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reuters.com — Burned by their failure to uncover the biggest Ponzi scheme in history, U.S. securities regulators are ramping up training of staff on how to spot the warning signs of market swindles. The Securities and Exchange Commission's inspection unit is offering 90-minute classes for employees. "We're doing it because of Bernie Madoff," said one SEC official who spoke on condition of anonymity because staff are not authorized to speak on the SEC's behalf. The first class, replete with PowerPoint slides, called "Basics of Ponzi schemes, affinity fraud and related schemes," was given on March 9. A second class teaching "Exam issues and techniques for detecting Ponzi schemes, affinity fraud and related schemes" was scheduled for March 23.

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nytimes.com — China said that eight senior regulators were fired last week for “slack supervision” in a tainted milk scandal that killed at least six children and sickened over 300,000 last year. The government said high-ranking regulators in the country’s major food supervisory agencies were stripped of their positions and their membership in the Communist Party. The dismissals were Beijing’s latest efforts to strengthen food safety practices and hold government officials accountable after the worst food safety crisis here in decades. The scandal dealt a huge blow to China’s dairy industry last year and also led to global recalls of Chinese-made food products, damaging international trade and further shaking confidence in this nation’s ability to monitor its food producers.

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usatoday.com — More than $700 million worth of public projects will start to emerge in this embattled city this year, as New Orleans' recovery enters one of its busiest stages since the devastating floods of Hurricane Katrina, the city's mayor said. Construction on jails, police and fire stations, playgrounds, theaters and mixed-income housing developments — all battered by the 2005 floods — has started or will start this year, as public federal funds finally were unleashed from bureaucratic tangles, Mayor Ray Nagin said. Nagin, 52, has been the public face of Katrina's devastation since the floods destroyed 80% of his city.

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— Describing the U.S. government’s failure to inspect 95 percent of food-processing plants as ‘‘a hazard to the public health,’’ President Barack Obama promised to bolster and reorganize the nation’s fractured food-safety system. ‘‘In the end, food safety is something I take seriously, not just as your president, but as a parent,’’ Mr. Obama said in his weekly radio and Internet address. Mr. Obama announced the creation of a Food Safety Working Group, which will include the secretaries of health and agriculture, to advise him on which laws and regulations need to be changed, to foster coordination across federal agencies, and to ensure that laws are enforced.

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reuters.com — The U.S. Food and Drug Administration issued safety guidelines for companies that use peanut products and said it may seize products that test positive for salmonella bacteria. While heat-sensitive, salmonella bacteria become heat-resistant in high-fat environments such as peanut butter, the FDA guidance advises. The document provides advice directly relevant to a food poisoning outbreak that has renewed calls for a revamp of food safety protocols in the United States. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention government said 683 people in 46 states have been sickened in the outbreak linked to foods that used peanut ingredients made by the now-bankrupt Peanut Corp of America. The outbreak continues to affect hundreds of the company's customers and has forced the recall of 3,235 products.

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nytimes.com — With government inspectors overwhelmed by the task of guarding the nation’s food supply, the job of monitoring food plants has in large part fallen to an army of private auditors. An examination of the largest food poisoning outbreaks in recent years shows that auditors failed to detect problems at plants whose contaminated products later sickened consumers. The rigor of audits varies widely and many companies choose the cheapest ones, which cost as little as $1,000, in contrast to the $8,000 the Food and Drug Administration spends to inspect a plant. Typically, the private auditors inspect only manufacturing plants, not the suppliers that feed ingredients to those facilities. Nor do they commonly test the actual food products for pathogens, even though gleaming production lines can turn out poisoned fare.

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latimes.com — The Supreme Court dealt a defeat to the pharmaceutical industry and the Bush administration, ruling that federal approval of a prescription drug does not provide a shield against lawsuits from injured patients. The 6-3 decision upholds the traditional right of American consumers to sue the manufacturer if they are harmed by a defective product. The ruling — a rejection of one of the Bush administration's most far-reaching legal policies — applies to the more than 11,000 drugs on the market in the U.S., both over-the-counter and prescription medications. Three years ago, the Bush administration announced that federal approval of a drug "preempts" or bars suits in state courts. But Justice John Paul Stevens, speaking for the court, said the administration's view "does not merit deference."

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reuters.com — Dead mice and rodent droppings were found throughout a Texas plant run by a company whose peanut products caused one of the biggest food recalls in U.S. history, food inspectors reported. Effective measures are not being taken to exclude pests from the processing areas and protect against the contamination of food on the premises by pests," the report reads. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says 677 people in 45 states have been sickened in the outbreak of salmonella food poisoning, which is still going on, and which has been traced to two of the company's plants in Georgia and Texas. So far, more than 2,833 products have been pulled from store shelves since mid-January, although not brand names of peanut butter, which are not affected.

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latimes.com — The Senate Intelligence Committee is preparing to launch an investigation of the CIA's detention and interrogation programs under President George W. Bush, setting the stage for a sweeping examination of some of most secretive and controversial operations in recent agency history. The inquiry is aimed at uncovering new information on the origins of the programs as well as scrutinizing how they were executed — including the conditions at clandestine CIA prison sites and the interrogation regimens used to break Al Qaeda suspects, according to Senate aides familiar with the investigation plans. Officials said the inquiry was not designed to determine whether CIA officials broke laws, but to learn lessons from the programs and see if there are recommendations to be made for detention and interrogations in the future.

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reuters.com — Americans hold a dim view of business executives, giving them poor grades for honesty and ethics and blaming them for business failures, according to a survey. Nearly 60 percent gave the worst grades to Wall Street executives for honesty and ethical practices, according to research. The poll questioned 2,071 U.S. adults and 110 business executives. Some 58 percent of the adults gave poor grades to top business executives for leadership during the economic crisis, while 31 percent rated them as fair, 9 percent as good and 2 percent as excellent. Among the executives, only 19 percent gave themselves poor grades for leadership, while 53 percent rated themselves as fair, 27 percent as good and 1 percent as excellent.

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