Nonpartisan fact-checking groups according to Los Angeles Times
http://www.factcheck.org/
http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/
http://www.politifact.org/truth-o-meter/
http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/asection/la-na-factcheck8-2008oct08,0,4017424,full.story

A litigation freeze among Citigroup, Wachovia and Wells Fargo has been extended until Friday, October 10 at 8 a.m. to give the parties a bit of time to reach a settlement over the bidding war for Wachovia. The WSJ reported this morning that a “quick resolution appeared increasingly unlikely,” and that Citi had reached out to other parties to join its bid. The talks, which are apparently continuing, are largely turning on ways to split up Wachovia’s assets between the two parties. WSJ Law Blog October 8, 2008

So many Route 666 signs went missing that New Jersey changed the route designation to 665. There's a joke in here somewhere about hell rides on Jersey roads, but it happens elsewhere in the country, as well. The former interstate 666, which runs through Utah, New Mexico, and Colorado, was renamed Route 491.
http://www.autoblog.com/2008/10/01/devil-made-me-do-it-666-most-stolen-highway-road-sign/

Listening instead of watching--a potential recipe for disaster
A man's car got stuck on the Metro-North tracks in Bedford Hills, New York because he said his GPS told him to make a right turn. And it's not the first time this has happened there. It's the tool that has become indispensable for some--the GPS directional unit, which literally tells a driver where to turn to get to any destination.
http://wcbstv.com/local/gps.beford.hills.2.828972.html

Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper's 2003 speech had been made almost word-for-word two days before in Canberra by his former Australian counterpart, John Howard.
To prove the allegation, portions of the speeches were played side by side. Speech-writer Owen Lippert, who describes himself as an expert in intellectual property, apologized and announced his resignation. "Pressed for time, I was overzealous in copying segments of another world leader's speech," he said in a statement. "Neither my superiors in the office of the leader of the opposition nor the leader of the opposition was aware that I had done so." http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7645593.stm

SEC Office of the Chief Accountant and FASB Staff Clarifications on Fair Value Accounting
News release: "The current environment has made questions surrounding the determination of fair value particularly challenging for preparers, auditors, and users of financial information. The SEC’s Office of the Chief Accountant and the staff of the FASB have been engaged in extensive consultations with participants in the capital markets, including investors, preparers, and auditors, on the application of fair value measurements in the current market environment."

What is a derivative? A security, like an option or future, whose value is derived from another underlying security. http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&defl=en&q=define:Derivative&sa=X&oi=glossary_definition&ct=title

October 8 is the birthday of R. L. Stine, (books by this author) born Robert Lawrence Stine in 1943 in Bexley, Ohio. He worked at a trade publication for the soft drink industry, and then at Scholastic, a children's literature publisher, where he edited their humor magazine. His first teen horror novel was called Blind Date (1986), and both R.L. Stine and Scholastic were shocked when it became a huge best-seller. So he wrote a whole series, called Fear Street, which debuted in 1989. It was the first modern series that appealed equally to boys and girls. It was so successful that he decided to write a series for younger kids, with less violence, less realism, and more monsters. That became the Goosebumps series. The Writer’s Almanac