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Despite numerous bloggers picking up on the switch, along with screenshots from before and after proving the language was changed, mesmerized Obama supporters are still claiming that that detractors had invented the language and that the website had not been altered.

The text from Obama’s change.gov website, which went online shortly after the election result, originally appeared as follows (emphasis mine).

Obama will call on citizens of all ages to serve America, by developing a plan to require 50 hours of community service in middle school and high school and 100 hours of community service in college every year.

The text was changed at some point on Friday afternoon/evening to the following (emphasis mine).

Obama will call on citizens of all ages to serve America, by setting a goal that all middle school and high school students do 50 hours of community service a year and by developing a plan so that all college students who conduct 100 hours of community service receive a universal and fully refundable tax credit ensuring that the first $4,000 of their college education is completely free.

The Bonn-based company said the new round of cuts are on top of another 5,400 job cuts it already announced and blamed heavy losses at the unit, which competes with rivals UPS Inc. and FedEx Corp.

Deutsche Post investors cheered the decision, sending the company’s shares up 7 percent to 10 euros ($12.90) in Frankfurt trading.

The cuts are part of a wider plan to curtail operations in the U.S., including domestic ground and delivery services though its international shipping to and from the U.S. would continue. The Express unit currently employs some 18,000 workers.

However, Deutsche Post said the U.S. remained a key market and that its other operations there, including freight and global mail and other logistics, won’t be affected by the closings.

Deutsche Post’s U.S. logistics unit employs more than 25,000 workers in the U.S.

Part of the plan calls for the halt to domestic shipping by Jan. 30, the company said after it closes all of its ground hubs and reduces the number of service centers from 412 to 103 across the U.S.

The Intelligence and Security Committee, the parliamentary watchdog of the intelligence and security agencies which has a cross-party membership from both Houses, wants to press ministers to introduce legislation that would prevent news outlets from reporting stories deemed by the Government to be against the interests of national security.

The committee also wants to censor reporting of police operations that are deemed to have implications for national security. The ISC is to recommend in its next report, out at the end of the year, that a commission be set up to look into its plans, according to senior Whitehall sources.

The ISC holds huge clout within Whitehall. It receives secret briefings from MI5, MI6 and GCHQ and is highly influential in forming government policy. Kim Howells, a respected former Foreign Office minister, was recently appointed its chairman. Under the existing voluntary code of conduct, known as the DA-Notice system, the Government can request that the media does not report a story. However, the committee’s members are particularly worried about leaks, which, they believe, could derail investigations and the reporting of which needs to be banned by legislation.

Civil liberties groups say these restrictions would be “very dangerous” and “damaging for public accountability”. They also point out that censoring journalists when the leaks come from officials is unjustified.

It filed under Chapter 11 of the bankruptcy code, which will allow it to hold off creditors and continue operations while it develops a reorganization plan.

The Richmond, Va.-based company has been struggling as nervous consumers spend less and credit has become tighter, and the retail industry overall is facing what’s expected to be the weakest holiday season in decades.

Circuit City also said it would cut 700 more jobs, after announcing a week ago that it would close 20 percent of its stores and lay off thousands of workers.

“This isn’t a surprise,” JPMorgan analyst Christopher Horvers said, adding that the reorganization could help the company get out of leases for certain bad store locations.

Circuit City, which has had only one profitable quarter in the past year, has faced significant declines in traffic and heightened competition from rival Best Buy Co. and others. It said it decided to file for bankruptcy protection because it was facing pressure from vendors who threatened to withhold products during the holiday season.

“At the end of the day I think it’s really about an inventory position,” Horvers said. “If they can get inventory into the stores, I can think they’ll remain competitive.”

In his annual speech at the Lord Mayor’s Banquet, Brown — who has spearheaded calls for the reform of international financial institutions — will say Britain, the United States and Europe are key to forging a new world order.

“The alliance between Britain and the U.S. — and more broadly between Europe and the U.S. — can and must provide leadership, not in order to make the rules ourselves, but to lead the global effort to build a stronger and more just international order,” an excerpt from the speech says.

Brown and other leaders meet in Washington next weekend to discuss longer term solutions for dealing with economic issues following a series of coordinated moves on interest rates and to recapitalize banks in the wake of the financial crisis.

“Uniquely in this global age, it is now in our power to come together so that 2008 is remembered not just for the failure of a financial crash that engulfed the world but for the resilience and optimism with which we faced the storm, endured it and prevailed,” Brown will say in his speech on Monday evening.

“…And if we learn from our experience of turning unity of purpose into unity of action, we can together seize this moment of change in our world to create a truly global society.”

According to a summary of the speech released by his office, Brown will set out five great challenges the world faces.

These are: terrorism and extremism and the need to reassert faith in democracy; the global economy; climate change; conflict and mechanisms for rebuilding states after conflict; and meeting goals on tackling poverty and disease.

Brown will also identify five stages for tackling the economy, starting with recapitalizing banks so they can resume lending to families and businesses, and better international co-ordination of fiscal and monetary policy.

He also wants immediate action to stop the spread of the financial crisis to middle-income countries, with a new facility for the International Monetary Fund, and agreement on a global trade deal, as well as reform of the global financial system.

Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said in September they would comply with congressional demands for transparency in a $700 billion bailout of the banking system. Two months later, as the Fed lends far more than that in separate rescue programs that didn’t require approval by Congress, Americans have no idea where their money is going or what securities the banks are pledging in return.

“The collateral is not being adequately disclosed, and that’s a big problem,” said Dan Fuss, vice chairman of Boston- based Loomis Sayles & Co., where he co-manages $17 billion in bonds. “In a liquid market, this wouldn’t matter, but we’re not. The market is very nervous and very thin.”

Bloomberg News has requested details of the Fed lending under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act and filed a federal lawsuit Nov. 7 seeking to force disclosure.

The Fed made the loans under terms of 11 programs, eight of them created in the past 15 months, in the midst of the biggest financial crisis since the Great Depression.

“It’s your money; it’s not the Fed’s money,” said billionaire Ted Forstmann, senior partner of Forstmann Little & Co. in New York. “Of course there should be transparency.”

Federal Reserve spokeswoman Michelle Smith declined to comment on the loans or the Bloomberg lawsuit. Treasury spokeswoman Michele Davis didn’t respond to a phone call and an e-mail seeking comment.

The Fed’s lending is significant because the central bank has stepped into a rescue role that was also the purpose of the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP, bailout plan — without safeguards put into the TARP legislation by Congress.

$2 Trillion

Total Fed lending topped $2 trillion for the first time last week and has risen by 140 percent, or $1.172 trillion, in the seven weeks since Fed governors relaxed the collateral standards on Sept. 14. The difference includes a $788 billion increase in loans to banks through the Fed and $474 billion in other lending, mostly through the central bank’s purchase of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac bonds.

Before Sept. 14, the Fed accepted mostly top-rated government and asset-backed securities as collateral. After that date, the central bank widened standards to accept other kinds of securities, some with lower ratings. The Fed collects interest on all its loans.

The plan to purchase distressed securities through TARP called for buying at the “lowest price that the secretary (of the Treasury) determines to be consistent with the purposes of this Act,” according to the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008, the law that covers TARP.

`We Need Transparency’

The legislation didn’t require any specific method for the purchases beyond saying mechanisms such as auctions or reverse auctions should be used “when appropriate.” In a reverse auction, bidders offer to sell securities at successively lower prices, helping to ensure that the Fed would pay less. The measure also included a five-member oversight board that includes Paulson and Bernanke.

At a Sept. 23 Senate Banking Committee hearing in Washington, Paulson called for transparency in the purchase of distressed assets under the TARP program.

“We need oversight,” Paulson told lawmakers. “We need protection. We need transparency. I want it. We all want it.”

At a joint House-Senate hearing the next day, Bernanke also stressed the importance of openness in the program. “Transparency is a big issue,” he said.

Banks Resist Disclosure

The Fed lent cash and government bonds to banks, which gave the Fed collateral in the form of equities and debt, including subprime and structured securities such as collateralized debt obligations, according to the Fed web site. The borrowers have included the now-bankrupt Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc., Citigroup Inc. and JPMorgan Chase & Co.

Banks oppose any release of information because it might signal weakness and spur short-selling or a run by depositors, said Scott Talbott, senior vice president of government affairs for the Financial Services Roundtable, a Washington trade group.

“You have to balance the need for transparency with protecting the public interest,” Talbott said. “Taxpayers have a right to know where their tax dollars are going, but one piece of information standing alone could undermine public confidence in the system.”

Frank Backs Fed

The nation’s biggest banks, Citigroup, Bank of America Corp., JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo & Co., Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Morgan Stanley, declined to comment on whether they have borrowed money from the Fed. They received $120 billion in capital from the TARP, which was signed into law Oct. 3.

In an interview Nov. 6, House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank said the Fed’s disclosure is sufficient and that the risk the central bank is taking on is appropriate in the current economic climate. Frank said he has discussed the program with Timothy F. Geithner, president and chief executive officer of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and a possible candidate to succeed Paulson as Treasury secretary.

“I talk to Geithner and he was pretty sure that they’re OK,” said Frank, a Massachusetts Democrat. “If the risk is that the Fed takes a little bit of a haircut, well that’s regrettable.” Such losses would be acceptable, he said, if the program helps revive the economy.

Frank said the Fed shouldn’t reveal the assets it holds or how it values them because of “delicacy with respect to pricing.” He said such disclosure would “give people clues to what your pricing is and what they might be able to sell us and what your estimates are.” He wouldn’t say why he thought that information would be problematic.

`Unclog the Market’

Revealing how the Fed values collateral could help thaw frozen credit markets, said Ron D’Vari, chief executive officer of NewOak Capital LLC in New York and the former head of structured finance at BlackRock Inc.

“I’d love to hear the methodology, how the Fed priced the assets,” D’Vari said. “That would unclog the market very quickly.”

TARP’s $700 billion so far is being used to buy preferred shares in banks to shore up their capital. The program was originally intended to hold banks’ troubled assets while markets were frozen.

The Bloomberg lawsuit argues that the collateral lists “are central to understanding and assessing the government’s response to the most cataclysmic financial crisis in America since the Great Depression.”

AIG Lending

The Fed has lent at least $81 billion to American International Group Inc., the world’s largest insurer, so that it can pay obligations to banks. The central bank is also responsible for losses on a $26.8 billion portfolio guaranteed after Bear Stearns Cos. was bought by JPMorgan.

“As a taxpayer, it is absolutely important that we know how they’re lending money and who they’re lending it to,” said Lucy Dalglish, executive director of the Arlington, Virginia- based Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press.

Ultimately, the Fed will have to remove some securities held as collateral from some programs because the central bank’s rules call for instruments rated below investment grade to be taken back by the borrower and marked down in value. Losses on those assets could then be written off, partly through the capital recently injected into those banks by the Treasury.

Moody’s Investors Service alone has cut its ratings on 926 mortgage-backed securities worth $42 billion to junk from investment grade since Sept. 14, making them ineligible for collateral on some Fed loans.

Signed Sept. 22 and obtained by United Press International, the “Heads of Agreement” document — basically a legal framework for a contract — delegates Shell sole access to the reserves for the next 25 years, with an option to extend that term.

Shell says the arrangement gives it exclusive rights to all natural gas runoff produced by oil exploration operations in the southern portion of the country. However, like so many other major industrial contracts coming out of Iraq, the process used to reach an agreement is being questioned.

“There hasn’t been much transparency in this agreement,” said Ali Hussain Balou, chairman of Iraq’s Oil and Gas Committee, in a report by Reuters. “They did not give a chance to another company. We want to know why.”

“It is only a partnership,” Iraqi Oil Ministry spokesman Assem Jihad told UPI. “There will not be a monopoly of the gas.”

“The charges that have been made are just patently absurd,” State Department deputy spokesman Robert Wood told the daily press briefing in Washington. “We reject them categorically.”

In La Paz on Thursday, Morales accused the US government of encouraging drug-trafficking as he explained his decision to banish the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA).

Wood said the Bolivian government will only hurt its own people.

“The United States has had good cooperation with the Bolivian government over 35 years with regard to counter-narcotics cooperation,” the deputy spokesman said.

“Should the Bolivian government decide to sever its working relationship with us with regard to counter-narcotics, it’s going to impact the Bolivian people,” Wood said.

“And we’re going to continue to look for ways to do what we can to counter the narcotics in the region,” he said.

Morales, a staunch opponent of the Washington government, said the staff from the US agency had three months to prepare to leave the country, because “the DEA did not respect the police, or even the (Bolivian) armed forces.”

“The worst thing is, it did not fight drug trafficking; It encouraged it,” the Bolivian leader said, adding that he had “quite a bit of evidence” backing up his charges.

Presidential Minister Juan Ramon Quintana presented a series of documents and press clippings at a news conference, which he described as “object data” that had influenced Morales’ decision to suspend DEA activities last week.

The officers pretended to struggle with the Denver police commander so it would look like they were being forcibly removed from a big demonstration and their cover wouldn’t be blown, the American Civil Liberties Union of Colorado said.

The ACLU said it obtained a police report on the incident under a state criminal justice records law.

In a letter to city officials, the ACLU questioned whether the fake confrontation worsened a tense situation with demonstrators and violated police rules.

Denver police spokesman Sonny Jackson said he was unaware of the report and couldn’t comment.

ACLU staff attorney Taylor Pendergrass asked the city of Denver’s independent police monitor to order an investigation. The monitor, Rich Rosenthal, said he received the request and was looking into it.

The incident occurred on Aug. 25, the opening night of the convention. Police arrested 106 people that night, the most of any day during the convention.

Police have said anarchists planned to cause trouble near convention delegates’ hotels and downtown businesses and that officers were trying to control the crowd.

A police “Use of Force” report released by the ACLU said, “In order not to be recognized as undercover detectives, some of the detectives put up a struggle with Commander Kroncke.” Kroncke’s first name wasn’t immediately available.

Sheriff’s deputies from neighboring Jefferson County were helping Denver police at the scene, and one deputy “thought that Commander Kroncke was being attacked” and sprayed the undercover officers, the report said.

The controversy over Tyson’s antibiotic-free label began in summer 2007, when the company began a massive advertising campaign to tout its chicken as “raised without antibiotics.” Already, Tyson has spent tens of millions of dollars this year to date in continuing this campaign.

Poultry farmers regularly treat chickens and other birds with antibiotics to prevent the development of intestinal infections that might reduce the weight (and profitability) of the birds. Yet scientists have become increasingly concerned that the routine use of antibiotics in animal agriculture may accelerate the development of antibiotic-resistant bacteria that could lead to a pandemic or other health crisis.

After Tyson began labeling its chicken antibiotic-free, the USDA warned the company that such labels were not truthful, because Tyson regularly treats its birds’ feed with bacteria-killing ionophores. Tyson argued that ionophores are antimicrobials rather than antibiotics, but the USDA reiterated its policy that “ionophores are antibiotics.”

Because ionophores are not used to treat human disease, however, the poultry company suggested a compromise, accepted by the USDA in December, whereby Tyson would use a label reading “raised without antibiotics that impact antibiotic resistance in humans.”

Tyson’s competitors Perdue Farms Inc., Sanderson Farms Inc. and Foster Farms sued, under the banner of the Truthful Labeling Coalition. In May 2008, a federal judge ruled in their favor and told Tyson to stop using the label.

Not long after, on June 3, USDA inspectors discovered that in addition to using ionophores, Tyson was regularly injecting its chicken eggs with gentamicin, an antibiotic that has been used for more than 30 years in the United States to treat urinary tract and blood infections. The drug is also stockpiled by the federal government as a treatment for biological agents such as plague.

“In contrast to information presented by Tyson Foods Inc., [inspectors] found that they routinely used the antibiotic gentamicin to prevent illness and death in chicks, which raises public health concerns,” said USDA Undersecretary for Food Safety Richard Raymond.

“The use of this particular antibiotic was not disclosed to us,” said USDA spokesperson Amanda Eamich.

The agency told Tyson that based on the new discovery, it would no longer consider the antibiotic-free label “truthful and accurate.” It gave the company 15 days to remove the label from all its products, although that deadline was eventually extended to July 9.

But Tyson objected again, claiming that because the antibiotics are injected two to three days before the chickens hatched, the birds can truthfully be said to be “raised without antibiotics.” USDA rules on how to label the raising of birds do not address anything that happens before the second day of life, the company said.

Tyson also defended the “in ovo” injection of antibiotics as standard industry practice.

“The vast majority of the industry does exactly the same thing,” Tyson Vice President Archie Schaffer said.

But Hansen noted that it takes gentamicin several weeks to dissipate, so the drugs are still in the birds’ bodies after they hatch.

“The labels were clearly false and misleading,” he said.

Tyson agreed to voluntarily withdraw its “raised without antibiotics labels,” citing “uncertainty and controversy over product labeling regulations.” It then filed a lawsuit against the USDA, claiming that the agency had improperly changed the definition of “raised without antibiotics” to include the treatment of eggs.