tagged w/ Mortgages
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Gretchen Morgenson: "Fannie Mae, the mortgage finance giant, learned as early as 2003 of extensive foreclosure abuses among the law firms it had hired to remove troubled borrowers from their homes. But the company did little to correct the firms’ practices, according to a report issued Tuesday."Gretchen Morgenson: "Fannie Mae, the mortgage finance giant, learned as early as... more
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Cabal
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4 months ago
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The 14 largest U.S. mortgage servicers must pay back homeowners for losses from foreclosures or loans that were mishandled in the wake of the housing collapse, according to a consent decree released today.
The agreement between the servicers and U.S. regulators imposes more substantial penalties than early reports of the deal indicated. It could also help the U.S. Justice Department determine the size and scope of any future fines for the flawed practices, regulators said.
The banks, including JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM) and Wells Fargo & Co. (WFC), agreed in the settlement to conduct a review of all loans that went into foreclosure in 2009 and 2010. They also agreed to improve their foreclosure, loan modification and refinancing procedures by hiring staff, upgrading document-tracking systems, assigning a single point of contact for each borrower and policing lawyers and vendors.
(more at link)The 14 largest U.S. mortgage servicers must pay back homeowners for losses from... more
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Ad firm Adzookie is claiming that if people are willing to turn the outside of their house into an advertisement–effectively turning their house into a billboard–Adzookie will make their monthly mortgage payments for them. Though the above picture was created with Photoshop, and Adzookie has yet to paint anyone’s house, Adzookie CEO Romeo Mendoza claims that since the offer launched Tuesday, the firm has already received more than 1,000 applications. The qualification criteria from Adzookie’s website:
We’re looking for houses to paint. In fact, paint is an understatement. We’re looking for homes to turn into billboards. In exchange, we’ll pay your mortgage every month for as long as your house remains painted
Here are a few things we’re looking for. You must own your home. It cannot be rented or leased. We’ll paint the entire outside of the house, minus the roof, the windows and any awnings. Painting will take approximately 3 – 5 days. Your house must remain painted for at least three months and may be extended up to a year. If, for any reason, you decide to cancel after three months or if we cancel the agreement with you, we’ll repaint your house back to the original colors.
If you’re prepared for the bright colors and stares from neighbors just complete the submission form below. We review every submission. If your home meets our criteria, an Adzookie team member will contact you.
What the information fails to mention is exactly how high the mortgage can be in order to qualify for the offer.
http://www.geekosystem.com/adzookie-house-ad/Ad firm Adzookie is claiming that if people are willing to turn the outside of their... more
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Banks so poorly handled documentation on millions of mortgages that many today cannot prove that they own the homes they want to foreclose on. The resulting rash of lawsuits from people seeking to save their homes has one of the government's top banking regulators worried that the torrent of litigation will delay the real estate market's recovery.
Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation Chair Sheila Bair tells Scott Pelley banks should be forced to contribute billions to a clean-up fund that will help stressed homeowners stay in their homes and stave off lawsuits - there are 30,000 already - that threaten the
economic rebound. Pelley's report on this latest chapter in the incredible mortgage meltdown story will be broadcast on "60 Minutes" Sunday, April 3 at 7 p.m. ET/PT.
Like last year, banks are expected to foreclose on a million mortgages this year, a scenario that could generate more lawsuits over mismanaged paperwork. "I think that this litigation could easily get out of control," says Bair. "...We're already feeling like we're falling behind it," She thinks a large clean-up pool funded by the banks that would pay homeowners to accept a bank's ownership claim without a lawsuit is necessary. "I would assume it would be billions [that the fund would need]," Bair tells Pelley.
The problem of bad mortgage documentation emanates from the huge volume of mortgages and banks' failure to keep track of them as they were packaged and sold numerous times while the housing bubble grew. Oftentimes, banks skipped required paperwork, instead relying on paperless computer management.
Bair says banks were sloppy. "It was a matter of cutting corners, not spending enough money and not having quality controls."
Banks so poorly handled documentation on millions of mortgages that many today cannot prove that they own the homes they want to foreclose on. The resulting rash of lawsuits from people seeking to save their homes has one of the government's top banking regulators worried that the torrent of litigation will delay the real estate market's recovery.
Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation Chair Sheila Bair tells Scott Pelley banks should be forced to contribute billions to a clean-up fund that will help stressed homeowners stay in their homes and stave off lawsuits - there are 30,000 already - that threaten the
economic rebound. Pelley's report on this latest chapter in the incredible mortgage meltdown story will be broadcast on "60 Minutes" Sunday, April 3 at 7 p.m. ET/PT.
Like last year, banks are expected to foreclose on a million mortgages this year, a scenario that could generate more lawsuits over mismanaged paperwork. "I think that this litigation could easily get out of control," says Bair. "...We're already feeling like we're falling behind it," She thinks a large clean-up pool funded by the banks that would pay homeowners to accept a bank's ownership claim without a lawsuit is necessary. "I would assume it would be billions [that the fund would need]," Bair tells Pelley.
The problem of bad mortgage documentation emanates from the huge volume of mortgages and banks' failure to keep track of them as they were packaged and sold numerous times while the housing bubble grew. Oftentimes, banks skipped required paperwork, instead relying on paperless computer management.
Bair says banks were sloppy. "It was a matter of cutting corners, not spending enough money and not having quality controls."
http://foreclosuregate.prosepoint.com/story/next-housing-shock-60-minutes-sundayBanks so poorly handled documentation on millions of mortgages that many today cannot... more
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David Dayen, in a pointed article titled, “The Corruption of the Financial Press: A Look at Housing Wire” documents how that mortgage “news” site has extensive business and financial connections with firms and individuals at the front-lines of dubious mortgage industry practices and has repeatedly gone to bat for its biggest advertiser even in the face of criminal investigations.
Housing Wire’s proprietor, Paul Jackson, made this inquiry fair game in a recent post, “Follow the money: Interpreting U.S. Bank v. Congress” in which he took aim at the Alabama attorneys who tried defending a client against what they contended was a wrongful foreclosure, using the untested strategy we had mentioned on this blog, the so-called New York trust theory. The court rejected the case on narrow grounds (the suit was fighting the ejectment, a stage after the foreclosure; any precedent on ejectment actions will have limited applicability in Alabama and none in other states). But Jackson went further than arguing the issues of the case or the importance of the decision. Based on no evidence, he denigrated the attorneys involved, claiming they must have big money backers (and we separately dispatched his spurious charges):
(links at site)
In other words, everything is about the money, and if you can find a viable angle to make more of it than someone else. And I mean everything….. As a result, it would be fascinating to learn who really bankrolled the defense in this particular case. Sometimes defense attorneys will put up their own money to defend a case like this — it’s not unheard of — but it’s far from the norm.
With the benefit of Dayen’s sleuthing, Jackson’s post is revealed as a classic case of projection, in which someone attributes to others the very sort of behavior he engages in. Per Dayen:
What is Housing Wire, anyway? The principals of it and its parent company, the LTV Group, are Paul Jackson, and Richard Bitner. He used to be a subprime mortgage broker, and he wrote a book about it called Confessions of a Subprime Lender. Bitner has compared himself in interviews to a drug dealer for his career in the subprime industry.
The main shareholders in Housing Wire, and its publisher LTV Publishing, which is also an advertising/PR/marketing company, are:
Robert Jackson, Paul’s father and a CEO at Jackson and Associates, an REO (real estate owned; it means a property owned by a bank or government entity after an unsuccessful foreclosure auction) lawyer; Berry Laws, a partner at Martin, Leigh, Laws & Fritzlen, a foreclosure mill law firm out of Kansas, linked to robo-signing, which also owns a title company; and Benny Nassiri, the owner of Asset Financial Network, which specializes in foreclosure properties. Basically, someone cashing in on the misery of others. She has also worked with IndyMac, the collapsed subprime lender.
(h/t bystander)
So this is the group around Housing Wire: foreclosure firms, an REO broker and an ex-subprime lender. If it is indeed “all about the money,” there’s a lot of guilt by association here. All of these people make money off the broken housing market and its constant stream of foreclosures.
But there’s more. The leading advertiser for Housing Wire is, in fact, LPS (Lender Processing Services). You may have heard of them because they have been implicated in multiple criminal investigations for producing fake documents for foreclosure cases. LPS ran DocX, the company that sold “authentic” documents to foreclosure mill law firms at cut rates. And they continued this profit center even outside of DocX:
Questionable signing and notarization practices weren’t limited to its subsidiary, called DocX, but occurred in at least one of LPS’s own offices, mortgage assignments filed in county recorders’ offices show. And rather than halt such practices after the federal investigation got underway, the company shifted the signing to firms with which it has close business ties. LPS provided personnel to work in the new signing operations, according to information from an LPS spokeswoman and court records including an October 21 ruling by a judge in Brooklyn, New York. Records in county recorders’ offices, and in the judge’s opinion, show that “robosigning” and preparation of apparently false documents went on at these sites on a large scale.
In one instance, it helped set up a massive signing operation at the nearby office of a major client, a spokeswoman for the client, American Home Mortgage Servicing, confirmed. LPS-hired notaries who worked there said in interviews that troves of documents were improperly handled. They said that about 200 affidavits per day were robosigned during the two months the two notaries remained there.
See also here and here. Yet Jackson has repeatedly defended LPS, its leading advertiser, from these charges, minimizing their legal exposure. One of the principals of the company, Benny Nassiri, also lists herself as affiliated with LPS.
Here’s the point. Jackson has a habit of throwing around statements like “it’s all about the money,” but his organization really fails under that standard. It’s filled with people from the mortgage industry who obviously have an incentive to minimize the conduct of the mortgage industry. It also makes its money from the mortgage industry. This is part and parcel of the financial press in all its sleaze.
Our Richard Smith pointed out that Jackson’s “follow the money” standard meant Jackson himself was not reliable:
Taking guidance from this exceedingly dubious, indeed self-refuting claim (if it’s all about the money, we can’t trust Jackson either, can we?) is quite foolish.
I think we can now go even further, that if you listen to Jackson, you can assume it’s only the money talking.
via:Yves Smith Naked CapitalismDavid Dayen, in a pointed article titled, “The Corruption of the Financial... more
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Bank of America has agreed to pay US mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac about $2.6bn (£1.7bn) to settle claims it sold them bad home loans.
link: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-12108655Bank of America has agreed to pay US mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac about... more
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eva2
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1 year ago
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Whether a first time home buyer or investor with decades of experience, everyone likes to look before they leap. But with realtors interested in dealing exclusively with those actively buying or selling, it can be hard to pin one down. No problem if you have an internet connection and a few minutes.Whether a first time home buyer or investor with decades of experience, everyone likes... more
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eva2
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1 year ago
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— The house that set off the national furor over faulty foreclosures is blue-gray and weathered. The porch is piled with furniture and knickknacks awaiting the next yard sale. In the driveway is a busted pickup truck. No one who lives there is going anywhere anytime soon.
Nicolle Bradbury bought this house seven years ago for $75,000, a major step up from the trailer she had been living in with her family. But she lost her job and the $474 monthly mortgage payment became difficult, then impossible.
It should have been a routine foreclosure, with Mrs. Bradbury joining the anonymous millions quietly dispossessed since the recession began. But she was savvy enough to contact a nonprofit group, Pine Tree Legal Assistance, where for once in her 38 years, she caught a break.
Her file was pulled, more or less at random, by Thomas A. Cox, a retired lawyer who volunteers at Pine Tree. He happened to know something about foreclosures because when he worked for a bank he did them all the time. Twenty years later, he had switched sides and, he says, was trying to make amends.
Suddenly, there is a frenzy over foreclosures. Every attorney general in the country is participating in an investigation into the flawed paperwork and questionable methods behind many of them. A Senate hearing is scheduled, and federal inquiries have begun. The housing market, which runs on foreclosure sales, is in turmoil. Bank stocks fell on Thursday as analysts tried to gauge the impact on lenders' bottom lines.
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http://finance.yahoo.com/real-estate/article/111040/from-a-maine-house-a-national-foreclosure-freeze?mod=realestate-buy— The house that set off the national furor over faulty foreclosures is... more
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A crackdown on reckless mortgage lenders by the Federal Housing Administration has failed to root out several executives with criminal records whose firms continue to do business with the agency in violation of federal law, according to government documents, court records and interviews.
The get-tough campaign has also been hamstrung because, even when the FHA can ban mortgage companies for wrongdoing or an excessive default rate, the agency does not have the legal power to stop their executives from landing jobs at other lenders, or open new firms.
Read the whole story: Washington PostA crackdown on reckless mortgage lenders by the Federal Housing Administration has... more
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Opening a credit card from a store does more than get you a discount, it also hurts your credit score.
Equifax Blogger Ilyce Glink warns that opening credit cards hurt your score which is not worth it if you are looking to buy a home.
"The credit card I opened had only a $2,000 line of credit. I charged several hundred dollars worth of clothes and paid it off before the end of the month.
I saved 20 percent on the clothes. I cost myself thirty points in my credit score."
This experience also explains why mortgage lenders will pull your credit history at least twice between the time you apply for and close on your loan.
In today's new world of mortgage finance, lenders are tightening credit requirements. It's far more difficult to get a mortgage today than it was five years ago.
Even borrowers who have near-perfect credit histories with credit scores in the 800 range are being rejected for reasons that seemingly make no sense-like a small investment loss taken on a tax return, or an extra $500 deposited into a savings account that couldn't be adequately explained.Opening a credit card from a store does more than get you a discount, it also hurts... more
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Mortgage servicers regularly make errors and break the rules of the government's mortgage modification program, according to hundreds of homeowners who responded to a ProPublica questionnaire.
For example, all homeowners who are rejected are supposed to receive a formal denial from their mortgage servicer, according to the program's rules. But 136 homeowners reported that they had been rejected from the program without receiving a formal denial. Additionally, homeowners reported more than 1,000 instances of mortgage servicer errors, including losing documents and giving false information.Mortgage servicers regularly make errors and break the rules of the government's... more
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's_newest_housing_nightmare/
Borrowers are getting screwed again as bailed-out banks send their foreclosure dirty work to con artists with a history of breaking the law.
LATE ONE NIGHT IN February 2009, Ariane Ice sat poring over records on the website of Florida's Palm Beach County. She'd been at it for weeks, forsaking sleep to sift through thousands of legal documents. She and her husband, Tom, an attorney, ran a boutique foreclosure defense firm called Ice Legal. (Slogan: "Your home is your castle. Defend it.") Now they were up against one of Florida's biggest foreclosure law firms: Founded by multimillionaire attorney David J. Stern, it controlled one-fifth of the state's booming market in foreclosure-related services. Ice had a strong hunch that Stern's operation was up to something, and that night she found her smoking gun.
It involved something called an "assignment of mortgage," the document that certifies who owns the property and is thus entitled to foreclose on it. Especially these days, the assignment is key evidence in a foreclosure case: With so many loans having been bought, sold, securitized, and traded, establishing who owns the mortgage is hardly a trivial matter. It frequently requires months of sleuthing in order to untangle the web of banks, brokers, and investors, among others. By law, a firm must execute (complete, sign, and notarize) an assignment before attempting to seize somebody's home.
A Florida notary's stamp is valid for four years, and its expiration date is visible on the imprint. But here in front of Ice were dozens of assignments notarized with stamps that hadn't even existed until months—in some cases nearly a year—after the foreclosures were filed. Which meant Stern's people were foreclosing first and doing their legal paperwork later. In effect, it also meant they were lying to the court—an act that could get a lawyer disbarred or even prosecuted. "There's no question that it's pervasive," says Tom Ice of the backdated documents—nearly two dozen of which were verified by Mother Jones. "We've found tons of them."
This all might seem like a legal technicality, but it's not. The faster a foreclosure moves, the more difficult it is for a homeowner to fight it—even if the case was filed in error. In March, upon discovering that Stern's firm had fudged an assignment of mortgage in another case, a judge in central Florida's Pasco County dismissed the case with prejudice—an unusually harsh ruling that means it can never again be refiled. "The execution date and notarial date," she wrote in a blunt ruling, "were fraudulently backdated, in a purposeful, intentional effort to mislead the defendant and this court."'s_newest_housing_nightmare/
Borrowers are getting screwed again as bailed-out... more
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From The Chat - "Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were playing catch up to not lose because the banks were going hog wild in packaging these dangerous derivatives. in deed it was the private mortgage broker country wide that conducted the main deal with Fannie Mae that got them into this racket."From The Chat - "Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were playing catch up to not lose... more
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As I was looking through a friend's pictures from last weekend's Halloween festivities, I came across a photo of a guy dressed in a cap and gown with a cardboard sign around his neck that just read: "F*cked". How very apropos. If the past couple of years have taught us anything, it's that the value of a college degree has diminished, and having one certainly doesn't guarantee finding a job.
But it's not just the lack of jobs and heavy competition that contribute to the dire state of our economy. Our spending habits and how we manage our finances also have a lot to do with this crisis. Last year, I produced a show with Vanguard producer/editor Sean Puglisi about how people in our generation are living in these current financial times:
Maxed Out (Video)
And this past spring, fellow Vanguard producer Lauren Cerre and I went to Argentina to see how the country came out of its own financial crisis not too long ago:
Thank You, Recession
It's now November 2009, and just a couple days ago we hit the one-year mark since Barack Obama was elected President. I still have the newspaper that Vanguard producer/editor Yasu Tsuji and I bought at the corner store near our office the day after he won the election:
President Obama just signed a measure that provides aid to the unemployed and expands a home buyer tax credit to stimulate economic growth. But at the rate things are going, we're going to need much more than that: the country's unemployment rate hit 10.2 percent in October--reaching double digits for the first time in 26 years. In the last month alone, employers dropped 190,000 workers from their payrolls. With numbers like that, it's no wonder we're applying for unconventional jobs that are very far from what we studied for in school. Every week, Christian Science Monitor contributor David Grant compiles a list of the week's top jobs, and below is last week's collection. My favorite is #1: I wonder if there will ever end up being a course for THAT in college:
1. E-mail Czar
Employer: Village Voice Media.
Wages/salary: Not listed.
Details: Needs a candidate who will “eat, sleep and drink email” and
increase Internet subscriptions from 750,000 to 2 million. Ideal candidate
will be a “goal driver, possess strong creativity and revenue producing
marketing ideas and the strongest of communication skills.”
Location: Phoenix, Dallas, Denver.
2. Entry Level Sales - Master Cutlery
Employer: Master Cutlery.
Wages/salary: $40,000-$50,000
Details: Salesperson will be challenged to identify new accounts, reactivate
inactive accounts and grow existing business for a company best known as a
manufacturer and distributor of “top quality swords, tactical and hunting
knives.”
Location: Secaucus, N.J., (pop. 15,931, median family income $72,568) hosted
the 2009 WNBA draft in April.
3. Deputy Columbia/Snake Salmon Recovery Program Manager
Employer: Bureau of Reclamation
Wages/salary: $80,402-$104,525
Details: Responsible for assisting in “administering and implementing the
Pacific Northwest region’s endangered species activities.” The position’s
primary responsibility is to “oversee implementation of actions required by
Biological Opinions and related documents for Endangered Species Act listed
species, particularly anadromous salmonids
Location: Boise, Idaho, (pop. 203,818, median family income $64,519) is home
to the Basque Museum, the only one of its kind in North America.
4. Animal Food Preparer
Employer: San Diego Zoo
Wages/salary: $11.42-$12.93 per hour
Details: Essential functions of this position include the preparation of
food for the bird collection, chopping various fruits and vegetables,
handling insects, fish and other food items as well as washing bird trays.
Selected applicant will be required to maintain live forage items such as
mice, lizards and insects.
Location: San Diego (pop. 1,264,263, median family income $72,407) is home
to the University of California - San Diego, whose mascot is the “Triton.”
5. Auto Dismantler
Employer: Tolpa’s Auto Parts
Wages/salary: Not listed.
Details: After the “cash for clunkers” program, auto parts store needs
immediate assistance to meet government required mandate of 180 days to
crush all vehicles.
Location: Remsen, N.Y, (pop. 1,958, median family income $41,042) is the
home of world-class luger Erin Hamlin, who won the 2009 World Luge
Championship, the first American to have done so in 16 years.
6. Brain Trainer
Employer: Learning Rx
Wages/salary: $15-$20 per hour.
Details: Are you sharp, smart and quicker than your peers? Need trainers to
work with adults and kids 4-5 days a week during afternoons and evenings.
Location: Chester, N.J., (pop. 7,282, median family income $133,586) was
once known as “Black River,” although the Chester Historical Society attests
that no one knows when the name was changed.
7. Professional Superhero
Employer: 7 Promotions Inc.
Wages/salary: Not listed.
Details: Looking for an Account Manager to add to an “illustrious team of
overachievers” at one of the “fastest growing privately owned sales and
marketing firms in Westchester County,” Conn.
Location: Danbury, Conn., (pop. 78,575, median family income $76,492) was
where singer Tracy Chapman spent her youth and graduated from high school.
If any of these jobs pique your interest, here's the Monitor page with full links, as well as links to past weeks' lists.
This week on The Real Recovery - a Current News investigation into unemployment and the end of the recession - the focus is on college graduates. If you have a story to tell - come get involved.
Recently on the Vanguard Blog:
- What Transformers 2 has to do with Japan's falling population - Adam Yamaguchi
- Why Should You Trust Us? - Mitch Koss
- My Second Tour of Sri Lanka - Mariana van Zeller
- Chinese Mobsters and Megacities - Joanne Shen
- The world: A dangerous place for do-gooders - Kaj Larsen
- The world: A dangerous place for reporters - Darren FosterAs I was looking through a friend's pictures from last weekend's Halloween... more
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tchang
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1 year ago
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It's the first day back at work in the New Year and the question on my mind is "Are things finally going to get better?" Well, unfortunately, a year's end is a pretty artificial time marker. And it seems the economy knows that.
According to speakers at the annual American Economic Association conference prospects for a big recovery anytime soon are bleak. "'It will be difficult to have a robust recovery while housing and commercial real estate are depressed,' said Martin Feldstein, a Harvard University professor and former head of the National Bureau of Economic Research." Additionally, national unemployment is still at 10% (as of the end of November, albeit with a slight dip from the previous month).
But come on, it's the first Monday of the New Year. Let's not get all pessimistic yet! Wall Street (though I don't think it's a good economic indicator) jumped 1.5% today.
What other signs are you seeing out there? Optimistic or pessimistic? Give us your 2010 predictions and the small signals you're seeing where you live. Leave your comment over on Current News.
Recently on the Current News Blog:
- Get to know Yemen: The new hot front in the war on terror
- China executes British national, flexes its diplomatic muscle?
- Five years since the tsunami
- Holiday news video round-up: Iran protests, British skiing and drinking, mud races
- How do you help Sebikotane, Senegal - Global Citizen YearIt's the first day back at work in the New Year and the question on my mind is... more
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