FRIDAY BITS & PIECES

Plan To Send FEMA Trailers To Haiti Criticized

The trailer industry and lawmakers are pressing the government to send Haiti thousands of potentially formaldehyde-laced trailers left over from Hurricane Katrina - an idea denounced by some as a crass and self-serving attempt to dump inferior American products on the poor.

The 100,000 trailers became a symbol of the Federal Emergency Management Agency's bungled response to Katrina. The government had bought the trailers to house victims of the 2005 storm, but after people began falling ill, high levels of formaldehyde, a chemical that is used in building materials and can cause breathing problems and perhaps cancer, were found inside. Many of the trailers have sat idle for years, and many are damaged.

The U.S. Agency for International Development, which is coordinating American assistance in Haiti, has expressed no interest in sending the trailers to the earthquake-stricken country. FEMA spokesman Clark Stevens declined to comment on the idea and said it was not FEMA's decision to make.

Haitian Culture and Communications Minister Marie Laurence Jocelyn Lassegue said Thursday she had not heard of the proposal but added: "I don't think we would use them. I don't think we would accept them."

In a Jan. 15 letter to FEMA, Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., chairman of the House Committee on Homeland Security, said the trailers could be used as temporary shelter or emergency clinics.

For the recreational-vehicle and trailer industry, which lost thousands of jobs during the recession, the push to send the units to Haiti is motivated by more than charity.

Bidding is under way in an online government-run auction to sell the trailers in large lots at bargain-basement prices -- something the RV industry fears will reduce demand for new products. Some of the bids received so far work out to less than $500 for a trailer that would sell for about $20,000 new.

Lobbyists for the Recreational Vehicle Industry Association -- which includes some major manufacturers in Elkhart, Ind., among them Gulf Stream -- have been talking with members of Congress, the government and disaster relief agencies to see if it would be possible to send the trailers to Haiti instead.

How much formaldehyde the trailers contain -- or if they still have any at all -- isn't known. The auction site warns that the trailers may not have been tested for the chemical, and FEMA said buyers must sign an agreement not to use the auctioned trailers for housing. Broom contends the majority are "perfectly safe," and "the handful of trailers that might have a problem" can be removed.

Pepper In Salami May Be Source Of Salmonella

Black pepper used to coat salami is the possible cause of a salmonella outbreak that sickened people in 40 states, the Rhode Island Department of Health said Thursday.

Tests showed the same strain of salmonella that has sickened at least 189 people since July was also found in two open containers of pepper at meat company Daniele International Inc.'s facility in Burrillville. Thirty-seven people have been hospitalized in the outbreak, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control.

Annemarie Beardsworth, a spokeswoman for the Rhode Island health department, said officials there are still waiting for results from closed containers of pepper, which are expected in two to three days.

"We're pretty sure right now that the ground pepper is the source of the outbreak, but until we get a positive result that was taken from a closed container, we can't be 100 percent certain," she said.

Daniele International recalled 1.2 million pounds of pepper-coated salami on Saturday after officials used the shopping records of people who were sickened to pinpoint the source of the problem.

The Department of Health said no additional products were being recalled.

The 40 states where illnesses related to the outbreak have been reported are: Alabama, Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Iowa, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Maryland, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, North Carolina, North Dakota, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia and Wyoming.

Official: Terror Case May Happen Outside Manhattan

Facing growing opposition to its plans to hold the Sept. 11 terrorist trial in New York City, the Obama administration is considering moving the proceedings elsewhere.

Two administration officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said Friday the Justice department is drawing up plans for possible alternate locations to try professed 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four alleged accomplices in case Congress or local officials prevent the trial from being held in Manhattan.

The two officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the deliberation.

Attorney General Eric Holder announced last year that the trial would be held in Manhattan federal court, generating stiff opposition in Congress and in New York.

Word that the administration is considering a backup plan for its most high-profile terrorism trial comes after President Barack Obama and Holder have spent weeks on the defensive about their handling of terrorism threats.

The administration has admitted intelligence missteps leading up to the failed Christmas bombing of a Detroit-bound airliner, and the case re-ignited a debate in Congress about whether such terror suspects should face civilian or military justice.

Moving the trial would be a major political setback for the administration's oft-stated aims in the fight against terrorism.

The officials did not say where else the trial might be held, but others have suggested an unpopulated island near Manhattan, or nearby military installations.

Obama has maintained his support for a civilian trial. White House spokesman Bill Burton said Thursday that the president is committed to seeing Mohammed and his alleged accomplices brought to justice, and believes that can be done successfully and securely in a federal court.

Wages, Benefits Rise By Record-Low Amount

Wages and benefits paid to U.S. workers posted a modest gain in the fourth quarter, ending a year in which recession-battered workers saw their compensation rise by the smallest amount on records going back more than a quarter-century.

The anemic gains have raised concerns about the durability of the economic recovery. The fear is that consumer spending, which accounts for 70 percent of economic activity, could falter if households don't have the income growth to support their spending.

The Labor Department said Friday that wages and benefits rose by 0.5 percent in the three months ending in December. For the entire year, wages and benefits were up 1.5 percent, the weakest showing on records that go back to 1982.

The 1.5 percent increase in total compensation in 2009 was about half the 2.6 percent increase in 2008 and both years represented the smallest gains for the government's Employment Compensation Index.

Last year, wages were up by just 1.5 percent and benefits rose by the same 1.5 percent, both record lows. In 2008, wages and salaries had been up 2.7 percent and benefits, which cover such things as health insurance and pension contributions, had risen by 2.2 percent.

The 0.5 percent rise in the fourth quarter for total compensation was slightly higher than the 0.4 percent advance economists had expected, and was the biggest quarterly gain since a 0.6 percent rise in the third quarter of 2008. Compensation had been up 0.4 percent in both the second and third quarters of this year.

Workers' compensation has been battered by the country's deep recession as a loss of 7.2 million jobs over the past two years has depressed wage gains. A separate report from the Labor Department earlier this month showed that nonsupervisory workers' inflation-adjusted weekly earnings fell by 1.6 percent last year, the sharpest drop since 1990.

Gates Makes $10 Billion Vaccines Pledge

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation will donate $10 billion over the next decade to research new vaccines and bring them to the world's poorest countries, the Microsoft co-founder and his wife said Friday.

Calling upon governments and business to also contribute, they said the money will produce higher immunization rates and aims to make sure that 90 percent of children are immunized against dangerous diseases such as diarrhea and pneumonia in poorer nations.

"We must make this the decade of vaccines," Bill Gates said in a statement. "Vaccines already save and improve millions of lives in developing countries. Innovation will make it possible to save more children than ever before."

Gates said the commitment more than doubles the $4.5 billion the foundation has given to vaccine research over the years.

The foundation said up to 7.6 million children under 5 could be saved through 2019 as a result of the donation. It also estimates that an additional 1.1 million kids would be saved if a malaria vaccine can be introduced by 2014. A tuberculosis vaccine would prevent even more deaths.

Genealogist: Obama, Sen.-Elect Brown Related

It was bad enough that President Barack Obama lost his filibuster-proof margin in the U.S. Senate to a Republican. Now it turns out he also lost it to a relative.

Genealogists said Friday that the Democratic president and the newly elected senator from Massachusetts, Scott Brown, are 10th cousins.

The New England Historic Genealogical Society said Obama's mother, Stanley Ann Dunham, and Brown's mother, Judith Ann Rugg, both descend from Richard Singletary of Haverhill, Mass.

He died in 1687 at, for the time, the unusually old age of 102.

"I think it's a really interesting thing, where you have the separation between a Democrat and a Republican, but you have one link," said David Allen Lambert, the society genealogist who co-discovered the connection with colleague Chris Child.

Lambert said the work was aided by prior research about Obama, as well as Brown's cooperation with the society when researchers first contacted him in December.

"I'm glad to be in such distinguished company," Brown said of the findings.

In 2008, the society discovered that Obama is related to seven prior presidents, including George H. W. Bush, George W. Bush, Jimmy Carter, Gerald Ford, Lyndon Johnson, Harry S. Truman and James Madison. They also learned he was related to actor Brad Pitt.

Brown, once a little-known state senator, jolted the national political landscape by capturing the Senate seat held for nearly a half-century by the late Democratic Sen. Edward Kennedy.

The genealogical chart shows that Obama descends from Richard's eldest son, Jonathan Singletary. He later changed his surname to Dunham. Brown, meanwhile, descends from Jonathan's brother, Nathaniel Singletary.

Also Friday, George Stephanopoulos, co-anchor of ABC News' "Good Morning America," learned he was likely related to Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Stephanopoulos underwent DNA testing to promote "Faces of America With Henry Louis Gates Jr.," a four-part series on family histories making its premiere Feb. 10 on PBS.

Gates told him during Friday's "GMA" show that he's "very likely a maternal cousin with Hillary Clinton."

"Sorry, Secretary Clinton," Stephanopoulos said. "I did not set this up."

From; FEMA; US DOJ; US Dept of Health/CDC; The Gates Foundation; The New England Historic Genealogical Society