Home prices drop by a record amount

NEW YORK - A widely watched index released Tuesday showed home prices dropping by the sharpest rate ever in the second quarter, but the data for June suggest the severity of the housing slump may be waning.

The Standard & Poor’s/Case-Shiller U.S. National Home Price Index tumbled a record 15.4 percent during the quarter from the same period a year ago.

The monthly indices also clocked in record declines. The 20-city index fell by 15.9 percent in June compared with a year ago, the largest drop since its inception in 2000. The 10-city index plunged 17 percent, its biggest decline in its 21-year history.

Angry Koreans!

(CNN) -- North Korea said Tuesday it has stopped disabling its nuclear plants and will consider restoring them because the United States has not removed it from a list of states that sponsor terrorism.

The communist nation said it halted the dismantling of the plutonium-producing plants on August 14, the state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported.

The North "will consider soon a step to restore the nuclear facilities in (Yongbyon) to their original state," the North Korean Foreign Ministry said in a statement that KCNA carried.

North Korea agreed to a complete dismantling of its Yongbyon nuclear complex by October. In return, U.S. President George W. Bush said he would lift some U.S. sanctions against North Korea and remove it from a State Department list of state sponsors of terrorism.

The sticking point between the two countries involves verification.

Washington said last week it will not remove North Korea from the terrorism list until Pyongyang agrees to set up an internationally recognizable mechanism to verify its declaration.

The U.S. has demanded that inspectors be given the right to visit all suspected nuclear facilities without notice, the South Korean news agency, Yonhap, said.

North Korea rejects that provision.

"The U.S. is gravely mistaken if it thinks it can make a house search in (North Korea) as it pleases just as it did in Iraq," the Foreign Ministry statement said.

In June, North Korean officials turned over to China a 60-page declaration, written in English, that details several rounds of plutonium production at the Yongbyon plant, dating to 1986.

In it, North Korea acknowledges producing roughly 40 kilograms of enriched plutonium -- enough for about seven nuclear bombs, according to the U.S. State Department.

Soon after, North Korea publicly destroyed a water cooling tower at the Yongbyon facility.

North Korea agreed to abandon its atomic weapons program on a promise that it would receive energy aid equivalent to one million tons of heavy fuel oil from the five nations involved in the disarmament talks: the United States, South Korea, China, Japan and Russia.

The parties to the talks also agreed on a system for verifying North Korea's compliance, including "visits to facilities, review of documents, interviews with technical personnel and other measures unanimously agreed upon among the six parties," according to a joint statement they released.

The North Korean Foreign Ministry said Tuesday that the United States was in "outright violation" of the agreement.

"The U.S., however, raised all of a sudden an issue of applying an 'international standard' to the verification of the nuclear declaration, abusing this agreed point," the statement said. "It (pressured North Korea) to accept such inspection as scouring any place ... as it pleases to collect samples and measure them."

South Korea's Foreign Ministry said it was disappointed by its neighbor's decision.

"The measure is regrettable as it came at a time when the six parties have to make concerted efforts to complete phase two of the denuclearization process," the ministry's spokesman Moon Tae-young told reporters.

He said Seoul "will work closely with relevant countries to have North Korea resume the disablement work as early as possible."

Madrid plane crash survivor 'born again'

MADRID, Spain (CNN) -- A woman who survived last week's Spanair airline crash in Madrid left the hospital Tuesday, saying she was "born again" by the disaster.

Beatriz Reyes, 41, has been credited with saving two of the three children who survived the crash which killed 154 people.

She is the second survivor to be sent home, while 16 others remained hospitalized Tuesday.

The first to leave the hospital was a 6-year-old boy, apparently one of the children Reyes helped in the moments after the Spanair MD-82 airliner crashed on takeoff from Madrid's Bajaras airport Wednesday.

"I saw some kids and I got them out," Reyes said. "I think anyone would have done it."

All 18 who survived were seated in the front section of the plane, the only part not to catch fire. Reyes was in seat 5-D.

She said she remained conscious throughout the crash.

"I felt a strong blow and then my stomach went up and down," she said. "That's when I knew there was an accident."

She said it was ironic that she was treated in the maternity ward at Hospital Infanta Sofia in the Madrid suburb of San Sebastian de los Reyes.

"On the 20th of August, I have been born again," she said.

She was returning home from a vacation in Germany when she boarded the flight to the city of Las Palmas in the Canary Islands.

KEPUTUSAN PILIHANRAYA KECIL PULAU PINANG P44:PERMATANG PAUH

KEPUTUSAN PILIHANRAYA KECIL PULAU PINANG P44:PERMATANG PAUH

1.Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim (KeADILan) 31,195 undi.
2.Hanafi Mamat (AKIM) 92 undi.
3.Datuk Arif Shah Omar Shah (BN)15,524 undi.

Jumlah mengundi: 47,258
Peratus keluar mengundi: 81 peratus
Undi rosak: 447 undi
Majoriti: 15,671 undi

Penyandang: Datuk Seri Dr Wan Azizah Ismail (KeADILan)
Undi diperolehi 8 Mac 2008: 30,348
Majoriti: 13,398 undi

Anwar is Permatang Pauh MP (Final update)

BUKIT MERTAJAM: Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim has won the Permatang Pauh by-election.

The PKR de-facto leader was returned to Parliament with a majority of 15,671 votes, exceeding the 13,388-vote majority won by his wife Datuk Seri Dr Wan Azizah Wan Ismail in the March 8 general election.

Anwar garnered 31,195 votes to beat Barisan candidate Datuk Arif Shah Omar Shah, who polled 15,524 votes, while Angkatan Keadilan Insan Malaysia candidate Hanafi Hamat lost his RM15,000 deposit after getting only 92 votes. There were 447 spoilt votes.

"This is the people's victory," Anwar said in a victory speech.

"Permatang Pauh has given a clear signal to the leadership of this country. We demand change. We want freedom. We don't want to live with corruption and oppression.

"We want an independent judiciary, we want the economy to benefit the vast majority not the corrupt few," he added.

Deputy Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak said the result was proof that democracy was still alive in the country and there was no manipulation involved.

"As we have pointed out right from the start, we would be facing a tough challenge," he said.

The closely watched by-election was called after Dr Wan Azizah resigned as the MP on July 31 to enable her husband to run for election.

Anwar held the seat for four terms before he was sacked from his Deputy Prime Minister's post in 1998 under corruption and sodomy charges.

Dr Wan Azizah, who had been known as a reluctant politician, won the seat for a third term in March.

A mammoth crowd comprising PKR leaders and supporters gathered early at the tallying centre at the Tuanku Bainun Teacher Training College in Bukit Mertajam to celebrate Anwar's victory.

Supporters in the crowd let off fireworks as returning officer Roslan Yahaya announced the results about 10pm.

Voter turnout was relatively high, at about 80% of the total of 58,459 registered voters in the constituency.

Barisan was the underdog from the start in the hard-fought by-election that Deputy Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak described as a titanic challenge.

Anwar’s convincing victory was reminiscent of his heyday, when he secured a stunning 23,515-vote majority in the 1995 general election by polling 27,945 votes. In Tuesday's polling, 47,258 voters cast their ballots, or 80.83% of the 58,459 total number of voters.

Its all about us and Malaysia now, not the stupid UMNO and their bloody money politic ... Malaysia we can !!!!