We Survived Abuse

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New York Times - National

• Pain Spreads as Credit Vise Grows Tighter - Lenders have become even less willing to part with their money, further crimping budgets and family spending.
  
  
• For Rivals, Finance Crisis Is Posing on-the-Fly Tests - The presidential race has turned into an audition for who could best handle a national economic emergency.
  
  
• Drug Label, Maimed Patient and Test for Court - At issue is whether plaintiffs have the right to sue when the products that hurt them had met federal standards.
  
  
• After Impasse, New California Budget Agreement - California legislative leaders and the governor have come to an agreement on the state budget, which is now roughly three months late.
  
  
• California Bans Texting by Operators of Trains - After investigators said an engineer in last week?s collision had been texting on the job, regulators temporarily banned the use of all cellular devices by anyone at the controls of a moving train.
  
  
• Political Memo: Given G.O.P. Predicament, Rangel Opts to Ride Out the Storm - Democrats believe that a long list of Republican lawmakers with legal troubles makes it impossible for Republicans to gain much ground on the issues of ethics and good government.
  
  
• Panel Proposes Broad Changes in Federal Financial Aid for College - The recommendations included a simpler application, Pell grant maximums linked to the consumer price index and federally financed college savings accounts for children in low-income families.
  
  
• Chicago Unveils Multifaceted Plan to Curb Emissions of Heat-Trapping Gases - The blueprint would change the city?s building codes to promote energy efficiency, and it calls for installing huge solar panels at municipal properties and building alternative fueling stations.
  
  
• Vast Bailout by U.S. Proposed in Bid to Stem Financial Crisis - Treasury and Fed officials were discussing with leaders in Congress a plan for the government to buy up distressed mortgages.
  
  
• A Bid to Curb Profit Gambit as Banks Fall - A backlash against short sellers has begun, with regulators in the U.S. and Britain tightening rules and authorities in New York intensifying investigations.
  
  

NYT - Opinion

• Editorial: Another Start for Peace Talks - Two days of meetings in Washington between the Israeli prime minister and the Palestinian president struck the right tone. Now Mr. Netanyahu should extend the moratorium on new settlement construction.
  
  
• Editorial: Endorsements for New York - Our choices for some of the major primary races in the state.
  
  
• Letters: The Divide Over the Islamic Center - Readers respond to a recent article.
  
  
• Letter: A Fitness Plan That?s Not Just for the Military - A reader responds to a recent article.
  
  
• Letter: Is Government Effective? New Jersey?s Costly Error - A reader responds to a recent article.
  
  
• Letter: A Gay Republican Comes Out - A reader responds to a recent article.
  
  
• Op-Ed Columnist: Of Janitors and Kings - Janitors in a Los Angeles office that is part of the JPMorgan Chase empire lose their jobs but find their voices of protest.
  
  
• Op-Ed Columnist: The Ungreat Debate - This week in Arizona, there was continued talk from the governor about nonexistent beheadings. And there were 16 seconds of silence.
  
  
• Op-Ed Columnist: Religious Outlier - According to a new Gallup poll, richer countries in general are less religious. But that doesn?t seem to be true of the United States.
  
  
• Op-Ed Contributor: The Pacific Campaign, Dam Division - World War II ends, and a building project with Japanese soldiers begins.
  
  

Washington Post.com - Today’s Headlines

• Rolling on to Colombia - Andrew Loog Oldham changed rock music forever, managing the Rolling Stones in the early years. Now 66, he is once more managing rock-and-rollers, but in South America this time.
• Digest - Thousands of Shiite Muslims in Pakistan mourned at funeral prayers for victims of a triple bombing that heaped more tragedy on a country already struggling to cope with devastating floods. In Iran, assailants smashed windows and damaged security cameras at the home of Iranian opposition leader Mehdi
• Karzai calls aide's arrest 'exactly reminiscent' of Soviet times - Afghan President Hamid Karzai spoke out angrily against the arrest of one of his closest aides last month on corruption charges, saying that the detention was conducted in a manner "exactly reminiscent of the Soviet presence in Afghanistan. Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, who appeared with Karzai
• Karzai tells Afghans not to panic in rush for withdrawals - DUBAI, UNITED ARAB EMIRATES - As depositors thronged branches of Afghanistan's biggest bank, President Hamid Karzai told Afghans on Thursday not to panic shortly after his brother, a major shareholder in the beleaguered Kabul Bank, called for intervention by the United States to head off a financial...
  
• Drug violence is worse, Calderon admits - MEXICO CITY - President Felipe Calderon acknowledged Thursday that an increasingly bloody war with powerful drug trafficking organizations continues to pose "the central threat" to Mexico.
• U.S. message leaves Iraqis confused - As President Obama declared Tuesday that it was "time to turn the page" in Iraq, Mahmoud Othman - tuning in to the Oval Office address at 3 a.m. in Baghdad - listened in shock. For Americans, the message was clear: The United States' war in Iraq is over. But the longtime Kurdish politican heard some
• Getting under the hood - In one of the first detailed insider accounts by a member of President Obama's team, a chief architect of the federal bailouts for General Motors and Chrysler has penned a 300-plus page description of the policy improvisation performed by the administration as the economy swooned at the outset of...
• HP poised to acquire 3Par as Dell bows out - Hewlett-Packard agreed to buy 3Par for $2.35 billion, ending an 18-day bidding war with Dell for the maker of storage systems and stepping up its rivalry with EMC.
  
• Put the millionaires' tax money to good use - With the economy downshifting into first gear and their poll numbers sagging, the White House and Democratic congressional leaders are desperate for an economic and political game-changer as they head into the November elections. As it happens, there's one close at hand: the expiration of the "Bush"...
• Survey of employed finds 25 percent lost a job during recession - Just over a quarter of the nation's 139 million currently employed workers endured a bout of unemployment during the Great Recession, according to results of a Pew Research Center survey released Thursday. And they tend to be less satisfied in their current jobs than are other workers.

Washington Post.com - Editorials

• The most important factors in the D.C. primary - ONE DISPIRITING aspect of the spirited contest between Mayor Adrian M. Fenty and D.C. Council Chairman Vincent C. Gray is what it reveals about the District's deep and enduring racial divisions. Neither Mr. Fenty nor Mr. Gray seemed particularly eager to discuss those during a debate last week,...
• Montgomery schools - SCHOOL BOARD elections tend not to attract a lot of attention; other contests are seen as more exciting or significant. But this year in Montgomery County, the impending retirement of Schools Superintendent Jerry D. Weast underscores the importance of choosing carefully a board that -- by selecting...
• Do you know where your children are? - DEPENDING ON where you live, your children have already started or will soon start school. Much to your relief, no doubt. What should make you uneasy is that the child-care center or school you send them to might not be prepared for an emergency. According to a report from Save the Children, far too...
• Feeling scorned, big business turns its back on President Obama - PRESIDENT OBAMA'S 2008 campaign raised roughly $40 million from the financial sector, 50 percent more than did Republican John McCain. But now, it seems, Wall Street is suffering a massive case of buyer's remorse. Irked by the president's anti-business rhetoric and by financial regulations he and a...
  
• Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin tries to crush dissenters - RUSSIAN PRIME MINISTER Vladimir Putin must be disappointed in his police force. True, Moscow police responded roughly on Tuesday when hundreds tried to demonstrate peacefully in favor of freedom of assembly. But the police apparently didn't beat anyone with clubs, as Mr. Putin had urged them to do....
• Alan Simpson's brash e-mail told truths about Social Security - DID ALAN SIMPSON'S mother never tell him to count to 10 before saying -- or e-mailing -- something he might regret? Apparently not. The Wyoming Republican, a former senator and now co-chair of President Obama's fiscal responsibility commission, put, as he acknowledged, a size 15 foot in his mouth...
• Unfulfilled promises to black farmers and Native Americans - JOHN BOYD JR. has had it. Mr. Boyd, president of the National Black Farmers Association, has worked for the past quarter-century to win some semblance of justice for African American farmers, who for decades were denied government loans because of the color of their skin. Yet something goes wrong...
• The EPA's new gas-mileage labels are good but not perfect - THE ENVIRONMENTAL Protection Agency is asking for comments on its proposed new gas mileage stickers for automobiles -- so here's ours. On the whole, both of the agency's two suggested alternative stickers represent much-needed improvement over current fuel-economy labeling. They more clearly and...
  
• Del. Norton deserves reelection to Congress - DEL. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.) is faulted by her opponent in the Sept. 14 primary for not being able to deliver voting rights to the city. This failure, even with solid Democratic majorities in both houses of Congress, is why challenger Douglass Sloan thinks that she should be replaced. That...
• Shouldn't winning the war be Mr. Obama's top mission? - ENDANGERED Democrats beseech President Obama to focus on the problems at home. Republicans smelling blood attack him if he talks about anything but the recession. His own aides promise, from time to time, that his mission will consist of "jobs, jobs, jobs."

Washington Post.com - Metro - Religion

• Episcopalians Reject Gay Candidates - SAN FRANCISCO, May 6 -- The story from the Grace Cathedral on Saturday was not so much about what happened but what didn't happen. Episcopalians in San Francisco did not elect an openly gay candidate as bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of California, thereby preventing a schism within the 75...
• A Financial Model Fit for Islam - The business class had just finished its evening prayer break, and everyone's shoes were back on.
• Latino Catholics Increasingly Drawn To Pentecostalism - LOS ANGELES -- When Fabiola Briones entered a Pentecostal church for the first time, she was in crisis, recently divorced and bitter from abuse she suffered as a child. A Mexican-American Catholic, she had never seen anyone fall to the ground while praising God or speak in tongues, which is common...
• Plans to End Cacophony Of Cairo's Call to Prayer - CAIRO, April 30 -- Sitting on the bluff at the Giza pyramids in late afternoon, as the sky turns pink behind the great pharaonic tombs, you can hear the 5 o'clock call to prayer rise from mosques in the Nile River valley below until the air becomes filled with a drone of proclaimed faith.
  
• The Sky's the Limit - A crunch on open space in many cities has developers courting churches with multimillion-dollar offers to buy their property and sometimes even the air above their heads.
• Inquiry Backs Complaint Against Priest - A Jesuit priest who was a popular teacher for 14 years at Georgetown Preparatory School inappropriately touched a student at the prestigious Jesuit-run boys' school in North Bethesda, an investigation by Jesuit authorities found.
• Reuters Business Summary - Honda Q4 net jumps on one-off gains TOKYO (Reuters) - Honda Motor Co. on Wednesday posted a 133 percent jump in fourth-quarter net profit, helped by a softer yen, brisk overseas sales and accounting one-offs, but projected weaker-than-expected earnings for this year. January-March net profit at...
• Reuters Politics Summary - Bush picks Fox's Snow as press secretary WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Bush has picked Fox News Radio host Tony Snow as his new White House press secretary and is expected to announce the choice as early as Wednesday, a Republican official said on Tuesday night. Snow will replace Scott McClellan,...
  
• Sri Lanka launches new strikes on Tiger territory - COLOMBO (Reuters) - Sri Lanka's military launched new strikes on Tamil Tiger areas in the island's northeast on Wednesday, a day after a deadly suicide bomb attack blamed on rebels shattered a fragile ceasefire.
• Empty chair and slurs mar Mexico election debate - MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Mexico's presidential candidates tore into each other on Tuesday in a televised debate with some tough rhetoric also aimed at an empty chair set aside for a leftist front runner who refused to take part.