Google Maps Foreclosure Visualizations: Prepare Yourself To Be Floored
January 27th, 2011Recovery.
Via: The Big Picture:
I wanted to demonstrate the full extent of Foreclosures in the US, so after setting GMaps on foreclosure listings, I slowly zoomed out of the map. Voila! Most foreclosures that are for sale in the USA are now showing on your screen.
More: Bigger Pics
California May Close Some State Parks and Eliminate Funding for Public Libraries
January 27th, 2011And these measures are like spitballs against the $25 billion deficit.
Via: Sacramento Bee:
After spending a century building the nation’s largest and most majestic state park system, Californians are poised to do something unprecedented: Retreat from that legacy and start closing parks.
Years of budget cuts in the California State Parks system have resulted in widespread reductions in park hours, crumbling facilities and reduced staffing. But in the past few years, lawmakers have rejected widespread closures proposed by former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Now, however, the climate has changed. Gov. Jerry Brown’s budget requires another $22 million in cuts to the parks budget – a pittance compared with the $25 billion state budget deficit, but a number that even strong parks supporters say is unlikely to be achieved without shuttering parks.
Via: Los Angeles Times:
New California Gov. Jerry Brown, facing tremendous budget problems, has proposed a statewide budget that eliminates state spending on public libraries entirely. Those cuts amount to around $30 million.
If Brown’s budget is passed as is, it will eliminate state funding for the Public Library Foundation, Transaction Based Reimbursement and the California Library Literacy and English Acquisition Service. Public libraries across the state also receive funding from other sources.
Karzai’s Pick for Parliament Speaker Accused of Atrocities
January 27th, 2011Via: McClatchy:
An Afghan warlord who’s accused of gross human rights violations and was once close to Osama bin Laden has received the backing of President Hamid Karzai for the important post of speaker of the new parliament, which was inaugurated Wednesday.
To the dismay of diplomats and many lawmakers, especially women and those from Afghanistan’s ethnic Hazara community, Abdul Rab Rasoul Sayyaf, who’s been accused of a string of atrocities during Afghanistan’s civil war of the 1990s, is Karzai’s early candidate for the speaker slot, members of parliament said.
…
The man who organized the first World Trade Center bombing, in 1993, Ramzi Yousef, reportedly trained at a camp run by Sayyaf. According to the 9/11 Commission report, Sayyaf also trained and mentored the alleged mastermind of the 2001 attack, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.
For Afghans, Sayyaf is linked to some of the most horrific episodes of the country’s civil war, in particular the 1993 killing of hundreds of ethnic Hazara civilians in the Afshar district of Kabul, a massacre that human rights groups accuse Sayyaf of ordering. Hazara are from the minority Shiite sect of Islam, which is anathema to Wahhabis.
Egyptian Stock Market Halted; Losses Deepen After Re-Open
January 27th, 2011Via: Daily News Egypt:
Trading resumed on Egypt’s stock market after a 40-minute suspension early Thursday, and had fallen 10.587 percent on the day as of 1:20 pm Cairo local time.
The broader EGX 70 was down more than 16 percent.
A spokesperson at the Egyptian Exchange told Daily News Egypt that the trading session would not end early as some have suspected. The market closes at 2:30 pm.
He added that the administration at the exchange — without specifying which officials — are in discussions with major institutional investors in a bid to shore up confidence, urging them to avoid the panic and re-invest in the market.
The Egyptian Exchange halted trading until 11:30 am on Jan. 27, and at the time the main EGX 30 was down 6.24 percent at 5,916.74 points.
A trader at CI Capital told Daily News Egypt, “It is a panic,” referring to investors’ sell-off in the market.
Mohamed Elzayat, analyst at CI Capital, said, “big investors, hedge funds and institutions are less nervous than retail investors.”
Utah: Dugway Proving Ground, a U.S. Army Chemical and Biological Warfare Facility, Was Locked Down ‘To Resolve a Serious Concern’
January 27th, 2011Update: A Missing Vial of VX
Via: Salt Lake Tribune:
An overnight lockdown, triggered when vial of the deadly VX nerve agent went temporarily missing, was lifted early Thursday morning at Utah’s sprawling, 801,000-acre Dugway Proving Ground.
—End Update—
Update: Mystery Emergency Triggered Dugway Lockdown; Base Reopened Now
Via: Salt Lake Tribune:
An overnight lockdown at the sprawling, 801,000-acre Dugway Proving Ground was lifted early Thursday morning.
Officials at the remote Army installation, 90 miles southwest of Salt Lake City in Utah’s western desert, remained tight-lipped about why they ordered gates closed at 5:24 p.m. Wednesday. Up to 1,500 employees of Dugway reportedly were forced to stay the night.
Dugway would not detail reasons for the shutdown, but did stress that no damages or injuries were reported, and no threats received. The installation does house small amounts of chemical and biological warfare agents for defense testing purposes, and Dugway also is a prime Army base for testing of an array of conventional military weaponry and ammunition.
Asked specifically Thursday if a chemical or biological leak or spill may have prompted the lockdown, Dugway public affairs specialist Bonnie Robinson said she could neither confirm nor deny that scenario.
—End Update—
Via: CNN:
A Utah military facility that tests chemical and biological weapons was locked down “to resolve a serious concern,” and authorities were working to reopen the base, officials said Thursday.
All base personnel were safe and working, and no evacuation was needed, said spokeswoman, Bonnie Robinson. She would not say why the base was locked down.
The U.S. Army’s Dugway Proving Ground has been locked down since 7:25 p.m. (ET) on Wednesday, said another spokeswoman, Paula Thomas.
As of about 6:15 a.m. (ET) Thursday, “We have allowed personnel outside the gate to enter Dugway … and are making preparations to begin allowing personnel to go home shortly,” Thomas said.
About 1,500 employees and contractors are stationed at the base.
Dugway commander Col. William E. King IV said earlier authorities were “working as quickly and as thoroughly as possible to resolve a serious concern within the Test Area” but he didn’t elaborate.
Canadian Authorities Arrest Former Guatemalan Special Forces Commander Who Participated in Dos Erres Massacre
January 27th, 2011Via: Los Angeles Times:
A Moreno Valley martial arts instructor suspected of belonging to the Guatemalan military unit that killed more than 150 civilians, including children, in the country’s infamous Dos Erres massacre in 1982 has been arrested on immigration fraud charges after fleeing from federal authorities last year.
Jorge Sosa, 52, was arrested by Canadian authorities last week while visiting his parents near Calgary, and Justice Department officials are seeking his extradition back to California. Sosa holds both Canadian and U.S. citizenship.
…
Authorities said that Sosa, also known as Jorge Vinicio Sosa Orantes, was a commander in a special forces unit known as the Kaibiles, which interrogated and then killed men, women and children while searching their Guatemalan village for guerrilla fighters who had ambushed a military convoy.
“During the course of these interrogations, the special patrol proceeded to systematically kill the men, women, and children at Dos Erres by, among other methods, hitting them in the head with a sledgehammer and throwing them into a well,” according to an Orange County federal grand jury indictment handed down Sept. 1. “Members of the special patrol also forcibly raped many of the women and girls at Dos Erres before killing them.”
Skeletal remains of about 150 people were later found in the village well, according to federal officials.
Related: U.S. Trained and Backed War Criminal: Efraín Ríos Montt
E-mails Suggest Bear Stearns Cheated Clients Out of Billions; Sold Investors ‘A Sack of Shit’
January 27th, 2011Via: The Atlantic:
Former Bear Stearns mortgage executives who now run mortgage divisions of Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, and Ally Financial have been accused of cheating and defrauding investors through the mortgage securities they created and sold while at Bear. According to e-mails and internal audits, JPMorgan had known about this fraud since the spring of 2008, but hid it from the public eye through legal maneuvering. Last week a lawsuit filed in 2008 by mortgage insurer Ambac Assurance Corp against Bear Stearns and JPMorgan was unsealed. The lawsuit’s supporting e-mails, going back as far as 2005, highlight Bear traders telling their superiors they were selling investors like Ambac a “sack of shit.”
News of internal whistleblowers coming forward from Bear’s mortgage servicing division, EMC, was first reported by The Atlantic in May of last year. Ex-EMC analysts admitted they were sometimes told to falsify loan-level performance data provided to the ratings agencies who blessed Bear’s billion-dollar deals. But according to depositions and documents in the Ambac lawsuit, Bear’s misdeeds went even deeper. They say senior traders under Tom Marano, who was a Senior Managing Director and Global Head of Mortgages for Bear and is now CEO of Ally’s mortgage operations, were pocketing cash that should have gone to securities holders after Bear had already sold them bonds and moved the loans off its books.
Mike Nierenberg, who ran the adjustable-rate mortgage trading desk at Bear and is now the head of mortgages and securitization for Bank of America, was a key player ensuring the defaulting loans Bear was buying would move off their books right after they bought them, with little concern for the firm’s due diligence standards. He was joined in this scheme by Jeff Verschleiser, his peer and Senior Managing Director on the mortgage and asset-backed securities trading desk and head of whole loan trading. He is now an executive in Goldman Sachs’ mortgage division.
According to the lawsuit, the Bear traders would sell toxic mortgage securities to investors and then sell back the bad loans with early payment defaults to the banks that originated them at a discount. The traders would pocket the refund, and would not pass it on to the mortgage trust, which was where it should have gone to be distributed to the investors who owned the bonds. The Marano-led traders also cut the time allowed for early payment defaults, without telling the bond investors. That way, Bear could quickly securitize defective loans, without leaving enough time for investors to do their own due diligence after the bonds were sold and put-back any bad loans to Bear.
DOJ Seeks Mandatory Data Retention Requirement for ISPs
January 26th, 2011Via: Computerworld:
The U.S. Department of Justice and an organization representing police chiefs from around the country renewed calls on Tuesday for legislation mandating Internet Service Providers (ISP) to retain certain customer usage data for up to two years.
The calls, which are stoking long standing privacy fears, were made at a hearing convened on Tuesday by a House subcommittee that is chaired by Rep. James Sensenbrenner, a Republican congressman from Wisconsin. Four years ago, Sensenbrenner proposed, and then quickly withdrew, legislation calling for mandatory data retention for ISPs.
In prepared testimony for today’s hearing, Jason Weinstein, deputy assistant attorney general at the Justice Department, said that data retention was crucial to fighting Internet crimes (PDF document), especially online child pornography.
Current policies that only require ISPs to preserve usage data at the specific request of law enforcement authorities are just not sufficient, Weinstein said. Increasingly, law enforcement authorities are coming up empty-handed in their efforts to go after online predators and other criminals because of the unavailability of data relating to their online activities, Weinstein said.
Police and Protesters Clash in Egypt
January 26th, 2011Video from Russia Today:
Via: Reuters:
Police fought with thousands of Egyptians who defied a government ban Wednesday to protest against President Hosni Mubarak’s 30-year-old rule, firing tear gas at the crowds and dragging away demonstrators.
Protesters burnt tyres and hurled stones at police as groups gathered at different parts of the capital Cairo.
The scenes were unprecedented in the country, one of the United States’ closest Middle East allies, and follow the overthrow two weeks ago of another long-serving Arab strongman, Tunisian leader Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali, in a popular revolt.
Activists had called on people to rally again after a “Day of Wrath” Tuesday of anti-government demonstrations across Egypt in which three protesters and one policeman were killed.
Security forces have arrested about 500 demonstrators over the two days, an Interior Ministry source said. Witnesses said officers, some in civilian clothes, hauled away people and bundled them into unmarked vans Wednesday.
Largest Soybean Sale Ever Between U.S. and China
January 26th, 2011Via: Grainnet:
Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack issued Jan. 25 the following statement on the reported sale of 2.74 million metric tons of U.S. soybeans to China in the 2011-12 marketing year:
“Today’s sale of 2.74 million tons of U.S. soybeans to China is the single largest daily soybean sale since USDA began issuing daily sales reports in 1977.
Flashback: Change We Can Believe In: Obama Chooses Monsanto Creature, Tom Vilsack, for Secretary of Agriculture
