NATION • WORLD
L AWRENCE J OURNAL -WORLD
X Tuesday, August 2, 2011
BUSINESS AT A GLANCE
Notable
Schalk van Zuydam/AP Photo
A CHILD REACTS AS SHE RECEIVES an immunization Monday at a food distribution center as she and others wait to be registered as refugees in Dadaab, Kenya. Dadaab, a camp designed for 90,000 people now houses around 440,000 refugees.
Somali refugees: No food to break Ramadan fast DADAAB, KENYA (AP) — As the Islamic holy month of Ramadan begins, Faduma Aden is fasting all day even though she doesn’t have enough food to celebrate with a sundown feast. The Somali mother of three, who fled starvation in her homeland, says she fasts because she fears God. Muslims around the world mark sundown during Ramadan with extravagant dinners after not eating from sunrise to sundown. That kind of nighttime celebration is unthinkable this year for most Somalis, who are enduring the worst famine in a generation. And even though Islam allows the ailing to eat, for many Somalis it’s a matter of faith to participate in Ramadan’s fast. “It hard for me to fast, but I did fast for fear of God,” said Aden, who is among tens of thousands who have made the arduous journey, often on foot, to this refugee camp in neighboring Kenya. Others, like Mohamed Mohamud Abdulle, are ashamed they don’t have food “to console the soul” at sundown after fasting all day. “How will I fast when I don’t have something to break it?” asked Abdulle. “All my family are hungry and I have nothing to feed them. I feel the hunger that forced me from my home has doubled here.” For much of the Muslim world, Ramadan this year falls at a time of political upheaval. Food prices typically spike during the Muslim religious month, and the elaborate dinners many in the Middle East put on to break
the daily fast drive a deep hole in household budgets. Fleeing Somalis say they have already been forced by famine to fast for weeks or months, without the end-ofday meal to regain their strength. “I cannot fast because I cannot get food to break it and eat before the morning,” said Nur Ahmed, a father of six at a camp for displaced people in the Somali capital, Mogadishu, whose wife died last year during childbirth. Sheik Ali Sheik Hussein, a mosque leader in Mogadishu, called it “worrying” that many Somalis cannot fast because they are already weak from hunger and don’t have food to regain their strength after sundown. “We have asked all Muslims to donate to help those dying from hunger,” he said. “Muslims should not be silent on this situation, so we shall help if Allah wills.” At a hospital run by the International Committee of the Red Cross in the Dadaab camp, clinician Muhammed Hussein breaks away from examining a patient to note that his Ramadan fast gives him greater understanding of the suffering of famine victims. “It gives you a lot of sympathy when you yourself feel hungry, you will understand the pain of someone who has not eaten... With this kind of severe malnutrition, people have no energy to walk, they have been walking from Kismayo in Somalia to this place. It gives you that heart to feel mercy for the people who are suffering.”
‘Credible lead’ surfaces in D.B. Cooper case By Pete Yost and MIke Baker Associated Press Writers
WASHINGTON — The FBI is investigating whether a dead man in the Pacific Northwest is D.B. Cooper, who hijacked a passenger jet in 1971 over Washington state and parachuted with $200,000 in ransom. Cooper has never been found. FBI agent Fred Gutt said Monday the bureau is following up a “credible” lead in the unsolved case and is focused on a suspect who died more than 10 years ago. Gutt said the bureau received a tip from a retired law enforcement source about the dead man possibly being Cooper. FBI agents requested personal effects of the possible suspect, who died of natural causes. The FBI is trying to find fingerprints or DNA on the dead man’s effects to compare with items the hijacker left behind. The FBI said three years ago that it found DNA evidence on the clip-on tie Cooper left on the plane before he jumped. Gutt said the FBI has already tested one item of the dead man’s belongings for fingerprints. It was not conclusive. They are now working with surviving family members to gather other items for further testing. The suspect is someone who has not been previously investigated, and Gutt said initial vetting supported the belief of the tipster. But he cautioned that the new lead
may not pan out and that investigators were still pursuing other possibilities. “Maybe this is just someone else who just happened to look like him and whose life story just kind of paralleled,” Gutt said. Gutt said the new lead is also promising because of the way it came to the FBI. The tipster initially discussed the case with a retired law enforcement off icer who then contacted the FBI. Only after the FBI contacted the witness directly did the person discuss the Cooper case with investigators. “They’re not seeking attention,” Gutt said. “To the contrary, they’re looking to avoid it.” Federal investigators have checked more than 1,000 leads since the suspect bailed out on Nov. 24, 1971, over the Pacific Northwest. The man who jumped gave his name as Dan Cooper and claimed shortly after takeoff in Portland, Ore., that he had a bomb, leading the flight crew to land the plane in Seattle, where passengers were exchanged for parachutes and ransom money. The flight then took off for Mexico with the suspect and flight crew on board. The hijacker parachuted from the plane after dark as it flew south, apparently over a rugged, wooded region of the Pacific Northwest. In 1980, a boy found several thousand dollars in $20 bills from the ransom decomposing along the Columbia River.
Leave it to the economy to stop a stock market rally. The Dow started the day up nearly 140 points after President Barack Obama and congressional leaders said Sunday that a deal had been reached to raise the nation’s borrowing limit and avoid a possible debt default. But another sign that the economy has slowed erased those early gains and took the Dow down as many as 145 points by midday. The Dow Jones industrial average ended the day with a loss of 10.75 points. It was the seventh day of declines for the blue-chip index.
Debt deal would have little effect on economy until 2014
By Christopher S. Rugaber Associated Press Writer
W A S H I N G T O N — The deal reached by Congress to raise the debt ceiling and cut more than $2 trillion in public spending should have only a minor impact on the economy for the next two years. Almost all the cuts would be made in 2014 or beyond. The approach heeds a warning by Federal Reserve Chair● Manufacturers had man Ben Bernanke and many their weakest growth in two private economists: Cutting years in July, a sign that the too much too soon could economy could weaken this harm the weak economic summer. The Institute for Sup- recovery. ply Management, a trade group Yet the deal won’t do much of purchasing executives, said to help the economy, either, at Monday that its index of manu- least in the short term, econfacturing activity fell to 50.9 omists said. percent in July from 55.3 perUnder the debt deal, discrecent in June. The reading was tionary spending, which the lowest since July 2009 — excludes Social Security, one month after the recession Medicare and Medicaid, officially ended. Any level would be cut $21 billion in 2012 above 50 indicates growth. The and $42 billion in 2013, accordmanufacturing sector has ing to an analysis by the Congressional Budget Office. expanded for 23 straight Combined, those cuts months. come to less than 1 percent of the nation’s $14 trillion economy. The impact “should be relatively minor,” says Brian Gardner, senior vice president at Keefe, Bruyette and Dow Industrials Wood, an investment bank. —10.75, 12,132.49 The spending cuts would Nasdaq increase to $75 billion in 2015 —11.77, 2,744.61 and $156 billion in 2021, the S&P 500 CBO estimates. Overall, the first phase of —5.34, 1,286.94 cuts would reduce spending 30-Year Treasury by $917 billion over 10 years. —0.06, 4.07% A congressional committee Corn (Chicago) would decide on a second +17 cents, $6.86 phase of cuts totaling $1.5 trilSoybeans (Chicago) lion. Reduced government +4.75 cents, $13.62 spending could mean less Wheat (Kansas City) money for highway construc+4.25 cents, $7.71 tion, housing assistance, govOil (New York) ernment-sponsored scientif—81 cents, $94.89 ic research or any number of other federal programs.
Monday’s markets
Companies that work on Defense Department contracts could suffer, too. The stocks of Lockheed Martin Corp., General Dynamics Corp. and Raytheon Co. all sank about 1 percent Monday. If lawmakers fail to reach a deal on a second round of cuts, the Pentagon’s budget would be cut automatically by about $500 billion. That measure is designed as a threat, to make sure congressional negotiators have strong incentives to compromise. Delaying the deepest cuts buys time for the economy to recover. Right now, it can’t absorb shocks very well: Unemployment is still 9.2 percent, people are spending less, worker pay has stagnated, and economic growth is the slowest since the end of the recession in June 2009. Worries about the economy, including the weakest manufacturing in two years, were one reason the stock market couldn’t sustain a rally after the debt deal was struck. The market was flat Monday. The Federal Reserve meets next week. Economists will watch for any signals that the Fed is considering new steps to help the economy, such as re-investing its government bond holdings indefinitely to keep interest rates down. The debt deal could restore some confidence among individuals and businesses by removing the fear that the U.S. government would default on its debt for the first time, says Troy Davig, an economist at Barclays Capital. Overall, the deal could subtract about 0.2 percentage point from economic growth in 2012, Davig estimates. While that is a relatively light blow, the economy only grew at an annual rate of 1.3 percent in April, May and June.
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Recognizing voices harder for dyslexics WASHINGTON — Pick up the phone and hear, “Hey, what’s up?” Chances are, those few words are enough to recognize who’s speaking — perhaps unless you have dyslexia. In a surprise discovery, researchers found adults with that reading disorder also have a hard time recognizing voices. The work isn’t just a curiosity. It fits with research to uncover the building blocks of literacy and how they can go wrong. The HEALTH eventual goal: To spot at-risk youngsters even before they open “Go, Dog, Go!” in kindergarten — instead of diagnosing dyslexia in a struggling second-grader. “Everybody is interested in understanding the root cause of dyslexia, so we can intervene early and do something about it,” says Massachusetts Institute of Technology cognitive neuroscientist John Gabrieli, senior author of the study published last week in the journal Science. Dyslexia is thought to affect 8 percent to 15 percent of Americans, who can have great difficulty reading and writing.
by Scott Adams
DILBERT
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