The 165 banks that toppled like dominoes in the financial crisis have stuck the FDIC with a hefty tab to the tune of $9 billion, the Wall Street Journal reports. Regulators have helped shoulder the burden of bad assets and loans at the failed banks; the loss-sharing agreements encouraged healthier…
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Lawyer for relatives of victims condemns ‘farce’ as rail regulator looks set to drop criminal case against maintenance firm Jarvis will escape prosecution for the fatal Potters Bar train crash after the rail regulator is understood to have dropped criminal proceedings against the maintenance firm. A lawyer representing families bereaved in the accident slammed the nine-year quest for justice as a “farce”, particularly as the taxpayer is instead likely to underwrite a looming six-figure fine for Network Rail over its liability for the incident. The Office of Rail Regulation (ORR) is preparing to announce that it will not seek a prosecution over the derailment of a train outside Potters Bar station, Hertfordshire, on 10 May 2002 in which seven people died. Louise Christian, a solicitor who represented families at the inquest into the deaths, said: “There is a huge problem every time we have one of these health and safety disasters. There is no accountability and the prosecutions they bring are a bit of a farce.” A tragic bookend to the Railtrack era that ushered in rail privatisation, the circumstances of the Potters Bar crash highlighted severe strains in the rail industry. Jarvis was contracted by Railtrack to maintain the line but attempted to blame the crash on a saboteur with “informed” engineering knowledge. The company later withdrew the claim in a humiliating apology and admitted joint liability for the crash. Six passengers on the West Anglia Great Northern train – Austen Kark, Emma Knights, Jonael Schickler, Alexander Ogunwusi, Chia Hsin Lin and Chia Chin Wu – were killed in the accident. A passerby, Agnes Quinlivan, died after she was hit by falling debris. It is understood that Jarvis’s financial problems contributed to the ORR’s decision, which it reached after consultation with the victims’ families, who have already seen the prospects of criminal proceedings against former Jarvis or Railtrack executive disappear. Jarvis’s rail division is in administration and its administrators have not participated in proceedings, adding further complications to a prosecution under the Health and Safety At Work Act that could only result in a fine against the company. Perdita Kark, whose father Austen was killed and whose mother, the novelist Nina Bawden, was seriously injured in the derailment, urged the industry to tighten safety standards after a coroner at the Potters Bar inquest warned that passengers still faced safety risks. “The gut instinct is that one wanted Jarvis in the dock along with Railtrack but in the end you just want to make sure that this sort of thing does not happen again because they have learned something from it. It is disappointing but I don’t see how you can bring into court something that does not exist anymore.” Last month Network Rail told Watford magistrates court that it would plead guilty to track safety failings that caused the derailment. Network Rail admitted failings over the installation, maintenance and inspection of stretcher bars, which hold rails apart at the correct width for train wheels. The owner of Britain’s tracks and stations inherited the liability for Potters Bar after it replaced Railtrack months after the crash and it will be sentenced at St Albans crown court on 30 March. Sentencing guidelines state that a fatal breach of health and safety laws carries a fine of at least £100,000 but the punishment will be underwritten by the state, which put £3.7bn into Network Rail last year and is its main source of funding. After entering its guilty plea Network Rail said the rail system had improved considerably since the crash, with the last fatal accident due to infrastructure problems occurring in 2007 when a Virgin Trains Pendolino derailed at Graygrigg, claiming the life of one passenger. “The railway today is almost unrecognisable since the days of Railtrack and the Potters Bar tragedy of 2002,” said Network Rail. The government has ruled out a joint public inquiry into Potters Bar and the Graygrigg crash, saying public interest would be “best served” with separate independent inquests into the disasters. The ORR declined to comment. Potters Bar train crash Transport Rail transport Dan Milmo guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …US life expectancy hit an all-time high in 2009, according to new government data released yesterday. A baby born that year can expect to live an average of 78.2 years, USA Today reports, up from 78 years in 2008. That’s in part because death rates fell significantly for 10…
Continue reading …An Atlanta Braves coach has lost his left eye after a foul ball hit him in the face. Luis Salazar, a minor league manager, was watching a spring training game when a line drive off the bat of the Braves’ Brian McCann hit him in the dugout. He was knocked…
Continue reading …Josh Fattal and Shane Bauer have an intriguing ally in their corner: Muhammad Ali. The Greatest quietly sent a letter to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei last month asking him to release the captive American hikers, and now he’s going public with it. “Please show the world the compassion I know you…
Continue reading …The New York City recipient of a kidney from a live donor has contracted HIV from the transplant, the Wall Street Journal reports. It marks the first time the virus has been transmitted from a live donor since 1985, when a powerful test was approved to screen donors. The donor…
Continue reading …Barack Obama’s not the only Obama who can write a book, and now Michelle Obama is taking her turn, the AP reports. The illustrated tome from Crown Publishing Group will tell the story of the White House garden, Obama says, answering questions like: “How did we do it? Why did…
Continue reading …Prominent GOP fundraiser Timothy Durham was arrested early this morning on allegations that he’d defrauded more than 5,000 people out of more than $200 million in a giant Ponzi scheme, the New York Times reports. The 48-year-old West Hollywood man also donated more than $800,000 to the Republican…
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Diplomatic cable claims official of India’s ruling Congress party told US of bribe plan India’s increasingly shaky coalition government is facing a fresh crisis following the release of an American diplomatic cable obtained by WikiLeaks which appears to reveal a government bid to buy support in parliament before a vote in 2008. Published in the Hindu newspaper , the cable claimed that an official from the ruling Congress party had told a US diplomat stationed in Delhi that a fund of between 500m and 600m rupees (between £7m and £8.2m) existed to pay parliamentarians to ensure the survival of the government. India’s opposition parties demanded the resignation of the prime minister Manmohan Singh, who has been under fire in recent months following a series of corruption cases. The Indian media has closely followed investigations into the scandals, which include an alleged telecoms scam estimated to have cost the state nearly £25m. The former telecoms minister, from a coalition partner of Congress, is currently in detention. Other government figures alleged to have acted corruptly include senior sports administrators involved in last year’s Delhi Commonwealth Games. The WikiLeaks report said an aide to a senior Congress politician had shown the American diplomat two chests of cash and said four lawmakers of a regional party had been paid 100m rupees each for their support. “Money was not an issue at all … the crucial thing was to ensure that those who took the money would vote for the government,” the aide was reported to have said. A second official allegedly told the diplomat that formerly a minister “could only offer small planes as bribes” but “now he can pay for votes with jets”. Votes at all level of politics in India are routinely exchanged for cash or favours. Allegations that money changed hands before the vote in 2008 – which came at the height of acrimonious debates over a controversial civil nuclear deal with the US – have been made before. Narasimhan Ram, editor of the Hindu, said the newspaper had gained access to the cables after long talks with WikiLeaks, which has been releasing portions of 250,000 leaked state department cables through selected newspapers since late last year. In December, the Guardian published a series of reports based on more than 5,000 cables sent by the US embassy in Delhi to Washington. One revealed that Rahul Gandhi, son of Congress party president Sonia Gandhi – who is widely seen as her political heir – had told the American ambassador that violent Hindu radicalism in India posed a potentially greater threat to the country than Islamist extremism . A second cable revealed a briefing by the Red Cross describing systematic torture in Indian detention centres in Kashmir . Ram said his newspaper would publish more revelations in coming days. “Can there be any doubt that there is something deeply rotten in our democracy? You are talking about a rising India … There are a lot of good things happening but at the heart of it is something rotten,” he said. Sushma Swaraj, a leader of the Bharatiya Janata party, said Singh’s government had lost its legitimacy. “This is a hammer blow that it cannot recover from,” she said in parliament. “It has lost all moral responsibility to govern.” The speaker of the house was forced to suspend proceedings for the day. A series of political protests over corruption has blocked parliamentary business in India for months. The current government, in its second term, has been unable to pass much-needed economic reforms as a result. Satish Sharma, the senior Congress politician at the centre of the new scandal, told reporters the claims were “baseless”. The government narrowly won a vote of confidence in 2008 after Communists withdrew support in anger at a landmark civil nuclear co-operation deal between India and the US. The four lawmakers whom the report alleged to have been paid bribes by the Congress official eventually voted against the government. India United States WikiLeaks Jason Burke guardian.co.uk
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Family of rapper vows to uncover truth after star – real name David Emmanuel – dies ‘making tea during police raid’ David Emmanuel, the British rap star Smiley Culture, died from a single stab wound through his heart, according to a postmortem examination. The 48-year-old singer died during a Metropolitan police raid at his house. His family have been told he stabbed himself while making a cup of tea. Emmanuel’s family say the postmortem has strengthened their resolve to uncover the truth behind the “most bizarre of circumstances”. They say they will employ an independent pathologist to verify the cause of death. “As a family, we are in a state of deep sorrow and anger,” said David Emmanuel, the musician’s nephew, at a packed public meeting in Brixton, south London. “My uncle was a father, an uncle, a friend and a mentor to many and is a British icon who died under the most peculiar of circumstances. “This is not a race issue, although there are suspicions that ethnicity has some relevance in this tragic event. This is a time when the whole British public will stand up to let the police and government know that we will no longer allow any citizen to die in the most bizarre of circumstances. Instead, we will seek the truth, doggedly, until that truth has been exposed.” Emmanuel was stabbed shortly before 8.30am on Tuesday, an hour and a half after four Metropolitan police officers arrived at his house in Warlingham, Surrey, with a search warrant. A relative, who asked to remain unnamed, said she saw Emmanuel shortly after 8am. He seemed calm, she said, but appeared to indicate that he was confused by the raid. She saw him “surrounded by officers” and when she waved to him, he “shrugged his shoulders, as though to tell me he didn’t know what was going on”. It was after this that Emmanuel was allowed to go unaccompanied into his kitchen, his family say. “Why, if Smiley was arrested, was he allowed to go near a kettle full of boiling water and drawers full of knives?” asked Lee Jasper, chair of the London race and criminal justice consortium. “It just doesn’t make sense.” At about 8.30am an air ambulance was called by police officers. The helicopter arrived but Emmanuel died at the scene. The case has been referred to the Independent Police Complaints Commission, which is setting up a community reference group to tell local people and the family of the investigation’s progress and channel questions or concerns. “This investigation is examining the basis on which Metropolitan police service officers went to Surrey to carry out the search warrant on Tuesday, how that was planned, how it was communicated with Surrey police and what happened while officers were at the address,” said IPCC commissioner Mike Franklin. “It is also looking at the response of the officers present to examine what was done in terms of first aid. The independent investigation will be studying forensic evidence and all other possible lines of enquiry to try to establish a factual account of exactly what happened,” he added. “Many of the questions that I know Mr Emmanuel’s family and friends have are exactly what we will be examining as part of this investigation. I want to reassure people that we will thoroughly scrutinise this incident and will update all those involved as we progress. I will also make the findings of our investigation public at the earliest opportunity. Until then, I would ask that speculation is avoided.” In September last year Emmanuel appeared before magistrates charged with conspiracy to supply cocaine. He was due in court in the coming days. Another relative, Merlin Emmanuel, said he refused to believe the singer had taken his own life. “Smiley had a great deal to look forward to,” he said. “It is true that he had an impending case but it is also true that the evidence in relation to this case was minimal and he, along with his legal team, were supremely confident of being acquitted this coming week. “The police have yet to give an official statement as to what happened,” he added. “We haven’t had a clear, coherent, official explanation as to what happened to Smiley. The police have a lot to answer to. Until our questions, queries and suspicions have been fully and competently answered to dispel any notion of foul play, we will not rest.” Police London Rap Race issues Urban music Amelia Hill guardian.co.uk
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