Blackwater’s New Ethics Chief: John Ashcroft
May 4th, 2011Via: Wired:
The consortium in charge of restructuring the world’s most infamous private security firm just added a new chief in charge of keeping the company on the straight and narrow. Yes, John Ashcroft, the former attorney general, is now an “independent director” of Xe Services, formerly known as Blackwater.
Ashcroft will head Xe’s new “subcommittee on governance,” its backers announced early Wednesday in a statement, an entity designed to “maximize governance, compliance and accountability” and “promote the highest degrees of ethics and professionalism within the private security industry.”
In other words, no more shooting civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan; no more signing for weapons its guards aren’t authorized to carry in warzones; no more impersonations of cartoon characters to acquire said weaponry; and no more ‘roids and coke on the job.
The Global Economy’s Corporate Crime Wave
May 4th, 2011Via: Project Syndicate:
The world is drowning in corporate fraud, and the problems are probably greatest in rich countries – those with supposedly “good governance.” Poor-country governments probably accept more bribes and commit more offenses, but it is rich countries that host the global companies that carry out the largest offenses. Money talks, and it is corrupting politics and markets all over the world.
Recovery: About 1 in 7 in U.S. Receive Food Stamps
May 4th, 2011Via: Christian Science Monitor:
As a logical consequence of the prolonged economic downturn it appears that participation in the federal food stamp program is continuing to rise.
In fact, household participation has been climbing so steadily that it has far surpassed the last peak set as a result of the immediate fallout following hurricane Katrina.
The latest data released by the Department of Agriculture shows that in February, an additional 11,517 new recipients were added to the food stamps program, an increase of 11.65% on a year-over-year basis, while household participation increased 13.97%.
Individual participation as a ratio of the overall civilian non-institutional population has increased 10.78% over the same period.
Japanese Government Raises ‘Safe’ Radiation Limits So Children Can Legally Attend Schools That Have Been Covered in Fallout from Fukushima Nuclear Disaster
May 4th, 2011Via: Guardian:
Furious parents in Fukushima have delivered a bag of radioactive playground earth to education officials in protest at moves to weaken nuclear safety standards in schools.
Children can now be exposed to 20 times more radiation than was previously permissible. The new regulations have prompted outcry. A senior adviser resigned and the prime minister, Naoto Kan, was criticised by politicians from his own party.
Ministers have defended the increase in the acceptable safety level from 1 to 20 millisieverts per year as a necessary measure to guarantee the education of hundreds of thousands of children in Fukushima prefecture, location of the nuclear plant that suffered a partial meltdown and several explosions after the earthquake and tsunami on 11 March.
It is estimated that 75% of Fukushima’s schools may have radiation levels above the old safety level of 1 millisievert. The local authorities in Koriyama have tried to ease the problem by digging up the top layer of soil in school and day centre playgrounds, but residents near the proposed dump site have objected.
The new standard of 20 millisieverts a year – equivalent to the annual maximum dose for German nuclear workers – will mean those schools remain open, but parents and nuclear opponents are angry that safety concerns are being ignored.
Deutsche Bank Faces U.S. Fraud Lawsuit Over Mortgage Lending
May 3rd, 2011via: Bloomberg:
Deutsche Bank AG (DBK), Germany’s biggest bank, was sued for more than $1 billion by the U.S. government, which claims it “repeatedly lied” so that thousands of risky mortgages qualified for a government insurance program.
The Frankfurt-based bank and its MortgageIT unit falsely certified that borrowers didn’t face risk of default, qualifying the loans for insurance by the Housing and Urban Development Department’s Federal Housing Administration, according to a complaint filed today in Manhattan federal court.
The bank and MortgageIT masked problem loans through “egregious” violations of HUD rules for analyzing the income and creditworthiness of borrowers, the Justice Department said. MortgageIT endorsed more than 39,000 loans for FHA insurance after 1999, making them “highly marketable for resale,” the U.S. said. Of those, 12,500 defaulted.
Army Corps Detonates Explosives on Flood Levee
May 3rd, 2011Via: Reuters:
The government on Monday detonated explosives to blow a hole in a flood levee on the Mississippi River and save several towns from being inundated, including Cairo, Illinois.
Six plumes of flame rose from the area of the explosion and a loud boom was heard at about 10 p.m. local time, a Reuters journalist near the site of the action said.
Related: U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Moves 265 Tons of Explosives Into Position to Breach Birds Point Levee
Resisting the Rise of the Machines as Marketing Meme to Sell Cars?
May 3rd, 2011Via: Dodge / YouTube:
Related: Life in Touchscreen Hell
Japan: Kan, “Will Study the Possibility of Setting Up an Alternative Capital to Take Over Tokyo’s Role in an Emergency”
May 2nd, 2011Via: NHK:
Kan said measures were not taken despite previous accidents and warnings, and that he must admit that the utility and the government failed to fully deal with the situation.
He also suggested that he will study the possibility of setting up an alternative capital to take over Tokyo’s role in an emergency, saying that measures must be taken to secure the continuity of the capital’s central functions.
Britain: Wind Power Companies Paid to Stop Producing Electricity
May 2nd, 2011Via: BBC:
Six Scottish windfarms were paid up to £300,000 to stop producing energy, it has emerged.
The turbines, at a range of sites across Scotland, were stopped because the grid network could not absorb all the energy they generated.
Details of the payments emerged following research by the Renewable Energy Foundation (REF).
The REF said energy companies were paid £900,000 to halt the turbines for several hours between 5 and 6 April.
According to the REF research, the payments made cost up to 20 times the value of the electricity that would have been generated if the turbines had kept running.
Your Location ‘Extremely Valuable’ to Google
May 2nd, 2011Via: International Business Times:
Then, just weeks ago Los Angeles-based researcher Samy Kamkar illustrated that Google Android based smartphones were sending precise GPS location and other data back to Google “several times an hour.”
“I cannot stress enough how important Google’s wifi location database is to our Android and mobile product strategy,” Google location manager Steve Lee told founder Page in the memo. “We absolutely do care about this because we need wifi data collection in order to maintain and improve our wifi location service.”
Related: Google Faces $50 Million Lawsuit Over Android Location Tracking
