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A government official says a system to treat radioactive water pooling at a nuclear power plant is not performing as well as hoped but should be working fully next month.

The system is key to stabilize the crisis at the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant because the contaminated water poses health risks and impedes workers as they try to repair damage at the plant.

Goshi Hosono, director of the government’s nuclear crisis task force, said Thursday the contaminated water problem is “the biggest barrier” now personal loans for people with bad credit.

The water is used to cool the reactors, but 110,000 tons of it have accumulated. The contaminated water could overflow by early July if there is no progress on the treatment system.

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Bankrupt bookstore chain Borders Group Inc. is seeking court permission to liquidate assets at an additional 51 stores, even as it negotiates with landlords and lenders to avoid doing so.

Closing the stores, including those at New York’s JFK International Airport and Penn Station, will result in a ’significant loss of jobs” and may not give the best returns to creditors, Borders said. It plans to try to shorten the list of stores if it can bargain more concessions from landlords. Meanwhile, its bankruptcy loan requires it to prepare for closing all 51 stores under certain deadlines or risk a default, Borders said in court papers filed Thursday.

No Borders stores in the St. Louis area are included in the 51 stores.

Mary Davis, a spokeswoman for Borders, said the company expects far fewer stores to close.

“We are actively working with our landlords to obtain the required stipulations,” including an extension of the 210-day window given to bankrupt companies to assume or reject leases, she said.

Borders said closing the stores means it won’t be able to sell them. Najafi Cos., a private-equity firm, is considering buying many Borders stores, a person familiar with the matter said quick guaranteed personal loans. Gores Group, a private-equity firm based in Los Angeles, is bidding for at least half of Borders’s stores, another person familiar with the matter said June 1.

“If they close all 50 stores, and say that includes some of their best, Najafi or Gores may say, ‘why would I want the remaining stuff?’” said Schuyler Carroll, a partner at law firm Perkins Coie LLP in New York that specializes in bankruptcy. That could increase the risk for liquidation of the entire chain, he said.

Borders, though, should be able to get more time from lenders if it can show Najafi and Gores would want some of those stores, said Carroll, who isn’t involved in the case.

Borders was founded 40 years ago as a single used-book store. The company, the second-largest book chain after Barnes & Noble Inc., had 642 stores in February when it filed for court protection. It closed 237 of them.

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Deep divisions within Yemen’s opposition appeared to doom an Arab proposal for the president to step down within a month, raising the prospect of more bloodshed and instability in a nation already beset by deep poverty and conflict.

President Ali Abdullah Saleh, who has ruled for 32 years, agreed Saturday to the Gulf Cooperation Council’s formula for him to transfer power to his vice president within 30 days of a deal being signed in exchange for immunity from prosecution for him and his sons.

A coalition of seven opposition parties generally accepted the deal. But thousands stood their ground Sunday in a permanent protest camp in part of the capital, Sanaa, and their leaders said they suspect Saleh is just maneuvering to buy time and cling to power. The protesters say the established opposition political parties taking part in the talks with Arab mediators do not represent them and cannot turn off the rage on the streets.

“President Saleh has in the past agreed to initiatives and he went back on his word,” said Khaled al-Ansi, one of the youth leaders organizing the street protests. “We have no reason to believe that he would not do this again.”

So far, Saleh has outrun more than two months of protests pressing for him to immediately step down, thanks in large part to the unwavering loyalty of the country’s best military units, which are controlled by one of his sons and other close relatives.

That seems to have insulated him even as outrage over the severity of his crackdown on protesters has stripped him of many close allies in his party, his tribe and the military.

International pressure is also bearing down on him to leave, including from the United States, which had backed his rule with millions in financial assistance and military aid for fighting the active al-Qaida branch that has taken root in the country.

A bloc of Gulf nations, including powerful Saudi Arabia, has been trying to broker an end to the crisis, fearing the potential blowback of more instability in the fragile country on the southern edge of Arabia.

But the protesters in the streets, who are from an array of different backgrounds and are not represented in the talks, reject the proposal outright and want nothing short of Saleh’s immediate resignation and his trial on charges of corruption and for the killings of unarmed protesters.

The proposal’s steps call for the established opposition parties to join Saleh in a unity government. The president would then submit his resignation to a parliament dominated by his own party, which would have to approve or reject it. What happens if they reject it is unclear. If approved, he would transfer his power to his vice president.

Mohammed al-Sabri, spokesman for the opposition political parties, said the coalition does not want to discuss a unity government until after Saleh is out of power.

“How could we form a government that gets sworn in by a president who has lost his legitimacy?” he said.

The protesters, meanwhile, are calling for more demonstrations in the next few days to intensify the pressure.

In response, the government signaled it would not agree to any adjustments in the Gulf proposal, with a statement on the official SABA news agency saying the initiative must be implemented in its entirety.

That raised the prospect that Saleh was counting on the opposition to reject the deal and only agreed to it to make them look like the spoilers.

Thousands of protesters, meanwhile, held onto their camp in the capital’s Change Square, where they are ringed by military units that defected to join and protect them. Army officers in desert camouflage uniforms mixed with the crowds, pumping their arms into the air and flashing victory signs.

Their anger has been fed by the heavy crackdown. More than 130 people have been killed by security forces and Saleh supporters since the unrest began in early February. At least 40 were killed in a single attack on March 18 by rooftop snipers overlooking Change Square.

Saleh offered earlier in the crisis to step down by the end of the year and guarantee that his son Ahmed would not succeed him. When that failed to ease the unrest, he rolled back and insisted he would stay until the end of his term in 2013. Seeking to ease the international pressure on him, he warned the country would slide into chaos and al-Qaida would seize control if he left early.

The U.S. is concerned about the possibility of a security vacuum as well as political and economic paralysis if Saleh leaves office without a clear deal in place, said a former U.S. ambassador to Yemen, Barbara Bodine.

But she did not think any new government would partner with al-Qaida.

“I do not think we need to be concerned that a Taliban-like government is going to come in, one that is going to support and facilitate al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula,” she said in an interview on Saturday night.

Her assessment of the Gulf mediation effort was that it would not bring a quick end to the crisis.

“We are not at the end. We may be at the beginning of the end, but we are not at the end of this process,” she said.

Saleh, a shrewd politician and former military officer, has held power for decades by using his security forces to put down opponents and deftly negotiating with powerful tribes that hold sway in Yemen’s remote hinterlands.

He has fended off numerous serious challenges. The country’s al-Qaida offshoot has attacked his forces, an armed rebellion has battered the north of the country and a secessionist movement has reappeared in the once-independent south.

At the same time, the country is rapidly running out of water and oil and is the poorest in the Arab world.

The United States has watched the uprising with particular concern because Saleh has been an ally in fighting al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, which has been behind two nearly successful attempts to attack U.S. targets in recent years and has an estimated 300 fighters.

Washington is now backing a transition of power to end the crisis. The White House on Saturday urged all parties in Yemen “to move swiftly to implement” a deal transferring power.

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Investors are paying the smallest discounts for Treasuries other than the newest, most-traded bonds since the start of the financial crisis, a sign of growing demand even as the Federal Reserve’s $600 billion buying program approaches its conclusion.

Yields on older notes with 10 years left to maturity have fallen to within 11.4 basis points, or 0.114 percentage point, of those on the newest securities of the same maturity, down from the peak of 66.1 in January 2009, according to data from Barclays Plc. The gap for so-called off-the-run notes narrowed to as little as 6.6 basis points in February, the least since May 2007.

While investors typically pay the most for benchmark Treasuries, the shrinking gap suggests that U.S. borrowing costs are unlikely to soar when the central bank’s second round of so- called quantitative easing ends in June. The Barclays data show that the spread in yields is less now than in the five years before the credit crisis began in 2007.

“There will not be major disruptions in the functioning of the Treasury market,” said Eric Pellicciaro, the New York-based head of global rates investments at BlackRock Inc., which manages about $3.56 trillion in assets. Participation in the Treasury market will “remain high, if not higher,” he said.

No Concern

Goldman Sachs Group Inc. economists said last week they don’t expect an increase in yields after the Fed exits the market, while Credit Suisse AG fixed-income strategists said Treasury rates may fall as traders reverse bets on a decline.

“We are not concerned about the end of QE2,” the Credit Suisse strategists led by Carl Lantz in New York wrote in the report. “Our base case is that rates will tend to rally around the end of the program.”

Treasuries gained last week, with the yield on the benchmark 10-year note falling 17 basis points, or 0.17 percentage point, to 3.41 percent, according to Bloomberg Bond Trader prices. The decline was the biggest since yields fell by the same amount in the five days ended Feb. 25. The price of the 3.625 percent security due February 2021 rose 1 13/32, or $14.06 per $1,000 face amount, to 101 25/32.

The rate was little changed today at 3.42 percent as of 6:02 a.m. in London.

The yield on the 9.875 percent note sold in November 1985 and due in November 2015 is 16 basis points less than the benchmark 1.37 percent security issued in November 2010 and maturing in five years.

Bond Bears

The Fed said Nov. 3 it would buy $600 billion of Treasuries in an effort to spur the sluggish labor market and prevent deflation to boost the economy. Since then, Labor Department data show the U.S. has created 723,000 jobs, inflation expectations as measured by debt yields have increased and markets from stocks to junks bonds have surged.

Bond bears say the only thing supporting the Treasury market is investors seeking safety amid turmoil and uprisings in the Middle East in North Africa, the nuclear disaster in Japan following a record earthquake and tsunami, and Europe’s sovereign-debt crisis.

Pacific Investment Management Co.’s Bill Gross, manager of the world’s biggest bond fund, has a net short position in Treasuries, or a bet pieces will fall, according to the firm’s website. The founder of Newport Beach, California-based Pimco has eliminated Treasuries from his $236 billion Total Return Fund, saying they offer little value because of the growing U no fax payday advances.S. debt burden and the risk of accelerating inflation.

Rate ‘Pressure’

“There’s going to be roughly $75 billion a month of issuance that’s going to have to be absorbed by the market,” said David Glocke, a fund manager who oversees $65 billion of Treasuries at Vanguard Group Inc. in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania. “That should go ahead and cause some pressure on interest rates to go up.”

Ten-year yields are down from 3.8 percent a year ago and remain below the average of 5.22 percent over the last two decades even with the U.S. projected to post a deficit in excess of $1 trillion for a third-consecutive year. Yields will remain below 4 percent through year-end, according to the median forecast of 73 economists in a Bloomberg News survey.

A narrowing in the difference in yields between on- and off-the-run Treasuries comes as the Fed shifts its buying to newer issues, which account for about 90 percent of trading in U.S. government securities. More than 36 percent of the government bonds the central bank bought in March were issued within the previous 90 days, up from 15 percent in November, according to Bank of America Merrill Lynch.

Rising Volume

In another sign of demand, the volume of Treasury trading now exceeds levels before the collapse of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. in September 2008, according to Fed data.

Primary dealers have traded an average of $606 billion in securities each week this year, compared with $584 billion in the first eight months of 2008, central bank data shows. The amount dipped to about $410 billion per week in 2009 and $524 billion last year even as debt outstanding surged 54 percent $8.86 trillion.

Treasuries are also getting a boost from optimism that President Barack Obama and Congress are beginning to address record debt levels, according to Brian Edmonds, head of interest rates at primary dealer Cantor Fitzgerald LP in New York.

Obama, a Democrat, unveiled a plan on April 13 to cut $4 trillion in cumulative deficits within 12 years through a combination of spending cuts and tax increases. The U.S. House passed a Republican budget on April 15 that would cut spending by more than $6 trillion over a decade.

Auction Demand

“We’re starting to have a meaningful dialogue that discusses these formerly untouchable things,” Edmonds said.

Demand at Treasury auctions has risen to record levels this year, with investors submitting $3 in orders for every $1 of debt offered, data compiled by Bloomberg show. At each of last week’s auctions of three-, 10- and 30-year bonds, the so-called bid-to-cover ratio exceeded the average of the previous 10 sales.

The bond market has likely already priced in the end of QE2, according to Goldman Sachs, a primary dealer. Traders typically adjust prices when the Fed announces its buying plans rather than when it acquires the debt, Sven Jari Stehn, an economist at the firm in New York, wrote in the report last week.

“Many market participants are worried that the end of the Treasury purchases will have strongly adverse effects on bond yields and other asset prices,” Stehn wrote. “This is unlikely.”

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The Wards couldn’t believe the news when their tax preparer called to tell them they’re getting a $54,000 refund this year.

Thelma Ward was speechless. She had to hand the phone to her husband so she could dance around the living room floor in shock.

"I was thanking God like never before," she said. "We’re just overwhelmed — that amount was so huge it was unbelievable."

Even their tax preparer said she had to check the math — 10 to 15 times.

"We couldn’t believe it when we totaled everything up. We were like, that can’t be right," said Dee Carter, owner of the local H&R Block where the Wards have brought their taxes for more than 10 years. "We had never seen anything like it before, so we had to check it over and over again."

So what’s bringing this windfall? The federal adoption tax credit.

In the past few years, the Wards have expanded their already big clan of seven children by adopting five new kids. For each of these adopted children, they are eligible for a one-time tax credit of up to $13,170.

The credit has been around since 1997, but this tax season it is refundable for the first time — which is the tax equivalent of hitting the jackpot.

A refundable tax credit lets you get the cash even if you owe no taxes. A non-refundable credit just offsets any taxes you owe, and then rolls anything remaining to the next tax year.

The Wards adopted the five children over a span of three years, so they’ve filed for the tax credit each year. But because they didn’t make enough money, the tax credit simply rolled over from year to year and accumulated.

This year, because the credit became refundable, they are getting all the previous years’ leftovers in a lump sum. (The couple had an earlier adoption, in 2004, but unused credits can only be carried for up to five years.)

While the Wards haven’t received the refund check yet, H&R Block calculated that the unused adoption credits from the past five years add up to $45,560 — making up the majority of the $54,000 refund they’re expecting.

"When this was first coming through the tax reform legislation, we just kept looking at it going, ‘Wow, this is really, really significant for people adopting,’" said Kathy Pickering, executive director of The Tax Institute at H&R Block. "It’s not a large population who can claim it, but for those who do, it can really change their lives."

A typical private adoption runs about $30,000, so the credit was intended to help families by reimbursing expenses, such as court fees. But the tax law allows parents who adopt "special needs" children to receive the entire credit even if they had no expenses.

All of the Wards’ foster children qualified as special needs, so Thelma was able to claim the full credit even though there were no adoption expenses. This is not unusual for foster children; about 80% of these kids are considered to have "special needs."

"People adopting from the foster-care community are typically lower and moderate income, and most don’t have a significant tax liability, so the credit never helped them," said Mary Boo, assistant director of the North American Council on Adoptable Children. "The expenses they have are life-long, so the government really stepped up this year to help these people."

It’s significant to the Wards, who only make about $39,000 per year.

"We didn’t get into foster care to adopt anyone, but when we started being foster parents we couldn’t let a child leave us without a place to call home," said Thelma.

She had to quit her job at a daycare to take care of her new children. And her husband, David, who works at a concrete company, had to take a significant pay cut last year to keep his job. The one saving grace: As foster parents, they receive about $3,300 a month from the state of North Carolina until the children turn 18.

"Any little bit helps, but it still doesn’t cover it," said Thelma, who has had to learn to stay on a tight budget to afford giving her children the care they need.

Kelli, only three years old, has a serious heart condition and has required medical attention since she was born. She is scheduled for a major heart surgery this month.

Octavius has a heart murmur and is in and out of the doctor’s office constantly. And all of them — including Joquavius, Zoie and Mckayla — require either speech therapy, psychiatry or special classes for learning disabilities.

This attention really adds up, both emotionally and financially. So to save money, Thelma focuses on the little things, like using coupons everywhere she can, selling her children’s clothes at consignment stores, buying everything used and holding yard sales.

While the kids are at school, Thelma goes to three grocery stores to do her weekly shopping. But the family’s weekly grocery bill still totals around $400, including the more than three gallons of milk and four loaves of bread the children go through. It usually takes five or six trips to the car to get all the groceries unloaded.

The Wards hope to use their windfall refund to take their big family on a vacation, pay bills, and buy new windows for their home — which needs a little repair after housing so many foster children over the past years.

"We’ll have to see what we can afford," said Thelma. "Money comes and money goes, so we want to make sure we spend it all wisely."

Many more families are also finding themselves in the enviable place of planning what to do with such a windfall. Tax preparer H&R Block said 8,000 of its own clients have already claimed the credit, and the company expects 150,000 total taxpayers to claim it this year.

That’s a 50% jump from the 2009 tax year — but not because adoptions have increased that much. Instead, many people who had no tax liability in previous years, and thus wouldn’t have been helped by the credit, are now filing. And some of the refunds it has seen range as high as $90,000.

A couple from Alabama, Tina and Kenny Thomas, recently adopted five kids from foster care and are now expecting a check for a whopping $65,000, thanks to this credit. Like the Wards, they had absolutely no idea it existed until they went to their tax preparer.

"We went in having no clue about the credit, and we even thought we may have to pay money," said Tina Thomas. "We never, never would have expected it."

But before you run out to adopt a child in order to cash in on this credit, know that the IRS is a stickler for documentation and isn’t doling out refunds like this to just anyone.

"If you’re claiming the credit because of the nature of the credit and the size of the refund, there are many documentation requirements that Congress included along with it," said Eric Smith, a spokesman for the IRS. "It is a generous credit for those who qualify — that’s why policymakers want to make sure the people who deserve it get it, and those who don’t, don’t." 

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The top U.N. envoy in Ivory Coast said Friday that getting internationally recognized president Alassane Ouattara back home will be “more complex than you can imagine” after the man clinging to power imposed a no-fly zone for U.N. aircraft.

Choi Young-jin made the comment to reporters Friday as he also expressed alarm about a growing number of attacks against U.N. personnel in the volatile West African country that was plunged into political chaos after the disputed Nov. 28 election.

More than 400 people have been killed in violence, most of them supporters of the internationally recognized winner Ouattara. He left the country this week for the first time since the crisis began, and sitting president Laurent Gbagbo subsequently ordered U.N. aircraft out of Ivorian air space.

The decision was ignored by the U.N., which continued to patrol the city from the air, but the timing of the announcement appeared to indicate that Gbagbo may try to prevent Ouattara from returning.

Ouattara met with African leaders Thursday in Ethiopia, where the African Union reaffirmed him as the legal president of Ivory Coast and said the country’s highest court now must swear him in.

It’s unclear how the AU plans to force Gbagbo to step down. He has refused similar calls from other world and regional bodies, including the U.N. Security Council and the regional bloc ECOWAS, which had warned that it would use all the means necessary, including an armed intervention to force Gbagbo out.

On Friday, Choi said that Ivorians have been directly shooting at U.N. peacekeepers, while other U.N. personnel have been kidnapped and hijacked. He blamed the attacks on propaganda from Gbagbo supporters. Gbagbo unsuccessfully ordered thousands of peacekeepers to leave after the U.N. certified results showing Ouattara won the election.

“I strongly warn those who invent and propagate those hate stories: Do not have illusion that you can do it with impunity,” Choi said. “UNOCI is currently gathering information documenting your acts, which constitute war crimes. We will have all the evidence allowing the judge to make you accountable.”

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The House and Senate are at a stalemate when it comes to getting rid of a hated small business tax reporting provision.

While lawmakers in both parties of the House and the Senate want to repeal the so-called 1099 reporting rule, calling it an onerous provision that will break the back of small business, nobody is able to come up with an actionable plan to pay for the measure.

The House voted Thursday to repeal a part of the health care reform law hated by small businesses — but it is doubtful the proposal will get past the Senate.

By a 314-112 vote, the House acted to repeal the new rule, which requires any taxpayer with business income to issue 1099 forms to all vendors from whom they’ve purchased more than $600 of goods and services in a tax year.

That’s a massive expansion in the role of the 1099 tax form, which currently reports non-wage income for individual workers.

The IRS’s National Taxpayer Advocate estimates that this change will affect 40 million taxpayers, creating a compliance burden that could be "disproportionate as compared with any resulting improvement in tax compliance."

Congress passed the rule requiring small businesses to report those goods and services purchased as a part of the broader health care reform law passed last year. Repealing the reporting rule would cost the federal government $22 billion over the next 10 years, because it would result in small businesses paying less in taxes.

Repealing the rule is one of the few things that Republicans who control the House and Democrats who control the Senate agree they want to do this year, because of the paperwork nightmare it creates for companies.

But it’s unlikely that the Senate, which passed its own repeal last month, would go along with the House version to pay for the bill.

In its effort to repeal the reporting rule, the Senate would pay for the repeal by directing the White House to find and use money that’s been slated for other government programs but not yet spent Payday advance.

By contrast, House Republicans want to offset the cost by rewriting a section of the health care law that gives Americans subsidies to buy health insurance.

Republicans want to crack down on the overpayment of those subsidies and recover money from families whose income ended up disqualifying them for the health care subsidies. Republicans would allow the government to recover more of these overpaid subsidies — even when families accidentally made too much money, such as through an unexpected bonus check.

House Democrats spent most of the debate accusing Republicans of paying for the bill by raising taxes on the middle class. Last year, House Democrats proposed paying for the bill by "closing tax loopholes" for companies that defer taxes through offshore subsidiaries.

"Hidden deep in this bill is language that will, indeed, increase taxes on the middle class by thousands of dollars a year," said New York Democrat Rep. Joseph Crowley.

But Republicans say their pay-for method isn’t a tax hike. "It’s returning an improper government subsidy, which is not a tax increase," said California Republican Rep. David Dreier.

They also say that Democrats themselves had once considered employing the same tactic in the health care reforms that passed last year.

President Obama’s budget office warned Tuesday that the White House also doesn’t like the way Republicans pay for the bill. But the administration stopped short of threatening a presidential veto. 

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A major confrontation between General Motors and some of its former dealers over the downsizing of GM

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