We all know how the story ended for the first “Sheriff of Wall Street,” Eliot Spitzer. CNN hailed attorney Preet Bharara as the “New Sheriff of Wall Street” in a puff-piece Thursday afternoon, and one can only wonder if his career path will eventually take him to a prime-time slot at CNN as a Democrat mouthpiece. Bharara was nominated by President Obama in 2009 to be U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York. In less than two years he has convicted 44 people on Wall Street for insider trading, thus earning him headlines and a complimentary title from CNN. [Video below the break.] CNN did not mention that Bharara was a chief counsel to Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) on the Senate Judiciary Committee, before he was nominated by President Obama. He also helped oversee the congressional investigation into the firings of eight attorneys by the Bush administration in 2006. CNN touted Bharara's record going after Wall Street but also online poker websites and the Times Square bomber. They did mention a common complaint of his critics – that he hasn't caught any of the big wigs responsible for the 2008 economic fiasco – but buried it deep in the segment and immediately followed up with a positive quote from a government official. Nonetheless, CNNMoney's Poppy Harlow praised Bharara as “taking down the Gordon Gekkos of Wall Street” and noted his “aggressive tactics that have people talking.” A transcript of the segment, which aired on June 23 at 12:56 p.m. EDT, is as follows: FREDRICKA WHITFIELD: All right, and now the moment you've been waiting for. The “Choose The News” winner. Meet the man taking on white collar criminals on Wall Street. Poppy Harlow has this story. (Video Clip) PREET BHARARA, U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York: Greed sometimes is not good. POPPY HARLOW, CNNMoney.com (voice-over): Taking down the Gordon Gekkos of Wall Street, Preet Bharara is making quite a name for himself as U.S. attorney for the southern district of New York. Professor JOHN COFFEE, Columbia Law School: From the standpoint of Wall Street traders who are thinking of crossing the line, they should view him as not just a sheriff, but Matt Dillon, U.S. Marshal. HARLOW: Tackling the biggest insider trading case in U.S. history, he's keeping the financial world on its toes. RAVI BATRA, defense attorney: I see what he's done as nothing short of throwing the neutron bomb on to Wall Street. HARLOW: In less than two years, 49 people charged with insider trading, 44 convicted, and eight sentenced. JEFF TOOBIN, CNN legal analyst: He is using these insider trading cases, not just to prosecute the guilty, but to use them as a warning to all of Wall Street that this behavior will not be tolerated. HARLOW: It's his aggressive tactics that have people talking. DANIEL RICHMAN, FMR. ASST. U.S. ATTORNEY: I certainly think the use of wiretaps is something rather new in the securities area. But, frankly, snatching hard drives is too. When the hedge fund guys start acting like mobsters, they get treated like that. RAJARATNAM: (phone conversation) And there's a rumor, that Goldman might look to buy a commercial bank. GUPTA: Mhmm. RAJARATNAM: Have you heard anything along that lines? HARLOW: What was that? RAJARATNAM: Have you heard anything along that lines? HARLOW: That's the sound of someone breaking the law. CHIESI: (phone conversation) I just got a call from my guy, I played him like a finely-tuned piano. HARLOW: All from wire taps ordered by Bharara. WILLIAM COHAN, Fortune contributor: That is sending a shiver through Wall Street. People are afraid to talk on their phones now or to text messages. All the — it has the desired effect. HARLOW (on camera): Bharara took down the man that ran this hedge fund, Galleon Group. His name is Raj Rajaratnam. And he was found guilty on 14 counts of insider trading. HARLOW (voice-over): But Bharara is taking on more than Wall Street. He brought down online poker websites that were allegedly involved in money laundering. He's prosecuting Bernie Madoff's cohorts and he sent the Times Square bomber to prison. But critics say Bharara has failed to take on any of the Wall Street big wigs. ROBERT KHUZAMI, director of enforcement, S.E.C.: It's not for a lack of desire. It has to do with the fact that the evidence is not there. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: If there are charges to be brought, he'll bring them. If there are convictions to be had, he'll take them. HARLOW: Something the SEC applauds. KHUZAMI: Both of us together are better than us separately. I think in this case, one plus one equals three. HARLOW: And when you look at his numbers, so far they're pretty solid. Poppy Harlow, CNN Money, New York. (End Video Clip) WHITFIELD: And if your choice did not win or you just want to check out the runners up, I'll have the links on them on Suzanne Malveaux's page at facebook.com/suzannecnn.
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A group of fans want to elect news anchor Brian Williams president forever, even though he has no interest in the position. Philosopher king much? Somebody’s been reading Plato! What compelled this quixotic group of young’uns to form the catchily-named Campaign to Get Brian Williams to Consider Running for President? “Brian Williams has the gravitas,
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Nine years after killing Surrey schoolgirl, former nightclub bouncer and wheel clamper Bellfield finally brought to justice Levi Bellfield, a convicted double killer, has been found guilty of kidnapping and murdering 13-year-old Milly Dowler amid emotional scenes at the Old Bailey. Immediately after the jury returned their unanimous verdict, Milly’s mother Sally broke down and had to be helped from the courtroom by her husband, Bob, as she collapsed in hysterics. Milly’s sister Gemma also became uncontrollably emotional as she left court, shouting “guilty” as medical staff were called. Their screams could be heard for several minutes as observers sat stunned. It had taken nine years for the family to get justice for Milly, with the verdict ending one of the largest police investigations of its kind. It began when she vanished off the streets of Walton-on-Thames in Surrey while walking home from school. Her unclothed remains were found six months later by mushroom pickers at Yateley Heath Woods, near Fleet, Hampshire, 25 miles away. Bellfield, who lived in a rented flat 50 yards from where Milly was last seen, had denied the charges. He showed no emotion as the guilty verdict was read out, and gave a large yawn as he was led from the dock. The jury are still deliberating on a charge of the attempted abduction of another girl, Rachel Cowles, then 11, a day before Milly vanished. Bellfield, a former nightclub doorman and wheel clamper, already has convictions for the murder of Amelie Delagrange, 22, a French student, and gap-year student Marsha McDonnell, 19, and the attempted murder of Kate Sheedy, 18, head girl at a convent school. Those attacks took place in the three years after Milly’s abduction and murder, which became one of Britain’s most notorious unsolved cases. The court had heard that Milly disappeared “in the blink of an eye” while walking home from school on 21 March 2002, shortly after 4pm. CCTV evidence showed she could not have walked past the entrance to the rented flat Bellfield was sharing with his girlfriend and three children. His girlfriend was house-sitting for a friend at the time. Bellfield moved his family out of the flat, in Collingwood Place, Walton, the day after Milly’s disappearance. The red Daewoo Nexia car he was driving has never been found, despite a huge police search of underwater sites and visits to more than 200 scrap merchants. None of Milly’s possessions have ever been found. The jury heard police had knocked 11 times at the door of the flat during house-to-house inquiries, but received no response, and had not checked the identity of the occupants with the landlord. A report by Rachel Cowles’s mother to police about the incident involving her daughter was not followed up at the time, with information only reaching detectives investigating Milly’s murder three years after the schoolgirl’s death. The parents of Delagrange, who was attacked as she walked home at night on Twickenham Green in 2004, were in court for the verdict, as was Sheedy, who suffered horrendous injuries after Bellfield ran her over near her house in Isleworth, west London. Bellfield became a suspect after his arrest following the murder of Delagrange in 2004. Last night, Amelie’s mother, Dominique, questioned Surrey police’s investigation into Milly’s disappearance. “It’s true there is the question that if the same thorough investigation had been carried out in the case of Milly, then Marsha [McDonnell] and Amelie [Delagrange] would still be alive. That question remains,” she told ITN. McDonnell, a gap-year student, was attacked, again with a blunt instrument, near her home in Hampton, south-west London, in February 2003. Bellfield was jailed for life for the attacks on her and Sheedy in February 2008 and was told he would never be released. The four-week trial saw Milly’s father, a 59-year-old former IT recruitment consultant, and mother, a 51-year-old maths teacher at her daughter’s Weybridge school, subjected to tough cross-examination by Bellfield’s defence. Bob Dowler suffered the humiliation of having to admit an interest in bondage sex after evidence that Milly had found a pornographic magazine, and he had to admit he had been considered a suspect. Each of her parents broke down in the witness box as it was suggested Milly may have run away because she was unhappy at home. Last night, Louise Casey, commissioner for victims and witnesses, said: “The experience that the Dowler family have endured through this legal process has been quite appalling.” Milly Dowler Crime London Caroline Davies guardian.co.uk
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Click here to view this media Former Obama green jobs adviser Van Jones has challenged Glenn Beck to a debate over repeated attacks by Beck and other Fox News hosts. Jones has also sent a letter to Fox News demanding they cease and desist “a series of sensational and inflammatory charges” against him. The network has until Friday to respond. Beck “does not have the guts to debate himself in the mirror,” Current’s Keith Olbermann told Jones Wednesday.
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As NewsBusters previously reported , Jon Stewart earlier this month did a segment on “The Daily Show” wherein he impersonated Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain using an Amos and Andy voice. While campaigning in Iowa Wednesday, Cain said of this incident, “He wants to mock me because I happen to be a black conservative” (video follows with transcript and commentary): HERMAN CAIN: If you elect me president of the United States of America my commitment to you is I will not just be the president of the Congress or the party. I will be a president, to paraphrase Abraham Lincoln, of the people, by the people and for the people. This is why you heard me say bills will be bills that you and I can understand. I said in one presentation about a month ago: “No bill is going to longer than 3 pages.” Remember that. Some of these idiotic reporters thought I was serious. The joke’s on them. The message was short bills. Understandable bills. No it’s not literally going to be three pages. The executive summary will be three pages. But they want to jump all over me, Jon Stewart. On the way over here, true story, on the way over here I did a radio interview on Sean Hannity’s show. Do you all get that here? Sean Hannity’s show. He pretaped it so I’m telling you when you hear it its not always live. He makes it sound like its live. I did an interview on Sean Hannity’s show on the way over here. I had been traveling the campaign so much I did not hear what Jon Stewart said on Chris Wallace’s Sunday morning show last Sunday. Where he was mocking my three page bills. Did you see that show. And then he mocked me with a, you know, Amos and Andy type brogue. And Sean said you didn’t see that. And I said no Sean, I didn’t see that, I’m out campaigning. And so they played the clip. And I said well Sean first of all if he really thinks that I’m serious about a bill only being three pages the joke’s on him. And I said secondly as far as him mocking me look I’ve been called every name in the book because I’m a conservative, because I’m black. Sticks and stone may break my bones, words are not going to hurt me. I was on that radio show because a happen to be an American black conservative. I labeled my self. I’m an American Black Conservative, an A-B-C. They keep trying to put labels on me. I have been called “Uncle Tom,” “sell out,” “Oreo,” “shameless.” So the fact that he wants to mock me because I happen to be a black conservative, in the words of my Grandfather, “I does not care. I does not care.” Does anyone for a moment think Stewart would have done this if Cain was a liberal? (H/T ThinkProgress )
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Home Retail Group said to be in talks to buy parts of Habitat in a possible £20m deal In the 1960s, Sir Terence Conran started a style revolution with the Habitat chain that helped the nation to shake off postwar austerity. It went on to define “the designer decade” of the 1980s, spawned countless imitators on the high street and became a victim of its own success. The chain could now face an ignominious fate, as part of the group which owns Argos, which has pioneered a different kind of design movement selling sofas for under £200 and £30 wardrobes. Home Retail Group was today said to be in talks to buy parts of Habitat in a deal that could be worth up to £20m. Home Retail declined to comment but is reported to be interested in acquiring some of Habitat’s stores and the rights to use the brand in Britain and an announcement could come as soon as tomorrow morning. Home Retail also owns Homebase and analysts suggested the Habitat brand could be used on products across its stores. “I don’t think this is a marriage made in heaven,” said one analyst. “It’s like jumping into a swimming pool with a lump of concrete tied round your neck. Habitat has never made any money and Home Retail has got enough problems of its own. “In the early days Habitat was interesting, innovative and quite successful but only people with extremely long memories can remember its best days.” Habitat has struggled financially for many years. Although the shops were a breath of fresh air when they arrived on the high street, its clever designs were soon mimicked by cheaper rivals and by the late 80s it was in financial difficulties. Even ownership by Sweden’s wealthy Kamprad family, whose patriarch Ingvar founded Ikea, could not restore its fortunes. Despite owning Habitat for nearly 20 years, they failed to come up with a successful formula and eventually paid restructuring firm Hilco a multimillion pound dowry to take the loss-making business off their hands in December 2009. Indeed while Habitat struggled Ikea marched on to become the UK’s biggest furniture retailer with sales of more than £1bn. Last year profits at Argos fell sharply as moribund consumer confidence put a dampener on sales of homeware and electricals and the group’s chief executive Terry Duddy recently warned that sales of electricals – particularly televisions and video games – had tumbled 20% during the spring. According to analysts at Verdict, the high street downturn has cost the furniture market nearly £2bn in lost sales. Neil Saunders says that back in 2008 it was worth £12.5bn but had withered to £10.7bn by last year; it has stabilised but is still predicted to shrink this year. Despite its woes, Home Retail has a substantial cash pile and is looking for new avenues of growth, having embarked on a number of new initiatives including selling books and children’s clothes. Last week it launched Argos TV, its own home shopping channel. Argos has substantial market share in areas such as furniture, toys and homeware. It already owns household brands including Schreiber, Hygena, Alba and Bush and Chad Valley which it bought following the collapse of Woolworths. In sales terms Habitat is a minnow. While Home Retail turned over more than £4bn last year, at last count Habitat was making a loss of £18.7m on sales of £74.3m in the year to March 2009. Habitat’s performance is thought to have improved on Hilco’s watch as it extricated itself from expensive stores and introduced new products and it is said to have approached private equity firms about a deal. It is unclear how many of its 29 stores Home Retail would be interested in taking on but it is thought to face competition from the French furniture group Conforama reported to be interested in buying the international parts of the chain. Conran has had no involvement with Habitat for many years. Having expanded his business empire to include restaurants and hotels, the 79-year-old’s most recent design brief is a homeware collection for Marks & Spencer which he says is a “serious design project”. “It gives us the chance to produce a truly democratic and British collection, something that I have been aiming to achieve all my working life,” said Conran of the tie-up announced in March. “This is our chance at last.” Retail industry Zoe Wood guardian.co.uk
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Ringtones are evil. Islamic countries are fun. The record industry is still a den of thieves – and so is
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Labour leader wants to be free to appoint members, while quota of posts for women will also be abolished In a surprise assertion of his authority over his party, Ed Miliband, the Labour leader, has said he would abolish elections to his shadow cabinet, leaving him free to appoint his own top team. The move will end a decades-long Labour tradition that shadow cabinet members are elected by their fellow Labour MPs. Shadow cabinet and senior party figures were informed of Miliband’s plan to end a key plank of internal democracy today. He will address Labour MPs about his plans on Monday evening and expects a secret ballot to be conducted among them. The proposal also has to be formally endorsed by party conference in September. No quota of posts for women in the shadow cabinet will be retained. At present a ballot paper is only valid if at least six votes for women are cast. Miliband’s aides said he would appoint a large number of women as a matter of course. During his leadership campaign, Miliband said he wanted half of the shadow cabinet to be women. Aides said he had taken the step to end the distraction of elections and to make his top team focus on the task of holding the government to account. They believe repeated internal elections make some shadow cabinet members as concerned by their popularity among their colleagues as with their impact on the general public. One spokesman said: “Elections were a legacy from our previous time in opposition and it is a sign that Ed does not want the party to be dragged back to the 80s.” Miliband has also decided not to go ahead with plan for an elected party chair. The announcement comes two days before a Labour national policy forum at which shadow cabinet members are due to report on the progress they have made in renewing party thinking. Some Labour activists say Miliband has not been receiving enough support from his most senior political colleagues, and this puts them on notice they will have to raise their game. Labour MPs voted only in the autumn, following an internal review, not to abolish shadow cabinet elections, but instead to shift from annual to two-yearly elections in an attempt to impose greater stability. Party officials insisted that Miliband’s move did not presage an imminent shadow cabinet reshuffle, or the return of his brother David to frontline politics. The officials also denied that it reflected frustration at the performance of any of his team, or a need to end recent political infighting over issues such as tax and spending. But the move will give Miliband freedom from September to recast the shadow cabinet in his own political image, and promote fresh younger talent currently stuck in the relative obscurity of junior shadow ministerial jobs. He will also be in a position to sack anyone for disloyalty or refusal to co-operate on policy. Although the leader is free to appoint any elected member to any portfolio he chooses, those who do well in the elections believe they have earned the right to be handed the more senior jobs. Despite denials tonight , it is likely that some older figures will agree to stand aside at some point. Ed Miliband Labour Women in politics Patrick Wintour guardian.co.uk
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US Federal Trade Commission antitrust inquiry will examine heart of Google’s search-advertising business, reports say US regulators are poised to launch a formal investigation into whether Google has abused its dominance on the web, according to reports. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is days away from serving subpoenas on the internet giant in what could be the biggest investigation yet of the search company’s business, according to The Wall Street Journal . Both Google and the FTC declined to comment. A wide-ranging investigation into Google has been discussed for months. Google has faced several antitrust probes in recent years, and is already the subject of a similar investigation in Europe. In the US inquiries have so far largely been limited to reviews of the company’s mergers and acquisitions. The inquiry will examine the heart of Google’s search-advertising business, and the source of most of Google’s revenue. Google accounts for around two-thirds of internet searches in the US (and close to 90% in the UK) and according to critics unfairly uses that dominance to favour its own growing network of services. Last November, the European commission opened its own formal investigation into allegations that Google discriminated against competing services in its search results and prevented some websites from using ads by Google competitors. “This is a major headache for Google even if they ultimately prevail in court,” said Professor Christopher Yoo of the University of Pennsylvania Law School. “The US and EU often share information and these dual investigations can be very effective.” Legal experts said the investigation could be similar in scale to the massive antitrust probe of Microsoft, which started in 1991 and ended in a settlement a decade later. Professor Joshua Wright of George Mason Law School said: “The investigation will be of a comparable scale to that of Microsoft.” But he said the chances of Google being found guilty of antitrust behaviour, as Microsoft was, were far smaller. Wright said for the US to bring a successful case against Google, it would have to prove the company was harming consumers. “As an outsider I would say that obstacle is far higher for them today with Google than it was back then with Microsoft,” he said. Yoo said: “The reality is that changes in antitrust laws in the US have made it much harder for the government to prevail.” He said Google faced a higher risk in the EU case but that in either case the investigations were likely to have a profound impact on the firm. “Even if the charges are ultimately bogus, they will occupy many, many hours of managements time and attention,” he said. The FTC’s investigations are likely to widen to other companies as official requests for information about their dealings with Google. The company has long denied any anticompetitive behaviour, arguing that users can easily click on other choices on the web. “Given our success and the disruptive nature of our business, it’s entirely understandable that we’ve caused unease among other companies and caught the attention of regulators,” Google executives wrote in a company blog post after the official European probe was launched last year. Google Internet Search engines United States Dominic Rushe guardian.co.uk
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Lady Warsi says women are being denied rights granted 1,400 years ago in Qur’an Pakistan is failing to live up to one of the main tenets of Islam which guarantees rights to all women, according to Sayeeda Warsi, the Conservative Party co-chairman and minister without portfoliio who is the first Muslim to sit as a full member of the cabinet. In a sign of Britain’s impatience with Pakistan, where minority communities and women face persecution, Lady Warsi expressed disappointment that the world’s first Islamic republic is denying rights granted 1,400 years ago in the Qur’an. As she prepares to become the first British minister to address the Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC) next week, Warsi said in a Guardian interview that in a “nutshell” Pakistan is not living up to the ideals of its founding father, Muhammad Ali Jinnah. Warsi, who says she is able to deliver a tough message to Pakistan because she is unencumbered by “colonial baggage”, said she raised the issue of women’s rights in a speech in Urdu at the Fatima Jinnah University in Rawalpindi. The university is named after the younger sister of the founder of Pakistan. “Why is it that today you’re being denied the rights that your faith gave to you 1,400 years ago?” Warsi asked, recalling her central message to her female audience. Warsi, 40, whose father arrived in Britain from Pakistan in 1960, will address a meeting of OIC foreign ministers next week in Astana, the capital of Kazakhstan. Warsi said she had also raised concerns about the treatment of minorities in Pakistan. Shahbaz Bhatti, Pakistan’s only Christian minister, was shot dead in March after he called the reform of blasphemy laws that impose the death sentence for insulting Islam. Warsi said: “I said to them … let me talk to you about the rights of minorities, the protection of women and the concept of meritocracy. I gave real examples of how Islam embodies all of those values and the question I put was my country wasn’t formed in the name of Islam but yours was, so why does my country embody the values of the faith that your country was formed on the basis of?” Warsi said her family heritage gave her a chance to speak out. “This was not the west arriving with an ideological perspective of women’s rights about to impose them on a nation. “I understand this culture, I deeply understand the faith and the culture that is part of this nation … But what I don’t see is you in many ways having the very values upon which the nation was formed, the vision of the founder of Pakistan.” Since her appointment to the cabinet Warsi has visited a series of Muslim countries, including Kuwait and Pakistan on four occasions. She played an important role in smoothing relations with Pakistan after David Cameron caused great offence last July when he said in India that elements of the Pakistan state were guilty of exporting terrorism. Warsi, who recalls how she wore a pink shalwar kameez on the day she was appointed believes her presence in cabinet challenges “the kind of lazy prejudice” that says in the Muslim world and in Britain that somebody from her background cannot be a government minister. “I don’t believe in this clash of civilisations where there is the west and the Muslim world,” she said. “I mean if I did I, you know I mean where would I fit in?” Warsi travels to Astana after she met Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, the secretary general of the OIC, during a visit to its secretariat in Jeddah last year while she was in Saudi Arabia for the hajj. This led to the appointment of Britain’s first special representative to the 57-strong group. “This is an organisation which is good to engage with and have much deeper engagement with but clearly that relationship didn’t appear to be there twelve months ago,” Warsi said. Ihsanoglu recently raised concerns about Islamophobia with Warsi, who caused some controversy in January by saying this had “crossed the threshold of middle-class respectability”. They had both agreed that Britain has a better track record than other European countries. Sayeeda Warsi Conservatives Pakistan Foreign policy Islam Women in politics Gender Religion Women Nicholas Watt guardian.co.uk
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