WASHINGTON (KABC) -- According to ABC News sources, al Qaeda mastermind Osama bin Laden was killed in Pakistan.
In a speech Sunday night, President Obama said the U.S. had received a lead late last year on bin Laden's whereabouts. After months of investigation, bin Laden's location was confirmed.
The president said he authorized an operation and Sunday morning (U.S. time), American forces attacked a compound near Islamabad, Pakistan. Bin Laden was killed in the attack.
American forces reportedly have possession of bin Laden's body. DNA testing reportedly confirmed bin Laden's identity.
Speaking from the White House's East Room Sunday night, the president praised and thanked U.S. forces and the intelligence community.
According to the U.S. Bureau of Consular Affairs, a travel alert was issued due "to the enhanced potential for anti-American violence given counterterrorism activity in Pakistan." Americans are urged to limit their travel outside of their homes and hotels. Also, U.S. embassies and U.S. government facilities worldwide "remain at a heightened state of alert." The facilities may close depending on security postures.
■The operation
CIA agents had been tracking couriers for bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri. One courier in particular was identified as a valuable target.
That courier's identity was uncovered about four years ago. Two years later, intelligence identified areas in Pakistan where the courier and his brother had operated.
In August 2010, a residence north of Islamabad, Pakistan, was determined to be a potential target. The residence was found in a relatively affluent area.
Surveillance found there were huge alarms at the location. The property was eight times larger than homes in other areas. It had been built in 2005.
Access to the property was restricted. Trash from the location was burned on-site.
The main structure of the compound, a three-story building, had few windows. There was a seven-foot-high wall surrounding the property. The compound had no television or telephone service.
It was determined the residence was custom-built to hide someone, the type of location that was thought to be housing bin Laden.
A small U.S. Navy SEAL team conducted a helicopter raid on the compound Sunday. The operation was considered extremely dangerous due to the high security measures of the property, as well as its location in a residential area and its proximity to Islamabad.
The operation was described as a surgical raid by a small team.
Osama bin Laden was killed, as well as two couriers, one of bin Laden's adult sons, and a woman who was used as a human shield.
One helicopter was reportedly downed, but not destroyed, in the attack. U.S. forces later intentionally destroyed the helicopter, according to the Associated Press.
The strike team was reportedly on the property for less than 40 minutes. SEALs took bin Laden's body and left in a helicopter.
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Former President George W. Bush released a statement Sunday night: "Earlier this evening, President Obama called to inform me that American forces killed Osama bin Laden, the leader of the al Qaeda network that attacked America on September 11, 2001. I congratulated him and the men and women of our military and intelligence communities who devoted their lives to this mission. They have our everlasting gratitude. This momentous achievement marks a victory for America, for people who seek peace around the world, and for all those who lost loved ones on September 11, 2001. The fight against terror goes on, but tonight America has sent an unmistakable message: No matter how long it takes, justice will be done."
Former President Bill Clinton released a statement Sunday night: "I congratulate the President, the National Security team and the members of our armed forces on bringing Osama bin Laden to justice after more than a decade of murderous al-Qaida attacks."
Crowds gathered outside the White House after Sunday's announcement and celebrated. Jubilant crowds were also reported at Ground Zero in New York City.
Bin Laden created the al Qaeda terror network that was responsible for the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the U.S.
The U.S. has been in search of bin Laden since the attacks. He was widely believed to be in hiding along the porous Afghan/Pakistani border.
Bin Laden is suspected of fomenting earlier terrorist plots against the U.S., including the 1993 World Trade Center attack, two U.S. embassy bombings in Africa, and the bombing of the USS Cole off Yemen in 2000.
Officials say the administration is ensuring bin Laden's body is being "handled in accordance with Islamic practice and tradition."
オサマ・ビン・ラデンを殺害したネイビーシールとは？
By MICHAEL MURRAY
May 2, 2011
The Navy SEAL team of military operatives who killed Osama bin Laden in a compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan on Sunday night was made up of some of the best-trained troops in the world. SEAL Team Six, the "Naval Special Warfare Development Group," was the main force involved in Sunday's firefight.
The daring operation began when two U.S. helicopters flew in low from Afghanistan and swept into the compound where Osama bin Laden was thought to be hiding late Sunday night Pakistan time, or Sunday afternoon Washington time. Twenty to 25 U.S. Navy SEALs disembarked from the helicopters as soon as they were in position and stormed the compound. The White House says they killed bin Laden and at least four others with him. The team was on the ground for only 40 minutes, most of that was time spent scrubbing the compound for information about al Qaeda and its plans.
The Navy SEAL team on this mission was supported by helicopter pilots from the 160th Special Ops Air Regiment, part of the Joint Special Operations Command. The CIA was the operational commander of the mission, but it was tasked to Special Forces.
U.S. Navy Sea, Air and Land Teams, commonly known as SEAL Teams, are the best of the best. Their creed is to be "a special breed of warrior ready to answer our nation's call."
"We are reminded that we are fortunate to have Americans who dedicate their lives to protecting ours," President Obama said today. "We may not always know their names, we may not always know their stories, but they are there every day on the front lines of freedom and we are truly blessed."
"There are other operations going on around the globe constantly," said Capt. Duncan Smith, a SEAL spokesman who spoke with ABC News.
In 2009, another SEAL team was instrumental in rescuing the American captain of the cargo ship Maersk Alabama from armed pirates off the coast of Somalia. On that mission, SEAL snipers fired perfect shots -- from the deck of a heaving ship -- to neutralize three pirates, with three bullets, simultaneously. The SEALs began their work in 1942, when military leaders decided to set up an elite team to scout beaches suitable for landing troops in World War II.
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These men have done all of this in anonymity. It is standard procedure never to identify members of Team Six.
"A lot of those missions -- a majority of those missions -- are ones that the public will never know about... and that's a good thing," Smith said.
Navy SEALs toil in the dark of night, tasked with the most daring, dangerous and important missions. To become a SEAL, those men completed some of the most brutal training regimens ever devised, designed to push the boundaries of even the most able service members. Only one third of recruits eventually become SEALs.
"You have to be able to endure a lot of physical pain and sometimes emotional pain, and you just have to dig deep. It's an elite organization and so it can't be for everybody," said Paul Tharp, master chief of the Naval Special Warfare Preparatory School and a SEAL for 24 years.
"What sets SEALs apart is our diversity in terms of the environments in which we operate," said Smith, also a SEAL for 24 years. "We operate at 10,000 feet in the Hindu Kush Mountains. We operate in desert regions in Iraq and elsewhere. We operate in jungles throughout the world."
As of 2009, there were 2,500 active duty SEALs. With the expanding war on terror and missions in 30 countries, the Navy needs more, but finding young men who can meet the SEALs' standards is a challenge.
"We are not looking for cocky kids," said Senior Chief Hans Garcia, a SEAL recruiter. "The perfect person would be a candidate who is remarkably physically fit, but is pretty humble, an analytical thinker, a problem solver -- someone who is very value-oriented, patriotic, puts service above self."
ABC News' BRIAN ROSS (@brianross) , JAKE TAPPER (@jaketapper) , RICHARD ESPOSITO, ALICE MAGGIN and NICK SCHIFRIN (@nickschifrin) contributed to this report.
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Thursday, May 5, 2011
Nissan minivans picked as Big Apple's next yellow cabs
AP
NEW YORK — A boxy minivan made by Nissan will be the next iconic yellow cab in New York City, Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced Tuesday.
Winner takes all: A photo provided by Nissan Motor Co. shows a Nissan NV200, the model selected by New York City to supply the taxi fleet for the next 10 years. Below: Mayor Michael Bloomberg announces the winner of the Taxi of Tomorrow competition during a news conference Tuesday. AP
The model, selected from among three finalists in a city competition, is designed so it can eventually be updated with an electric engine.
The city is exploring the possibility of ultimately replacing its entire fleet of more than 13,000 taxis with vehicles powered by electricity.
Bloomberg conceded at a City Hall news conference that the minivan — which offers extra passenger legroom and enough trunk space for the luggage of four people — might make some think of suburbia, but he said the distinctive yellow paint job will make them New York icons.
The minivan features a panoramic overhead window that will give tourists a view of the city's skyscrapers and onboard outlets and charging stations that will allow professionals to treat the cabs as mobile offices.
With such amenities, city Taxi and Limousine Commissioner David Yassky said he believes the vehicles could become as beloved as the Checker cabs of yesteryear.
"Not a week goes by when somebody doesn't say to me, 'Why can't you bring back the Checker?' " he said. "The cars that are on the road today just have not generated the same type of affection and passenger loyalty."
The anchor of the city's current fleet of more than 13,200 taxis is Ford's Crown Victoria, which was recently discontinued.
The Nissan van, which beat out proposals from Ford Motor Co. and Turkey's Karsan, will be phased in beginning in 2013 as older taxis age out of service. All current taxis, including the city's hybrid cabs, will be off the streets by 2018.
Although the city was not legally allowed to make its decision based on fuel-efficiency, Nissan's vehicles would double efficiency to 25 mpg (10.6 km per liter) from the Crown Victoria's 12 mpg to 13 mpg, the mayor said. The Nissan was the most fuel-efficient and the cheapest of the three finalists, and is expected to cost about $29,000 (\3.5 million), with an anticipated $1 billion in total sales.
The new models will be the first city taxicabs to offer air bags for passengers and to go through crash testing with equipment such as the driver's partition already installed.
The doors will slide open sideways, eliminating the possibility of opening a door into an oncoming bicyclist or automobile.
And passengers will no longer have to cope with drivers who say they don't know how to get to out-of-the-way destinations, because every car will be equipped with a GPS system, the mayor said.
Ford had planned to build its vehicles overseas, while Nissan plans to build them in Mexico, then put final touches on them at a New York City-area facility.
About 70 percent of Nissan vehicles sold in the U.S. are made in the U.S., according to the automaker.
とても興奮する試合だったね。さすが世界ランクNO１だけある。
*****
USA beats Brazil in Women's W. Cup quarter finals
By Ryland James | AFP – 8 hrs ago
Two-time winners the USA have beaten beat Brazil 5-3 on penalties in dramatic fashion to advance to the semi-finals of the women's World Cup after the tie had been locked 2-2 in extra time.
US defender Alex Krieger hit the winning penalty after her goalkeeper Hope Solo had earlier saved from Brazil's Daiane to give her side the advantage in the shoot-out.
On the final whistle, American striker Abby Wambach had kept her side in the quarter-final with a dramatic header in the 122nd minute to level the scores after Brazil play-maker Marta had scored in the 92nd minute.
"This is the perfect example of what the United States is all about," said Wambach.
"We never give up. This is incredile, I am so happy. The path is now marked for us and we want to win this tournament."
The game went into extra-time with the scores 1-1 as an own-goal by Brazil defender Daiane after just two minutes was cancelled out by Marta's penalty on 68 minutes which she converted at the second attempt.
The US had been reduced to 10 players when defender Rachel Buehler was sent off just moments before.
US goalkeeper Hope Solo, reacting to her squad's victory, said her team's never-say-die fighting spirit helped get the USA through to the semis.
"There is something special about this group, it's the energy, the vibe, the leadership," said Solo.
"Even when we went a player down and then a goal down in extra time, we kept fighting. You can't coach that, it is a feeling."
The USA will now face France in Moenchengladbach in Wednesday's semi-final for a place in next Sunday's final in Frankfurt while Brazil go home.
"From an emotional point of view, everyone is really sad which is normal after a defeat like that where you lose in the last minute," said Brazil coach Kleiton Lima.
"The girls threw everything into trying to win, we have tried to console them, but it will take time to get over this."
While the Americans came to Dresden having lost 2-1 to Sweden in their final Group C game, Brazil did not concede a goal in the group stages as they swept past Australia, Norway and Equatorial Guinea as Group D winners.
But Brazil leaked their first goal here after just two minutes in front of a sell-out crowd of 25,598.
USA midfielder Shannon Boxx whipped in the first cross of the game and Daiane could only watch in horror as her clearance kick sliced into her own net.
Marta also served a reminder to the US defence of her status as five-time world player of the year when she dribbled from the halfway line at full speed only to fire her shot over the bar on 20 minutes.
The game turned against the Americans in the 65th minute when Buehler brought down Marta in the area as they both went for the ball, but was shown a straight red card by Australian referee Jacqui Melksham.
Justice seemed to have been done when Cristiane's first penalty attempt was saved by Solo.
But Solo appeared to hop in the direction before she dived, so Melksham insisted the penalty be re-taken -- with furious protests from the Americans -- and Marta slammed home the second attempt on 68 minutes.
Solo was booked for her angry response.
Neither side could break the deadlock in normal time, but Marta popped up with what looked like the winner in the 92nd minute when she pivoted on a cross from left wing Maurine.
With time almost up, Wambach's header at the death gave her side the precious life line which was all they needed for a historic win in the shoot-out.
US loses AAA credit rating from S&P
S&P downgrades US credit rating in historic move, says Congress didn't cut budget enough
Martin Crutsinger, AP Economics Writer, On Saturday August 6, 2011, 1:24 am EDT
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The lowering of America's sterling credit rating was the punctuation mark on a tumultuous week in financial markets.
Standard & Poor's, the credit rating agency, said Friday it was dissatisfied with the plan Congress came up with earlier in the week to reduce the country's debt.
This is the first time the nation's credit rating has fallen below the highest level, AAA. The U.S. had held that rating since 1917. The move came just days after a gridlocked Congress finally agreed to spending cuts that would reduce the debt by more than $2 trillion.
The drop in the rating by one notch to AA-plus was telegraphed as a possibility back in April. The three main credit agencies, which also include Moody's Investor Service and Fitch, had warned during the budget fight that if Congress did not cut spending far enough, the country faced a downgrade. Moody's said it was keeping its AAA rating on the nation's debt, but that it might still lower it.
One of the biggest questions after the downgrade was what impact it would have on already nervous investors. While the downgrade was not a surprise, some selling is expected when stock trading resumes Monday morning. The Dow Jones industrial average fell 699 points this week, the biggest weekly point drop since October 2008. The weak economy was the primary catalyst behind that plunge, but the debt debate and the threat of a downgrade were also factors.
"I think we will have a knee-jerk reaction on Monday," said Jack Ablin, chief investment officer at Harris Private Bank.
But any losses might be short-lived.
"The market's already been shaken out," said Harvey Neiman, a portfolio manager of the Neiman Large Cap Value Fund. "It knew it was coming."
One fear in the market has been that a downgrade would scare buyers away from U.S. debt. If that were to happen, the interest rate paid on U.S. bonds, notes and bills would have to rise to attract buyers. And that could lead to higher borrowing rates for consumers, since the rates on mortgages and other loans are pegged to the yield on Treasury securities.
However, even without an AAA rating from S&P, U.S. debt is seen as one of the safest investments in the world. And investors clearly weren't scared away this week. While stocks were plunging, investors were buying Treasurys and driving up their prices. The yield on the 10-year Treasury note, which falls when the price rises, fell to a low of 2.39 percent on Thursday from 2.75 percent Monday.
A study by JPMorgan Chase found that there has been a slight rise in rates when countries lost an AAA rating. In 1998, S&P lowered ratings for Belgium, Italy and Spain. A week later, their 10-year rates had barely moved.
The government fought the downgrade. Administration sources familiar with the discussions said the S&P analysis was fundamentally flawed. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren't authorized to discuss the matter publicly. S&P had sent the administration a draft document in the early afternoon Friday and the administration, after examining the numbers, challenged the analysis.
S&P said that in addition to the downgrade, it is issuing a negative outlook, meaning that there was a chance it will lower the rating further within the next two years. It said such a downgrade, to AA, would occur if the agency sees smaller reductions in spending than Congress and the administration have agreed to make, higher interest rates or new fiscal pressures during this period.
In its statement, S&P said that it had changed its view "of the difficulties of bridging the gulf between the political parties" over a credible deficit reduction plan.
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S&P said it was now "pessimistic about the capacity of Congress and the administration to be able to leverage their agreement this week into a broader fiscal consolidation plan that stabilizes the government's debt dynamics anytime soon."
One analyst suggested the downgrade might move Congress to take concrete steps to fix the nation's budget problems.
"It's a downgrade and it's bad, but if it spurs more conversation about bringing down spending and maybe more intelligent tax policy, it could be a good thing in the long run," said Frank Barbera, a portfolio manager of the Sierra Core Retirement Fund.
The Federal Reserve and other U.S. regulators said in a joint statement that S&P's action should not have any impact on how banks and other financial institutions assess the riskiness of Treasurys or other securities guaranteed by the U.S. government. The statement was issued to make sure banks did not feel that the downgrade would affect the amount of capital that regulators require the banks to hold against possible losses.
Before leaving for a weekend at Camp David, President Barack Obama met with Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner in the Oval Office late Friday afternoon.
The downgrade is likely to have little to no impact on how the United States finances its borrowing, through the sale of Treasury bonds, bills and notes. This week's buying proves that.
"Investors have voted and are saying the U.S. is going to pay them," said Mark Zandi, chief economist of Moody's Analytics. "U.S. Treasurys are still the gold standard." He noted that neither his parent organization, Moody's, nor Fitch, the other of the three major rating agencies, have downgraded U.S. debt.
The ratings agencies were sharply criticized after the financial crisis in 2008 for not warning investors about the risks of subprime mortgages. Those mortgages were packaged as securities and sold to investors who lost billions of dollars when the loans went bad.
Japan had its ratings cut a decade ago to AA, and it didn't have much lasting impact. The credit ratings of both Canada and Australia have also been downgraded over time, without much lasting damage.
"I don't think it's going to amount to a lot," said Peter Morici, a University of Maryland business economist.
Still, he said, "The United States deserves to have this happen," because of its clumsy handling of fiscal policy.
In reacting to the downgrade, Democrats and Republicans continued to blame each other and pledged to hold firm to their principles.
Republican presidential candidates criticized the White House. Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., called on Obama to fire Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and submit a plan to balance the budget and not just reduce future deficits. Republican candidate Mitt Romney, former governor of Massachusetts, said the credit downgrade was the "latest casualty" in Obama's failed economic leadership.
House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi said the American people will be closely watching the work of the 12-member joint committee that has been created to produce more than $1 trillion in additional savings over the next decade.
"The work of this committee will affect all Americans, and its deliberations should be open to the press, to the public and webcast," she said.
Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid said the downgrade underscored the need for a "balanced approach to deficit reduction that combines spending cuts with revenue-raising measures" such as doing away with tax breaks for the wealthy and oil companies.
AP reporters Tom Raum, David Espo and Julie Pace in Washington and Business Writers Chip Cutter and Pallavi Gogoi in New York contributed to this report.
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アップルがエクソンモービルをわずかに超えて、アメリカ１位の規模に。
Apple briefly passes Exxon as largest U.S. company
On Tuesday August 9, 2011, 2:18 pm
By Poornima Gupta and Rodrigo Campos
SAN FRANCISCO/NEW YORK (Reuters) - Apple Inc briefly edged past Exxon Mobil Corp to become the most valuable company in the United States after days of volatile stock market action.
The technology giant's market value rose on Tuesday to $341.5 billion, just above Exxon's $341.4 billion, even though the oil major's annual revenue is four times that of Apple's.
Exxon quickly regained the No. 1 spot as its shares rose and Apple's shed some of their gains, with stocks globally remaining volatile because of soft economic data and the downgrading of the United States' sovereign credit on Friday.
At 1:50 p.m. EDT Exxon's market cap was $339.3 billion while Apple's dipped to $338.8 billion.
Tuesday's move by Apple, which ended Exxon Mobil's run of more than five years at the top, capped a remarkable turnaround for a company that once teetered on the brink before Apple's Steve Jobs returned to resuscitate the company he co-founded.
Thirteen years ago, some analysts said Apple's value consisted of real estate holdings and cash on hand.
Apple joined, albeit briefly, a small group of companies that have held the top spot in the S&P 500, including General Electric, General Motors, IBM, Microsoft Corp and AT&T, according to Standard & Poor's Index Analytics
Since July 1, Apple's market capitalization has risen by more than $20 billion, fueled by optimism that a new version of its best-selling iPhone will lead to a monstrous second half of 2011.
Exxon's market cap, on the other hand, has slipped nearly $60 billion in the same period due to volatile crude oil prices.
Men walk past an advertisement for Apple's iPad2 in front of an electronic shop in Tokyo May 5, 2011. S REUTERS/Kim Kyung-Hoon
(Additional reporting by Anna Driver in Houston; Editing by Steve Orlofsky)
米郵政省の赤字とダウンサイジング
Postal Service considers cutting 120,000 jobs
As losses reach $8B or more again this year, Postal Service considers cutting 120,000 jobs
Randolph E. Schmid, Associated Press, On Thursday August 11, 2011, 6:32 pm EDT
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The financially strapped U.S. Postal Service is considering cutting as many as 120,000 jobs.
Facing a second year of losses totaling $8 billion or more, the agency also wants to pull its workers out of the retirement and health benefits plans covering federal workers and set up its own benefit systems.
Congressional approval would be needed for either step, and both could be expected to face severe opposition from postal unions which have contracts that ban layoffs.
The post office has cut 110,000 jobs over the last four years and is currently engaged in eliminating 7,500 administrative staff. In its 2010 annual report, the agency said it had 583,908 career employees.
The loss of mail to the Internet and the decline in advertising caused by the recession have rocked the agency.
Postal officials have said they will be unable to make a $5.5 billion payment to cover future employee health care costs due Sept. 30. It is the only federal agency required to make such a payment but, because of the complex way government finances are counted, eliminating it would make the federal budget deficit appear $5.5 billion larger.
If Congress doesn't act and current losses continue, the post office will be unable to make that payment at the end of September because it will have reached its borrowing limit and simply won't have the cash to do so, the agency said earlier.
In that event, Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe said, "Our intent is to continue to deliver the mail, pay our employees and pay our suppliers."
Postal officials have sought congressional assistance repeatedly over the last few years, including requests to be allowed to end Saturday mail delivery, and several bills have been proposed, but none has been acted on.
In addition the post office recently said it is considering closing 3,653 post offices, stations and other facilities, about one-10th of its offices around the country, in an effort to save money. Offices under consideration for closing are largely rural with little traffic.
And in June the post office suspended contributions to its employees' pension fund, which it said was overfunded.
In its 2010 annual report the post office reported a loss of more than $8 billion on revenues of $67 billion and expenses of $75 billion.
And even while total mail volume fell from 202 billion items to 170 billion from 2008 to 2010 the number of places the agency has to deliver mail increased by 1.7 million as Americans built new homes, offices and businesses.
The latest cutback plans were first reported by The Washington Post, which said a notice to employees informing them of its proposals stated: "Financial crisis calls for significant actions, we will be insolvent next month due to significant declines in mail volume and retiree health benefit prefunding costs imposed by Congress."
I hope this deal never gets through. AT&T is pricy and its customer service is aweful. AT&T is only the choice I have on the west coast for land line. T-mobile is only the choice for a cell phone if you don't want to deal with AT&T.
*****
U.S. Moves to Block AT&T Merger with T-Mobile
DEALBOOK, On Wednesday August 31, 2011, 10:56 am EDT
The Justice Department filed a complaint on Wednesday to block AT&T's proposed $39 billion acquisition of T-Mobile, a deal that would create the largest carrier in the country and reshape the industry.
The complaint, which was filed in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia, said that T-Mobile "places important competitive pressure on its three larger rivals, particularly in terms of pricing, a critically important aspect of competition." The complaint also highlighted T-Mobile's high speed network and its innovations in technology.
"AT&T's elimination of T-Mobile as an independent, low-priced rival would remove a significant competitive force from the market," the complaint said. "Thus, unless this acquisition is enjoined, customers of mobile wireless telecommunications services likely will face higher prices, less product variety and innovation, and poorer quality services due to reduced incentives to invest than would exist absent the merger."
Shares of AT&T dropped nearly 4 percent on the news, to less than $29. Deutsche Telekom shares fell 5 percent in trading in Frankfurt.
Ever since AT&T announced plans to buy T-Mobile from Deutsche Telekom for $39 billion in March, the deal has proved controversial. Lawmakers, consumer advocates, and rivals have voiced opposition to the merger, saying it would significantly reduce competition. The deal would have left just three major players: AT&T, Verizon and the significantly smaller Sprint Nextel.
"Sprint urges the United States government to block this anti-competitive acquisition," Vonya McCann, Sprint's senior vice president for government affairs, said back in March. "This transaction will harm consumers and harm competition at a time when this country can least afford it."
AT&T has moved to drum up support for the deal of late. On Wednesday, it announced plans to bring 5,000 call-center jobs back to the United States.
"Does this shore up an issue that people have?" Randall Stephenson, AT&T's chief executive, said in an interview on Tuesday. "Sure, I hope it does."
ゴールドか環境保護か？ アメリカでの全国的論争に
Alaska voters weighing in: salmon vs. gold
Voters in rural Alaska weighing in on initiative that pits salmon against vast mineral mine
Becky Bohrer, Associated Press,
On Sunday October 2, 2011, 11:02 am
JUNEAU, Alaska (AP) -- The battle over a copper and gold mine near one of the world's premiere fisheries is headed to the ballot.
The vote has turned a normally sleepy local election into a national environmental debate.
Voters in southwest Alaska's Lake and Peninsula Borough are deciding whether to ban large-scale resource extraction activity, including mining, that would destroy or degrade salmon habitat. The measure is aimed at Pebble Mine, the world-class gold-and-copper prospect near the headwaters of Bristol Bay.
The debate surrounding Pebble has attracted the attention of chefs, Robert Redford and big-name jewelers who have vowed not to sell any gold coming from the project
But Tuesday's vote will almost certainly not be the last word on how -- or whether -- the mine gets built.
Many government retirees also get public paychecks ダラス・テキサス州
Thousands of government retirees across country return to work to collect public paychecks
Danny Robbins, Tammy Webber and Peter Jackson, Associated Press, On Saturday October 1, 2011, 12:16 pm EDT
DALLAS (AP) -- Double-dipping -- the well-established practice of public workers collecting government pensions and salaries at the same time -- has become a hot topic for lawmakers struggling with strained budgets.
Even as some states have begun curbing the practice, a review by The Associated Press found tens of thousands of state and public school employees drawing government salaries along with their pensions. In five states alone -- California, New York, Texas, Florida and Michigan -- at least 66,000 government retirees also receive taxpayer-funded paychecks.
One is engineer Maury Roos, who retired from the California Department of Water Resources with an annual pension of more than $113,000. He returned part-time within weeks.
Roos says he uses the extra money to go to engineering conferences and the state gets an experienced engineer.
お悔やみを兼ねた、スティーブ・ジョブの偉業を褒め称える記事。ロックフェラー、ヘンリー・フォード、サム・ウォートン（ウォールマート）と実業界の巨人として並べている。
Steve Jobs Earned His Place in the American Business Pantheon
By Daniel Gross
Wed, Oct 5, 2011, 9:26pm EDT
PostsWebsiteEmailBy Daniel Gross | Contrary Indicator – 59 minutes ago
Steve Jobs, who died on Wednesday, was a singular figure in American business history. He will go in the pantheon of great American entrepreneurs, inventors, and innovators, alongside John D. Rockefeller, Henry Ford, and Sam Walton.
Jobs didn't invent computer technology, or the cell phone, or the notion of digitizing music. But he invented methods, business models, and devices that turned each into significantly larger cultural and economic phenomena.
To a degree, one might look back on the arc of Jobs's career and conclude that he simply rode a series of technological waves. But Jobs, and the company he led, rode the waves while pushing back against them.
In an industry frequently hostile to design, Jobs's Apple banked on it. In an industry in which products simply got cheaper every year and everything tends toward a commodity, Apple's products were able to command a premium. And in an age of pinched consumer spending, millions of people were eager — even desperate — to shell out for the latest version of the iPod, the iPad, or the iPhone.
In an era frequently characterized by executive greed and massive pay for significant underperformance, Jobs worked for a dollar a year. At a time when many founding CEOs step down when they hit their late 40s and early 50s to chase other pursuits (a la Bill Gates), Jobs stuck with it. In an era in which many experts fretted about the ability of America's economy to thrive and innovate, Apple grew into a major exporter. Apple now represents American brands, the way McDonald's and IBM and Coca-Cola once did.
In an era in which equity values stagnated, Apple's stock thrived. The performance of the company's stock, which is now worth $322 billion, up from a few billion in 2003, is one of the great examples of value creation in modern history.
It's difficult to put a tag on what it is precisely that Jobs did. He didn't create a fundamentally new business structure, the way John D. Rockefeller did with the vertical integration of Standard Oil. He didn't democratize a product that had only been available to the very rich, as Henry Ford did with the Model T. And he didn't fundamentally alter the distribution, logistics, and production systems the way that Sam Walton did with Wal-Mart. Under Jobs, Apple simply created a bunch of really cool products that people decided they needed to have. And have again. While Apple had brilliant ads, and while Jobs was an excellent salesperson, Apple's rabid, evangelizing fans have been the most effective marketing tool. When it comes to clothes, or shoes, or cars, my kids, 13 and 9, are largely indifferent to brands. When it was time for them to get their own computer, it had to be a Mac.
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There are three basic business stories: the rise, the fall, and then the comeback. Jobs provided a vivid example of each. He started Apple Computer in the 1970s out of the proverbial garage with Steve Wozniak, only to be pushed after the company had gained scale. Returning to helm the company in 1997, he led a comeback that was, in many ways, far more impressive than the original rise.
Yes, Steve Jobs got rich in the past decade. But he didn't so at the expense of his shareholders. In fact, they grew rich along with him. And Apple didn't prosper at the expense of partners. The walled-garden approach of iTunes and the Apps store goes went against the grain of the notion that everything online should be free. But it was, at root, a courageous act. And it served as a kind of affirmation for content producers. And perhaps that's why he got such good press.
Several industries in the past decade found themselves essentially powerless in the face of the internet and the advent of digital technology. But Jobs and Apple invented devices and business models that encouraged people to pay: for music, for television shows and movies, for books, and for applications. By continuing to roll out new products, Apple has really expanded the playing field for content creators. It's much more compelling to watch a movie on an iPad than it is on an iPod.
The highest form of charity is helping somebody find a job or a means to support themselves. Just so, one might argue that the highest form of business is creating a profitable enterprise that allows and encourages other people to innovate and find means to support themselves. Apple has done that time and again. Yes, the publishing and music industries have griped over payment terms. But Apple is allowing individuals and companies to reach truly massive audiences at a relatively low cost. It has rescued some markets, revived others, and created entirely new ones.
This century is only a decade old. But it's a safe bet that in 2099, when analysts and historians are looking back, Steve Jobs will be remembered as one of the giants of 21st century business.
Daniel Gross is economics editor at Yahoo! Finance
スティーブン・ジョブの生涯
Steven P. Jobs, 1955-2011
Apple’s Visionary Redefined Digital Age
Steven P. Jobs, the visionary co-founder of Apple, has died at 56.
By JOHN MARKOFF
Published: October 5, 2011 The New York Times
(Page 1 of 5)
Steven P. Jobs, the visionary co-founder of Apple who helped usher in the era of personal computers and then led a cultural transformation in the way music, movies and mobile communications were experienced in the digital age, died Wednesday. He was 56.
The death was announced by Apple, the company Mr. Jobs and his high school friend Stephen Wozniak started in 1976 in a suburban California garage. A friend of the family said the cause was complications of pancreatic cancer.
Mr. Jobs had waged a long and public struggle with the disease, remaining the face of the company even as he underwent treatment, introducing new products for a global market in his trademark blue jeans even as he grew gaunt and frail.
He underwent surgery in 2004, received a liver transplant in 2009 and took three medical leaves of absence as Apple’s chief executive before stepping down in August and turning over the helm to Timothy D. Cook, the chief operating officer. When he left, he was still engaged in the company’s affairs, negotiating with another Silicon Valley executive only weeks earlier.
“I have always said that if there ever came a day when I could no longer meet my duties and expectations as Apple’s C.E.O., I would be the first to let you know,” Mr. Jobs said in a letter released by the company. “Unfortunately, that day has come.”
By then, having mastered digital technology and capitalized on his intuitive marketing sense, Mr. Jobs had largely come to define the personal computer industry and an array of digital consumer and entertainment businesses centered on the Internet. He had also become a very rich man, worth an estimated $8.3 billion.
Tributes to Mr. Jobs flowed quickly on Wednesday evening, in formal statements and in the flow of social networks, with President Obama, technology industry leaders and legions of Apple fans weighing in.
“For those of us lucky enough to get to work with Steve, it’s been an insanely great honor,” said Bill Gates, the Microsoft co-founder. “I will miss Steve immensely.”
A Twitter user named Matt Galligan wrote: “R.I.P. Steve Jobs. You touched an ugly world of technology and made it beautiful.”
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Eight years after founding Apple, Mr. Jobs led the team that designed the Macintosh computer, a breakthrough in making personal computers easier to use. After a 12-year separation from the company, prompted by a bitter falling-out with his chief executive, John Sculley, he returned in 1997 to oversee the creation of one innovative digital device after another — the iPod, the iPhone and the iPad. These transformed not only product categories like music players and cellphones but also entire industries, like music and mobile communications.
During his years outside Apple, he bought a tiny computer graphics spinoff from the director George Lucas and built a team of computer scientists, artists and animators that became Pixar Animation Studios.
Starting with “Toy Story” in 1995, Pixar produced a string of hit movies, won several Academy Awards for artistic and technological excellence, and made the full-length computer-animated film a mainstream art form enjoyed by children and adults worldwide.
Mr. Jobs was neither a hardware engineer nor a software programmer, nor did he think of himself as a manager. He considered himself a technology leader, choosing the best people possible, encouraging and prodding them, and making the final call on product design.
It was an executive style that had evolved. In his early years at Apple, his meddling in tiny details maddened colleagues, and his criticism could be caustic and even humiliating. But he grew to elicit extraordinary loyalty.
“He was the most passionate leader one could hope for, a motivating force without parallel,” wrote Steven Levy, author of the 1994 book “Insanely Great,” which chronicles the creation of the Mac. “Tom Sawyer could have picked up tricks from Steve Jobs.”
“Toy Story,” for example, took four years to make while Pixar struggled, yet Mr. Jobs never let up on his colleagues. “‘You need a lot more than vision — you need a stubbornness, tenacity, belief and patience to stay the course,” said Edwin Catmull, a computer scientist and a co-founder of Pixar. “In Steve’s case, he pushes right to the edge, to try to make the next big step forward.”
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Mr. Jobs was the ultimate arbiter of Apple products, and his standards were exacting. Over the course of a year he tossed out two iPhone prototypes, for example, before approving the third, and began shipping it in June 2007.
To his understanding of technology he brought an immersion in popular culture. In his 20s, he dated Joan Baez; Ella Fitzgerald sang at his 30th birthday party. His worldview was shaped by the ’60s counterculture in the San Francisco Bay Area, where he had grown up, the adopted son of a Silicon Valley machinist. When he graduated from high school in Cupertino in 1972, he said, ”the very strong scent of the 1960s was still there.”
After dropping out of Reed College, a stronghold of liberal thought in Portland, Ore., in 1972, Mr. Jobs led a countercultural lifestyle himself. He told a reporter that taking LSD was one of the two or three most important things he had done in his life. He said there were things about him that people who had not tried psychedelics — even people who knew him well, including his wife — could never understand.
Decades later he flew around the world in his own corporate jet, but he maintained emotional ties to the period in which he grew up. He often felt like an outsider in the corporate world, he said. When discussing the Silicon Valley’s lasting contributions to humanity, he mentioned in the same breath the invention of the microchip and “The Whole Earth Catalog,” a 1960s counterculture publication.
Apple’s very name reflected his unconventionality. In an era when engineers and hobbyists tended to describe their machines with model numbers, he chose the name of a fruit, supposedly because of his dietary habits at the time.
Coming on the scene just as computing began to move beyond the walls of research laboratories and corporations in the 1970s, Mr. Jobs saw that computing was becoming personal — that it could do more than crunch numbers and solve scientific and business problems — and that it could even be a force for social and economic change. And at a time when hobbyist computers were boxy wooden affairs with metal chassis, he designed the Apple II as a sleek, low-slung plastic package intended for the den or the kitchen. He was offering not just products but a digital lifestyle.
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He put much stock in the notion of “taste,” a word he used frequently. It was a sensibility that shone in products that looked like works of art and delighted users. Great products, he said, were a triumph of taste, of “trying to expose yourself to the best things humans have done and then trying to bring those things into what you are doing.”
Regis McKenna, a longtime Silicon Valley marketing executive to whom Mr. Jobs turned in the late 1970s to help shape the Apple brand, said Mr. Jobs’s genius lay in his ability to simplify complex, highly engineered products, “to strip away the excess layers of business, design and innovation until only the simple, elegant reality remained.”
Mr. Jobs’s own research and intuition, not focus groups, were his guide. When asked what market research went into the iPad, Mr. Jobs replied: “None. It’s not the consumers’ job to know what they want.”
Early Interests
Steven Paul Jobs was born in San Francisco on Feb. 24, 1955, and surrendered for adoption by his biological parents, Joanne Carole Schieble and Abdulfattah Jandali, a graduate student from Syria who became a political science professor. He was adopted by Paul and Clara Jobs.
The elder Mr. Jobs, who worked in finance and real estate before returning to his original trade as a machinist, moved his family down the San Francisco Peninsula to Mountain View and then to Los Altos in the 1960s.
Mr. Jobs developed an early interest in electronics. He was mentored by a neighbor, an electronics hobbyist, who built Heathkit do-it-yourself electronics projects. He was brash from an early age. As an eighth grader, after discovering that a crucial part was missing from a frequency counter he was assembling, he telephoned William Hewlett, the co-founder of Hewlett-Packard. Mr. Hewlett spoke with the boy for 20 minutes, prepared a bag of parts for him to pick up and offered him a job as a summer intern.
Mr. Jobs met Mr. Wozniak while attending Homestead High School in neighboring Cupertino. The two took an introductory electronics class there.
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The spark that ignited their partnership was provided by Mr. Wozniak’s mother. Mr. Wozniak had graduated from high school and enrolled at the University of California, Berkeley, when she sent him an article from the October 1971 issue of Esquire magazine. The article, “Secrets of the Little Blue Box,” by Ron Rosenbaum, detailed an underground hobbyist culture of young men known as phone phreaks who were illicitly exploring the nation’s phone system.
Mr. Wozniak shared the article with Mr. Jobs, and the two set out to track down an elusive figure identified in the article as Captain Crunch. The man had taken the name from his discovery that a whistle that came in boxes of Cap’n Crunch cereal was tuned to a frequency that made it possible to make free long-distance calls simply by blowing the whistle next to a phone handset.
Captain Crunch was John Draper, a former Air Force electronic technician, and finding him took several weeks. Learning that the two young hobbyists were searching for him, Mr. Draper had arranged to come to Mr. Wozniak’s Berkeley dormitory room. Mr. Jobs, who was still in high school, had traveled to Berkeley for the meeting. When Mr. Draper arrived, he entered the room saying simply, “It is I!”
Based on information they gleaned from Mr. Draper, Mr. Wozniak and Mr. Jobs later collaborated on building and selling blue boxes, devices that were widely used for making free — and illegal — phone calls. They raised a total of $6,000 from the effort.
After enrolling at Reed College in 1972, Mr. Jobs left after one semester, but remained in Portland for another 18 months auditing classes. In a commencement address given at Stanford in 2005, he said he had decided to leave college because it was consuming all of his parents’ savings.
Leaving school, however, also freed his curiosity to follow his interests. “I didn’t have a dorm room,” he said in his Stanford speech, “so I slept on the floor in friends’ rooms, I returned Coke bottles for the 5-cent deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the seven miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on.”
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He returned to Silicon Valley in 1974 and took a job there as a technician at Atari, the video game manufacturer. Still searching for his calling, he left after several months and traveled to India with a college friend, Daniel Kottke, who would later become an early Apple employee. Mr. Jobs returned to Atari that fall. In 1975, he and Mr. Wozniak, then working as an engineer at H.P., began attending meetings of the Homebrew Computer Club, a hobbyist group that met at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center in Menlo Park, Calif. Personal computing had been pioneered at research laboratories adjacent to Stanford, and it was spreading to the outside world.
“What I remember is how intense he looked,” said Lee Felsenstein, a computer designer who was a Homebrew member. “He was everywhere, and he seemed to be trying to hear everything people had to say.”
Mr. Wozniak designed the original Apple I computer simply to show it off to his friends at the Homebrew. It was Mr. Jobs who had the inspiration that it could be a commercial product.
In early 1976, he and Mr. Wozniak, using their own money, began Apple with an initial investment of $1,300; they later gained the backing of a former Intel executive, A. C. Markkula, who lent them $250,000. Mr. Wozniak would be the technical half and Mr. Jobs the marketing half of the original Apple I Computer. Starting out in the Jobs family garage in Los Altos, they moved the company to a small office in Cupertino shortly thereafter.
In April 1977, Mr. Jobs and Mr. Wozniak introduced Apple II at the West Coast Computer Faire in San Francisco. It created a sensation. Faced with a gaggle of small and large competitors in the emerging computer market, Apple, with its Apple II, had figured out a way to straddle the business and consumer markets by building a computer that could be customized for specific applications.
Sales skyrocketed, from $2 million in 1977 to $600 million in 1981, the year the company went public. By 1983 Apple was in the Fortune 500. No company had ever joined the list so quickly.
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The Apple III, introduced in May 1980, was intended to dominate the desktop computer market. I.B.M. would not introduce its original personal computer until 1981. But the Apple III had a host of technical problems, and Mr. Jobs shifted his focus to a new and ultimately short-lived project, an office workstation computer code-named Lisa.
By then Mr. Jobs had made his much-chronicled 1979 visit to Xerox’s research center in Palo Alto, where he saw the Alto, an experimental personal computer system that foreshadowed modern desktop computing. The Alto, controlled by a mouse pointing device, was one of the first computers to employ a graphical video display, which presented the user with a view of documents and programs, adopting the metaphor of an office desktop.
“It was one of those sort of apocalyptic moments,” Mr. Jobs said of his visit in a 1995 oral history interview for the Smithsonian Institution. “I remember within 10 minutes of seeing the graphical user interface stuff, just knowing that every computer would work this way someday. It was so obvious once you saw it. It didn’t require tremendous intellect. It was so clear.”
In 1981 he joined a small group of Apple engineers pursuing a separate project, a lower-cost system code-named Macintosh. The machine was introduced in January 1984 and trumpeted during the Super Bowl telecast by a 60-second commercial, directed by Ridley Scott, that linked I.B.M., then the dominant PC maker, with Orwell’s Big Brother.
A year earlier Mr. Jobs had lured Mr. Sculley to Apple to be its chief executive. A former Pepsi-Cola chief executive, Mr. Sculley was impressed by Mr. Jobs’s pitch: “Do you want to spend the rest of your life selling sugared water, or do you want a chance to change the world?”
He went on to help Mr. Jobs introduce a number of new computer models, including an advanced version of the Apple II and later the Lisa and Macintosh desktop computers. Through them Mr. Jobs popularized the graphical user interface, which, based on a mouse pointing device, would become the standard way to control computers.
But when the Lisa failed commercially and early Macintosh sales proved disappointing, the two men became estranged and a power struggle ensued, and Mr. Jobs lost control of the Lisa project. The board ultimately stripped him of his operational role, taking control of the Lisa project away from him, and 1,200 Apple employees were laid off. He left Apple in 1985.
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“I don’t wear the right kind of pants to run this company,” he told a small gathering of Apple employees before he left, according to a member of the original Macintosh development team. He was barefoot as he spoke, and wearing blue jeans.
That September he announced a new venture, NeXT Inc. The aim was to build a workstation computer for the higher-education market. The next year, the Texas industrialist H. Ross Perot invested $20 million in the effort. But it did not achieve Mr. Jobs’s goals.
Mr. Jobs also established a personal philanthropic foundation after leaving Apple but soon had a change of heart, deciding instead to spend much of his fortune — $10 million — on acquiring Pixar, a struggling graphics supercomputing company owned by the filmmaker George Lucas.
The purchase was a significant gamble; there was little market at the time for computer-animated movies. But that changed in 1995, when the company, with Walt Disney Pictures, released “Toy Story.” That film’s box-office receipts ultimately reached $362 million, and when Pixar went public in a record-breaking offering, Mr. Jobs emerged a billionaire. In 2006, the Walt Disney Company agreed to purchase Pixar for $7.4 billion. The sale made Mr. Jobs Disney’s largest single shareholder, with about 7 percent of the company’s stock.
His personal life also became more public. He had a number of well-publicized romantic relationships, including one with the folk singer Joan Baez, before marrying Laurene Powell. In 1996, his sister Mona Simpson, a novelist, threw a spotlight on her relationship with Mr. Jobs in the novel “A Regular Guy.” The two did not meet until they were adults. The novel centered on a Silicon Valley entrepreneur who bore a close resemblance to Mr. Jobs. It was not an entirely flattering portrait. Mr. Jobs said about a quarter of it was accurate.
“We’re family,” he said of Ms. Simpson in an interview with The New York Times Magazine. “She’s one of my best friends in the world. I call her and talk to her every couple of days.”
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