Engineers inspecting Airbus A380 aircraft for further wings cracks have found similar flaws on at least one aircraft, industry sources said on Tuesday.

European safety authorities ordered urgent inspections on just under a third of the superjumbo fleet last week after two types of cracks were discovered on the same type of bracket inside the wings of the world’s largest jetliner.

Airlines have until Friday to complete a first phase of checks, after which Airbus or safety regulators are expected to give an update on any new findings.

Airbus, which insists the superjumbo is safe to fly, declined to comment on any interim results while airlines carry out checks under the timetable established by regulators.

But a spokesman said recent events showed the industry’s process of continuous evaluation, designed to catch and repair any faults before they become a hazard, was working smoothly.
Read more: http://trade.cc/acfrixzz1kOqDcOIt

(via)

Billionaire Warren Buffett’s longtime secretary will be joining first lady Michelle Obama in her box at tonight’s State of the Union, White House communications director Dan Pfeiffer announced on Twitter.

Debbie Bosanek, who has worked for Buffett for nearly two decades, has become a symbol in the White House’s fight over the tax code and economic fairness. Obama is expected to renew his push for the so-called “Buffett rule” that would bring investment taxation levels into line with income taxation levels — and ensure that upper income earners pay rates as high as middle-class Americans.

“Warren Buffett’s secretary shouldn’t pay a higher tax rate than Warren Buffett,” President Obama said in September, when he unveiled his American Jobs Act proposal. It’s a trope that Buffett himself has repeated, as he has campaigned for higher taxes on investment income.

It’s common practice for presidents to invite guests to sit next to the first spouse that fit with the theme of their address — and Bosanek’s presence is a big hint that the address will tilt heavily towards economic issues of fairness.

Annie Lowrey, writing in Slate, reports that Bosanek has traditionally been very wary of the limelight — acting as a gatekeeper to the billionaire investor, not as a newsmaker. While she does acts as the press liaison for Buffett and his company, she’s tight-lipped. She reportedlyonce wore a t-shirt with the caption: “Hi, I’m Debbie B. Warren is not available, and I have no comment.”

(via Gerri Willis at FoxBusiness.com) 

If I had to rank pre-paid debit cards in terms of their value to consumers, they would be pretty darn low. Right up there with the PedEgg and the Flowbee. Ultimately, these cards are glorified gift cards laden with fees that find an audience because they are backed by a celebrity. Consumers love brand identity and buying a celebrity card is just another way to get closer to your favorite reality talk show star or radio talk show host. But for anybody who cares about their money, these cards are just a money waster.

And, so it is with Suze Orman’s pre-paid debit card, the Approved Card. The card is laden with fees – 20 of them – starting with a $3 a month charge for using the card. Some of the fees can be avoided, but it begs the question of why I would buy such a card if I had to spend all my time reading the fine print to make sure I avoid the trip wires? The Approved Card has more fees than the Rushcard, backed by Russell Simmons, which has 17, and the Lil Wayne prepaid Discover card which has seven. In fact, the Approved Card makes American Express look like a not-for profit institution. Amex’s pre-paid card has just one fee.

The Approved Card, though, purports to do more than just give you a place to stash your money. Orman maintains consumers’ use of the ‘Suze Card’ will be shared with one credit bureau with the hope it will eventually help you build credit. The card does this by offering free credit reports, scores and free credit monitoring. (By the way, the scores are not from the industry score standard, FICO, but from a lesser known player in the field.) Savvy consumers, though, know that these services are already available for free on the web from websites like CreditKarma.com. The government requires that your three credit reports be available for free from AnnualCreditReport.com.

And, this claim that the Approved Card is intended to be a credit-builder makes little sense on its face. Consumers aren’t evaluated for credit on the basis of how they spend their money. For example, you don’t get points for going to the pet store rather than the grocery store or the other way around. It makes no sense to use your spending history as a way to estimate your creditworthiness, unless, I guess, you’re the Kardashians. (More on the Kardashians in a moment.) The big credit reporting agencies evaluate how you handle debt. Do you pay it off quickly? Do you miss payments?

Look, by Suze’s own standards, pre-paid debit cards are a waste of money because of the fees they charge. But, to me, the problems are even bigger than that. I’ve been highly critical of the nation’s largest banks. But that doesn’t mean I want consumers to leave the banking system. Having a relationship with a banker and being inside “the system” helps establish you as a viable candidate for loans. What’s more, you can still find banks offering free checking accounts. Suggesting that people remove themselves from the banking system and operate on its periphery doesn’t do anyone any favors. The old Suze knows that. I’m not sure who this new Suze is. And, I am tempted to ask just how much money she is making on this debit card scheme. As my friend Chuck Jaffe wrote recently, “The problem with Suze is that you don’t know when the advice ends and the advertising begins.” Suffice it to say that maybe what we know now is that the advertising never stopped.

By the way, we’ve asked Suze and the Approved Card team to come on the show and talk about the card and why they believe it’s a positive for consumers. That was back on Jan. 12. Since then, we’ve talked to several personal finance experts who agree the card is of little benefit to consumers. Here’s what Suze’s people had to say to our request for an appearance, “[You’ve done three segments] without any input from Suze or The Approved Card team. At this point we will just leave it there and respectfully decline your offer to appear.”

Oh, and about the Kardashians: Suze slammed the reality stars’ pre-paid debit card saying it ‘swindled’ teens with ‘outrageous fees’ and that its marketing was misleading. The Kardashians, ultimately, pulled the card. Suze should do the same.
Read more: http://trade.cc/acex#ixzz1kOoYjmTc

(via NY TIMES)

Newt Gingrich insists his fans will not be silenced.

Mr. Gingrich, a former House speaker, on Tuesday morning threatened not participate in any future debates with audiences that have been instructed to be silent. That was the case on Monday, when Brian Williams of NBC News asked the audience of about 500 people who assembled for a debate in Tampa to hold their applause until the commercial breaks.

In an interview with the morning show “Fox and Friends,” Mr. Gingrich said NBC’s rules amounted to stifling free speech. In what has become a standard line of attack for his anti-establishment campaign, Mr. Gingrich blamed the media for trying to silence a dissenting point of view.

“I wish in retrospect I’d protested when Brian Williams took them out of it because I think it’s wrong,” Mr. Gingrich said. “And I think he took them out of it because the media is terrified that the audience is going to side with the candidates against the media, which is what they’ve done in every debate.”

Mr. Gingrich soared to victory in the South Carolina last week after back-to-back debates in which he took on the moderators with as much zeal as he took on his rivals for the Republican presidential nomination. The audiences, which were far larger and encouraged to participate, cheered him on as he pushed back. First he lashed out at Juan Williams of Fox News for suggesting that Mr. Gingrich’s comments about blacks and welfare were offensive. Then he snapped at John King of CNN for opening the debate with a question about accusations that he had asked an ex-wife for an “open marriage.”

Mr. Gingrich’s performance in the debate in Tampa on Monday night was far more muted. Critics noted that he seemed to be off his game. The National Journal, which co-hosted the NBC debate, compared Gingrich to “a stand-up comedian whose routine suffers without echoes of laughter egging him on.”

Mr. Gingrich clearly noticed something was off, too. “We’re going to serve notice on future debates,” he told Fox. “We’re just not going to allow that to happen. That’s wrong. The media doesn’t control free speech. People ought to be allowed to applaud if they want to.”

Fun times

Igloo style

Shit for brain he has…

(via ABC NEWS) 

Sen. Rand Paul told his communications director this morning he was being detained by TSA at the Nashville airport.

The Twitter account associated with Paul staffer Moira Bagley, @moirabagley, tweeted around 10 a.m., ET, “Just got a call from @senrandpaul. He’s currently being detained by TSA in Nashville.”

A TSA spokesman said the agency was looking into the matter but could not immediately comment.

Paul apparently set off  an airport security full-body scanner “on a glitch,” a spokesman in Paul’s office told ABC News.

The Paul staffer said TSA agents would not let Paul walk back through the body scanner and were demanding a full body pat-down.

The Paul spokesman said his office called TSA administrator John Pistole about the incident this morning.

The Senate is back in session today at 2 p.m., with votes scheduled at 4:30 p.m.

The issue of pat-downs has been an important one to Paul, the son of libertarian-leaning Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul. Sen.  Paul brought this issue up at a hearing earlier this year.

(via TMZ)

Joe Paterno, the legendary former coach at Penn State University, is on his death bed … this according to several reports.

A spokesman for the family says doctors have “characterized his status as serious.”

Onward State, a student-run newspaper on campus, reported Saturday he had been taken off his respirator. The Citizens Voice, a newspaper in nearby Wilkes-Barre, PA, reported Paterno’s wife Sue summoned close friends and longtime staff members toState College hospital.

TMZ reached out to Paterno’s lawyer, who would only say rumors of JoePa’s death were “not accurate.”

Paterno was the coach at Penn State for 46 years, until he was famously fired by the school last November following the sexual abuse allegations against his former assistant coach, Jerry Sandusky.

You weren’t the only one who Googled that smoking hot NBA cheerleader from “American Idol” this week — THOUSANDS of other people did too … and TMZ has learned, the massive surge in traffic crashed her manager’s website.

In case you missed Wednesday’s episode, the smokeshow’s name is Brittany Kerr — a cheerleader for the Charlotte Bobcats. J.Lo wasn’t that impressed with her audition, but Steven Tyler and Randy Jackson eagerly handed the girl a ticket to Hollywood.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=I3aloXCc0tU

But the fanfare didn’t end there … a rep for Kerr’s management company — which hosts multiple photos of her on its website — tells TMZ, its site was forced to shut down for hours after a massive surge in traffic crippled its servers.

But Kerr’s management company wasn’t the only thing affected … photographer Jim Merrill — who recently snapped Kerr in a bikini shoot — tells TMZ, he had to scramble to buy additional bandwidth for his website to accommodate all the voyeurs.

Via TMZ

 

By: John Carney
Senior Editor, CNBC.com

It’s bonus day at Goldman Sachs.

Officially known as “Compensation Communication Day,” today is the day when many at Goldman are finding out what their bonus will be.

And it’s “really ugly” today, according to one Goldman employee.

A midlevel Goldman Sachs [GS  108.74    1.06  (+0.98%)   ] employee who works in the Fixed Income, Currency and Commodities division put it this way: “It’s a bloodbath. People are trying to put on a strong face but there are a lot of clenched jaws.”

One thing that makes the situation even more intense is that many receive the news of their bonus in a very public way.

Read the rest here.

LOS ANGELES (CBS) — The revamped school lunches at Los Angeles Unified School District have won awards, commending them for improving the menu at the second largest school district in the nation. Too bad the students don’t agree.

Rejecting healthful alternatives like vegetarian curries and tamales, quinoa salads and pad Thai noodles, students are throwing them in the trash by the thousands, bringing junk food from home and buying instant noodles and other decidedly unhealthy fare from the “black markets” that have begun to thrive at campuses across the district, according to the Los Angeles Times.

The wholesale rejection to its healthy menu comes about a year after a very public food fight with TV chef Jamie Oliver. Oliver filmed a few weeks of his ABC series “Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution” at one LAUSD campus, but the permit was terminated abruptly.

The series’ first season featured Oliver trying to revolutionize the eating habits and food policies of Huntington, W. Va.

The district said they welcomed Oliver, but not his cameras, in an effort to avoid gimmicks, like filling a school bus with 57 tons of white sand to represent the amount of sugar LAUSD students consume weekly in flavored milk.

The kerfluffle led to LAUSD’s decision to change the menu in favor of healthier options. The district decided to do away with chocolate- and strawberry-flavored milk.

Now, the Times reports cartons of plain milk are being thrown away en masse, unopened, along with uneaten entrees. Participation in the school lunch program has dropped by thousands of students, who are ditching lunch and are suffering from hunger-related ailments.

The complaints have been heard and LAUSD is planning changes to the menu, the Times reports. Burgers and (healthy) pizza are coming back, and dishes like quinoa salads and brown rice cutlets are out.

Read the rest here.

(via TMZ)

One final meal after he knew he screwed himself and everyone else…

(via  CNN)

_______________________

The captain of the Costa Concordia ordered dinner for himself and a woman after the ship struck rocks off Italy’s coast, a cook from the ship told a Filipino television station.

In an interview with GMA Network, cook Rogelio Barista said Capt. Francesco Schettino ordered dinner less than an hour after the accident.

“We wondered what was going on. … At that time, we really felt something was wrong. … The stuff in the kitchen was falling off shelves and we realized how grave the situation was,” Barista told GMA.

Schettino ordered dinner around 10:30 p.m. Friday, Barista said. Authorities say the ship struck the rocks at 9:41 p.m.

“I have had 12 years of experience as a cook on a cruise ship. … I have even witnessed fires, so I wasn’t that scared,” Barista said. “But I did wonder, though, what the captain was doing … why was he still there.”

The ship hit rocks off the coast of the Italian island of Giglio on Friday night.

At least 11 people are known to have died in the disaster, and 21 are still missing, according to the Italian Crisis Unit.

Criticism from both Costa Cruises and the authorities has focused so far on Schettino, who is under house arrest and facing possible charges of manslaughter, shipwreck and abandoning ship.

Coast guard records published Thursday by an Italian newspaper pile further pressure on the captain of the Concordia and his officers, suggesting that the authorities first became aware of the crash from a friend of the mother of a passenger about 15 minutes after the ship hit rocks.

Schettino’s brother-in-law defended him in an Italian newspaper Thursday.

Schettino “managed to avoid a tragedy — it could have been worse,” Maurilio Russo said in Corriere della Sera.

And he denied that the captain had abandoned ship.

“He was not running away, he came down (from the ship) to survey the damage,” Russo said.

(via NY POST)

GIGLIO, Italy — The search for bodies on the wreck of the Costa Concordia resumed Thursday amid reports that a mystery blonde woman was on the bridge alongside the ship’s captain before the liner crashed off the Italian coast.

The woman is believed to be Domnica Cemortan, a 25-year-old Moldovan, thought to be the same female seen dining with Captain Francesco Schettino at around 9 p.m. last Friday, just under half an hour before the disaster, Italian newspaper Il Secolo reported.

Cemortan, who may have been a guest of either Schettino or another officer, or a ship employee, may emerge as a key witness to Friday night’s events, but Italian prosecutors will neither confirm nor deny the reports.

Read more: http://trade.cc/aaqm

(via DrudgeReport.com)

(Drudge gets the big scoop again)

NEWT EX-WIFE UNLOADS ON CAMERA; NETWORK DEBATES 'ETHICS' OF AIRING BEFORE SC PRIMARY**Exclusive**
Wed Jan 18 2012 18:47:14 ET

Marianne Gingrich has said she could end her ex-husband’s career with a single interview. Earlier this week, she sat before ABCNEWS cameras, the DRUDGE REPORT has learned.

She spoke to ABCNEWS reporter Brian Ross for two hours.

Her explosive revelations are set to rock the campaign.

But now a “civil war” has erupted inside of the network, an insider claims, on exactly when the confession will air!

ABCNEWS suits determined it would be “unethical” to run the Marianne Gingrich interview so close to the South Carolina Primary, a curious decision, one insider argued, since the network has aggressively been reporting on other candidates.

A decision was tentatively made to air the interview next Monday, after all votes have been counted.

Gingrich canceled a press conference on Wednesday to deal with the matter.

“He believes that what he says in public and how he lives don’t have to be connected,” Marianne Gingrich, Newt’s wife of 18 years, explained to ESQUIRE last year. “When you try and change your history too much, and try and recolor it because you don’t like the way it was or you want it to be different to prove something new … you lose touch with who you really are.”

MORE

 

Do they they not get what just happened in their own backyard ?

She made through security to board the plane. So much for security….

Wakey wakey money cheats….currently they are looking for Anthony Chiasson of Level Global

By: Reuters

Rating agency Fitch said on Tuesday that Greece would default on its debt, although it said that such a default was likely to take place in an orderly manner.

“It is going to happen. Greece is insolvent so it will default,” Edward Parker, Managing Director for Fitch’s Sovereign and Supranational Group in Europe, the Middle East and Africa told Reuters on the sidelines of a conference in the Swedish capital. “So in that sense it shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone.”

The Fitch comments come after Moritz Kraemer, head of Standard & Poor’s rating agency’s European sovereign ratings unit, said on Monday Greece would default shortly on its debt obligations.

Parker said that Fitch believed that even a voluntary agreement by private investors to take a haircut on Greek debt would constitute a default.

Read the rest here.