Politics

AP - Five Blackwater Worldwide security guards are expected to appear in federal court to answer to manslaughter charges in the 2007 shooting deaths of 17 Iraqi civilians in Baghdad.

Great idea but I think such a program in the US would interfere with the love-in Obama is having with the Republicans. I don't know, maybe he could pull it off if he let the GOP segregate the schools again in the south, because letting them have what they want is most important because they've been so right about everything. At least there's someone out there looking into progressive policies so the US can follow progress from afar, which is almost the same thing. Who really wants change from the failed policies and same old people that brought us to where we are anyway? Change and progress are overrated anyway.Companies could be "named and shamed" in league tables revealing pay inequalities between male and female employees under government plans to tackle the gender pay gap, the Guardian can reveal.

The government's equalities office is drawing up an amendment to the equality bill that would force companies to publish figures in annual accounts showing the number of men and women in particular pay bands. The bill is due to be published early this year.

Business leaders reacted angrily to the proposal. The Confederation of British Industry (CBI) complained that forcing companies to produce "meaningless statistics" would do little to tackle the underlying causes of inequality, while the Federation of Small Businesses (FSB) said the response was "over-prescriptive".

The minister in charge of the bill, Vera Baird, the solicitor general, is understood to be sympathetic to the scheme following criticism that the existing requirement for public sector bodies to report on gender pay inequalities did not go far enough to close the pay gap.

Men are paid 17.1% more than women for full-time work, according to government figures published in November. In part-time wages, the gender gap is 36.6%, according to the Office of National Statistics. Over a lifetime, that disparity means that women in full-time employment will be paid £369,000 less than their male counterparts, the EHRC estimated.

Separate research by Cranfield Business School showed the number of women holding executive directorships in FTSE 100 companies fell in 2007 to the lowest level for nine years. Only three of Britain's top companies have female chief executives.

Politico - For an outfit known for its lack of drama, Team Obama has become a downright thrill show.

The UK has been a credit-loving country for years and like the US, is going to have to learn how to survive with less easy credit. It's also interesting to see that the Tories in the UK are proposing tax incentives for savers as opposed to handouts for spending. This is the heart of the problem that we're facing in such economies where we need people to save and learn how to be frugal again but we also need them to spend to keep the economy afloat. Decades of bad policy won't be turned around overnight and maybe some of both plans needs to be examined on both sides of the pond.A quarter of all British families will have no disposable income in 2009, dealing yet another blow to the beleaguered retail sector.

In November, a survey by Nielsen, the market research firm, and trade body the British Retail Consortium (BRC) found that 21 per cent of families had no spare cash left after essential living expenses. However, sector insiders expect this to grow to at least 25 per cent by the spring.

A PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) survey last week showed that six in 10 people believe they will have less disposable income in 2009 than they had last year. Those in the lower socio-economic DE classifications were particularly gloomy, with nearly 70 per cent convinced they would have less money to spend on the high street.

Stephen Robertson, director-general at the BRC, said: "A fifth of all families had nothing left to spend [after core expenses] and I think that will get worse during 2009."

A leading retail figure predicted that the next Nielsen/BRC survey, due in May, will show at least 25 per cent of families lacking the cash needed for minor luxuries.

AP - Health care continued to take up a greater share of the economy in 2007, as spending on hospitals, doctors and other services increased 6.1 percent to $2.2 trillion.

AP - Ukraine's gas company Naftogaz says Gazprom has cut natural gas supplies to Europe by two-thirds.

The White House cat, an 18-year-old black American shorthair, died Sunday, the office of Laura Bush said.

From the Guardian:Lake Superior State University in Michigan has unveiled its 34th annual list of words that should be banished from our vocabularies this year...

First Dude "Skateboard English is not the appropriate way to refer to the spouse of a high ranking public official," says one commentator on the university's website.

Maverick The word has been left so battered and bruised by the assaults perpetrated on it by John McCain and Sarah Palin that it might be a kindness to leave it in peace to recover for a while.

Staycation Banishment of this seems harsh. Staycation is a succinct, witty way of labelling the new trend for staying in your home country at holiday time, but it is suffering for enshrining both green and economic concerns, which as we have seen above, is a sure way to tick people off.

Chris has used staycation on the blog, and I had no idea what it meant until I read his post, so I'm not sure that one's being overused, yet.

AP - Spending on health care slowed slightly in 2007 as consumers turned more to generic drugs instead of brand-names to fill their medicine cabinets, the government reported Monday.

President-elect Barack Obama stunned the national intelligence community by selecting Clinton White House chief of staff Leon E. Panetta, a longtime Washington insider with little intelligence experience, to serve as the next head of the CIA.

Weeks before President-elect Barack Obama chose New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson to head the Commerce Department, a small group of volunteers with ethics, tax and investigative expertise -- most of them lawyers -- scoured his background looking for embarrassing facts or political problems.

President-elect Barack Obama selected four prominent lawyers yesterday for senior posts at the Justice Department, naming pragmatic leaders who are likely to reverse some of the more divisive policies of the Bush administration.

Entertainer-turned-politician Al Franken declared victory in Minnesota's U.S. Senate race yesterday, just hours after a state panel charged with overseeing the recount of nearly 3 million ballots certified that the Democrat had received 225 more votes than Republican Sen. Norm Coleman.

Vice President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. will travel to Southwest Asia later this week, his Senate office announced yesterday.