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The story of the financial debacle will end the way it began, with the super-hustlers from Goldman Sachs at the center of the action and profiting wildly. Never in U.S. history has one company wielded such destructive power over our political economy, irrespective of whether a Republican or a Democrat happened to be president.

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Here's the link to Wednesday's live blog.

2:59 pm PDT: We're taking a break to cover other news developments. But be sure to check out our live Twitter feed over to the right. Just move your mouse over a tweet to keep it from scrolling. We'll be back shortly.

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Here's the link to Wednesday's live blog.

5:26 pm PDT: We couldn't leave for the day without first reporting on this development.

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Here's the link to Wednesday's live blog.

11:13 pm PDT: I just received word from the State Department that the FAA is halting all air traffic to Haiti because there isn't any fuel nor room for planes.

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Here is the link to Thursday's live blog. Please check the page regularly for updates.

7:45am PDT: The BBC has a disturbing first hand video report from a hospital in Port-au-Prince where, last night, injured people waiting for treatment slept amongst dead bodies.

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Employees Bearing Higher Portion of Health Insurance Costs

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On Thursday, a manageable explosion on a Gulf Coast oil rig reignited fears founded by the BP spill and revived calls for a reassessment of the country's drilling policies.

Just before 9 a.m. Thursday morning, the Vermilion Oil Rig 380 exploded. Unlike the Deepwater Horizon rig, this one was located in shallow waters. By late afternoon, a sheen of oil had been spotted, spreading a mile long from the burning rig; but by Friday morning the Coast Guard was saying the that was a mistake—there was no sheen.

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Washington - The first Middle East peace talks in nearly two years got off to a quick start Thursday, with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas agreeing to meet again in two weeks and to commence work on the blueprint for a peace treaty.

Netanyahu and Abbas conferred alone for 90 minutes at the State Department following group meetings that included Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and U.S. special envoy George Mitchell.

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Altaf Hussain's call for a return of the generals in Pakistan came before the betting scandal of huge proportions currently rocking the cricket-crazy country. Otherwise, he might have cited the sports scam as an argument. He based his demand for undoing democracy, instead, on floods that have caused human distress of a heart-wrenching degree and scale since the last week of July.

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Kabul, Afghanistan - President Hamid Karzai has again challenged the patience of his international backers as he desperately tries to keep an FBI-sponsored corruption investigation from breaching the walls of the presidential palace.

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This report supports the case that unemployment is cyclical, not structural.

The unemployment rate edged up to 9.6 percent in August as the economy shed 54,000 jobs. The decline was entirely attributable to the loss of 114,000 temporary Census jobs. Excluding these jobs, the economy created 60,000 jobs. With job growth for the prior two months revised up by 123,000, excluding the Census jobs, the August pace is roughly even with June and July.

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As the midterm political season heats up, one word on every politician’s lips is “jobs.” And for good reason. People are hurting—they can’t pay their mortgages, send their kids to college, pay their dental bills. Young people are wondering if they have a place in the work world.

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One of the great mantras of the modern economics profession is that markets know best, and that the collective "wisdom" of investors is generally correct.

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A federal judge in Georgia upheld the murder conviction of death row inmate Troy Davis last week, following a special evidentiary hearing that was ordered by the US Supreme Court to determine whether he was innocent.

The high court took the unusual step of directing the federal judge in charge of the case, US District Judge William Moore, to re-examine it after Davis and his lawyers presented evidence that the reliability of witness statements used by the prosecution was questionable.

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As the world comes to terms with the mind-boggling scale of the tragedy in Pakistan, many Americans are asking what we can do to aid the flood victims.

Some may hesitate to contribute to flood relief because we associate Pakistan with qualities we don’t admire—nuclear proliferation, religious fundamentalism, the oppression of women, and a corrupt and powerful military. But the people of Pakistan are more likely to be the victims than the perpetrators of these problems, and above all else, they are fellow human beings in dire need.

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The US Justice Department (DOJ) filed a lawsuit against controversial Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio on Thursday for alleged civil rights violations and refusal to cooperate with a federal probe.

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Edward Bernays, the American nephew of Sigmund Freud, is said to have invented modern propaganda. During the First World War, he was one of a group of influential liberals who mounted a secret government campaign to persuade reluctant Americans to send an army to the bloodbath in Europe. In his book, "Propaganda," published in 1928, Bernays wrote that the "intelligent manipulation of the organised habits and opinions of the masses was an important element in democratic society" and that the

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Washington - According to polls, Americans are in a mood to hold their breath until they turn blue. Voters appear to be so fed up with the Democrats that they're ready to toss them out in favor of the Republicans -- for whom, according to those same polls, the nation has even greater contempt. This isn't an "electoral wave," it's a temper tantrum.

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Washington - Military auditors failed to complete an audit of the business systems of an Ohio- based company - Mission Essential Personnel - even though it had billed for one billion dollars worth of work largely in Afghanistan over the last four years.

In September 2007 the U.S. Intelligence and Security Command (INSCOM) awarded Mission Essential Personnel (MEP) a five-year-contract worth up to 414 million dollars to provide 1,691 translators in Afghanistan. MEP was a start-up company created by three men, including Chad Monnin, a U.S. Army Special Forces reservist who was injured in a parachute accident.

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