USA
In Senate testimony Thursday, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said that providing up to $30 billion to facilitate the sale of Bear Stearns, a struggling investment bank, to JPMorgan Chase & Co. was done to avoid a "chaotic unwinding" that could have hurt individual investors and financial institutions.
On the eve of a House hearing Thursday of the Federal Aviation Administration's oversight of the airline industry, the FAA announced that four unnamed carriers are being investigated for failing to comply with maintenance requirements.
House lawmakers Wednesday approved spending $50 billion annually over the next five years to fight AIDs and other maladies in Africa and other areas of the world. That triples the amount previously earmarked for this purpose.
The Transportation Security Administration said Wednesday that the apprehension of a man accused of trying to bring explosives onto a plane in Orlando, Fla., earlier this week was a victory for the agency's new behavior-based screening techniques. The TSA didn't specify what led them to charge Kevin Christopher Brown, an Army veteran, as he approached a ticket counter for a flight to Jamaica.
The attorneys for former Enron Corp. CEO Jeffrey Skilling argued Wednesday to a US district appellate court that his conviction on 19 counts of fraud and other crimes should be overturned. The court is expected to rule at a later date.
The Navajo Nation in northern Arizona plans to partner with a Boston company to build hundreds of windmills to take advantage of blustery conditions on the Navajo reservation north of Flagstaff, Ariz. The project is expected to provide jobs and generate 500 megawatts of "clean" energy, enough for 100,000 households.
ATA Airlines, a commercial and military charter company based in Indianapolis, said Thursday that the carrier has filed for bankruptcy and discontinued all flights as the result of losing a key contract to continue its military charters.
In a report about the Federal Emergency Management Agency's disaster readiness, released Thursday, the agency's inspector general said FEMA is better prepared but still not completely ready for another catastrophe on the scale of hurricane Katrina.
