ANCHORAGE, Alaska — Sarah Palin can take down the fence.

Palin’s neighbor of three months on Wasilla’s Lake Lucille, author Joe McGinniss, is packing his bags and notebooks and leaving Sunday for his home in Massachusetts to write the book he has been researching on the former governor and GOP vice presidential candidate.

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Joe McGinniss, Palin Neighbor & Author, Leaving Wasilla To Write Book

ANCHORAGE, Alaska — Sarah Palin can take down the fence.

Palin’s neighbor of three months on Wasilla’s Lake Lucille, author Joe McGinniss, is packing his bags and notebooks and leaving Sunday for his home in Massachusetts to write the book he has been researching on the former governor and GOP vice presidential candidate.

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Joe McGinniss, Palin Neighbor & Author, Leaving Wasilla To Write Book

Frito-Lay makes a lot of noise marketing its Sun Chips snacks as “green.” They are cooked with steam from solar energy, the message goes.

But its latest effort–making the bags out of biodegradable plant material instead of plastic–is creating a different kind of racket. Chip eaters are griping about the loud crackling sounds the new bag makes. Some have compared it to a “revving motorcycle” and “glass breaking.”

It is louder than “the cockpit of my jet,” said J. Scot Heathman, an Air Force pilot, in a video probing the issue that he posted on his blog under the headline “Potato Chip Technology That Destroys Your Hearing.” Mr. Heathman tested the loudness using a RadioShack sound meter. He squeezed the bag and recorded a 95 decibel level. A bag of Tostitos Scoops chips (another Frito-Lay brand, in bags made from plastic) measured 77.

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‘Sorry But I Can’t Hear You Over This Sun Chips Bag’: Compostable Packaging Irks Snackers

Can you imagine watching the World Cup in the winter? Sounds silly, right? Well, for the Southern Hemisphere, that’s the cool reality. While we are hot, hot, hot here up North in this unbearable, humid heat, our other half is enjoying some crispier days. So pack your bags and escape down to the Southern Hemisphere. Before you know it, it will feel like you left this wet, hot summer half a world away.

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NEW YORK — BP holds enough oil in its reserves to single-handedly supply the United States for two years. It has little debt for a company of its size and makes more money than Apple and Google combined.

So when the White House arm-twisted its executives into setting aside $20 billion for the Gulf oil spill, investors weren’t worried it would bankrupt BP. They barely batted an eye.

“The U.S. government will become insolvent before BP does,” said Bruce Lanni, a stock analyst with Nollenberg Capital Partners.

Sure, BP stock has crumpled in half in a matter of weeks. Creditors are demanding ever higher interest. But this time it’s not some inscrutable, high-flying Wall Street bank in trouble.

BP posted $17 billion in profit from its vast operations around the globe last year, compared with $5.7 billion for Apple and $6.5 billion for Google. More important, in the past three years the company generated $91 billion in cash flow from operations.

It’s not highly leveraged with debt, as banks were during the financial crisis. And it has 18 billion barrels of oil in proven reserves, twice what the U.S. consumes every year.

BP has spent about $1.8 billion on the spill so far, but that’s the first drop in a very large bucket. If BP faces criminal charges, for instance, it could end up having to pay tens of billions in legal costs alone.

Analyst estimates of BP’s total cost range from $17 billion to $60 billion. If the worst predictions about the leak come true, that figure could surpass $100 billion, based on a Goldman Sachs estimate that each barrel of oil spilled could wind up costing as much as $40,000 in cleanup and compensation.

Such a big bill, even at the lower end of the estimates, would drive many companies under. But analysts said BP probably won’t have to go to that extreme unless it wants to wall off liabilities from the rest of its operations to attract potential suitors.

Under Wednesday’s deal with the Obama administration, BP will suspend its dividend for the rest of 2010, freeing up $8 billion. The company also plans to raise $10 billion from selling some assets. Add cash lying around in bank accounts and in short-term investments and BP could raise $25 billion without breaking much of a sweat.

What’s more, BP is expected to generate $30 billion this year in operating cash flow, assuming oil prices don’t fall. Investors like to focus on this figure because, unlike profits, it ignores costs for which money never changes hands, like wear and tear on rigs.

Much of this operating cash has to be plowed back into the company, but some of that spending – $21 billion last year – is discretionary and could be cut. On Wednesday BP said it will trim planned outlays this year by $2 billion.

BP also has relatively little debt for a company of its size. That means it has plenty of wiggle room to borrow. In fact, it already has lined up $10 billion with banks if it needs it.

The caveat: If BP did need to issue bonds or take out a loan, it would have to pay above-market interest rates because the risks posed by the oil spill have tainted its credit rating.

Fear of the unknown has taken a toll on BP’s stock.

With BP’s deepwater well in the Gulf of Mexico still spewing oil two months after it exploded, trying to guess how much the company will have to cough up for cleanup and damages seems a fool’s game.

And after watching other seemingly impregnable companies collapse over the past two years, investors are not in the mood for much uncertainty.

“We are living in an era where there is no such thing as too big to fail,” said Stephen Leeb, president of the money manager Leeb Group. That specter, he said, makes BP “very scary” to investors.

BP’s agreement to the $20 billion fund – and President Barack Obama’s pledge that the company is strong and should remain so – seemed to calm investors a bit. But they still fret about BP’s total tab.

Fresh estimates warn that as much as 2.5 million gallons of oil a day have been leaking into the Gulf – triple what scientists thought just a week ago. Worried that BP is more likely now to stiff its lenders, Fitch Ratings recently knocked BP’s credit score down six notches to triple B.

BP’s stock price has plunged 46 percent since the April 20 explosion, wiping out $87 billion in shareholder wealth. It’s more than most pessimistic stock analysts expect the company will have to pay.

And that’s got some of them quite animated.

“It’s overdone,” said Philip Adams of Gimme Credit. Fadel Gheit of Oppenheimer & Co. captures BP’s stock performance in one word: “Ridiculous.”

Gheit predicts BP shares will hit $55 by the end of the next year, up nearly 75 percent from where it was trading Wednesday. Before the explosion, BP’s stock was at about $60, valuing the company at $187 billion.

But despite BP’s enormous wealth, even bulls worry its stock might fall further.

Among their concerns:

_ A sharp drop in oil prices.

Oil falling from $75 per barrel to $60 or $55 “would be far more destabilizing to the company than any potential claim it might face in the Gulf,” Oppenheimer’s Gheit said. BP’s annual cash flow fluctuates by $450 million for every $1 change in oil, he estimated.

If oil prices fell, BP would be more likely to explore selling itself to Exxon Mobil, Royal Dutch Shell or Chevron or at least divest its U.S. operations, analysts said.

_ Washington could restrict BP in the U.S.

BP’s willingness to set up a compensation fund seems to have converted Obama into more of an ally than an antagonist. On Wednesday, the president called the company “strong and viable,” adding that it was “in all our interests that it remain so.”

But there’s still a risk that political backlash could restrict BP’s operations in the U.S. and reduce its government contracts.

Though it operates in more than 80 countries, BP is heavily dependent on the U.S. Forty percent of its assets are in the country, and the company is the biggest energy provider to the U.S. military.

“If the government has a single-minded focus to be punitive, it could take this company down,” said Lawrence Goldstein, a director of the Energy Policy Research Foundation.

Alex Morris of Raymond James said he expected politicians to be careful meting out punishment because the dependency is mutual, given the country’s oil addiction.

“We’re not going to ban them from the Gulf,” he said, noting that BP is the biggest producer there. “It’s hard to imagine our politicians telling them to pack their bags.”

_ Hurricane trouble.

If BP doesn’t plug the leak soon, it runs the risk that a big storm during hurricane season will wash more oil ashore and add to damages, said Argus Research analyst Phil Weiss.

For bulls on BP stock, the company’s greatest asset may be time.

Cases involving major companies tend to drag on for years in the labyrinth of the U.S. legal system, and the complexity and stakes involved in the Gulf spill probably will lengthen the process even more. With more time to pay, BP can stagger its costs instead of absorbing them all in a single financial blow.

“I would be stunned if all the criminal and civil cases against BP are wrapped up before the end of this decade,” said David Logan, dean of Roger Williams University’s School of Law in Rhode Island.

BP may be able to stretch out payments even longer, if the Exxon Valdez spill is any measure. The tanker spilled 11 million gallons in Alaska in 1989, but it took nearly two decades for the courts to determine what the company had to pay.

Said Raymond James analyst Morris, “Anytime you have lawyers billable by the hour, you know it’s going to drag out.”

___

Associated Press writers Harry Weber in Houston and Mark Williams in Columbus, Ohio, contributed to this report. Liedtke reported from San Francisco.

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LIMA, Peru — Peruvian police plan to take Joran van der Sloot, who they say has confessed to last week’s killing of a 21-year-old business student in his Lima hotel room, to visit the crime scene, officials said Tuesday.

They also said police have until the weekend to file criminal charges against the Dutchman in the May 30 killing of Stephany Flores.

The beating death occurred exactly five years after U.S. teenager Natalee Holloway disappeared in Aruba – an assumed death in which Van der Sloot has long been considered the prime suspect by authorities on the Dutch Caribbean island.

It wasn’t clear if Van der Sloot has obtained private counsel, and there was no immediate word from either him or his family about the reported confession.

Peru’s chief police spokesman, Col. Abel Gamarra, told The Associated Press late Monday that Van der Sloot confessed earlier in the day.

Several Peruvian media outlets reported, without identifying their sources, that he admitted to killing Flores in a rage after learning she looked up information about his past on his laptop without permission.

The newspaper La Republica said Van der Sloot tearfully confessed, in the presence of a prosecutor and a state-appointed attorney, to grabbing Flores by the neck and hitting her because she had viewed images about the Aruba case on his computer while he was out buying coffee.

Neither Gamarra, senior police officials nor prosecutors would provide details of the alleged confession, which came on Van der Sloot’s third full day in Peruvian custody at criminal police headquarters.

Meanwhile, the Dutch newspaper De Volkskrant quoted the suspect’s lawyer in the Netherlands as suggesting the confession may have been coerced.

“Joran told his mother crying Monday that he was being interrogated under reasonably barbaric conditions,” the paper quoted Bert De Rooij saying. “He said the police were trying to force him to confess.”

Under such conditions, he said, the “confession was possibly false.”

The state-appointed lawyer who represented Van der Sloot in initial interrogations, Carla Odria, told the AP that a different lawyer, who she said was hired by the suspect, was with Van der Sloot on Monday. She said she did not know the lawyer’s name. Authorities would not release the name of the lawyer.

Officials at the Dutch Embassy, who said the suspect’s family was attempting to obtain private counsel for Van der Sloot, could not be reached for comment Tuesday on whether a private lawyer had in fact been retained.

Van der Sloot’s mother, who apparently lives in Aruba, also could not be located for comment. The suspect’s father, a former judge and attorney on Aruba, died in February.

Flores, the daughter of a Peruvian circus empresario and former race car driver, was found beaten to death, her neck broken, in the 22-year-old Dutchman’s hotel room. Police said the two met playing poker at a casino.

The chief of Peru’s criminal police, Gen. Cesar Guardia, said the crime scene visit at the TAC hotel would most likely occur Wednesday. A psychological exam of the suspect is also required before a judge can decide whether he should stand trial.

Asked about the alleged confession, a brother of the victim, Enrique Flores, had no comment. “What we as a family want to do now is rest a bit and let this follow the judicial path,” he said.

Video from hotel security cameras shows the two entering Van der Sloot’s room together at 5 a.m. Sunday and Van der Sloot leaving alone four hours later with his bags. Police say Van der Sloot also left the hotel briefly at 8:10 a.m. and returned with two cups of coffee and bread purchased across the street at a supermarket.

Murder convictions carry a maximum of 35 years in prison in Peru, and it was not immediately clear if a confession could lead to a reduced sentence.

Van der Sloot remains the key suspect in Aruba for the 2005 disappearance of Holloway, an 18-year-old from Alabama who was on the resort island celebrating her high school graduation. He was arrested twice in the case – and gave a number of conflicting confessions, some in TV interviews – but was freed for lack of evidence.

Holloway’s father, Dave, told ABC’s “Good Morning America” on Tuesday that Van der Sloot should tell all he knows about the disappearance of his daughter. “Hopefully this is his last victim.”

The girl’s mother, Beth Holloway, said her heart and prayers were with the Flores family.

A fixture on true crime shows and in tabloids after Holloway’s disappearance, Van der Sloot gained a reputation for lying – even admitting a penchant for it – and also exhibited a volatile temper. In one Dutch television interview he threw a glass of wine in a reporter’s eyes. In another, he smashed a glass of water against a wall in a fury.

The 6-foot-3 (191-centimeter) Van der Sloot has been held at Peru’s criminal police headquarters since arriving Saturday in a police convoy from Chile, where he was captured Thursday.

He had crossed into Chile on Monday – roughly a day after leaving the Lima hotel.

Lima’s deputy medical investigator, Victor Tejada, told the AP that Flores was killed by blows with a blunt object, probably a tennis racket found in the hotel room. Guardia said her body was found face down and clothed with no indication of sexual assault.

Chilean police who questioned Van der Sloot the day of his arrest said he declared himself innocent of the Lima slaying but acknowledged knowing Flores.

There were indications Van der Sloot may have been traveling on money gained through extortion. The day of his arrest in Chile, Van der Sloot was charged in the United States with trying to extort $250,000 from Holloway’s family in exchange for disclosing the location of her body and describing how she died.

U.S. prosecutors say $15,000 was transferred to a Dutch bank account in his name May 10. He arrived in Peru four days later, coinciding with the runup to a June 2-5 Latin America Poker Tour tournament with a $930,000 prize pool.

Tournament organizers said Van der Sloot did not sign up for the event, which required a $2,700 entrance fee.

Van der Sloot is an avid gambler and was known to frequent Aruba’s casino hotels, one of which was where Holloway stayed.

In a lengthy 2006 interview with Greta Van Susteren on Fox News, Van der Sloot described drinking shots of rum with Holloway, whom he said he met while playing poker at a casino, then taking her to a beach and leaving her there around 3:30 a.m.

Two years later, a Dutch television crime reporter captured hidden-camera footage of Van der Sloot saying that after Holloway, drunk, collapsed on the beach while the two were kissing, he asked a friend to dump her body in the sea.

“I would never murder a girl,” he said.

That interview prompted authorities in Aruba to reopen the case, but Van der Sloot later said he made up the whole story and he was not charged.

The crime reporter, Peter de Vries – the victim of the wine-throwing incident – reported later in 2008 that Van der Sloot was recruiting Thai women in Bangkok for sex work in the Netherlands.

Aruba’s prime minister, Mike Eman, said he assured Holloway’s mother Tuesday that his government is committed to pursuing any new leads in the case. He said Van der Sloot’s arrest in Peru raised hope of determining what happened to the teenager.

Holloway’s family has faulted Aruban investigators, saying they botched the case. Eman said he told the mother that he hopes his government can “repair some broken relationships.”

___

Associated Press writers Carla Salazar in Lima, Frank Bajak in Bogota, Colombia, and Arthur Max in Amsterdam contributed to this report.

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Joran Van Der Sloot To Be Taken To Crime Scene, Peru Officials Say

The luxury goods brand Louis Vuitton misled the public by suggesting its expensive leather bags were hand-made, according to the advertising watchdog.

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The hand-crafted Louis Vuitton bags made on sewing machines

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