Shorts (right)
Alex Rodriguez to Play With Labrum Tear
Alex Rodriguez will try to play through a labrum tear of his right hip, the Yankees said Thursday, because the condition would require him to miss four months if he needs surgery.
“It doesn’t mean it’s going to get worse, it doesn’t mean it won’t get worse,” general manager Brian Cashman said. “That’s the gray area, that’s what we’re all trying to figure out. It’s in our best interest, because he’s such an asset. Part of the conservative treatment is to limit his spring training. If we’re going to try to see if we can get through the season with it, let’s shorten the pounding he’ll be taking.”
Rodriguez was in Vail, Colo., on Thursday to have a cyst on his hip drained by Dr. Marc Filippon, who examined him on Wednesday and found the labrum tear. Cashman would not say how severely Rodriguez tore the labrum, but he said that he would need surgery after the season, if not sooner.
Cashman said Rodriguez, who had been training with the Dominican Republic, would not participate in the World Baseball Classic. Cashman said he expected Rodriguez to return here soon.
Manager Joe Girardi said he would limit Rodriguez’s workload this spring by using him as a designated hitter, restricting his innings and giving him more days off. But Girardi, who typically plays down injuries, acknowledged his concerns.
Auditors Raise Doubts About GM’s Viability
Auditors for General Motors, in one of the bleakest assessments yet of the automaker’s prospects, said Thursday that GM’s survival was in “substantial doubt” even if it received all $30 billion it hoped to borrow from the federal government.
The report by the auditing firm Deloitte & Touche also raised the possibility that GM could have to liquidate its operations if its loan request is denied.
GM’s acknowledgment that it is perilously close to bankruptcy — its auditors made a similar announcement last fall — was not unexpected. But the report stirred new fears among investors, who drove down GM’s shares by 15 percent, to $1.86.
Deloitte & Touche laid out numerous chains of events that could trigger a bankruptcy filing by GM. The company, which lost $30.9 billion last year and has received $13.4 billion in government loans since December, made the disclosure in its annual report filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
The announcement does not mean bankruptcy is imminent. But it underscores how difficult it will be for GM to successfully complete the restructuring plan that it filed with the Treasury Department last month.
“Our recurring losses from operations, stockholders’ deficit and inability to generate sufficient cash flow to meet our obligations and sustain our operations raise substantial doubt about our ability to continue as a going concern,” GM said in its filing.
GM, which is seeking an additional $16.6 billion in federal loans, must prove its viability to President Barack Obama’s auto task force by a March 31 deadline.
Robert Gibbs, the White House press secretary, said the task force was well aware of GM’s precarious state before the auditors’ report was released.
Pakistan’s Truce With Taliban Is Volatile
The Taliban and the Pakistani army signed a truce in February in Swat, the once-popular tourist area just an hour north of the capital. But far from establishing peace, the pact seems to have allowed the Taliban free rein to expand their harsh religious rule.
Just days after the truce was signed, a member of a prominent anti-Taliban family returned to his mountain village, having received assurances from the government that it was safe. He was promptly kidnapped by the Taliban, tortured and murdered.
The militants then erected roadblocks to search cars for any relatives who dared travel there for his funeral. None did.
This week, two Pakistani soldiers who were part of a convoy escorting a water tanker were shot and killed because they failed to inform the Taliban in advance of their movements.
Senators Ask, ‘Who Got Money From AIG?’
The Senate Banking Committee told the vice chairman of the Federal Reserve to identify all the parties made whole by the bailout of the American International Group or forget about coming back to ask Congress for more rescue money.
“You will get the biggest ‘no’ you ever got,” Sen. Jim Bunning, R-Ky., warned Donald L. Kohn, vice chairman of the Fed board of governors, in a hearing on Thursday. “I will hold up the bill.”
The hearing was called to examine the regulatory patchwork that had allowed huge risks to build up at AIG. Since AIG’s near-collapse in September, the government has committed $160 billion to keep it afloat.
Tens of billions of those dollars have merely passed through AIG to its derivatives trading partners, shielding them from losses. The Fed has refused to provide the names of those financial institutions, and senator after senator expressed outrage.
Kohn said the Fed believed that the only hope of recovering the taxpayers’ money was to get AIG back on its feet, doing business as usual — and that meant respecting its customers’ privacy. “I would be very concerned that if we gave out the names, people wouldn’t want to do business with AIG,” he said.
Committee members also pressed regulators from the Office of Thrift Supervision and the New York State Insurance Department to concede that they were at least partly at fault for failing to prevent AIG’s crisis.