McElroy solid in role as backup

Treating her listeners as one global community, Ms. Makeba sang in any language she chose, from her own Xhosa to the East African lingua franca Swahili to Portuguese to Yiddish. She also took sides: against South African apartheid and for a worldwide movement against racism, to the point of derailing her career when she married the black power advocate Stokely Carmichael in the late 1960s. (They were divorced in the mid-1970s.) Even during three decades of life as an exile and expatriate — the South African government revoked her passport in 1960 — she made it clear that South Africa was her home and her bedrock as an artist.

Her voice, more properly voices, were unstoppable. Always cosmopolitan, Ms. Makeba knew her Billie Holiday as well as old Xhosa melodies like “The Click Song,” with its percussive syllables, which became one of her international hits. She could sound light, lilting and girlish; she could be flirtatious, bluesy or utterly exuberant. Her voice also held a layer of rawer, sharper exhortation: the tone of village songs and spirit invocations, the traditions that were her birthright — songs she revisited on her 1988 album “Sangoma” (Warner Brothers). Her huge repertory didn’t feature strident protest songs but in love songs and lullabies, party songs and calls for unity there was an indomitable will to survive: a joyful tenacity that could translate as both deep cultural memory and immediate defiance.

She must have been an exotic apparition in the 1960s, upbeat and already a star in South Africa, wowing Europe and then arriving in the United States with support from Harry Belafonte. She had already, bravely, sung in an anti-apartheid documentary, “Come Back, Africa.” In exile she was still an ambassador, showing America and the world an Africa full of vibrant, irresistible sounds: the loping mbube grooves that Paul Simon would rediscover decades later, the flow of African words, the grain of her voice.

Videos on YouTube from 1966 show Ms. Makeba, with her musicians in jackets and ties, performing in an elegant long dress that also happens to have a leopard-skin pattern: supper-club Africana that’s at home on any continent. Her music was different but not forbidding, especially with her own charisma to introduce it. Before anyone was tossing around terms like “world music,” she was creating it, making her heritage portable while preserving its essence.

She was never a purist, but always proud of her roots.

Ms. Makeba arrived during America’s civil-rights struggles and performed at the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s marches. A visible reminder that discrimination stretched beyond the United States, she denounced apartheid in a speech to the United Nations General Assembly in 1963. It’s impossible to guess what she may have been thinking when she sang her 1967 “Pata Pata,” with its bits of English narration — “ ‘Pata Pata’ is the name of a dance we do down Johannesburg way” — in the full knowledge that she herself would not be welcome back in Johannesburg until a regime change.

Prohibited from returning to South Africa, she settled instead in Guinea, in West Africa, where she participated in that country’s government-assisted movement toward musical “authenticité” — merging traditional styles with new instruments — and let her repertory stretch further. For a while she also joined Guinea’s United Nations delegation.

Ms. Makeba didn’t have the career of a pop singer, thinking about hits and trends and markets. She followed conscience and history instead, becoming a symbol of integrity and pan-Africanism — lending her imprimatur, for instance, by performing on Mr. Simon’s 1987 “Graceland” tour, which carried South African music worldwide while implicitly pointing to the apartheid that still prevailed at home. Through five decades of making music, down to her final studio album, “Reflections,” in 2004 and concerts till the day she died, she sang with a voice that was unmistakably African, and just as unmistakably fearless.

"She took her for a full spin," Bush's spokeswoman Sally McDonough said of the tour, which lasted about an hour. "They went in every single room. They spent time talking about their children and life at the White House."

Michelle Obama and her daughters toured the White House after her husband was elected to the Senate in 2004, but had no inkling then that she would someday live there.

Now, she's just weeks from moving in.

Laura Bush's personal tour included the famed Lincoln Bedroom, which she helped renovate, as well as where her daughters, Jenna and Barbara, lived. Having called the White House home for eight years, the first lady has put her imprint on nearly every part of the private residence.

She told Michelle Obama she was free to bring in her own furniture or switch out what was there, and reassured her that she could "really make the girls' rooms their rooms," McDonough said.

"The place is a museum," said Doug Wead, a former aide to President George H.W. Bush and author of a book on presidents' kin. "The principle rule: The higher up you go in the White House, the greater the freedom to redecorate and change," he said, referring to upper floors of the private quarters.

During her visit to Washington, Michelle Obama checked out at least two of the city's top private schools for daughters, Malia, 10, and Sasha, 7. They now attend a private school in Chicago.

She also met privately in the Map Room with Adm. Stephen Rochon, director of the executive residence and chief usher.

"After the tour, the first lady and Mrs. Obama visited in the West Sitting Hall where they discussed raising daughters in the White House as Jenna and Barbara Bush were similar in age to Malia and Sasha when they visited their grandfather, President George H.W. Bush, during his presidency," said Stephanie Cutter, spokeswoman for the Obama-Biden transition.

Monday's pre-Inauguration Day ritual between the two women dates back 100 years.

On Dec. 11, 1908, Edith Roosevelt, wife of President Theodore Roosevelt, gave William Taft's wife, Nellie, a private tour. Nellie Taft overcompensated for her nervousness by acting a bit haughty, said Carl Sferrazza Anthony, historian for the National First Ladies' Library in Canton, Ohio. "After lunch as the two walked into the Green Room, Nellie quipped in a whisper loud enough for Edith to hear, 'I would have put that table over there.'"

Over the years, first ladies have shown little trouble putting aside politics when it comes to the tour — even if their husbands are from different political camps. President Lyndon B. Johnson's wife, nicknamed Lady Bird, was long acquainted with Richard Nixon's wife, Pat, so the meeting was warm and friendly.

As they walked by the media on their tour, first lady Barbara Bush gave Hillary Rodham Clinton a warning: "They're going to be all over you," Bush said, according to Myra Gutin, a professor at Rider University in New Jersey who has written extensively about first ladies. Clinton thanked her for the advice, but said she already had firsthand knowledge about the pitfalls of dealing with the media.

Other tours have led to tense, uncomfortable moments.

During the Great Depression, incoming first lady Eleanor Roosevelt asked President Hoover's wife, Lou, to see the White House kitchens.

"Mrs. Hoover pulled herself up and said `Mrs. Roosevelt, I have lived in this house for four years. I have never stepped inside the kitchen and I do not intend to do so now,'" Anthony said.

Jacqueline Kennedy had just delivered her second child by Caesarean section when she arrived for her tour. Her doctor had insisted she use a wheelchair, but she didn't ask for one and first lady Mamie Eisenhower didn't offer one.

"They said goodbye," Anthony said. "Mamie Eisenhower went off to her bridge game and Jackie Kennedy got into the limousine and pretty much collapsed and had to be in bed for weeks."

The attackers detonated a car bomb in the Sunni district of Adhamiyah, then minutes later a suicide bomber ran into the resulting melee and blew up, according to defence and interior ministry officials.

A third explosion caused by a roadside bomb around 30 metres (yards) from the first two blasts tore through the market moments later, according to an Iraqi police officer who was on the street when the attack took place.

An interior ministry official said at least 68 people were wounded in the rush-hour Baghdad attack, which wreaked the heaviest toll in Baghdad since June 17 when 51 people were killed and 75 wounded in a car bombing.

Monday's attack took place on Kassra street, a road lined with restaurants and tea shops popular for breakfast with Iraqi security forces, as a bus carrying young school girls drove past, according to witnesses.

"There was a huge explosion and before I went out to look another bomb went off," said Fadel Hussein, a waiter at a teahouse near the scene.

"Heavy smoke was everywhere. There were so many bloody victims on the ground, we helped to evacuate those people to ambulances," Hussein told AFP.

The US and Iraqi military cordoned off the area, which was littered with glass, mangled metal and scorched cars as sobbing parents desperately searched for their children.

One woman in her 40s and wearing a black abaya, the traditional black Arab dress, sat on the ground crying uncontrollably.

"I'm waiting for my husband who is inside the area looking for my son. I hope he is still alive," she sobbed.

Witnesses told an AFP photographer that some schoolgirls in the bus had died in the blast.

Seats in the wrecked interior of the minibus were heavily stained with blood, while its exterior was riddled with fist-sized shrapnel holes. Girls' shoes lay strewn on the blood-stained street.

Among those killed were three policemen, three women and five children, police said.

The Medical City hospital received 37 wounded people, including several women and children and two Iraqi soldiers, a medic said.

However, the US military put the toll at four killed and 34 wounded.

Meanwhile in Baquba, a restive city north of Baghdad, a female suicide bomber killed four Sunni guards belonging to Awakening councils and wounded at least 15 civilians at a checkpoint.

A doctor who examined the remains of the attacker said she was likely a 13-year-old girl.

The United Nations envoy to Iraq, Staffan de Mistura, condemned the attacks that "aimed at re-instilling fear, distrust and division among the public just as Iraq prepares itself to assume political normalcy with the upcoming provincial elections."

On Sunday, Baghdad set January 31 as the date for long-awaited provincial elections seen by Washington as a key benchmark towards national reconciliation but also capable of stoking further conflict among Iraq's divided communities.

The bombings also came as Sunni militias which have played a key role in driving Al-Qaeda fighters from Baghdad began receiving pay cheques from a Shiite-led government that has long eyed them with suspicion.

Up to 60 stations opened throughout the Iraqi capital to pay some 50,000 members of the US-allied Awakening Councils or Sahwas which used to receive their monthly salaries from the American military.

Despite the dramatic improvement in security in large swathes of Iraq, militants continue to launch near daily attacks , most of them targeting US and Iraqi security forces.

Baghdad has been hit by a string of bombings in the last week, most of them small roadside bombs that claimed only a handful of victims.

The US military says the capital has become much safer since the launch last year of a joint Iraqi-US security plan. Attacks average four a day, 83 percent less than in 2007.

It was always expected to end like this. If there's anything much going on with the water currently on Mars, chances are good it's happening at the poles, so NASA directed its latest lander, the Phoenix, to that region of the planet. Unfortunately, that inevitably meant that the lander would run short on sunlight to power its solar panels once the long, cold Martian winter set in.

About an hour ago, Phoenix's Twitter page broke the news: "From Phoenix mission ops: Phoenix is no longer communicating with Earth. We'll continue to listen, but it's likely its mission has ended." Power for the lander had been getting short, and it was taking longer to recharge its batteries; the loss of contact was a sign that the batteries had fully run down. There was never really a chance that the lander would run long past its expiration date (unlike the rovers, which operate in sunnier climes), but the exact date of its demise had been anyone's guess.

In its time on the red planet, Phoenix had a good view of the polar weather, but its work focused on the chemistry of the polar regions. Right off the bat, the lander's robotic scoop appeared to hit solid ice just below the surface, and scientists were rewarded with time-lapse images of ice subliming into the thin Martian atmosphere from one of the trenches it dug.

Images: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona/Texas A&M University

We'll have a better sense of what precisely Phoenix has found when the scientific papers start coming out, but the lander had already made one key discovery: the public's really interested in the prospect of life on Mars. Back in August, rumors about a major discovery with implications for life on Mars became so intense that NASA had to hold a press conference to dispel them. It turns out they'd discovered lots of a compound that contains chlorine but, as of last check, they were still unsure what it was.

Phoenix is one of those rare cases where NASA got exactly what it had planned on: spotless operation in precisely the place they intended to land it. Unfortunately that location ensured that, no matter how well-engineered the hardware was, the winter would bring its operation to an end.

The American International Group has become a money pit for the United States government. The insurance giant’s new $150 billion bailout is bigger and looks easier on A.I.G. than its previous two facilities, in aggregate $123 billion, from the Federal Reserve. The package is better defined than before, but the increased potential burden on taxpayers is embarrassing for the Fed and the Treasury. It underlines the need for regulation that catches any group that’s too big to fail.

In structural terms, A.I.G.’s Bailout 2.0 looks like an improvement. It aims to solve the company’s main problem — the cash bleeding from its $400 billion credit-default swap portfolio — by unwinding the worst of the instruments completely in a kind of “bad bank” separate from A.I.G.’s insurance businesses. It’s doing something similar with a collection of dodgy mortgage-backed securities. In addition, the Treasury will invest $40 billion in preferred securities under its Troubled Asset Relief Program, and the New York Fed will replace its existing $85 billion credit facility with a new $60 billion loan with a much lower interest rate.

This should all help keep A.I.G. afloat while also bringing an end to the collateral calls that have caused a huge outflow of cash. It should also buy the insurance giant time to sell some of its assets. However, the plan amounts to burdening taxpayers with all of A.I.G.’s losses while still leaving shareholders and even management with a slice of any upside.

That seems too generous, but the Fed’s earlier strategy to protect taxpayers was always wishful thinking. A.I.G.’s size and market significance meant it had the government over a barrel. The insurer’s finance operations had grown far too big to fail, while operating in large part in the cracks between different regulators’ territories.

If the Fed and the Treasury have now done enough to stabilize the situation, that offsets some of the embarrassment of having to bail out their own initial bailout. Longer term, regulations need to capture any company that becomes too significant to the financial system. Rewriting the currently inadequate rulebook is an important task for President-elect Barack Obama. A.I.G. makes for a persuasive Exhibit A.

Santander’s U-Turn

They say Spain is different, but its biggest bank may not be so different after all. Like many of its European peers, Santander has pulled a U-turn on capital. Days after its chief executive, Alfredo Saenz, said the bank didn’t need more capital, Santander has begun raising 7.2 billion euros (about $9.2 billion) with a deeply discounted rights issue.

The about-face reflects the increasing nervousness of investors about the bank’s capitalization. Santander’s core Tier 1 capital ratio, a measure of the strength of its capital, stood at 6.3 percent at the end of September, but was expected to drop below 6 percent as the bank absorbed its recent glut of acquisitions.

Santander could have increased its capital organically by retaining profits over time. That may have been adequate by yesterday’s standards, particularly for a retail bank with minimal exposure to toxic subprime housing assets. But the goalposts have moved, and Santander woke up late to the sentiment shift. The rights issue will take the ratio up to a more comfortable 7 percent.

Turnabouts can dent confidence and make investors suspicious. Santander insists it has no skeletons rattling about in its closet. Nor is it planning any further acquisitions, it says. But shareholders are now likely to be more skeptical about taking what management says at face value.

Santander, which recently acquired Sovereign Bancorp, is issuing the shares at a steep 46 percent discount. Still, the bank looks to be a cut above its peers. It isn’t tapping the government for the capital. Its dividend looks safe through 2009. Its do-it-yourself approach is also on more shareholder-friendly terms than other recent bank transactions. Credit Suisse diluted existing shareholders and issued expensive preference shares to investors from the Middle East. Barclays did the same at an even steeper price.

What’s more, by finally relenting to the market’s demand that it raise more capital, Santander has piled the pressure on other refuseniks. Deutsche Bank, BBVA of Spain and Italian institutions are looking increasingly stubborn in holding out. Like Santander, they all claim to be different. But toughing it out in the face of investor skepticism is looking like a untenable strategy.

As the 43rd and 44th U.S. presidents held their first face-to-face talks on Monday, the next first lady, Michelle Obama, toured the presidential residence with Laura Bush.

At the end of their highly symbolic visit, Bush walked Obama to a waiting black limousine for the trip to the airport and the return flight by jet charter to his transition headquarters in Chicago. His team is working there to put together the next Cabinet and to fill the hundreds of jobs that come open in a change of administrations.

Neither Bush nor Obama made a statement before or after their meeting.

Obama spokesman Robert Gibbs said the two men "talked extensively" about the economic situation and foreign policy.

"Obviously the topics that came up are what you've seen and heard about in the news recently and about what a number of transition officials spoke about on the Sunday (TV talk) shows," he said.

Topics included "the need to get the economy back on track," Gibbs said, and "what's going on in the auto industry." The discussion of the auto industry wasn't limited to any one of the nation's three largest car makers, he said. "It was a discussion about the broad health of the industry, and they also spoke about the housing industry and foreclosures."

Michelle Obama arrived in the nation's capital ahead of her husband Monday and was returning to Chicago separately. She was scouting out Washington schools for the Obama daughters — 10-year-old Malia and 7-year-old Sasha.

The Obamas arrived at the White House diplomatic entrance 11 minutes before their appointed 2 p.m. visit and were greeted outdoors by the president and first lady who stood without coats in the beautiful but chilly fall day.

Bush has been at pains to make the transition as smooth and gracious as possible. He has publicly set aside any lingering hard feelings after the long and sometimes bitter presidential election campaign in which Obama convincingly defeated Republican John McCain, having hammered him as little more than a clone of the deeply unpopular Bush.

Bush had backed McCain but lauded Obama's victory as a "triumph of the American story," as he issued a warm invitation for Obama and the next first lady to visit their future home. Obama will be the country's first black president and takes office with fellow Democrats firmly in control of both houses of Congress.

As the visit began, Bush and Obama could be seen talking animatedly as they strolled alone under the White House Colonnade, pausing for pictures before entering the Oval Office for Obama's first visit to the presidential chamber.

Bush allowed Obama to enter the historic office first as they prepared for a private talk about the challenges of leading a nation freighted in this hand-over of power by a crippling economic downturn and wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The country's troubles fall to Obama when he takes office Jan. 20.

After arriving, the Obamas were taken to the Diplomatic Reception Room where met the chief usher of the White House, press secretary Dana Perino said.

Mrs. Bush gave Mrs. Obama a tour of the first family's living quarters, including the bedrooms used by children of past presidents. Cutter's statement said the women spent time in the White House "West Sitting Hall, where they discussed raising daughters in the White House, as Jenna and Barbara Bush were similar in age to Malia and Sasha Obama when they visited their grandfather, President George H. W. Bush, during his presidency."

Obama started his day in Chicago, dropping his daughters at their private Chicago school, giving each girl a kiss before heading to a gym for a workout.

When asked last week about his meeting with Bush, Obama said: "I'm going to go in there with a spirit of bipartisanship, and a sense that both the president and various leaders of Congress all recognize the severity of the situation right now and want to get stuff done."

Aside from a meeting with economic advisers and holding a press conference on Friday, Obama has stayed largely out of view, emphasizing there is just one U.S. president for now, and that is Bush.

The president-elect's transition chief, John Podesta, arrived at the White House in the Obama limousine but was not believed to have been in the meeting.

Bush chief of staff Josh Bolten had said in advance of the session that he was "sure each of them will have a list of issues to go down. But I think that's something very personal to both of them. I know the president will want to convey to President-elect Obama his sense of how to deal with some of the most important issues of the day. But exactly how he does that, I don't know, and I don't think anybody will know."