In a collision of 21st century media and 1970s political reforms, the inquiry hints at a showdown over press freedoms for bloggers, whose self-published journals can shift between news reporting, opinion writing, political organizing and campaign fundraising.
State officials are downplaying any possible media rights conflict, pointing out that regulators have already exempted journalistic blogging from previous guidelines for online campaign activity.
Regulation: The Community Reinvestment Act is to blame for the financial crisis, but it so powerfully serves Democrats’ interests that they’ll do anything to protect it — including revising history. ...
Two bills in the House would be a good place to start. HR 7264, which has nine co-sponsors, would repeal the CRA. And HR 7094, with 17 co-sponsors, would dissolve Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
Those of you who would like to play a part:
I notice that Mark Udall is moving on the the senate and has stopped taking emails at his house address. Figures. I’ll try to remind everyone when the new members are sworn in.
Gunmen seized the Kenya-bound MV Faina, carrying 33 tanks, grenade launchers and ammunition, on 24 September.
A pirate spokesman said releasing the ship was “a matter of time”, but gave no details of a ransom payment.
The Home Secretary told the BBC that officers had to be allowed to “follow the evidence where they need to”, and denied that she had been informed by police in advance about plans to arrest and interrogate Damian Green. ...
...Mr Green was held and questioned for nine hours on Thursday “on suspicion of conspiring to commit misconduct in a public office and aiding and abetting, counselling or procuring misconduct in a public office”.
His homes and offices, including in the House of Commons, were searched and his computer, phone and other communications equipment seized in the raids. ...
... “This started as an investigation of a systematic series of leaks from a department that deals with some of the most sensitive and confidential information in government.
“There are four leaks that are in the public arena. The point is that this started as an investigation into a systematic series of leaks about which, of course, it was not clear what had been leaked and what may not have been leaked.”
Chamlong Srimuang, a former army general who is one of the protest leaders, met with the chief of police in Bangkok to request that police officers join protesters in patrolling the besieged prime minister’s office, where the explosion took place, Thai media reported.
The meeting came amid growing fears of violence between protesters and government supporters, who held a demonstration Sunday in the heart of Bangkok.
But the meeting between Chamlong and the police also underlined the demonstrators’ impunity in carrying out their illegal sit-ins, which have stranded more than 100,000 travelers both inside Thailand and in neighboring countries that rely on Bangkok as a hub.
The most dangerous woman in the world?
Prosecutor Ali Akbar Heidari-Far said Mohsen Eslamian, 21, and Ali Asghar Pashtar, 20—both university students—and Rouzbeh Yahyazadeh, 32, would be hanged in Shiraz once the sentence was confirmed by the supreme court.
“A revolutionary court in Tehran has found the three main accused of the case to be ‘mohareb’ (enemies of God) and ‘corrupt on the earth’,” he said, without disclosing when the verdict was issued.
Using a particle accelerator, more associated with unlocking the secrets of the Universe than those of red wine, physicists at the Centre for Scientific Research in Bordeaux have teamed up with some of the great wine producing chateaux of the region and a wine merchant specialising in rare wines.
“We wanted to find some objective scientific method for analysing the wine and authenticating it in cases where it’s not entirely clear if the bottle is genuine,” says Stephen Williams of The Antique Wine Company, which bank rolled the VinCert project to the tune of £100,000.
The secondary trade in fine wine, with vintages dating back many decades or even centuries, now exceeds £1bn a year.
Zanele Hadebe from Umlazi was burned with petrol, as was Tamara Ramazani from Durban, while Ntombiyenkosi Sibiya from Umlazi and Thelma Pillay from Pietermaritzburg were allegedly murdered by their partners.
Still traumatised by her ordeal, 19-year-old Zanele Hadebe said she was grateful her life had been spared even though she lost her baby, when her boyfriend, Sphesihle Meyiwe, 26, allegedly set her alight.
Speaking from her hospital bed at Inkosi Albert Luthuli Central Hospital, Hadebe, who was seven months pregnant at the time, recalled how Meyiwe poured petrol all over her body, except her face, and set her on fire.
They said two British-born Pakistanis are under arrest. And another five suspects are said to have been born and raised here.
Two of the five were allegedly identified from passports found on their bodies. Captured gunmen are also said to have told police some of their comrades were from the UK.
The sources claimed two of the British are from Leeds, two are from Bradford and one from Hartlepool. All are aged between 20 and 30.
Mohammed Abushamma, 20, from Islington, North London, a science student at University College London, appeared at the Old Bailey. He admitted preparing acts of terrorism between March 17 and April 18. He was given conditional bail and will be sentenced at a date to be fixed.
Abushamma and Qasim Abukar, 20, from Tufnell Park, North London, were arrested at Heathrow as they returned to England.
It will be measured in hours.
The Mumbai police said the death toll had risen to 162 and was likely to rise again. The number killed or wounded was at least 438, they said.
Most of the dead were apparently Indian citizens, but at least 18 foreigners were killed and 22 had been injured, said Vilasrao Deshmukh, the chief minister of Maharashtra State.
Just 10 militants, the city’s police commissioner suggested Saturday, had caused all the mayhem.
“With confidence I can say that 10 terrorists came in,” said the commissioner, Hasan Gafoor. “We killed nine of them and one was captured alive.”
The lights are dimming on Northwest Colorado’s energy future.
Energy companies across the country are reducing their capital budgets, and there are issues discouraging development in the Rocky Mountain states, despite the area’s wealth of resources.
Moffat County has seen the slow down. Whereas it saw between 125 and 145 drilling applications in each of the past five years, only 42 have been filed in 2008 to date.
Jeff Comstock, county Natural Resources Department director, termed the change “dramatic.”
“These applications are typically good for one year, so I look at that as a pretty good forecast into what’s coming,” Comstock said. “I haven’t seen that kind of a drop since I’ve been doing this, so I don’t know what that will mean for the county.”
However, one thing is certain: The county stood to earn about $100,000 on a land lease with Pioneer Natural Resources, not including future royalties. Comstock learned Monday the deal would not go through because of the company’s budget cutbacks.
The market forecaster said the cities ranked in the top 10 bucked national trends of housing decline and showed strong sales and home appreciation.
The cities are also predicted to continue as strong markets in the future.
Grand Junction is the only city in Colorado with a housing market projected to grow, according to the report, which predicts 4 percent growth through the end of the year.
Mr. Summers is the right person to lead a Fannie-Freddie rethink because he so clearly comprehends what went wrong. In a July 16 posting on the Creative Capitalism Web site, he provided this succinct postmortem: “The illusion that the companies were doing virtuous work made it impossible to build a political case for serious regulation.” “When there were social failures the companies always blamed their need to perform for the shareholders. When there were business failures it was always the result of their social obligations. Government budget discipline was not appropriate because it was always emphasized that they were ‘private companies.’ But market discipline was nearly nonexistent given the general perception—now validated—that their debt was government backed. Little wonder with gains privatized and losses socialized that the enterprises have gambled their way into financial catastrophe.”
In a Post op-ed on July 28, Mr. Summers suggested that after the current crisis has passed, the government could divide the firms’ “functions into government and private components, the latter of which would be sold off in multiple pieces. The proceeds could be used to fund the low-income housing support activity that was previously mandated to the GSEs.” Whether or not that precise formula is best, Mr. Summers is clearly right that the hybrid public-private model no longer makes sense—a point that his future boss, President-elect Barack Obama has also embraced. Now all that’s left is for the new administration to place a high priority on fixing Fannie and Freddie, give Mr. Summers the assignment, and start working with Congress to make it happen. For a presidency that promises fundamental change, we cannot think of a more appropriate undertaking.
Meeting all SEC regulations and reporting would be a good start.
Boulder Time