9:20pm Saturday – AlaskaReport.com receives letter from Palin lawyer Van Flein evidently confirming some details (will post when we clarify missing information)

AlaskaReport has learned that Todd Palin and former Alaska governor Sarah Palin are to divorce. Multiple sources in Wasilla and Anchorage (including a former Palin staffer) have confirmed the split. The sources preferred to remain anonymous for fear of repercussions from the Palins and their coworkers.

A National Enquirer story exposing previous affairs on both sides led to a deterioration of their marriage and the stress from that led to Palin’s resignation as governor of Alaska last week.

The Palins were noticeably not speaking to each other for most of last Sunday’s resignation speech in Fairbanks. Sarah ditched Todd (MSNBC) right after the speech and left without him. Sarah removed her wedding ring a couple of weeks ago.

According to the ImmoralMinority blog Sarah has recently purchased land in Montana and is considering moving the family there. Sarah Palin is originally from Idaho.

Todd Palin told Fox News last week that he was heading back to his job in the oil fields of Alaska, yet Sarah recently signed a book deal reportedly worth $11 million.

Editor’s note: AlaskaReport was the first website to report that Sarah Palin was running for governor of Alaska and the first website to report that Sarah was picked as John McCain’s VP candidate.

Related stories:
Sarah Palin’s silence on affair deafening

Palin lawyer threatens to serve papers at kindergarten

Sarah Palin on “hurt feelings” – November 5th, 2008

Former Alaska governor Sarah Palin says politicians need to have thick skin “just as I’ve got” Which of course is hilarious since she quit as Alaska’s governor complaining about her hurt feelings from Alaska’s bloggers reporting on her 21 ethics violations.

Sarah Palin on “hurt feelings” from Dennis Zaki on Vimeo.

President Obama says unemployment is likely to tick up for several months as the economy recovers from its deepest downturn in decades.

The president said Tuesday that renewed employment typically lags behind other signs of improvement as a swooning economy turns around.

More than 2 million jobs have been lost since Congress passed Obama’s $787 billion economic stimulus package. The unemployment rate stands at 9.5 percent, the highest in 26 years.

Obama said the single biggest challenge for the U.S. and other nations is the creation of enough jobs that pay good wages.

He spoke in the Oval Office after meeting with Dutch Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende.

Officials made three arrests over the weekend and a fourth Monday evening in the Pensacola killings of Byrd and Melanie Billings, which happened during a home-invasion while several of the children were home.

After saying he hoped to make another one or two arrests Tuesday, Escambia County Sheriff David Morgan later announced that two more suspects were caught in the fatal shootings.

A spokeswoman with the sheriff’s office said that more information would be announced later Tuesday by authorities from Escambia County. A press conference was planned for 1 p.m. EDT.

The new arrests, both in a nearby county, bring the total to six.

The Okaloosa County Sheriff’s Office confirmed the arrests but declined to identify the latest suspects or release other details.

Morgan told ABC’s “Good Morning America” that authorities have tied at least seven people to the crime but that nothing links any of the suspects to the family directly.

Morgan said day laborer Gary Lamont Sumner was arrested on a murder charge in a nearby county Monday after he was pulled over in a traffic stop. The sheriff said investigators have placed Sumner at the scene of the killings, though he wouldn’t provide details.

The couple took care to make their nine-bedroom house a safe place for their growing brood of children, wiring it with surveillance cameras in every room.

It was those cameras that captured images of the masked men who shot the wealthy couple Thursday in a break-in executed with chilling precision.

Morgan said that the crime appeared to have “numerous motives,” though robbery was the only one he would mention.

“Mr. Billings was well-to-do. He was an entrepreneur and he opened his home to the community. You are asking me to speculate on a motive. That could have been one reason,” Morgan said, likening the killings to the 1959 slayings of a Kansas farm family. In that case, chronicled by Truman Capote in the book “In Cold Blood,” the killers mistakenly believed the prosperous family kept a safe full of cash at home.

When asked if the Billings kept much money at their home, Morgan replied, “That has not been verified.”

The video from last Thursday showed three armed, masked men arriving in a red van, entering through the front of the house and then returning to the vehicle. Others dressed in what the sheriff called “ninja garb” went in through an unlocked utility door in the back. They were in and out in under 10 minutes.

The sheriff would not say what, if anything, was stolen.

Some of the nine children in the house at the time were sleeping, but several others saw the break-in, authorities said. One left the house and went to get a neighbor, who called 911.

“I think you’ll find this particularly chilling and here’s why: We have a team that enters at the rear of the home and another that enters at the front of the home,” Morgan said. “It leads me to believe this was a very well-planned and methodical operation.”

Morgan said, however, that there was no indication anyone had unlocked the door for the intruders, adding that people in the community felt comfortable leaving their doors unlocked. He also said he knew of no connection between the men under arrest and the Billings family.

The couple owned several local businesses, including a finance company and a used-car dealership. They lived in Beulah, a rural area west of Pensacola, near the Alabama state line, in a house set deep in the woods. They had 16 children in all — 12 of them adopted.

Tips from the public led police to the van on Saturday. Day laborer Wayne Coldiron, 41, turned himself in on Sunday, and Leonard P. Gonzalez Jr., 35, was arrested the same day in a neighboring county. They were charged with murder and home invasion. The two were expected to have their first court appearances Tuesday.

Authorities also jailed Gonzalez’s father on a charge of evidence tampering. Police said the 56-year-old tried to paint over and hide damage on the van.

Ashley Markham, an adult daughter of the victims, said she plans to carry on with her parents’ legacy. The husband and wife were 68 and 43, respectively.

“My mother always told me some people grow up wanting to be doctors or lawyers or teachers. She wanted to be a mommy,” Markham said in a statement. “Her lifelong dream was loving her babies and being a voice for them.”

The president also handed the pontiff a letter from Massachusetts Sen. Edward Kennedy, who was diagnosed with brain cancer last year, and asked that the pontiff pray for the senator, Deputy National Security Advisor Denis McDonough said.

Kennedy, 77, a Democrat, received the diagnosis after suffering a seizure in May 2008.

Obama and the pope spent about a half-hour talking, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said.

Obama told the pope he understands the church’s teachings and said, as he has before, that he would like to reduce the number of abortions in the United States, Vatican spokesman the Rev. Federico Lombardi told CNN.

McDonough said the pope gave Obama — who supports abortion rights and federally funded embryonic stem-cell research — a Vatican paper titled “An Instruction on Certain Bioethical Questions.” Watch the pope and president meet for the first time »

He said his sense was that the two “discussed abortion and stem cells. They discussed a range of those issues.”

In a commencement address at the University of Notre Dame, in South Bend, Indiana, on May 17, the president urged a search for “common ground” on abortion.

No matter how much Americans “may want to fudge it … at some level the views of the two camps are irreconcilable,” Obama said.

He urged supporters and opponents of abortion rights to “work together to reduce the number of women seeking abortions by reducing unintended pregnancies, and making adoption more available, and providing care and support for women who do carry their child to term.”

The commencement ceremony was boycotted by a number of graduates dismayed by the Catholic university’s decision both to tap Obama as its commencement speaker and to give him an honorary degree.

Sen. Roland Burris of Illinois, who was appointed last year to replace President Obama in the Senate, has decided he won’t run in next year’s election, after his Senate service was clouded by controversy, FOX News has confirmed.

Burris plans a formal announcement Friday in Chicago.

Burris reportedly reached his decision after struggling to raise campaign funds — an estimated $20,000 so far, with campaign disclosures with the Federal Election Commission expected to be filed next week.

A source told the Chicago Sun-Times that Burris has been very concerned about his legacy.

“After 20 years in government service, Burris didn’t want the last four months in office to be that legacy,” the source said.

Click here to read the Sun-Times report.

Gov. Rod Blagojevich appointed Burris on Dec. 30 to fill Obama’s former seat over the objections of Senate Democratic leaders, who eventually welcomed Burris after being confronted with racial pressure. Burris is the Senate’s only black member.

At the time, Blagojevich faced a federal probe into evidence he had attempted to sell the appointment, and the Illinois Legislature later ousted him from the governor’s office.

Burris has denied paying for the appointment, though he has been alienated in the Senate since revelations he had not been forthright about communications with Blagojevich’s camp.

By not seeking a full term, Burris increases Democrats chances of holding on to the Senate seat in 2010. Republicans had viewed Burris as a potentially easy target if he were to run for a full-term in the Senate.

President Obama shook hands with Libyan leader Muammar al-Qaddafi Thursday, a sign that relations have improved considerably between the U.S. and the North African nation.

The two met as they posed for pictures ahead of a G-8 summit dinner hosted by Italian President Giorgio Napolitano.

Obama’s diplomatic gesture was his latest effort to reach out to controversial world leaders in an attempt to improve the United States’ standing around the world, which he says was damaged by former President Bush’s unilateral diplomacy. 

But it was Bush who restored full diplomatic relations with Libya in 2006 after the formerly isolated country, which was recognized as a sponsor of terrorism, announced it was ending its weapons of mass destruction program.

Obama also shook hands with Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez in April at the Summit of Americas, where Chavez gave Obama a book critical of U.S. foreign policy.

In Italy, Obama posed for a photo, standing between Napolitano and Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi and then socialized with others, including U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan.

Qaddafi entered the room in a colorful outfit, with red and gold draping over his shoulder and matching shirt and pants.

Despite improved international relations, Qaddafi remains a controversial figure. He criticized the U.S.-led war in Iraq during a speech last month to the Italian Senate.

“Iraq was a fortress against terrorism. With Saddam Hussein, Al Qaeda could not get in, but now thanks to the United States it is an open arena and this benefits Al Qaeda,” he said.

He also compared the U.S. air strike on Tripoli in 1986, in which one of his daughters was killed, to an Al Qaeda attack.

“What difference is there between the American attack on our homes in 1986 and bin Laden’s terrorist actions?” he asked. “If bin Laden has no state and is an outlaw, America is a state with international rules.”

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Four employees of Rio Tinto — one Australian and three Chinese — had been held since Sunday, said Australian Foreign Minister Stephen Smith.

Under Chinese law, suspects are officially charged when they are arrested, a distinction from being detained.

Officials with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs offered conflicting information at a news conference, saying the four workers were detained, not arrested.

China’s reason for holding Australian Stern Hu “came as a surprise” to the Australian government, Smith said.

Opposition leader Malcolm Turnbull said: “We’ve raised our concerns with the Chinese Embassy in Canberra. This is a matter of very real concern, and it is completely unacceptable.”

A Rio Tinto spokesman also called the charges surprising. Watch more on the case »

“We are not aware of any evidence that would support such an investigation,” spokesman Nick Cobban told CNN. “We will continue to work to support our employees and their families.”

Officials at the Chinese government press office in Shanghai were aware of the report but could not confirm the arrests, a spokesman said.

All four are employees at Rio Tinto’s Shanghai office, the company said.

Australia’s consular agreement with China allows for Australian officials to have access to Hu by Friday, Smith said. Officials have asked that Hu’s wife and Rio Tinto officials be allowed to see him, Smith said.

The incident comes after Rio Tinto broke away from a $19.2 billion investment deal with state-owned Chinalco last month.

The deal with Chinalco was signed in February and was awaiting a review by Australia’s Foreign Investment Review Board. The deal soured as opposition party members ratcheted disapproval, saying it put Australian resources at strategic risk.

Others saw the deal as an alliance that would further link resource-rich Australia with the commodities-hungry Chinese market.

At least 35 people were killed and 65 wounded in a double suicide bombing in northern Iraq on Thursday morning, according to the Nineveh Military Operations Command.

The bombers struck the city of Tal Afar in Nineveh province, where political tensions have recently increased between Arabs and Kurds. Violence erupted in Nineveh on Wednesday as well.

The first bomb struck the house of a security official working in counterterrorism operations, the official said. The second bomb detonated just minutes later, after people had gathered at the scene in a predominantly Shiite Turkmen area of the city.

The Tal Afar bombings occurred a day after attacks on mainly Shiite targets in Nineveh province — including a car bomb in a Turkmen area of the provincial capital, Mosul, — left at least 19 people dead and dozens wounded.

Despite a drop in violence in Nineveh’s provincial capital, Mosul, the city remains a challenge. There are daily reports of attacks.

U.S. forces pulled out of Iraq’s urban centers June 30. The U.S. military had suggested keeping its combat troops in Mosul beyond the withdrawal deadline, but the Iraqi government insisted on making no exceptions for the date set in the security agreement.

Tal Afar is about 45 miles (72 kilometers) west of Mosul.

Also on Thursday morning, at least seven people were killed and 20 wounded when a bomb detonated in a busy marketplace in Sadr City, the vast Shiite slum in Baghdad, the Interior Ministry official said.

Bomb blasts — one from a rigged bicycle and another from a car — in two predominantly Shiite neighborhoods of southwestern Baghdad wounded six people, according to the official.

Leaders of the world’s leading industrialized nations are meeting with representatives of up-and-coming economies to tackle global warming at an economic summit Thursday in Italy.

G-8 leaders wait for an aide to remove toe markers as they pose for a family photo in L’Aquila, Italy, on July 8.

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U.S. President Barack Obama will lead the Major Economies Forum at the Group of Eight meetings in L’Aquila.

The forum is a climate-centered group whose members represent the G-8 nations — Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia and the United States — along with Brazil, China, India, Mexico and South Africa. Those nations account for 80 percent of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions.

Thursday’s session follows a pledge by G-8 leaders the night before, to seek huge cuts in emissions and sets the stage for the possibility of an all-encompassing agreement at a major environmental summit in December in Copenhagen, Denmark.

The leaders said they would “join a global response to achieve a 50 percent reduction in global emissions by 2050, and to a goal of an aggregate 80 percent or more reduction by developed countries by that date.” Watch report from CNN’s Ed Henry »

The goal mirrors one adopted by the U.S. House of Representatives last month.

Despite the G-8 leaders’ pledge to cut emissions, developing nations may not follow suit — and G-8 leaders stopped short of calling on them to set specific targets.

Instead, they “called upon major emerging economies to undertake quantifiable actions to collectively reduce emissions significantly below business-as-usual by a specified year,” the White House said.

After the summit’s first session on Wednesday, Obama and other leaders toured the mountain town of L’Aquila. The area was devastated by a 6.3-magnitude quake in April, killing about 300 people and leaving some 45,000 homeless. Watch as leaders tour quake zone »

Obama is expected to push for further international financial stimulus packages at the summit, reflecting continued concerns over the global economic crisis despite massive government spending to halt the downturn. Watch what’s on agenda at G-8 summit »

The summit’s host, Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, is likely hoping that the three-day event will help draw the spotlight away from recent scandals that have prompted questions about his suitability to lead.

Prone to gaffes and facing a divorce from his wife of 19 years, the Italian prime minister is being investigated over allegations that he paid for sex, claims that he has repeatedly denied.

Berlusconi has made a big show of moving the summit from its original venue on the island of Sardinia to L’Aquila, in central Italy, as a gesture of support for the region.

A massive security operation has been put in place around the town, which is still hit by regular aftershocks. Italy said last week it had arrested six members of a left-wing terrorist group that was plotting an attack on the summit. Watch Berlusconi talk to CNN about scandals he faces »

Meanwhile, Pope Benedict XVI launched a verbal assault on global capitalism ahead of the meeting, lambasting “grave deviations and failures” and calling for a “profoundly new way of understanding business enterprise.”

The pope, who is to meet Obama on Friday in Rome, challenged bankers to turn away from the practices blamed for bringing about the global economic crisis and instead use their power to help the world create wealth and economic development.

“Above all, the intention to do good must not be considered incompatible with the effective capacity to produce goods,” Benedict said.

After his meeting with the pope, the first African-American president will make his first trip as chief executive to Africa, traveling to Accra, Ghana. Obama’s father was a native of Kenya.

On June 11, 2009, the World Health Organization (WHO) raised the worldwide pandemic alert level to Phase 6 in response to the ongoing global spread of the novel influenza A (H1N1) virus. A Phase 6 designation indicates that a global pandemic is underway.

More than 70 countries are now reporting cases of human infection with novel H1N1 flu. This number has been increasing over the past few weeks. Some of the cases were involved in travelling, others were local community outbreaks. WHO designation of a pandemic alert Phase 6 reflects the fact that there are now ongoing local outbreaks all over the world.

WHO’s decision to raise the pandemic alert level to Phase 6 is a reflection of the spread of the virus, not the severity of illness caused by the virus.

Learn More About A Natural Immune Booster That Is Recommended >>

It’s uncertain at this time how serious or severe this novel H1N1 (swine flu) pandemic will be in terms of how many of the infected people will develop serious complications or die from novel H1N1 infection. This virus has not been around long enough and influenza by its nature is already unpredictable. One concern is that because novel H1N1 is a new virus, many people may have little or no immunity against it, and without extra immune support the illness may be more severe and widespread. In addition, currently there is no vaccine to protect against swine flu virus. Therefore many health-informed people are using this 2 Step Immune Booster To Stay Healthy:

2 Step Immune Boosting Virus Defense:

Step 1: Drink Twice as Much Spring Water as Normal
Step 2: Take This Natural Immune Booster named Cold & Flu Essentials

Fighting For Your Health…

Swine flu outbreak prompts U.S. government preparation for pandemic
by Kathrine Harmon in 60-second Science Blog

With the number of confirmed U.S. swine flu cases double the 20 it was yesterday, the government says that it is closely monitoring the swine flu outbreak and is preparing for further spread.

“This is obviously the cause for concern and requires a heightened state of alert, but it’s not a cause for alarm,” President Obama said today at the National Academy of Sciences (NAS).

Obama signs bill funding swine flu fight.

Obama on Swine Flu: Urges ‘Utmost Precautions’ And Advises Schools with Cases to Close

Background
The Swine flu virus is causing illness in infected persons in the United States and countries around the world.  That illness may continue for some time. As a result, you or people around you may become ill. If so, not only do you need to recognize the symptoms and know what to do, but you also need to take action to strengthen your immune system.

Symptoms
The symptoms of this new swine flu virus in people are similar to the symptoms of seasonal flu and include fever, cough, sore throat, runny or stuffy nose, body aches, headache, chills and fatigue. A significant number of people who have been infected with this new swine virus also have reported diarrhea and vomiting.   It’s expected, but not known for sure, that the high-risk groups for the swine flu are the same as those for seasonal influenza.

People at higher risk of serious complications from seasonal flu include people age 65 years and older, children younger than 5 years old, pregnant women, people of any age with chronic medical conditions (such as asthma, diabetes, or heart disease), and people who are immune-suppressed (e.g., taking immunosuppressive medications, infected with HIV).

2-Steps for Boosting Immunity and Protecting From Viruses:

1. Drink twice as much water.
2. Take This Natural Immune Booster named Cold & Flu Essentials

Step1– Drink twice as much water

Surprisingly, drinking more water is a simple and effective way to keep your body’s natural immunity strong. It does this by keeping your body hydrated, which helps your lymphatic system circulate properly. The lymphatic system is a network that carries non-blood fluids (known as lymph or interstitial fluid) through the body. It’s the body’s natural ability to heal and to keep diseases at bay. Lymph is a clear, watery fluid that moves around the body via organs, ducts, and nodes to distribute immune cells and other factors. It is vital in fighting off infection and in draining out “bad” fluids from the body, acting as a kind of cleanser that reaches almost every cell in the body. Plenty of pure spring water helps the lymphatic system flush toxins away, keep the immune system strong and more able to fight off disease and viruses.

Step 2– Take This Natural Immune Booster named Cold & Flu Essentials

Cold & Flu Essentials is an all natural immune booster herbal formula. It includes botanicals that are documented as having anti-viral and anti-inflammatory components. These botanicals are made from herbals that have been used in China for hundreds of years to fight off epidemics and viral-infections.

also

Russia has tightened preventive measures to stop the spread of swine flu, which has already killed at least 81 people in Mexico. Anyone arriving from North America with symptoms of the deadly virus will be quarantined.

Meanwhile, swine flu cases were confirmed in New York on Sunday while potential cases were reported from New Zealand, Hong Kong, and Spain.

Also, Russian authorities have limited imports of pork from Mexico, a number of U.S. states and the Caribbean.

Russian Chief Veterinarian Inspector Nikolay Vlasov told Itar-Tass:

“We have blocked the delivery of pork from the area between Colombia, California and Florida.”

In addition, it’s now prohibited from bringing any kinds of meat products into the country carried in the hand luggage of air and sea passengers traveling through Mexico and the U.S. states of Texas, California, and Kansas.

Russian chief sanitary doctor Gennady Onishchenko, in an interview with Vesti-24 channel, said that even though the disease is not fatal when quickly diagnosed and treated, it’s still not recommended to travel to Mexico.

Also, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has set up a governmental commission to prevent the spread of swine flu in the country