Burst of gunfire from U.S. soldier touches varied lives

ABOVE: A family photo shows Pfc. Michael Edward Yates Jr. and his son Kamren. BELOW: Licensed clinical social worker Cmdr. Charles Keith Springle

Keith Springle, who grew up swimming and fishing off the North Carolina coast and seemed destined as a boy to join the Navy, was in Iraq because it was his duty as a military psychologist. Dr. Matthew Houseal, a 54-year-old Army reservist and psychiatrist, was there because he felt he needed to be.

Regardless of how they came to be there, both made it their mission to help their fellow service members cope with the stress of life in the combat zone. Soldiers like the Maryland rebel who liked tinkering with guns and despised “pencil pushers”; or the Peru native who, whether he was walking the streets of New Jersey or the dirt roads of Iraq, was a magnet for candy-seeking kids; or the shy video gamer from Missouri whose refusal to back down probably cost him his life.

Stress brought the five together earlier this week at a Baghdad clinic, the emotionally wounded and the healers. And stress is what killed them.

Authorities say Sgt. John M. Russell, who was nearing the end of his third tour in Iraq, was deeply angry at the military when he walked into the combat stress clinic at Camp Liberty on Monday and opened fire.

Killed were Springle, 52, a Navy commander from Beaufort, N.C.; Houseal of Amarillo, Texas; Army Sgt. Christian E. Bueno-Galdos, 25, of Paterson, N.J.; Spc. Jacob D. Barton, 20, of Lenox, Mo.; and Pfc. Michael E. Yates Jr., 19, of Federalsburg, Md., who had met Russell shortly before the shootings.

The paths that brought these six men together traced a grid across the globe, from South America to rural Missouri, from the islands of Alaska to deepest Antarctica, before intersecting so tragically in an Army clinic.

Family and teachers said Jacob Barton was a quiet student who loved graphic novels and science fiction. Growing up with his grandmother in the house, he sometimes had trouble relating to kids his own age.

“His grandmother was foremost on his mind at all times,” said Rod Waldrip, Barton’s high school English teacher at Rolla High School, where Barton graduated last year. “He sometimes wouldn’t do after-school activities because he had to see if she was OK. She was his main concern.”

Rose Coleman said her grandson was adjusting to life in the Army and that he “seemed to like it.”

Although he was reserved, he wasn’t afraid. Waldrip remembers seeing Barton come to the rescue of somebody who was getting bullied.

“He wouldn’t say much unless there was some injustice being done, and then he would speak up.”

Coleman said the Army told the family that Barton died trying to shield another man from the shooting.

“And he tried to talk the guy with the gun to put his gun down,” she said.

Springle knew mental health issues in the past weren’t being addressed and wanted to be proactive in treating the issues faced by soldiers and their families, said Staff Sgt. Robert Mullis of the Boone-based 1451st Transportation Company of the N.C. National Guard, who was part of a civilian outreach program with Springle.

“He saw it as preventive maintenance,” Mullis said of Springle. “They’ve just been through some tough experiences. He was reaching out trying to try and stop a big beast before it got started.”

Springle grew up in the little fishing village of Lewiston, N.C., just east of Beaufort. Cousin Alton Dudley said the pair were a kind of saltwater Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer.

“It was a carefree life,” said Dudley, a fishing boat captain who was nine years older than Springle. “I am sure that he joined the Navy so that he could be at sea or close to it.”

All who knew him talked about Springle’s sense of humor and upbeat attitude. But Springle, whose son and son-in-law have each done a tour in Iraq, took the issue of combat stress very seriously. While deploying to Iraq was his duty, his work on the homefront with the Citizen-Soldier Support Program was a labor of love.

“This was volunteer work,” said Bob Goodale, director of behavioral mental health for the Chapel Hill-based program. “He was doing this because it was the right thing to do: training civilian providers so they were better equipped to serve the families and the service members.”

At 54, Houseal, a major in the Army Reserves, was under no obligation to go to Iraq. But he was already something of an adventurer.

For 11 months in 1991, the University of Michigan graduate served as the physician for about 20 people working at the Amundsen-Scott Station near the South Pole in a climate research project funded by the National Science Foundation, said Mike O’Neill who was the group’s electronics technician.

“He came in at the last minute not knowing anybody,” said O’Neill, who works for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Colorado. “That’s one of the reasons I really respected him.”

The Amarillo man had worked for a dozen years at the Texas Panhandle Mental Health and Mental Retardation clinic, said executive director Bud Schertler. He left Texas for Iraq in late January and was assigned to the 55th Medical Company in Indianapolis, which ran the clinic where the shootings occurred.

Bueno-Galdos couldn’t wait to serve his adopted country and did so exceptionally, earning three Army Commendation Medals.

He was 7 when his family emigrated from Mollendo, Peru, for better economic opportunities. The youngest of four children, Chinito – a term of endearment that literally means “little Chinaman” – became a U.S. citizen in high school and joined the Army as soon as he graduated.

Back home in Paterson, he never made a trip to the corner bodega without a group of neighborhood children tailing behind, knowing he would buy them candy or a soda, his family recalled. It was the same in Iraq, where he was on his second tour.

Yates displayed zeal for serving in the Army, but perhaps not the locale where he was serving, as evidenced by his MySpace page.

His profile lists his location as “(expletive), Iraq.”

Yates’ mother, Shawna Machlinski, said her son joined the Army, not out of a sense of duty, but because he didn’t see many other options. Besides, his stepfather and two stepbrothers were all military men.

Yates liked the military, especially going out on what he called “stealth missions.” His problems started when he went back after spending nearly the entire month of April at home. His son, Kamren Mister, celebrated his first birthday on April 7.

But the visit left him anxious. He wasn’t home long enough, but he’d still been away from “my military family” too long. Once back in Iraq, his mother said, he began to think about things he wished he’d done while visiting Maryland.

When the strong emotions began surfacing, she said, he was transferred to headquarters company “so he could stay out of combat.”

“He didn’t like headquarters at all,” said Machlinski. “He said they’re stupid pencil pushers.”

Despite the stigma, Yates volunteered to go to the stress clinic.

“I need help dealing with this,” he told his mom.

Yates had been at the clinic nearly a week when he called home Sunday for Mother’s Day.

Sometime during that time, he bumped into Russell.

Yates told his mother that Russell seemed like a nice enough guy, but after three tours, he clearly hated the Army.

“Man, this guy’s got issues,” she remembers him telling her.

Russell, 44, who was a little more than a month shy of finishing his third tour, told his family that the clinic was hurting him more than helping.

Now, he faces charges of murder and aggravated assault.

FORT WAYNE, Ind. – Officials say a suspected drug dealer who led police on a 90 mph chase in Indiana was arrested after he stopped suddenly at a Taco Bell parking lot.

Fort Wayne police Sgt. Mark Walters says 36-year-old Jermaine Askia Cooper told officers he “knew he was going to jail for a while” and wanted to get one last burrito. He did not get the burrito, police said.

Cooper was held without bail on four counts of dealing cocaine, one count of resisting arrest by fleeing and other charges.

A voicemail mailbox for a listing for a Jermaine Cooper in Fort Wayne was full and not accepting messages.

Police say the chase began Tuesday after officers spotted Cooper, who was wanted on other charges. The chase ended in nearby Decatur.

He reverses position because of damage photos might do

WASHINGTON – President Obama will try to block the court-ordered release of photos showing the abuse of prisoners in U.S. custody in Iraq and Afghanistan, reversing his position and ceding to military concerns the images could stoke anti-American passions overseas.

The White House had said last month it would not oppose an appeals court ruling that set a May 28 deadline for releasing dozens of photos from military investigations of alleged misconduct.

But American commanders in the war zones have expressed concern about damage the photos might do.

When photos emerged in 2004 from the U.S.-run Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, showing grinning American soldiers posing with detainees – some of the prisoners naked, some being held on leashes – the pictures caused a huge anti-American backlash around the globe, particularly in the Muslim world.

Obama, explaining his change of heart, said the photos had already served their purpose in investigations of “a small number of individuals.” Those cases were all concluded by 2004, and the president said “the individuals who were involved have been identified, and appropriate actions have been taken.”

“This is not a situation in which the Pentagon has concealed or sought to justify inappropriate action,” Obama said of the photos.

The effort to keep the photos from becoming public represented a sharp reversal from Obama’s repeated pledges for open government.

Obama’s reversal puts him in step with some Republicans. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., sent kudos via Twitter. “Strongly agree,” he said.

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LATEST DEVELOPMENTS

• A suicide car bomber killed seven people and wounded 21 others Wednesday outside a U.S. military base in the same part of eastern Afghanistan where militants stormed government buildings a day earlier, police said.

• Ninety-five Afghan children are among the 140 people said to have died in a recent U.S.-Taliban battle in western Afghanistan, a lawmaker involved in the investigation into the deaths said Wednesday. The U.S. military disputed the claim.

• Tempers boiled over Wednesday at a refugee camp in Pakistan when a scuffle broke out as police escorted a truck carrying mattresses and water, but the incident did not last long and there were no reports of injuries.

The Associated Press

DETROIT – Authorities say a rural postal carrier in suburban Detroit stole and sold stamps worth nearly $20,000 because he was behind on his mortgage.

Postal agents confronted John Auito on April 30 outside his home in Macomb. He told agents that he typically sold the stamps at a 15 percent discount. Auito contacted people who had participated in stamp auctions on eBay.

The 42-year-old Auito is charged with stealing stamps that were being shipped to retailers in his delivery area. A message seeking comment was left at his home Monday.

Auito told agents that he began taking stamps in September because he feared foreclosure.

Felicia Cody wasn't able to salvage much from her grandmother's burned house on Monday, which was destroyed by the Jesusita wildfire in Santa Barbara, Calif. Situated at the end of Tunnel Road, the home was among the first of many to be destroyed by the wind-driven wildfire. The home had been rebuilt after being destroyed by another wildfire in 1964.

SANTA BARBARA, Calif. – Firefighters rushed to wipe out the last remnants of a wildfire that destroyed dozens of homes in the hills above this scenic coastal city, racing against winds that might whip the blaze back to life.

The 13-square-mile blaze was 70 percent encircled after several days of good weather over the Santa Ynez Mountains and full containment was expected Wednesday.

But the National Weather Service issued a “fire weather watch” for the local mountains and south Santa Barbara County from late Tuesday afternoon through Thursday morning due to gusty north winds and low relative humidity.

The area’s “sundowner” winds typically appear during evening hours or late afternoons in certain conditions, blowing from north to south down passes and canyons just above Santa Barbara and adjacent communities.

Roberta LaRocco, a Santa Barbara County spokeswoman, said there was concern “but we are optimistic.”

Firefighters were mainly dousing hot spots and carving containment lines in wilderness areas north of the city in Los Padres National Forest, Santa Barbara County spokeswoman Sarah Gibson said.

“There is no open flame,” Gibson said.

The 8,733-acre fire – equal to about 13 1/2 square miles – broke out May 5 and destroyed 77 homes and damaged 22 others, according to county estimates. Sixty outbuildings were also destroyed and 69 others were damaged.

Approximately 145 homes remained evacuated, affecting some 360 people, down from 30,500 people at the fire’s height. It has cost $10.8 million to fight and has injured 28 firefighters.

Most people returned Sunday to unscathed homes.

“We were very, very, very lucky, and we always keep knocking on wood,” said Marty Conoley, 57, rapping on a coffee table in his undamaged home. “Who would have thunk a fire at this time of year?”

Others weren’t as lucky. Robert Pratini, an 88-year old retired teacher, stood with relatives on heaps of blackened debris where his hillside house once stood. His wife. Faye, 79, said they doubt they will rebuild.

“You always have a glimmer of optimism,” said Pratini, who had lived there since 1960. “You build up a lot of memories, and a lot of attachments.”

Officials said the blaze apparently was started by someone using a power tool to clear brush last Tuesday on private land near the Jesusita Trail. They asked the public for help in identifying the tool user.

Officials declined to comment further about the type of power tool that may have been used, or if anyone could face charges.

During the weekend, fire officials praised residents for aggressively cutting back brush that could have fueled the blaze.

Ex-special forces officer to head Afghan fight

U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates (wearing suit) and U.S. Army Gen. David McKiernan (seated, right), then-commander of the U.S. forces in Afghanistan, listen Friday to Afghan governors and local officials during a visit to Forward Operating Base Airborne in the mountains of Wardak Province, Afghanistan. Gates fired McKieran on Monday.

WASHINGTON – President Obama fired the top U.S. general in Afghanistan on Monday, replacing him with a former special forces commander in a quest for a more agile, unconventional approach in a war that has gone quickly downhill.

With the Taliban resurgent, Obama’s switch from Gen. David McKiernan to Lt. Gen. Stanley McChrystal suggested that the new president wants major changes in addition to the additional troops he’s ordering into Afghanistan to shore up the war effort.

McKiernan, on the job for less than a year, repeatedly pressed for more forces. Although Obama has approved more than 21,000 additional troops this year, he has warned that the war will not be won by military means.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates echoed that view at a grim Pentagon news conference announcing the leadership overhaul.

“As I have said many times before, very few of these problems can be solved by military means alone,” he said. “And yet, from the military perspective, we can and must do better.”

“It’s time for new leadership and fresh eyes.”

A new team of commanders will now be charged with applying Obama’s revamped strategy for challenging an increasingly brutal and resourceful insurgency. The strategy, a work in progress, relies on the kind of special forces and counterinsurgency tactics McChrystal knows well, as well as nonmilitary approaches to confronting the Taliban. It would hinge success in the seven-year-old war to political and other conditions across the border in Pakistan.

McKiernan, named to his post by then- President George W. Bush, had expected to serve into next year but was told he was out during Gates’ visit to Afghanistan last week.

Gates said he asked for McKiernan’s resignation “with the approval of the president.” The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Mike Mullen, and McKiernan’s military boss, Gen. David Petraeus, both said they supported the switch.

The White House said the recommended change came from the Pentagon.

“The president agreed with the recommendation of the secretary of defense and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff that the implementation of a new strategy in Afghanistan called for new military leadership,” White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said in a statement.

McChrystal is a former special forces chief credited with nabbing one of the most-wanted fugitives in Iraq. Taking a newly created No. 2 slot under his command will be Lt. Gen. David Rodriguez, a veteran of the Afghanistan fight who has been Gates’ military shadow, the top uniformed aide who travels with him everywhere.

By year’s end, the United States will have more than 68,000 troops in the sprawling country, about double the total at the end of Bush’s presidency but far fewer than the 130,000 in Iraq.

McKiernan and other U.S. commanders have said resources they need in Afghanistan are tied up in Iraq.

Although Obama had pledged to add forces in Afghanistan while shutting down the Iraq war, his new administration has sought firmer control over the pace and scope of any new deployments. Gates and Mullen have both warned Obama that a very large influx of U.S. troops would be self-defeating.

Asked if McKiernan’s resignation would end his military career, Gates said, “Probably.” But he praised the general’s long service, and when pressed to name anything McKiernan had failed to do, Gates demurred.

“Nothing went wrong, and there was nothing specific,” he said.

Gates, too, was appointed to his position by Bush. He noted that the Afghan campaign has long lacked people and money in favor of the Bush administration’s focus since 2003 on the Iraq war.

“But I believe, resources or no, that our mission there requires new thinking and new approaches from our military leaders,” he said. “Today we have a new policy set by our new president. We have a new strategy, a new mission and a new ambassador. I believe that new military leadership also is needed.”

McKiernan issued a short statement in Kabul.

“All of us, in any future capacity, must remain committed to the great people of Afghanistan,” McKiernan said. “They deserve security, government that meets their expectations, and a better future than the last 30 years of conflict have witnessed.”

In June 2006 Bush congratulated McChrystal for his role in the operation that killed Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of al-Qaida in Iraq. As head of the Special Operations Command, McChrystal’s forces included the Army’s clandestine counterterrorism unit, the Delta Force.

He drew criticism for his role in the military’s handling of the friendly fire shooting of Army Ranger Pat Tillman, a former NFL star, in Afghanistan.

An investigation at the time found that McChrystal was “accountable for the inaccurate and misleading assertions” contained in papers recommending that Tillman get a Silver Star award.

McChrystal acknowledged he had suspected several days before approving the Silver Star citation that Tillman might have died by fratricide, rather than enemy fire. He sent a memo to military leaders warning them of that, even as they were approving Tillman’s Silver Star. Still, he told investigators he believed Tillman deserved the award.

McChrystal

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McCHRYSTAL BIO

NAME: Lt. Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal

EXPERIENCE : Director of The Joint Staff, August 2008-present; Commander, Joint Special Operations Command and commander, Joint Special Operations Command Forward, 2006-2008; commanding general, Joint Special Operations Command, 2003-06; vice director for operations, J-3 The Joint Staff, 2002-03; chief of staff, XVIII Airborne Corps and Fort Bragg, 2001-02; assistant division commander for operations, 82d Airborne Division; commander, 75th Ranger Regiment, 1997-99.

EDUCATION: B.S., U.S. Military Academy; M.A. in national security and strategic studies, U.S. Naval War College; M.S. in international relations, Salve Regina University.

Georgia leads nation in bank closures with 9 in past year

The closure of the FirstCity Bank means residents of Gibson, Ga., have to travel 20 miles to the nearest bank.

GIBSON, Ga. – The banner above FirstCity Bank still reads “Celebrating 100 Years of Service,” but the 690 residents of this rural community aren’t in the mood – not since government regulators locked the door, emptied the vault and closed the only bank within nearly 20 miles.

Georgia leads the nation in bank failures, with nine banks shut down in the past year. Still, few in tiny Glascock County suspected the financial meltdown driven by toxic real-estate loans would scuttle the place they deposited paychecks earned from sawmills and row-crop farming, their local lender for buying tractors and pickup trucks.

“We need a bank, definitely,” says 70-year-old Charles Usry, who fits cars with new brakes and tires at his small auto parts store across Main Street from the now-empty FirstCity. “If you don’t have a bank, eventually people are going to go somewhere else. The towns are going to die.”

Eleven Georgia banks, most surrounding Atlanta, have been shuttered by regulators, followed by nine in California and four in Florida. Experts predict more could be closed in Georgia in the future. But what propelled Georgia to No. 1 in bank failures is complicated.

Experts say it’s a combination of an antiquated state law that favored a plethora of smaller community banks over multi-branch giants; a population explosion in metro Atlanta that fueled massive suburban real estate development and a crush of new banks formed to cash in on the Atlanta boom shortly before the market tanked.

First, Georgia is home to a huge number of state and federally chartered banks. At the end of 2008, Georgia had 334 banks. That’s more than California, which has nearly four times Georgia’s population, or Florida, which has twice as many people. Only five states – Texas, Illinois, Minnesota, Iowa and Kansas – have more banks than Georgia, according to the FDIC.

What these states had in common, until the mid-1990s, was some of the nation’s most restrictive laws on branch banking. Georgia, for example, prohibited banks from opening branches across county lines until 1996.

The law shielded local banks from worrying about competition from out-of-town rivals. It also guaranteed that Georgia, with a whopping 159 counties, would have a correspondingly large number of banks.

“It was really a belief that local banking was the best banking and you did not want to have the big city banks dictating the amount of credit available to small town and rural America,” said Steve Verdier, director of congressional relations for the Independent Community Bankers of America.

Even after interstate giants such as Bank of America, SunTrust and Wachovia could expand freely across Georgia, growth in Atlanta’s suburbs spurred the opening of new banks looking to profit from loans to real-estate developers.

Metro Atlanta had three of the nation’s 10 fastest growing counties of the 1990s. Because of that growth, about half the state’s banks ended up clustered around Atlanta, said Joe Brannen, president and CEO of the Georgia Bankers Association.

“Georgia is a tad unique in that we don’t have five or 10 big metropolitan areas. We’ve got one real big one,” Brannen said.

Georgia’s diversity of small banks was an asset when the economy was strong, with consumers benefiting from competitive rates and broader sources of credit, said James Verbrugge, a professor emeritus of finance at the University of Georgia’s Terry College of Business. It became a liability when the bottom fell out of the housing market and smaller banks had less capital to weather the crisis.

With the financial meltdown centered on Atlanta, nobody in Gibson expected to feel the fallout in tiny Glascock County, which has the third-smallest population of any in Georgia. But bad loans took a toll there, too, after the bank was sold to new owners who moved its headquarters to the Atlanta area.

The town’s bank was founded in 1905 as the Bank of Gibson. It survived two world wars and the Great Depression under the local ownership of Erasmus Eggleston Griffin Sr. and two succeeding generations – until family members with a controlling interest opted to sell the bank in 2000. Then, it was renamed FirstCity.

When FirstCity closed, residents felt it immediately. Customers’ ATM cards no longer worked. Outstanding checks were worthless. Until the FDIC issued checks the next week for the insured amount of residents accounts, people were left with nothing but the cash in their pockets.

Audra Mason, who styles hair at a salon two blocks from the bank, had several customers cancel haircut appointments because they didn’t have cash to pay her. Jennie Veazey, a cook at a local diner, got her boss to pay her in cash until she received checks and a new ATM card for her new account.

Hazel Bedingfield, 79, fretted over the 24-mile trip to claim her Social Security payment from Thomson, where the FDIC re-routed direct deposits for government checks to a new account at a SunTrust Bank in a nearby county.

“It does gall you,” Bedingfield said. “Just because we’re a little bitty county doesn’t mean we don’t need a bank. It wasn’t our fault.”

Pakistan says 400 killed; thousands of refugees flee valley

MINGORA, Pakistan – Tens of thousands of civilians, many on foot or donkey-led carts, took advantage of a lifted curfew to flee Pakistan’s embattled Swat Valley on Sunday, while the army said it had killed 400 to 500 militants in its battle against the Taliban.

The hemorrhaging of residents from the scenic valley that once attracted many tourists threatened to greatly exacerbate an existing internal refugee crisis for a nuclear-armed nation already facing economic, political and other woes.

The army offensive has garnered praise from the U.S., which wants Pakistan to root out havens on its soil where Taliban militants can plan attacks on American and NATO forces across the border in Afghanistan. In an interview aired Sunday, Pakistan’s president urged international support for the fight and insisted the army had enough troops in the northwest to handle the threat.

As they left Swat’s main town of Mingora, some residents cursed the situation and condemned the Taliban, while others blamed Pakistani leaders for bowing to the West. “Show our picture to your master America and get money from him,” some taunted.

The desperate Swat residents were trying to leave any way they could – on motorbikes, animal-pulled carts, rickshaws or foot. A ban on civilian vehicles entering the valley complicated the exodus for those without cars. Some chided an Associated Press reporter for slowing them down by asking questions.

“We are going out only with our clothes and a few things to eat on the long journey,” said Rehmat Alam, a 40-year-old medical technician walking out of Mingora with 18 other relatives. “We just got out by relying on God.”

Fighter jets and helicopter gunships have pounded Swat and surrounding districts over the past few days after Taliban fighters in the valley moved out and tried to impose their reign in other areas, including a stretch just 60 miles from the capital, Islamabad.

The army’s nine-hour suspension of the curfew Sunday could signal a more intense operation now that more civilians have left. Army spokesman Maj. Gen. Athar Abbas said 400 to 500 militants had been killed since the operation’s launch last week.

MANCHESTER, N.H. – Just in time for Mother’s Day, a mother duck has been reunited with two of her babies who fell into a storm drain in Manchester, N.H.

The mother was crossing the street with 11 ducklings parading behind her Thursday when two of the little ones tumbled through a grate. Workers at a nearby hair salon called police, who sent a crew from the city water works department. While salon workers corralled the upset mother duck and other ducklings in a box, the city workers opened the grate, climbed into the drain and rescued the two ducklings.

The salon owner told the New Hampshire Sunday News that when all 12 were taken to the Merrimack River, they were met by a male duck who led the family into the water.

DETROIT – For General Motors Corp., the task at hand is so difficult that experts say a Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing is all but inevitable.

To remake itself outside of court, GM must persuade bondholders to swap $27 billion in debt for 10 percent of its risky stock. On top of that, the automaker must work out deals with its union, announce factory closures, cut or sell brands and force hundreds of dealers out of business – all in three weeks.

“I just don’t see how it’s possible, given all of the pieces,” said Stephen J. Lubben, a professor at Seton Hall (N.J.) University School of Law who specializes in bankruptcy.

GM, which has received $15.4 billion in federal aid, faces a June 1 government deadline to complete its restructuring plan. If it can’t finish in time, the company will follow Detroit competitor Chrysler LLC into bankruptcy protection.

Although company executives said last week they would still prefer to restructure out of court, experts say all GM is doing now is lining up majorities of stakeholders to make its court-supervised reorganization move more quickly.

“If we need to pursue bankruptcy, we will make sure that we do it in an expeditious fashion. The exact strategies I’m not getting into today, but we’ll be ready to go if that’s required,” Chief Executive Fritz Henderson said last week.

The threat of bankruptcy, however, may be just a negotiating ploy to pull reluctant bondholders into the equity swap deal. In Chrysler’s case, some secured debtholders resisted taking roughly 30 cents on the dollar for what they were owed, but most gave in after they were identified in court documents.

Henderson, who took over in March when the federal government ousted Rick Wagoner, said last week there’s still time to get everything done by the deadline, although he conceded it will be difficult to meet a government requirement that 90 percent of its thousands of bondholders agree to the stock swap.

The biggest obstacle to GM restructuring out of court appears to be its bondholders, who have been reluctant to sign on to the stock swap when the government and United Auto Workers union would get far more stock in exchange for debts owed by GM.

Even though the U.S. government has agreed to back up GM and Chrysler new-car warranties, potential car buyers already view GM as if it is in bankruptcy, reflected by the company’s steep revenue drop in the latest quarter, Lubben said. On Thursday, GM posted a $6 billion first-quarter loss and said its revenue plunged by nearly half, largely because bankruptcy fears scared customers away from showrooms.

“I don’t think anyone is buying cars from a company who is wringing their hands about a potential bankruptcy for the past year or so,” he said.

KANSAS CITY, Mo. – Police didn’t have to dust for fingerprints to find this suspect – they just rifled through the wallet he left behind at the scene.

Albert Vincent Perkins is charged with robbing First Federal Bank in Kansas City on Thursday.

Police say he walked into the bank, handed the teller a plastic bag and ordered her to give him all of the $100 bills.

Then he walked out of the bank – but left his wallet sitting on the counter.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office says the teller and a customer in the bank identified the photo on the driver’s license and another photo in the wallet as the bank robber.

Perkins was arrested Thursday night. Police say he took about $3,100.

Children line up to receive hot tea at a refugee camp near Mardan, Pakistan, Friday.<a href="http://10.4.149.24/archives/apphoto/search/?search%5Bform%5D%5Bfulltext%5D=Greg+Baker+within+BYLINE"/>

MARDAN, Pakistan – Pakistan’s army vowed Friday to eliminate militants from a northwestern valley but warned that its under-equipped troops face thousands of Taliban extremists who have seized towns, planted bombs, and coerced children to be suicide bombers.

As air force jets roared overhead and gunbattles raged, terrified civilians from the Swat Valley and neighboring districts accelerated their exodus, with United Nations and Pakistani officials predicting 1 million refugees will soon burden the turbulent Afghan border region.

“The army is now engaged in a full-scale operation to eliminate the militants, miscreants and anti-state elements from Swat,” said Maj. Gen. Athar Abbas, chief army spokesman.

Pakistan’s army is fighting to wrest Swat and two neighboring districts from militants who dominate the adjoining tribal belt along the Afghan frontier.

The army announced its offensive after Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani said the government would wipe out groups trying to “take Pakistan hostage at gunpoint.”

Meanwhile, the stream of civilians seeking safety appeared to have intensified, leaving Pakistan facing a humanitarian emergency.

On Friday, the U.N. refugee agency said provincial officials had told them 500,000 had fled, were on the move, or were trying to flee. About a half-million have already been made homeless elsewhere in the border region since August 2008, when the army launched its last major anti-Taliban operation in the Bajur border region.

Some in Mingora, Swat’s main town, have accused the Taliban of not allowing them to leave, perhaps because they want to use them as human shields. Others came under attack even as they fled.

Report sparks optimism of end of recession

Employers shed 539,000 jobs in April, pushing the nation’s unemployment rate to 8.9 percent, but the pace of job losses slowed, leading some analysts to predict the recession will end in a few months.

A record 13.7 million Americans were out of work last month and 5.7 million jobs have been lost since the downturn began in December 2007, the Labor Department reported Friday.

The jobless rate was up from 8.5 percent in March and the highest since fall 1983. A year ago, unemployment was 5 percent.

Still, the smallest number of jobs losses in six months provided the latest in a series of signs the recession’s ferocity is easing.

“It’s a step in the right direction, but we still have a long way to go,” said Maury Harris, chief U.S. economist for UBS.

Recent reports have shown manufacturing and services industries shrinking more slowly. Also, consumer spending and confidence have ticked up and the housing market has shown signs of bottoming.

Analyst Richard Yamarone of Argus Research said he expects the recession to end by late summer but, like many economists, predicts unemployment will remain high through 2010.

Harris said enthusiasm over April’s decline in job losses was restrained by the fact that it was partly due to the addition of about 60,000 government workers for the 2010 census.

“We have to appreciate that they’re temporary (workers),” he said.

Still, the 539,000 job cuts were far less than March’s 699,000 and January’s peak of 741,000.

President Obama said Friday “the gears of our economic engine do seem to be slowly turning once again.”

He asked states and colleges to help jobless people pursue education and training without losing their unemployment benefits. States generally require people who collect unemployment to be actively looking for work, which can make it difficult to sign up for school or job training. Under Obama’s plan, going to school would satisfy the requirement that they were seeking new employment.

“We’re still in the midst of a recession that was years in the making and will be months or even years in the unmaking,” Obama said. But he added: “Step by step, we are making progress.”

Mountain becomes ‘inferno’

A DC-10 tanker drops fire retardant on an unburned area Friday as efforts to fight the Jesusita fire continue in the mountains above Santa Barbara, Calif..

SANTA BARBARA, Calif. – Turning the horizon a lurid orange and raining embers on roofs as it advanced, a raging wildfire that has destroyed scores of homes in the hills menaced this celebrity enclave and other coastal towns Friday, and the number of people ordered to flee climbed to 30,000.

Authorities warned an additional 23,000 to be ready to leave at a moment’s notice.

Columns of smoke rose off the Santa Ynez Mountains as the 4-day-old blaze – fanned by “sundowner” winds that sweep down the slopes in the evening – blew up from 2,700 acres to 3,500 acres in less than a day, creating a firefighting front five miles long.

“It’s crazy. The whole mountain looked like an inferno,” said Maria Martinez, 50, who with her fiance hurriedly left her home in San Marcos Pass, on the edge of Santa Barbara. The couple went to an evacuation center at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

An unknown number of homes were destroyed in the blowup that began Thursday night, in addition to the estimated 75 houses that burned the night before on the ridges and in the canyons above Santa Barbara.

No deaths or serious injuries were reported.

The number of people ordered to evacuate rose from 12,000 the night before as the blaze pushed west toward neighboring Goleta and east toward well-to-do Montecito.

“Last night, all hell broke loose,” Santa Barbara Fire Chief Andrew DiMizio said Friday morning, recounting firefighters’ efforts to put out roof fires and keep flames out of his section of the city.

The eight-member Wasjutin family arrived at the university campus in three cars and a trailer packed with four dogs, eight baby chickens, two cockatiels, an iguana, a rat named Cutie and an African spur tortoise. They fled their 40-acre San Marcos Pass property after watching the flames grow closer. They left three horses and three hens behind.

“We drove down through fire on both sides,” Silvia Wasjutin, 48, a speech pathologist, said.

In a scene of strange contrasts, students bicycled to classes and midterms as ash fell on campus, and boats bobbed in Santa Barbara’s harbor as smoke rose from the mountains above town.

The Santa Barbara area has long been a favorite of celebrities. Oprah Winfrey has an estate in Montecito, where Charlie Chaplin’s old seaside escape, the Montecito Inn, has stood since 1928. A ranch in the mountains that Ronald and Nancy Reagan bought became his Western retreat during his presidency.

A U.S. Forest Service fire engine is in place at a home that is threatened by an approaching wildfire in Santa Barbara, Calif.

Obama able to get commitments to fight militants

Pakistani soldiers are seen on their way to Pakistan's troubled valley of Swat where government security forces are fighting with Taliban militants, in Mardan near Peshawar, Pakistan on Wednesday.

TAKHT BAI, Pakistan – Pakistan launched air and ground attacks against up to 7,000 Taliban entrenched militants Wednesday, killing dozens holed up at emerald mines and on forested hillsides following urgent U.S. demands to step up the fight against the insurgents.

President Obama declared he got the commitments he wanted Wednesday from the leaders of Pakistan and Afghanistan to more aggressively fight Taliban and al-Qaida militants who are gaining power and sowing violence in their countries.

“I’m pleased that these two men, elected leaders of Afghanistan and Pakistan, fully appreciate the seriousness of the threats that we face and have reaffirmed their commitment to confronting it,” Obama said at the White House.

With militants fighting back and weary refugees lining up at camps, the operation will be a test of whether the army has the will, capability and political support to defeat an enemy that had three months under a now-shattered peace deal to rest and regroup.

“It is an all-out war there. Rockets are landing everywhere,” said Laiq Zada, 33, who fled the Swat Valley and is living in a government-run tent camp out of the danger zone.

Eight years after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the area remains a haven for al-Qaida and Taliban fighters blamed for spiraling violence in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Uprooting the insurgents from the valley will mean unpopular civilian casualties. But there have been signs recently of a shift in the national mood against the Taliban after it got most of the blame for the collapsed peace process in Swat.

Wednesday’s clashes followed the collapse of a three-month-old truce in Swat that saw the government impose Islamic law.

It was widely criticized in the West as a surrender to the militants.

Sustained fighting broke out Tuesday, triggering a mass exodus from Mingora, the main town in the valley. Up to 40,000 people have fled the region, according to officials, who have warned that 500,000 could leave.

The military said about 35 militants positioned near emerald mines and in hillside bases above the town were killed – the most reported casualties there since fighting resumed. It reported another 50 enemy fighters killed in Buner in artillery strikes and clashes.

President Barack Obama speaks to reporters after his meeting with Afghanistan's President Hamid Karzai (left) and Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari on Wednesday in the White House.