Greece entered a new age of austerity last night with central Athens in flames, shops and businesses vandalised and police hunting hooded rioters through ransacked office buildings and the tourist district in the shadow of the Acropolis.
-The Independent
“It is a mess, a mess on both sides.”The case against former IMF head Dominique Strauss-Kahn is aparently not going so well. Forensic evidence confirms that there was a sexual encounter between DSK and the Sofitel Hotel housekeeper, but her credibility is eroding.
According to the two officials, the woman had a phone conversation with an incarcerated man within a day of her encounter with Mr. Strauss-Kahn in which she discussed the possible benefits of pursuing the charges against him. The conversation was recorded.
That man, the investigators learned, had been arrested on charges of possessing 400 pounds of marijuana. He is among a number of individuals who made multiple cash deposits, totaling around $100,000, into the woman’s bank account over the last two years. The deposits were made in Arizona, Georgia, New York and Pennsylvania.
According to the two officials, the woman had a phone conversation with an incarcerated man within a day of her encounter with Mr. Strauss-Kahn in which she discussed the possible benefits of pursuing the charges against him. The conversation was recorded.
That man, the investigators learned, had been arrested on charges of possessing 400 pounds of marijuana. He is among a number of individuals who made multiple cash deposits, totaling around $100,000, into the woman’s bank account over the last two years. The deposits were made in Arizona, Georgia, New York and Pennsylvania.
-New York Times
"We owe, like, $1.6 trillion because the Federal Reserve bought that debt, so we have to work hard to pay the interest to the Federal Reserve," Paul said. "We don't, I mean, they're nobody; why do we have to pay them off?"
-CNN
Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
It's an indefensible industry. The situation is profit vs. public safety. The latter stands no chance over the long term.
-CounterPunch
The 2,000-foot berm collapsed about 1:25 a.m. Sunday due to “onsite activities,” OPPD officials said. The Aqua Dam provided supplemental flood protection and was not required under NRC regulations.
“We put up the aqua-berm as additional protection,” said OPPD spokesman Mike Jones. “(The plant) is in the same situation it would have been in if the berm had not been added. We're still within NRC regulations.”
-Omaha World-Herald
"We are determined and committed to supporting the defense of the Philippines."
-US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton
Del Rosario, with Mrs Clinton at his side, said: "While we are a small country, we are prepared to do what is necessary to stand up to any aggressive action in our backyard."
The Philippines has announced the deployment in disputed waters of its navy flagship, the Rajah Humabon. One of the world's oldest warships, the Rajah Humabon was a former US Navy frigate that served during World War II.
The Philippines has historically bought second-hand hardware, but del Rosario said that President Benigno Aquino has allocated 11 billion pesos (£157 million) to upgrade the navy.
Shortly ahead of his talks with Mrs Clinton, Mr del Rosario said that the Philippines was asking the United States for "an operational lease so that we can look at fairly new equipment and be able to get our hands on that quickly."
"We need to have the resources to be able to stand and defend ourselves and, I think, to the extent that we can do that, we become a stronger ally for you," he said at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
-The Telegraph
Lieutenant Noel Cadigal of the Philippine navy said two U.S. guided missile destroyers and a salvage ship would join four Philippine gunboats for gunnery, patrol and interdiction drills off the southern tip of Palawan island.
"We will also hold anti-piracy and anti-smuggling exercises and test the interoperability and readiness of the two navies in responding to various scenarios, such as security, disaster and humanitarian assistance," Cadigal said.
-News Daily
"It was not a home, it was not a block, it was not a neighborhood, it was an entire town..."
The New York Fed is refusing to tell investigators how many billions of dollars it shipped to Iraq during the early days of the US invasion there, the special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction told CNBC Tuesday.
The Fed's lack of disclosure is making it difficult for the inspector general to follow the paper trail of billions of dollars that went missing in the chaotic rush to finance the Iraq occupation, and to determine how much of that money was stolen.
-CNBC
"I believe that these firearms will continue to turn up at crimes scenes on both sides of the border for years to come."
-ATF agent Peter Forcelli
At a hearing before the Oversight and Government Reform Committee, which (California Rep. Darrell) Issa chairs, Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley said hundreds of weapons destined for cartels in Mexico were bought in Arizona gun shops. One agent, John Dodson, who took his complaints to Grassley's office, estimated that 1,800 guns in Fast and Furious were unaccounted for, and about two-thirds are probably in Mexico.
Another of the three investigators, Peter Forcelli, said that "based upon my conversations with agents who assisted in this case, surveillance on individuals who had acquired weapons was often terminated far from the Mexican border." Forcelli said that while case agents believed that weapons were destined for Mexico, "the potential exists that many were sent with cartel drugs to other points within the United States."
"I can't tell you the why" the surveillances were called off, Dodson testified. "Hopefully ... this committee can find out." But the committee did not ask that question of any of the nonagent witnesses Wednesday.
-MSNBC
Agent Dodson testified that "although my instincts made me want to intervene and interdict these weapons, my supervisors directed me and my colleagues not to make any stop or arrest, but rather, to keep the straw purchaser under surveillance while allowing the guns to walk."
"Allowing loads of weapons that we knew to be destined for criminals — this was the plan," said Dodson. "It was so mandated."
In one case, Dodson said, he watched a suspect receive a bag filled with cash from a third party, then proceed to a gun dealer and buy weapons with that cash and deliver them to the same unidentified third party. In that and other circumstances, his instructions were to do nothing.
"Surveillance operations like this were the rule, not the exception," said Dodson. "This was not a matter of weapons getting away from us, or allowing a few to walk so as to follow them to a much larger or more significant target."
The third ATF agent, Olindo James Casa, said that "on several occasions I personally requested to interdict or seize firearms, but I was always ordered to stand down and not to seize the firearms."
Casa said that "the surveillance team followed straw purchasers to Phoenix area firearms dealers and would observe the straw purchasers buy and then depart with numerous firearms in hand. On many of those occasions, the surveillance team would then follow the straw purchasers either to a residence, a public location or until the surveillance team was spotted by the straw purchasers.
But the end result was always the same: the surveillance was terminated" by others up the chain of command.
-MSNBC
“Mr. President, we have humiliated, hurt and wronged the Greek people. A proud people, full of fighting spirit. That’s why the people humiliate us now. We have hurt and wronged Florina. I feel the urge to apologize to the Greeks and my compatriots. We have taken human dignity away from them”, he includes in his statement.
-Protothema
A restructuring of Greece's debt — either with a bond swap or by extending maturities on existing bonds — looks increasingly likely to be imposed by European policymakers as a means of sharing the burden of Greece's crisis with the private sector, S&P said in a statement.
"In our view, any such transactions would likely be on terms less favorable than the debt being refinanced, which we, in turn, would view as a de facto default according to Standard & Poor's published criteria," the agency said.
-CNBC
Much of the public focus is on the nation's public debt, which is $14.3 trillion. But that doesn't include money guaranteed for Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security, which comes close to $50 trillion, according to government figures.
The government also is on the hook for other debts such as the programs related to the bailout of the financial system following the crisis of 2008 and 2009, government figures show.
Taken together, Gross puts the total at "nearly $100 trillion," that while perhaps a bit on the high side, places the country in a highly unenviable fiscal position that he said won't find a solution overnight.
-CNBC
A cursory investigation does not reveal the exposition of any sensitive data.... This time. Yet one thing LulzSec most certainly acquired was the user/pass combinations of all individuals affiliated with the Senate, and are likely currently actively downloading all their emails.
-Zero Hedge
"Occupy a public space."
Pentagon officials determined that one giant C-130 Hercules cargo plane could carry $2.4 billion in shrink-wrapped bricks of $100 bills. They sent an initial full planeload of cash, followed by 20 other flights to Iraq by May 2004 in a $12-billion haul that U.S. officials believe to be the biggest international cash airlift of all time.
This month, the Pentagon and the Iraqi government are finally closing the books on the program that handled all those Benjamins. But despite years of audits and investigations, U.S. Defense officials still cannot say what happened to $6.6 billion in cash — enough to run the Los Angeles Unified School District or the Chicago Public Schools for a year, among many other things.
For the first time, federal auditors are suggesting that some or all of the cash may have been stolen, not just mislaid in an accounting error. Stuart Bowen, special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction, an office created by Congress, said the missing $6.6 billion may be "the largest theft of funds in national history."
The mystery is a growing embarrassment to the Pentagon, and an irritant to Washington's relations with Baghdad. Iraqi officials are threatening to go to court to reclaim the money, which came from Iraqi oil sales, seized Iraqi assets and surplus funds from the United Nations' oil-for-food program.
-LA Times
The White House decided to use the money in the so-called Development Fund for Iraq, which was created by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York to hold money amassed during the years when Hussein's regime was under crippling economic and trade sanctions.
The cash was carried by tractor-trailer trucks from the fortress-like Federal Reserve currency repository in East Rutherford, N.J., to Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland, then flown to Baghdad. U.S. officials there stored the hoard in a basement vault at one of Hussein's former palaces, and at U.S. military bases, and eventually distributed the money to Iraqi ministries and contractors.
-LA Times
OAKLAND -- Former BART police officer Johannes Mehserle was released from jail early Monday morning after serving just over 11 months of a two-year-prison term given to the 29-year-old after he was found guilty of involuntary manslaughter for killing Oscar Grant III.
Mehserle's release at 12:01 a.m. was confirmed by a Los Angeles County Men's Jail automated notification system which sent out alerts as soon as the former Napa resident was allowed to walk free.
Although Mehserle was sentenced to state prison for his conviction, he was never handed over to the California Department of Corrections because of safety concerns. Mehserle's attorney Michael Rains successfully argued to keep Mehserle in Los Angeles County jail where he was held in his own cell and apart from other inmates.
Mehserle also did not serve the entire two-year sentence given by Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Robert Perry because of credits he received for time served. Mehserle was put in jail immediately after a Los Angeles jury found him guilty of involuntary manslaughter on July 8, 2010.
-Inside Bay Area
Rains said Mehserle was hopeful to find a job in retail.
He's had retail type work for a long time and sales jobs,” Rains said. “He also has technical knowledge on computers."
"He's gotten a couple of offers," Mehserle's attorney told KTVU.
-KTVU
Crows have been attacking police in the parking lot of an Everett Police Department precinct station. They've been swooping down and dive-bombing the officers as they walk to and from their cars.
Lt. Bob Johns said he recently was flanked by the aggressive birds and "got zinged."
"They're like velociraptors," Johns said.
One officer used his siren to try to scare away the crows, but it didn't work. The birds responded by decorating his car with droppings, The Daily Herald reported.
-Inside Bay ARea
The 89-year-old radio evangelist and president of the Oakland nonprofit Family Radio was taken by ambulance from his house Thursday night, a neighbor said, but his well-known, gravelly voice that led many believers to donate millions of dollars to his cause may never be the same.
"He had a stroke, it was on his right side," said the neighbor, who declined to give her name but said she and her husband helped and comforted Camping's wife, Shirley, as the drama unfolded Thursday night.
Her husband spoke again with Shirley Camping on Friday. "His speech appears to be a little bit slurred but otherwise he's OK," the neighbor said. "(Shirley) said he was doing good "... and the only thing that's affected is his speech."
-Inside Bay Area
The recent CDC Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report indicates that eight cities in the northwest U.S. (Boise ID, Seattle WA, Portland OR, plus the northern California cities of Santa Cruz, Sacramento, San Francisco, San Jose, and Berkeley) reported the following data on deaths among those younger than one year of age:
4 weeks ending March 19, 2011 - 37 deaths (avg. 9.25 per week)
10 weeks ending May 28, 2011 - 125 deaths (avg.12.50 per week)
This amounts to an increase of 35% (the total for the entire U.S. rose about 2.3%), and is statistically significant. Of further significance is that those dates include the four weeks before and the ten weeks after the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant disaster. In 2001 the infant mortality was 6.834 per 1000 live births, increasing to 6.845 in 2007. All years from 2002 to 2007 were higher than the 2001 rate.
-Counterpunch
We need to measure the actual levels of isotopes in the environment and in the bodies of people exposed to determine if the fallout is killing our most vulnerable. The research is not technically difficult – the political and economic barriers may be greater.
-Counterpunch
MADRID (Reuters) – Spanish police arrested three suspected members of the so-called Anonymous group on Friday on charges of cyber-attacks against targets including Sony Corp's PlayStation Network, governments, businesses and banks.
Police alleged the three arrested "hacktivists" had been involved in a recent attack on Sony's PlayStation Network, as well as cyber-attacks on Spanish banks BBVA and Bankia and Italian energy group Enel SpA.
The arrests are the first in Spain against members of Anonymous following similar legal proceedings in the United States and Britain. Police told Reuters all three men were Spanish and in their 30s. One worked in the merchant navy.
-Reuters
Anonymous also recently targeted Sony with a DDoS attack campaign in early April, but called off the assault after receiving backlash from Sony customers who did not appreciate the network downtime. When the network failed again due to the network breach, Anonymous issued a press release on April 22 that sought to dispel any notion that the movement had taken part in the latest PSN outage.
-Infosec Island
Some 4.2 million mortgage borrowers are either seriously delinquent or have had their cases referred to lawyers to pursue foreclosure auctions, according to LPS Applied Analytics. Of those, two-thirds have made no payments at all for at least a year, and nearly one-third have gone more than two years.
The Bilderberg group is one of the world's most famous clubs, it gathers bankers, politicians, industrialists, media moves and shakers, scholars and billionaires in a different location each year, usually in Europe. All the attendees share one condition of membership: discretion.
Created in 1954 by Prince Bernhard of Holland in order to bring together European and American elites, this annual meeting is named after the hotel of the Dutch village Oosterbeek where it took place for the first time.
-Time
Khalid al Falih, chief executive officer of state-owned Saudi Aramco, recently warned in April that at the country’s current rate of growth in domestic oil consumption, Saudi Arabia would burn a staggering 8.3 million barrels a day of its own oil by 2028. That is almost its current level of production.
-Globe and Mail
Russia, the one country actually capable of producing 10 million barrels a day, isn’t even at the table at the OPEC meeting. And it’s been Russia that has been adding the most to world exports over the better part of the last decade as OPEC exports have faltered.
Oil production in Russia, the world’s largest producer, rose to a near post-Soviet high of 10.26 million barrels a day in May. Unlike Saudi Arabia, which has been hard pressed to maintain even a nine million barrel a day production level, Russian production has been north of ten million barrels a day since September 2009.
-Globe and Mail
"It was a common practice..."
O’Brien is one of a handful of officials nationwide who began pulling court documents following a 60 Minutes story on foreclosure fraud that featured a Palm Beach County homeowner.
On Tuesday, Obrien said he rejected two robo-signed documents submitted to his registry for recording and plans to continue doing so.
“My registry will not be a knowing participant in this fraud against homeowners,” O’Brien said in a statement. “From today forward, lenders be on notice, the Southern Essex District Registry of Deeds will not record robo-signed documents.”
-Palm Beach Post
Details of the new deal to supersede the May, 2010 rescue have yet to be hammered out, but it assumes Greece's funding needs will be covered by a mix of new EU and IMF loans, budget deficit cuts including tax increases and state asset sales, and a "voluntary" participation by private creditors.
One possibility is that creditors would agree to buy new Greek bonds when old ones they hold mature, meaning that Athens would not have to produce the cash up front.
The managing director of ratings agency Moody's sovereign risk group said today it was hard to see how a private sector rollover of Greek debt would be truly voluntary and it would therefore likely constitute a default.
-Irish Times
(Reuters) - Thousands of Greeks have been receiving pensions despite being long dead, the Labour Minister said on Monday, promising to crack down on social security fraud that is costing the debt-laden country millions each year.
Minister Louka Katseli also said the government is investigating a suspiciously high number of people over the age of 100 and still drawing their pensions.
Data crosschecks had revealed that about 4,500 deceased civil servants continued getting their pension cheques, burdening taxpayers with more than 16 million euros (14 million pounds) each year, Katseli told daily Ta Nea in an interview.
Deposits have shrunk by about 13 billion euros since the beginning of the year. In 2010, they contracted by 29.1 billion euros or 12.2 percent.
With the U.S. at war on two fronts in the Middle East, local law enforcement agencies are feeling the squeeze when they go to order ammunition.
A decrease in supply has led to rising costs and longer wait times for police departments whose tightening budgets already have forced them to make personnel cutbacks.
Experts tell Gannett New Jersey it has yet to become a safety issue. But rising costs and a decreased supply have put a burden on law enforcement to stockpile ammunition, and that can be a problem during lean economic times.
-Associated Press
Whatever romantic notions we have about the pirates of previous centuries, there shouldn’t be any doubt that modern piracy is a stone-cold business. It’s an unlawful business and one detrimental to shipping interests and international commerce, but nevertheless an operation whose guiding purpose is commercial in nature. That makes Somali and other pirates largely the concern of workaday ships of commerce that ply danger zones, though non-commercial vessels are at risk as well.
Wherever piracy occurs, it’s the result of a confluence of factors (and it’s an age-old problem; early in his life, no less a personage than Julius Caesar was captured by pirates). The recipe for piracy is this: a seafaring but poor people who live near a prosperous trade route, combined with little or no government control of their territory. Somalia is a text book example. The country has not had a functioning government for about 20 years, and is essentially a lawless patchwork of quarreling warlords, tribal entities and terrorist groups lording over a population that gets by on about $500 a year per person.
Moreover, the Somalis have a long history of seafaring, especially as fishermen. As such, they have jealously guarded their fishing grounds for years, using their vessels to drive away foreign trawlers. As the government of Somalia melted into anarchy, this “coast guard” discovered new opportunities as pirates, and as they grew experienced, they started venturing further out and seizing larger vessels such as bulk cargo containers and oil tankers. Somali pirates are now known to strike in an area of roughly 2.5 million square nautical miles off Somalia’s coastline, which is an increase of about one million nautical miles from only two years ago, according to Geopolicity.
-World Trade
(Greek Premier George) Papandreou agreed to 78 billion euros in additional austerity measures and asset sales through 2015 to secure the 12 billion-euro bailout payment in July and meet conditions for receiving an additional rescue package. He agreed to make “significant” cuts in public-sector employment and establish an agency to manage accelerated asset sales, according to a statement released in Athens on June 3.
-Bloomberg
I spoke with a retired military officer two days ago, who is now working at a private corporation, even his job is in doubt. He too spoke of revolution. As someone who has written a book on Marx’s Politics and long been interested in revolution, now nonviolent revolution, I was amazed to have powerful conversations with two middle class people (out of three I talked with; the third is also for fundamental change) who had straightforwardly expressed the vision and expectation of violent revolution….
-GlobalResearch.ca
“I don’t see how Greece can eventually avoid some kind of default,” said Martin N. Baily, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, who served as chairman of Council of Economic Advisers under the Clinton administration. “It’s hard to see how you can avoid the need to finance this over the next five to 10 years.”
His sentiment was echoed widely among economists, politicians and analysts gathered here over the weekend for a conference held by the Council for the United States and Italy.
-New York Times
MyPlate is all about balancing the five elements of a healthy meal: fruit, vegetables, protein, grains and small side of dairy. About half of your plate should be fruits and vegetables, according to the new guide, while grains and protein should compliment the other half. The new campaign urges a full-fat dairy side with a lower-fat or fat-free alternative like skim milk.
-Yahoo! News
During his lengthy incarceration, Pratt became a symbol of the turbulent 1960s, and he gained the support of activists and politicians including former Assembly Speaker Willie Brown, then-Rep. Ron Dellums (D-Oakland), the NAACP, Amnesty International and many others.
"What happened to him is the horror story of the United States," (Attorney Stuart) Hanlon said Friday. "This became a microcosm of when the government decides what's politically right or wrong. The COINTELPRO program was awful. He became a symbol for what they did."
Pratt was born Sept. 13, 1947, in Morgan City, La., a small town about two hours from New Orleans. The youngest of seven children, Pratt was raised as a Roman Catholic by his mother and his father, who operated a small scrap-metal business.
"He had Southern, rural roots, hardworking parents who sent all of their kids to college," Hanlon said. "He goes to the military, fights and is a decorated soldier in Vietnam, comes back, becomes a football star in college.
"That would be an American hero," Hanlon said of Pratt's life up to that point. "It was different because he was black and he became a Panther and then the road went the wrong way."
Hanlon said Pratt had been spending half his time in the small Tanzanian village of Imbaseni and the other half in Louisiana. When asked why he chose to spend so much of his time on another continent, Hanlon said, "I think he felt he had tasted the worst America could give and it wasn't very good."
-Inside Bay Area
California was the top state for the crime in 2010 with 247, followed by Texas, 91; and Florida, 66. The bureau identified 747 cargo thefts nationwide worth $171 million.
Electronics topped on the list for type of item stolen, followed by “other” and food items.
All three commodities are relatively easy for criminals to sell after they are stolen with many of the goods being resold online, at flea markets, and overseas, the report said.
-Biz Journals
In both cases, prosecutors are seeking to learn more about documents unearthed by a U.S. Senate subcommittee report about Wall Street's role in the housing market collapse. The Manhattan D.A. is not seeking new documents, the source said.
The subcommittee report said that Goldman offloaded much of its subprime mortgage exposure to unsuspecting clients in late 2006 and 2007 as the market was starting to fall sharply. In some cases, the bank dragged its heels when clients wanted to close out their losing positions, according to the report.
The U.S. government is broadly investigating banks' actions in the years leading up to the financial crisis to determine whether executives' misdeeds made the meltdown worse.
One of the first big cases as part of the government's broad investigations was the Securities and Exchange Commission's civil fraud suit against Goldman last year over the bank's failure to disclose information linked to a complex mortgage security.
Goldman settled those charges in July without admitting or denying charges, but it did express regret for failing to disclose information.
-Reuters
Stocks extended losses after the manufacturing fell below expectations in May and the private sector added only 38,000 jobs during the month.
"Interest rates are amazingly low and that, thanks to Ben Bernanke, is driving everything," (Peter) Yastrow said. "We’re on the verge of a great, great depression. The [Federal Reserve] knows it.
"We have many, many homeowners that are totally underwater here and cannot get out from under. The technology frontier is limited right now. We definitely have an innovation slowdown and the economy’s gonna suffer."
-CNBC
Due to the classification of being a non-violent felon, Mehserle could walk free in the next few weeks after serving less than one calendar year of his prison sentence.
In Oakland and in Los Angeles, where Mehserle’s trial took place and he is currently being held, reaction to the news of Mehserle’s classification was met with shock and anger among activists and observers of the case.
“I don’t know how much more violent you can get than killing someone!” said Tiah Starr, an organizer with the October 22nd Coalition against Police Brutality, one of the founding organizations of the Los Angeles Coalition for Justice for Oscar Grant.
“It’s insane that he only did a year in jail and Oscar Grant is dead … it just makes no sense to me,” said Starr.
Sheilagh Polk, a former Los Angeles resident who moved to Oakland four years ago, felt that the charge of involuntary manslaughter never should have been an option. “Mehserle … should have been convicted of second degree murder; he pulled out his gun, cocked it, pulled the trigger and executed an unarmed, young Black man with full confidence that he would get away with it. And he did,” she said.
Davey D, a journalist and 20-year resident of the Bay Area, felt that the non-violent designation was just one more indicator of the justice system’s failure to work for African Americans. “At the end of the day, this is just a repudiation of Black life,” he said. “That’s what this all boils down to – the verdict, the picking of the jury, the sentencing – this is all a refusal to acknowledge and see Black life as something that is valuable.”
-SF Bay View