Eideard

That’s right. Ain’t anything different on the outside.

The U.S. government has imposed the first increase in mileage standards for passenger cars and boosted the floor for sport utilities and pickups beginning with model year 2011 vehicles.

The modest increase of less than 1 mile per gallon for the fleet over current targets for the fleet represents an abbreviated approach by the Obama administration as it confronts industry distress and pressure from California and other states to set their own goals.

The standard, which is expected to cost industry $1.4 billion in vehicle design and other changes, would require compacts, sedans and other passenger cars to average 30.2 miles per gallon in combined city/highway driving, up from the 27.5 mpg standard that was established in the late 1970s under the Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) program.

Many passenger cars made by overseas manufacturers already meet or exceed the standard.

Just in case you never noticed.

Toyota Motor Corp expects its 2010 Prius hybrid to get 46 mpg while estimates for the Insight hybrid made by Honda Motor Co is 41 mpg.

Detroit’s efforts to revamp its fleet include the Ford Fusion hybrid sedan, due in showrooms this spring, that gets 41 mpg/city.

I’ll just take a line or two to whine about the lack of a smallish-diesel-powered pickup available in the U.S.. Ford makes ‘em. So does Toyota. Just not for the United States.

Daylife/Reuters Pictures

The United States will give Pakistan the tools in needs to defeat al Qaeda, but it expects accountability in return, President Barack Obama said in an interview about his new Afghan strategy.

On CBS’s “Face the Nation” program, Obama also said if the United States had al Qaeda leaders in its sights in Pakistan, it would go after them after consulting Pakistani authorities…

“One of the concerns that we’ve had building up over the last several years is a notion, I think, among the average Pakistani, that this is somehow America’s war and they are not invested,” Obama said.

“What we want to do is say to the Pakistani people — you are our friends, you are our allies. We are going to give you the tools to defeat al Qaeda and to root out these safe havens, but we also expect some accountability,” he said.

He also said the United States would go after so-called “high-value” targets in Pakistan after consulting with Pakistani authorities…”Our plan does not change the recognition of Pakistan as a sovereign government,” Obama said. “We need to work with them and through them to deal with al Qaeda. But we have to hold them much more accountable.”

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Officials at three Texas universities say they have serious concerns about a bill to let students carry guns on campus.

“As one faculty person told me, ‘Do you think I want to pass out those Fs and Ds with somebody in the classroom having a gun?’ ” state Rep. Lon Burnam, D-Fort Worth.

The bill, backed by the National Rifle Association, would be limited to students 21 and older, said the bill’s sponsor, state Rep. Joe Driver, R-Garland, who argues such a law would make campuses safer.

More than 70 Texas House members have signed on as co-sponsors to the bill, Driver said, noting 76 are needed to pass the legislation.

Next year, they’re gonna let ‘em have books.

Criminal proceedings have begun in Spain against six senior officials in the Bush administration for the use of torture against detainees in Guantánamo Bay. Baltasar Garzón, the counter-terrorism judge whose prosecution of General Augusto Pinochet led to his arrest in Britain in 1998, has referred the case to the chief prosecutor before deciding whether to proceed.

The case is bound to threaten Spain’s relations with the new administration in Washington, but Gonzalo Boyé, one of the four lawyers who wrote the lawsuit, said the prosecutor would have little choice under Spanish law but to approve the prosecution.

“The only route of escape the prosecutor might have is to ask whether there is ongoing process in the US against these people,” Boyé told the Observer. “This case will go ahead. It will be against the law not to go ahead.”

The officials named in the case include the most senior legal minds in the Bush administration. They are: Alberto Gonzales, a former White House counsel and attorney general; David Addington, former vice-president Dick Cheney’s chief of staff; Douglas Feith, who was under-secretary of defence; William Haynes, formerly the Pentagon’s general counsel; and John Yoo and Jay Bybee, who were both senior justice department legal advisers.

Personally, I’d love to see these thugs get their just due. I have some concern that the prosecution will never be more than a sideshow – since it seems unlikely they’ll ever go to trial in the United States. Our government’s focus on hauling us up from the recession guarantees that.

U.S. cooperation with extradition rarely happens unless we’re the ones looking to extradite.

Wow! One daring guy in a pinstripe suit.

President Barack Obama won support from top bankers on Friday for his efforts to rid financial institutions of bad debts, but differences remained over broader U.S. plans for the financial industry.

Chief executives from Wells Fargo, JP Morgan Chase and other financial giants met Obama at the White House and echoed his call for cooperation to help the economy. But their statements about tough trading conditions in March overshadowed the positive spin the executives and the White House sought to give to the meeting.

“The basic message is we’re all in this thing together,” Wells Fargo Chief Executive John Stumpf told reporters after the meeting, with other bank executives at his side…

The meeting came just days after the U.S. Treasury Department provided details on a government plan to cleanse banks’ balance sheets of up to $1 trillion in distressed loans and securities, a plan the banks will have to support in order for it to work.

White House advisers said the president wanted to get a snapshot of the economy from the banking chiefs, and the message they sent was lukewarm. I watched the interviews with the CEO’s after the meeting and I’d say this Reuters account is more negative than what I witnessed.

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The couple in better days

A police force has apologised to a widow after officers gave her the rope her husband used to hang himself.

Angie Gerrelli found the blood-stained yellow tow rope in a sack of items returned after her estranged 50-year-old partner, John Gilmore, killed himself in a park in Barry, south Wales…

Recounting the time she discovered the grisly item, Ms Gerrelli told the Barry and District News: “I reached into the bag and took out the laptop, and then I saw yellow and realised what I had in my hand.

“I went to pieces – I just sunk to the floor. I dropped it and put my hands to my face.”

Officers from the force have been spoken to by superiors about their conduct in the matter.

Well, that will sort it all out, eh?

Courtney Holt, head of MySpace Music
Daylife/AP Photo

The “Place for Friends” is starting to feel lonely. MySpace, the Rupert Murdoch-owned website once synonymous with social networking, is losing popularity and key staff in its biggest troubles since launching five years ago…

MySpace’s loss of status as the cool place to be is an object lesson in the notoriously fickle internet, where today’s cultural icon is tomorrow’s passing fad. From humble origins in 2003, the site led the so-called “Web 2.0″ revolution in which users could create their own profile pages and share content with friends. Murdoch’s purchase of MySpace for $580m was seen as a masterstroke as membership continued to soar, with celebrities and politicians joining the craze.

But then came Facebook, founded by Harvard student Mark Zuckerberg, which soon snowballed with an older and apparently more affluent demographic to steal MySpace’s crown. Gradually newspaper coverage of social networks switched from references to “MySpace and Facebook” to “Facebook and MySpace”. The rise of Bebo also undermined MySpace’s dominance, while Twitter is among the latest novelties eating into users’ attention spans…

There are clues behind the scenes that all is not well at Murdoch’s Fox Interactive Media, which runs the site.

Amit Kapur, MySpace’s chief operating officer, resigned after little more than a year in the post to set up a new company. He will be joined by Jim Benedetto and Steve Pearman, senior vice-presidents of engineering and product strategy.

And, no, I really don’t care. But, some of you do.

Inside a synagogue in Esfahan

A row has broken out over allegations of antisemitism at the New York Times, America’s most vaunted name in journalism and a newspaper with a large Jewish readership. The storm centres on a column about Jews in Iran written by New York Times journalist Roger Cohen and a cartoon attacking the recent war in Gaza.

The newspaper, and Cohen in particular, has been accused of being too critical of Israel and an apologist for Iran and its leader, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Cohen’s column was written from Iran about the country’s small Jewish minority. His piece acknowledged the difficulties the group experienced and portrayed them as part of an Iranian society that he said was more tolerant, democratic and sophisticated than many American critics allowed.

Such sentiments might seem uncontroversial, but in America no one touching on issues around Israel or antisemitism escapes close scrutiny. Cohen was attacked by Jewish writers and bloggers. The Jerusalem Post dubbed him “misled”, while the Atlantic Monthly called him “credulous”. Others went much further…

Perhaps part of the reason for the intensity of the attack is the fact that he is Jewish himself. “I think it’s partly my name. The ‘self-hating Jew’ things can come to the surface in some of the responses,” he said. Another reason is that the column appeared in the Times, which many media experts hardly see as a fierce critic of Israel, given its home audience. “As soon as I read the column I thought a lot of people would be unhappy,” said Jack Lule, a journalism professor at Lehigh University.

Any critic of Israel’s government comes to expect charges of anti-Semitism. It generally is more ferocious than the old McCarthy Days [and post-McCarthy] label of anti-American against any citizen who challenges U.S. foreign policy. After all, Israel occupies a special place in the American mythology of Freedom Fighters We Love and Support.

The ranks of Americans with friends in Israel’s Left has diminished – mostly as that independent Left has dwindled through age, collaboration with Centrist and Right politicians. So, that American Jewish voice shrinks, as well. Even the last of my old friends who once shared the occasional cell during earlier American repressions – are gone – the Arab and the Jew, they used to call themselves in argument. Though they both were Jews.

Jensen Button during practice in Australia. Yup, slicks are back.
Daylife/Reuters Pictures

Britain’s Jenson Button claimed pole position for Sunday’s Australian Grand Prix in Melbourne — leading a sweep of the front row for Formula One new boys Brawn GP. Button edged out teammate Rubens Barrichello of Brazil by three hundredths of a second to claim the fourth pole of his career…

But Saturday’s qualifying provided little cheer for reigning world champion Lewis Hamilton, who will have to start from 18th in the grid. Hamilton struggled to the 15th best time but was relegated to the very rear of the grid because the gearbox in his McLaren had to be changed.

He later gained a partial reprieve as the Toyotas of Timo Glock and Jarno Trulli were penalized for a technical infringement with the rear wings of their cars…

Like McLaren, Ferrari were also off the pace with Felipe Massa qualifying seventh best and Kimi Raikkonen in ninth, although both will move up a place after the punishment meted out to Toyota by race stewards.

It is the first time in 38 races that neither a Ferrari or McLaren is on the front row for a grand prix.

Sebastian Vettel will start from third on the grid on his debut for Red Bull, with Robert Kubica also performing superbly for BMW Sauber — the Pole joining the promising young German on the second row…

Button will be aiming for the second victory of his 154 grand prix career in a remarkable reversal of fortunes for the former Honda team whose future looked bleak when the Japanese car manufacturer pulled out of the sport late last year blaming the global economic downturn. But a management buyout led by technical guru Ross Brawn rescued the team and secured drives for Button and Barrichello.

Exciting as all hell. Even though I’m a McLaren and Hamilton fan, it’s a gas to see Ross Brawn pull off a season start like this one.

Jerome Blanchett took a loaded handgun into the Holiday Inn-Harrisburg East on Friday, passing dozens of unmarked police cars in the parking lot and a sign at the hotel’s entrance welcoming 300 officers to the Pennsylvania Narcotic Officers’ Association conference, police said.

Nevertheless, the 19-year-old Harrisburg man went into the men’s room and waited to rob the next person who walked through the door, police said.

Unfortunately for Blanchett, that person was John Comparetto, a retired New York City Police Department lieutenant. “He chose to rob a cop in a place where there were 300 cops,” Comparetto said afterward. “He’s not very bright…”

Blanchett demanded money, and Comparetto handed over $138, police said. Blanchett took Comparetto’s cell phone, told him to drop his pants and threatened to kill him if he tried to follow him, police said.

Seconds after Blanchett left the bathroom, Comparetto pulled a handgun from his ankle holster and went after his attacker, he said. Their guns drawn, he and other officers took Blanchett into custody as he was trying to get into a taxi outside the hotel…

“I knew I could take away the gun, but I hurt my back a few years ago,” Comparetto said. “I’m too old to be fighting people. So I made an assessment that I would cooperate and worry about this afterward.”

“This should make all Pennsylvania news as the dumbest criminal in Pennsylvania.”

This clown qualifies as one of the dumbest crooks in the country.