Explosions rock Myanmar's capital, two other towns (Reuters)

YANGON (Reuters) – Four explosions rocked Myanmar's capital, Naypyitaw, and two other towns on Friday, residents said, adding several people were wounded but no one had been killed.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility or response from the authorities. Myanmar's government usually blames bombings on ethnic minority rebels.

The first three blasts went off within minutes of each other in three different places.

The first suspected bomb exploded in a jeep in Mandalay, the country's second-biggest city after the former capital, Yangon, at about 12:10 p.m. (0540 GMT).

The incident happened near Zaygyo Market, a major shopping center in the central city, about 400 miles north of Yangon.

"We heard the car was badly damaged and four people were wounded," a shopkeeper told Reuters by telephone from the town, adding the market was closed, otherwise the number of casualties would have been higher.

A bomb was also blamed for an explosion in an unoccupied house opposite a market in Naypyitaw, the new capital about 205 miles north of Yangon, at about 12:20 p.m. (0550 GMT).

"It was very powerful. We all heard a very loud explosion," said a government official who had been in a bookshop near the market at the time.

"So far as I heard, there were no casualties. Security officials are now combing the area," said the official, who asked not to be named.

The third explosion hit Pyin Oo Lwin, a town about 45 miles north of Mandalay, at about 12:30 p.m. (0600 GMT), the Mandalay shopkeeper told Reuters after speaking with relatives living there.

Also known as May Myo, Pyin Oo Lwin is a garrison town as well as a hill resort, home to four military institutes including the elite Defense Services Academy.

The fourth explosion went off at about 3 p.m. (0830 GMT) in the same part of Mandalay as the earlier blast, near a rubbish dump. No casualties were reported, the shopkeeper said.

There have been about half a dozen bomb blasts in Myanmar cities, including Naypyitaw and the Kachin State capital, Myitkyina, in the past few weeks.

On May 18, two passengers were killed and nine were wounded when a bomb exploded on a train near Naypyitaw.

The government normally blames rebels who have been fighting successive central governments for greater autonomy since the country won independence in 1948.

Serious fighting broke out in the north of the country this month in Kachin state near the border with China, disrupting the operations of two Chinese-built hydropower plants.

Government troops fought with ethnic minority Kachin rebels, who state media said had destroyed 25 bridges in the area.

(Editing by Alan Raybould and Robert Birsel)

Yahoo! News

Google hoping other sites like recommendation tool (AP)

SAN FRANCISCO – Google is hoping other websites will like its recently introduced system for recommending online content and ads.

The Internet search leader has been using "+1" recommendation button on its own site for two months. It became available to other publishers Wednesday.

The +1 feature is similar to the Facebook "Like" button that has become a staple at thousands of websites.

Pressing the +1 or Like button enables people to recommend an article, photo, video, song or some other kind of material to their online connections.

The personal endorsement also says something about an individual's interests and preferences. That's something both Google Inc. and Facebook want to know more about so they can do a better job placing the online ads that generate most of their revenue.

Yahoo! News

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Verizon woos Android lovers with Xperia Play, launches three other new phones (Appolicious)

Verizon’s ramping up its smartphone roster with a new lineup of devices, all featuring entertainment perks, speed boosts and new features. The four new devices include the Xperia Play, LG Revolution, HTC Trophy and Motorola Droid X2.

The Xperia Play is the darling of the bunch, manufactured by Sony Ericsson, and donning the PlayStation mark. It’s a gaming phone, connected to the PlayStation Network, and designed to handle high-end games, making it a hefty gaming device that happens to have phone capabilities. With a 4-inch 480x854 display, 1GHz CUP and an 8GB memory card, the long-awaited Xperia Play will cost you $199 if you give Verizon two years of your life.

LG’s hoping to make a splash in the device arena with the Revolution, touting LTE capabilities as one of its selling features. This makes the Revolution a speedy phone, with faster data transfer on the go. It’s slightly bigger than the Xperia Play, with a 4.3-inch screen, a single-core 1GHz Snapdragon CPU, a 5-megapixel back camera (and 1.3-megapixel front camera), and 16GB of storage. You’ll pay a premium for the speed, however, with the Revolution’s price tag of approximately $250 with a two-year contract.

The HTC Trophy, on the other hand, is the device maker’s latest Windows phone, boasting WP7 OS. It’s the cheapest in this freshly launched group, costing about $150 with a two-year contract. It’s also on the smaller side, with a 3.8-inch display, a 1GHz Snapdragon CPU, a 5-megapixel back camera and 16GB of storage memory.

Finally, there’s the Droid X2, which is roaring with power. It’s got the dual-core 1GHz CPU, with an 8-megapixel back camera and a 4.3 inch, 960x540 display. There’s no LTE on this phone, however, slightly dropping the price down to about $199 with a two-year contract. For all its beauty and brawn, the X2 is really missing out with no support for Verizon’s 4G capabilities, leaving it to city outskirts, while making way for faster phones.

Yahoo! News

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Egyptians show support for other Arabs

Thousands of Egyptians gathered in Cairo's Tahrir Square on Friday to call for unity across the Arab world.Tahrir Square in Cairo is a symbol of Egyptian protestPeople proclaimed solidarity with counterparts in other countriesPeople demonstrated in front of the U.S. Embassy too

Cairo, Egypt (CNN) -- Thousands of people streamed into Cairo's Tahrir Square on Friday and chanted for unity across the Arab world, and a couple of hundred staged a pro-Osama bin Laden protest in front of the U.S. Embassy.

The people crossed the bridges along Cairo and converged in the iconic Tahrir square where the daily gatherings of protesters earlier this year led to the removal of longtime President Hosni Mubarak.

They proclaimed their solidarity with opposition forces and protesters across the Arab world, including Bahrain, Yemen, Syria and Libya, and urged Egypt to withdraw its ambassadors from those countries in solidarity with the citizens of those countries.

People carried flags of different countries, and a coffin for the "martyrs" of Syria was seen, a sight that symbolized the tough crackdown on demonstrators by the Damascus regime.

The so-called Arab spring, the uprisings against regimes across the Arab world, started in Tunisia earlier this year and quickly spread to Egypt -- where Mubarak was forced to resigned after more than 30 years in power.

There have been persistent police crackdowns against protesters in places like Syria and Bahrain and a civil war has erupted between forces for and against Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi.

Mubarak has been in poor health and living in a hospital in the southern Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheikh. He is under investigation on charges of ordering the killing of protesters.

Outside the U.S. Embassy, a couple of hundred people called for the removal of the U.S. ambassador and chanted slogans against U.S. President Barack Obama and in support of bin Laden, the leader of al Qaeda who was shot and killed during a U.S. operation in Pakistan.

One chant heard was "Obama, Obama, bin Laden is in Tahrir Square."

CNN Top Stories

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Gates: 'Ultimate insider' changed the Pentagon like no other

Obama shuffles national security staffvar cnnWindowParams = window.location.toString().toQueryParams();if(typeof cnnWindowParams.video != "undefined") {if(cnnWindowParams.video) {cnnLoadStoryPlayer('politics/2011/04/28/bts.obama.security.team.shuffle.cnn', 'cnnCVP1', '640x384_start_art', playerOverRide, T1);}} else {$('cnnCVP2').onclick = function() {if ($$('.box-opened').length) {$$('.box-opened').each(function(val){Element.fireEvent(val, 'click');});}cnnLoadStoryPlayer('politics/2011/04/28/bts.obama.security.team.shuffle.cnn', 'cnnCVP1', '640x384_start_art', playerOverRide, T1);};$('cnnCVP2').onmouseover = function() {$('cnnCVP2').className = 'cnn_mtt1plybttn cnn_mtt1plybttnon';};$('cnnCVP2').onmouseout = function() {$('cnnCVP2').className = 'cnn_mtt1plybttn';};}Gates once said it was "inconceivable" that he would stay on after Bush administrationAs secretary of defense, Gates has shaken up Pentagon and trimmed its budgetVeteran journalist says the Pentagon "calmed down" with Gates at the helmCandy Crowley talks to two former Washington insiders with deep experience in the intelligence game : former Rep. Jane Harman and Stephen Hadley, former Bush administration national security adviser, about how a Leon Panetta-led Pentagon will run and what kind of CIA chief Gen. David Petraeus will be, on CNN's "State of the Union" at 9 a.m. and noon ET.

Washington (CNN) -- For a man who considered himself "the ultimate insider" in Washington, Robert Gates made no secret of his desire to become an outsider.

Long before the 2008 election, Gates was asked whether he would consider serving as secretary of defense beyond the end of President George W. Bush's second term.

"The circumstances under which I would do that are inconceivable to me," Gates replied in an April 2008 Pentagon news briefing.

Gates even had a "countdown clock" that ticked down the days until the end of the Bush administration, when he could retire. But within weeks of President Obama's election, the clock became obsolete.

"I've thrown away the clock because it was absolutely useless," Gates said in December 2008.

Getting rid of things and people who didn't perform as planned became a hallmark of Gates' time in the Department of Defense.

Shortly after replacing Donald Rumsfeld in the Pentagon's E-Ring office suite, Gates was confronted with a scandal at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, the military hospital in Washington in which wounded troops from Iraq and Afghanistan are treated.

When a Washington Post investigation unearthed months of substandard care at Walter Reed, the man in charge of the hospital was fired, and the secretary of the Army resigned.

"I am disappointed that some in the Army have not adequately appreciated the seriousness of the situation," Gates said when announcing Secretary Francis Harvey's resignation. "Some have shown too much defensiveness and have not shown enough focus on digging into and addressing the problems."

Harvey wouldn't be the last top Defense official to find himself out of work under Gates.

In June 2007, just months after Harvey left, Gates announced that he would not recommend Gen. Peter Pace for a second term as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the first not to get a second term since the Kennedy administration.

"There was the very real prospect the process would be quite contentious," Gates said of Pace's Senate confirmation hearings. "I have decided that at this moment in our history, the nation, our men and women in uniform, and Gen. Pace himself would not be well-served by a divisive ordeal in selecting the next chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff."

Pink slips flew again a year later in the upper echelons of the Air Force after two incidents displayed problems involving the handling of nuclear weapons and equipment. Gates said the incidents, including one in which a B-52 bomber flew across the country without anyone on board knowing that six of the missiles on board were nuclear-tipped, showed that the "focus of the Air Force leadership has drifted."

The changes Gates made apparently didn't leave a sense of bitterness among those still in leadership positions at the Pentagon.

"He was quite tough and fired a lot of people," said Tom Ricks, a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter who has covered the Pentagon for years. But "look at how the place calmed down, compared to when (Donald) Rumsfeld was there. The Iraq war was run better; the generals felt like they had adult leadership."

Michael O'Hanlon, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, agrees: "He maintained a spirit and tone of competence and professionalism and collegiality and yet also accountability."

During the early months of his tenure, Gates focused on implementing the "troop surge" in Iraq, a strategy change that was under consideration before he became secretary. It called for increasing the number of troops in Iraq and focusing their efforts in Baghdad. The goal was to have Iraqi troops take the lead in military matters and allow political progress to proceed by isolating extremists.

Although many on both sides of the political spectrum opposed the idea of 20,000 more American troops in Iraq, by 2008, violence declined, and Gates began overseeing the withdrawal of U.S. troops from the country, an endeavor that continues.

After working his way up from an entry-level job at the Central Intelligence Agency to the director's chair, Gates retired and laid out his career in the intelligence community in his autobiography "From the Shadows: The Ultimate Insider's Story of Five Presidents and How They Won the Cold War."

Now he was serving a sixth president and overseeing two hot wars. But he wasn't looking forward to staying on for a seventh. He frequently joked about getting away from the capital.

"It's a pleasure to be back here at West Point, although as I often say, 'It's always a pleasure to be away from Washington, D.C.,' " Gates told cadets at the U.S. Military Academy.

But after Obama won the 2008 election, he reached out to Gates in a secret meeting at a fire station at Reagan National Airport in Washington. Gates said he was impressed by what Obama said and agreed to stay on. Gates, a Republican, became the first secretary of defense to serve in both Democratic and Republican administrations.

His first major initiative was to oversee changes in the war in Afghanistan, even as the troop surge in Iraq was still winding down. Less than two weeks after his inauguration, Obama talked with Gates about the military's plans to send thousands more U.S. troops to Afghanistan.

Gates said a few days later that the goal of those troops was "to bring greater security in places like Helmand (province) by being a permanent presence there -- by being a long-term presence rather than flying out by helicopter for a day's operations or a couple of days' operations and then flying back to their base."

The increase in troops has led to a spike in U.S. troop deaths in the almost-10-year-old war. But by June, the Obama administration will begin withdrawing troops from the country, putting security issues more into the hands of Afghan security forces.

The U.S. commander in Afghanistan at the time of the surge was Gen. David D. McKiernan, who had been asking for more troops. But even before all those troops arrived, McKiernan was out.

"We have not been able to fully resource our military effort in Afghanistan in recent years, " Gates said when he announced in May 2009 that McKiernan would be replaced. "I believe, resources or no, that our mission there requires new thinking and new approaches from our military leaders. "

McKiernan was replaced by Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the former chief of special operations, who had already served in Afghanistan.

But changes in personnel were not Gates' only priority that winter. His fiscal year 2010 budget request, his first under Obama, showed that he could be just as cold in slashing the budget as he was in terminating careers.

In the request, Gates cut spending on F-22 fighter jets, the Army's Future Combat System and the Navy's next generation of destroyers. He ended plans to build a new fleet of presidential helicopters and ended purchases of C-17 cargo jets. The cuts, while criticized by Congress, lead to hundreds of billions of dollars in savings for the department, according to the Pentagon.

A year later, Gates was still fighting to trim the defense budget while the country dealt with two wars and a new financial crisis.

"Given America's difficult economic circumstances and perilous fiscal condition, military spending on things large and small can and should expect closer, harsher scrutiny," he said in Abilene, Kansas. "The gusher has been turned off and will stay off for a good period of time."

Critics say Gates' budget priorities are misguided. James Carafano, who directs the Heritage Foundation's Douglas and Sarah Allison Center for Foreign Policy Studies, says Gates has mortgaged the future of the country's defense.

"Gates took a military that's stretched and gutted its future. The U.S. will pay the price for that, and it will be his legacy far more than stage-managing Iraq and Afghanistan."

As he prepares to pack up his office, including the pictures of his home in Washington state to which he has so longed to return, Gates has found himself overseeing U.S. involvement in a third conflict in Libya.

Just in February, Gates was back at West Point, and he told the cadets, "In my opinion, any future defense secretary who advises the president to again send a big American land army into Asia or into the Middle East or Africa should 'have his head examined,' as Gen. (Douglas) MacArthur so delicately put it."

But just weeks later, the Navy and Air Force were heavily involved in enforcing a United Nations-sanctioned no-fly zone over Libya. Although seeming to follow Gates' advice, Obama issued a strict "no-boots-on-the-ground" rule for U.S. troops there. And American involvement in Libya has been scaled back and turned over to international partners.

Gates is still cutting programs and making some in Congress angry.

In April, the department announced that it was ending the program to develop an alternative engine for the new F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. Supporters said the program created 1,000 jobs, but Gates has called the program -- estimated to cost $1.8 billion to $2.9 billion -- unjustified and excessive.

Such cuts are one reason why Carafano says history will not look kindly on Gates' tenure as secretary of defense.

But both Ricks and O'Hanlon rate Gates as among the best.

"He helped turn around Iraq; he did a good job with Afghanistan; he brought stability at a turbulent time," O'Hanlon said.

As for Gates himself, when asked about his legacy during what will likely be his last visit to the troops in Iraq, he said that although his agenda was no longer just Iraq, that's what he would judged on.

"And I'll let people judge for themselves."

CNN

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Gates: 'Ultimate insider' changed the Pentagon like no other

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Washington (CNN) -- For a man who considered himself "the ultimate insider" in Washington, Robert Gates made no secret of his desire to become an outsider.

Long before the 2008 election, Gates was asked whether he would consider serving as secretary of defense beyond the end of President George W. Bush's second term.

"The circumstances under which I would do that are inconceivable to me," Gates replied in an April 2008 Pentagon news briefing.

Gates even had a "countdown clock" that ticked down the days until the end of the Bush administration, when he could retire. But within weeks of President Obama's election, the clock became obsolete.

"I've thrown away the clock because it was absolutely useless," Gates said in December 2008.

Getting rid of things and people who didn't perform as planned became a hallmark of Gates' time in the Department of Defense.

Shortly after replacing Donald Rumsfeld in the Pentagon's E-Ring office suite, Gates was confronted with a scandal at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, the military hospital in Washington in which wounded troops from Iraq and Afghanistan are treated.

When a Washington Post investigation unearthed months of substandard care at Walter Reed, the man in charge of the hospital was fired, and the secretary of the Army resigned.

"I am disappointed that some in the Army have not adequately appreciated the seriousness of the situation," Gates said when announcing Secretary Francis Harvey's resignation. "Some have shown too much defensiveness and have not shown enough focus on digging into and addressing the problems."

Harvey wouldn't be the last top Defense official to find himself out of work under Gates.

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In June 2007, just months after Harvey left, Gates announced that he would not recommend Gen. Peter Pace for a second term as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the first not to get a second term since the Kennedy administration.

"There was the very real prospect the process would be quite contentious," Gates said of Pace's Senate confirmation hearings. "I have decided that at this moment in our history, the nation, our men and women in uniform, and Gen. Pace himself would not be well-served by a divisive ordeal in selecting the next chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff."

Pink slips flew again a year later in the upper echelons of the Air Force after two incidents displayed problems involving the handling of nuclear weapons and equipment. Gates said the incidents, including one in which a B-52 bomber flew across the country without anyone on board knowing that six of the missiles on board were nuclear-tipped, showed that the "focus of the Air Force leadership has drifted."

The changes Gates made apparently didn't leave a sense of bitterness among those still in leadership positions at the Pentagon.

"He was quite tough and fired a lot of people," said Tom Ricks, a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter who has covered the Pentagon for years. But "look at how the place calmed down, compared to when (Donald) Rumsfeld was there. The Iraq war was run better; the generals felt like they had adult leadership."

Michael O'Hanlon, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, agrees: "He maintained a spirit and tone of competence and professionalism and collegiality and yet also accountability."

During the early months of his tenure, Gates focused on implementing the "troop surge" in Iraq, a strategy change that was under consideration before he became secretary. It called for increasing the number of troops in Iraq and focusing their efforts in Baghdad. The goal was to have Iraqi troops take the lead in military matters and allow political progress to proceed by isolating extremists.

Although many on both sides of the political spectrum opposed the idea of 20,000 more American troops in Iraq, by 2008, violence declined, and Gates began overseeing the withdrawal of U.S. troops from the country, an endeavor that continues.

After working his way up from an entry-level job at the Central Intelligence Agency to the director's chair, Gates retired and laid out his career in the intelligence community in his autobiography "From the Shadows: The Ultimate Insider's Story of Five Presidents and How They Won the Cold War."

Now he was serving a sixth president and overseeing two hot wars. But he wasn't looking forward to staying on for a seventh. He frequently joked about getting away from the capital.

"It's a pleasure to be back here at West Point, although as I often say, 'It's always a pleasure to be away from Washington, D.C.,' " Gates told cadets at the U.S. Military Academy.

But after Obama won the 2008 election, he reached out to Gates in a secret meeting at a fire station at Reagan National Airport in Washington. Gates said he was impressed by what Obama said and agreed to stay on. Gates, a Republican, became the first secretary of defense to serve in both Democratic and Republican administrations.

His first major initiative was to oversee changes in the war in Afghanistan, even as the troop surge in Iraq was still winding down. Less than two weeks after his inauguration, Obama talked with Gates about the military's plans to send thousands more U.S. troops to Afghanistan.

Gates said a few days later that the goal of those troops was "to bring greater security in places like Helmand (province) by being a permanent presence there -- by being a long-term presence rather than flying out by helicopter for a day's operations or a couple of days' operations and then flying back to their base."

The increase in troops has led to a spike in U.S. troop deaths in the almost-10-year-old war. But by June, the Obama administration will begin withdrawing troops from the country, putting security issues more into the hands of Afghan security forces.

The U.S. commander in Afghanistan at the time of the surge was Gen. David D. McKiernan, who had been asking for more troops. But even before all those troops arrived, McKiernan was out.

"We have not been able to fully resource our military effort in Afghanistan in recent years, " Gates said when he announced in May 2009 that McKiernan would be replaced. "I believe, resources or no, that our mission there requires new thinking and new approaches from our military leaders. "

McKiernan was replaced by Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the former chief of special operations, who had already served in Afghanistan.

But changes in personnel were not Gates' only priority that winter. His fiscal year 2010 budget request, his first under Obama, showed that he could be just as cold in slashing the budget as he was in terminating careers.

In the request, Gates cut spending on F-22 fighter jets, the Army's Future Combat System and the Navy's next generation of destroyers. He ended plans to build a new fleet of presidential helicopters and ended purchases of C-17 cargo jets. The cuts, while criticized by Congress, lead to hundreds of billions of dollars in savings for the department, according to the Pentagon.

A year later, Gates was still fighting to trim the defense budget while the country dealt with two wars and a new financial crisis.

"Given America's difficult economic circumstances and perilous fiscal condition, military spending on things large and small can and should expect closer, harsher scrutiny," he said in Abilene, Kansas. "The gusher has been turned off and will stay off for a good period of time."

Critics say Gates' budget priorities are misguided. James Carafano, who directs the Heritage Foundation's Douglas and Sarah Allison Center for Foreign Policy Studies, says Gates has mortgaged the future of the country's defense.

"Gates took a military that's stretched and gutted its future. The U.S. will pay the price for that, and it will be his legacy far more than stage-managing Iraq and Afghanistan."

As he prepares to pack up his office, including the pictures of his home in Washington state to which he has so longed to return, Gates has found himself overseeing U.S. involvement in a third conflict in Libya.

Just in February, Gates was back at West Point, and he told the cadets, "In my opinion, any future defense secretary who advises the president to again send a big American land army into Asia or into the Middle East or Africa should 'have his head examined,' as Gen. (Douglas) MacArthur so delicately put it."

But just weeks later, the Navy and Air Force were heavily involved in enforcing a United Nations-sanctioned no-fly zone over Libya. Although seeming to follow Gates' advice, Obama issued a strict "no-boots-on-the-ground" rule for U.S. troops there. And American involvement in Libya has been scaled back and turned over to international partners.

Gates is still cutting programs and making some in Congress angry.

In April, the department announced that it was ending the program to develop an alternative engine for the new F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. Supporters said the program created 1,000 jobs, but Gates has called the program -- estimated to cost $1.8 billion to $2.9 billion -- unjustified and excessive.

Such cuts are one reason why Carafano says history will not look kindly on Gates' tenure as secretary of defense.

But both Ricks and O'Hanlon rate Gates as among the best.

"He helped turn around Iraq; he did a good job with Afghanistan; he brought stability at a turbulent time," O'Hanlon said.

As for Gates himself, when asked about his legacy during what will likely be his last visit to the troops in Iraq, he said that although his agenda was no longer just Iraq, that's what he would judged on.

"And I'll let people judge for themselves."

CNN

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Obama Eyes Speculators for Rising Gas Prices, as Other Factors Play Role

AP

Wednesday: President Obama speaks during a town hall meeting at Facebook headquarters in Palo Alto, Calif.

With gas prices surging to $4 a gallon, one of President Obama's solution to break the back of rising costs is to have Attorney General Eric Holder form a task force to examine alleged fraud or manipulation of oil markets.

"We are going to make sure that no one is taking advantage of the American people for their own short-term gain," Obama said to applause at a town hall-style meeting at a renewable energy plant in Reno, Nev., on Thursday.

But commodity analysts are skeptical of the president's plan.

"This is a transparently political fishing expedition that insinuates that fraud or manipulation is distorting oil prices without providing even the flimsiest factual basis for such a suspicion," said Craig Pirrong, a finance professor at the University of Houston who specializes in commodity prices. 

The national average price for a gallon of regular gasoline was $3.84 on Thursday, about 30 cents higher than a month ago and almost a dollar higher than a year ago.

For Americans, who on average buy about 500 gallons of gasoline a year, that's an extra $500 from their wallets. 

But that's not the only way consumers are hit by higher gas prices. More expensive oil imports means increases in the cost of food, airline tickets and products shipped or trucked from far-away locations, among other expenses. 

At his town hall, Obama bemoaned the higher price "at a time when things were already pretty tough." He renewed his proposal to end roughly $4 billion annually in various government subsidies to oil and gas companies "at a time when they're making record profits and you're paying near record prices at the pump. It has to stop."

But without congressional support for that plan, his primary tool right now appears to be the task force. 

The Financial Fraud Enforcement Working Group will focus some of its probe on "the role of traders and speculators" in the oil-price surge, Obama said, and will include several Cabinet department officials, federal regulators and the National Association of Attorneys General.

In a memo accompanying a statement announcing the task force, Holder promised to "be vigilant in monitoring the oil and gas markets for any wrongdoing so that consumers can be confident they are not paying higher prices as a result of illegal activity."

But he suggested a variety of legal reasons may be behind the spike in gas prices.

"Based upon our work and research to date, it is evident that there are regional differences in gasoline prices, as well as differences in the statutory and other legal tools at the government's disposal," Holder said. "It is also clear that there are lawful reasons for increases in gas prices, given supply and demand.

"Nonetheless, where consumers are harmed by unlawful conduct that has the effect of increasing gas prices, state and federal authorities will take swift action," Holder said, without citing any current evidence of intentional manipulation of oil and gas prices or fraud.

Stephen Moore, a senior economic writer for the Wall Street Journal editorial board and founder of the Club for Growth, said aside from the Middle East, part of the problem is Federal Reserve policy, which he describes as inflationary because it is pushing extra dollars into the economy.

"We're seeing inflationary effects through these gasoline prices but we're also seeing it in gold prices, copper prices and food prices. So I think (Federal Reserve Board Chairman) Ben Bernanke is as much responsible for these high gasoline prices as anyone," Moore said.

A McClatchy-Marist poll this month found that 36 percent of respondents blame tensions abroad for rising gas prices while 33 percent blamed oil companies. Eleven percent blamed Obama and Democrats, and 6 percent pointed to congressional Republicans. The nationwide poll of 1,274 adults was conducted April 10-14 with a margin of error of 3 percent.

Indeed, with the 2012 campaign ramping up, the White House is eager to show voters it's taking action to tackle rising gas prices. But Pirrong said the task force is hardly needed since the agencies already have tools to monitor for fraud and to take action.

"This is part of a broad effort by the administration to deflect criticism with regard to gasoline prices," he said.

As Obama targets traders, some media analysts argue that he is getting a free ride on the skyrocketing prices compared to former President George W. Bush who was largely blamed for soaring hikes near the end of presidency in 2008.

"The numbers are fascinating

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USA and other countries need to re-tool their science programs

Nature

The April 21, 2011edition of the British science journal Nature includes a look at the Ph.D. process.

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The April 21, 2011edition of the British science journal Nature includes a look at the Ph.D. process.

According to the multipart series in the journal Nature, the world is awash in Ph.D.s, most of them being awarded after years of study and tens of thousands of dollars to scholars who will never find work in academia, the traditional goal for Doctors of Philosophy.

"In some countries, including the United States and Japan, people who have trained at great length and expense to be researchers confront a dwindling number of academic jobs and an industrial sector unable to take up the slack," the cover article says.

Of people who received Ph.D.s in the biological sciences five to six years ago, only 13% have tenure-track positions leading to a professorship, says Paula Stephan, who studies the economics of science at Georgia State University in Atlanta.

All together, 10% are working part time or out of the labor force entirely, 33% are in academic positions that don't lead to a professorship positions, 22% are in industry and 20% are at community colleges or working in government or non-profit jobs, she says.

That 33% of Ph.D.s in non tenure-track positions is especially troubling, she says. It used to be that "post-docs," post doctoral research positions in a professor's lab, were a steppingstone to one's own lab and professorship. But now one-third of Ph.D.s are permanently stuck "basically working as research assistants." They have no job security and salaries start at $39,000 a year. "That's appalling: You could get that with a bachelor of science degree," Stephan says.

It's not necessarily the education that needs to change, but how the endpoint is presented, says Maresi Nerad, director of the Center for Innovation and Research in Graduate Education at the University of Washington in Seattle.

Even the way anything but being a professor is termed is a problem, she says. People refer to "alternative careers," which just screams "It's not the real thing, the real thing is becoming a professor,' " she says. The presumption is that if they don't become a professor, "something isn't right with them." But that track hasn't really existed for the majority for a long time.

In fact, her studies have found that about half of the science Ph.D.s end up working outside of academia in industry, government or at not-for-profits, and they're very happy and actually make more money and have more autonomy.

The glut tracks back to predictions in the 1980s that an impending wave of professor retirements and rising college enrollment would require a hoard of new Ph.D.s. This didn't prove to be true, but Ph.D.-track students flooded universities and then couldn't find jobs.

One reason the overproduction of Ph.D.s hasn't been dealt with is the economic incentives built into Ph.D. programs in science. Universities rely on graduate students and post-docs, Stephan says. "There are tremendous incentives for academic departments to grow their Ph.D. programs because it's a cheap, temporary workforce."

The future for Ph.D.s isn't all grim

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Gadhafi forces capture USA TODAY writer, 3 other journalists

Moammar Gadhafi's forces have captured four journalists in Libya. Two are U.S. citizens, one of whom has reported on the civil war for USA TODAY.

Here's what the paper's world and military affairs editor, William Dermody, reports:

Clare Morgana Gillis has reported for USA TODAY, The Atlantic and the Christian Science Monitor. The other U.S. citizen arrested is James Foley, a journalist for GlobalPost.

Human Rights Watch stated Thursday that witnesses said that the four reporters were in a car Tuesday a few miles outside of Brega, the scene of intense fighting recently, when they were stopped by pro-government forces and taken away. The driver was released and the car destroyed with a rocket-propelled grenade.

Rebels who witnessed the arrest reported what they saw to The New York Times, which alerted Human Rights Watch. The other two journalists taken are Manu Brabo, a Spanish photographer, and Anton Hammerl, a South African photographer.

Last month, four journalists for the Times were captured and released after six days. Gillis, of New Haven, Conn., is a graduate of Harvard University. The location of the journalists is not known.

The State Department, Human Rights Watch and the Libyan foreign media office have been informed of the situation and asked to intervene on behalf of the journalists.

"Clare Morgana Gillis has provided excellent coverage of the conflict in Libya as a journalist working for numerous American publications including USA TODAY," said Editor John Hillkirk. "We ask Libyan authorities to ensure her safety and release her immediately, along with the three journalists who are with her."

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