Nation: WNBC reports that the Wall Street area has received a nonspecific but “time-specific” terror threat from al-Qaida. “The non-specific threat information suggests an al Qaeda terror (threat – SIC) would like to strike the city sometime this month, a security official said on condition of anonymity.” As the market plummets yet another day, maybe there’s a different terror at work we should be concerned about — the fragility of the U.S. dollar.
World: UPIreports that India has foiled a plot by two rebels to attack the Bombay Stock Exchange and Bhabha Atomic Research Center’s nuclear installation.
World: The Sydney Morning Herald reports that chaos is rocking Lhasa, Tibet, after Chinese authorities began cracking down on protesting monks. One resident told the paper “People have been burning cars and motorbikes and buses. There is smoke everywhere and they have been throwing rocks and breaking windows. We’re scared.”
Election 2008: In what seems like a daily occurrence now, another controversy has erupted among the Democratic candidates. This time it’s in Sen. Barack Obama’s court, as The Guardian reports about his pastor Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s controversial sermon that has been getting a lot of play on the Web. The Guardian includes some excerpts from his sermon including this passage, “Barack knows what it means living in a country and a culture that is controlled by rich white people. Hillary would never know that. Hillary ain’t never been called a nigger. Hillary has never had a people defined as a non-person.” Maybe the solution to all this back and forth controversy is to put Wright and Geraldine Ferarro in the ring?
Business: Here’s an interesting perspective. Bloomberg reports that the “collapse of the subprime mortgage market will lead to record losses for insurance companies, overtaking Hurricane Katrina, the worst natural disaster in U.S. history.”
O P I N I O N
Gannett Blog is giving its namesake the old one-two punch today after details came out yesterday on CEO Craig Dubow’s compensation for 2007. Despite the fact that Gannett’s stock has plummeted (flirting with a $27+ finish for today), Dubow was paid $7.9 million (a 36 percent increase from last year) including a $1.75 million bonus for essentially driving this “Titanic” into a hyper-local iceberg.
In this age of cutbacks and layoffs rattling the newspaper industry, such compensation seems downright immoral. When was the last time employees received a raise above 3 (or in some places, 2) percent? Or a bonus, themselves? When was the last time these newsrooms (or local information centers — gag) bought current Associated Press style books for the employees? When was the last time Gannett was proactive, that is hiring more staff (and replacing posts long unfilled) to handle new challenges and media platforms?
There must be a worldwide run on grape Kool-Aid. If so, it might explain why this offensive level of compensation for shoddy work is being allowed.
Does Dubow have a fiddle? If so, he’s been playing the heck out of it lately while his corporation burns.
Feed me 5 Under the Radar
