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Illinois lenders InBank of Oak Forest and Platinum Community Bank of Rolling Meadows; Vantus Bank of Sioux City, Iowa; First Bank of Kansas City, Missouri; and First State Bank of Flagstaff, Arizona were shut by regulators, and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. was named receiver, the agency said in statements yesterday. Closing the lenders, with combined assets of $1.1 billion and deposits of $982 million, will cost the deposit insurance fund about $401 million.

The new squadron was established to provide each B-52 Wing with two active-duty combat coded squadrons, which will give the Air Force “bench depth” to rotate the squadrons across the mission sets as recommended in the Defense Science Board Report. The much anticipated stand-up was previously announced in 2008 and extensive studies were conducted to determine which base the unit would best fit. Minot was announced as the home and the 69th Bomb Squadron was designated for reactivation on Aug. 28.

“The activation of the 69th Bomb Squadron at Minot Air Force Base is a historic event that continues the legacy of the distinguished 69th Bomb Squadron. In World War II, the 69th Bomb Squadron deployed A-26 and B-26 bombers to Australia and the South Pacific. And during the Vietnam War, the 69th Bomb Squadron stepped up to the plate and deployed B-52 aircraft to Guam and Thailand,” said Maj. Gen. Floyd Carpenter, 8th Air Force Commander. “Now more than 65 years after its initial activation, the 69th Bomb Squadron returns to provide deterrence forces and help balance the demands of both the nuclear and conventional missions of the B-52 fleet.”

“The 69th has close ties with the 5th [Bomb Wing], and definitely a logical choice” said Lt. Col. Kevin J. Notari, 5th Operations Group Detachment 1 commander. “Both units fought simultaneously out of two different locations in the Southwest Pacific theatre during World War II. Furthermore, the unit was the first Air Force unit to fly night low level combat sorties during the first three days of Desert Storm” he added.

As a result, 10 B-52 aircraft from Barksdale AFB will flow to Minot between Oct. 09 and April 10. There won’t be a significant number of personnel that will flow with the aircraft, as personnel for the new squadron will flow in gradually through the normal PCS process and support from the 23rd BS.

“This activation is a measure of the confidence our nation has in the men and women of the Minot Air Force Base,” said N.D. Govenor John Hoeven. “The 69th Bomb Squadron will bring approximately 1,000 new military members and their families to the state and will be a major asset to the community, the Minot Air Force Base, and our nation,” he added.

The squadron is expected to mirror the other 3 currently established active B-52 squadrons. As the squadron builds up, many of the resources and functions from the 23rd Bomb Squadron will be shared including training, exercises and deployments.

“This adds flexibility to the Air Force Global Strike Command mission,” said Maj. William L. Byers 5th OG Det. 1, Chief of Standard Evaluations.”The 69th allows for an even distribution of operations tempo between the 2nd Bomb Wing and 5th BW, and at the same time supports the persistent presence in United States Pacific Command,” he added. This will help refine and focus nuclear mission training for B-52 units and is part of continued Air Force efforts to reinvigorate the Nuclear Enterprise.

The United States Air Force has a legacy of providing strategic capabilities as stewards of the nuclear enterprise, and is committed to conducting safe, secure and reliable nuclear operations.

The new squadron commander, Lt. Col. Michael R. Cardoza, echoed this sentiment in his remarks during the ceremony.

The State Food and Drug Administration (SFDA) issued the license for Sinovac’s vaccine called Panflu.1 on Thursday, after it passed SFDA’s experts evaluation on Aug. 31.

“Clinical trials show that Panflu.1 is very safe and its immunogenicity factors reach international standards,” said Zhang Wei, director of SFDA’s registration department.

Panflu.1 could safely be given to people aged from three to 60 years old in a single shot, 15 microgram dose, according to the evaluation report.

Sinovac had the capacity to produce five million doses of vaccine before Oct.1, and 20 to 30 million doses per year, according to its president Yin Weidong.

The young student stated her aspirations in a televised interview that was posted on a southern China website, leading bloggers to describe her comments as “a reflection of social reality,” the Southern Metropolis Daily reported.

“When I grow up I want to be an official,” said the girl, whose face was blurred to protect her identity.

“What kind of official?” the interviewer asked.

“A corrupt official because corrupt officials have a lot of things,” she replied.

Numerous other children appearing in the video were asked the same question, with many saying they wanted to become teachers, while others said they were not sure what they wanted to be when they grew up.

Many chatroom users praised the child for her “realistic” outlook on life, while others expressed cynicism over rampant corruption in China.

“Socialism has issued a new version of ‘The Emperor’s New Clothes’,” said one posting.

“The ugliness of life has already tainted the children – how are we ever going to educate the next generation?” another posting said.

A research group representing 16 companies, including Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd., will spend four years developing technology to send electricity without cables in the form of microwaves, according to a statement on the trade ministry’s Web site today.

“It sounds like a science-fiction cartoon, but solar power generation in space may be a significant alternative energy source in the century ahead as fossil fuel disappears,” said Kensuke Kanekiyo, managing director of the Institute of Energy Economics, a government research body.

Japan is developing the technology for the 1-gigawatt solar station, fitted with four square kilometers of solar panels, and hopes to have it running in three decades, according to a 15- page background document prepared by the trade ministry in August. Being in space it will generate power from the sun regardless of weather conditions, unlike earth-based solar generators, according to the document. One gigawatt is enough to supply about 294,000 average Tokyo homes.

Takashi Imai, a spokesman for the Institute of Unmanned Space Experiment Free Flyer, which represents the 16 companies, confirmed the selection when reached by phone in Tokyo.

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Far, Far Away

Transporting panels to the solar station 36,000 kilometers above the earth’s surface will be prohibitively costly, so Japan has to figure out a way to slash expenses to make the solar station commercially viable, said Hiroshi Yoshida, Chief Executive Officer of Excalibur KK, a Tokyo-based space and defense-policy consulting company.

“These expenses need to be lowered to a hundredth of current estimates,” Yoshida said by phone from Tokyo.

The project to generate electricity in space and transmit it to earth may cost at least 2 trillion yen, said Koji Umehara, deputy director of space development and utilization at the science ministry. Launching a single rocket costs about 10 billion yen, he said.

“Humankind will some day need this technology, but it will take a long time before we use it,” Yoshida said.

The trade ministry and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, which are leading the project, plan to launch a small satellite fitted with solar panels in 2015, and test beaming the electricity from space through the ionosphere, the outermost layer of the earth’s atmosphere, according to the trade ministry document. The government hopes to have the solar station fully operational in the 2030s, it said.

Supplies rose 65 billion cubic feet in the week ended Aug. 28 to 3.323 trillion cubic feet, the Energy Department said. Inventories are the highest for that week since the department began publishing data in 1993. Stockpiles typically gained 64 billion cubic feet for the period in the past five years.

“We’re well supplied and there’s so little demand,” said Michael Rose, director of trading at Angus Jackson Inc. in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. “Some people are starting to question the economic recovery and that adds more pressure to gas.”

Natural gas for October delivery fell 20.7 cents, or 7.6 percent, to settle at $2.508 per million British thermal units at 2:52 p.m. on the New York Mercantile Exchange, the lowest close since March 5, 2002. Gas has dropped 55 percent this year. Today’s decline was the largest in three months. Futures earlier touched $2.50.

Overall U.S. gas consumption may contract by 2.6 percent as the recession that began in December 2007 cuts demand, the Energy Department said in its monthly Short-Term Energy Outlook on Aug. 11.

Gas use at factories is forecast to tumble 8.6 percent this year because of the recession, the department said.

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Though traffickers have been planting on public lands for years, figures from the U.S. Forest Service indicate the sheer volume of marijuana plants on public land has increased every year since 2005 — by millions. And those are just the plants that the government knows about and has destroyed.

Most pot farms are cultivated by low-level cartel workers, many who are working to pay off smugglers who helped them cross the border, officials have said. Campsites are sophisticated and well hidden, with foxholes and sniper nests, Arthur told CNN.

The food stamp program, which helps cover the cost of groceries for one in nine Americans, has grown in step with the U.S. unemployment rate which stood at 9.4 percent in July.

The Labor Department will release August employment figures on Friday.

Christian Poveda, 52, was shot at least four times in the face, according to local reports.

Poveda’s documentary, “La Vida Loca,” which follows the lives of members of the Mara 18 street gang, had been screened at a handful of film festivals and is slated for wider release later this month. His body was found in an area controlled by that same gang, local reports said.

A motive of Poveda’s murder Wednesday was being investigated, National Civil Police Director Carlos Ascencio Giron said in a statement. Citing the pending investigation, police did not immediately give any details, but Ascencio Giron said that the homicide and organized crime divisions of his department were handling the case jointly with the attorney general’s office.

Salvadoran President Mauricio Funes said he was “very shocked” by the news of the murder.

According to a statement by the president’s office, Poveda first arrived in El Salvador in the 1980s to cover the civil war as a photojournalist. He left to report from other war zones, but returned to research and film the gangs in El Salvador.