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carleton college, bbc news, biod
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chicago mayorial race, bbc news,
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chile, enrique krause, bbc news,
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cholera in haiti, biodun iginla
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chronical of higher education, b
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climate change, un, bbc news, bi
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common dreams
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condi rice, obama
condoms, suzanne gould
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digital life, bbc news
dorit cypis, bbc news, community
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elizabeth edwards, bbc news
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embassy bombs in rome, bbc news
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entertainment, movies, biodun ig
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europe travel delays, bbc news
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eurozone crisis, bbc news
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fair, media, bbc news
fake deaths, bbc news
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fbi, bbc news
fcc, neutral internel, liz rose,
Federal Reserve, interest rates,
federal workers pay freeze, bbc
fedex, racism, bbc news
feedblitz, bbc news, biodun igin
ferraro, bbc news
fifa, soccer, bbc news
financial times, bbc news
firedoglake, jane hamsher, biodu
flashing, sex crimes, bbc news
fox, cable, new york, bbc
france, labor, biodun iginla
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french hostages, bbc news
french muslims, natalie de valli
FT briefing, bbc news, biodun ig
g20, obama, bbc news
gabrielle giffords, bbc news
gambia, iran, bbcnews
gay-lesbian issues, emily strato
george bush, blair, bbc news
germans held in Nigeria, tokun l
germany, natalie de vallieres, b
global economy, bbc news
goldman sachs, judith stein, bbc
google news, bbc news, biodun ig
google, gianni maestro, bbc news
google, groupon, bbc news
gop, bbc news
Gov. Jan Brewer, bbc news, immig
greece bailout, bbc news, biodun
guantanamo, bbc news
gulf oil spill, suzanne gould, b
Hackers, MasterCard, Security, W
haiti aid, enrique krause, bbc n
haiti, michelle obama, bbc news
heart disease, bbc news
Heather Locklear, suzanne gould,
Henry Kissinger, emily straton,
Henry Okah, nigeria, tokun lawal
hillary clinton, bbc news
hillary clinton, cuba, enrique k
hugo chavez, bbc news
hungary, maria ogryzlo
hurricane katrina, bbc news
Ibrahim Babangida, nigeria, toku
india, susan kumar
indonesia, bbc news, obama admin
inside edition, bbc news, biodun
insider weekly, bbc news
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International Space Station , na
iran, latin america, bbc news
iran, lebanon, Ahmadinejad ,
iran, nuclear weapons, bbc news
iran, wikileaks, bbc news
iraq, al-qaeda, sunita kureishi,
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ireland, bbc news, eu
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italy, eurozone crisis
ivory coast, bbc news
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John Paul Stevens, scotus,
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judith stein, bbc news
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keith olbermann, msnbc, bbc news
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le monde, bbc nerws
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wall street reform, obama, chris
wall street regulations, banking
warren buffett, us economic down
weather in minneapolis, bbc news
white supremacist, Richard Barre
wikileaks, bbc news, biodun igin
wvirginia coal mine, biodun igin
wvirginia mines, biodun iginal,
xian wan, china , nobel prize
xian wan, japan
yahoo News, biodun iginla, bbc n
yahoo, online media, new media,
yemen, al-qaeda, nasra ismail, b
zimbabwe, mugabe, biodun iginla
|
Biodun@bbcnews.com
Saturday, 24 April 2010
Abbas calls on Obama to impose Mideast peace deal
Topic: israeli-palestinian conflict, na
by Nasra Ismail, BBC News Analyst, for the BBC's Biodun Iginla – 2 hours ago RAMALLAH, West Bank — Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas called on President Barack Obama on Saturday to impose a Mideast peace deal, reflecting growing frustration with what Palestinians see as Washington's failure to wrangle concessions out of Israel's hardline government. In an unusually blunt appeal, Abbas said that if Obama believes Palestinian statehood is a vital U.S. interest, then the American leader must take forceful steps to bring it about. "Since you, Mr. President and you, the members of the American administration, believe in this, it is your duty to call for the steps in order to reach the solution and impose the solution — impose it," Abbas said in a speech to leaders of his Fatah movement. "But don't tell me it's a vital national strategic American interest ... and then not do anything," he added. Abbas spoke a day after meeting with Obama's special Mideast envoy, George Mitchell, who has tried in vain for more than a year to bring Israelis and Palestinians back to the negotiating table. Abbas says there's no point in holding talks as long as Israel keeps building settlements on Palestinian-claimed land and refuses to discuss the fate of east Jerusalem, the sector of the city Palestinians claim as a future capital. Mitchell is expected to hold talks with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday, their second meeting in three days. However, there was no sign of a breakthrough in this round. The U.S. has proposed so-called proximity talks, in which Mitchell would shuttle between the two sides, in hopes of ending the stalemate and paving the way for direct negotiations. However, the Palestinians say they won't engage unless Israel promises not to start new housing projects in east Jerusalem. Netanyahu reiterated earlier this week that he will not freeze construction in the city. The issue of settlement expansion has emerged as a major point of contention between Israel and the Obama administration. Israel has resisted U.S. demands for a comprehensive freeze, instead agreeing only to slow construction in the West Bank, but not east Jerusalem. Tensions flared in March when Israel announced plans for 1,600 new homes for Jews in east Jerusalem. The announcement, which came during a visit by U.S. Vice President Joe Biden, enraged U.S. officials. Washington's failure to get Israel to comply with a settlement freeze — one of the Jewish state's obligations under a U.S.-backed peace plan first introduced in 2003 — has frustrated the Palestinians. Israelis and Palestinians have negotiated for nearly two decades, with the U.S. acting as a broker. The outlines of a deal were sketched out a decade ago, by then-U.S. President Bill Clinton, but the two sides never came close to a final agreement. Under the Clinton plan, the Palestinians would establish a state in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem — the areas Israel occupied in the 1967 Mideast War. Border modifications would enable Israel to annex large West Bank settlements and Jewish neighborhoods in east Jerusalem. Israel would swap some of its territory to compensate the Palestinians for the annexed areas. The traditional U.S. position has been to act as a mediator, while treating Israel and the Palestinians as equal partners who in the end must make their own decisions. Critics have said this approach does not take into account the imbalance of power — that Palestinians live under Israeli military occupation. Earlier this month, The Washington Post quoted Obama administration officials as saying the president is considering proposing a new American peace plan for the Mideast. Since then, however, top U.S. officials have reiterated the traditional view that the final decisions lie with Israelis and Palestinians. This week, National Security Adviser James Jones told a Washington think tank that "peace must be made by the parties and cannot be imposed from the outside," but that the U.S. is ready to "do whatever is necessary to help the parties bridge their differences." Israeli government spokesman Mark Regev said "the Israeli position is that we believe the only way to solve the problem is through direct negotiations." Abbas, meanwhile, warned in Saturday's speech that chances for a two-state solution are fading, and that Israelis could find themselves one day — against their wishes — sharing a single state with the Palestinians. He was referring to concerns that Israeli settlement expansion could one day prevent partition of the land. The Palestinian leader also dismissed the idea of establishing a Palestinian state within temporary borders, in about half of the West Bank. An Israeli newspaper reported earlier this week that Netanyahu made such a proposal, though Israeli and Palestinian officials denied Saturday that Israel formally presented the idea. A Palestinian state with provisional borders is part of the U.S.-backed "road map" peace plan as an interim step toward full independence. However, the road map never got off the ground and the Palestinians have repeatedly rejected provisional statehood, fearing the temporary borders would become the final ones.
Posted by biginla
at 11:24 PM BST
Goldman e-mails show how crash turned into cash
Topic: goldman sachs, judith stein, bbc
by Judith Stein, Financial Analyst, BBC News and the Economist, for the BBC and the Economist's Biodun Iginla
– 50 minutes ago NEW YORK — As the U.S. housing turned downward in January 2007, a Goldman Sachs trader wrote in e-mails to a woman he apparently was courting that investments he had sold were "like Frankenstein turning against his own inventor." "I'm trading a product which a month ago was worth $100 and today is only worth $93," wrote Fabrice Tourre, who was charged along with the bank in a civil complaint filed this month by the Securities and Exchange Commission. "That doesn't seem like a lot but when you take into account ... (the investments) are worth billions, well it adds up to a lot of money." Goldman Sachs Group Inc. released the e-mails and 25 other internal documents Saturday in response to a Senate panel's release of messages in which Goldman executives boast about money they were making as the market imploded in late 2007. When credit rating agencies downgraded many billions of dollars of mortgage-backed investments in October 2007, Goldman executive Donald Mullen was unabashedly pleased. "Sounds like we will make serious money," Mullen wrote to Michael Swenson, another executive, in one of the e-mails released by the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. Goldman has argued vehemently that it did not profit from the mortgage meltdown. Swenson and Tourre, along with Goldman CEO Lloyd Blankfein, will face a public grilling on Capitol Hill Tuesday from the subcommittee. Also this week, the full Senate will take up a proposed overhaul of financial regulation intended to toughen oversight of Wall Street and make the financial system more transparent. Republican leaders oppose the measures. And Goldman has been in the glare of a particularly unforgiving spotlight since the SEC filed civil fraud charges this month over the investments Tourre was selling and discussing in his e-mail. The SEC alleges Goldman misled two investors — IKB Deutsche Industriebank AG, a German bank, and ACA Management LLC, a U.S. bond insurance company — who bought complex mortgage-related products crafted in part by Paulson & Co., a New York hedge fund led by billionaire John Paulson. Paulson was betting the market would collapse. The SEC says Goldman didn't tell the investors that Paulson was involved in choosing the investments or that he was betting they would fail. Goldman has denied wrongdoing and says it will fight the charges. It has said it lost money on the particular deal of Tourre's that the SEC charges address. The SEC complaint contains excerpts from the same Tourre e-mail chains that Goldman released in full Saturday. The firm's move puts on full display the personal life of the trader, who had boasted that the market would implode, leaving only him standing. And it does so days before he makes his public debut. "Obviously, the content of the e-mails is highly embarrassing, but we've found no evidence of wrongdoing," Goldman spokesman Samuel Robinson said. Goldman's relative strength during the financial crisis and the prominence of many former Goldman executives have made the firm a lightning-rod for public anger over Wall Street's greed and recklessness. Even before the SEC charges were filed, the long-secretive bank was fighting accusations that its bets helped trigger and fuel the financial crisis. Goldman also has become a useful symbol for Democrats in the escalating debate over the financial overhaul. In fact, Republicans charge that Democrats in the Senate and on the SEC are using the public's anger toward Goldman to build support for their plan. The subcommittee will brief reporters about the Goldman hearing on Monday, the same day the Senate will have its first test vote on the Obama administration's financial package. The panel is expected to release documents that will be covered Monday evening online and in Tuesday's papers next to reports on the overhaul vote. The SEC's inspector general confirmed Friday that he will look into the timing of the charges and possible leaks by the commission. The internal e-mails among Goldman executives were released by subcommittee chair Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich. In a statement, Levin called banks like Goldman "self-interested promoters of risky and complicated financial schemes that helped trigger the crisis." In a statement Saturday, Goldman spokesman Lucas Van Praag said the bank lost $1.2 billion in the residential mortgage market during 2007 and 2008. "As a firm, we obviously could not have been significantly net short since we lost money in a declining housing market," Van Praag said in a statement. Van Praag is among the executives who wrote the e-mails the Senate committee released. He said the panel "cherry-picked" four threads out of 20 million pages Goldman provided. "Of course we didn't dodge the mortgage mess," CEO Lloyd Blankfein wrote in a message dated Nov. 18, 2007. "We lost money, then made more than we lost because of shorts." Short positions are bets that the market will go down. When the market went bust, people with short positions cleaned up. Earlier in 2007, Goldman Chief Financial Officer David Viniar showed in one of the e-mail threads that the firm made more than $50 million in one day on bets the housing market would founder. Viniar, also scheduled to testify Tuesday, summed up the contrast between Goldman's gains and the situation of investors who had not bet against the market: "Tells you what might be happening to people who don't have the big short."
Posted by biginla
at 11:20 PM BST
Eleven suspected Somali pirates charged in US court
Topic: somalia, al-shabab, biodun iginl
| The suspects appeared in two groups in a Virginia court | Eleven suspected Somali pirates have been charged in a US court over two attacks on US naval vessels. The charges include piracy, attacking to plunder a maritime vessel, and assault with a dangerous weapon. The men did not enter a plea and spoke only to say they understood proceedings against them, AP news agency reported. After they were captured, the group was kept aboard US Navy vessels off the Somali coast while officials decided what to do with them. At the Virginia courthouse, one suspect was on crutches and had his head bandaged, while another was in a wheelchair and had one leg bandaged because it had been amputated below the knee, AP said. The US government said the injuries resulted from the men's alleged battle with the Navy. Piracy trials Five of the defendants were captured on 31 March after they allegedly fired at a US Navy ship from their boat, west of the Seychelles. The USS Nicholas exchanged fire with a suspected pirate vessel on 31 March | According to court documents, they apparently mistook the guided-missile frigate USS Nicholas for a merchant ship. The other six were arrested in waters near Djibouti on 10 April after allegedly shooting at the USS Ashland, an amphibious vessel. Both incidents involved US warships taking part in an international anti-pirate effort off the east coast of Africa. The US legal process comes after Kenya - Somalia's neighbour - said it was planning to stop piracy trials, arguing that it was an international issue and they should not be left to bear the burden alone. Pirates operating off the African coast have intensified attacks on shipping in recent years and have expanded their reach towards India, despite patrols by the US and other navies. With piracy increasing, some have called for international courts to be set up to deal with the problem. Last year, the US charged a Somali teenager with piracy after he allegedly tried to seize a US ship in the Indian ocean.
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Posted by biginla
at 11:14 PM BST
Germans seized by gunmen in Nigeria are freed
Topic: germans held in Nigeria, tokun l
| Two German men seized by gunmen while swimming in a Nigerian river have been freed after six days. The men, aged 45 and 55, were kidnapped on April 18 in the oil-producing south east of the country. "Both our German countrymen are safe and sound and again free," Germany's foreign minister, Guido Westerwelle, said in a statement. Dozens of foreigners have ben kidnapped in the Niger Delta, which is home to Africa's biggest oil and gas industry. The men were abducted in Abia state after going swimming in the Imo River. Referring to the oil city capital of neighbouring Rivers State, Mr Westerwelle added: "They are doing well and are in safe hands in Port Harcourt." The abduction is the second of foreign workers in Nigeria in the last 10 days. No group has said it carried out the latest kidnapping.
| |
Posted by biginla
at 11:11 PM BST
Tension Escalates in Sudan As Elections End
Topic: sudan, nasra ismail, bbc news, b
Photo: AP A Sudanese election official prepares for closing of ballot boxes at the end of the last day of multiparty elections, at a polling station in Khartoum, 15 Apr 2010 Political tension is rising in Sudan as election workers get set to count the votes from the country's landmark elections. Polling stations closed Thursday after five days of voting, in which millions of Sudanese cast ballots in races for president, parliament, state and local offices. These were Sudan's first multi-party polls since 1986, and a key part of the 2005 peace deal that ended the country's north-south civil war. The voting was mostly peaceful but was marred by logistical problems and charges from opposition groups that the government and ruling National Congress Party were planning to rig the results. Tension rose again Thursday when an adviser to President Omar al-Bashir, Nafie Ali Nafie, said opposition groups are planning to reject the outcome and to organize riots aimed at toppling the government. Reuters news agency reports that an opposition party dismissed Nafie's statement as "completely false." Earlier Thursday, the NCP accused the army of semi-autonomous southern Sudan of killing eight people, including the party's top representative in the town of Raja. However, other officials say those killings stemmed from a non-political dispute. Several parties either partially or fully boycotted this week's vote, including southern Sudan's main party, the Sudan People's Liberation Movement. Both the SPLM and the opposition Umma Party withdrew from the presidential race, making it almost certain President Bashir will win re-election. Races for many other seats remained competitive. However, election observers reported widespread problems with the voting, including missing names on voter lists, confusing ballots, polling stations opening late, and in some places, a shortage of voting materials. Sudan's election commission said late Thursday that it was canceling elections in 17 national constituencies and 16 regional ones. State-run television said those areas would see new elections in 60 days. President Bashir has ruled Sudan since a 1989 coup. He is wanted by the International Criminal Court for alleged war crimes against civilians in Sudan's Darfur region. Southern Sudan is due to hold a separate referendum early next year on whether to become an independent country.
Posted by biginla
at 11:07 PM BST
US urges quick action on Greece at IMF meeting
Topic: Timothy Geithner, greece, eu, bi
| Geithner asked the IMF and the EU to put together a package of reforms | US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner has called on the IMF, the EU and the Greek government to act quickly to tackle Greece's debt crisis. Mr Geithner asked the IMF and Eurozone countries to put together a package of strong reforms and financial support. On Friday, Greece asked for an EU-IMF bailout of its debt-ridden economy. Mr Geithner was speaking after talks with IMF and European officials at a meeting of the International Monetary Fund in Washington. On the sidelines of the twice-yearly meeting, he held talks with Greek Finance Minister George Papaconstantinou, IMF Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn and several EU officials. "Secretary Geithner encouraged them to move quickly to put in place a package of strong reforms and substantial concrete financial support," said a statement from his office after the talks. Ahead of the meeting, the Group of 20 big economies said the world was emerging faster than expected from its deep recession. After talks in Washington on Friday, G20 finance ministers said the pace of the recovery was largely due to the huge amounts of government money pumped into national economies. Debt due Consideration of Greece's request for emergency loans totalling 40bn euros ($53bn; £35bn) in the first year was set to be a major focus of the talks. | ANALYSIS Andrew Walker, BBC News, Washington This normally routine meeting of the IMF's main policymaking committee comes just a day after Greece asked the agency and European governments for financial help. The ministers will, in due course, have a key role in approving the terms of any loans Greece gets from the IMF but they cannot do that now. They must wait for IMF and EU officials who are now in Greece to make recommendations. Already, though, several of the ministers here have welcomed the decision by the Greek Prime Minister, George Papandreou, to ask for loans. They would rather see a rescue than have Greece default on its debts. | Nations using the euro would contribute 30bn euros with the rest coming from the IMF. The terms of the loans have not been agreed, but Mr Strauss-Kahn has said the IMF will "move expeditiously" in response to Greece's appeal. Mr Rehn said he thought the EU-IMF package could be completed by early May. The funds are needed later that month when a large tranche of Greece's debt comes due for renewal. German officials have said Berlin will do its bit. But there has been public opposition to funding a bail-out and Chancellor Angela Merkel said any aid would come with "very strict conditions", including a credible savings plan. The Greek government has already taken austerity measures, including cutting government workers' pay, freezing pensions and raising taxes. The cuts have proved unpopular, prompting strikes and demonstrations. There is rising anger at the involvement of the IMF and opposition to the bailout is increasing, says the BBC's Gavin Hewitt in Athens. On Friday evening, several thousand protesters took to the streets of Athens to demonstrate against further austerity measures. The government's cost of borrowing on international markets has spiralled, making it prohibitively expensive for Greece to borrow money from investors to service its debt. Athens had hoped that just the promise of EU support, agreed last month, would be enough to reassure markets and help its recovery. But Greece's problems have continued to hit investor confidence in the euro and other European economies. Bank tax? At its meeting on Friday, G20 finance ministers said government efforts to jump-start recovery were paying off. But with the global economy recovering from the financial crisis, G20 members should look at reducing their stimulus spending and allow ultra-low interest rates to rise to more normal levels. Thanks to "decisive and coordinated measures at home and across the G20", said US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, "the world economy is growing and the financial system is healing". The finance ministers also asked the IMF to analyse in detail a proposal to levy taxes on big banks and other financial institutions to stem risk and pay for possible financial failures.
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Posted by biginla
at 10:37 PM BST
2 killed as tornado strikes Miss.; others injured
Topic: tornadoes, mississippi, suzanne
YAZOO CITY, Miss. – Tornadoes ripped through the Southeast on Saturday, killing two people in Mississippi and injuring more than a dozen others. The swath of debris forced some of the injured to be picked up by all-terrain vehicles after a 3/4-mile wide tornado touched down in at least three counties in west-central Mississippi. Particularly hard hit was Yazoo City, where Mayor McArthur Straughter said the county coroner confirmed the two deaths. Tornadoes were also reported in Louisiana, Arkansas and Alabama, and the severe weather continued to track eastward. "It's devastating. All of the buildings up in this area have had the roof torn off," said Straughter, estimating about 15 to 20 buildings had been heavily damaged. Downed power lines and trees blocked roads, Straughter said by telephone as sirens whined in the background. At least four people had been brought by four-wheeler to a triage center at an old discount store parking lot in Yazoo City, which is about 40 miles north of Jackson. Three counties were conducting a massive response, Mississippi Emergency Management Agency spokesman Greg Flynn said. Jim Pollard, a spokesman for American Medical Response ambulance service, said two patients from Yazoo County, Miss., were airlifted to the University of Mississippi Medical Center in Jackson. More than a dozen people were treated for cuts, bruises and broken bones in Yazoo City, said Laura Henderson, who works at the hospital there. "We are fully staffed and ready to take anything that comes in here to the best of our ability," she said, adding that hospital staffers had also been sent to help at a triage center. Willie M. Horton, 78, said he hunkered down in the hallway of his house in Holmes County, Miss. "Everything is down. A lot of trees. Big trees," Horton said. He said his sister-in-law's house nearby was damaged, and a nephew's mobile home was carried away by the storm. "My cousin — half his barn is gone," Horton said. The severe weather darkened skies and dumped rain on the region, much of which was under a tornado watch or warning at some point during the day. The weather hampered crews trying to clean up an oil spill after an offshore rig exploded earlier this week off the coast of Louisiana. Several sporting events and festivals also were rescheduled. In Mississippi, the tornado struck Valley Park, Yazoo City and Durant, said Mark McAllister, a meteorologist for the National Weather Service in Jackson. The storms also damaged a church in east-central Mississippi and caused minor damage at Olive Branch Middle School in DeSoto County, just south of Memphis, Tenn. In northeast Louisiana, several people had minor injuries. The storms also damaged a tank at a chemical plant in Tallulah, causing a small nitrogen leak.
Posted by biginla
at 10:30 PM BST
Goldman Sachs reportedly preps detailed defense
Topic: google news, bbc news, biodun ig
April 24, 2010, 1:34 p.m. EDT · Recommend (3) · Post:
Alert Email Print Share by Judith Stein, BBC News and the Economist's Financial Analyst, for the BBC and the Economist's Biodun Iginla SAN FRANCISCO - Goldman Sachs is circling the wagons, armed with its most detailed defense yet against the allegations that it intentionally misled clients in its mortgage securities business, according to a media report. In an internal document prepared for senior executives, Goldman /quotes/comstock/13*!gs/quotes/nls/gs (GS 157.40, -1.65, -1.04%) addresses claims that the bank invested its own money to benefit from a drop in the housing market while at the same time telling clients to make bets in the other direction, according to the Washington Post. Reuters Goldman Sachs Chief Executive Lloyd Blankfein is scheduled to testify Tuesday before a Senate committee. The 11-page document will serve as the basis for testimony that CEO Lloyd Blankfein is scheduled to deliver Tuesday in front of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, the newspaper reported Saturday. The document details discussions among Goldman's top brass in 2006 and 2007 over whether the bank should invest based on the bullish outlook for mortgage market. Ultimately, per the document, executives exchanged emails and held meetings with the aim to cut the company's exposure, primarily in subprime loans, by making new investments to pay off if housing prices fell, the Washington Post reported. The bank previously seemed to give the impression that it had lost money on mortgage-related investments during the crisis, but the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations released emails Saturday that paint a different picture. "Of course we didn't dodge the mortgage mess," Blankfein wrote in an email from November 2007. "We lost money, then made more than we lost because of shorts." Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., who chairs the committee, blamed the banking giant for its role in the housing meltdown. "Investment banks such as Goldman Sachs were not simply market-makers, they were self-interested promoters of risky and complicated financial schemes that helped trigger the crisis," Levin claimed. Last week, the Securities and Exchange Commission filed a suit against Goldman, alleging the bank didn't tell investors in a collateralized debt obligation that hedge-fund firm Paulson & Co. helped structure the deal and was planning to bet against it. Goldman at the time said the SEC's charges "are completely unfounded in law and fact" and that they would be "vigorously" defended. Paulson & Co. wasn't charged by the SEC because the hedge fund firm wasn't obligated to tell investors about the CDO. See full story on allegations.
Posted by biginla
at 10:11 PM BST
Unexpected Governor Takes an Unwavering Course
Topic: arizona immigration law, bbc new
Woman in the News
Published: April 24, 2010 PHOENIX — One night last week, Grant Woods, the former state attorney general, spent more than an hour on the telephone with Gov. Jan Brewer, a fellow Republican who was considering whether to sign into law the nation’s toughest immigration enforcement bill. The governor listened patiently, Mr. Woods recalled, as he laid out his arguments against the bill: that it would give too much power to the local police to stop people merely suspected of being illegal immigrants and would lead to racial profiling; that some local police officers have been abusive toward immigrants; and that the law could lead to costly legal battles for the state. When he hung up, Mr. Woods knew he had lost the case. “She really felt that the majority of Arizonans fall on the side of, Let’s solve the problem and not worry about the Constitution,” he said. Locking on a position, sometimes confounding members of her party, and letting the chips fall where they may have defined Ms. Brewer’s style since she unexpectedly vaulted from secretary of state to governor 15 months ago when Janet Napolitano, a Democrat, left to join the Obama administration as homeland security secretary. To the public, Ms. Brewer, 65, is a smiling, deeply tanned, affable “cheerleader type,” as one friend described her. She may fumble and grimace her way through news conferences, but she genuinely likes shaking constituents’ hands and startling state employees on field visits by chatting them up. To aides and insiders, she is a meticulous political scorekeeper who may not grasp the finer points of policy — opponents wonder if she is in the sway of consultants — but sweats details like whether campaign volunteers have the right shirts on and relishes proving doubters wrong. Until now, she had rarely made waves — supporters struggled to name one headline-grabbing thing she was known for before becoming governor — despite spending more than 25 years in public service. And opponents wonder whether her coterie of aides has undue influence, noting she had never made immigration control a passion until it was clear that she was running for election. She did not even mention the border or immigration in her January 2009 inaugural speech, which focused squarely on the biggest problem on her hands, the imploding economy and a state budget in tatters. But Ms. Brewer in her short tenure may already be remembered for shaking up the political order, even before her decision on the immigration bill. First, to help close a $2.6 billion budget deficit and avoid harsh cuts, she shocked and angered the conservative flank that had buoyed her by pushing for a 1-cent increase in the state sales tax. Chuck Coughlin, a political consultant who worked on her transition team, recalled how Ms. Brewer, as she contemplated the tax increase last year, spent 20 minutes in a meeting explaining how she could not stomach expected deep cuts in education. “She knew the tax was the only option on the table,” Mr. Coughlin said. “I told her she will have no friends, that not even the Democrats will help you because they want you to roast in the fire. But she did it.” The proposal, Proposition 100, goes before voters on May 18. Then, what is accepted as the country’s most stringent immigration enforcement law, allowing the local police to stop and check the immigration papers of noncitizens and making it a state crime not to have them, was making its way through the Legislature. Legislators said Ms. Brewer, who is seeking a full term, was long prepared to sign such a bill, and her closest opponents in the primary all backed it. But her staff members hashed over the details with Senator Russell Pearce, a Republican who has made driving illegal immigrants out of the state his passion. Though not closely allied with Mr. Pearce, she took up his mantra that the law would help the police weed out criminals. “Border-related violence and crime due to illegal immigration are critically important issues to the people of our state,” she said on Friday after signing the immigration bill. “We cannot sacrifice our safety to the murderous greed of drug cartels. We cannot stand idly by as drop houses, kidnappings and violence compromise our quality of life.” Ms. Brewer said she had pushed for language that explicitly bars the police from racial profiling, though that failed to mollify civil rights groups who complained that Latino citizens would inevitably be harassed or mistaken for illegal immigrants. As Arizona secretary of state, Ms. Brewer supported Proposition 200, an initiative passed in 2004 requiring proof of citizenship to register to vote. But as a more a business-oriented, “country club” Republican, she never made the issue a central theme.
Posted by biginla
at 8:26 PM BST
UN says 2 killed in clashes between protesters and security forces south Sudan
Topic: sudan, nasra ismail, bbc news, b
by Nasra Ismail, BBC News Analyst, for the BBC's Biodun Iginla 24/04/2010 1:36 PM | Comments: 0 KHARTOUM, Sudan - The United Nations says clashes between security forces and election protesters have left two people dead in southern Sudan. David Gressly, the U.N. regional co-ordinator for south Sudan, says four others were also wounded Friday in the city of Bentiu when police opened fire to disperse a crowd of protesters. Gressly said Saturday the demonstrators were supporters of a losing candidate in Sudan's April 11-15 elections. He said the supporters took to the streets after vote results - which showed their candidate losing the election - were announced by election officials in Bentiu and not in the capital Khartoum, leading them to suspect vote fraud. There are fears that a flawed vote could fuel violence in the conflict-strewn country. Election monitors have said the elections failed to meet international standards.
Posted by biginla
at 8:19 PM BST
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