Looks like the pressure applied by progressive groups like Credo Action, MoveOn and Progressive Change Campaign Committee really helped. But this is only the beginning. We all know the banks are applying all the leverage they can to block any threat of accountability, and they’re not going to give up. We’ll stay on top of this and what’s happening in other states — like NY AG Eric Schneiderman’s investigation into mortgage bank fraud: California Atty. Gen. Kamala Harris will no longer take part in a national foreclosure probe of some of the nation’s biggest banks, which are accused of pervasive misconduct in dealing with troubled homeowners. Harris removed herself from talks by a coalition of state attorneys general and federal agencies investigating abusive foreclosure practices because the nation’s five largest mortgage servicers were not offering California homeowners relief commensurate to what people in the state had suffered , Harris told The Times on Friday. The big banks were also demanding to be granted overly broad immunity from legal claims that could potentially derail further investigations into Wall Street’s role in the mortgage meltdown, Harris said. “It has been a process of negotiating and sitting at a table in good faith, but ultimately I have decided that we have to go our own course and take an independent path. And that decision is because we need to bring relief to Californians that is equal to the pain California experienced, and what is being negotiated now is insufficient,” Harris told The Times in an interview. Harris delivered the news in a letter sent Friday to Iowa Atty. Gen. Tom Miller, who has been leading the 50-state coalition. Iowa Atty. Gen. Tom Miller, who has been leading the negotiations, vowed to press on. “California has been an important part of our team and has made a significant contribution to this case,” Miller said in a statement. “However, the multistate effort is pressing forward and we fully expect to reach a settlement with the banks.” The removal of California from the discussions is a major blow to fraying efforts by the coalition, which has been trying to strike a settlement deal with the big banks for months. The move by Harris to reject the settlement talks is also a key departure from efforts by the Obama administration , which has been pushing for a fast resolution to the so-called robo-signing scandal that erupted last year. “This whole concept of a settlement on foreclosure abuse is probably dead,” said Christopher Whalen, the founder of Institutional Risk Analytics. “Nobody in their right mind is going to opt into a settlement right now.”
Continue reading …
New revelations have emerged about the notorious Oxford club, including claims of fist fights, cocaine and trashed restaurants The chancellor of the exchequer endeavours to present a sober and serious image as a man who can steer us through crisis. But it seems that George Osborne was not always so buttoned up. New details have emerged of Osborne’s wild university days as a member of the notorious Bullingdon Club. The all-male dining club, which the prime minister, David Cameron, also belonged to as an undergraduate, is open only to sons of aristocratic families or the super-rich and is famed for its riotous behaviour. A 1992 photograph of Osborne in tie and tails with his fellow members, including the multimillionaire financier Nat Rothschild, has been much reproduced. Osborne, who belonged to the Bullingdon while studying modern history at Magdalen College, Oxford, in the early 1990s, has never spoken in detail of what he got up to as a member, preferring to draw a veil over his youthful antics. But in an interview with the Observer Magazine , one of Osborne’s Bullingdon contemporaries has spoken for the first time about some of the astonishing escapades to which the future chancellor bore witness. They include an alcohol-fuelled party which degenerated into a fist fight, allegations of cocaine use by another member of the club, and an evening during which the members trashed a Michelin-starred restaurant. The contemporary, who asked not to be named, said that on one evening in 1992, shortly after the famous photograph of Osborne was taken, the Bullingdon members boarded a double-decker bus to Waddesdon Manor in Buckinghamshire, the Rothschild family seat. “It started to get really out of control,” he said. “I remember Nat [Rothschild] being comatose on the lawn, being tended to by a butler who was applying cold towels to his forehead, trying to bring him round. One of the guys got into a fist fight because he was Italian and a football match was on and there’d been some racial taunting. Plates had been thrown. As usual, it escalated.” The source added: “I think George was mildly alarmed. He was enjoying the food and wine, enjoying watching the football and I just remember him looking at me with raised eyebrows at what was going on. I never saw him take drugs.” On a different occasion, with Osborne also present, the source recalled one Bullingdon member “trying to snort lines of coke from the top of an open-top bus and the bus was speeding along so it kept blowing away. I said to him: ‘You’re stupid, it’s blowing away,’ and his response was: ‘I can afford it.’” Another time, Osborne and the Bullingdon went for a meal at a Michelin-starred restaurant in Berkshire where, coincidentally, the comedian Lenny Henry and his then wife, Dawn French, were having dinner. The source said: “A couple of the boys started getting obnoxious and talking about their family wealth and Lenny Henry said: ‘Actually, sod off.’ There was a slight altercation when a member put a cigar out on someone else’s lapel and it turned into a fist fight and furniture was broken. It was horrible, horrible. We used to smash everything up and then pay a cheque saying ‘It’s OK, we can pay for it.’” Unlike many of his cabinet colleagues (including William Hague, a fellow Magdalen alumnus), there has never been any sense until now that Osborne was particularly involved in student politics. But the Observer can reveal that, as a 19-year-old, he did stand for the post of entertainments representative in his college junior common room. In fact, his electioneering was so enthusiastic that his rival for the position wrote a letter of complaint to the JCR vice-president outlining the future Conservative MP’s underhand tactics. The letter, dated 15 November 1990, accuses Osborne of “electorate malpractice” on several counts including “the dissemination of five different wordings of posters, instead of the mandatory two” and “the attempt on the part of Mr George Osborne to pervert the democratic process by electioneering in the JCR”. The letter was written by Rupert Harding, who won the election. Harding, who now runs a language school in Finland, has little memory of the event. Contacted by the Observer , he said: “Perverting the democratic process I think meant going up to people after Neighbours and asking them to vote for him.” Although Osborne no doubt abandoned such dirty politics as soon as he was elected the Conservative MP for Tatton in 2001, his friendship with Nat Rothschild continues to this day. In October 2008, Rothschild claimed that Osborne had tried to solicit a £50,000 donation from the Russian aluminium magnate Oleg Deripaska while on Deripaska’s yacht in Corfu along with Rothschild and the Labour peer Lord Mandelson. Such a move would have been a violation of the law against political donations by foreign citizens. A formal complaint was made to the Electoral Commission, which rejected the claims. George Osborne University of Oxford Elizabeth Day guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …
Senior commander of the Haqqani network, which has pledged allegiance to the Taliban, is seized in Paktia province A senior leader of a major pro-Taliban network has been captured in Afghanistan, the Nato-led International Security Assistance Force (Isaf) has announced. Haji Mali Khan, the senior commander of the Haqqani network in Afghanistan, was detained during an operation in eastern Paktia province earlier this week. Khan is “one of the highest ranking members of the Haqqani network and a revered elder of the Haqqani clan,” Isaf said. Khan had managed bases and operations in both Afghanistan and Pakistan, and moved forces across the border for attacks, as well as transferring funds and sourcing supplies, Isaf added in a statement. He was captured on Tuesday in Jani Khel district of Paktia province along with his deputy and bodyguard, in an operation by Afghan and foreign forces, Nato said. He was heavily armed but “submitted … without incident or resistance”. The Taliban, to whom the Haqqani network have pledged allegiance, denied that Khan had been captured. “I have just spoken with Haji Mali Khan, he is fine and is somewhere else and hasn’t been detained,” a Taliban spokesman told Reuters. “This is a baseless news and it has been released in order to weaken mujahideen’s morale.” Nato said it had arrested 1,300 suspected Haqqani insurgents and 300 insurgent leaders in 500 operations this year. Afghanistan Taliban guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …
Back in the 1970s, there was a lot of discussion about the way TV executives were grabbing ratings with female jiggle. “T&A,” it was called. The jiggle continues, but now it’s coming from somewhere else. So far, the hot new trend of the 2011 TV season is…dangling male genitalia. That’s full-frontal male nudity…hidden behind graphic effects. CBS was thrilled the September 19 premiere of its reboot of the sleazy “Two and a Half Men” drew gonzo ratings. After all the Charlie Sheen drama, how could his TV character’s funeral not attract a crowd? But that wasn’t enough for Chuck Lorre & Co. They had to debut actor Ashton Kutcher in the nude. First, Kutcher
Continue reading …
• Email scott.murray@guardian.co.uk with all your thoughts • Press F5 to refresh this page or use our auto-refresher • Click here for all the stats you will ever need • You want the latest scores? Click here While we wait: Why not take a trip down memory lane with this week’s Merseyside-derby-related Joy of Six ? Referee: Martin Atkinson (W Yorkshire) Liverpool drop Jordan Henderson for the first time in the league this season: Reina, Kelly, Carragher, Skrtel, Jose Enrique, Kuyt, Lucas, Adam, Downing, Suarez, Carroll. Subs: Doni, Gerrard, Henderson, Coates, Spearing, Flanagan, Bellamy. Louis Saha makes his first start of the season for Everton, who relegate captain Phil Neville to the bench: Everton: Howard, Hibbert, Jagielka, Distin, Baines, Coleman, Fellaini, Rodwell, Osman, Cahill, Saha. Subs: Mucha, Bilyaletdinov, Drenthe, Stracqualursi, Neville, Barkley, Vellios. Today’s brouhaha begins at: 12.45pm. But while the glory days have gone, the Merseyside derby has continued to deliver, the most consistently entertaining stramash in English football. Goals, red cards, thundering challenges, last-minute winners, outrageous tackles, penalties, kicks, stamps, slaps, fistfights, refereeing controversies, goalkeeping calamities, simulations of decadent nights hoovering up the jazz salt: there’s usually something for everyone. Thoughts turn today to Kenny Dalglish’s last involvement in a Merseyside derby at Goodison Park. That was, of course, the famous 4-4 draw in the fifth round of the FA Cup in 1991. Less than 48 hours after the final whistle, Kenny was gone, the aftermath of the Hillsborough disaster finally taking its terrible toll. His departure signalled the end of an era for Liverpool. Everton, too, were on their way down from the heights of the 1980s, during which the pair had taken turns to be the best team in the land. That seems a long time ago now, as Louise Taylor reports. Premier League 2011-12 Everton Liverpool Premier League Scott Murray guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …
Palestinian Authority accuses Congress of holding back aid to punish Mahmoud Abbas’ bid for UN statehood The Palestinian Authority has accused the US of “collective punishment”, after the US Congress blocked $200m (£128m) in aid in response to President Mahmoud Abbas’ bid for UN statehood. The decision to freeze the payments was reportedly made by three congressional committees on 18 August, before Abbas’ planned bid for statehood recognition at the UN the following month. The funds, intended for food aid, health care, and infrastructure projects, were supposed to have been transferred within the US financial year, which ends today. The Obama administration is reportedly negotiating with congressional leaders to unlock the aid. “It is another kind of collective punishment which is going to harm the needs of the public without making any positive contribution,” Palestinian Authority spokesman Ghassan Khatib told the Independent. “It is ironic to be punished for going to the United Nations.” USAid has already started scaling back its aid operations in the West Bank and Gaza, and there are fears it may be forced to end all humanitarian work and distribution of financial support to the Palestinian Authority by January. There are also fears the move could lead to a security crisis in the Palestinian territories. “Security co-operation with the Palestinians is excellent at the moment and we do not want to jeopardise that,” a senior Israeli military official official told the Independent. Republican Gary Ackerman, member of the House sub-committee on the Middle East and South Asia, told a meeting of representatives and leaders of Jewish organisations outside the UN headquarters on Monday that “there may need to be a total cut-off of all aid to the Palestinians for pursuing this course of action which is very dangerous and ill advised.” Former president Bill Clinton recently warned Congress to leave the issue of aid to the Obama administration. He said: “Everybody knows the US Congress is the most pro-Israel parliamentary body in the world. They don’t have to demonstrate that.” A UN security council panel on admitting new members to the UN met to discuss the Palestinian bid for the first time on Friday. After the meeting, Lebanese UN ambassador Nawaf Salam said the committee unanimously agreed to hold further meetings next week. Palestinian territories Middle East Mahmoud Abbas United Nations United States Aid Barack Obama guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …
Kenyan coastguards are said to have surrounded a pirate boat where the elderly woman is being held hostage Kenyan coastguards are said to have surrounded a pirate boat where kidnappers are holding an elderly French woman hostage after snatching her from her beach home. A group of nine armed men attacked the property near Lamu in the middle of the night after arriving by speedboat. Staff and neighbours reported shots being fired and said the gunmen had burst into the house shouting: “Take us to Maman”. It is the second violent abduction of a foreigner in three weeks. In a similar attack on 11 September, gunman attacked a British couple in their 50s on holiday north of Lamu. The publishing executive David Tebbutt, from Bishop’s Stortford, was killed and his wife Judith is being held hostage, possibly in Somalia. The Kenyan tourism minister, Najib Balala, said the army, police and coastguards had located the boat where the French woman was being held and had surrounded it. “Two coastguard vessels have encircled the boat where there are armed men and a woman,” Balala told Reuters. The local police chief, Adoli Aggrey, added: “We have deployed a contingent in the region. The army is already there and a police helicopter is in the air.” Bernard Valero, a foreign affairs spokesman in Paris, said the foreign ministry was in “constant contact” with the Kenyan authorities. “Our ambassador and his team will do all they can to free our citizen who is known to our embassy and very well liked locally,” added Valero. Kenyan police said they were unable to establish whether the kidnappers were Somali pirates, a Shebab Islamic group of a local gang but added the “suspicious” boat they had surrounded was heading for Somalia. The woman, who has not been named, is retired and had lived in Kenya for 15 years, returning only occasionally to France to visit her family. She was well known in the area where she spent half the year at her home on the island of Manda just offshore from the village of Shela, in the Lamu archipelago near the Somali border, where numerous wealthy foreigners have second homes. Locals said she was elderly and used a wheelchair. Jeremiah Kiptoon, who works on Manda, said he was woken by gunfire and shouting. “It was just before three in the morning. We were all sleeping and were woken with a jump because there were shots fired. The dogs were barking and people were shouting,” he said. “I ran to the place where it was all happening, but by the time I arrived the woman was already gone. Her house is close to the beach. Everyone was staying there shocked. The staff told us that nine men arrived in a speedboat and had burst into the house with guns shouting: ‘Take us to Maman’.” Somali pirates have frequently seized crew from merchant ships in the coastal waters off the Horn of Africa, but in recent years have targeted private yachts, snatching westerners and demanding, often successfully, huge ransoms. David Tebbutt, 58, a publishing director at Faber & Faber, and his wife Judith, 57, were staying at the Kiwayu Safari Village, a luxury holiday resort of 18 thatched cottages along a mile of sheltered beach, less than 30 miles from the border between Kenya and Somalia, when they were attacked. It was unclear whether the killing and kidnapping was carried out by Islamic extremists or pirates. A Briton kidnapped in southern Somalia in 2008, the environmental researcher Murray Watson, is still missing and a French secret service agent has also been held in Somalia for more than two years. The British couple Paul and Rachel Chandler were snatched from their yacht in 2010 and held for 13 months. They were released after a ransom was paid. The Lamu archipelago is often included in package holidays to Kenya, together with game-viewing safaris in some of the country’s national parks. Tourism is a key foreign currency earner for Kenya, east Africa’s largest economy. The sector had only recently recovered from the violence that erupted after disputed 2007 polls scared tourists away. Somalia, which lies in the easternmost part of Africa, has been without a central government controlling the entire country since it plunged into civil war in 1991. Kenya Piracy at sea France Africa Europe Kim Willsher guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Kenyan coastguards are said to have surrounded a pirate boat where the elderly woman is being held hostage Kenyan coastguards are said to have surrounded a pirate boat where kidnappers are holding an elderly French woman hostage after snatching her from her beach home. A group of nine armed men attacked the property near Lamu in the middle of the night after arriving by speedboat. Staff and neighbours reported shots being fired and said the gunmen had burst into the house shouting: “Take us to Maman”. It is the second violent abduction of a foreigner in three weeks. In a similar attack on 11 September, gunman attacked a British couple in their 50s on holiday north of Lamu. The publishing executive David Tebbutt, from Bishop’s Stortford, was killed and his wife Judith is being held hostage, possibly in Somalia. The Kenyan tourism minister, Najib Balala, said the army, police and coastguards had located the boat where the French woman was being held and had surrounded it. “Two coastguard vessels have encircled the boat where there are armed men and a woman,” Balala told Reuters. The local police chief, Adoli Aggrey, added: “We have deployed a contingent in the region. The army is already there and a police helicopter is in the air.” Bernard Valero, a foreign affairs spokesman in Paris, said the foreign ministry was in “constant contact” with the Kenyan authorities. “Our ambassador and his team will do all they can to free our citizen who is known to our embassy and very well liked locally,” added Valero. Kenyan police said they were unable to establish whether the kidnappers were Somali pirates, a Shebab Islamic group of a local gang but added the “suspicious” boat they had surrounded was heading for Somalia. The woman, who has not been named, is retired and had lived in Kenya for 15 years, returning only occasionally to France to visit her family. She was well known in the area where she spent half the year at her home on the island of Manda just offshore from the village of Shela, in the Lamu archipelago near the Somali border, where numerous wealthy foreigners have second homes. Locals said she was elderly and used a wheelchair. Jeremiah Kiptoon, who works on Manda, said he was woken by gunfire and shouting. “It was just before three in the morning. We were all sleeping and were woken with a jump because there were shots fired. The dogs were barking and people were shouting,” he said. “I ran to the place where it was all happening, but by the time I arrived the woman was already gone. Her house is close to the beach. Everyone was staying there shocked. The staff told us that nine men arrived in a speedboat and had burst into the house with guns shouting: ‘Take us to Maman’.” Somali pirates have frequently seized crew from merchant ships in the coastal waters off the Horn of Africa, but in recent years have targeted private yachts, snatching westerners and demanding, often successfully, huge ransoms. David Tebbutt, 58, a publishing director at Faber & Faber, and his wife Judith, 57, were staying at the Kiwayu Safari Village, a luxury holiday resort of 18 thatched cottages along a mile of sheltered beach, less than 30 miles from the border between Kenya and Somalia, when they were attacked. It was unclear whether the killing and kidnapping was carried out by Islamic extremists or pirates. A Briton kidnapped in southern Somalia in 2008, the environmental researcher Murray Watson, is still missing and a French secret service agent has also been held in Somalia for more than two years. The British couple Paul and Rachel Chandler were snatched from their yacht in 2010 and held for 13 months. They were released after a ransom was paid. The Lamu archipelago is often included in package holidays to Kenya, together with game-viewing safaris in some of the country’s national parks. Tourism is a key foreign currency earner for Kenya, east Africa’s largest economy. The sector had only recently recovered from the violence that erupted after disputed 2007 polls scared tourists away. Somalia, which lies in the easternmost part of Africa, has been without a central government controlling the entire country since it plunged into civil war in 1991. Kenya Piracy at sea France Africa Europe Kim Willsher guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …
A senior Tory MP has criticised plans as ‘piecemeal’, while John Redwood says the chancellor cannot stick to tax promises The Tory party has been hit by a row over its economic strategy on the eve of the Conservative party conference with a senior backbencher attacking George Osborne’s plans as “piecemeal” and in need of “radical improvement”. Andrew Tyrie, the influential chairman of the Treasury select committee, said the government still did not have a “coherent and credible” plan for growth and questioned government initiatives such as David Cameron’s “big society”. “There is much to do, and it is not just a question of gaps in policy,” Tyrie said. “A coherent and credible plan for the long-term economic growth rate of the UK economy is needed,” he told the Times. Osborne also came under fire from John Redwood, the co-chairman of the Conservative party’s police review group in economic competitiveness. Redwood told BBC News that he did not think Osborne would be able to stick to his promise, outlined in the Daily Telegraph, that there would be no tax cuts before the next election. He said Osborne would have to backtrack to ensure the UK retained its “competitiveness”. He added: “I think Andrew Tyrie speaks for a lot of Conservatives when he says that he thinks that some of the spending priorities are not appropriate for current austerity Britain and that we need to make stronger strides to get the deficit down by controlling spending. “I think the £30bn increase in current public spending last year was rather a large increase in the circumstances.” He added that Tyrie’s views on tax would also be shared by party members. “If we’re going to tax the rich more and get more money in from a growing economy we need to set competitive rates.” Tyrie went further in his attack on his party’s policies, branding some of them “irrelevant” and “contradictory”. He said “The big society, localism, the green strategy – whether right or wrong, these and other initiatives have seemed at best irrelevant to the task in hand, if not downright contradictory to it; likewise the huge spending hike on overseas aid and the cost of the Libyan expedition.” Speaking before the release of a report he has written for the Centre for Policy Studies, Tyrie said current policy did not “adequately recognise” the fact that “the age of abundance has been replaced by the age of austerity”. He strongly supported the government’s line on tackling the immediate crisis, it was reported. But he said the government had “a long way to go” to arrive at a coherent strategy for securing better economic performance in the long term. Will Hutton, a leading commentator on the economy who believes the government should invest its way out of the recession, said Tyrie’s criticism of the government’s economic strategy was justified. “You have to do more than tax cuts, you have to lay a whole story out – that the UK is the place [to invest],” he told BBC News. Hutton, who chairs the Big Innovation Centre, a partnership of 10 global companies including Google and GlaxoSmithKline , said the government needed to put more energy and long-term thought into making Britain a home for new sectors, for instance technology. “It is this sense of lack of mobilisation, lack of sense of purpose that is dismaying everyone,” he said. He said the coalition was failing to avail of cheap finance – bond yields were now the lowest since the 1990s enabling Britain to borrow at “unbelievably low rates”. Conservatives George Osborne Economic growth (GDP) Conservative conference 2010 Conservative conference 2011 Economics Lisa O’Carroll guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …A senior Tory MP has criticised plans as ‘piecemeal’, while John Redwood says the chancellor cannot stick to tax promises The Tory party has been hit by a row over its economic strategy on the eve of the Conservative party conference with a senior backbencher attacking George Osborne’s plans as “piecemeal” and in need of “radical improvement”. Andrew Tyrie, the influential chairman of the Treasury select committee, said the government still did not have a “coherent and credible” plan for growth and questioned government initiatives such as David Cameron’s “big society”. “There is much to do, and it is not just a question of gaps in policy,” Tyrie said. “A coherent and credible plan for the long-term economic growth rate of the UK economy is needed,” he told the Times. Osborne also came under fire from John Redwood, the co-chairman of the Conservative party’s police review group in economic competitiveness. Redwood told BBC News that he did not think Osborne would be able to stick to his promise, outlined in the Daily Telegraph, that there would be no tax cuts before the next election. He said Osborne would have to backtrack to ensure the UK retained its “competitiveness”. He added: “I think Andrew Tyrie speaks for a lot of Conservatives when he says that he thinks that some of the spending priorities are not appropriate for current austerity Britain and that we need to make stronger strides to get the deficit down by controlling spending. “I think the £30bn increase in current public spending last year was rather a large increase in the circumstances.” He added that Tyrie’s views on tax would also be shared by party members. “If we’re going to tax the rich more and get more money in from a growing economy we need to set competitive rates.” Tyrie went further in his attack on his party’s policies, branding some of them “irrelevant” and “contradictory”. He said “The big society, localism, the green strategy – whether right or wrong, these and other initiatives have seemed at best irrelevant to the task in hand, if not downright contradictory to it; likewise the huge spending hike on overseas aid and the cost of the Libyan expedition.” Speaking before the release of a report he has written for the Centre for Policy Studies, Tyrie said current policy did not “adequately recognise” the fact that “the age of abundance has been replaced by the age of austerity”. He strongly supported the government’s line on tackling the immediate crisis, it was reported. But he said the government had “a long way to go” to arrive at a coherent strategy for securing better economic performance in the long term. Will Hutton, a leading commentator on the economy who believes the government should invest its way out of the recession, said Tyrie’s criticism of the government’s economic strategy was justified. “You have to do more than tax cuts, you have to lay a whole story out – that the UK is the place [to invest],” he told BBC News. Hutton, who chairs the Big Innovation Centre, a partnership of 10 global companies including Google and GlaxoSmithKline , said the government needed to put more energy and long-term thought into making Britain a home for new sectors, for instance technology. “It is this sense of lack of mobilisation, lack of sense of purpose that is dismaying everyone,” he said. He said the coalition was failing to avail of cheap finance – bond yields were now the lowest since the 1990s enabling Britain to borrow at “unbelievably low rates”. Conservatives George Osborne Economic growth (GDP) Conservative conference 2010 Conservative conference 2011 Economics Lisa O’Carroll guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …