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Exactly how it works is classified, but we have established some details. The first part of the weapon is an artillery round – or as the army puts it, “a non-lethal personal suppression projectile” – fired from a 155mm howitzer, with a range of 28km. It scatters 152 small non-explosive submunitions over a 1-hectare area; as each parachutes down, it sprays a chemical agent. Development was overseen by the US Army’s Armament Research, Development and Engineering Centre (Ardec).

Citing a massive run on deposits, regulators shut its main branch three hours early, leaving customers stunned and upset. One woman leaned on the locked doors, pleading with an employee inside: “Please, please, I want to take out a portion.” All she could do was read a two-page notice taped to the door.

The bank’s 33 branches will be closed over the weekend, but the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. will reopen the bank on Monday as IndyMac Federal Bank, said the Office of Thrift Supervision in Washington. Customers will not be able to bank by phone or Internet over the weekend, regulators said, but can continue to use ATMs, debit cards and checks. Normal branch hours, online banking and phone banking services were to resume Monday.

Based on a preliminary analysis, federal authorities said the takeover of IndyMac, which had $32 billion in listed assets, would cost the FDIC between $4 billion and $8 billion. Regulators said deposits of up to $100,000 were safe and insured by the FDIC.

The report, carried also by Iranian news outlets, claimed that recently massive nocturnal activity by IAF craft was noted in several American held airbases, including measures by the US army to increase security around the bases.

The Jerusalem Post could not confirm the veracity of the report.

According to the sources, former military officers in the Anbar province said IAF jets arrive during the night from Jordanian airspace, enter Iraq’s airspace and land on a runway near the city of Hadita. The sources estimated the jets were practicing for a raid on Iran’s nuclear sites.

The sources also said the American bases in Iraq might serve as a platform for the IAF from which to attack Iran. If Israeli warplanes will take off from Iraq, they can reach Bushehr in five minutes – a “record time,” the sources said.

After reports of a massive IAF exercise over the Mediterranean surfaced several weeks ago, an Israeli official told the times that the drill was “the dress rehearsal” for an attack on Iran’s nuclear sites.

The companies, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, have been hit hard by the mortgage foreclosure crisis. Their shares are plummeting and their borrowing costs are rising as investors worry that the companies will suffer losses far larger than the $11 billion they have already lost in recent months. Now, as housing prices decline further and foreclosures grow, the markets are worried that Fannie and Freddie themselves may default on their debt.

Under a conservatorship, the shares of Fannie and Freddie would be worth little or nothing, and any losses on mortgages they own or guarantee — which could be staggering — would be paid by taxpayers.

The government officials said that the administration had also considered calling for legislation that would offer an explicit government guarantee on the $5 trillion of debt owned or guaranteed by the companies. But that is a far less attractive option, they said, because it would effectively double the size of the public debt.

The officials also said that such a step would be ineffective because the markets already widely accept that the government stands behind the companies.

The officials involved in the discussions stressed that no action by the administration was imminent, and that Fannie and Freddie are not considered to be in a crisis situation. But in recent days, enough concern has built among senior government officials over the health of the giant mortgage finance companies for them to hold a series of meetings and conference calls to discuss contingency plans.

A conservatorship or other rescue operation would be the second time in four months that the Bush administration has stepped in to engineer a rescue to prevent the financial system from collapsing. Last March, it forced the sale of Bear Stearns to JPMorgan Chase to avert a bankruptcy of that venerable investment house.

Anger in the workplace — employees and employers who are grumpy, insulting, short-tempered or worse — is shockingly common and likely growing as Americans cope with woes of rising costs, job uncertainty or overwhelming debt, experts say.

“It runs the gamut from just rudeness up to pretty extreme abusive behaviors,” said Paul Spector, professor of industrial and organizational psychology at the University of South Florida. “The severe cases of fatal violence get a lot of press but in some ways this is more insidious because it affects millions of people.”

Nearly half of U.S. workers in America report yelling and verbal abuse on the job, with roughly a quarter saying it has driven them to tears, research has shown.

Other research showed one-sixth of workers reported anger at work has led to property damage, while a tenth reported physical violence and fear their workplace might not be safe.

“It’s a total disaster,” said Anna Maravelas, author of “How to Reduce Workplace Conflict and Stress.” “Rudeness, impatience, people being angry — we used to do that kind of stuff at home but at work, we were professional. Now it’s almost becoming trendy to do it at work.

“It was something we did behind closed doors,” she said. “Now people are losing their sense of embarrassment over it.”

Contemporary pressures such as rising fuel costs fan the flames, said John Challenger, head of Chicago’s Challenger, Gray & Christmas workplace consultants.

“People are coming to work after a long commute, sitting in traffic watching their discretionary income burn up. They’re ready for a fight or just really upset,” he said.

Reports at the time said that 20 people were killed in the airstrike in Nangarhar province. The US military said they were militants.

But local people said the dead were wedding party guests.

…

Mr Karzai set up a nine-man commission to look into Sunday’s incident.

The commission is headed by Senate deputy speaker, Burhanullah Shinwari whose constituency is in Nangarhar province. He told the BBC: ”Our investigation found out that 47 civilians (were killed) by the American bombing and nine others injured.

Jim Shea, chairman of Gulf Stream Coach, which built 50,000 trailers for the Federal Emergency Management Agency for $520 million, said his company decided that its results were “irrelevant information” because FEMA already knew about high formaldehyde levels. The agency and the company were working together to improve ventilation, he said, and FEMA later turned down company offers to conduct more tests.

In hindsight Gulf Stream should have shared information from its sampling, Shea said. “Anything that would have been helpful to public health in any kind of way with this in retrospect, we would have loved to have been able to shed more light on it,” he said.

The testimony came as Democrats and Republicans on the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform clashed over builders’ responsibility for the housing debacle that unfolded after the August 2005 storm, raising both public health alarms along the Gulf Coast and doubts about how the government will house Americans in future emergencies.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended this winter that all Katrina trailer residents be moved to safer housing after finding elevated formaldehyde levels in 42 percent of trailers. Four companies — Gulf Stream, Forest River, Keystone and Pilgrim International — were identified as having significant problems.

Appearing under oath, executives of those companies each acknowledged CDC findings that some of their products contained unsafe levels of formaldehyde, a common industrial chemical used in glues to make particle board and plywood. It has been linked to cancer and higher rates of respiratory illness.

But company officials and some GOP lawmakers blamed the federal government for failing to set any binding indoor air-quality standards for formaldehyde in trailers or any other U.S. housing. Republicans from Indiana, where the recreational vehicle industry is based, defended builders’ records and integrity.