SPB News for Saturday.

Bloomberg: GE Capital To Cut 7,500 to 11,000 Jobs

Hertz Rental Car To Cut 4,000 Positions

California controller to suspend tax refunds, welfare checks — John Chiang announces that his office will suspend $3.7 billion in payments owed to Californians starting Feb. 1, as a result of the state's cash crisis. Student grants are also affected. — Reporting from Sacramento …

Bush's Final Approval Rating: 22 Percent — CBS News/N.Y. Times Poll Finds President Will Leave Office With Lowest Final Approval Rating Ever — (CBS) President Bush will leave office as one of the most unpopular departing presidents in history, according to a new CBS News/New York Times poll showing

Circuit City to close 567 remaining US stores — Bankrupt Circuit City Stores Inc., unable to work out a sale of the company, said Friday it will go out of business — closing its 567 U.S. stores and cutting 30,000 jobs. — The nation's second-biggest consumer electronics retailer …

Report Finds Major U.S. Companies Have Offshore Tax Havens — A majority of America's largest publicly traded companies and the U.S. government's largest federal contractors — including some receiving millions in federal bailout money — use multiple subsidiaries in offshore tax havens

Justices to Hear 2 Cases Brought Against Schools — WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court agreed Friday to decide two cases pitting parents against public schools. — One concerns a 13-year-old honor student who was subjected to a strip search by school officials in Arizona looking for prescription-strength ibuprofen.

Arabs lost 2.5 trillion dollars from credit crunch: Kuwait … Arab investors have lost 2.5 trillion dollars from the credit crunch, Kuwaiti Foreign Minister Sheikh Mohammad al-Sabah, whose country hosts an Arab economic summit next week, said on Friday. — “The Arab world has lost 2.5 trillion dollars …

Special court OKs broad evidence-gathering rules The government does not need a search warrant when it taps the phones or checks the e-mails of suspected terrorists who are outside the United States, even if Americans might be overheard on these calls, a special intelligence court ruled in an opinion released Thursday. The decision confirms what the Bush regime officials and some legal experts have long said. While the Constitution protects the privacy rights of Americans against "unreasonable searches and seizures," this principle does not bar U.S. spy agencies from conducting surveillance aimed at foreign targets abroad.

Inauguration security center to go live Saturday The multi-agency command center, run by the Secret Service eight blocks from the White House, will have more than 100 officials from 58 federal, state and local agencies overseeing what is likely the largest security operation in inaugural history. It is the only command center in the Washington area where officials will monitor inaugural activities and public areas via live video feeds from the FBI, Metropolitan Police Department, National Park Service, District of Columbia Transportation Department, National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency and others.

Saudi Arabia: KBR expands interests to security facilities Kellogg Brown & Root (KBR) is reportedly becoming a serious competitor to all major US construction and contracting companies active in Saudi Arabia, including notably Bechtel and Fluor.

200,000 war veterans homeless in US --300,000 Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans file disability claims with US federal government. For six years of war in Iraq, the Bush administration has done absolutely nothing to take care of the hundreds of thousands of wounded veterans coming home, said Aaron Glantz, a journalist who has been covering the stories of US military vets returning from Iraq and Afghanistan.

Bush Administration Proposes Letting Oil Companies Drill Offshore The Bush administration, in one of its final acts [of terror], is proposing to let oil companies drill for oil and natural gas in half a dozen areas of the outer continental shelf that had been previously been off limits to drilling, a move that will reopen the debate over offshore drilling for President-elect Barack Obama.

Government giving $20 billion to Bank of America --Guaranteeing losses on over $400 billion worth of Citi, Bank of America assets The U.S. government on Friday announced it was injecting $20 billion into Bank of America and guaranteeing losses on over $400 billion of assets both the Charlotte, N.C. lender and Citigroup. In a statement released Friday, the Treasury Department and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation said they will invest $20 billion in Bank of America from the Troubled Assets Relief Program in exchange for preferred stock paying an 8% dividend.

UAW accepts government ban on strikes By Jerry White It has come to light that the federal bailout of General Motors and Chrysler approved last month by the Bush administration with the support of the incoming Obama administration includes a stipulation that effectively bans strikes or work stoppages by autoworkers. The clause, which was revealed in a Security and Exchange Commission filing by GM last week, coincides with government demands that the 139,000 workers at Detroit's auto companies agree by February 17 to accept mass layoffs, plant closures and sweeping wage and benefit concessions.