Health Benefits of Green Tea

By Jason Szep and Frank Jack Daniel

ST. JOHN'S/CARACAS (Reuters) - Hundreds of people rushed on Wednesday to withdraw money from banks in Antigua and Venezuela linked to Texas billionaire Allen Stanford, as the fallout from U.S. fraud charges against him rippled across the globe.

Stanford, a flamboyant 58-year-old financier and sports entrepreneur, remained out of sight a day after the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) charged him and two top executives with an $8 billion fraud.

The SEC said it did not know where he was.

In Miami, the local NBC television station reported that Stanford Group offices in the city were raided by federal officials, a day after a similar raid at its U.S. headquarters in Houston.

The U.S. Attorney's Office and an FBI spokeswoman in Miami said their agencies had not been involved in the latest raid and referred calls to the SEC.

Stanford's operations in Miami and Baton Rouge were being shut down by a court-appointed receiver, a source briefed on the matter said.

From the tiny Caribbean island of Antigua, a key outpost in Stanford's business empire, to Andean nations Venezuela, Colombia and Ecuador, investors and depositors -- most angry, some in tears -- besieged his banks and companies to try to redeem funds or seek information about their savings.

After the shock generated by the alleged $50 billion Ponzi scheme fraud by Wall Street veteran Bernard Madoff, regulators sought to calm public fears about another major financial scandal at a time of global recession and banking failures.

In Colombia, a local affiliate of Stanford halted its activities on that country's stock exchange.

In neighbouring Ecuador, the local Stanford affiliate was suspended for 30 days from operating in the Quito stock exchange, the bourse said.

While mystery surrounded Stanford's whereabouts, CNBC television reported that he tried to hire a private jet to fly from Houston, the site of his U.S. headquarters, to Antigua, but the jet lessor refused to accept his credit card.

In a civil complaint, the SEC accused Stanford of fraudulently selling high-yield certificates of deposit from his Antiguan affiliate, Stanford International Bank Ltd (SIB).

Asked by reporters whether there would be more fraud cases of the scale and scope of Madoff and Stanford, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder told reporters: "It's hard to say. I'd like to think that those are going to be the largest."

He declined to comment on why the Justice Department has not filed criminal charges against Stanford.

Asked if Stanford may be outside the United States, SEC spokeswoman Kimberly Garber said: "Certainly that's a possibility, but we don't know."

ANGER AND TEARS

In the twin-island Caribbean state of Antigua and Barbuda, where Stanford is the biggest private employer, Prime Minister Baldwin Spencer said the SEC charges could have "catastrophic" consequences, but urged the public not to panic.

In Antigua's capital St. John's and the Venezuelan capital Caracas, hundreds besieged Stanford banks and offices.

"I heard the news and came straight down. We've had money here for two years and I want it back," said Caracas resident Josefina Moreno, who added her son had about $10,000 invested.

A Venezuelan official estimated that people in that country have invested about $2.5 billion in SIB. [ID:nN18430622]

Antiguan police officers stood watch at Stanford-controlled Bank of Antigua were hundreds turned out on Wednesday.

"I'd like to get my money out," said Andrea Lamar, 28.

Bank of Antigua, with three branches in Antigua and Barbuda, is part of Stanford's global business interests, but separate from SIB, the offshore affiliate at the heart of fraud charges lodged by U.S. regulators.

In Mexico City, some 40 mainly middle-aged and elderly people waited outside a Stanford office for information. Tempers frayed. "I demand to be let in," one woman shouted.

Peruvian regulators sent an inspection team to local Stanford offices.

In its civil complaint, the SEC said SIB sold $8 billion in CDs by promising returns "that exceed those available through true certificates of deposits offered by traditional banks."

Stanford Group claims to oversee $50 billion in assets.

In Houston, the first of what lawyers think may be a flood of lawsuits against Stanford was filed in federal court on Tuesday, hours after a U.S. judge froze the company's assets.

Four investors who each put in between $250,000 and $600,000 with Stanford will seek "consequential damages" in a trial where they will lay out how the company's army of financial advisers managed to sell $6.7 billion in CDs.

In Florida, Michael A. Gross, acting director of the division of securities at the Florida Office of Financial Regulation, said the office still had "an open examination" of Stanford's business in the state, conducted through a trust office in Miami and broker-dealers in Miami, Longboat Key, Boca Raton and Vero Beach.

FIGURES, COMPANIES DISTANCE THEMSELVES

The SEC said Stanford had failed to respond to subpoenas seeking testimony.

Since Tuesday, Stanford company officials have been referring requests for comment to the SEC.

There were no signs of imminent criminal charges against Stanford, whose personal fortune was estimated by Forbes Magazine last year at $2.2 billion.

A federal judge appointed a receiver on Tuesday "to take possession and control of defendants' assets for the protection of defendants' victims."

Stanford, who holds dual U.S.-Antiguan citizenship, has donated millions of dollars to U.S. politicians and secured endorsements from sports stars, including golfer Vijay Singh and soccer player Michael Owen.

Singh, wearing a golf shirt with a Stanford logo, told Reuters in California he was "just surprised by it all." He said Allen Stanford had donated large sums to charity.

But other public figures scrambled to pull back from any ties with Stanford.

British brokerage and investment house Blue Oak Capital said it had canceled a deal to distribute research from Stanford Washington Research Group.

Former Swiss President Adolf Ogi said he would resign from the board of Stanford Financial Group.

A leading figure in British cricket described the England and Wales Cricket Board's (ECB) association with Stanford as a "fiasco.

A planned Stanford-sponsored Twenty20 international cricket tournament was now unlikely to take place, following the SEC fraud charges, ECB chairman Giles Clarke said.

In Antigua, Stanford owns the country's largest newspaper, heads a local commercial bank, and is the first American to receive a knighthood from its government. He has homes sprinkled across the region, from Antigua to St. Croix in the U.S. Virgin Islands to Miami.

(Additional reporting by Frank Jack Daniel, Ana Isabel Martinez and Saul Hudson in Caracas, James Vicini and Randall Mikkelsen in Washington, Cyntia Barrera in Mexico City, Teresa Cespedes in Lima, Alonso Soto in Quito, Rachelle Younglai, Simon Evans in Antigua, Tom Brown in Miami, Svea Herbst-Bayliss in Boston, Anna Driver in Houston, Helen Popper and Nelson Bocanegra in Bogota, Martin de Sa'Pinto and Emma Thomasson in Zurich and Mitch Phillips and Joel Dimmock in London; writing by Pascal Fletcher; editing by John Wallace and Jeffrey Benkoe)

By Mark Felsenthal and Alister Bull

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Federal Reserve policymakers largely gave up hope for economic growth in 2009 and discussed setting an inflation target last month as a deepening recession heightened fears of a dangerous decline in prices.

With employment falling, the housing market showing no sign of stabilization, and credit conditions still tight despite official interest rates being cut to close to zero, the central bank projected the economy would shrink by between 0.5 percent and 1.3 percent this year, the Fed said in minutes of its January 27-28 policy meeting released on Wednesday.

In its previous quarterly forecast in October, the Fed offered a range for 2009 U.S. gross domestic product that ranged from a decline of 0.2 percent to growth of 1.1 percent.

The central bank's forecasts strip out the highest and lowest views to provide what it calls a "central tendency." The latest forecast shows that two of 16 Fed officials still saw the possibility of at least some growth in 2009.

U.S. stock markets showed little reaction to the revised forecast. Some economists noted that the gloomier economic view was still not as grim as many private forecasts.

The unraveling economy has pushed inflation uncomfortably low in the eyes of Fed officials, but the central bank stopped short of setting an explicit inflation target. An inflation target is seen by some policy-makers as an important took in achieving stable prices.

Instead, for the first time, the Fed issued long-range projections that offered a signal on how it expects the economy to perform beyond its normal three-year forecast horizon.

The projections in the minutes of the central bank's policy-setting Federal Open Market Committee showed officials thought inflation would remain abnormally low through 2010 and possibly into 2011.

Their longer-run projection called for inflation of 1.7 percent to 2 percent, well above the 2009 forecast for 0.3 percent to 1 percent and an indication of the inflation rate officials would like to achieve.

"The longer-term projections of inflation may be interpreted ... as the rate of inflation that FOMC participants see as most consistent with the dual mandate given to it by Congress -- that is the rate of inflation that promotes maximum sustainable employment while also delivering reasonable price stability," Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke told the National Press Club.

ANCHORING EXPECTATIONS

Taking on-the-record media questions for the first time since becoming Fed chairman in 2006, Bernanke said the long-run projections should help anchor public expectations about the future path of inflation in a way that could help prevent a self-reinforcing inflationary, or deflationary, psychology.

Deflation, a period of sustained price declines, is seen as dangerous to the economy because it can cause businesses and consumers to delay purchases in the hopes of securing even lower prices, which would worsen the recession.

When Bernanke took the helm at the Fed, he was a vocal proponent of setting a numerical target for inflation. However, some officials have worried that establishing an explicit target would limit the central bank's flexibility.

With policy-makers increasingly concerned that falling prices will trigger a dangerous round of deflation and prolong the recession, some economists had speculated the Fed would extend its forecast horizon in a compromise move.

The minutes showed that Fed officials held a January 16 conference call where they discussed establishing an explicit inflation target, various inflation gauges that they could use and related issues, but no decision was made.

Charles Evans, president of the Chicago Federal Reserve Bank, said on Wednesday that "tremendous resource slack" could pull inflation down to 1 percent, although he said it would require a larger contraction than he expects for deflation to take hold.

Bernanke on Wednesday disclosed no new programs to aid the economy. Nor did he mention buying longer-dated Treasury debt, which he discussed in January as a way to ease borrowing costs but has made no public mention of since.

Some observers think the Fed is backing off the idea.

There was scant discussion of that option in the minutes even though the Fed said after the meeting it was prepared to buy Treasuries if it thought it would be "particularly effective" to loosen up private credit markets while its target for overnight rates are in a zero to 0.25 percent range.

The minutes showed Fed officials thought it appropriate to continue with a program of buying mortgage-backed securities and debt issued by mortgage finance companies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and perhaps expand that program if needed.

They also considered ways they could better convey their thinking on monetary policy when rates are likely to remain near zero for a while. Some FOMC members thought establishing targets for growth of the money supply could provide useful information and help anchor inflation expectations.

Bernanke dismissed worries that expanding the Fed's balance sheet would stoke inflation, pointing out that with global economic activity so weak and commodity prices low, there was little risk of unacceptably high inflation in the near term.

"However, at some point, when credit markets and the economy have begun to recover, the Federal Reserve will have to moderate growth in the money supply and begin to raise the federal funds rate," he said.

(Writing by Emily Kaiser; Editing by Leslie Adler)

By Nick Carey

CLIO, Michigan (Reuters) - As the U.S. auto industry struggles to survive by cutting plants, brands and workers, the wage and benefit concessions won by the United Auto Workers union through decades of aggressive representation and negotiations have come under siege.

But a handful of the union's most senior survivors still recall the early days of the UAW and some of their legendary battles with the automakers in the 1930s during the Great Depression.

Without the UAW, they argue, America would have no middle class. The concessions being made today will only weaken the union, they say.

"Back then (in the 1930s) there was no middle class, there was just the working poor," said Art Lowell, 91, one of five surviving members of the "sit-down" strike in Flint, Michigan against General Motors Corp that ran from December 1936 to February 1937. "I'm proud of what we did. We prospered, the company prospered and the country prospered."

"If the UAW makes more concessions, a lot of people are going to hurt," Lowell added, seated in the living room of the home he built for himself in the small town of Clio, Michigan, about 13 miles north of Flint.

The strike in Flint -- once the heart of GM's empire, with more than 100,000 hourly workers compared with 62,000 hourly workers across the entire company today -- is the stuff of legend in the UAW as it spurred on the first contract with an automaker.

Prior to the strike, Olen Ham, 91, recalls working in GM's foundry in Flint where molten iron was poured into molds, for 52 cents an hour amid "horrible conditions."

"It was a dirty place, there was no ventilation and the heat was terrible," Ham said.

'GREAT ADVENTURE'

The Flint strike began on December 30, 1936, when workers occupied two plants. It spread to other plants in Flint and elsewhere.

Events took a violent turn when the police attempted to storm one plant with tear gas and guns. As a result, Michigan Governor Frank Murphy called in the National Guard to keep the peace and ordered GM and the UAW to negotiate.

"If Murphy hadn't called out the National Guard, I'm convinced the police and GM's goons would have killed us all," Lowell said. "I never gave it a thought at the time. I was 19 and it just felt like a great adventure."

When UAW-GM negotiations failed, some 2,000 workers took over Chevrolet plant No. 4 in late January, which was seen as the most important factory in the GM network.

"We got management's attention," Ham said. "We hit them in the pocketbook and forced them to negotiate."

Provided with food by women volunteers, many of the workers in the plant spent much of their time on seats destined for the cars produced there, earning the strikers the name "sit-downers."

"It was just what had to be done, and we did it," said Geraldine Blankinship, 89, the last surviving member of the Women's Brigade. "We had to fight for everything we got."

After a two-week standoff, GM and the UAW signed a one-page agreement. Ham's hourly wage doubled to $1.04.

Today, the contract is bigger than a phone book and contains benefits including sick pay and paid vacation.

"We created the middle class in America," Ham said.

There is a monument to the sit-downers in Flint and the few survivors are feted as heroes by auto workers and retirees.

"I get treated like royalty," Lowell said. "People come and shake my hand and say 'Thank you for the life I have today.'"

SLIPPERY SLOPE

The U.S. auto industry prospered after World War Two, as did the UAW -- right up until the oil shocks of the 1970s.

Membership in the union peaked at close to 1.5 million in 1979 and has been declining ever since. Membership fell below 500,000 in 2008. The last time it was that low was in 1941.

The UAW made landmark givebacks on wages and health care in 2007 contract talks with GM, Chrysler -- controlled by Cerberus Capital Management LP and Ford Motor Co.

Further concessions were included as part of a U.S. loan bailout for GM and Chrysler announced in December and are part of restructuring plans presented to the Obama administration on Tuesday by GM and Chrysler.

Union pioneers like Olen Ham say concessions -- championed in particular by the Republican Party -- spell disaster.

"Benefits for workers and retirees are in jeopardy," he said. "The Republicans want to wipe out the labor movement."

Dave Moore, 96, is one of few remaining survivors of the Ford hunger march in 1932 where protesters marched on Ford demanding jobs and benefits.

In violent clashes with police, five marchers were shot dead. Moore later shut down the assembly line at a Ford plant in 1941 when workers called a strike that led to the first UAW agreement with the automaker.

He said fresh concessions would only lead to fresh demands from automakers for sacrifices from workers.

"Worse is yet to come if the UAW goes down that path," he said. "They (the automakers) want us to give up what we fought and died for."

"This time they say give us back some of what we gave you," he added. "Next time they'll say give back all we gave you."

(Editing by Patrick Fitzgibbons and Matthew Lewis)

By Andrew Gray

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The American general running the war in Afghanistan on Wednesday predicted a tough year ahead despite the addition of 17,000 more U.S. troops to break a stalemate with Taliban insurgents in the south of the country.

Army General David McKiernan said the United States would need to be heavily committed for years to Afghanistan, where insurgent violence has increased to its highest levels since American-led forces ousted the Taliban from power in 2001.

McKiernan said he was delighted by President Barack Obama's decision to send 17,000 more troops to Afghanistan but cautioned that their mission would be hard.

"Even with these additional forces, I have to tell you that 2009 is going to be a tough year," McKiernan, the top commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, said at the Pentagon.

He said most of the additional troops would go to southern Afghanistan, the heartland of the insurgency where NATO forces are struggling to hold terrain against Taliban fighters.

The extra forces will add to a foreign military presence that already consists of some 38,000 U.S. troops and another 30,000 troops from other nations, mainly NATO allies.

"What this allows us to do is change the dynamics of the security situation, predominantly in southern Afghanistan, where we are, at best, stalemated," said McKiernan, who was visiting Washington for a conference.

McKiernan asked last year for a major increase in forces -- about 30,000 troops -- as the insurgency intensified.

He will have around two-thirds of those forces by the summer and decisions about further troop increases could be made later in the year, he said.

McKiernan has rejected comparisons between his planned buildup and the 2007 "surge" of U.S. forces in Iraq. While the surge was a short-term boost in combat power, McKiernan sees higher troop levels in Afghanistan for years to come.

"For the next three to four years, I think we're going to need to stay heavily committed... in a sustained manner in Afghanistan," he told reporters.

Under McKiernan's plans, troops should clear areas of insurgents and then hold onto the terrain to allow for the provision of essential services and economic development to build support among local people against insurgents.

Under plans announced by Obama on Tuesday, 8,000 Marines will go to Afghanistan in late spring and a further 4,000 soldiers will deploy in the summer. Another 5,000 support troops will also be deployed, the Pentagon said.

(Additional reporting by Paul Eckert, editing by Chris Wilson)

By Andrew Stern and Michael Conlon

CHICAGO (Reuters) - Fending off calls for his resignation, Roland Burris on Wednesday said he would cooperate with investigations into whether his appointment to a U.S. Senate seat was tainted by dealings with the former Illinois governor accused of trying to sell the seat.

Inconsistencies in how Burris, a former Illinois attorney general, described his contacts with the staff of disgraced former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich have led to an investigation of Burris by a county prosecutor. A probe by the U.S. Senate Ethics Committee was also under way.

Burris, who took the Senate seat vacated by President Barack Obama, told a civic group there was "never a hint of scandal" in his 30 years of public service, "and I've never asked for anything in return until today -- I ask you today to stop the rush to judgment."

But some local Democrats and newspaper editorials in the Chicago Tribune and the Washington Post said Burris can no longer be believed and called for him to resign.

The Chicago Tribune said: "The benefit of the doubt had already been stretched thin and taut by the time Roland Burris offered his third version of the events leading to his appointment to the U.S. Senate. It finally snapped like a rubber band, popping him on that long Pinocchio nose of his, when he came out with version four."

Senate Democratic leaders had held up Burris' December 30 appointment to Obama's Senate seat because of charges against Blagojevich, who federal prosecutors said was caught on FBI wiretaps trying to sell the seat. Burris, Obama and Blagojevich are all Democrats.

Burris testified at impeachment hearings in the Illinois legislature that led to Blagojevich's ouster for abuse of power. Blagojevich has denied wrongdoing and has not been indicted.

After Burris testified he had contact with only one Blagojevich aide prior to his appointment, Burris filed an affidavit weeks later saying he talked with four other aides. Among them was the governor's brother, who Burris has since said asked him to raise money.

Dick Durbin of Illinois, the second-ranking Democrat in the U.S. Senate, said Burris' statements "raised questions."

"His sworn testimony ... was not complete and we need to have the complete story before a final conclusion can be reached," Durbin said.

On Wednesday, Burris repeated his claims of innocence.

"The governor's brother reached out to me as he has for a number of years to do fundraising. But I did not give one single dollar," Burris said.

Burris said he would willingly cooperate with prosecutors and investigators but would refrain from speaking to reporters any more about it.

"What I will no longer do after today, now that there is an ongoing investigation, is engage the media and have facts drip out in selective sound bites," Burris said.

If Burris resigns or is removed from office by a two-thirds majority of the Senate -- a rare event -- his replacement could be named by Blagojevich's Democratic successor, Patrick Quinn, or be decided by a special election that would give Republicans an opening.

(Editing by Vicki Allen)