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Joint Task Force attacks Niger Delta Villages. Killing civilians and burning down houses in Gbaramatu kingdom.Joint Task Force attacks Niger Delta Villages. Killing civilians and burning down... more
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AKRON, Ohio — An Ohio man said he chipped away loose material to prepare a pothole for repair and thought he was helping the city, not breaking the law. Police charged Stacy with criminal damaging, saying he destroyed fresh asphalt and ignored an officer's warning.AKRON, Ohio — An Ohio man said he chipped away loose material to prepare a... more
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The State of Texas has reached an agreement with the U.S. Justice Department to spend $112 million over the next 5 year to improve the state's 13 residential facilities for the mentally disabled. The agreement seeks to address complaints and concerns held by state leaders, families and advocacy groups over incidents that have taken place at the schools; including ones recently reported by ABC News including a 'fight club' allegedly run by employees of a Texas state school who forced mentally disabled residents to brawl and another case in which a 15 year-old resident of another Texas school committed suicide.
The settlement brings much-needed closure to a sad chapter in our state's history,' said State Senator Jane Nelson, R-Flower Mound. "Abuse and neglect of our most vulnerable citizens must never be tolerated."The State of Texas has reached an agreement with the U.S. Justice Department to spend... more
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NASA's triumphant mission to repair the Hubble Space Telescope this week has cracked open a policy rift within the space agency, with a top NASA scientist saying that the United States is on the way to losing the capability of doing what it has just done so dramatically.
David Leckrone, the senior project scientist for the Hubble, said NASA's new strategy for the post-space shuttle era does not include servicing scientific instruments in space, and he fears that vast amounts of accumulated knowledge and technical expertise will quickly vanish.NASA's triumphant mission to repair the Hubble Space Telescope this week has... more
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From 2003 to 2008, Nuhu Ribadu was Chairman of Nigeria's Economic and Financial Crimes Commission. Over the course of his career, he charged many of Nigeria's bankers, politicians and former ministers of corruption and money laundering. As a result, he was eventually fired and exiled from Nigeria for exposing corruption within the Nigerian government as well as other African governments. In this video, Ribadu testifies in front of the U.S Financial Services Committee on their role in aiding the money laundering practices of these governments.From 2003 to 2008, Nuhu Ribadu was Chairman of Nigeria's Economic and Financial... more
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MOGADISHU, Somalia — Hundreds of foreigners fighting alongside Somali Islamic insurgents have driven this week's fierce battles against government forces, which have killed more than 100 people, the U.N. envoy to Somalia said Friday.
Concern that the government might fall is mounting. Observers fear that if the al-Qaida linked insurgents seize the capital, they will gain a safe haven on the Horn of Africa.
The U.N. Security Council on Friday condemned the upsurge in fighting and gave strong support to the country's leaders. A statement approved by all 15 council members demanded that opposition groups immediately end their offensive, renounce violence and join reconciliation efforts.
Somalia's coastline borders an important sea trade route and the Horn juts into the Indian Ocean just below the oil-rich Arabian peninsula.
The government controls only one major road in the capital, Mogadishu, along with some government installations, with the assistance of about 4,350 African Union troops.MOGADISHU, Somalia — Hundreds of foreigners fighting alongside Somali Islamic... more
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A former Kaua'i mortgage broker who admitted to defrauding more than 50 people out of $30 million drove his truck off a cliff into a ravine in Washington state, killing himself today, the day he was due in federal court in Honolulu for sentencing, according to law enforcement officials.
The body of James W. Lull, 60, was pulled from the wreckage of a white, 2007 Ford Explorer Sport Trac at the bottom of a ravine at about 1:30 p.m. today, according to Sgt. Ed McAvoy of the Washington State Patrol. That was half an hour before Lull was to appear in federal court in Honolulu where he was likely to be sentenced to jail time.
Lull's attorney, Peter Wolff, a federal public defender, said he spoke by phone with Lull on Wednesday. Lull, who was in Seattle, indicated that he would be flying to Hawai'i in time for today's 2 p.m. hearing.
Instead, his body was being pulled from the ravine.
"Where Mr. Lull left the roadway it was about a 200-foot drop," McAvoy said. Officers did not find a suicide note from the wreckage of the truck, McAvoy said.
Lull declared bankruptcy in 2006 and moved to the Seattle area, where he was living when he was indicted in Hawai'i on charges of operating a Ponzi scheme that defrauded investors of tens of millions of dollars.
The wreckage of Lull's white pickup truck was reported to the Washington State Patrol at 1:15 p.m. by a trucker driving over the Fred Redmon Bridge on Interstate 82, about eight miles north of Yakima, Wash.
Lull's failure to show in court in Honolulu prompted the issuance of a bench warrant and spurred a manhunt by U.S. Marshals and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
Both agencies received word this afternoon that Lull was dead.
After crossing the Fred Redmon Bridge, Lull apparently drove into an open field and then through a barbed wire fence and onto property maintained by the U.S. Army Yakima Training Center. Lull then apparently drove his truck off a 200-foot cliff into the ravine where it tumbled and flipped until coming to rest on its wheels.
Lull, who maintained a residence in Kirkland, Wash., was under federal investigation for possible new crimes in Washington state and showed "deception" when asked in a March lie detector test if he had hidden assets from his victims, according to federal court papers.
Lull, a former Kaua'i mortgage broker, pled guilty last September to defrauding dozens of victims out of $30 million.
U.S. District Judge Susan Oki Mollway was originally scheduled to sentence Lull April 14 but ordered a month's delay after hearing from some of Lull's victims and saying she wanted more information about the extent of Lull's cooperation in recovering their money.
The rescheduled hearing in Mollway's court today ended after less than 25 minutes, when Lull's status changed from defendant to fugitive.
News of Lull's death was not reported until after the hearing.
Wolff, Lull's attorney, told Mollway that he had no idea where his client might be.
"I thought he would have been here," he said.A former Kaua'i mortgage broker who admitted to defrauding more than 50 people... more
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Thanks to the United States and its' illegal influence of its' government caused this. Hawai'i relys so much on tourism over half of the jobs in Hawai'i are based on Tourism, then comes Agriculture which is suffering. Hawai’i will suffer the most in population numbers with this stupid fucking recession. If not for the intervention of the American Government, Hawai’i would still be a self sustainable nation. What will America do for the thousands of people who won’t have jobs for the next 3-4 years because America is going bankrupt. Tourism fucked Hawai’i, with its’ lies, deception, and greed. Natives here are slaves for the White American Corporations just as it was since the early 1800s.
When Emmanuel Verdugo moved to the Big Island four years ago, there was too much work. He earned about $25 an hour installing tile and flooring in multimillion-dollar mansions, plus all the overtime and side jobs he could handle.
"It was booming. I thought it was going to last forever," he said.
Times have changed.
The 39-year-old Verdugo, of Kealakekua, hasn't been able to find a job since being laid off a year ago, and he's not alone. Verdugo was among hundreds in line at a job fair Thursday for the island's new Target ( TGT - news - people ) store.
While the state's overall unemployment rate is still lower than most of the country, the rate on the Big Island has soared in the past year because of the sharp drop-off in tourism and construction resulting from the nation's deepening recession.
It's been hard keeping up with bills," Verdugo said. "There's nothing out there. Nothing."
The island jobless rate hit 10.2 percent in March, which is among the highest in the state, and more than the national average. It's a staggering change from a year ago when it was just 4 percent, which is considered by economists as "full employment."
The statewide jobless rate is 7.1 percent, the highest mark in over three decades.Thanks to the United States and its' illegal influence of its' government... more
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WASHINGTON — Dick Cheney made clear Sunday he'd rather follow firebrand broadcaster Rush Limbaugh than former Joint Chiefs chairman Colin Powell into political battle over the future of the Republican Party.
Even as Cheney embraced efforts to expand the party by ex-Govs. Jeb Bush of Florida and Mitt Romney of Massachusetts and the House's No. 2 Republican, Virginia Rep. Eric Cantor, the former vice president appeared to write his one-time colleague Powell out of the GOP.
Asked about recent verbal broadsides between Limbaugh and Powell, Cheney said, "If I had to choose in terms of being a Republican, I'd go with Rush Limbaugh. My take on it was Colin had already left the party. I didn't know he was still a Republican."
Cheney, citing Powell's backing of Obama over Republican nominee John McCain, said, "I assumed that that is some indication of his loyalty and his interests."WASHINGTON — Dick Cheney made clear Sunday he'd rather follow firebrand... more
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A federal court jury on Friday acquitted the big chemical products company W. R. Grace and three of its former executives on all charges that they had knowingly contaminated the small Montana mining town of Libby with asbestos, then conspired to cover up the deed. Legal experts said the case was an uphill climb for prosecutors almost from the beginning.
Judge Donald W. Molloy refused, for example, to allow the jurors to see some evidence — ruling it overly prejudicial — including memos in which executives talked about the costs of people dying in Libby.
Marshalling the evidence was not the only problem for prosecutors, though. In late April, Judge Molloy denounced the star prosecution witness, Robert H. Locke, in open court, and raised doubts in front of the jurors about the practices of the prosecutors.
Mr. Locke, a former Grace executive, testified that Grace executives knew that asbestos was sickening people and that they actively worked to hide that knowledge. But after his testimony, evidence turned over by the prosecution showed that Mr. Locke had grossly understated on the witness stand how often he had met with prosecutors.
Judge Molloy told the jurors that the government had committed an “inexcusable dereliction of duty” by not providing evidence of that relationship sooner. He ordered the panel not to consider Mr. Locke’s testimony in considering the fate of one defendant, Robert J. Bettacchi, and to use “great skepticism” in evaluating Mr. Locke’s testimony about the case as a whole.A federal court jury on Friday acquitted the big chemical products company W. R. Grace... more
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Sen. Arlen Specter, in leaving the party that gave birth to his political rise and supported his career in the Senate for five terms, fired a parting shot at the GOP on Tuesday that infuriated Republicans.
"As the Republican Party has moved farther and farther to the right, I have found myself increasingly at odds with the Republican philosophy and more in line with the philosophy of the Democratic Party," he said at a news conference.
But Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele noted that Specter had no problem seeking help from conservatives Rick Santorum and George W. Bush in his last re-election bid.
"Is this the same Republican Party, the same rightward-tilting Republican Party that saved his hide in 2004?" Steele said. "To whom he went running and pleading for support because he couldn't make it through a Republican primary?"
Other voices on the right also objected to Specter's characterization of the party.
"I don't think there's evidence that the Republican Party has shifted heavily to the right," said GOP analyst Michael Barone.
GOP pollster Whit Ayers said, "It's hard to identify a lot of issues on which the GOP of today is actually more conservative than it was in 2000, 2002 or 2004, when it won national elections."Sen. Arlen Specter, in leaving the party that gave birth to his political rise and... more
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WASHINGTON – The Obama administration Wednesday asked Congress to end the disparity in penalties for use of crack- and powder-cocaine crimes, a stance sure to bring on contentious debate from the law-enforcement community.
"The Administration believes Congress's goal should be to completely eliminate the sentencing disparity between crack cocaine and powder cocaine," said assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer, who heads the Justice Department's criminal division.
Police proposals have called for increasing the penalty for powder cocaine rather than reducing the punishment for crack. Some Republicans and Democrats in Congress have talked more frequently in recent years about easing the disparity, with little success.
In 2007, the commission guideline eased sentences handed down to crack-cocaine defendants; then, over the objects of the Justice Department, the commission made the change retroactive.WASHINGTON – The Obama administration Wednesday asked Congress to end the... more
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The military agency that provided advice on harsh interrogation techniques for use against terrorism suspects referred to the application of extreme duress as "torture" in a July 2002 document sent to the Pentagon's chief lawyer and warned that it would produce "unreliable information." In 2002, Military Agency Warned Against 'Torture'
"The unintended consequence of a U.S. policy that provides for the torture of prisoners is that it could be used by our adversaries as justification for the torture of captured U.S. personnel," says the document, an unsigned two-page attachment to a memo by the military's Joint Personnel Recovery Agency. Parts of the attachment, obtained in full by The Washington Post, were quoted in a Senate report on harsh interrogation released this week.The military agency that provided advice on harsh interrogation techniques for use... more
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NEW YORK, April 23 -- Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke and former Treasury secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. threatened to remove the management and board of Bank of America if it backed out of its deal to acquire ailing investment house Merrill Lynch late last year, according to documents released yesterday by New York Attorney General Andrew M. Cuomo.
Kenneth Lewis, Bank of America's chief executive, told investigators he wanted to stop the merger because "devastating losses" at Merrill would be detrimental to his company, the documents show. But the threat from Paulson changed his mind, he told the attorney general's office.
Paulson said he made the threat at the request of Bernanke, according to the documents, out of concern about the danger to the wider financial system.
On Dec. 5, Bank of America shareholders approved the merger. Yesterday, a Bank of America spokesman said that "we believe we acted legally and appropriately with regard to the Merrill Lynch transaction."NEW YORK, April 23 -- Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke and former Treasury... more
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The Pentagon and Homeland Security Department are developing contingency plans to send National Guard troops to the U.S.-Mexican border under a $350 million initiative that would expand the U.S. military's role in the war on drugs, according to Obama administration officials.
The circumstances under which the troops could be deployed have not been determined, the officials said. They said the proposal was designed to give President Obama additional flexibility to respond to drug-related violence that has threatened to spill into the United States from Mexico and to curb southbound smuggling of cash and weapons.
The initiative, which was tucked into a supplemental budget request sent to Congress this month, has raised concerns over what some U.S. officials perceive as an effort by the Pentagon to increase its counter-narcotics profile through a large pot of money that comes with few visible requirementsThe Pentagon and Homeland Security Department are developing contingency plans to send... more
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President Obama's global warming agenda has been losing support in Congress, but why let an irritant like democratic consent interfere with saving the world? So last Friday the Environmental Protection Agency decided to put a gun to the head of Congress and play cap-and-trade roulette with the U.S. economy.
The pistol comes in the form of a ruling that carbon dioxide is a dangerous pollutant that threatens the public and therefore must be regulated under the 1970 Clean Air Act. This so-called "endangerment finding" sets the clock ticking on a vast array of taxes and regulation that EPA will have the power to impose across the economy, and all with little or no political debate.
This "Dirty Harry" theory of governance -- Do you feel lucky? -- is as cynical as it is destructive. And contra Mr. Markey, if cap and tax is killed this year, it will be done in by Democrats, many of whom are starting to realize the economic harm it would inflict. In March, the Senate voted 89 to 8 on a resolution vowing to pass a climate bill only if "such legislation does not increase electricity or gasoline prices."
That's called democracy, but for the Obama Administration such debate is an inconvenient truth. If they can't get Congress to pass their agenda, they'll use EPA and the courts to impose it. How lucky do you feel?President Obama's global warming agenda has been losing support in Congress, but... more
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WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The "morning-after pill" will be available without a prescription to women 17 and older, the Food and Drug Administration said Wednesday. The minimum age has been 18.
Plan B, also called the morning-after pill, is intended to prevent pregnancy after unprotected sex.
On March 23, a federal court ordered that Plan B, an emergency contraception pill, be made available over the counter to those 17 and up, the agency said in a statement on its Web site. The agency will not appeal that order, the statement said.
In the order, U.S. District Judge Edward Korman also asked the agency to consider whether the pill should be available to women of all ages without a prescription, saying that such a determination is best left to the expertise of the FDA rather than a federal district judge.
And he rebuked the FDA for apparently departing from its own procedures with respect to making decisions on the pill's over-the-counter status, noting the "unusual involvement of the White House in the Plan B decision-making process."
The plaintiffs in the case presented "unrebutted evidence of the FDA's lack of good faith" toward the application to switch Plan B from prescription to non-prescription use, the judge wrote.
"This lack of good faith is evidenced by, among other things, (1) repeated and unreasonable delays, pressure emanating from the White House, and the obvious connection between the confirmation process of two FDA commissioners and the timing of the FDA's decisions; and (2) significant departures from the FDA's normal procedures and policies ... as compared to the review of other switch applications in the past 10 years," Korman wrote.WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The "morning-after pill" will be available without a... more
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DAGGAR, Pakistan | Taliban militants have expanded their operations from the Swat Valley to Buner, an adjacent region they now control that is just 60 miles from the capital, Islamabad.
Young militants armed with automatic weapons freely patrol roads, while their superiors lead prayers in mosques, where they recruit other fighters to join their campaign to impose Taliban rule throughout Pakistan.
Pir Baba is one such mosque. Named after a revered Sufi saint from the region, an adjacent shrine used to be visited daily by worshippers from all across the country.
However, they are no longer allowed to visit the shrine because the Taliban say Pir Baba devotees were involved in un-Islamic practices.
The Taliban expansion to Buner and elsewhere in Pakistan is happening rapidly, well before the Obama administration can begin implementing its regional strategy that depends on the Pakistani government's willingness to fight the militants.
Speaking to The Washington Times at Pir Baba mosque, Taliban commander Ustad Yasir scoffed at demands from the Pakistani government to lay down their weapons - part of a purported peace deal in which President Asif Ali Zardari agreed to impose Islamic Shariah law in the Swat ValleyDAGGAR, Pakistan | Taliban militants have expanded their operations from the Swat... more
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WASHINGTON, April 22 (Reuters) - President Barack Obama came under strong criticism on Wednesday for leaving the door open to the prosecution of former Bush administration officials who authorized severe CIA interrogation procedures.
Obama's decision to release classified memos last Thursday that detailed aggressive techniques on terrorism suspects, including waterboarding, sleep deprivation and forced nudity, has triggered a political firestorm in Washington.
Politicians on the left are eager to launch investigations into the Bush-era policies that were part of the effort to prevent a repeat of the Sept. 11 attacks, while those on the right said Obama seems to be breaking a pledge to look forward, not review the past.
Karl Rove, who was a top aide to former President George W. Bush, accused Obama of seeking to conduct "show trials" a day after the president left open the possibility of prosecuting officials who provided legal analysis of interrogation procedures.
Rove told Reuters: "If the Obama administration insists on criminalizing policy disagreements, how can they place any limits on who they prosecute?"
"Everyone in the interrogation process would have to be treated the same," he said, including the CIA agents, the physicians who monitored interrogation sessions, and the lawyers who researched and wrote the memos.WASHINGTON, April 22 (Reuters) - President Barack Obama came under strong criticism on... more
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WASHINGTON (CNN) -- A former head of the CIA slammed President Obama on Sunday for releasing four Bush-era memos, saying the new president has compromised national security.
Former CIA chief Michael Hayden said Sunday it is wrong to make interrogation methods public.
Michael Hayden, who served as former President Bush's last CIA director from 2006 to 2009, said releasing the memos outlining terror interrogation methods emboldened terrorist groups such as al Qaeda.
"What we have described for our enemies in the midst of a war are the outer limits that any American would ever go to in terms of interrogating an al Qaeda terrorist. That's very valuable information," Hayden said during an appearance on "Fox News Sunday."
"By taking [certain] techniques off the table, we have made it more difficult -- in a whole host of circumstances I can imagine -- for CIA officers to defend the nation."
But Sens. Claire McCaskill, D-Missouri, and Lindsey Graham, R-South Carolina, said certain techniques should not have been allowed in the first place. McCaskill called them "a great recruitment tool for those who want to do harm to our country."
White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel dismissed Hayden's assertion that releasing the memos had undermined U.S. intelligence efforts by giving al Qaeda critical new information.
"One of the reasons the president was willing to let this information out was that already the information was out," he said on ABC's "This Week."
"Go get the New York Review of Books. It's there."WASHINGTON (CNN) -- A former head of the CIA slammed President Obama on Sunday for... more
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