HOOVER SAYS ECONOMY OKAY.

The nationwide housing slump and collapsed mortgage markets have taken yet another toll on Washington Mutual — specifically, on its employees and shareholders.

The Seattle-based thrift, one of the nation's largest home lenders, said Monday it will:

• Cut 3,150 jobs, mostly in its struggling home loans business;

• Shutter nearly two-thirds of its home-loan stores;

• Close its 5-year-old mortgage-backed securities brokerage;

• Slash its quarterly dividend to 15 cents per share, from 56 cents.

The company also said it would sell $2.5 billion worth of convertible preferred stock. That, along with the dividend cut and the other closures and reductions, should give WaMu $3.7 billion more in capital to work with as it tries to ride out the nation's worst financial crisis since the savings-and-loan debacle of the late 1980s and early 1990s.

Employee reaction

Rumors and tension filled WaMu's home loan offices on Monday afternoon, with employees anxiously waiting to hear whether their jobs were safe. Workers said they did not see the cuts coming, despite a downturn in the mortgage market and WaMu's loan woes.

"We had no clue this was coming," said one Seattle-area loan consultant who has worked at WaMu for five years. "The market's slow, but that just means you call old clients and things like that."

He said he expects to stay in lending, even if his job at WaMu is cut, and he tries not to worry about it too much. "You can't be too concerned or you'll give yourself a heart attack," he said.

Iraq calmer, but more divided

By Ned Parker, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
December 10, 2007

BAGHDAD -- The U.S. troop buildup in Iraq was meant to freeze the country's civil war so political leaders could rebuild their fractured nation. Ten months later, the country's bloodshed has dropped, but the military strategy has failed to reverse Iraq's disintegration into areas dominated by militias, tribes and parties, with a weak central government struggling to assert its influence.

In the south, Shiite Muslim militias are at war over the lucrative oil resources in the Basra region. To the west, in Anbar province, Sunni Arab tribes that once fought U.S. forces now help police the streets and control the highways to Jordan and Syria. In the north, Arabs, Kurds and Turkmens are locked in a battle for the regions around Kirkuk and Mosul. In Baghdad, blast walls partition neighborhoods policed by Sunni paramilitary groups and Shiite militias.

"Iraq is moving in the direction of a failed state, a highly decentralized situation -- totally unplanned, of course -- with competing centers of power run by warlords and militias," said Joost Hiltermann of the International Crisis Group. "The central government has no political control whatsoever beyond Baghdad, maybe not even beyond the Green Zone."

The capital's Green Zone mirrors the chaos outside. Once the base of Saddam Hussein's dictatorial regime, it is now the seat of Iraq's fractured and dysfunctional representative government. The U.S. troop buildup was intended to help Iraq's national leaders overcome differences and give them space to pass compromise measures to end the country's sectarian war, but lawmakers remain divided and continue to harbor suspicions about each other's motives.

In the summer, the country's Sunni Arab minority quit the coalition government, leaving Shiites and Kurds with a razor-thin majority in parliament. They appear unable to push forward any solution to the country's problems, whether a national oil law, a review of Iraq's new constitution or legislation defining the powers of provincial councils. All efforts to define relations between Baghdad and outlying regions are stalled.

"The absence of government in a lot of areas has allowed others to move in, whether militias or others," said an American diplomat, who like others, spoke on condition of anonymity.

U.S. soldiers shoot 4 Iraqi civilians, one killed

Tue Dec 4, 3:56 AM ET

U.S. soldiers mistakenly shot four Iraqi civilians, killing one, during operations against al Qaeda militants, the U.S. military said on Tuesday.

U.S. soldiers had detained a suspected al Qaeda fighter in Tarmiya, 30 km (20 miles) north of Baghdad, on Monday when they were approached by a car that did not obey an order to stop.

The car continued moving towards the soldiers despite two sets of warning shots. U.S. soldiers then fired on the car, hitting the four people inside. One of the passengers died while being taken to a military hospital for treatment.

"We regret when Iraqis are hurt or killed while coalition forces work diligently to rid this country of terrorist networks that threaten the security of Iraq and our forces," U.S. military spokesman Major Anton Alston said in a statement.

U.S. troops killed five Iraqi civilians, including a child, in two similar shootings last week, the military has said.

Iraqis have often been angered by what they describe as the heavy-handed use of force by U.S. troops since the 2003 invasion to topple Saddam Hussein, especially in air strikes and by troops traveling in convoys of Humvee military vehicles.

RAPE

SEOUL, South Korea (Dec. 7) - A crane-carrying vessel collided with an oil tanker off of South Korea's west coast on Friday, causing more than 66,000 barrels of crude oil to spill in what was believed to be South Korea's largest offshore oil leak, officials said.

Officials at the Maritime and Fisheries Ministry, citing Coast Guard reports, initially said about 110,000 barrels had leaked from the Hong Kong-registered tanker. But the Coast Guard later said additional information indicated the amount was significantly lower - about 66,043 barrels.