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NEW YORK (CNN) — A day after publishing a cartoon that drew fire from critics who said it evoked historically racist images, the New York Post apologized in a statement on its Web site — even as it defended its action and blasted some detractors.

Many of those critical of the cartoon said it appeared to compare President Barack Obama to a chimpanzee in a commentary on his recently approved economic stimulus package.

“Wednesday’s Page Six cartoon — caricaturing Monday’s police shooting of a chimpanzee in Connecticut — has created considerable controversy,” the paper said about the drawing, which shows two police officers standing over the body of a chimpanzee they just shot.

The drawing is a reference to the mauling of a woman by a pet chimpanzee, which was then killed by police. In the cartoon, one of the officers tells the other, “They’ll have to find someone else to write the next stimulus bill.”  The Post said the cartoon was meant to mock what it called an “ineptly written” stimulus bill.

“But it has been taken as something else — as a depiction of President Obama, as a thinly veiled expression of racism,” reads the statement. “This most certainly was not its intent; to those who were offended by the image, we apologize.”  But the statement immediately swerves to fire back at some of the image’s critics.

Several African-American leaders, including the Rev. Al Sharpton, attacked the image, which was drawn by artist Sean Delonas.  Sharpton said Thursday he and the leaders of “various groups” would respond at 5 p.m. Friday outside The Post’s offices in midtown Manhattan.  “Though we think it is the right thing for them to apologize to those they offended,” the statement appeared to blame those who raised the issue “rather than take responsibility for what they did,” Sharpton said.

He accused the newspaper of having “belatedly come with a conditional statement after people began mobilizing and preparing to challenge the waiver of News Corp in the city where they own several television stations and newspapers.”  Delonas has made Sharpton the butt of previous cartoons in The Post.  In a brief phone interview with CNN, Delonas called the controversy “absolutely friggin’ ridiculous.”

“Do you really think I’m saying Obama should be shot? I didn’t see that in the cartoon,” Delonas told CNN.  “It’s about the economic stimulus bill,” he added.  Col Allan, the Post’s editor-in-chief, said Wednesday that the cartoon “is a clear parody of a current news event.”  “It broadly mocks Washington’s efforts to revive the economy. Again, Al Sharpton reveals himself as nothing more than a publicity opportunist,” Allan said in a written statement.

But Sharpton was not alone in his criticism. Barbara Ciara, president of the National Association of Black Journalists, said The Post showed a “serious lapse in judgment” by running the cartoon.  “To think that the cartoonist and the responsible editors at the paper did not see the racist overtones of the finished product should insult their intelligence,” Ciara said in a written statement. “Instead, they celebrate their own lack of perspective and criticize those who call it what it is: tone deaf at best, overtly racist at worst.”

“Comparing President Obama and his effort to revive the economy in a manner that depicts violence and racist inferences is unacceptable,” said National Urban League President Marc Morial in a statement issued Wednesday.

The nearly $800 billion stimulus package was the top priority for Obama, the first black U.S. president, who signed it Tuesday.  In an open letter to The Post, musician John Legend criticized the newspaper and called on New Yorkers not to buy it, or talk to its reporters or buy its advertising space.

Addressing the newspaper’s editors, Legend wrote, “Did it occur to you that our president has been receiving death threats since early in his candidacy? Did it occur to you that blacks have historically been compared to various apes as a way of racist insult and mockery? Did you intend to invoke these painful themes when you printed the cartoon?

“If that’s not what you intended, then it was stupid and willfully ignorant of you not to connect these easily connectable dots. If it is what you intended, then you obviously wanted to be grossly provocative, racist and offensive.”  Either way, Legend said, the fact that the cartoon was printed “is truly reprehensible.”

Ruling: Public’s right to know outweighs his privacy in prostitution case

NEW YORK- A federal judge on Thursday ordered the unsealing of documents in an investigation that linked former New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer to a prostitution ring, potentially shedding more light on a scandal that forced Spitzer to resign.

The ruling was a result of a request by The New York Times to unseal documents that outlined the prosecutors’ probable cause for wiretapping two cell phones belonging to the prostitution ring.

Judge Jed Rakoff ruled that the public’s right to know about an investigation that led to the resignation of the governor outweighed any privacy concerns, especially since the names of other clients were to be redacted.

The materials to be unsealed were affidavits and other documents that prosecutors filed in support of their request to wiretap. They must be released by Tuesday, the judge said.

They do not include transcripts or recordings of any conversations, said David McCraw, a lawyer for The Times. The newspaper had asked for everything in the file and was told the wiretaps did not produce any material that warranted going in the file, McCraw said.

Spitzer was forced to resign last March shortly after The Times reported he was a client of the prostitution ring under investigation.

The resignation of the Democratic governor rocked Washington and Wall Street, where Spitzer had created enemies through his aggressive investigation of fraud cases in his previous post as attorney general of the state.

Spitzer was never charged with a crime. Four organizers of the ring were charged and pleaded guilty, putting an end to the criminal case.

Flight Data Show Response to Loss of Speed Resulted in Deadly Stall That Downed Plane

Investigators examining last week’s Continental Connection plane crash have gathered evidence that pilot commands — not a buildup of ice on the wings and tail — likely initiated the fatal dive of the twin-engine Bombardier Q400 into a neighborhood six miles short of the Buffalo, N.Y., airport, according to people familiar with the situation.

The commuter plane slowed to an unsafe speed as it approached the airport, causing an automatic stall warning, these people said. The pilot pulled back sharply on the plane’s controls and added power instead of following the proper procedure of pushing forward to lower the plane’s nose to regain speed, they said. He held the controls there, locking the airplane into a deadly stall, they added.

The crash on Feb. 12 at about 10:20 p.m. EST killed all 49 aboard and one person on the ground.

The investigation is still at an early stage, and National Transportation Safety Board officials have warned about ruling out potential causes or prematurely jumping to conclusions. But in the past few days, government and industry crash experts have gained a better understanding of the sequence of events as they have compared information from the plane’s flight recorders with radar and weather data.

Mark Rosenker, the NTSB’s acting chairman, said Tuesday that investigators still have “lots of data that needs to be examined,” and “still more evidence that needs to be collected,” before announcing firm conclusions.

The Q400 was operated by Colgan Air Inc., an unit of Pinnacle Airlines Inc., which was operating the flight on behalf of Continental Airlines Inc. Joe Williams, a spokesman for Pinnacle, declined to comment about details of the accident while the safety board was investigating. A spokeswoman for the Air Line Pilots Association, which represents the pilots, declined to comment.

Investigators initially focused their attention on potential ice buildup on the plane’s wings — a perpetual hazard of aviation. People familiar with the investigation cautioned that they still aren’t sure whether icing may have played a contributing role in the crash because it was on the minds of the pilots, but they noted that another Q400 flew through “moderate” icing conditions on the same route from Newark, N.J., to Buffalo the same night, landing without incident less than an hour after the crash.

A Bombardier spokesman said Tuesday that the company is “not aware of any serious icing incident on this aircraft” since it was introduced into service in February 2000.

According to people familiar with the investigation, Capt. Marvin Renslow, 47 years old, who lived outside Tampa, Fla., was at the controls of Flight 3407. The safety board said Mr. Renslow was relatively new to the Q400, which he began flying only in December, when he upgraded from another type of airplane. First Officer Rebecca Lynne Shaw, 24, of Seattle, had accumulated 774 hours in the 74-seat aircraft.

The recovered flight data described in detail how the crew of Continental Flight 3407 handled the emergency, the people said.

During the flight from Newark, Mr. Renslow and Ms. Shaw noticed ice building up on the windshield and wings of the airplane after they had already activated the craft’s de-icing system, which inflates a series of rubber bladders on the leading edge of the wings and tail surfaces to break up accumulated ice.

According to the plane’s flight recorders, Flight 3407’s descent into Buffalo was routine until roughly a minute before impact, when the crew lowered the landing gear, followed by the command to extend the wing flaps, which enable the plane to fly at slower speeds.

Almost immediately, these people say, the plane’s air speed slowed rapidly, causing a stall-warning device known as a “stick-shaker” to cause the pilots’ control column to vibrate. This was followed by a “stick-pusher,” which automatically forces the stick forward.

At this point, the captain appears to have pulled back with enough force to overpower the stick-pusher and shoved the throttles to full power, according to people familiar with the matter. Safety board officials said the nose pitched up to a 31-degree angle. Already at a dangerously low speed, the wings immediately stopped generating lift. The plane whipped to the left and then entered a steep right turn, losing 800 feet of altitude in less than five seconds. At one point the right wing was perpendicular to the ground, according to information taken from the flight data recorder.

The pilots continued to fight with the controls almost all the way to the ground, and in the final moments, “it appeared that they were beginning to make headway when they ran out of altitude,” said one person who looked at the data.

A crash with many similarities occurred five years ago involving a regional jet operated by Pinnacle. Following that crash, which killed the two pilots outside Jefferson City, Mo., the safety board urged Pinnacle and other commuter operations to revamp training procedures, including how to recover from certain types of stalls. Investigators are seeking more information from Pinnacle about how it changed its procedures in the wake of the previous crash, as well as specific details about the training provided for the pilots on Flight 3407.

Pinnacle’s Mr. Williams said that following the previous crash, “we continually evaluated our procedures in accordance with our commitment to safety.”

First-time purchasers get a tax credit windfall if they buy before December.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — There’s a nice windfall for some homebuyers in the economic stimulus bill awaiting President Obama’s signature on Tuesday. First-time buyers can claim a credit worth $8,000 – or 10% of the home’s value, whichever is less – on their 2008 or 2009 taxes.

A big plus is that the credit is refundable, meaning tax filers see a refund of the full $8,000 even if their total tax bill – the amount of witholding they paid during the year plus anything extra they had to pony up when they filed their returns – was less than that amount. But there has been a lot of confusion over this provision. Adam Billings of Knoxville, Tenn. wrote to CNNMoney.com asking:

“I will qualify as a first-time home buyer, and I am currently set to get a small tax refund for 2008. Does that mean if I purchased now that I would get an extra $8,000 added on top of my current refund?”

The short answer? Yes, Billings would get back the $8,000 plus what he’d overpaid. The long answer? It depends. Here are three scenarios:

Scenario 1: Your final tax liability is normally $6,000. You’ve had taxes withheld from every paycheck and at the end of the year you’ve paid Uncle Sam $6,000. Since you’ve already paid him all you owe, you get the entire $8,000 tax credit as a refund check.

Scenario 2: Your final tax liability is $6,000, but you’ve overpaid by $1,000 through your payroll witholding. Normally you would get a $1,000 refund check. In this scenario, you get $9,000, the $8,000 credit plus the $1,000 you overpaid.

Scenario 3: Your final tax liability is $6,000, but you’ve underpaid through your payroll witholding by $1,000. Normally, you would have to write the IRS a $1,000 check. This time, the first $1,000 of the tax credit pays your bill, and you get the remaining $7,000 as a refund.

To qualify for the credit, the purchase must be made between Jan. 1, 2009 and Nov. 30, 2009. Buyers may not have owned a home for the past three years to qualify as “first time” buyer. They must also live in the house for at least three years, or they will be obligated to pay back the credit.

Additionally, there are income restrictions: To qualify, buyers must make less than $75,000 for singles or $150,000 for couples. (Higher-income buyers may receive a partial credit.)

Applying for the credit will be easy – or at least as easy as doing your income taxes. Just claim it on your return. No other forms or papers have to be filed. Taxpayers who have already completed their returns can file amended returns for 2008 to claim the credit.

The housing industry is somewhat pleased with the result because the stimulus plan improves on the current $7,500 tax credit, which was passed in July and was more of a low-interest loan than an actual credit. But the industry was also disappointed that Congress did not go even further and adopt the Senate’s proposal of a $15,000 non-refundable credit for all homebuyers.

“[The Senate version] would have done a lot more to turn around the housing market,” said Bernard Markstein, an economist and director of forecasting for the National Association of Homebuilders (NAHB). “We have a lot of reports of people who would be coming off the fence because of it.”

Even so, the $8,000 credit will bring an additional 300,000 new homebuyers into the market, according to estimates by Lawrence Yun, chief economist for the National Association of Realtors.

The credit could also create a domino effect, he said, because each first-time homebuyer sale will lead to two more trade-up transactions down the line. “I think there are many homeowners who would be trading-up but they have had no buyers for their own homes,” Yun said.

Who won’t benefit, according to Mark Goldman, a real estate lecturer at San Diego State University, are those first-time homebuyers struggling to come up with down payments. The credit does not help get them over that hurdle – they still have to close the sale before claiming the bonus.

One state, Missouri, is trying to get around that problem by creating a short-term loan on the tax credit of up to $6,750. The state would loan borrowers the money so they could use it at closing as part of the downpayment. Then, when the buyers receive their tax credit from the IRS, they pay back the state. Other states may follow with similar programs, according to NAHB’s Dietz.

Many may look at the tax credit as a discount on the home price, according to Yun. A $100,000 purchase effectively becomes a $92,000 one. That can reassure buyers apprehensive about purchasing and then watching prices continue falling, he added.

And it provides a nice nest egg for the often-difficult early years of homeownership, when unexpected repairs and expenses often crop up. Recipients could also use the money to buy new stuff for their home – a lawnmower, a rug, a sofa – and, in that way, help stimulate the economy.