cryptogon.com

Hundreds of deer were discovered either dead or so badly injured they had to be put down by wildlife experts.

In the country’s rural Salzburg province, 90 per cent of pheasants and 80 per cent of hares were killed in the hail storms.

Sepp Eder, the hunting chief, said : “Animals sought shelter in farms, in fields of grain but the hail was so heavy it smashed right into them. It may take five years for animal numbers to recover, if they ever do so.”

Confused, she called the customer service line on the back of the card, issued by Citibank, and was told the account was closed because of something that appeared on her credit report. But when the Sykesville, Md., resident got a copy of her credit report online, the only negative thing she saw was “closed at credit grantor’s request” on the Shell MasterCard account.

“They said there was a routine review,” said Burdette, who maintained that she and her husband, Brian, used the card regularly and always paid the bill on time.

Burdette isn’t alone. People across the country have been reporting similar experiences in postings on various consumer Web sites.

Citi confirmed the basics. The bank said in a statement it “decided to close a limited number of oil partner co-branded MasterCard accounts.” That includes not only Shell, but Citgo, ExxonMobil and Phillips 66-Conoco cards.

The close date was Wednesday, and letters were sent out Monday to customers informing them of the change, a Citi spokesman said. The bank would not say how many cards were shut down or how much available credit they represented.

But unlike the bank’s move to shut down its Home Depot cards, Citi did not discontinue the sale of these cards altogether. It is still accepting applications, promising rewards like 3 percent cash back on fuel purchases and 1 percent cash back on other spending.

No law, including the Credit CARD Act that has started to take effect, prevents banks from closing down credit accounts without warning. Credit card issuers all maintain the right, typically listed in the fine print on credit card agreements.

Citi would not say why the cards in question were shut down, issuing a statement that said only it continuously evaluates its products.

The 2009 Chevrolet Tahoe roared away with officers in pursuit, but shortly after the suspect made a right turn, operators at General Motors Co.’s OnStar service sent a command that electronically disabled the gas pedal and the SUV gradually came to a halt.

The flustered thief got out and ran, but was quickly nabbed after he climbed several fences and fell into a backyard swimming pool, police said.

More bond sales will further inflate Japan’s national debt, the highest among advanced economies at roughly 170% of gross domestic product, which could raise long-term interest rates and threaten the country’s economic recovery.

“It is possible” for the central government’s tax revenues to fall below ¥40 trillion ($444 billion), missing an initial forecast made nearly a year ago for ¥46 trillion, Mr. Fujii said at a news conference. “This is due to the global recession that began last year, and we will deal with this through the additional issuance of government securities.”

Mr. Fujii also said the government would not use the ¥2.926 trillion it saved through restructuring the previous cabinet’s extra budget to meet the shortfall in tax revenue. Instead, those funds will be spent on steps to support households, either in the current fiscal year ending March or during fiscal 2010, he said.

Mr. Fujii’s comments may add to speculation that the new Japanese government, which is focused on jump-starting the country’s sluggish consumer spending and has yet to come up with a fiscal-reform plan, is not prioritizing government debt reduction.

Even before the Democratic Party of Japan rose to power last month, the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development had predicted that Japan’s national debt would reach 200% by next year, indicating the gravity of Japan’s fiscal problems.

While Mr. Fujii declined to estimate how much more debt would be sold, analysts expect that the amount may be near the anticipated tax-revenue shortfall of ¥6 trillion or more. That would bring the total new bond issuance for this fiscal year to a record ¥50 trillion or higher.

Such views have driven investors to sell Japanese government debt recently, on concerns that greater supply will make JGBs less valuable. The yield on the benchmark 10-year government bonds, which moves inversely with bond prices, closed at a one-month high of ¥1.340% Monday. Around noon in Tokyo Tuesday the yield was at 1.345%.

Karzai and election officials loyal to the president appeared to balk at accepting the fraud investigators’ findings that he did not win the majority needed for a first-round victory in the landmark presidential election. That would trigger a runoff with his main challenger, former Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah.

While Abdullah renewed demands for a runoff, the Obama administration and diplomats sought to persuade Karzai to acknowledge the validity of the U.N.-backed panel’s findings. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said she was encouraged by the direction events were taking.

The Secret Service is tracking a far broader range of possible threats to the nation’s leaders, the officials said, even as it also investigates financial crimes such as counterfeiting as part of its original mandate.

The new demands are leading some officials, both inside and outside the agency, to raise the possibility of the service curtailing or dropping its role in fighting financial crime to focus more on protecting leaders and their families from assassination attempts and thwarting terrorist plots aimed at high-profile events.

“If there were an evaluation of the service’s two missions, it might be determined that it is ineffective . . . to conduct its protection mission and investigate financial crimes,’’ according to a inter nal report issued in August by the Congressional Research Service.

In-Q-Tel, the investment arm of the CIA and the wider intelligence community, is putting cash into Visible Technologies, a software firm that specializes in monitoring social media. It’s part of a larger movement within the spy services to get better at using ”open source intelligence” — information that’s publicly available, but often hidden in the flood of TV shows, newspaper articles, blog posts, online videos and radio reports generated every day.

Visible crawls over half a million web 2.0 sites a day, scraping more than a million posts and conversations taking place on blogs, online forums, Flickr, YouTube, Twitter and Amazon. (It doesn’t touch closed social networks, like Facebook, at the moment.) Customers get customized, real-time feeds of what’s being said on these sites, based on a series of keywords.

“That’s kind of the basic step — get in and monitor,” says company senior vice president Blake Cahill.

Then Visible “scores” each post, labeling it as positive or negative, mixed or neutral. It examines how influential a conversation or an author is. (”Trying to determine who really matters,” as Cahill puts it.) Finally, Visible gives users a chance to tag posts, forward them to colleagues and allow them to response through a web interface.

In-Q-Tel says it wants Visible to keep track of foreign social media, and give spooks “early-warning detection on how issues are playing internationally,” spokesperson Donald Tighe tells Danger Room.

Of course, such a tool can also be pointed inward, at domestic bloggers or tweeters. Visible already keeps tabs on web 2.0 sites for Dell, AT&T and Verizon. For Microsoft, the company is monitoring the buzz on its Windows 7 rollout. For Spam-maker Hormel, Visible is tracking animal-right activists’ online campaigns against the company.

“Anything that is out in the open is fair game for collection,” says Steven Aftergood, who tracks intelligence issues at the Federation of American Scientists. But “even if information is openly gathered by intelligence agencies it would still be problematic if it were used for unauthorized domestic investigations or operations. Intelligence agencies or employees might be tempted to use the tools at their disposal to compile information on political figures, critics, journalists or others, and to exploit such information for political advantage. That is not permissible even if all of the information in question is technically ‘open source.’”

Visible chief executive officer Dan Vetras says the CIA is now an “end customer,” thanks to the In-Q-Tel investment. And more government clients are now on the horizon. “We just got awarded another one in the last few days,” Vetras adds.

Tighe disputes this — sort of. “This contract, this deal, this investment has nothing to do with any agency of government and this company,” he says. But Tighe quickly notes that In-Q-Tel does have “an interested end customer” in the intelligence community for Visibile. And if all goes well, the company’s software will be used in pilot programs at that agency. “In pilots, we use real data. And during the adoption phase, we use it real missions.”

But nobody questions that they are on the increase.

David Rothstein, a researcher with Policy Matters Ohio, summarized the way they occur like this:

* The lender files a foreclosure, gets the foreclosure judgment in court, takes the property to sheriff’s auction but doesn’t bid on it if no one else does.

* The lender files as above, gets the judgment, sets the sheriff’s auction, then cancels the sale at the last minute.

* The lender files as above but then never requests a sheriff’s auction.

* The lender doesn’t even bother to file foreclosure.

All of these actions leave the foreclosed property in the hands of the original owner who, in many cases, has moved out and is unaware the lender hasn’t taken it.

One indicator of the trend in walkaways is the gap between the number of foreclosure filings by lenders and the number of properties actually sold at sheriff’s auction.

A Dayton Daily News analysis of Montgomery County records found that, through September, foreclosure filings are on a pace this year to decrease by 8 percent. Meanwhile, foreclosed properties sold at sheriff’s sale will be down more than 21 percent. Over the three years an average of 2,500 foreclosure filings have not made it to sale at auction.

A foreclosure filing may not make it to auction for a number of reasons, including owners coming up with the money or lenders working out deals with them. But, Rothstein said, the growing difference between filings and sales suggests walkaways are playing an increasing role.

“When we look at the numbers, it’s not like thousands of people are getting loan modifications that would lift them out of the foreclosure process,” he said. “So what’s happening to those other properties?”

Another indicator is the falling number of properties that banks are repossessing, said Daren Blomquist, a spokesman for RealtyTrac, Inc. Data from RealtyTrac shows that bank repossessions, called REOs, have been steadily declining in Montgomery County over the last three years. The 2009 monthly average for repossessions is only 43 percent of what it was in 2007, a newspaper analysis of the data show.

“There’s something happening once the properties enter foreclosure that is at the very least slowing down the process,” Blomquist said. “Maybe not to that (Montgomery County’s) extreme, but we’re seeing a similar pattern nationwide.”

Another indicator is the number of canceled sheriff’s sales, said Chuck Rodersheimer, a Dayton attorney who specializes in bankruptcy and foreclosure cases. ZIP codes like 45405 and 45406 northwest of downtown Dayton illustrate the problem, he said.

A newspaper analysis of sheriff’s sale data found that 45406 had 721 cancellations since 2006, by far the most of any county ZIP code. The 45405 ZIP was second with 594 cancellations.

Some of those neighborhoods have a lot of old, deteriorating housing stock, many of which are for sale or vacant, and accumulating unpaid taxes. The cost to the bank for taking responsibility for those properties, he said, is going to far outstrip anything they could hope to get out of selling the homes.