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State-run media blamed Iran’s western adversaries for the killing, but there was no immediate claim of responsibility for the blast.

“The February school payment we can’t make, February payroll there’s no money there,” said State Treasurer, Dean Martin.

Martin said unless the capitol buildings are sold before the end of the month, there will be no more money meaning, “If they continue to issue checks without having money from the sale of the buildings, I have to bounce them.”

That’s because Martin said spending has increased double digits during the first two years of the recession, while revenues were dropping at the same rate.

Martin said the biggest issue is what he calls welfare healthcare.

“Ten years ago AHCCCS was only a $200 million dollar agency, today it’s over $2 billion,” he said.

That’s why he wants the state to adopt the 2004-2005 budget.

“Well than means 40 to 45 kids in a classroom,” said Michael O’Neil, of O’Neil Associates, who does public opinion research, “There’s a whole lot more people that live here now than lived here in ’04.”

Hundreds of Amish families in the region are likely to be free from that requirement.

The Amish, as well as some other religious sects, are covered by a “religious conscience” exemption, which allows people with religious objections to insurance to opt out of the mandate. It is in both the House and Senate versions of the bill, making its appearance in the final version routine unless there are last-minute objections.

“In wealth management it is imperative that we stop the outflow of assets and increase the inflow,” Gruebel said today in a memo to staff obtained by Bloomberg News. “We ourselves must not give clients any reason to leave the bank.”

“Basically we’re taking old fashioned parenting and bringing it into the mobile world,” Taser chairman and co-founder Tom Smith said at the Consumer Electronics Show here, where the Arizona company unveiled the new product.

“Because when you give your child his mobile phone you don’t know who they’re talking to, what they’re sending or texting, all of those things,” Smith told AFP.

The phone application, called “Mobile Protector,” allows a parent to screen a child’s incoming and outgoing calls and messages, block particular numbers and even listen in on a conversation.

A dashboard on a parent’s phone or a personal computer shows the mobiles being monitored and the permitted callers such as friends and family.

Aides to top congressional Democrats also said that Geithner has support on Capitol Hill as lawmakers prepare hearings into why the New York Fed in December 2008 asked American International Group Inc. to scale back disclosures of the government’s $182.3 billion bailout of the New York-based insurer. The Treasury Department said Geithner, 48, recused himself from such deliberations after Obama picked him to be Treasury chief the previous month.

The nation’s sales of passenger cars, buses and trucks rose to 13.6 million, the fastest pace in at least 10 years, according to the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers. In the U.S., sales slumped 21 percent to 10.4 million, the fewest since 1982, according to Autodata Corp.

China’s vehicle sales have surged since 1999 as economic growth averaging more than 9 percent a year has helped automakers including General Motors Co. and Volkswagen AG compensate for slumping demand in the U.S. and Europe. The market will likely remain the world’s largest, even as sales slow this year on a reduction in tax cuts, according to Booz & Co.

“China is becoming the center stage of development for the 21st century global auto industry,” said Bill Russo, a Beijing- based senior adviser at Booz & Co., which advises automakers. “Economic growth has directly translated into growth in automobile sales.”

The magazine reported that after 9/11, the CIA used one of Prince’s homes in Virginia as a covert training facility for hit teams that would hunt Al Qaeda suspects globally. Their job was find, fix and finish: “Find the designated target, fix the person’s routine, and, if necessary, finish him off,” as the magazine put it.

According to Vanity Fair, one of the team’s targets was Mamoun Darkazanli, a naturalized German citizen originally from Syria. Darkazanli has been accused by Spain of being an Al Qaeda supporter with close ties to the alleged 9/11 plotters who lived in Hamburg. The Blackwater/CIA team “supposedly went in ‘dark,’ meaning they did not notify their own station–much less the German government–of their presence,” according to Vanity Fair. “They then followed Darkazanli for weeks and worked through the logistics of how and where they would take him down.” Authorities in Washington, however, “chose not to pull the trigger.”

This week, a senior lawmaker in Chancellor Angela Merkel’s center-right Christian Democratic Union called on Washington to provide an explanation. “If this commando really existed and the US government knew about it but didn’t notify our government then this would be a very grave incident,” said the lawmaker, Wolfgang Bosbach.

His concerns were echoed in the US by Representative Jan Schakowsky, a member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. “This really is part of an ongoing investigation that I can’t talk about, but even the fact that there is that allegation, I think, gives one a picture of the degree to which Blackwater has been completely enmeshed in these secret operations,” Schahowsky said. “And, you know, at least the allegation that they are, I think is disturbing enough. And there is an investigation going on around activities like that.”

“This morning, we set a new all-time record peak load on the electrical system, with customers drawing more than 23,500 megawatt-hours of power,” said Sarah Marmion, FPL spokeswoman. “This breaks FPL’s previous peak record, which occurred on Aug. 17, 2005.”