Holy Cow

The battle to save Shambo the sacred bullock ended on Thursday after police overcame chanting protestors protecting the Fresian at a Hindu monastic community in Wales.
 

Dozens of praying campaigners had built a shrine for Shambo at the monastery and vowed to save him.

But after a 12-hour stand-off with Welsh Assembly officials, the six-year-old bullock, which has tested positive for bovine tuberculosis, was finally led away to slaughter after police intervened.

"At least everybody that has campaigned for Shambo's survival can go to bed with a clear conscience, having tried everything they could," said a spokesman for the Skanda Vale temple near Carmarthen.

The standoff at the Community of the Many Names of God had followed months of legal wrangling over the fate of Shambo.

An Appeal Court ruled this month that the bullock must die in accordance with government policy of slaughtering TB-positive cattle.

An Indian charity had agreed to take Shambo out of the country and more than 23,500 people signed a protest petition.

Cows are sacred to Hindus and the monastery spokesman said it would be "an appalling desecration of life" if the bullock were killed.

The National Farmers Union says no animal should be exempt from the rules governing TB and that to spare Shambo would be unfair on farmers who have had to see their stock slaughtered.

A spokesman for the Welsh regional government said the option of allowing Shambo to go to India was not possible because it would put other animals and people at risk.

A panel has found that astronauts were allowed to fly on at least two occasions despite warnings they were so drunk they posed a flight risk, Aviation Week reported on Thursday on its Web site.
 

The publication said the panel set up by NASA to study astronaut health issues reported "heavy use of alcohol" within 12 hours of launch.

It said flight surgeons and other astronauts warned that the drunken astronauts posed a flight risk when they flew on the two known occasions.

The panel, established after the arrest of astronaut Lisa Nowak in February on assault charges, also apparently does not deal directly with Nowak or mention any other astronaut by name, Aviation Week said.

A spokeswoman at Houston's Johnson Space Center, where the astronaut corps is based, would not comment but the space agency said it would release the findings of "two reviews regarding astronaut medical and behavioral health assessments" at a press conference on Friday in Washington.

NASA Administrator Michael Griffin ordered the reviews after Nowak, who flew on a shuttle mission last year, was arrested on February 5 in Orlando, Florida on charges she assaulted a woman she viewed as a romantic rival for another astronaut.

Nowak, supposedly wearing diapers so she would not have to stop, drove all night from Houston to Orlando to confront the woman, Air Force Captain Colleen Shipman, as she arrived at the Orlando airport.

Texas leads the list of having the dirtiest power plants in the United States, while New England and the Pacific Coast produce cleaner energy and less carbon dioxide emissions linked to global warming, an environmental group said on Thursday.
 

Of the 50 "dirtiest" power plants with the highest CO2 emissions in the country, Texas accounts for five and Indiana and Pennsylvania each have four, the Environmental Integrity Project EIP annual study found.

Coal-fired power plants make half the electricity used in the United States and dominate the list of the 50 "dirtiest."

U.S. CO2 emissions actually fell slightly in 2006 from 2005, but if less-efficient older plants are not shut or modified and a wave of proposed coal-fired plants are built, CO2 emissions could rise 34 percent by 2030, the study said.

In 2005 and 2006, U.S. power plants emitted about 2.5 billion tons of CO2, said the study, which relied on data from the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Energy.

States with three plants on the list were Alabama, Georgia, North Carolina, Ohio and West Virginia, while Florida, Kentucky, New Mexico and Wyoming each had two plants on the Top 50 list.

New England and the Pacific Coast do not have any power plants on among the Top 50 list for CO2 polluters. But coal-fired plants in New Mexico, Arizona and Utah that serve California are among the top polluters, the study found.

Southern Co. owns the top two plants that last year produced the most CO2 -- the Scherer coal-fired plant in Georgia and the James H. Miller Jr. coal-fired plant in Alabama.

Still, the Scherer plant emitted less CO2 in 2006, at 25.3 million tons, from 26 million tons in 2005.

The EIP study also ranked the top producers of three other pollutants - sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide, and mercury.

The study found that sulfur dioxide emissions are improving due to federal regulations, nitrogen oxide emissions fell in 2006 and are expected to continue falling, and while mercury emissions were steady, they are expected to fall mainly as a "co-benefit" of sulfur dioxide controls.

The EIP study said U.S. power plants make 40 percent of CO2 emissions, about two-thirds of sulfur dioxide emissions, 22 percent of nitrogen oxides emissions, and roughly a third of all mercury emissions.

Americans who feel bored and underpaid do work hard -- at surfing the Internet and catching up on gossip, according to a survey that found U.S. workers waste about 20 percent of their working day.
 

An online survey of 2,057 employees by online compensation company Salary.com found about six in every 10 workers admit to wasting time at work with the average employee wasting 1.7 hours of a typical 8.5 hour working day.

Personal Internet use topped the list as the leading time-wasting activity according to 34 percent of respondents, with 20.3 percent then listing socializing with co-workers and 17 percent conducting personal business as taking up time.

The reasons why people wasted time were varied with nearly 18 percent of respondents questioned by e-mail in June and July said boredom and not having enough to do was the main reason.

The second most popular reason for wasting time was having too long hours (13.9 percent), being underpaid (11.8 percent), and a lack of challenging work (11.1 percent).

"While a certain amount of wasted time is built into company salary structures, our research indicates that companies with a challenged and engaged workforce can expect more productivity in return," said Bill Coleman, chief compensation officer at Salary.com.

While the amount of time wasted at work seems high, Coleman said the numbers have improved, with the amount of time wasted dropping 19 percent since Salary.com conducted its first annual survey on slacking at work in 2005. Then workers reported wasting 2.09 hours of their working day.

"I think (the decline) is really a result of the economy and that there's more business, more work available and less time to sit around wondering what you are going to do with your day," Coleman told Reuters.

Many power utilities are gearing up to install "smart" meters in kitchens or living rooms to show customers the cost of their electricity use – per minute and perhaps per appliance. During times of peak usage, utilities may even remotely adjust your home thermostat.
 

Having an instant electric bill on the wall, with dollar signs rolling like a gasoline pump, is designed to create sticker shock – and then, perhaps, a conservation ethic to help curb climate change. People might cut back their use of power-hungry devices, from clothes dryers to the TV "sleep mode." They might, for instance, turn on dishwashers only after 10 p.m.

Some utilities hope to install "intelligent sockets" that communicate between appliances and the electricity provider. On hot summer days, when electric rates would be raised through "dynamic pricing," those customers who voluntarily give up control of their usage – and it would have be voluntary – would be given rebates.

But can such watt-saving steps help save the planet? Yes, if they keep utilities from building more carbon-spewing power plants – especially the expensive kind that rev up only during peak hours. By many estimates, fossil-fuel power plants are likely to be the preferred source of electricity for years to come.

As it is, utilities can't keep up with rising demand. One projection shows a 19 percent rise in peak-time electricity usage over the next decade while only a 6 percent growth in power capacity.

Something's got to give. And it may be consumer lifestyles.

A three-year experiment in California with 2,500 customers showed they reduced their average electricity demand by 13 percent during peak summer hours when they had to pay five times the normal cost. Users with the kind of "smart" thermostats that adjust appliance use cut back by 27 percent.

Even if smart meters cut usage by only 5 percent nationwide with "time-of-day" pricing, that would save about 625 combustion turbines from being built and reduce overall industry costs by about $3 billion a year, according to a study by The Brattle Group, a consulting firm.

But such savings won't come cheap.

The cost of installing what's called advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) – with new meters alone priced up to $200 – may take years for utilities to recover. Many in the industry are balking at the up-front price tag, the technical challenges, and the uncertainty of consumer reaction to volatile prices and in-your-face meters.

Sensing resistance, Congress nudged utilities to adapt AMI in its 2005 energy law. Several states, especially California, are pushing it hard. At present, though, AMI is used in only about 6 percent of meters. State regulators need to be more aggressive in forcing utilities to give up the old practice of selling as much electricity as possible with flat-rate pricing and meters that consumers don't understand (and can't easily see). One idea is to "de-couple" a utility's profit from its electricity sales by guaranteeing a set rate of return.

Electricity providers need to become facilitators for their customers in achieving energy efficiency and reducing their carbon footprint.

Being "smart" isn't only for meters that alter electricity usage.

It's for the planet, too.

At what point will President Bush finally grasp the enormous disaster that the neo-conservatives, from Vice President Dick Cheney on down, have visited upon his presidency? Or, to put it numerically, just how does a president descend from a 92 percent approval rating one month after 9-11 — the highest of any president since modern polling began — to the two-thirds disapproval score that has stalked him through the last year, thanks to the Iraq debacle, without getting the message?
 

Two major polls released this week show that the vast majority of Americans grasp the salient lesson of the Iraq misadventure: "Winning" this war has nothing to do with winning the war on terrorism. Thus, the public overwhelmingly supports the congressional Democratic leadership's demand that the administration begin concrete steps to extract U.S. troops from Iraq.

This week's New York Times-CBS poll found that two-thirds of those polled said that the war is "going badly" and that "the United States should reduce its forces in Iraq, or remove them altogether." Meanwhile, a Washington Post-ABC survey reported that, "by a large margin, Americans trust the Democrats rather than the president to find a solution to a conflict that remains enormously unpopular."

According to the Post poll, more than six in 10 Americans want Congress to make the final decision about when our troops come home. Even a majority of Republicans judge Bush to be too rigid to change course, and significantly, among those who either served in Iraq or had a close friend or relative who did, only 38 percent approve of Bush's handling of the war.

In an important rebuke to those Democrat "centrists" afraid to vigorously challenge Bush on the war, about half of those polled criticized the Democrats for doing "too little" to challenge Bush's war policy. How much courage will it take for wavering Democrats and Republicans to come out forthrightly in favor of ending a war that the majority of Americans believe is not worth fighting?

At first, the public, driven by false claims of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction and ties to al-Qaida manufactured by the neo-con cabal that dominated the administration, bought into Bush's claims that the Iraq war was an essential battle in the war on terrorism. At a time when even respectable news organizations were spreading such falsehoods as unquestioned truths and most Democrats in Congress displayed the independence of mind of cheerleaders, it was no wonder that initial support for the Iraq war was nearly unanimous.

Fully 90 percent of Americans backed Bush one week after the first bombs fell in a "shock and awe" campaign that neo-con ideologues at the Pentagon were convinced would lead a terrorized population to embrace democracy and other purported Western values.

As Winston Churchill once observed, a lie gets halfway around the world before the truth puts its pants on. But the truth eventually does catch up, and that is the specter that now haunts our president. There is simply no plausible national security argument for the United States' ongoing occupation of Iraq. That fact was driven home Tuesday, when American and Iranian negotiators met for the second time in Baghdad at the insistence of Iraq's Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, who was quite clear that peace will not come without the Iranian government's cooperation.

The harsh reality that the United States must now enlist the support of Iran, the "rogue nation" that Bush claims threatens us with nukes, which this very week was once again accused by the U.S. ambassador of supplying arms to Iraq's anti-American Shiite militias, underscores the folly of this disastrous escapade. The regime change engineered by the neo-cons vastly extended the power of the regime housed in Tehran and will only intensify with each additional day of the U.S. occupation.

Yet, communication with Iran is a good thing, because Iranians at least have to live with the consequences of increased violence — as opposed to American politicians, who feel required only to muddle through to the next election. The Democrats and the few Republican dissidents are quite happy to make a show of their reservations about the war without actually ending it. The Democratic leadership in Congress is playing a risky game of pretending to be the party of peace without actually pursuing the budget-cutting measures that would force an end to the war.

While this opportunistic strategy may produce a temporary political advantage, it will be of slight comfort to the families of American soldiers killed and maimed in Iraq over the next 18 months, not to mention the hundreds of thousands of future Iraqi victims. Nor will it con a public that has turned solidly against this war and is determined to hold politicians responsible for ending it.

Pacific Grove, Calif. - The first-ever study ranking countries according to their level of peacefulness, the Global Peace Index, was recently published by the Economist Intelligence Unit.
 

Sensibly, its basic premise is that "peace isn't just the absence of war; it's the absence of violence."

The index uses 24 indicators such as how many soldiers are killed, the level of violent crimes, and relations with neighboring countries.

Yet it fails to include the most prevalent form of global violence: violence against women and children, often in their own families. To put it mildly, this blind spot makes the index very inaccurate.

Glancing at the list shows why. Out of 121 countries studied, the United States ranked 96; Israel was 119. But Libya, Cuba, and China – not exactly paragons of human rights – rank 58, 59, and 60.

A closer examination reveals some of the sources of distortion:

•For example, Egypt was ranked 73. But more than 90 percent of Egyptian girls and women are subjected to genital mutilation. This gruesome practice causes many lifelong physical problems and claims the lives of countless women. It's a terrible form of violence, but it wasn't included in the index, otherwise Egypt would have ranked much lower.

•United Arab Emirates is 38, but this does not count the jockey slave trade of little boys for the camel races that are a favorite sport in this area. It is well known that these children are often treated worse than the camels, subject to whippings and other violence, as well as given little to eat so they won't weigh much.

If this violence, as well as the violence of "honor killings" of girls and women in the Middle East were included, such nations would rank much lower.

•China ranked 60, but female infanticide is still a major problem, as shown by the imbalanced ratio of males to females there.

•Chile ranked 16, but as in many Latin American nations (and nations worldwide), the incidence of wife battering is extremely high. For example, although this violence is still rarely prosecuted or officially reported, 26 percent of Chilean women suffered at least one episode of violence by a partner, according to a 2000 UNICEF study.

The authors of the Global Peace Index expressed hope that it will lead to a new approach to the study of peace. They also said they plan to expand their criteria for future indexes. This expansion must start with major changes in the 10 "measures of societal safety and security."

The current index rightly seeks to measure the "level of disrespect for human rights." But according to the report's methodology, this level was based on the "Political Terror Scale" – a scale that ignores the fact that the most ubiquitous human rights violations worldwide are, as a UNICEF report noted 10 years ago, violations of the rights of women and children.

That the index fails to include this violence is particularly shocking in light of the longstanding availability of international statistics such as:

• Twenty percent of women and 5 to 10 percent of men have suffered sexual abuse as children.

• Between 100 million and 132 million girls and women have been subjected to genital mutilation worldwide. Each year, an estimated 2 million join their ranks.

•Female infanticide, selective female malnutrition, and medical neglect of girls are far too common. In India's Punjab State, girls between the ages of 2 and 4 die at nearly twice the rate of boys.

Similarly, while the index rightly includes "level of violent crime," it fails to take into account that much of the violence in families is still not considered a crime in many nations – and hence not reported, much less prosecuted, as such.

It's unrealistic to expect "cultures of peace" so long as children grow up in families in which the use of violence to impose one's will on others is considered normal, even moral.

The good news is that not every one growing up in such families perpetuates violence. The bad news is that many people do – be it in intimate or international relations.

Intimate and international violence are inextricably interconnected. But we can only see this once we include in studies of violence the majority: women and children. If we are serious about peace – not just about measuring it but about creating more of it – we have to look at the whole picture. We must pay particular attention to those formative experiences when young people first learn either to respect human rights or to accept human rights violations as just the way things are.

Only as we leave behind traditions of domination and violence in the human family will we have solid foundations on which to build global peace.

A parked car bomb killed 25 people and wounded 115 when it exploded near an intersection in central Baghdad on Thursday and police said the toll was likely to rise as many bodies were still buried under rubble.
 

Bodies lay strewn around the street after the blast, which smashed three buildings into piles of masonry and concrete. It was at least the fourth to hit the predominantly Shi'ite district of Karrada this week.

U.S. and Iraqi forces have stepped up security operations in Baghdad since mid-February in an attempt to stem bombings, many of them blamed on Sunni Islamist al Qaeda, as well as sectarian killings between majority Shi'ites and minority Sunni Arabs.

But large-scale bombings continue to plague the capital.

Residents bundled victims into the boots of cars and the back of pick-up trucks and vans to rush them to hospital as police tried to evacuate stunned residents.

At least one building and several cars were ablaze. Short bursts of gunfire could be heard soon after the explosion.

Karrada, normally one of Baghdad's most stable areas, was hit by three separate blasts on Monday which killed 13 people.

Earlier on Thursday, a parked car bomb killed seven people and wounded 45 near a popular kebab restaurant and shops in the city of Kirkuk, 250 km (155 miles) north of Baghdad.

Separately, the U.S. military said five soldiers had been killed in Iraq over the past two days. Three Marines and a soldier died in combat in volatile Diyala province north of Baghdad on Tuesday.

Another soldier was killed by small arms fire in southern Baghdad on Wednesday.

IRAN ACCUSED

On Thursday, the U.S. military's second most senior commander in Iraq said militia mortar and rocket crews had been hitting Baghdad's heavily protected Green Zone with greater accuracy in the past three months because of training from Iran.

Lieutenant-General Raymond Odierno's comments came after the U.S. ambassador to Iraq accused Tehran of increasing support for militias when he met his Iranian counterpart for a second round of talks on Iraq's violence on Tuesday.

Iran rejects the allegations.

"In the last three months we have seen a significant improvement in the capability of mortarmen and rocketeers to provide accurate fire into the Green Zone and other places," Odierno, operational commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, said.

"We think this is directly related to training conducted inside Iran," he told a news conference.

Rocket and mortar barrages have hit the sprawling Green Zone, home to the U.S. embassy and Iraqi government buildings, with greater frequency in recent months.

Many of the attacks come from the direction of areas such as Sadr City that have a strong presence of Mehdi Army militiamen loyal to anti-American cleric Moqtada al Sadr

Democratic senators urged that U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales be investigated for possible perjury and issued a subpoena on Thursday to senior White House political adviser Karl Rove.
 

The actions were part of an escalating battle between the Democratic-led Congress and the White House that appears headed toward court.

Four Democratic senators wrote U.S. Solicitor General Paul Clement, asking that he appoint an independent counsel to examine the truthfulness of Gonzales' testimony regarding his firing of federal prosecutors and President George W. Bush's warrantless domestic-spying program.

"We ask that you immediately appoint an independent special counsel from outside the Department of Justice to determine whether Attorney General Gonzales may have misled Congress or perjured himself in testimony before Congress," they wrote.

The letter was signed by members of the Judiciary Committee: Charles Schumer of New York, Dianne Feinstein of California, Russell Feingold of Wisconsin and Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island.

"Oh give me a break," said White House spokeswoman Dana Perino. "It's amazing to me how every day the Democrats find a way to get out of doing the work Americans are expecting on issues important to them."

Shortly afterward, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, a Vermont Democrat, subpoenaed two more White House aides -- Rove and deputy political director J. Scott Jennings -- in his panel's probe of the fired prosecutors.

"The evidence shows that senior White House political operatives were focused on the political impact of federal prosecutions and whether federal prosecutors were doing enough to bring partisan voter fraud and corruption cases," Leahy said.

"It is obvious that the reasons given for the firings of these prosecutors were contrived as part of a cover up," Leahy charged.

The White House has said the firings were justified. It has rejected calls from Democrats and some Republicans for Gonzales to resign.

The House of Representatives Judiciary Committee on Wednesday recommended contempt of Congress charges against White House chief of staff Josh Bolten and former White House counsel Harriet Miers for refusing to provide subpoenaed information and testimony. The White House contends that Bush's assertion of executive privilege shields them.

Gonzales drew fire at a hearing before the Senate Judiciary committee on Tuesday when lawmakers challenged his truthfulness and ability to lead the Justice Department.

Following his appearance, the White House and Justice Department said they believed Gonzales had been truthful.

The four Democratic senators who wrote Clement disagreed, saying: "We believe a special counsel is needed because it has become apparent that the attorney general has provided -- at a minimum -- half truths and misleading statements."

They cited as examples matters dealing with his firing last year of nine of the nation's 93 U.S. attorneys and dealings with Bush's spying program in the war on terrorism while Gonzales was White House counsel.

The senators said Gonzales testified this week that a White House briefing in March 2004 for members of Congress was about "intelligence activities" and not about the spying program, despite assertions to the contrary by others who attended the meeting.

Gonzales testified earlier this year that there had not been any "serious disagreement" about the surveillance program. But former Deputy Attorney General James Comey told Congress in May a number Justice Department officials threatened to quit over it.

In April, Gonzales told Congress he had not talked to potential witnesses about his firing of federal prosecutors. But the next month a former aide, Monica Goodling, testified he had raised the topic with her.

Stocks plummeted on Thursday, with the Dow industrials tumbling 400 points, on more signs of deterioration in the U.S. housing market and problems in financing corporate takeovers.
 

Earnings reports also weighed on stocks. A drop in quarterly profit at Exxon Mobil Corp. (XOM.N) wiped out more than $16 billion in market value of the world's largest publicly traded company. Exxon's stock slid 5.4 percent to

$87.72.

Worrying news on housing came from home builders D.R. Horton Inc (DHI.N) and Beazer Homes (BZH.N). Both posted quarterly losses.

Financial shares took a beating on concern that the problems of the battered subprime mortgage market will spread.

The Dow Jones industrial average (.DJI) was down 375.23 points, or 2.72 percent, at 13,409.84. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index (.SPX) was down 45.75 points, or 3.01 percent, at 1,472.34. The Nasdaq Composite Index (.IXIC) was down 75.12 points, or 2.84 percent, at 2,573.05.

"You have to have a simmering effect now. We've just gone in one direction -- north," said Todd Schoenberger, executive director of brokerage at USAA, who was in New York on Thursday.

"The question is where are we going with corporate credit?" he said.

The Chicago Board of Options Exchange's volatility index (.VIX), a gauge for measuring investor anxiety, shot to its highest level in more than 13 months.

At late morning, as losses mounted, the New York Stock Exchange imposed trading curbs to restrict large-block sales when a stock is falling.

Beazer's stock was down 11.9 percent at $15.01 while D.R. Horton was down 3.8 percent at $16.81.

In addition to the weak corporate results, a government report showed a sharper-than-expected drop in June new home sales, while home builder WCI Communities Inc. (WCI.N) said the real estate market downturn was hurting its push to sell itself. The stock fell 21 percent to $8.95 on the NYSE.

Exxon led decliners on the S&P 500, following by Citigroup Inc. (C.N), down 4.2 percent at $47.19. Adverse credit market conditions are spilling over into the financing of corporate deals, which have helped to drive stocks to recent record highs.

Dow Chemical Co. (DOW.N) reported a slight increase in quarterly earnings, but its shares fell 5.9 percent to $42.99, as some analysts argued that a lower-than-expected tax rate helped boost earnings more than improved demand.

July 26, 2007

 

Wall Street fell sharply Thursday, extending its weeks-long streak of volatility after disappointing home sales figures added to investors' increasing uneasiness about the mortgage and corporate lending markets. The Dow Jones industrials fell more than 240 points, while Treasury yields plunged as investors moved money from stocks to bonds.

Investors who had been able to shrug off concerns about subprime mortgage lending problems and a more difficult environment for corporate borrowing were clearly worried once again. Anxiety increased after the Commerce Department reported that sales of new homes fell 6.6 percent last month to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 834,000 units, more than triple what had been expected and the largest percentage drop since sales fell by 12.7 percent in January.

Traders also weighed a mixed batch of second-quarter earnings reports from major names like Ford Motor Co. and Exxon Mobil Corp. But disappointing results from home builders including Pulte Homes Inc. and D.R. Horton Inc. _ squeezed by a sluggish environment from home sales and continued defaults in subprime loans _ weighed heavily on the market.

'Wall Street continues to walk a wall of worry,' said Ryan Larson, a senior equity trader at Voyageur Asset Management. 'The housing market continues to be a story, and nobody knows when it will rebound. But, the real concerns are about credit and oil pushing higher.'

Jitters remain throughout the market that the number of private-equity deals _ a main driver of the market's record run _ might dry up because buyout shops are having difficulties accessing credit. On Wednesday, a group of banks had to postpone a $12 billion offering to raise funds for Chrysler Group's acquisition by Cerberus Capital.

Meanwhile, a barrel of crude oil was up 91 cents at $76.79 on the New York Mercantile Exchange, feeding the market's worries about inflation.

Thursday marked the eighth straight session in which the market has fallen after rising the day before _ or vice-versa. Wall Street has been unable to put together back-to-back gains or losses in that stretch. On Wednesday, the Dow rose 68 points.

In late morning trading, the Dow fell 243.62, or 1.77 percent, to 13,541.45.

Broader stock indicators were also down. The Standard & Poor's 500 index was down 31.75, or 2.09 percent, at 1,486.34 and the Nasdaq composite index tumbled 49.70, or 1.88 percent, to 2,598.47.

The steep decline in stocks has been a boon for the Treasury market as traders shifted cash into safer investments. The yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury note fell to 4.82 percent from 4.90 percent late Wednesday.

The dollar was mixed against other major currencies, while gold prices were lower.

Wall Street, now at the peak of second-quarter earnings season, has been extremely volatile lately _ a signature of typically slower trading that has been heightened by record runs in major market indexes. On Thursday, declining issues beat advancers by a 4 to 3 basis on the New York Stock Exchange, where volume came to almost 670 million shares in late morning trading.

Also stunting stocks was a disappointing durable goods report released by the Commerce Department. Though sales of big-ticket items increased by 1.4 percent last month to a seasonally adjusted $217.07 billion, durable goods excluding transportation equipment had an unexpected drop.

In addition, the Labor Department reported that jobless claims fell by 2,000 to 301,000 in the week ended July 21, slightly better than analysts' expectations.

Ford Motor rose 20 cents, or 2.6 percent, to $8.18 after it reported cost-cutting and a turnaround in its core automotive operations pushed its second-quarter to a profit. The company had posted seven quarters of losses as it grappled with sluggish sales and a major overhaul of its operations.

Dow component Exxon Mobil's disappointing second-quarter results also weighed on the overall market, even as energy prices continued to spike. Shares fell $3.63, or 3.9 percent, to $89.16 after it reported a smaller profit than analysts expected.

The Nasdaq's losses weren't as steep as other major indexes during the session due to strength from Apple Inc., which surged $9.86, or 7.2 percent, to $147.12. The iPod and iPhone maker's earnings easily surpassed Wall Street projections late Wednesday due to strong sales from its computer offerings.

Home builders sank after several disappointing reports. D.R. Horton fell 86 cents, or 4.9 percent, to $16.62 after it posted a fiscal third-quarter loss on charges to write down the value of unsold inventory and deposits on land.

Pulte fell $1, or 4.8 percent, to $19.67 after it posted a second-quarter loss amid the struggling housing market.

Dow Chemical Co. dropped $1.82, or 3.9 percent, to $43.85 after second-quarter results missed expectations. The company said profit during the quarter rose 2 percent as strong international growth offset weakness in the North American housing and automotive sectors.

The Russell 2000 index of smaller companies fell 21.21, or 2.61 percent, to 791.29.

European stocks fell sharply in response to the drop in New York. Britain's FTSE 100 dropped 1.74 percent, Germany's DAX index dropped 1.57 percent, and France's CAC-40 fell 1.64 percent. Earlier, Japan's Nikkei stock average closed up 0.88 percent.

A federal judge in Boston has ordered the government to pay more than $101 million to the families of four Massachusetts men wrongly convicted of murder, reports CBS station WBZ-TV in Boston.

Joseph Salvati, Peter Limone and the families of two other men who died in prison after being convicted in the 1965 gangland murder they didn't commit, had sued the federal government for malicious prosecution.

U.S. District Judge Nancy Gertner said it took 30 years to uncover the injustice, and that (quote) "the government's position is, in a word, absurd."

There was no immediate breakdown on how the $101,750,000 judgement would be distributed among the plaintiffs.

Their lawsuit accused the FBI of withholding evidence that could have cleared them.

During a lengthy civil trial, lawyers for the men argued that Boston FBI agents knew Joseph "The Animal" Barboza - a mob hitman - lied when he named the four men as Edward "Teddy" Deegan's killers. They said Barboza wanted to protect a fellow FBI informant, Vincent "Jimmy" Flemmi, who was involved in Deegan's murder.

The men were "acceptable collateral damage" in the FBI's priority at the time - taking down the Mafia through the use of criminal informants, their lawyers said.

The government argued that federal authorities had no duty to share information with state officials who prosecuted Limone, Salvati, Henry Tameleo and Louis Greco. Federal authorities cannot be held responsible for the results of a state prosecution, a Justice Department lawyer argued.

Judge Gertner admonished the Justice Department in her ruling Thursday.

"The FBI knew his (Barboza's) testimony was false, but let perjury happen anyway," Gertner said.

"The FBI said the benefit outweighed the cost. To put it in current terms, these four men were collateral damage."

"Now is the time to say, without equivocation, this cost to these four men is not remotely acceptable."

Salvati and Limone were exonerated in 2001 after FBI memos dating back to the Deegan case surfaced, showing the men were framed by Barboza.

"It took extraordinary efforts to bring out the facts. Judge Wolfe, Lawyer Garro and even reporter Dan Rea" of WBZ-TV, Gertner said.

"The FBI said 'just trust us' to the state and then vouched for a perjurer."

The lawsuit accused the government of malicious prosecution, intentional infliction of emotional distress, conspiracy and negligent supervision of FBI agents. The case was heard by Judge Gertner instead of a jury.

Lawyers for the men did not seek a specific amount in damages, but in court documents they cited other wrongful conviction cases in which $1 million was awarded for every year of imprisonment, which in this case would amount to more than $100 million total.