Rescued by Taxpayers, $440,000 for Retreat Including “Pedicures, Manicures”

Less than a week after the federal government committed $85 billion to bail out AIG, executives of the giant AIG insurance company headed for a week-long retreat at a luxury resort and spa, the St. Regis Resort in Monarch Beach, California, Congressional investigators revealed today.

“Rooms at this resort can cost over $1,000 a night,” Congressman Henry Waxman (D-CA) said this morning as his committee continued its investigation of Wall Street and its CEOs.

AIG documents obtained by Waxman’s investigators show the company paid more than $440,000 for the retreat, including nearly $200,000 for rooms, $150,000 for meals and $23,000 in spa charges.

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Stuck in a $14,300 debt hole, reader Trixare4kids was able to dig herself out using tips she learned about on Consumerist.com. Let’s learn how she attacked her personal finances and learned to live frugally, and did it all in 20 months.Yahoo! Buzz

She writes: “This morning I made my very last payment on $14,300 in credit card debt and a personal line of credit for a home improvement project that was completed a few years ago. I paid it off over the last 20 months thanks to applying some of the stuff I learned at consumerist.com. It was tough. It took discipline, but I did it!

Instead of making a bunch of changes at once, I did things a little over time. It looked something like this. It’s maybe not in the order that makes the most sense to a financial planner or in the order that someone else would do things; I just know that it worked for me.

MONTH 1: NEGOTIATING BETTER CREDIT CARDS RATES:
I called every single credit card company and tried to negotiate for a lower rate. I was successful with a lot of them. In once case the rate went from 14% to 7.99%. If they would not lower the interest rate, I politely thanked them and then transferred those balances onto lower rate cards. I canceled each card as it was paid off.

MONTH 2: GO CASH-ONLY:
I cut up every single card except one for emergencies. I actually put my remaining credit card in a big plastic cup full of water and stuck it in the freezer. That way, I’d really have to work at it to get that card. Cash only was the rule. If I did not have the cash, I did not need it. It’s still in the freezer 20 months later.

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Vincent Laforet from Vilis Skuja on Vimeo.

this is an amazing sample of what the Canon 5D Mark II is capable of, especially when in the hands of Vincent LaForet. i want one!

for those of you who don’t know, this is a 21MP still photo SLR camera that shoots 1080p HD Video.

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Hired Guns from JD on Vimeo.

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WASHINGTON – The Bush administration has shelved plans to set up a diplomatic outpost in Iran, in part over fears it could affect the U.S. presidential race or be interpreted as political meddling, The Associated Press has learned.The proposal to send U.S. diplomats to Tehran for the first time in three decades attracted great attention when it was floated over the summer, but has now been placed on indefinite hold as November’s election nears and Iran continues to defy demands to halt suspect nuclear activities, officials told the AP.

Two administration officials familiar with the matter spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal administration deliberations on the sensitive subject.

The officials said a decision had been made to leave the decision to the next U.S. president because it could be seen as a reward for Iran’s nuclear intransigence, especially when Iran policy has become a key part of the heated campaign between Democrat Barack Obama and Republican John McCain.

Obama has called for unconditional direct talks with the leaders of adversaries such as Iran and North Korea, assuming that groundwork by lower-level officials indicated that the top-level talks would be fruitful.

McCain has ridiculed the suggestion as naive.

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Earth From Above comes to NYC – The Big Picture – Boston.com

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All around the world, it seems, people just can’t get enough of this amazing free office suite, which is now turning in serious market shares in some countries. For, example, according to this report, there are now 12 million users in Brazil, representing fully 25% of the entire office market there. Meanwhile, plucky little Italy has notched up 4 million downloads in the last 12 months (that’s downloads, not users, but still impressive).

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China Launches First Willing Manned Mission Into Space

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Barack Obama accused John McCain of resorting to smear tactics yesterday as Republicans showed signs of alarm at the prospect of a Democratic clean sweep in both the White House and Congressional races on November 4.

His attack came after McCain’s team, in an unusual step, signalled at the weekend that it is to switch strategy towards more personal and nastier criticism of Obama.

McCain’s team offered an early glimpse of the new strategy by accusing Obama of being friends with a terrorist, Bill Ayers. He is one of the founders of the Weathermen, a radical underground group responsible for a bombing campaign in the US in the 1970s.

The aim of the McCain team appears to be to try to shift attention away from the economic crisis that has led to a haemorrhaging of Republican support over the last two weeks.

Having entered the final 30 days of the campaign, during which the views of undecided voters begin to consolidate, polls and reports from Democratic and Republican campaign staff on the ground suggest a seismic shift is taking place in the electoral map in favour of the Democrats.

The optimism in the Obama camp is based not just on the poll leads but on voter registration.

Obama has more staff and volunteers on the ground and has registered millions of new Democratic voters, an effort unmatched by the Republicans. The Democrats’ team revealed at the weekend it has registered 1.5 million new voters in swing state Pennsylvania alone.

Unlike in 2004, when the failed Democratic candidate John Kerry was slow to respond to personal attacks, Obama is countering fast. In a speech on the campaign trail in Asheville, North Carolina, Obama accused McCain of trying to divert voters from the economic crisis.

“Senator McCain and his operatives are gambling that he can distract you with smears rather than talk to you about substance. They’d rather try to tear our campaign down than lift this country up. It’s what you do when you’re out of touch, out of ideas, and running out of time.”

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STAR CITY, Russia — This place was once no place, a secret military base northeast of Moscow that did not show up on maps. The Soviet Union trained its astronauts here to fight on the highest battlefield of the cold war: space.

Yet these days, Star City is the place for America’s hard-won orbital partnership with Russia, where astronauts train to fly aboard Soyuz spacecraft. And in two years Star City will be the only place to send astronauts from any nation to the International Space Station.

The gap is coming: from 2010, when the National Aeronautics and Space Administration shuts down the space shuttle program, to 2015, when the next generation of American spacecraft is scheduled to arrive, NASA expects to have no human flight capacity and will depend on Russia to get to the $100 billion station, buying seats on Soyuz craft as space tourists do.

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irregular flow from 4khz on Vimeo.

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