Teenage mothers were allegedly forced to give up newborns to human traffickers in southern city of Aba Nigerian police have raided an alleged “baby farm” where teenage mothers were forced to give up their newborns for sale to human traffickers. Thirty-two pregnant girls were rescued from a maternity home run by a trafficking ring in the southern city of Aba, police said. The girls, mostly of school age, were allegedly locked up at the Cross Foundation clinic so they could produce babies to be sold for illegal adoption or for use in ritual witchcraft. Bala Hassan, the Abia state police commissioner, said: “We stormed the premises of the Cross Foundation in Aba three days ago following a report that pregnant girls aged between 15 and 17 are being made to make babies for the proprietor. “We rescued 32 pregnant girls and arrested the proprietor, who is undergoing interrogation over allegations that he normally sells the babies to people who may use them for rituals or other purposes.” Hassan added that four babies, already sold in an alleged deal but not yet collected, were also recovered in the raid. Estimates of the girls’ ages varied. Geoffrey Ogbonna, another police spokesman, was quoted by CNN: “There are about 30 pregnant young ladies; the eldest was 20 years old. Some belong in secondary, even in primary school.” A doctor arrested at the clinic said the babies had been handed over to social welfare for adoption. Some of the rescued girls told police that the hospital owner gave them $192 (£118) for newborn boys and $161 for newborn girls after they were sold. Dr Hyacinth Orikara, proprietor of the Cross Foundation, is likely to face charges of child abuse and human trafficking, police said. Buying or selling babies can carry a 14-year jail sentence. Orikara, reportedly a university graduate and employee of the Abia state health management board, denied the allegations, claiming the home was a foundation to help teenagers with unwanted pregnancies. Human trafficking is ranked the third most common crime in Nigeria after financial fraud and drug trafficking. At least 10 children are sold every day across the country, according to the UN. Traffickers are seldom caught. Babies are sold for up to $6,400 each, depending on the sex, the National Agency for the Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons says. Teenagers with unplanned pregnancies are sometimes lured to clinics and then forced to hand over their babies. The children are often put up for illegal adoption or, in some parts of the country, killed as part of witchcraft rituals because they are thought to make charms more powerful. The police carried out similar raids on such clinics in neighbouring Enugu state in 2008. A Nigerian woman was jailed in Britain three years ago for trying to smuggle a baby into the country in order to get on the list for a council flat. Human trafficking Nigeria Africa Children Human rights David Smith guardian.co.uk
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Manhattan’s district attorney believed to have questions about Goldman Sachs’s behaviour before and during financial crisis Manhattan’s top law enforcer is believed to have issued subpoenas to Goldman Sachs as he investigates the firm’s activity during the credit crisis. Manhattan district attorney Cyrus Vance Jr is pursuing claims made by an official senate investigation into Wall Street’s role in the housing market collapse. The report, published in April, singled out Goldman Sachs for particular criticism, accusing the bank of misleading buyers of mortgage-linked investments. The bank encouraged buyers to invest in mortgage-related securities even as it was betting heavily against the mortgage market, according to the report. Senator Carl Levin, a persistent critic of the bank, accused Goldman executives, including chief executive Lloyd Blankfein, of giving “misleading and inaccurate” evidence to the committee. Goldman said its executives’ testimony was “truthful and accurate”. The report was referred to the US department of justice and the financial watchdog the securities and exchange commission, which are also investigating. Vance, the son of president Jimmy Carter’s secretary of state, was appointed Manhattan’s district attorney in 2009. Earlier this year he said that his office had active investigations into Wall Street “across the board” and called for the his powers to be expanded in order to tackle large-scale white-collar crime. The Manhattan DA’s office has tackled many high-profile white-collar cases, from BCCI to Tyco. A subpoena is only a request for information and does not mean the company is a target of a criminal investigation. Goldman Sachs Banking Financial crisis Regulators Dominic Rushe guardian.co.uk
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Mitt Romney makes his official bid for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination at Bittersweet Farm, New Hampshire 11.35am ET: In case you think Bittersweet Farm is a strange place to announce his bid for the nomination, the farm has a long tradition of hosting Republican events thanks to its owners, who are also Romney supporters. Seacoast Online reports more background: Bittersweet Farm has been the site of many Republican rallies and events over the years. The Scammans have hosted former President George W. Bush, former New Hampshire Governor John H Sununu and his son, former US Senator John E Sununu. The aide said Romney appreciates the farm’s “rich political history” as well as the traditions of the New Hampshire primary and the state’s role in picking a presidential nominee. The formal announcement will come during a noon cookout featuring hamburgers, hot dogs and chili made using the recipe of Romney’s wife, Ann. All proceeds from the sale of food will go toward the American Legion Post 35′s global war on terror memorial fund. And anyway, Michele Bachmann is going to make her announcement in the Iowa town of her birth: Waterloo. Talk about optics – although of course the British have good memories of Waterloo. 11.30am ET: The big question of course is: can Mitt Romney win the Republican nomination? And the answer isn’t clear. Although polls regularly show Romney as the leading candidate among Republicans, polls taken this far out from the start of the primary season – which doesn’t start until February 2012 with the Iowa caucuses – are worse than useless. Polls taken at this point in 2007 confidently predicted that Hillary Clinton would be battling Rudy Guiliani for the presidency in 2008. And in 2003 the polls unanimously decalred that Howard Dean would be the Democratic nominee. On Intrade, the financial-style predictions market , Romney is also the clear front-runner with a 29% rating – well ahead of his major rivals Tim Pawlenty (19%) and Jon Huntsman (16%). But below the top three sits Sarah Palin on a mere 6.5% – but the uncertainty over Palin’s plans is keeping that number low. Should Palin announce it would surely shoot up. Preamble: Can you feel the Romentum? After months of gearing up, today Mitt Romney officially throws his hat into the ring for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination, with an announcement at 12 noon (5pm BST) in the crucial first primary state of New Hampshire. We’ll be following the announcement here live – but there’s no doubt that Romney is intending to run, as he has made clear by his actions ever since the 2008 election. Romney’s announcement remarks will take place at Bittersweet Farm in Stratham , about an hours drive outside of Manchester, New Hampshire. Will it be a bittersweet moment for Romney and his supporters? If you want to watch the event live on your computer, Romney’s campaign website will be offering a video stream from 12 noon ET. Mitt Romney US elections 2012 Republicans New Hampshire US politics United States Richard Adams guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …At Ellis Island, Sarah Palin attacks the DREAM Act: It ‘usurps’ legal immigration
June 2, 2011 No Comment
Click here to view this media Yesterday, while making a photo op of Ellis Island on her bus tour of the East Coast, Sarah Palin made plain she’s with the nativist wing of the Tea Party — which is to say, pretty much the mainstream of today’s Republican Party — in opposing the DREAM Act: PALIN: The immigrants of the past, they had to literally and figuratively stand in line and follow rules to become U.S. citizens. I’d like to see that continue. And unfortunately, the DREAM Act kind of usurps that-the system that is a legal system to make sure that immigrants who want to be here legally, working hard, producing and supplying revenue and resources for their families, that they’re able to do that right and legally. Unfortunately, the DREAM Act doesn’t accomplish that. Not that facts or reason ever matter much with Palin, but Andrea Nill at ThinkProgress does point out that, in fact, the DREAM Act perfectly fits Palin’s description: Actually, the DREAM Act aims to accomplish precisely what Palin described. Under the DREAM Act bill that Republicans killed last December, applicants would have had to go through a rigorous process of background checks, in addition to paying taxes, learning English, and either serving in the military or attending college. They would have then received a “conditional nonimmigrant” status and would be required to “stand in line” for ten years before being granted legal immigrant status. The Congressional Budget Office estimated that the same bill would reduce the deficit by $1.4 billion over ten years. Today’s Republicans are so deeply in the thrall of their nativist wing that they can’t even bring themselves to endorse a common-sense piece of immigration legislation like the DREAM Act. Instead, they succumb to the pack of lies that the nativists sell . They will regret this deeply, and soon. I’m looking forward to seeing Sarah Palin trying to sell her “Latino outreach” in the 2012 election. Bet it goes over about as well as Sharron Angle’s ill-fated stab.
Continue reading …Not Only Are U.S. Corporations Not Overtaxed, Some Of The Biggest Are Paying A Negative Tax Rate
June 2, 2011 No CommentI can’t quite believe that Rick Ungar is allowed to post this stuff on the Forbes blog, but he’s been doing it for awhile, so they must have noticed by now. This is some infuriating news , don’t you think? Instead of keeping their mouths shut and counting their blessings, they’re yelling for austerity cuts for the rest of us while they’re making money hand over fist: Yesterday, I wrote about how the GOP is falsely pushing the argument that America’s corporations are overtaxed. I included some great data courtesy of conservative commentator Bruce Bartlett whose New York Times piece did an extraordinary job of putting the lie to the Republican assertions. Today, and not a moment too soon, the non-profit Citizens For Tax Justice (CTJ) has put out their findings revealing that twelve of the nations largest Fortune 500 companies, while making $170 billion in profits during the period of The Great Recession, paid an effective tax rate of negative 1.5%. Yes, you read that correctly. Not only have these twelve companies paid zero in taxes for the years 2008-2010, they actually received tax subsidies that added $62.4 billion to their bottom lines.The companies were chosen by the CTJ to represent a range of industries, including manufacturing, energy, services, transportation and high tech and include – in alphabetical order – American Electric Power, Boeing, Dupont, Exxon Mobil, FedEx, General Electric, Honeywell International, IBM, United Technologies, Verizon Communications, Wells Fargo and Yahoo. Here are the bullet points presented by the report: From 2008 through 2010, these 12 companies reported $171 billion in pretax U.S. profits. But as a group, their federal income taxes were negative: –$2.5 billion. All but two of the dozen companies enjoyed at least one no-tax year over the 2008-10 period, despite reporting substantial pretax U.S. profits in those no-tax years. Eight of the twelve companies reported net tax benefits over the full three-year period. According to the study, not a single one of these companies paid an amount even close to the 35% statutory tax rate.
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Barack Obama and Abraham Lincoln “are peas in the same pod,” at least in the eyes of Salon.com technology reporter Andrew Leonard . And just how exactly? Because “both [were] irredeemably stained by the hard fiscal decisions they had to make to save their nation,” Leonard argued in a June 2 “How the World Works” blog post. To do so, the Salon writer conflated loopy conspiracy theories about Lincoln having been a pawn of European Jewish bankers with complaints Obama faces from conservative and libertarian quarters regarding his spendthrift economic policies. Leonard seems to suggest there's little if any legitimate critique from the right on Obama's stewardship of federal finances (emphases mine): [I]f you dig a little deeper on the specific accusation that the Rothschild motivation for starting the Civil War was to take over the U.S. banking system, you suddenly find yourself facing a set of concerns that are surprisingly close to the surface of contemporary political discourse involving the national debt and monetary policy.
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VS Naipaul has claimed that ‘I read a piece of writing and within a paragraph or two I know whether it is by a woman or not.’ Find out if you do, too, with this test
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OCR said students will not be unfairly disadvantaged by mistake, amid fears it could affect their chances of getting into university One of England’s biggest exam boards has been forced to apologise after pupils were set an impossible question in an AS-level maths paper. OCR promised to take the error into account when marking the exam, amid students’ concerns that the mistake could affect their university places. The question, which was worth eight marks and 11% of the paper, was impossible to solve due to a miscalculation of an equation. Students were presented with a diagram showing a network of tracks in a forest. The distances between points on the network were also set out. Students were then asked to find the shortest route to walk along every track, starting and ending at the same point. The given length was supposed to be equal to an equation set out in the paper. But OCR admitted that it failed to calculate the length properly – meaning the shortest route failed to match the mathematical equation. A total of 6,790 sixth-formers sat the paper on Thursday 26 May. Since then, many have been posting messages on social networking sites calling for a resit, and expressing fears that the mix-up may harm their university chances. One student wrote on thestudentroom.co.uk : “Can we not all or the majority of us write to OCR and demand a resit?” Another said: “I agree, there is no fair way to mark it and loads of us need certain grades for uni.” Grades from AS-levels are used by students when applying for university places. One poster suggested that students could attempt to bring legal action if they missed their grade, and therefore university places as a result of the error. “On a teaching website, a head of maths has proposed that a no win, no fee solicitor could bring a class action to represent anyone who fails to make their university offers because of this and ends up paying £9,000 per annum university fees instead of £3,000 per annum,” wrote the poster. In a statement, an OCR spokesman said the exam board “very much regretted” the mistake. “We would like to assure teachers, parents and students that we have several measures in place to ensure that candidates are not unfairly disadvantaged as a result of this unfortunate error. “Because we have been alerted to this so early, we are able to take this error into account when marking the paper. “We will also take it into account when setting the grade boundaries. We have sent a letter to all schools and colleges explaining in more detail what we shall do. “We do apologise again that this has happened. To help us understand how this occurred and to minimise the chance of such an error happening again, we will be undertaking a thorough review of our quality assurance procedures.” AS-levels Students Higher education Mathematics Schools guardian.co.uk
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Unions say Birmingham council has begun exporting IT posts and warns of thousands of job loses if other town halls follow suit Union leaders have attacked a Tory-led council over its involvement in the “export” of up to 100 jobs to India, amid warnings that the move could be “the tip of the iceberg” that could see thousands of taxpayer-funded jobs go overseas. Unite claimed Birmingham city council, a Conservative-Liberal Democrat run authority led by the Conservative Mike Whitby, is the first town hall in the country involved in plans to move jobs to India for work paid for by taxpayers. A redundancy notice for 70 IT posts has already been served. Officials said they feared more council jobs in Birmingham and other local authorities could also go abroad as private companies delivering public services prepare to go to “any length” to cut costs for profit. Another union cited jobs being “shipped out” as it launched a strike ballot of nearly 10,000 members at Birmingham city council over job cuts, workers’ pay and conditions. The union is balloting against plans known as the Birmingham contract, which it claims breaks away from nationally agreed terms and conditions, abolishes payments for weekend and out of hours working and weakens workers’ rights in grievances and disciplinaries. It said the ‘contract’ will have a disproportionate impact on low paid women workers. Unison said that, to add “insult to injury”, staff who face redundancy at the arms-length IT company are being told they must train up their replacements in India before they go. But the council said the new staff contracts were designed to make the authority “fit for the challenges facing the public sector” and contribute to the budgetary savings it has to make. Alan Rudge, the cabinet member for equalities and human resources, said: “There is a clear need to bring our organisation into line with other leading employers, and the new Birmingham contract will make the council more resilient to future pressures through the reduction in costs and the introduction of broad job groups.” Service Birmingham, a joint venture between the outsourcing firm Capita and the council, confirmed it has already transferred 17 “back office” IT support roles to India and has issued formal notice of redundancy plans for local workers ahead of the transfer of a further 38 roles in the summer. A further 45 jobs will be transferred to India later in the year if the first two phases of transfer go well, according to a spokesman. In a statement, Service Birmingham said: “It is important to emphasise this is a very small element of the work we do for the council, and we remain absolutely committed to our Birmingham workforce.” The Unite national officer, Peter Allenson, said: “It beggars belief that council workers will be forced to train workers from overseas to do their jobs so Capita and Birmingham council can lift and shift them abroad. “Unite is demanding that Birmingham city council halts its plans. We fear this could be just the tip of the iceberg and other councils could follow suit. Thousands of public sector jobs could go. Once these jobs go, they will not come back.” He added: “The blame lies firmly with private companies prepared to go to any length to cut costs for profit and this Tory-led council which is encouraging them to get away with it.” A council spokesman insisted the transfer of jobs to India “is a story about Service Birmingham” and referred all comments to its spokesman. The council has a one-third stake in the venture. Capita, through the Service Birmingham company, has the contract for the council’s IT and call centre services until 2021. It is also working on the authority’s business transformation programme, which has been running since 2005 and aims to save the council £1bn in costs by 2016. Despite the planned redundancies, Service Birmingham said it was committed to increasing local workforce numbers. “Offshore staff will only ever represent a fraction of Service Birmingham’s 1,100 workforce,” the statement said. “In addition, we will honour our jobs promise to employ an additional 520 people in the Birmingham area by 1 April 2011, 720 by 1 April 2013 and 800 by the end of 2016.” The council plans to cut £300m from the city budget by 2015 as well as shed 7,116 jobs, which Unison says represents 37% of the council workforce. The union claims that, once part-time jobs are factored in, the total job losses increase to 10,000, which will have a “devastating impact on council services”. Mark New, a regional organiser for the union, said: “Members are upset and angry and Unison is asking them to take a stand against these savage cuts. To add insult to injury, the council plans to outsource more jobs to India. “The massive job cuts, the pay freeze and privatisation, will leave the council struggling to provide decent services to people in Birmingham. “Birmingham council is cutting back too hard and too fast. The cuts will devastate whole communities and the local economy, as well as the lives of council workers and their families.” Local government Public sector cuts Public services policy Public finance Conservatives Liberal Democrats Hélène Mulholland guardian.co.uk
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Drought fears in parts of UK as warm weather expected to continue into early summer, threatening diminished harvests Parts of the UK have enjoyed one of the warmest and driest springs for more than 100 years, according to the Met Office. But while the south and east of Britain experienced balmy temperatures, places further north and east remained wet. For the weekend, forecasters predicted sunshine and temperatures in the mid-20s celsius. Across the whole of England and Wales, it was the second driest spring since 1910 and the driest spring since 1990. Central England experienced an average temperature of 10.3C (50.5F), the highest since monthly records began in 1659. The temperature for the whole of Britain was 9.2C (48.6F), the highest since 1910, the Met Office said. The previous top figure was in 2007 when the average was 9.05C (48.3F). Overall, England and Wales had only 45% of the long-term average rainfall for March, April and May. But East Anglia had only 21% of the long-term average rainfall – giving the area its driest spring for 101 years. This comes on top of the warmest, driest March and April recorded in England and Wales in more than 50 years. Britain’s exceptionally dry and hot spring is set to continue well into June, providing little relief for farmers especially in southern England and East Anglia. Provisional rainfall figures from the Environment Agency for May suggest that while the north and the Midlands have had much-needed showers, East Anglia has only had 20% of average rainfall and central, south-east and south-west England between 41% and 55% of average. “River flows remain low, except in north England and north Wales. River flows in south-west England, the Midlands, south-east Wales, parts of East Anglia and Kent are particularly low”, said the agency in a statement. “Throughout most of June, rainfall amounts look likely to continue to be below average across the UK, especially in the south, where they will probably stay well below average”, said the Met Office. In May, the public sector research body, the Centre for Hydrology and Ecology , reported soils were some of the driest seen in England and Wales for at least 50 years. “The exceptional aridity of the early spring, following a relatively dry 2010, has resulted in agricultural and hydrological drought conditions affecting large parts of southern Britain,” it said in a statement. Farmers in East Anglia are expecting harvests to be 25% down on normal yields, but the dry, warm weather has benefited many fruit growers who have been able to harvest early. The British strawberry season started nearly two weeks earlier than usual. The early start to the season is also set to benefit British wine growers . Allison Cobb, a forecaster with MeteoGroup, the weather division of the Press Association, said: “It is going to be very pleasant across the UK over the next few days with lots of sunshine and temperatures in the mid-20s celsius which is warmer than average for the time of year. “On Saturday it starts to turn a bit cooler and cloudier in northern parts with some drizzle as a cold front swings southwards across the UK. “Southern areas will still be quite nice and dry and sunny with temperatures in the mid to low 20s celsius, although northern parts will see temperatures drop down to the teens.” Sunday is expected to be cooler in the south with temperatures dropping to the upper teens Celsius, and drizzle expected in Scotland and Ireland. Weather Met Office Drought Farming John Vidal guardian.co.uk
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