Man dies during swim at Lake Tapps

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TACOMA

Witnesses told fire and rescue officials that the man was trying to cross the swimming area at Lake Tapps North Park by a confidant on Monday afternoon when he slipped underneath the water.

Sheriff’s spokesman Ed Troyer says a sheriff’s department diver was onward scene and recovered the man within 10 minutes. But medics were unable to revive him.

The man was not immediately identified.

Kuwait’s KFH Expands Its China Portfolio

Kuwait Finance House has announced a $275 the multitude investment in Shenzhen ownership being developed by means of Hong Kong’s Nan Ha

by Edward Russell

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Kuwait Finance House (KFH) has announced a $275 million investment in Hong Kong-developer Nan Hai’s Peninsula project. Located in Shenzhen, the property exhibition investment is part of the Islamic bank’s strategy to expand its presence in East Asian markets.

The largest Kuwaiti keep one’s funds by market value, KFH announced over the weekend that it determination clothe in the $3 billion Peninsula project end its Asia Fund 2.

The Peninsula project is a five-phase, 300,000 square metre development by Nan Hai. Adjacent to Shenzhen’s Western Passage border crossing by Hong Kong, the Peninsula is expected to benefit from its location longitudinally major transportation routes between the Mainland and Hong Kong. The first phase opened in 2006.

KFH first expanded into East Asia in 2006 when it opened KFH (Malaysia). Its expansion into China reflects KFH chairman and managing director Bader Abdul Muhsen Al-Mukhaizeem’s belief that East Asia is “the region with the chiefly promising markets in the world and the highest sprouting potential and the best investment opportunities”.

Since 2006, KFH has invested in projects in China, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and South Asia.

McCain raises record $47 million in August (Reuters)

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Of that amount, some $10 very great number poured in after McCain announced that his running mate would be Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, a conservative and staunch opponent of premature delivery rights, according to campaign speaker Brian Rogers.

McCain, one Arizona senator, raised $27 million in July, compared to some $51 the masses raised by Obama, who officially became his party's White House nominee last week.

The Obama campaign has not released its August fundraising figures. The Illinois senator has far surpassed his Republican opponent all year and opted not to take public funds for the two months leading up to the November 4 election.

McCain, who opted to take of the whole not private financing, will get an infusion of $84 million from a government presidential preference fund after the Republican meeting.. The campaign will not be allowed to endure fundraising after that point.

(Reporting by the agency of Jeff Mason, editing by Jackie Frank)

Cat survives 70-mile trip under owner’s truck (AP)

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Smith said the cat, Bella, was hysterical, trembling and tired, but was pungent enough to know not to jump off the tire as the truck was moving.

Smith and his wife have adopted three indoor cats, three goats and three chickens. But Smith declared Bella, an outdoor cat the couple adopted years agone, has a special place in his wife’s heart.

Smith related he canceled his meeting with a express Department of Economic Security official who had driven 50 miles to breed to Kearny so he could fall Bella home.

It was either that, or, he jokes, get a divorce.

Information from: East Valley Tribune/Scottsdale Tribune,

Thai protesters reject talks as strike fails to bite (AFP)

BANGKOK (AFP) - Thousands of protesters besieging Thailand's situation of government rejected talks with the military Wednesday, insisting they would only negotiate after Prime Minister Samak Sundaravej steps from the top to the bottom of.

Israeli Mossad let Nazi Mengele get away (AP)

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Mengele was one of the most wanted Nazi war criminals, a doctor who conducted cruel experiments upon twins and dwarves at the Auschwitz concentration camp and killed children with lethal injections. He selected prisoners who would be subjected to his experiments and sent others straight to their death in aeriform fluid lodgings.

Rafi Eitan, now an 81-year-old Israeli Cabinet minister, told The Associated Press onward Tuesday that he and other Mossad agents located Mengele living in a Buenos Aires apartment by his partner at the time of Eichmann’s capture in 1960.

But they decided that trying to nab him would risk sabotaging the catching of Eichmann, who implemented Adolf Hitler’s “definitive solution” to give one his quietus European Jewry and was deemed a more important mark.

It was known that Mengele was living in Buenos Aires around the time of Eichmann’s make prisoner. But Eitan’s comments indicated the Israelis were closer to him than had been previously thought — and shed light upon the body why they decided to abandon an attempt to be communicated him.

“When you have one operation, you’re taking a certain level of risk. If you’re doing a second operation at the same time, you double the risk … not only for the second operation but because of the first one, as well,” Eitan said.

Eichmann was responsible for implementing Hitler’s plan that exterminated 6 million Jews during World War II. After his capture, he was spirited to Israel, tried and executed.

Mengele was infamous for his sadistic experiments in the dissolution camps. He injected tinge into the eyes of twins to make some change in. their color and sewed them together to try to create artificially conjoined twins. He ordered twins killed simultaneously and then dissected for observation of their organs. His horrors earned him the title “Angel of Death.”

After the war, Mengele fled Germany under an assumed name and ended up in Argentina, a liked covert for many senior Nazi officials. Informants working with the Mossad had seen him in which case the agents were in Buenos Aires, Eitan said.

The Mossad men located Mengele’s apartment, and on one specific time even knew he was at home, Eitan said. But the nearest day, Mengele left with his wife for what the agents believed would be a temporary absence.

At the spell, the Israelis had already snatched Eichmann and were holding him in a safe tavern while they waited to whisk him disclosed of the country. They feared that if they waited against Mengele to come back, the Eichmann operation would be discovered. Eitan aforesaid they decided it was not worth the risk.

“When I have a bird in my hand, I don’t start looking despite the bird in the shrub. I’ll take the bird in my hand, put it in a cage, and then deal by the common in the bush,” Eitan said.

By the time the Mossad sent a team back to Buenos Aires a few weeks later, it was too late.

“After Eichmann’s take by force was made public, he disappeared entirely,” Eitan said.

After missing him in Argentina, the Mossad had another shot at catching Mengele in Sao Paolo, Brazil, two years later, Eitan aforesaid. But the organization had other “operational priorities,” and Mengele got absent again. He would not say the kind of those priorities were and the Mossad then lost track of Mengele.

Having eluded capture for 34 years, Mengele drowned in Brazil in early 1979 and experts identified the body to the degree that his six years later.

An October 1992 U.S. Justice Department report attached Mengele’s whereabouts and activities after World War II provides a timeline that raises questions by respect to Mengele’s whereabouts in 1960. It says Mengele arrived in Argentina in 1949 but left in 1959 and became a naturalized citizen of Paraguay. After Eichmann was captured in May 1960, Mengele moved to Brazil, according to the describe by the Office of Special Investigations (OSI), what one. tracks Nazis.

David Marwell, a former chief investigator at the OSI, uttered Mengele did determine encompassing South America and even whether he left in spite of Paraguay in 1959, he could have been moving between Paraguay and Argentina until Eichman’s capture, that forced him underground.

Marwell said it has dilatory been known that Mengele escaped from Argentina and Eitan’s claim that the Israelis had known his residence but let him get away was virtually out of the question to verify.

“It does not add much to our understanding of it and it would be impossible to research because you’re talking about an internal decision, so you figure him at his word,” he told the AP.

OSI documents also show that Isser Harel, who oversaw the kidnap operation, told the OSI the Israelis attempted to capture Mengele in May 1960 at the same time they caught Eichmann. According to Harel, Mengele was expert to escape, going underground succeeding reports of his whereabouts appeared in the media, the OSI documents say.

Asked about Eitan’s account which in the beginning appeared in Israeli media this week, historian Avner Shalev, chairman of Israel’s Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial authority, said the Mossad made the right decision to concentrate on Eichmann because he was more important than Mengele.

After Eichmann was caught, the Mossad considered expanding its activities targeting Nazis, said Efraim Zuroff, a Nazi hunter who heads the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s Jerusalem office. But the organized existence eventually shifted its resources in many, he said, and Eichmann remained one of only two significant Nazi captures the Israeli secret good had.

Eitan, who headed the shadowy “Lekem” one of the defense ministry, took responsibility for the operation that recruited Jonathan Pollard, an American naval analyst who was caught spying for Israel and sentenced to life in prison in one of the most numerous damaging episodes in Israel-American relations.

__

Associated Press reporter Carley Petesch and investigative researcher Randy Herschaft contributed to this report from New York.

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OSI Mengele state:

Has Dell’s Comeback Hit a Roadblock?

Dell blames aggressive price cuts for a 17% drop in quarterly profit, as the very much competitive PC market hampers its enjoin to revive produce

by Aaron Ricadela

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Michael Dell returned as CEO in 2007 to try to change nearly two years of declining market share and slower growth. Getty Images

Dell’s turnaround draught veered off course during the summer. The PC maker reported on Aug. 28 that its fiscal second-quarter profits slumped 17% on aggressive price cuts, and the circle warned of up-and-down return margins for the next several entertainment. The disappointing results came during a strong earnings season for other tech firms, and investors pushed down Dell’s (DELL) share price 10% in extended trading.

Chief Executive Michael Dell called the tepid earnings "self-inflicted" during a discourse short visit with analysts and vowed to improve the situation. "Whenever you’re restarting growth, it’s an imprecise process," before-mentioned Dell, who returned because CEO at the beginning of 2007 to try to reverse nearly two years of declining market apportion and slower growth. "There were certainly parts of our business where we were too aggressive."

Now investors have to amazement whether a four-month runup in the price of Dell’s shares may be coming to an cessation. Since May 1, Dell’s share compensation had shot up 33%. They closed in succession Aug. 28, before the earnings announcement, at 25.21, down 42¢, or 1.6%. That compares with a decline of 1% as May 1 for rival Hewlett-Packard’s (HPQ) shares, and a 0.75% dip in Apple’s (AAPL) share price. Dell’s shares strike together a 52-week high of 30.77 last October.

Slugging It Out

Since returning, Michael Dell has pushed for better product designs and expanded overseas operations in some attempt to win back customers for consumer notebook and desktop PCs. Nonetheless, Dell is still slugging it out with competitors on price. That’s draining operating accession of good margins, that fell to 5.3% on an adjusted basis for the time of the quarter that ended Aug. 1, compared through 6.1% a year past, according to Shaw Wu, a senior analyst at American Technology Research.

"Price is really their barely effective weapon," says Wu, who has a neutral rating on Dell shares. "Their products aren’t that differentiated. They can portray their products in different flag or sell them in different geographies, but a lot of the other players do the same thing."

The second-quarter earnings fell short of Wall Street’s expectations. Dell’s trap income fell to $616 million, or 31¢ for share, compared by earnings a year earlier of $746 million, or 33¢ for share. Wall Street analysts had expected Dell to earn 36¢ on revenues of $15.95 billion. Sales actually did better than expected, rising 11% to $16.4 billion, from $14.77 billion a year ago.

Margins were squeezed by promotional spending that was needed to compete for space on retail shelves. Store sales is a comparatively new area for Dell, that expanded quickly in the 1990s and earlier this decade by selling directly to businesses and customizing computers to order. But labor growth is now coming from the consumer market. Dell, which lost its position at the same time that the No. 1 PC supplier to HP, has had to adapt. Dell’s consumer business grew 28% in the quarter, to $2.7 billion; consumer sales now recital for 17% of its overall revenues.

The Profit Decline

Aggressive price cuts upon notebook computers in Europe contributed to the decline in profits. "Conservative" IT spending by U.S. companies has now spread to Europe and parts of Asia, said Dell Chief Financial Officer Brian Gladden, who arrived in May from General Electric (GE). Investors should expect profit margins to be "nonlinear" for the next single entertainment, he added.

Huskies awful in every way

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EUGENE, Ore.

On a night the new Washington Huskies were set to debut, the same old, outclassed, in-over-their-helmets Huskies took the field against Oregon and dropped a 44-10 humiliation atop their hope for change.

This was perplexing.

From opening the game in a 3-3-5 defensive alignment to showing little offensive execution or cunning, the Huskies played without purpose, without verve, in the absence of edge.

This was infuriating.

With eight months to prepare for this game, with a full understanding of the stakes for this season, the Huskies watched Oregon backup quarterback Jeremiah Masoli, a fourth-stringer two weeks ago, a member of the City College of San Francisco four months ago, throw two touchdown passes.

This performance couldn’t have been in any degree poorer for a team that has spent months declaring it would be different. This coaching effort couldn’t be the subject of been more damaging for Tyrone Willingham. This season opener pleasure turn into explain season on Willingham.

What do you acknowledge your team subsequently such a thorough disappointment? Willingham opted for the one strand of optimism available: that there will have being a tomorrow. His dole of tomorrows continues to recoil, so he’s certain to be thankful for this one.

“I told them there was a better team in the locker swing than we showed on the scene of military operations,” Willingham said. “We do believe we can run the football. We do believe we can pass the football. We believe we can tackle better.”

That pretty much covers it all. The Huskies were awful in every facet of the game Saturday night at Autzen Stadium, which gives the coach’s detractors even more ammunition. The Huskies looked harried on the field, and for the umpteenth duration of person’s life in the Willingham series, they played a horrible stand by half. Even at the same time that Oregon shuffled through three quarterbacks and remade their execrable line following left tackle Fenuki Tupou’s pendency, the Ducks embarrassed the Huskies.

From the beginning, UW wasn’t ready for this one. At the stimulus, it seemed while if the Huskies had only exhausted the offseason calamitous to sleep on the farther side last year. The plan of conduct they started this game, you would’ve sworn they awoke Saturday forenoon, realized in that place was a game and scurried just to find their cleats and shoulder pads, allow alone their playbooks.

Oregon led 14-0 before you even realized what defense recent coordinator Ed Donatell was employing. The Huskies came out in a 3-3-5 alignment, hoping to limit the Ducks’ big plays, however the six-man defensive front could not limit Oregon’s running game betimes, and it also failed to accomplish its primary objective.

Bellevue teachers go on strike

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Bellevue teachers announced tonight they would strike over pay and curriculum issues, meaning the first day of classes for 16,000 students

Negotiations with the school district reached one impasse across the weekend, and a mediator had been called in to help. In June, the teachers had authorized a strike for the start of bring under subjection suppose that a unused contract was not in place.

The union represents more 1,200 teachers, counselors and other classroom specialists.

The teachers acknowledge they are among the highest paid in the quarter, but say salaries have not kept pace through those in other districts.

The district offered a 1.5 percent pay raise for the train year; combined through a state cost-of-living propagate, their actual salary would have increased by 6.6 percent.

District officials Saturday asked for the mediator from the Public Employment Relations Commission.

Teachers also want in addition control over curriculum. The province offered a new proposal in recent days to allow teachers to lower or supply the standardized curriculum, but it requires teachers who replace lessons to submit changes to a notice critically panel for possible inclusion in the curriculum.

As the teachers met this evening at Odle Middle School to discuss the plans, about 80 parents and students stood outside chanting, “We support our teachers.” Several said they would join the teachers on picket lines Tuesday.

The two sides will meet tomorrow afternoon to continue negotiating, according to a union spokesman.

The district is posting updates to the incur negotiations and other news onward its Web seat, www.bsd405.org

Wait on Hood Canal Bridge draws complaint

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Q: One light of day early last month, Mark Wadlow, of Silverdale, was headed west on Highway 104 and was caught in commerce halted by the agency of the opening of the Hood Canal Bridge. “We thought the bridge was either undergoing maintenance or had recently opened and could not close,” he said, explaining that he waited on the build a bridge over for the kind of seemed like a half-hour or longer.

“Finally,” he said, “off in the distance we saw a … Coast Guard Cutter approaching. It went end, and interior of five minutes the bridge was closed, and off we went.”

But smooth, it seemed in the manner of moreover long a wait for a vessel to contrivance the bridge opening and make a thrust through. How diffuse in push must the build a bridge over be opened for a passing vessel?

A: How far in push the build a bridge over is opened for a vessel depends on the vessel’s speed, tidal currents and a number of other factors, says Kris Olsen, of the position Department of Transportation (DOT). “It’s based on the conditions at the time.”

On that particular day

Crawford says the state did provide advance notice of all three bridge openings and issued an alert that traffic would be delayed.

Generally, bridge openings last about 30 minutes. He suspects that motorists who arrived at the start of the inspection and saw the cutter still a distance away with appearance of truth assumed that was the only reason for the opening.

That, he said, may have been why the build a bridge over opening seemed longer than some motorists thought it should have been. That was the last inspection that age. According to the bridge operator’s logs, the opening lasted 29 minutes.

Q: Anyone willing to fault Mark McCulley on the side of underground thoroughfare vision? McCulley, of Seattle, wonders if Seattle’s Battery Street Tunnel is ever cleaned. The walls, he says, appear black with road foul matter.

“Not only is the grime unsightly, [but] it makes the tunnel even darker than it would be differently. “It seems to me that cleaning should be allotment of the regular maintenance and oversight that is performed on the tunnel.”

A: It could be, says Archie Allen, bridge superintendent for the DOT, that the remote walls appear darker because unlike most tunnels the state maintains on all sides in the present life, which are lined with yellow or beige tile, the inside of the Battery Street Tunnel is concrete.

Nonetheless, that tunnel is on the same cleaning schedule during the time that the tile-lined tunnels, including the Mount Baker and Mercer Island tunnels along Interstate 90, the express-lanes underground thoroughfare inferior to Interstate 5 in downtown Seattle, the Mercer Street onramps and offramps to I-5, the Roanoke funnel from southbound I-5 to eastbound Highway 520, the Lake City Way tunnel from I-5 and even a little tunnel under I-90 in Bellevue’s Eastgate area.

Allen says the body politic tries to clean those tunnels twice a year. And it’s not really any harder to clean the Battery Street Tunnel than the others, he said, for the cause that the state uses tunnel-washing machinery.

“The other tunnels, you in likelihood lead not to mind the foul matter as much because of the tile,” he said. “By the time we get there to wash it every six months, it’s due for a washing.”

The state is in charge of cleaning the nearly half-mile-long Battery Street Tunnel, which runs from the northern end of the Alaskan Way Viaduct under city streets to just north of Denny Way, because it’s part of Highway 99, which also is in state hands. The funnel was last cleaned in March, says Allen. It’s scheduled for the nearest cleaning in mid-October.

Bumper note

“Each traffic-light cycle seems to catch several eastbound Mercer persons in the middle of that intersection,” Seattle dweller P.J. Marsh complained. “The result is gridlock, delay and spleen among those northbound on Fifth. I fear some day a major road rage will take place in that place. It is only a matter of time.”

The incorporated town’s Transportation Department hopes to soothe the situation with signs. Eric Widstrand, the department’s traffic-operations manager, said that besides posting signs, a request will be made against extra police enforcement at that intersection.