VA clinic dentist may have exposed hundreds to HIV, hepatitis for 18 years
US lawmakers were warned yesterday that allowing states to declare bankruptcy would upend the $2.8 trillion (£1.7 trillion) municipal bond market, making it much harder and more expensive to fund local government, and potentially destablising the economic recovery.
A House of Representatives committee was examining the extent of the financial distress in state and local governments, which has become a major topic of concern on Wall Street and among individual investors, and examining ways to prevent the need for a federal bailout of any of the lower rungs of government.
Riz Khan talks to Muslim scholar Tariq Ramadan and Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Zizek about the power of popular dissent, the limits of peaceful protest and the future of Egyptian politics.
“Egypt will explode. Army must save the country now,” the Nobel Peace Prize-winning former head of the U.N. nuclear watchdog said on Twitter.
Egypt’s people-power protesters, reeling with disillusion and anger after President Hosni Mubarak disappointed hopes he was about to resign, planned massive new demonstrations on Friday that may test the army’s loyalties.
Increasingly sour confrontation after 17 days of unrest has raised fears of violence.
At least 10,000 protesters have gathered in front of the building of the state television, while thousands others are setting up camps close to Mubarak's presidential palace, a Press TV correspondent reported.
More protesters are marching towards the presidential palace in Cairo's suburb of Heliopolis amid tight security measures by troops guarding the building, the report said.
In a televised speech broadcast by state television on Thursday afternoon, the 82-year-old president dampened widespread speculations that he would abandon power after 30 years in office, and instead transferred some powers to Vice President Omar Suleiman.
WASHINGTON — Lawmakers said they will consider tougher penalties, including larger fines and criminal charges, against mortgage lenders who ignored financial protections for active-duty troops and overcharged military families thousands in loan fees.
“You’ve broken the law, you’ve ruined people’s lives, and someone needs to take responsibility for that,” Rep. Bob Filner, D-Calif., ranking member on the House Veterans Affairs Committee, told officials from JPMorgan Chase. “This is not over for them. Something needs to be done.”
Last month, following news reports chronicling the problems, officials from JPMorgan Chase announced they would repay more than $2.4 million to nearly 4,500 military families who were overcharged for mortgages in recent years.
“For the first few years it was let’s take the conservative take on things. And then after a few years it evolved into, well it’s not just the conservative take on things, we’re going to take the Republican take on things which is not necessarily in lock step with the conservative point of view.
“And then two, three, five years into that it was, we’re taking the Bush line on things, which was different than the GOP. We were a Stalin-esque mouthpiece. It was just what Bush says goes on our channel. And by that point it was just totally dangerous. Hopefully most people understand how dangerous it is for a media outfit to be a straight, unfiltered mouthpiece for an unchecked president.”
The strange case of the disappearing Merrill Lynch research note...
"I am too angry to translate what he said," an Egyptian friend told me. "Surely he knows it is over for him now. Why is he doing this?"
Then the defiant chants started. The mood, which had been one of celebration, in minutes turned to anger.
A professional-looking man striding past me paused and said in English: "He is a stupid guy. There will be violence now. He is splitting the people and turning one half against the other."
Young men with Egyptian flags started chanting, and organised themselves into groups to march to the palace, several miles away.
Egypt's president Hosni Mubarak defied his country last night and refused to stand down.
Despite hundreds of thousands of people flooding into Cairo’s Tahrir Square expecting the 82-year-old to make way for a transitional government, he made it clear he was determined to cling on to power until elections in September.
Angry crowds jeered the president and waved their shoes in contempt as it became clear he was unwilling to submit to their demands for the end of his 30-year rule. Mubarak praised the young of Egypt and said the ‘martyrs’ who had been killed in the recent protests would get ‘justice’.
The furious crowd chanted ‘get out! get out!’ and ‘leave, leave dictator’. *Good photos at source.
Although Biden "supports Democracy" he somehow doesn't support the Democracy of the people who've risen to tell Mubarak to GTFOH.
The decision by Egypt's opposition groups to tap Mohamed ElBaradei, the country's high-profile advocate of democratic reform, to act as their interlocutor with the government marks the first real attempt to organize behind a common voice since protests began a week ago.
U.S. authorities are considering ways to tighten security in public areas at U.S. airports after a deadly attack in Moscow last month, John Pistole, the head of the U.S. Transportation Security Administration, said on Thursday.
The ideas included checkpoints before vehicles are allowed to pull up to the airport terminals, small security teams patrolling the grounds and using officers who are trained to detect unusual behavior, he told a House of Representatives' subcommittee on transportation security.
Bernanke's Fiscal Suicide...
How It All Began
Dylan Ratigan speaks with the mayor of Victorville, California, a real estate wasteland that became famous last year when dozens of brand NEW homes were demolished without ever having occupants. Another data point from housing bubble ground zero.
This is a really good summary and look at the big picture.
Stuart Littlewood views the weasel words of William Hague, British Foreign Secretary and life-long member of the ruling Conservative Party's Israel lobby, who has voiced fears over the non-existent Israeli-Palestinian "peace process" while studiously avoiding any mention of the need for justice for the people of Palestine.
(Share with all your friends who own radio stations!)
Eyewitnesses on Thursday night said the Egyptian army had troops pulled out of many locations near the presidential palace in Cairo, where they had been stationed since the beginning of the ongoing popular uprising.
Sources said army tanks had disappeared from Salah Salem Street, which is near the presidential palace and President Hosni Mubarak’s residence.
They added troops had withdrawn before today's meeting of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces from which Mubarak was absent.
The sources opined that the withdrawal of the troops could be a warning to the president that the army may not be able to protect him if protesters decided to march towards the palace.
I swear I heard a roar of anger from 80 Million Egyptians resoundng in Jerusalem after the long awaited speech of Hosni Mubarak. 80 Million people that were hoping to become the ‘ONLY DEMOCRACY IN THE MIDDLE EAST’ ….. but they will have to wait a bit longer.
Over the past few days, journalists working for Egyptian state media have orchestrated a remarkable uprising of their own: They have begun reporting news that casts the embattled government in a negative light.
The Daily Telegraph also reported that Mr. Suleiman has a direct hotline to Tel Aviv with whom he speaks on a daily basis.
AFP/Activist Post
WASHINGTON (AFP) - The United States, a veto-wielding permanent UN Security Council member, will use "the tools that we have" to block a resolution condemning Israeli settlements, a top US diplomat said Thursday.
"We have made very clear that we do not think the Security Council is the right place to engage on these issues," Deputy Secretary of State James Steinberg told the House of Representatives' Foreign Affairs Committee.
Months after top New York City officials expressed intense behind-the-scenes frustration at the security vulnerabilities at the United Nations headquarters in Manhattan, the U.N. is now planning to spend $100 million — donated by the U.S. — on the upgrade.
Barbour also spoke of the special relationship between the United States and Israel.
“This trip has reminded me that your country and the Israelis who inhabit it are our friends,” said Barbour. “I’m a Christian and I want you to know that there are tens of millions of American Christians who join me in recognizing that Israel and Israelis are our friends as well as our allies and partners.”
He noted that American Christians are “committed to a State of Israel that is secure, democratic, prosperous, and Jewish. Be assured that the overwhelming majority of American Christians are joined at the hip with American Jews in standing by Israel during this hour of turmoil or any other time of crisis. We believe in your nationhood and we believe in your right to secure, defensible borders.”
Add one more pill to the daily Oxycodone consumption by the Chair Central Planner. In what is about to become the latest headache for Bernanke, popular Chinese economist Lu Zhengwei, a senior economist at China's Industrial Bank Co., has advised that China should promptly sell its GSE holdings on concerns that continued "blank check" writing by Congress to the GSEs will be "almost impossible" as well as fears that as soon as QE2 ends, the entire US bond complex will see a major sell off. In other words welcome to the world of game theory defection: he who sells first, loses the least.
If China were to sell its GSE debt how big would be the damage? Pretty big: $500 billion worth of big.
Penn and Teller, the "bs" duo were paid 56,000 to appear at the UF student government "ACCENT" event that was held at the University of Florida.
Little did the duo know, activist and 9/11 truther Bob Tuskin was in attendance. Bob was able to film himself confronting the duo over building seven and 9/11 in general. It was painfully clear that they really had no idea what the facts surrounding 9/11 actually are.
In a response to a question from Tuskin, Penn admitted he's never seen the collapse of Building 7, a 47 story skyscraper. How is this possible? Why would they even attempt to debunk so called "conspiracy theories" without even looking at the full story. We cannot simply ignore a 47 story building because it doesn't fall in line with the official line.
AFP/Activist Post
WASHINGTON (AFP) - Republican House Speaker John Boehner on Thursday vowed the biggest budget cuts in US history as budget talks in the Congress heated up. Some of the cuts will be part of a House spending bill to fund the US government through the end of the fiscal year on October 1, replacing a stopgap measure approved last year that expires March 4.
Presidential sources say Egypt's three-decade ruler Hosni Mubarak has left the country, noting an address he is scheduled to deliver in a few hours is taped.
AFP/Activist Post
WASHINGTON (AFP) - The US budget deficit in January was $49.8 billion, a 16.8 percent rise from a year earlier but less than had been expected, the Treasury Department reported Thursday. The number was encouraging as analysts had forecast a figure in the range of $59.5 billion.
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