SPB News for Thursday

Biden: Recovery.gov Errors Will Be Fixed

Poll: Public Favors Gov't Health Plan

Military Leaders Push Congress To Close Gitmo

Obama: Gitmo Will Close 'Next Year'

Hundreds Line Up In Michigan For Chance To Meet Palin

Schwarzenegger Rules Out Another Run For Office

Obama Suggests Death Penalty Is OK For 9/11 Suspect

Goldman Sachs' CEO Lloyd Blankfein Apologizes

Goldman Sachs says sorry, 'gives back'

Sarah Palin gives Oprah biggest audience in two years — Oprah Winfrey's interview with former vp candidate Sarah Palin scored the talk show host her highest rating in two years. — Monday's episode of “The Oprah Winfrey Show” drew a 8.7 household rating and 13 share

Texas' gay marriage ban may have banned all marriages — AUSTIN — Texans: Are you really married? — Maybe not. — Barbara Ann Radnofsky, a Houston lawyer and Democratic candidate for attorney general, says that a 22-word clause in a 2005 constitutional amendment designed

Republicans Block Dodd's Effort to Immediately Stop Credit Card Rate Hikes

Judge: Corps' negligence caused Katrina flooding A federal judge ruled Wednesday that the Army Corps of Engineers' failure to properly maintain a navigation channel led to massive flooding in Hurricane Katrina. U.S. District Judge Stanwood Duval sided with five residents and one business who argued the Army Corps' shoddy oversight of the Mississippi River-Gulf Outlet led to the flooding of New Orleans' Lower Ninth Ward and neighboring St. Bernard Parish. Duval awarded the plaintiffs $720,000, or about $170,000 each, but the decision could eventually make the government vulnerable to a much larger payout.

CIA Secret 'Torture' Prison Found at Fancy Horseback Riding Academy --ABC News Finds the Location of a "Black Site" for Alleged Terrorists in Lithuania The CIA built one of its secret European prisons inside an exclusive riding academy outside Vilnius, Lithuania, a current Lithuanian government official and a former U.S. intelligence official told ABC News this week. Where affluent Lithuanians once rode show horses and sipped coffee at a café, the CIA installed a concrete structure where it could use harsh tactics to interrogate up to eight suspected 'al-Qaeda' terrorists at a time. "The activities in that prison were illegal," said human rights researcher John Sifton. "They included various forms of torture, including sleep deprivation, forced standing, painful stress positions."

Iraq president invites Total to work oil fields Iraq's President Jalal Talabani struck an optimistic note on French oil company Total's chance of winning an oil contract Wednesday, saying that figures aren't everything in winning a contract. Talabani met with French president Nicolas Sarkozy on Tuesday and had a meeting with Total executives on Wednesday morning.

E-mails show KBR feared casualties before deadly attack KBR security personnel expected casualties the night before six civilian drivers were killed and others injured in an Iraq ambush, but went ahead with the convoy, according to e-mails presented in a Houston federal court today. "There is a ton on intel stating tomorrow will be a bad day," wrote George Seagle, KBR's director of security in the Middle East, the night before the April 9, 2004 attacks. In the e-mail presented in court he suggested KBR halt convoys for the next day.

Guantanamo won't close by January: Obama U.S. President Barack Obama has acknowledged that he will not be able to meet his pledge to close the controversial detention centre at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, by January. One of Obama's first acts as president was to sign an executive order to close the facility within a year, a move he said would restore his country’s "moral high ground." But his plan ran into roadblocks... The U.S. Senate in May voted 90-6 against allowing funds requested to shut down the facility or use the funds to transfer prisoners to U.S. soil.

US Senate drops bid blocking Gitmo transfer The US Senate has voted against a measure aimed at preventing the Obama administration from transferring Guantanamo Bay detainees to US soil for trial. The measure sponsored by Republican Senator James Inhofe was defeated in a 57-43 vote on Tuesday afternoon.

Bank Bonuses Surge: Goldman Sachs Executives May Earn More Than In 2006 By Daniel M. Harrison While many Americans will count themselves lucky to be drawing any kind of income at all this year, bonus payments will rise by 40 percent for most bankers, according to a recent survey conducted by New York-based Options Group. The survey’s results are supported by recent NYSE data which suggests that Bank of America, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Morgan Stanley, and Wells Fargo have set aside $112 billion in compensation for their employees this year. The exchange adds that for many bankers, compensation will exceed the amount they earned in 2007... In fact, in the case of Goldman Sachs, average salary payouts are likely to top even those in 2006, a year in which the global economy zoomed ahead.