capital of the world, and Pennsylvania, once the steel capital, have more government bureaucrats than people making things. The leaders in government hiring are Wyoming and New Mexico, which have hired more than six government workers for every manufacturing worker. Now it is certainly true that many states have not typically been home to traditional manufacturing operations. Iowa and Nebraska are farm states, for example. But in those states, there are at least five times more government workers than farmers. West Virginia is the mining capital of the world, yet it has at least three times more government workers than miners. New York is the financial capital of the world—at least for now. That sector employs roughly 670,000 New Yorkers. That's less than half of the state's 1.48 million government employees.
Don't expect a reversal of this trend anytime soon. Surveys of college graduates are finding that more and more of our top minds want to work for the government. Why? Because in recent years only government agencies have been hiring, and because the offer of near lifetime security is highly valued in these times of economic turbulence. When 23-year-olds aren't willing to take career risks, we have a real problem on our hands. Sadly, we could end up with a generation of Americans who want to work at the Department of Motor Vehicles. The employment trends described here are explained in part by hugely beneficial productivity improvements in such traditional industries as farming, manufacturing, financial services and telecommunications. These produce far more output per worker than in the past. The typical farmer, for example, is today at least three times more productive than in 1950. Where are the productivity gains in government? Consider a core function of state and local governments: schools. Over the period 1970-2005, school spending per pupil, adjusted for inflation, doubled, while standardized achievement test scores were flat. Over roughly that same time period, public-school employment doubled per student, according to a study by researchers at the University of Washington. That is what economists call negative productivity. But education is an industry where we measure performance backwards: We gauge school performance not by outputs, but by inputs. If quality falls, we say we didn't pay teachers enough or we need smaller class sizes or newer schools. If education had undergone the same productivity revolution that manufacturing has, we would have half as many educators, smaller school budgets, and higher graduation rates and test scores. The same is true of almost all other government services. Mass transit spends more and more every year and yet a much smaller share of Americans use trains and buses today than in past decades. One way that private companies spur productivity is by firing underperforming employees and rewarding excellence. In government employment, tenure for teachers and near lifetime employment for other civil servants shields workers from this basic system of reward and punishment. It is a system that breeds mediocrity, which is what we've gotten.
US jobs report pushes oil up, stronger dollar keeps crude gains moderate
Chris Kahn, AP Energy Writer Friday April 1, 2011
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NEW YORK (AP) -- Oil prices hit a new 30-month high on Friday after the world's top two oil consumers, the U.S. and China, issued positive economic reports that could lead to increased demand. The U.S. said its economy added 216,000 new jobs last month and the unemployment rate dropped to 8.8 percent, a two-year low. Adding jobs often pushes oil prices higher since it implies that more workers will join the daily commute and increase demand for oil and gasoline. In China, the government reported growing demand for autos and machinery as its manufacturing sector regained momentum. Benchmark crude for May delivery gained 84 cents at $107.56 per barrel in afternoon trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The price rose as high as $107.93 per barrel earlier in the day. Oil hasn't been that high since September 2008. In London, Brent crude added 55 cents at $117.75 per barrel on the ICE Futures exchange. A stronger dollar kept prices from soaring early in the session, but eased by afternoon. Oil is traded in dollars and a stronger dollar rises makes crude more expensive for investors holding other currencies. "The jobs number looked so good," analyst and trader Jim Ritterbusch said. "Then everyone looked at the dollar" and wondered how it would affect demand in China and other emerging markets. China is the world's second largest oil consumer behind the U.S. "It's a very nervous market environment right now," Ritterbusch said. Meanwhile, gas pump prices rose by more than a penny on Friday to a national average of $3.619 per gallon, according to AAA, Wright Express and Oil Price Information Service. Gasoline prices are at the highest levels ever for this time of year. They've soared 23.2 cents in the last month and 81.6 cents since a year ago. In other Nymex Trading, heating oil for April delivery gained a penny at $3.1177 per gallon and the gasoline contract for April added 2 cents at $3.1321 per gallon. Natural gas for May delivery lost 6 cents at $4.327 per 1,000 cubic feet.
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_________________________________________________________________________ US Ending Its Air Combat Role in Libya Gates says US ending its air combat role in Libya, leaving the heavy lifting to allies
The Associated Press
By ROBERT BURNS AP National Security Writer
WASHINGTON April 1, 2011 (AP)
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The Pentagon is about to pull its attack planes out of the international air campaign in Libya, hoping NATO partners can take up the slack.
The announcement Thursday drew incredulous reactions from some in Congress who wondered aloud why the Obama administration would bow out of a key element of the strategy for protecting Libyan civilians and crippling Moammar Gadhafi's army.
"Odd," ''troubling" and "unnerving" were among critical comments by senators pressing for an explanation of the announcement by Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Joint Chiefs chairman Adm. Mike Mullen that American combat missions will end Saturday.
"Your timing is exquisite," Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., said sarcastically, alluding to Gadhafi's military advances this week.
Gates and Mullen, in back-to-back appearances before the House and Senate armed services committees, also forcefully argued against putting the U.S. in the role of arming or training Libyan rebel forces, while suggesting it might be a job for Arab or other countries. The White House has said repeatedly that it has not ruled out arming the rebels, who have retreated pell-mell this week under the pressure of a renewed eastern offensive by Gadhafi's better-armed and better-trained ground troops.
"My view would be, if there is going to be that kind of assistance to the opposition, there are plenty of sources for it other than the United States," Gates said.
The White House press secretary, Jay Carney, said he saw no contradiction between Gates' remarks and President Barack Obama's statement that "he has not ruled it in or out." As yet, none of Obama's top advisers have publicly advocated a significant expansion of the U.S. role aiding the opposition.
Gates and Mullen were early skeptics of getting involved militarily in Libya, and Gates made clear Thursday that he still worries about the possibility of getting drawn into an open-ended and costly commitment. That explains in part his view that if the rebels are to receive foreign arms, that task — and the training that would necessarily go with it — should not be done by Americans.
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CIA Coming to Rebels' Aid in Libya
Secret directive from Obama might allow U.S. to arm rebel forces.
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BENGHAZI, Libya — Libya's rebels will agree to a cease-fire if Muammar al-Qaddafi pulls his military forces out of cities and allows peaceful protests against his regime, an opposition leader said Friday.
Mustafa Abdul-Jalil, head of the opposition's interim governing council based in Benghazi, spoke during a joint press conference with U.N. envoy Abdelilah Al-Khatib. Al-Khatib is visiting the rebels' de facto stronghold of Benghazi in hopes of reaching a political solution to the crisis embroiling the North African nation.
Abdul-Jalil said the rebels' condition for a cease-fire is "that the Qaddafi brigades and forces withdraw from inside and outside Libyan cities to give freedom to the Libyan people to choose and the world will see that they will choose freedom."
The U.N. resolution that authorized international airstrikes against Libya called for Qaddafi and the rebels to end hostilities. Qaddafi announced a cease-fire immediately but has shown no sign of heeding it. His forces continue to attack rebels in the east, where the opposition in strongest, and have besieged the only major rebel-held city in the west, Misrata.
Abdul-Jalil said the regime must withdraw its forces and lift all sieges.
He stressed the ultimate goal was Qaddafi's ouster.
"Our aim is to liberate and have sovereignty over all of Libya with its capital in Tripoli," Abdul-Jalil said.
The U.N. said Al-Khatib, arrived Thursday in Tripoli.
Forces loyal to Libya's leader of nearly 42 years spent much of this week pushing the rebels back about 100 miles along the coast, and the opposition was trying to regroup. The rebels had mortars Friday, weapons they previously appeared to have lacked, and on Thursday night they drove in a convoy with at least eight rocket launchers — more artillery than usual.
The rebels also appeared to have more communication equipment such as radios and satellite phones, and were working in more organized units, in which military defectors were each leading six or seven volunteers.
The rebels' losses this week, and others before air strikes began March 19, underlined that their equipment, training and organization were far inferior to those of Qaddafi's forces. The recent changes appear to be an attempt to correct, or at least ease, the imbalance.
A Libyan opposition official said rebels will be able to buy more arms thanks to an oil deal they reached with the tiny Arab nation of Qatar.
Ali Tarhouni, who handles finances for the opposition's National Transitional Council, said Qatar has agreed to market oil currently in storage in rebel-controlled areas of southeastern Libya.
Tarhouni didn't say when the deal was signed or when oil shipments will begin. He said one sticking point is how to truck the oil out of the country. Tarhouni said money from oil sales will be put into an escrow account the opposition will use to pay for weapons, food, medicine, fuel and other needs.
It was unclear where the front line was Friday. Rebels were holding journalists back at the western gate of Ajdabiya, far from the fighting. On Thursday, the opposition had moved into Brega, about 50 miles east of Ajdabiya, before Qaddafi's forces pushed them out.Qaddafi's greatest losses this week were not military but political. Two members of his inner circle, including his foreign minister, abandoned him Wednesday and Thursday, setting off speculation about other officials who may be next. The defections could sway people who have stuck with Qaddafi despite the uprising that began Feb. 15 and the international air strikes aimed at keeping the autocrat from attacking his own people.
Libyan state TV aired a phone interview with intelligence chief Bouzeid Dorda to knock down rumors that he also left Qaddafi.
"I am in Libya and will remain here steadfast in the same camp of the revolution despite everything," Dorda said. "I never thought to cross the borders or violate commitment to the people, the revolution and the leader."
Qaddafi struck a defiant stance in a statement Thursday, saying he's not the one who should go — it's the Western leaders who attacking his military with air strikes who should resign immediately. Qaddafi's message was undercut by its delivery — a scroll across the bottom of state TV as he remained out of sight.
The White House said the strongman's inner circle was clearly crumbling with the loss of Foreign Minister Moussa Koussa, who flew from Tunisia to England on Wednesday. Koussa is privy to all the inner workings of the regime, so his departure could open the door for some hard intelligence, though Britain refused to offer him immunity from prosecution.
Scottish and American officials, meanwhile, pushed for access to Koussa, who reportedly has first-hand knowledge of Qaddafi's role in the 1988 Lockerbie bombing of Pan Am Flight 103. Koussa also is said to have played a primary role in the planning and execution of the terrorist attack that killed all 259 people on board, and 11 people on the ground.
Ali Abdessalam Treki, a former foreign minister and U.N. General Assembly president, announced his departure on several opposition websites the next day, saying "It is our nation's right to live in freedom and democracy and enjoy a good life."
Qaddafi accused the leaders of the countries attacking his forces of being "affected by power madness."
"The solution for this problem is that they resign immediately and their peoples find alternatives to them," the Libya state news agency quoted him as saying. His government's forces have regained momentum on the rapidly moving front line of the battle with opposition forces, retaking the town of Brega after pushing the rebels miles back toward the territory they hold in eastern Libya.
The rebels said they were undaunted, taking heart from the departures in Qaddafi's inner circle. "We believe that the regime is crumbling from within," opposition spokesman Mustafa Gheriani said in Benghazi, the rebels' de facto capital.
Libyan officials, who initially denied Koussa's defection, said he had resigned because he was sick with diabetes and high blood pressure. Government spokesman Moussa Ibrahim said Koussa was given permission to go to Tunisia, but the regime was surprised to learn he had flown to London.
"I talked to many people and this is not a happy piece of news, but people are saying, 'So what? If someone wants to step down that's his decision,'" Ibrahim said.
Nations behind the campaign of international air strikes that have hobbled Libya's military hailed Koussa's resignation as a sign of weakness in Qaddafi's reign. They're hoping for nonmilitary solution, in part because the rebels have been seriously outgunned.
The U.S. has ruled out using ground troops in Libya, and says it will not yet consider providing arms to the rebels. Defense Secretary Robert Gates told Congress on Thursday that the U.S. still knows little about the rebels, and that if anyone arms and trains them it should be some other country.
Asked by a lawmaker whether U.S. involvement might inevitably mean "boots on the ground" in Libya, Gates replied, "Not as long as I am in this job."
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