SPB News for Thursday.

· Bill Gates No Longer World's Richest Man

Yup, Warren Buffett now holds the title..

Tainted Evidence --Canada tosses CIA terror testimony obtained through waterboarding The Canadian government is no longer using evidence gained from CIA interrogations of a top 'Al Qaeda' prisoner who was waterboarded. According to documents obtained by NEWSWEEK, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS), the country's national-security agency, last month quietly withdrew statements by alleged Al Qaeda leader Abu Zubaydah from public papers outlining the case against two alleged terror "sleeper" operatives in Ottawa and Montreal.

Administration says president can keep troops in Iraq even after UN mandate expires The Bush administration can keep troops in Iraq into next year even after the current U.N. mandate governing operations there expires and without Congress' permission, a senior State Department official told a Democratic lawmaker on Wednesday. In a letter to Rep. Gary Ackerman, D-N.Y., David Satterfield said military operations can continue "beyond the end of this year under the laws passed by Congress and the president's [sic] authority as commander in chief."

US senator wants Iraq oil funds used for rebuilding The chairman of the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee said on Tuesday he may try to require Iraq to spend more of its oil revenue on reconstruction instead of investing the money in foreign banks.

DOD set to boost spending for communications, electronics, and intelligence Leaders of the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) propose spending $29.16 billion in fiscal year 2009 for procurement and research in communications, electronics, telecommunications, and intelligence (CET&I) technologies, which would represent an 8.5 percent increase from current-year enacted levels.

Conn. teen appeals school punishment for vulgar Web language, hearing begins A teen who used vulgar slang in an Internet blog to complain about school administrators shouldn't have been punished by the school, her lawyer told a federal appeals court. But a lawyer for the Burlington, Conn., school told the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Tuesday that administrators should be allowed to act if such comments are made on the Web.

Oil surpasses $104 a barrel, gaining more than $5 --U.S. inventories drop 'unexpectedly;' OPEC leaves output unchanged Crude-oil futures on Wednesday surged past $104 a barrel for the first time, rallying after data showed U.S. inventories fell unexpectedly and after the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries decided to keep its production levels unchanged. [See: Exxon guns for all-time profit record 23 Jan 2008 Exxon Mobil, the world's largest publicly traded oil company, is within striking distance of setting an all-time profit record - again. "For every $1 [increase] in the price of oil, Exxon makes [another] $125 million for the quarter," said Fadel Gheit, a senior energy analyst at Oppenheimer.]

Fraud compounds woes of housing crisis As the U.S. housing meltdown forces hundreds of thousands of Americans from their homes, the extent to which fraud was a factor in the crisis is just coming to light.