e-Coops

Forget fall leaf tours or autumndayson a cottage dock vacationers aresigning up fora September trip to frolic inAlberta’s oilsands.

Classic Canadian Tours will fly passengers from Calgary to Fort McMurray to get a first-hand glimpse of what isdriving theprovince’s economy.

Brenda Trockstad, a spokeswoman for the Calgarytravel company,saidcustomers willtour the Oil Sands Discovery Centre, visit Suncor’ssite “to get a close up view of what it takes to extract oil from the tar sands,”and see a park reclaimed from past developments.

Geologists aren’t the only people plunking down more than $500 for the one-day trip, she said.They’ve taken bookings from professors, retirees, farmers, andeven investors who want to see what energy companies are doing.

“We kind of thought of it as being for a man, the equivalent of a woman going to a spa,” she said. “I must say that more than half of our people coming on this tour so far are women.”

A view of the Suncor Energy plant north of Fort McMurray.
(Canadian Press)

Marius Vos, a retired engineer who lives on Vancouver Island, has booked his ticket. He recalls a university professor speaking decades ago about the northern oilsands and he’s just curious to see what’s happening there.

“I would like to see what equipment they have up there and how they work it,” he said. “They’re spending billions of dollars up there, several different companies.It’s mind-boggling, I’m quite sure, butI can’t imagine it from here so I’d like to see it first hand.”

Trockstad says based on the interested calls from customers, the company will be offering more one-day trips in the future.

A new way to track stock market news has emerged. A website called StraightStocks.com offers one of the Internets simplest and most comprehensive stock market portals.

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This is really just the beginning
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«www.straightstocks.com» (launching just earlier this month) is undoubtedly catching on. Many authors have created accounts and are submitting content on a daily basis. Additionally, more and more investors are using the site each day. “This is really just the beginning,” says Mr. Olson. “Our goal is to create a comprehensive stock market portal to provide our visitors with the most up-to-date and highest-quality content available.”

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With StraightStocks free high-quality content, comprehensive stock research center and user-friendly design, it truly is a one of a kind portal that may very be the way of the future.

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(CBS)Michael Bloomberg’s announcement that he is leaving the Republican Party has solidified the New York mayor’s status as one of the most enticing non-candidates in the ‘08 presidential field.

A day after the announcement, Bloomberg repeated his assurance that he intends to finish out his second term as mayor and will not be a candidate for president.

“I’ve got the greatest job in the world,” he said on Wednesday.

But political advisers aren’t taking Bloomberg at his word and are grappling with the reality that next year’s general election could become a three-person affair.

“I think the country might be ready for a third-party candidacy and he’s got the money to do it, if he chooses to do it,” said CBS News chief Washington correspondent Bob Schieffer.

Bloomberg was a lifelong Democrat before switching to the GOP in 2001, which allowed him to sidestep a crowded Democratic primary field.

His liberal positions on several hot-button issues, include abortion, gun control and gay rights, lead many to believe that his impact on the election would negatively affect the Democratic nominee. The New York Times reported that several political analysts agreed that a Bloomberg candidacy would do just that.

But Bloomberg could also garner the support of disaffected GOP moderates.

Third-party candidates have traditionally ciphered off support from the party in which they left, notes CBS News political consultant Nicolle Wallace.

Such was the case when Teddy Roosevelt left the Republicans to become a Bull Moose in 1912 a move that helped contribute to Democrat Woodrow Wilson’s victory.

CBSNews.com senior political editor Vaughn Ververs points out that since Bloomberg will be able to bypass the primary cycle, he likely won’t have to announce his candidacy until after February of next year.

“It’s going to be hard to say what his impact will be until we know who the two nominees are for both parties,” said Ververs said.

One of Bloomberg’s more daunting tasks would be getting his name on the ballot, since state parties have control of the election process.

But Bloomberg enjoys the benefit of having some time to weigh his options.

Whether he decides to seek the nation’s highest office might depend on what happens during the primaries. If the nominees are Hillary Clinton and Rudy Giuliani, for instance, Bloomberg might find it difficult to find his own niche in an all-New York field.

“I think what he is truly doing here is exploring,” Schieffer said. “He’s testing the waters testing the market. He’s going to go around the country, he’s going to make some speeches, he’s going to see what kind of a reaction he gets. And if he gets a good reaction, my prediction is that he will run as an independent candidate.”

SHENZHEN, China: Inside Mattels sprawling test lab here, scores of technicians are doing their worst: setting Chicken Dance Elmo dolls on fire, wrecking Hot Wheels cars and yanking at the limbs of Dora the Explorer. The lab workers are paid to break toys, pick apart their innards, and analyze the raw materials that go into them.

The goal is to protect young children from the serious harm that poor construction or dangerous components can bring. But it is also to protect Mattel, the worlds biggest toy maker, from what is increasingly viewed as the risk of doing business in China.

The recent wave of recalls and warnings from China has ignited worldwide concern about the safety of Chinese products, potentially mucking up a global system built, in large part, on outsourced manufacturing. As a result, companies are trying urgently to figure out how to do business here, without risking their reputation, consumer trust, or customers lives.

Mattel may have some of the answers. In the 1990s, critics charged the company with running sweatshops in Asia. Now, independent analysts, and even watchdog groups, say Mattel may be the best role model for how to operate prudently in China.

“Mattel realized very early that they were always going to be in the crosshairs of sensitivities about child labor and product safety, and they knew they had to really play it straight,” said M. Eric Johnson, a management professor at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth, who has visited numerous factories in China, including some of Mattels. “Mattel was in China before China was cool, and they learned to do business there in a good way. They understood the importance of protecting their brand, and they invested.”

Mattel, and many of the outside analysts, say the key is command and control. Unlike many other companies, Mattel, which makes about 65 percent of its toys here, actually owns the plants that produce its most popular wares. About 50 percent of Mattels toy revenue comes from core products made in these company-run plants, a high proportion in the industry Д and a more costly method than using the lowest-bidding local manufacturer.

Its workers check toys for safety on site and in facilities like the one here in Shenzhen. An independent auditor inspects factories and posts reports on the Internet.

The company demands that the outside manufacturers it does use comply with its safety guidelines. And when supplies or raw materials arrive at one of its five Chinese factories, they are analyzed and tested.

“We are not perfect; we have holes,” said Jim Walter, a senior vice president at Mattel. “But were doing more than anyone else.”

Mattels presence in Asia predates the global outsourcing wave by decades. “The foot-stamp on the original Barbie says Made in Japan, ” said Jules Andres, a spokeswoman for Mattel. “That was 1959.”

Initially, overseas production was handled largely by outside vendors. But in the 1980s executives became concerned that outsourcing toy-making put trademarks at risk: the market could be flooded with imitation Barbies. Executives also thought they could handle manufacturing more efficiently themselves by building large factories.

Mattel aggressively expanded the number of plants it owned in Asia. Noncore products, like trinkets made under movie-licensing deals, could be outsourced. But Barbie dolls and Hot Wheels, among others, would be kept in tightly controlled factories.

For all its efforts to assume direct control, Mattel was surprised when, at the height of the holiday shopping season in 1996, NBCs “Dateline” program sneaked cameras into Mattels Indonesian factory and alleged that the company had hired underage workers and overworked them. U.S. News and World Report ran a cover story the same month with the headline “Sweatshop Christmas.”

A Mattel spokeswoman said that many of the charges against its factories were unfounded, and that the toy maker was already committed to decent workplace conditions.

Still, in 1997, Mattel took a significant step to improve its image and working conditions. The company hired S. Prakash Sethi, a professor at Baruch College, part of the City University of New York, who had an international reputation as a critic of worker mistreatment.

Sethi would make unannounced visits to Mattels factories and vendors plants. He insisted that he would only monitor Mattel if the toy maker let him post his reports publicly and uncensored.

Mattel agreed.

Ten years later, Sethi says Mattel, unlike most companies operating abroad, still gives him 100 percent independence in his reports, which are often critical. “Mattel is the gold standard,” he said.

Today, industry analysts tend to mention Mattels commitment to worker conditions in the same breath as its commitment to product safety.

“Mattel

WASHINGTON—Documents indicate eight congressional leaders were briefed about the Bush administration’s terrorist surveillance program on the eve of its expiration in 2004, contradicting sworn Senate testimony this week by Attorney General .

The documents underscore questions about Gonzales’ credibility as senators consider whether a perjury investigation should be opened into conflicting accounts about the program and a dramatic March 2004 confrontation leading up to its potentially illegal reauthorization.

A Gonzales spokesman maintained Wednesday that the attorney general stands by his testimony.

At a heated hearing Tuesday, Gonzales repeatedly testified that the issue at hand was not about the , which allowed the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on suspects in the United States without receiving court approval.

Instead, Gonzales said, the emergency meetings on March 10, 2004, focused on an intelligence program that he would not describe.

Gonzales, who was then serving as counsel to Bush, testified that the White House Situation Room briefing sought to inform congressional leaders about the pending expiration of the unidentified program and Justice Department objections to renew it. Those objections were led by then-Deputy Attorney General Jim Comey, who questioned the program’s legality.

“The dissent related to other intelligence activities,” Gonzales testified at Tuesday’s hearing. “The dissent was not about the terrorist surveillance program.”

“Not the TSP?” responded Sen. Charles E. Schumer, D-N.Y. “Come on. If you say it’s about other, that implies not. Now say it or not.”

“It was not,” Gonzales answered. “It was about other intelligence activities.”

A four-page memo from the national intelligence director’s office says the White House briefing with the eight lawmakers on March 10, 2004, was about the terror surveillance program, or TSP.

The memo, dated May 17, 2006, and addressed to then-House Speaker Dennis Hastert, details “the classification of the dates, locations, and names of members of Congress who attended briefings on the Terrorist Surveillance Program,” wrote then-Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte.

It shows that the briefing in March 2004 was attended by the Republican and Democratic House and Senate leaders and leading members of both chambers’ intelligence committees, as Gonzales testified.

Schumer called the memo evidence that Gonzales was not truthful in his testimony.

“It seemed clear to just about everyone on the committee that the attorney general was deceiving us when he said the dissent was about other intelligence activities and this memo is even more evidence that helps confirm our suspicions,” Schumer said.

Bush acknowledged the existence of the classified surveillance program in December 2005 after it was revealed by The New York Times. In January, it was put under the authority of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court for judicial review before any wiretaps were to be approved.

Asked for comment on the documents Wednesday evening, Justice spokesman Brian Roehrkasse said Gonzales “stands by his testimony.”

“The disagreement referenced by Jim Comey in March 2004 was not about the particular intelligence activity that has been publicly described by the president,” Roehrkasse said. “It was about other highly classified intelligence activities that have been briefed to the intelligence committees.”

The disagreement over whether to renew the program led to a dramatic, and highly controversial, confrontation between Gonzales and then-Attorney General John Ashcroft on the night of March 10, 2004.

After briefing the congressional leaders, Gonzales testified that he and then-White House chief of staff Andy Card headed to a Washington hospital room, where a sedated Ashcroft was recovering from surgery. Ashcroft had already turned over his powers as attorney general to Comey.

Comey was in the hospital room as well, and recounted to senators in his own sworn testimony in May that he “thought I just witnessed an effort to take advantage of a very sick man, who did not have the powers of the attorney general because they had been transferred to me.”

Ultimately, Ashcroft sided with Comey, and Gonzales and Card left the hospital after a five- to six-minute conversation.

Gonzales denied that he and Card tried to pressure Ashcroft into approving the program over Comey’s objections.

“We never had any intent to ask anything of him if we did not feel that he was competent,” Gonzales told the Senate panel Tuesday. “At the end of his description of the legal issues, he said, ‘I’m not making this decision. The deputy attorney general is.’ And so Andy Card and I thanked him. We told him that we would continue working with the deputy attorney general and we left.”

Democrats and Republicans alike expressed disbelief at Gonzales’ version of events.

“There’s a discrepancy here in sworn testimony,” Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., said after listening to Gonzales, raising the possibility of a perjury inquiry. “We’re going to have to ask who’s telling the truth, who’s not.”

Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, top Republican on the panel, also disregarded Gonzales’ description. “I do not find your testimony credible, candidly,” he told the attorney general.

House and Senate lawmakers who attended the Situation Room briefing are divided on the accuracy of Gonzales’ account of that meeting, which he said concluded by a “consensus in the room from the congressional leadership is that we should continue the activities, at least for now, despite the objections of Mr. Comey.”

Three Democrats Д House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller and former Senate Democratic leader Tom Daschle Д dispute Gonzales’ testimony. Rockefeller called it “untruthful,” and Pelosi spokesman Brendan Daly said the speaker disagreed that it should be continued without Justice Department or FISA court oversight.

On the other hand, former GOP House Intelligence Chairman Porter Goss, “does not recall anyone saying the project must be ended,’ spokeswoman Jennifer Millerwise Dyck said. And former Senate Republican leader Bill Frist stopped short of confirming or denying the meeting’s outcome.

“I recall being briefed with the others about the program and it was stated that Gonzales would visit with Ashcroft in the hospital and that our meeting was part of the administration’s responsibility to discuss with the leadership of Congress,’ Frist said in a statement.