Obama: Road to recovery never straight
WASHINGTON, Jan. 8 (UPI) -- The latest unemployment numbers demonstrate how rocky the road to recovery is, U.S. President Barack Obama said Friday.
The Labor Department said the total number of unemployed rose to 15.3 million, almost double the number reported in December 2007, when 7.7 million were listed as unemployed, and the unemployment rate stood at 5 percent. The 10 percent jobless rate held, but 85,000 non-farm jobs were lost during the month, the department said.
"The jobs numbers that were released by the Labor Department this morning are a reminder that the road to recovery is never straight and that we have to continue to work every single day to get our economy moving again," Obama said before announcing $2.3 billion in tax credits for new, clean-technology manufacturing projects. "For most Americans, and for me, that means jobs."
Job losses for the final quarter of 2009 were one-tenth of what the country experienced in the first quarter of 2009, Obama said.
White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said the Labor Department report was "obviously disappointing."
While the trend from first quarter 2009 to fourth quarter 2009 was moving in a positive direction, "I doubt you'd find anybody in this administration ... that believed our economic problems had vanished," Gibbs said.
Not guilty plea in alleged Dec. 25 bombing
DETROIT, Jan. 8 (UPI) -- The Nigerian charged with trying to blow up a Northwest Airlines jetliner as it approached Detroit pleaded not guilty Friday in his first court appearance.
Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, 23, said little as a not guilty plea was entered on his behalf, The Detroit News reported. He was polite, addressing U.S. Magistrate Judge Mark Randon as "sir."
Abdulmutallab allegedly flew from Amsterdam to Detroit on Christmas Day with explosives concealed in his underwear. He told Randon he had taken pain pills when asked if he was using any medication.
Miriam Siefer, chief public defender for the district, did not ask for bail. Two Nigerian lawyers were in court but said they were there on behalf of Abdulmutallab's family as observers.
Hebba Ares, 27, of Bloomfield Hills, a Muslim who sat a few rows from Abdulmutallab on the plane, was in the courtroom audience.
"I felt some things in the pit of my stomach and in my heart," Ares told the News. "I feel sick."
The plan to use hidden explosives to bring down a plane in the United States was allegedly concocted in Yemen.
Pakistani blast may have killed militants
KARACHI, Pakistan, Jan. 8 (UPI) -- Pakistan's interior minister said a Karachi house where a deadly explosion occurred Friday was a base for a group planning to attack him.
Rehman Malik said police found evidence in the ruins that the occupants were preparing for an assault on a Karachi court, CNN reported. Malik was scheduled to appear to answer corruption charges.
At least seven people died in the blast.
Karachi Police Chief Waseed Ahmed said investigators found a small arsenal, including two suicide vests, 25 grenades, three AK-47 assault weapons and ammunition. They also discovered a stock of canned goods, suggesting they were preparing for hostage-taking and a courthouse siege.
The house was occupied by a family from the Swat Valley, Malik said. The government's first military operation against the Taliban last year occurred in Swat.
Two men and an elderly woman who survived the explosion were questioned by police.
Karachi, a cosmopolitan metropolis and Pakistan's largest city, was rocked by militant violence Dec. 28 when 43 people were killed and dozens were injured in an attack on a religious procession by the country's minority Shiite Muslims.
Reports: DNA sought in Tylenol killer case
WOBURN, Mass., Jan. 8 (UPI) -- James Lewis, suspected in the 1982 Tylenol killings, has been ordered by a Massachusetts judge to surrender DNA samples to investigators, media reported Friday.
ABC News and the Chicago Sun-Times reported unnamed sources said a Middlesex Superior Court judge directed Lewis to submit his genetic samples in the case, for which he has long been the only suspect.
The Sun-Times said Lewis, 63, appeared in a closed hearing Wednesday and also was ordered to provide fingerprints and palm prints to comply with a DuPage County, Ill., grand jury subpoena. His wife also was ordered to provide samples, the newspaper said.
DuPage County and Cook County in Illinois are both investigating the murder case. Lewis now lives in the Boston area.
No one has ever been charged in the 27-year-old case in which seven Chicago-area residents were poisoned by Extra Strength Tylenol contaminated with cyanide. However, Lewis served 13 years in prison for his 1983 conviction for trying to extort $1 million from Johnson & Johnson, the pain-killer maker's parent company, ABC said.
The deaths ignited a nationwide scare that led to more secure packaging for medicines and food.
The Sun-Times said the FBI's investigation of the case is moving forward now because of advances in forensic technology and new tips. Investigators raided Lewis' Boston-area home and storage lockers.
"The investigation into the 1982 Tylenol killings is still ongoing," FBI Special Agent Ross Rice told ABC's Chicago affiliate WLS-TV. "No arrests have been made and no criminal charges filed."
