Nearly a year after the federal rescue of the nation's biggest banks, taxpayers have begun seeing profits from the hundreds of billions of dollars in aid that many critics thought might never be seen again. The government still faces potentially huge long-term losses from its bailouts of the insurance giant American International Group, the mortgage finance companies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and the automakers General Motors and Chrysler. The Treasury Department could also take a hit from its guarantees on billions of dollars of toxic mortgages... The government has taken profits of about $1.4 billion on its investment in Goldman Sachs, $1.3 billion on Morgan Stanley and $414 million on American Express. The five other banks that repaid the government -- Northern Trust, Bank of New York Mellon, State Street, U.S. Bancorp and BB&T -- each brought in $100 million to $334 million in profit. The figure does not include the roughly $35 million the government has earned from 14 smaller banks that have paid back their loans. But all the profits taxpayers have won could still be wiped out by two deeply troubled institutions. Both Citigroup and Bank of America are still holding mortgages and other loans that were once worth billions of dollars but whose revised values are uncertain. If they prove "toxic" because they cannot attract buyers, they could leave large holes in the banks' balance sheets.

Wikipedia, one of the 10 most popular sites on the web, was founded about eight years ago as a long-shot experiment to create a free encyclopedia from the contributions of volunteers, all with the power to edit, and presumably improve, the content. Now, as the English-language version of Wikipedia has just surpassed three million articles, that freewheeling ethos is about to be curbed. Officials at the Wikimedia Foundation, the nonprofit in San Francisco that governs Wikipedia, say that within weeks, the English-language Wikipedia will begin imposing a layer of editorial review on articles about living people. The new feature, called ''flagged revisions'', will require that an experienced volunteer editor for Wikipedia sign off on any change made by the public before it can go live. Until the change is approved or in Wikispeak, flagged it will sit invisibly on Wikipedia's servers, and visitors will be directed to the earlier version.....Wikipedia is the first reference point for many web inquiries its pages often lead the search results on Google. ''We are no longer at the point that it is acceptable to throw things at the wall and see what sticks,'' Seattle lawyer and Wikipedia board chairman Michael Snow said. ''There was a time probably when the community was more forgiving of things that were inaccurate or fudged in some fashion whether simply misunderstood or an author had some axe to grind. There is less tolerance for that sort of problem now.'' ..... Wikipedia's volunteer editors gathered in Buenos Aires last week for their annual Wikimania conference. Much of the agenda was focused on the implications of the encyclopedia's size and influence.

When the CIA revived a plan to kill or capture terrorists in 2004, the agency turned to the well-connected security company then known as Blackwater USA. .... Blackwater told the CIA that it "could put people on the ground to provide the surveillance and support -- But the CIA's use of the private contractor as part of its now-abandoned plan to dispatch death squads skirted concerns now re-emerging with recent disclosures about Blackwater's role. Blackwater altered its corporate name to Xe Services after a series of use-of-force controversies, including a September 2007 shooting in Baghdad by five company security guards that left 17 civilians dead. ....Another former senior intelligence official said the use of Blackwater was not the only plan considered to kill or capture terrorists. Blackwater long has had a close and intertwined relationship with the CIA. Several senior agency leaders have taken up positions with the company. Among them were J. Cofer Black, once the head of the CIA's Counterterrorism Center, who would have had operational involvement with the secret plan in the early 2000s. Others included Robert Richer, a former deputy director for operations, and Alvin B. Krongard, a former CIA executive director. Another Blackwater hire was Enrique "Ric" Prado, a former operations chief at the Counterterrorism Center. Prado ran the death squad program when it was started up under Tenet, three former intelligence officials said. According to one former official, Jose A. Rodriquez Jr., who ran the CIA's clandestine service and was instrumental in reviving the program, reached out to Prado, then working at Blackwater. The two men had previously worked together in Latin America and then at the Counterterrorism Center, the former officials said. .....Prado did not return messages left at his home or with his business partner, Joseph E. Fluet. The pair recently formed The Constellation Consulting Group, an international intelligence and security firm based in northern Virginia.....The House Intelligence Committee is investigating whether the CIA broke the law by not quickly informing Congress about the secret program.

The notorious US private security contractor, formerly known as Blackwater, uses a Philippines location to train mercenaries for Iraq and Afghanistan operations. The company has been lent a former US naval base, northwest of the Manila Bay, "where they can train up to one thousand private military contractors," Washington-based journalist Wayne Madsen told Russia Today on Friday. They train people from India, Bangladesh, Nepal, Fiji and the Philippines for operations in Iraq, Afghanistan and other location where they operate, according to Madsen.. The company was denied lease of the base three years ago and was reportedly operating there via a proxy. "We have also been told about a Blackwater subsidiary called Satelles Solutions," the investigative journalist added. The group's stated mission is to provide security for US diplomats and diplomatic facilities as part of the State Department's Worldwide Personal Protection Program. The company, which has changed its name to Xe Services, LLC, however, is notorious for misusing its State Department-issued gun license as an excuse for trigger-ready atrocities, namely the killing of 17 civilians in Iraq in 2007. The Department, however, has refused to waive its permission to carry arms in Iraq.

Jaycee Lee Dugard was not only a kidnapped captive of Phillip Craig Garrido, living for 18 years in his backyard in unincorporated Antioch, but also the creative force behind his specialty printing business, according to the firm's customers. They knew the 29-year-old Dugard as "Allissa" and believed Garrido when he said she was his grown daughter. Mostly, they knew her as the courteous, professional young woman who, in telephone calls and e-mails, helped them order business cards, flyers and posters. "He told us up front he works with his daughter. He said Allissa did all of the graphic design and he did all of the printing," said J.P. Miller, who hired Garrido this month to advertise his Orinda-based company, A&J Hauling. Miller said the woman never gave any indication that she had been snatched from a South Lake Tahoe street at age 11 and forced to bear two children with Garrido, as police say.

In the 18 years that Jaycee Lee Dugard allegedly spent captive in Phillip Garrido's backyard, shielded from the world by trees, tarps, tents and tool sheds, she no doubt had a chance or two to tell someone the truth. Customers of Garrido's Antioch home-based printing business say the young woman whom they knew as Garrido's daughter "Allissa" designed business cards and helped with the family business. They never suspected that "Allissa" was a South Lake Tahoe girl kidnapped in 1991 at age 11..... He believes "somebody at a tender age ends up being raised in captivity by a person who gradually transforms this person into a slave," he said. "There are cultures in which this happens, in which women are given to men at a young age."

Japan's new Premier-in-waiting Yukio Hatoyama has vowed to pursue new politics that would take Tokyo away from the 'excesses of US-style capitalism'. Hatoyama, 62, who is expected to announce a transition team on Monday, said that he wanted 'Japan to be more independent'. The winner of Sunday's general elections emphasized that he would distance Japan from 'US diplomatic policies'. His Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) made history on Sunday with an overwhelming victory in the election. DPJ won 300 seats in the 480-seat lower house, ending half a century of Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) rule. Hatoyama had regularly criticized the pro-US ruling party for joining in refueling operations in the Indian Ocean in support of the US-led forces in Afghanistan. He has also insisted that his DJP party will question the role of thousands of US troops deployed throughout Japan under a post World War II security pact. Hatoyama wrote an opinion piece for The New York Times last week, noting that US hegemony was coming to an end in different parts of the world. "As a result of the failure of the Iraq war and the financial crisis, the era of US-led globalism is coming to an end," Hatoyama wrote.

Ministers were facing accusations today that hundreds of children are being held unnecessarily in immigration detention centres as official figures revealed, for the first time, that 470 minors were being detained with their families. The figures, made public following pressure from children's rights groups and MPs, showed most were under five. Many were from troubled countries such as Zimbabwe, Sudan, Sri Lanka and Democratic Republic of Congo. The UK has one of the worst records in Europe for detaining children, but accurate figures on how many are held, or for how long, have remained elusive. While the Home Office has not divulged the length of detention, it provided a "snapshot" picture of those held on a single day: 30 June 2009. This shows that almost a third of children were held for longer than 28 days, which means that in each case an immigration minister had to sign an authorisation for their continued detention.The figures also show that out of 225 children released from detention in the second quarter this year, only 100 were removed from the UK.