THE UNIVERSITY DARY KANSAN
WEDNESDAY, MARCH 26, 2008
NEWS
5A
NATION
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Construction workers look on as a section of a crane is lifted from a house and set on the ground Tuesday in Miami. Two workers were killed and four others were injured Tuesday when a crane collapsed at a downtown high-rise condominium site and fell on top of a home that the contractor used as an office, police said.
Crane collapse kills two in Miami
ASSOCIATED PRESS
MIAMI — Part of a construction crane plummeted 30 floors at the site of a high-rise condominium Tuesday, smashing into a home that the contractor used for storage and killing two workers, police said.
Five workers were injured, including one in critical condition, officials said.
One of those killed died inside the house, and the other died at a hospital, police spokesman Delrish Moss said.
30 floors and smashed through the home's Spanish-tiled roof.
The crane's main vertical section was intact, but the part that fell was a 20-foot section that workers had been raising to extend the equipment's reach. Miami fire spokesman Ignatius Carroll said. It fell
Authorities were checking employee logs to make sure no workers were missing. But an initial survey by rescue workers and dogs found no evidence of victims trapped at the site of the 40-plus-story luxury condo tower on Biscayne Bay, Moss said.
Fire officials said rescue efforts were hampered because the crane remained unstable.
David Martinez, a pipe fitter, was on the fourth floor of the condo tower eating lunch when the crash occurred.
Martinez said.
"It was like a small earthquake," he said. "We looked outside, and we couldn't even see." It took several minutes for the dust to clear,
Mary Costello, a senior vice president for Bovis Lend Lease Holdings Inc., which was managing the construction, said the accident occurred when a subcontractor tried to raise the crane section and it came loose. The company is cooperating with investigators, she said.
"Our hearts are heavy at this moment for the two deceased individuals,including one of our own employees and the additional injured workers,"she said in a statement.
The subcontractor and the tower developer, Royal Palms Communities, did not return phone messages seeking comment.
》 ECONOMY
Wall Street slows down
ASSOCIATED PRESS
NEW YORK — Wall Street paused after a huge two-session rally Tuesday but closed mostly higher, holding on to almost all its gains even after disappointing reports on consumer sentiment and the housing market.
Stocks pulled past profit-taking that was due in part to the Conference Board's report that consumer confidence sank to a five-year low in March. The index has been weakening since July, and is closely watched to determine the future of consumer spending, perhaps the most critical part of the economy.
Meanwhile, the Standard & Poor's/Case-Shiller home price index indicated that U.S. home prices fell 11.4 percent in January, the steepest drop since data was first collected in 1987. The latest decline means prices have been growing more slowly or dropping for 19 consecutive months.
Volume was light, with many investors holding off any big moves while the market sought a direction;trading remained uneasy amid the ongoing uncertainty about the economy and credit markets. Still, the fact that stocks didn't suffer a huge pullback, which has been the market's pattern for months after a big gain, indicated that at least for the time being Wall Street seems more capable of handling bad news.
Stocks had charged higher in the days following the Federal Reserve's decision to aid investment banks and orchestrate a buyout deal for a near-collapsed Bear Stearns Cos. The Dow Jones industrials shot up nearly 450 points in the previous two sessions.
"There is a lot of cash on the sidelines right now, and they're really waiting to see if there's another shoe to drop," said Todd Leone, managing director of equity trading at Cowen & Co. "Bear Stearns has taken a lot of fear
out of the market, and the Fed is doing what it can for the credit crunch, but I think there's still uncertainty."
The Dow fell 16.04, or 0.13 percent, to 12,532.60.
The blue chip index was actually the lager in Tuesday's session.
The one chip index was actually the laggard in Tuesday's session — the broader Standard & Poor's 500 and Nasdaq composite indexes had more robust gains. The S&P rose 3.11, or 0.23 percent, to 1,352.99; the Nasdaq added 14.30, or 0.61 percent, to 2,341.05.
Advancing issues led decliners by 2 to 1 on the New York Stock Exchange, where consolidated volume came to 3.99 billion shares from 4.37 billion on Monday.
Bond prices rose, regaining ground after a huge decline on Monday that accompanied the rally on Wall Street. The yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury note fell to 3.49 percent from late Monday's 3.55 percent. The yield moved to 3.51 percent in after-hours trading.
The dollar was down against other major currencies, while gold prices rose.
Oil futures wobbled, with some investors selling on new worries about the economy and buying in response to the dollar's latest decline. Light, sweet crude rose 36 cents to settle at $101.22 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange.
Though many on Wall Street expected the latest batch of economic data to be negative and that might have helped investors shake off the bad news there continues to be lingering concerns about consumer spending. The mood on Main Street is critical because consumer spending makes up about 70 percent of economic activity.
The Conference Board said its Consumer Confidence Index plunged to 64.5 in March from a revised 76.4 in February. The reading — a five-year low — was far below the 73.0 expected by analysts surveyed by Thomson/IFR.
"What is troubling is that consumer confidence took a plunge, and I think we're going to see consumer spending weaken as we go forward," said Peter Cardillo, chief market economist at New York-based brokerage house Avalon Partners.
Meanwhile. Standard & Poor's Case-Shiller index showed U.S. home prices declined 11.4 percent in January from a year earlier.
In corporate news, Monsanto Co. shares jumped almost 10 percent after the agricultural products company said earnings per share for the second quarter and for all of fiscal 2008 will be stronger than originally projected. Shares rose $10.29, or 9.9 percent, to $114.54, and also helped boost others in the sector.
JPMorgan Chase & Co. shares fell 49 cents to $46,06 after a securities analyst said the bank will end up paying about $65 per share for Bear Stearns. That amount, which includes costs to bring the two companies together, was labeled too high a price for a "deeply troubled company," the Punk, Ziegel and Co. analyst said.
Bear Stearns fell 31 cents, or 2.8 percent, to $10.94 — above the $10 per share buyout price being offered by JPMorgan. There has been some speculation in the market that a higher offer might come before the deal closes.
Yahoo Inc. rose $1.21, or 4.4 percent, to $28.73 on speculation Microsoft Inc. will raise its takeover price for the Internet company beyond $31 per share. Microsoft fell 3 cents to $29.14.
The Russell 2000 index of smaller companies rose $3.99, or 0.57 percent, to 705.27.
Investors overseas remained upbeat following the U.S. rallies Monday and last week. Japan's Nikkei stock average finished up 2.12 percent. Britain's FTSE 100 fell 0.91 percent, Germany's DAX index rose 3.24 percent, and France's CAC-40 rose 3.49 percent.
IN BRIEF
No one injured in firearm discharge during flight
CHARLOTTE, N.C. — The pilot of a US Airways plane may have been mishandling a firearm when it went off in flight, piercing the cockpit wall before the jet landed safely, a federal air marshal said Tuesday.
Airline officials have said the accidental discharge did not endanger the 124 passengers and five crew members over the weekend. But air safety experts said the hole could have caused the plane to rapidly depressurize had it been in a window at a higher altitude.
All people eligible to carry guns in the cockpit carry the same weapon, the .40-caliber semiautomatic H&K USP.
"This is an extremely safe and reliable weapon," said Greg Alter of the Federal Air Marshal Service."It's not going to discharge on its own, is the bottom line."
The pistol discharged snorry before noon Saturday aboard Flight 1536 from Denver to Charlotte, as the plane was at about 8,000 feet and was approaching to land. The photos taken by The Associated Press show a small entry hole in the lower side of the cockpit wall and a small exit hole on the exterior below the cockpit window.
"There are two issues: would they (the crew) have enough oxygen to remain alert," said Earl Dowell, an aeronautical engineering professor at Duke University. "If the crew could no longer control the airplane, that would be a big deal. And the rapid loss of pressure might damage the structure itself."
The gunshot marked the first time a pilot's weapon has been fired on a plane since the flight deck officer program was created following Sept. 11, 2001 Alter said.
The Transportation Security Administration is investigating how the gun discharged.
EAST ASIA
United States accidently ships weapons to Taiwan
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Associated Press
WASHINGTON — Shipping by mistake electrical fuses for an intercontinental ballistic missile to Taiwan raised concerns Tuesday for U.S.-China relations and triggered a broad investigation into the security of Pentagon weapons.
China vehemently opposes U.S. arms sales to Taiwan. Four of the cone-shaped fuses were shipped to Taiwanese officials in Fall 2006 instead of the helicopter batteries they had ordered.
Despite quarterly checks of the inventory, defense officials said they never knew the fuses were gone. Only after months of discussions with Taiwan over the missing batteries did the Pentagon finally realize — late last week — the gravity of what had happened.
Once the error was discovered, the military quickly recovered the four fuses. How it happened, and whether the incident constitutes a violation of any treaty or agreement governing international sales of missile technology, were lingering questions.
At a hastily called news conference Tuesday, Ryan Henry, the No.2 policy official in Defense Secretary Robert Gates' office, said President Bush as well as Chinese leaders were informed of the mistake — an error Henry called intolerable.
"I can not emphasize forcefully enough how strong the secretary feels about this matter and how disconcerting it is to him," Henry told reporters. He added that in an organization the size of the Defense Department there will be mistakes, but that "they cannot be tolerated in the arena in strategic systems, whether they are nuclear or only associated equipment, as was in this case."
In a comment directed at the Chinese concerns, Henry said the error does not suggest that U.S. policies on arms sales to Taiwan have changed.
Taiwan, which split from China
amid civil war in 1949, is the most sensitive issue in U.S.-China relations. Chinese officials repeatedly complained about U.S. arms sales to Taiwan during meetings with Gates in Beijing last fall. The U.S. insists it only provides weapons that would allow Taiwan to defend itself.
Beijing claims Taiwan as its own and has threatened to attack should the self-governing island make its de facto independence formal. Washington has hinted that it would go to war to protect Taiwan.
Gates has ordered a full investigation, and in a memo Tuesday he put Navy Adm. Kirkland H.
Henry said an examination of the site in Taiwan where the components had been stored after delivery indicated that they had not been tampered with. He said the components were "quite dated," as part of a system designed in the 1960s.
The Chinese Embassy did not immediately respond to a request for comment. A Taiwan official said Tuesday that the island's diplomats in Washington typically do not comment on Defense Department matters.
Donald in charge and asked that Donald report back with an initial assessment by April 15.
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