Meanwhile, American Express Co. became the first major financial institution to formally request permission to return federal bailout money provided under the Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP.

Wells Fargo & Co. said it’s seeking to raise $6 billion by offering common stock to investors. The San Francisco-based bank announced the plans after the government’s stress test results showed that Wells Fargo needs $13.7 billion in new capital to withstand a deeper recession.

The stress test results showed that Morgan Stanley needs $1.8 billion in fresh funds. Minutes after their release, the New York-based investment bank said it’s seeking to raise $2 billion through a public stock offering.

It said it will also try to raise $3 billion through an offering of senior debt that won’t be guaranteed by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. Raising capital without federal guarantees is a requirement for banks that want to return TARP funds.

Wells Fargo shares closed down nearly 8 percent at $24.76 on heavy trading volume. In after-hours trading, the stock fell 2.4 percent to $24.17.

Morgan Stanley shares ended 4.8 percent lower at $27.14. The stock fell 0.7 percent to $26.95 in after-hours trading.

Separately, Citigroup Inc. said it’s planning to convert an extra $5.5 billion of preferred shares into common stock after the stress tests determined it needs an equal amount in fresh capital.

A conversion would not actually give Citigroup more cash, but it would increase Citi’s “common equity,” a yardstick being used by the government to measure a bank’s ability to absorb losses.

The aim of the stress tests was to see how the nation’s 19 biggest banks would manage if the economy gets worse. Officials hope the tests will restore investors’ confidence in the battered banking sector. They have said none of the 19 banks will be allowed to fail.

Besides Wells Fargo and Morgan Stanley, banks requiring additional capital are: Bank of America Corp. ($33.9 billion); Citigroup Inc. ($5.5 billion); Fifth Third Bancorp ($1.1 billion); GMAC LLC ($11.5 billion); KeyCorp ($1.8 billion); PNC Financial Services Group Inc. ($600 million); Regions Financial Corp. ($2.5 billion); and SunTrust Banks Inc. ($2.2 billion).

The 10 banks will have until June 8 to develop a plan to raise capital and have it approved by their regulators.

Sung Won Sohn, an economics professor at California State University, Channel Islands, said the moves to raise funds by Wells Fargo and other banks could leave them overcapitalized, “assuming the economy continues to recover.”

Meanwhile, American Express and eight other companies won’t need new capital. Immediately after the release of the results, American Express chairman and chief executive Kenneth I. Chenault announced the credit card lender has filed a request with the Federal Reserve and the Treasury to repay its $3.4 billion in TARP funds.

American Express chief financial officer Daniel Henry said talks with regulators to return the TARP funds could begin Friday.

“We’ll take whatever action we need to take” to pay back the money, Henry said in a conference call with analysts.

Chafing under a litany of government restrictions, major banks including Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Morgan Stanley have said they want to return their share of the $700 billion TARP program. Twelve smaller banks have already repaid funds.

Speaking to analysts Thursday evening JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon reiterated his desire to repay TARP funds.

“Obviously, we’ll be in that process as soon as we can, and hopefully we’ll be allowed to pay it,” Dimon said.

Congress approved the TARP program in October as the worsening credit crisis threatened to cause a collapse of the banking system. A service of YellowBrix, Inc. (Associated Press/AP Online) By: Stevenson Jacobs.

The commissioner’s office didn’t announce the specific violation by Ramirez, but in a statement Thursday provided by Major League Baseball, Ramirez attributed the violation to medication he had been prescribed by a doctor.

“Recently I saw a physician for a personal health issue. He gave me a medication, not a steroid, which he thought was OK to give me,” Ramirez said. “Unfortunately, the medication was banned under our drug policy. Under the policy that mistake is now my responsibility. I have been advised not to say anything more for now.

Statement from Manny
“Recently I saw a physician for a personal health issue. He gave me a medication, not a steroid, which he thought was OK to give me. Unfortunately, the medication was banned under our drug policy. Under the policy that mistake is now my responsibility. I have been advised not to say anything more for now. I do want to say one other thing; I’ve taken and passed about 15 drug tests over the past five seasons. I want to apologize to Mr. McCourt, Mrs. McCourt, Mr. Torre, my teammates, the Dodger organization, and to the Dodger fans. LA is a special place to me and I know everybody is disappointed. So am I. I’m sorry about this whole situation.”

“I do want to say one other thing; I’ve taken and passed about 15 drug tests over the past five seasons. I want to apologize to [Dodgers owner Frank] McCourt, Mrs. McCourt, [manager Joe] Torre, my teammates, the Dodger organization, and to the Dodger fans. LA is a special place to me and I know everybody is disappointed. So am I. I’m sorry about this whole situation.”

After consultation with the Players’ Association and his personal representatives, Ramirez waived his right to challenge the suspension. He will lose nearly $8 million of his $25 million salary.

Ramirez’s test result was first reported by the Los Angeles Times.

Triple-A outfielder Xavier Paul has been told by the Dodgers that he will be promoted later today, according to The Times. Ramirez would be eligible to return to the Dodgers’ lineup for their July 3 game against San Diego.

In his first full season as a Dodger, Ramirez is batting .348 with six home runs and 20 RBIs. Los Angeles has bolted to a 21-8 record — best in the majors — and a 13-0 record at home that set the modern major league record for home winning streak to start a season. They lead the NL West by 6½ games.

This is the second major drug revelation to hit baseball in the last few months. In February, Alex Rodriguez admitted taking steroids while playing for Texas from 2001 to 2003. But that was before the start of testing with penalties under a program agreed to by players and management. The New York Yankees star doesn’t appear likely to be suspended.

Ramirez is the third player suspended this year under the major league program, following Philadelphia reliever J.C. Romero and Yankees pitcher Sergio Mitre.

Just two relatively low-profile players were suspended under the major league program last year, San Francisco catcher Elizier Alfonzo and Colorado catcher Humberto Coto.

In the past, the best-known player penalized was Baltimore’s Rafael Palmeiro, who received a 10-day suspension in 2005, the first year of penalties for first infractions. Information from The Associated Press was used in this report.

That they felt compelled to openly air such conclusions about a nominally close U.S. ally — for which the administration is proposing billions in new aid dollars — was a measure of the desperation that seems to have infected the Obama administration’s dealings with Pakistan’s weak civilian government and obtuse military leadership. In the months since the administration took office, as in the last months of the Bush administration, private cajoling of President Asif Ali Zardari and Army chief Gen. Ashfaq Kiyani to fight the Taliban has done little good. It’s not yet clear whether the public campaign will have more effect — but it is sure to get many in Washington stirred about what Ms. Clinton described as the “mortal threat” a Taliban regime armed with nuclear weapons could pose to the United States.

That threat is certainly real. The government’s decision to tolerate what amounts to Taliban control of the Swat Valley northwest of Islamabad has emboldened the extremists, who now are seeking to infiltrate neighboring districts even closer to the capital. The Pakistani army, untrained in counterinsurgency and rigidly focused on India, is reluctant to take on the militants; when it has tried to fight them in areas near the Afghan border, it has been mostly ineffective. Though the vast majority of Pakistanis oppose the Taliban’s fundamentalism, most also dislike Mr. Zardari’s government and suspect that operations against the insurgents serve U.S. interests more Pakistan’s.

The loud U.S. warnings did provoke the Zardari government and Gen. Kiyani to say that they would fight the Taliban if it continued to advance; the black-turbaned fighters subsequently withdrew from one district on Friday. Pakistani officials say that the public support needed for the military offensive Washington wants won’t be forthcoming unless Pakistanis believe that their government has tried all peaceful options. It is certainly the case that Pakistanis as well as their government must embrace the fight against the Taliban as their own, and not as a proxy war for the United States. It is also true that, apart from mounting missile strikes by remote-controlled aircraft, there is little the United States can do directly to defeat the Pakistani Taliban; the administration must try to work through the government and army.

But the United States has leverage: Without the billons flowing into Pakistan in direct U.S. aid as well as from other donors marshaled by Washington, Pakistan’s economy would collapse. Perhaps the dire U.S. warnings will galvanize the country’s political class into demanding action from the army and government — or replacing the latter. But shouts of ‘”fire” have risks: They can also cause panic, or go unheeded.

HAVANA – Fidel Castro wrote in an essay published yesterday that President Obama had “misinterpreted” his brother Raul’s seeming conciliatory remarks regarding the United States, and he bristled at the suggestion that Cuba should free political prisoners or cut taxes on dollars that Cuban Americans send to the island.

His comments put into doubt the true meaning of his brother’s statements and raised questions about Cuba’s position on detente with the United States.

Although he surrendered the presidency to Raul in February 2008, Fidel Castro retains enormous influence and remains head of Cuba’s Communist Party.

Raul Castro touched off speculation last week that the United States and Cuba could be headed toward a thaw after nearly a half-century of chilly relations. He said his government would be willing to sit down with its U.S. counterparts and discuss “everything, everything, everything,” including human rights, freedom of the press and expression, and political prisoners.

Obama responded at the Summit of the Americas by saying Washington was seeking a new beginning with Cuba. But as he prepared to leave the summit Sunday, Obama also called on Cuba to release political prisoners and reduce taxes on remittances from the United States.

That appeared to enrage Fidel Castro, 82, who wrote that Obama “without a doubt misinterpreted Raul’s declarations.”

“When the president of Cuba said he was ready to discuss any topic with the U.S. president, he meant he was not afraid of addressing any issue,” Fidel Castro wrote.

“That shows his courage and confidence in the principles of the revolution,” he wrote.

The former president appeared to be throwing a dose of cold water on growing expectations for improved bilateral relations, suggesting Obama had no right to dare suggest that Cuba make even small concessions.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton offered a different perspective while discussing Cuba policy yesterday with the House Foreign Affairs Committee. She said that while Fidel Castro had “contradicted” his brother’s statements about Cuba’s willingness to discuss a whole range of issues, that showed “there is beginning to be a debate” in Cuba about how to move forward with U.S. relations.

Raul Castro, 77, has not clarified the confusion and is unlikely to, out of respect for his older brother.

Clinton said the Obama administration needs to be ready to engage with Cuba, even though its government is “very difficult to move.”

The different tones, if not policy positions, that the Castro brothers have clearly adopted could mean there is a division in Cuba’s collective communist leadership over whether detente is moving too fast. Or the leaders could be trying to create an appearance of friction that keeps Cuba in the news and may become a bargaining chip in any negotiations.

“It’s a game of political strategy,” said Elizardo Sanchez, the island’s leading rights activist and head of the Cuban Commission for Human Rights and National Reconciliation.

Fidel Castro, in his essay, defended Cuba’s right to levy a 10 percent fee on every U.S. dollar sent to relatives on the island by Cuban Americans, saying that if the money arriving from abroad “is in dollars, all the more reason we should do it because it is the currency of the country that blockades us.”

All top Cuban leaders routinely call the 47-year-old trade embargo against their country a blockade.

“Not all Cubans have family members overseas that send remittances,” Fidel Castro wrote. He said Cuba used the revenue from fees on exchanging dollars to provide free health care, education and subsidized food to its population.

Fidel Castro has previously expressed admiration for Obama, but he blasted the new U.S. president in the essay for showing signs of “superficiality” and called on him to wait no longer before lifting the U.S. trade embargo against Cuba.

“We are living in a new era. Changes are unavoidable,” he wrote. “Leaders just pass through; peoples prevail.”

Still, some Cubans were irritated yesterday by his insistence that Obama misinterpreted Raul Castro’s sentiments.

Wilfredo O’Farril, 59, a construction worker, said: “I’m not afraid to say it. We are a people without a future.” Fidel Castro “first says one thing, then says another. We’ve been this way for 50 years.” By: Will Weissert (AP)

Police in Boston and Warwick, R.I., say Philip Markoff, 23, may have preyed on other women he found on the website, where people can post most ads for free, says Jake Wark, a spokesman for the district attorney in Suffolk County, Mass., who brought the charges. A judge ordered Markoff jailed without bail.

R.I. POLICE: Case similar to Boston Craigslist slaying

He is charged with murdering one woman and robbing and kidnapping another. Both had posted ads under the website’s “erotic services” section, police say.

Craigslist CEO Jim Buckmaster, in a statement posted on his blog Tuesday, urged website users to take “the same common-sense precautions online as they would offline,” such as choosing a public place or bringing a friend along when meeting people encountered online. About 50 million Americans use Craigslist to place online classified ads each month, he wrote.

“We are horrified and deeply saddened that our community services have been associated in any way whatsoever with a crime of violence,” he wrote. “We are evaluating this incident closely to see if there are any additional things (Craigslist) could be doing to further improve safety for our uses and the general public.”

Defense attorney John Salsberg said Markoff is not guilty and “has his family’s support.”

“There are a lot of people out there, and not all of them are good,” says Parry Aftab, a privacy and security lawyer who founded wiredsafety.org to promote online safety, including on popular sites such as Craigslist, Facebook and MySpace. “Many of us are vulnerable because we’re not as careful in the online world as we would normally be.”

This is not the first time someone allegedly has used Craigslist to find a victim. Michael John Anderson, 20, of Savage, Minn., was sentenced this month to life in prison for killing Katherine Ann Olson, 24, whom he lured to his home when she responded to an ad for a nanny he put on the site.

Craigslist signed an agreement Nov. 6 with 40 state attorneys general in which it promised to enact safeguards to restrict prostitution postings on its site. It requires people who post in the erotic ads section, which includes such services as fantasy role-playing and lap dances, to provide valid identification and pay a $5 or $10 fee by credit card.

Despite that agreement, Cook County, Ill., Sheriff Thomas Dart last month sued Craigslist for facilitating prostitution. The suit, filed in Chicago, asks a judge to outlaw the “erotic services” section. Dart said in the lawsuit that his department had made hundreds of arrests based on ads on the site, including for child endangerment and human trafficking.

Markoff is accused of contacting a 29-year-old woman who advertised massage services in the erotic services section of Craigslist, Wark says. He arranged to meet her April 10 at the Westin Copley Place hotel in Boston, Wark says. Once in her hotel room, Wark says, he pointed a gun at her, bound her hands and demanded money. Markoff is charged in that case with armed robbery and kidnapping.

Markoff replied to another Craigslist ad April 14 and made an appointment to meet Julissa Brisman, 26, of New York, at the Boston Marriott Copley Place, Wark says. Brisman was beaten and shot three times at close range, he says. One bullet struck her heart, killing her. Markoff is charged with murder and carrying a firearm without a license.

“The evidence suggests an armed robbery that escalated to violence,” Wark says. He says police traced an Internet address used to set up the date with Brisman to Markoff’s apartment in Quincy, Mass.

Police also are investigating whether Markoff is linked to a similar armed robbery in Warwick, R.I., Wark says. Contributing: The Associated Press By: Donna Leinwand, USA TODAY

In an announcement on state-run television, the country said it was ready to step up efforts to develop nuclear weapons and poised for a military response to any moves against it.

“The revolutionary armed forces of the DPRK are always keeping themselves fully ready to go into action any moment to mercilessly punish anyone who encroaches upon the sovereignty and dignity of the DPRK even a bit,” it said.

On Monday the United Nations condemned North Korea — which refers to itself as the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, or DPRK — for launching a rocket.

The United States called the launch a “provocative act” that violated a 2006 Security Council resolution prohibiting Pyongyang from conducting ballistic missile launches.

Pyongyang insists the April 5 launch was a successful mission to place a communications satellite into orbit. The United States says the rocket’s payload did not reach orbit.

The U.N. statement says the rocket launch was “in contravention” to a 2006 Security Council resolution that demanded that North Korea not launch any ballistic missiles.

The 15-member council also voted unanimously for a statement by the council’s president demanding the country make no more launches.

“The Korean People’s Army will consider sanctions to be applied against the DPRK under various names over its satellite launch or any pressure to be put upon it through ‘total participation’ in the PSI (Proliferation Security Initiative) as a declaration of undisguised confrontation and a declaration of a war against the DPRK,” the announcement on state TV said.

“Now that the group officially declared confrontation and war against the DPRK, its revolutionary armed forces will opt for increasing the nation’s defense capability including nuclear deterrent in every way, without being bound to the agreement adopted at the six-party talks,” it continued, apparently referring to the Security Council.

Referring to South Korean President Lee Myung-bak, the statement added, “The Lee group of traitors should never forget that Seoul is just 50 kilometers (31 miles) away from the Military Demarcation Line.”

That line was established by the 1953 Armistice Agreement between the two Koreas — which are still technically at war.

A Friday report North Korea’s official KCNA news agency, seemed to blame the “war hysteria” on the United States and South Korea after the two countries carried out a combined air force operation in South Korea.

The “‘South Korea-U.S. military alliance’ oft-repeated by them is, in essence, nothing but a ‘war alliance’ and ‘alliance for aggression’ aimed at invading the DPRK,” the report said.

“When a nuclear war will break out due to the war chariot of the ‘South Korea-U.S. military alliance’ is a matter of time,” it said. “The U.S. and South Korean warmongers would be well advised to stop acting rashly, properly understanding who their rival is.”

Right now, we are spending future generations into the poorhouse, and we really don’t care as long as we have the cash to keep the cable on, pay for text messages, or purchase $600 shower curtains.

President Obama said something yesterday about us no longer being able to spend, spend, spend in government, but I guess that does not include the healthcare reform Obama wants, the stimulus package we “need” or else the Earth will start hurling into the sun, or for the US to either bail out or purchase the US automakers.

I look at things in simple terms, and here is how I see things:

Some people made some really foolish moves when purchasing homes – people who could not really afford homes purchased them on really shaky grounds because they figured that the housing market would go up 10% per year. Then when it looked like this was not going to happen, people started defaulting on loans, banks foreclosed on houses they did not really want to own, and property values fell in many areas of the country.

The government got involved because elected officials need to appear to be helpful. What I never understood was that some Federal oversight failed, regulators were sleeping at the wheel, so as rational beings we wanted the same people who made the mistakes to fix the problem. We did that because they have the expertise. I am still scratching my head on this one.

We passed a bunch of spending bills, and some of them did very little to help the economy. So our legislators decided to spend money in other ways. It reminds me of seeing someone on the side of the road, head bend, hood popped open, wondering why the car has stalled. He (face it, it would be a “he”; a “she” would call AAA) takes a monkey wrench (or other item in the toolbox) and whacks part of the car. If it doesn’t fix the problem, he whacks another part of the engine. We are kinda doing the same thing right now, but our monkey wrench is 1 Trillion Dollar spending bills.

Here is what people are not talking about: (1) Unemployment is on the rise, but people are still making mortgage payments. What happens in several months when people start blowing through their emergency funds. (2) Most ARMs (adjustable rate mortgages) have not ratcheted up, yet. The first wave will hit in a year or so. What happens when this occurs.

Both of these events are what I like to call “Holy Cow” events. They are big, may affect housing prices and the economy, and will probably need our legislative bodies writing hundreds of billions of dollars in spending (because that’s what legislatures do).

Part of me wants to dress like a native American and attend one of these tea party events – though I think dressing like Pocahontas is not really PC unless you are on a Disney property.

Me, I am looking at the stock market gain more than 1,000 points over the last month or two, and I still think about the bad news on the horizon. But stock brokers are smart, right? I mean, they are a bit smarter than mortgage brokers and bank regulators, right?

I have started thinking about this tea party tax protest some more. Why could it not have been some wine tasting tax protest instead? I mean, that would have more appeal to me, and after thinking about this, I could use a drink.

Jeremy Schoemaker has built a name for himself as an online marketing guru at Shoemoney.com, where he writes on a variety of topics, mostly related to making money on the web. Outside of the marketing community he is perhaps best known for this famous photograph, in which he shows off a check displaying his monthly earnings from Google AdSense that total over $130,000.

Unsurprisingly, other marketers have tried to build off Schoemaker’s success through dubious means, registering ads through Google’s AdSense program that use the word ‘Shoemoney’ in their text – a term that Schoemaker has trademarked. Google forbids the practice, and Schoemaker has been able to fend off violations in the past without going to court.

But the latest offense was different. Beginning 4 months ago, Schoemaker began to notice a new violator, who was sending an ad for “Shoemoney” to the domain myincentivewebsite.com. Repeated attempts to contact Google and the offending parties went unanswered (as did a Cease and Desist). The owners of the offending website had set their contact information to ‘private’ through their registrar, so contacting them directly wasn’t easy. Schoemaker got a court ordered subpoena that ordered the violator’s webhost to disclose his personal information.

With his real name in hand, Schoemaker finally managed to get in touch with the alleged violator. The defendant claimed to be unaware of any breaches of Google’s Terms of Service or the Shoemoney trademark. Schoemaker isn’t convinced, stating that “he played dumb every time and was very deceitful with his responses”. To make matters worse, the defendant attempted to clear his name by sending Schoemaker a screenshot of his account featuring a list of keywords he was targeting – a list that Schoemaker says was incredibly similar to his own.

That’s when things started to get strange. A friend of Schoemaker’s discovered that the violator had a number of friends on Facebook who worked for Google’s AdWords. A cached version of his LinkedIn profile stated that he is an employee at Google working as an AdWords Account Strategist, though the title has since been removed. A call to Google’s New York office revealed that someone with his name is listed in the directory, all but confirming Schoemaker’s suspicions that he was dealing with a Google employee.

Schoemaker has filed suit against the violator (and his father, who stepped forward to claim the offending website as his own). At this point it’s still unclear if the violator used his position at Google to bypass its trademarked words filters or to access Schoemaker’s own list of keywords, but at the very least it’s hard to believe the Google employee was unaware that his actions were in violation of Google’s Terms of Service.

We have been unable to get in touch with the defendant. Google has given us the following statement:
“‘While we take this kind of allegation seriously we’re not able to comment on specifics.”