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And while his staff said they knew where he was, a spokesman said he wasn’t aware that any of them had spoken with the governor since Thursday. Sanford’s wife said she hasn’t heard from him in several days, including Father’s Day.

“He was writing something and wanted some space to get away from the kids,” Jenny Sanford told The Associated Press while vacationing with the couple’s four sons at their Sullivans Island beach house. She said she didn’t know where he was, but wasn’t concerned.

Sanford, who’s also chairman of the Republican Governors Association, earned a reputation as the nation’s most vocal anti-bailout governor by refusing $700 million in federal stimulus money for schools until he lost a court battle earlier this month.

His spokesman Joel Sawyer said the governor was taking a break after losing the fight.

“Gov. Sanford is taking some time away from the office this week to recharge after the stimulus battle and the legislative session and to work on a couple of projects that have fallen by the wayside,” Sawyer said.

Sawyer told The Associated Press that he hadn’t spoken with Sanford since Thursday and wasn’t aware that any other member of the governor’s staff had, either. The governor told his staff where he was going last week and planned to check in.

“If an emergency arose and we were unable to immediately reach him, we would obviously consult with other state officials before making any decisions,” including Bauer, Sawyer said.

Sawyer wouldn’t say where the Sanford was, but said it was an area with limited communication.

A post-session wind-down isn’t uncommon and he goes “out of pocket for a few days at a time to clear his head,” Sawyer said. “Obviously, that’s going to be somewhat out of the question this time given the attention this particular absence has gotten.”

Asked how he knew the governor was OK, Sawyer referred a reporter to his prepared statements. “Again, this is not unusual. We are not at all concerned,” Sawyer said. He expected Sanford would return later this week.

The canton of Obwalden is planning to launch “special living zones” for millionaires in an attempt to boost its tax take by luring the wealthiest residents. Like other cantons in the tax haven, Obwalden finds itself short of revenue because it has been competing with other jurisdictions to see who can offer the lowest rate of tax.

The result has been a drastic shortfall in tax revenues as people set up PO box companies to take advantage of the low rates, while contributing nothing to the local economies because they live elsewhere.

Obwalden’s answer is to lift construction bans on land reserved for agricultural use, offering the rich the chance to secure property on protected land, with the promise of spectacular views of lake and alpine landscapes.

Details of Obwalden’s plan, published in the Swiss press, suggest selling villas on an exclusive basis to those who pay high taxes or who create work in the area – “a sunny location, with low noise emissions, good amenities … as well as an unrestricted view that cannot be built on”.

More than 200 people were injured in the clashes between police and residents outside the hotel in Hubei province’s Shishou city, according to a Hong Kong-based rights group, the Information Center for Human Rights and Democracy.

Hundreds had been angered by the death of 24-year old Tu Yuangao, who was found dead Wednesday evening in front of the Yonglong hotel. Tu’s relatives believe he was killed by the hotel boss, who is related to the mayor, the rights group said.

Discontent with local officials and police in China often leads to mass protests, which can gather size and force with remarkable speed. Mild frustration can turn into fury within minutes.

A local resident surnamed Chen said protesters started gathering outside the hotel Friday and by late Saturday had clashed five or six times with police, smashing six police vans and fire trucks. Chen said thousands of armed police forces with shields and batons were deployed in the area. The crowd started dispersing early Sunday, but security was tight, he said. “The area around the hotel is still cordoned off by hundreds of police with batons,” Chen said in a telephone interview Sunday.

A man who answered the phone at the Shishou government said the crowd dispersed after local authorities persuaded them to leave and that there had been no conflicts since Saturday afternoon. The man, who refused to give his name, said authorities were investigating the death of Tu, whose body was moved from the hotel to a funeral parlor Sunday. Chinese media reported that police ruled out murder, saying they found a suicide note.

And in California, where a $24 billion deficit for the coming fiscal year is the nation’s worst, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has proposed releasing thousands of prisoners early and closing more than 200 state parks.

Meanwhile, Maine is adding taxes on candy and ski tickets, Wisconsin on oil companies, and Kentucky on alcohol and cellphone ring tones.

With state revenues in a free fall and the economy choked by the worst recession in 60 years, governors and legislatures are approving program cuts, layoffs and, to a smaller degree, tax increases that were previously unthinkable.

All but four states must have new budgets in place less than two weeks from now — by July 1, the start of their fiscal year. But most are already predicting shortfalls as tax collections shrink, unemployment rises and the stock market remains in turmoil.

“These are some of the worst numbers we have ever seen,” said Scott D. Pattison, executive director of the National Association of State Budget Officers, adding that the federal stimulus money that began flowing this spring was the only thing preventing widespread paralysis, particularly in the areas of education and health care. “If we didn’t have those funds, I think we’d have an incredible number of states just really unsure of how they were going to get a new budget out.”

The states where the fiscal year does not end June 30 are Alabama, Michigan, New York and Texas.

Even with the stimulus funds, political leaders in at least 19 states are still struggling to negotiate budgets, which has incited more than the usual drama and spite. Governors and legislators of the same party are finding themselves at bitter odds: in Arizona, Gov. Jan Brewer, a Republican, sued the Republican-controlled Legislature earlier this month after it refused to send her its budget plan in hopes that she would run out of time to veto it.

In Illinois, the Democratic-led legislature is fighting a plan by Gov. Patrick J. Quinn, also a Democrat, to balance the new budget by raising income taxes. And in Massachusetts, Gov. Deval Patrick, a Democrat, has threatened to veto a 25 percent increase in the state sales tax that Democratic legislative leaders say is crucial to help close a $1.5 billion deficit in the new fiscal year.

“Legislators have never dealt with a recession as precipitous and rapid as this one,” said Susan K. Urahn, managing director of the Pew Center on the States. “They’re faced with some of the toughest decisions legislators ever have to make, for both political and economic reasons, so it’s not surprising that the environment has become very tense.”

As anger over fluoridating Geelong’s water supply mounted today, Labor minister Lisa Neville has been targeted along with water and health officials.

A death threat was left with a bottle of water on the verandah of Ms Neville’s house on Saturday night, a government spokeswoman said.

Anti-fluoride activists have also threatened to blow up Barwon Water’s treatment plants as the authority begins on Monday adding fluoride to the water supply in Geelong, 70 kilometres southwest of Melbourne.

The Department of Human Services (DHS) received a threatening letter in the mail last week.

All three threats are being investigated by police.

A government spokeswoman said Ms Neville, who is the member for Bellarine, returned home on Saturday night to find the bottle of water and a note on her front verandah.

It read: “We’re going to kill you, bitch”.

The report found electronic funds transfer (Eftpos) had displaced cash as the most common method used to pay for things such as groceries, power bills and mortgage. The number using Eftpos in the latest survey (83 per cent) is the same as in 2005, but the number using cash dropped from 84 per cent to 77 per cent. There have also been declines in all other methods of payment except internet banking, where users have increased from 34 per cent of adults in 2005 to 47 per cent.

Head warns that the UK is about to be hit by a further wave of fraud as the credit crunch bites. He expects a growing number of Ponzi schemes, like that run by Bernie Madoff, to come to light. There has also been a rise in “boiler room fraud”, where investors are conned by smooth-talking salesmen into buying worthless or dubious shares, contrary to expectations that share-buying would fall in the recession.

Head says: “We have seen a rise in the sophistication of this fraud and in the brutality of the crooks when people try to dig themselves out of a hole.

“We have seen people driven to suicide because they have lost everything.”

Manuals confiscated from boiler room fraudsters show how investors are carefully selected to receive harassing phonecalls. Among other recommendations, salesmen are told to avoid talking to women as they “ask more questions than men”.

The fight against fraud has been hampered by investigators’ reluctance to co-operate and share information. This is being addressed with the launch of the National Fraud Reporting Centre and the National Fraud Intelligence Bureau in the next six months.

Any type of blog could be scrutinized, not just ones that specialize in reviews.

So parents keeping blogs to update family members on their child’s first steps technically would fall under the FTC guidelines, though they likely would have little to worry about unless they accept payments or free products and write about them.

But they would need to think twice if, for instance, they praise parenting books they’ve just read and include links to buy them at a retailer like Amazon.com Inc.

That’s because the guidelines also would cover the broader and common practice of affiliate marketing, in which bloggers and other sites get a commission when someone clicks on a link that leads to a purchase at a retailer. In such cases, merchants also would be responsible for actions by their sales agents — including a network of bloggers.

Amazon declined to comment.