Stories Making Headlines Right Now

MADOFF SCANDAL
    NEW: Victims worry Madoff will take secrets to prison

Disgraced financier Bernard Madoff is to plead
guilty and face some of his victims in a New York federal court
today.
    Madoff is expected to plead guilty to eleven felonies, carrying
prison terms of up to 150 years.
    Federal Judge Denny Chin will also rule on whether Madoff will
await sentencing from home or from jail. He would not be formally
sentenced for several months.
    And key questions remain unanswered: Who helped Madoff run one
of the largest investment scams in U.S. history? What happened to
the money?
    Alexandra Penney says she’s furious with Bernard Madoff. But
she’s just as angry with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
    The 60-year old artist and former magazine editor said Madoff
took everything she’d saved from the age of 16.
    She won’t be in court for the guilty plea. She’s in Florida.

OBAMA-STIMULUS
    NEW: Obama, Biden to talk stimulus with states

President Barack Obama wants to hear how
states are - or should be - using their pieces of the $787 billion
economic stimulus package.
    Obama, Vice President Joe Biden and officials from across the
country were to meet at a White House conference Thursday to
discuss how states want to use their dollars. Administration
officials will discuss states’ efforts to rebuild their budgets and
trim their unemployment rolls.
    The White House says the summit is a chance for states to offer
ideas and hear directly from Cabinet secretaries. Officials also
will reiterate that states’ efforts have to be open and
accountable.

GEITHNER-CONGRESS
    NEW: Geithner set to defend Obama budget before Senate

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner plans to
defend Obama administration policies on taxes and bank relief
before the Senate Budget Committee.
    Geithner is expected to be questioned sharply on a proposal to
restrict tax deductions for upper-income taxpayers. Lawmakers from
both parties have panned the plan.
    Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad of North Dakota has said
President Barack Obama’s ambitious budget contains a number of
difficult provisions that will have to be either dropped or
changed.
    Senators will probably focus on a proposal to have polluters
purchase government permits for their carbon emissions.

FORECLOSURE RATES
    Foreclosures up 30 percent in February

The recession continues to hammer homeowners
particularly hard in Western states and Florida. But the worst is
now also spreading to places like Oregon, Idaho and Illinois.
    New figures compiled by RealtyTrac show more than 74,000 homes
were foreclosed last month and nearly 291,000 homeowners received
at least one foreclosure-related notice. The number of threatened
homes is up 30 percent from a year ago.
    The Obama administration’s plan for reversing the crisis is only
just getting under way, but a number of banks and state governments
had moved to temporarily halt foreclosures even before the latest
rise in foreclosures.
    Adding to the ugliness, RealtyTrac estimates there are about
700,000 foreclosed properties that banks have held back from
listing for sale. That makes up a so-called “shadow inventory” of
unsold homes that the foreclosure tracking company says could drag
out the housing crisis even longer.

SOUTH ALABAMA SHOOTINGS
    Police: Ala. gunman was depressed before rampage

Police say a gunman who killed 10 people and
then himself was depressed about job issues before he went on a
shooting rampage across south Alabama.
    Lt. Barry Tucker of the Alabama Bureau of Investigations said
during a news conference Wednesday night that interviews with
people who spoke to Michael McLendon in the days before the
shooting indicated that he was depressed. But Tucker was careful to
say that authorities do not believe the shooting was job-related.
    Authorities think they have a general motive but would not
release it. Tucker says McLendon left no specific indication of why
he went on the rampage.
    District Attorney Gary McAliley has said McLendon struggled to
keep a job and left behind lists of employers and co-workers he
believed had wronged him.

US-CHINA
    NEW: President meets with top Chinese diplomat

President Barack Obama meets today with
China’s top diplomat amid tensions from a weekend confrontation at
sea.
    Washington and Beijing remain at odds over exactly what happened
in the South China Sea Sunday.
    Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton says she and the
Chinese minister (Yang Jiechi) agreed yesterday on the need to
reduce tensions and avoid a repeat. White House spokesman Robert
Gibbs says the incident will come up during today’s meeting. He
says the U.S. will continue to make its position clear, which is
that the Navy ship was in international waters and not breaking any
laws.
    Gibbs says the president also wants to talk about other issues
of mutual concern, including the financial crisis.

CHINA-US
    China demands US Navy end surveillance missions

China’s Defense Ministry is demanding that the
U.S. Navy end surveillance missions off China’s southern coast
following a weekend confrontation between an American vessel and
Chinese ships.
    In its first public comment on the issue, the ministry has
repeated earlier Chinese statements that the unarmed U.S. ship was
operating illegally inside China’s exclusive economic zone.
    Ministry spokesman Huang Xueping said in a statement faxed
Thursday to reporters that, “The Chinese side’s carrying out of
routine enforcement and safeguarding measures within its exclusive
economic zone was entirely appropriate and legal.“
    Huang said: “We demand the United States respect our legal
interests and security concerns, and take effective measures to
prevent a recurrence of such incidents.“

NKOREA-MISSILE
    UPDATE: SKorea: NKorea to launch satellite April 4-8

South Korea says it has confirmed that
North Korea plans to launch a satellite from April 4-8.
    An official at South Korea’s Ministry of Land, Transport and
Maritime Affairs said Thursday that officials confirmed with the
International Maritime Organization that the North had informed the
organization of its schedule for the launch.
    Do Myung-hwan, the official, said North Korea also notified the
IMO that the launch will be made in an easterly direction.
    South Korea, Japan and the United States believe the launch will
test missile technology in violation of a 2006 U.N. Security
Council resolution banning Pyongyang from ballistic missile
activity, and have urged the North not to go forward.

PAKISTAN
    Witnesses: Pakistani police arrest more activists

Pakistani police have arrested at least
60 more political activists ahead of a planned anti-government
rally.
    Karachi police chief Waseem Ahmad said Thursday that 50 people
were detained overnight in the city.
    Witnesses outside the court saw around 12 other activists being
bundled into a police van. They were planning to set off for
Islamabad for a sit-in at parliament early next week.

GRADUATION RATES
    Report: 12 states made gains in HS graduation rate

A report finds the national high school
graduation rate remained flat at about 75 percent between 2002 and
2006. But at the same time, a dozen states made substantial gains.
    The report by researchers at Johns Hopkins University found the
largest gain was in Tennessee, where the rate rose from 61 percent
to 72 percent.
    Rounding out the list of states with substantial gains:
Delaware, Kentucky, South Dakota, Arkansas, Alabama, North
Carolina, New York, Hawaii, Missouri, Nebraska and New Hampshire.
    The report comes just days after President Barack Obama’s first
major speech on education, in which he discussed reducing the high
school dropout rate and pushing states to adopt more rigorous
academic standards.