The inspector general at the Securities and Exchange Commission has recommended that the Justice Department examine whether to prosecute former SEC general counsel David Becker for helping shape the agency’s policy toward victims of Bernard Madoff’s investment fraud despite having a personal stake in the matter.
Becker was an heir to and executor of his mother’s estate, which included a $2 million account with Madoff. Months ago, a trustee trying to recover money for Madoff’s investors sued Becker to recover fictitious profits paid out when his mother’s account was liquidated.
SEC’s IG: Review ex-counsel’s role in Madoff victims policy
Ecologist to devote $100k Heinz award to fight fracking in NY State
We are blowing up mountains to get at coal, felling boreal forests to get at tar, and siphoning oil from the ocean deep. Most ominously, through the process called fracking, we are shattering the very bedrock of our nation to get at the petrified bubbles of methane trapped inside.
Fracking turns fresh water into poison. It fills our air with smog, our roadways with eighteen-wheelers hauling hazardous materials, and our fields and pastures with pipelines and toxic pits.
I am therefore announcing my intent to devote my Heinz Award to the fight against hydrofracking in upstate New York, where I live with my husband and our two children.
U.S. to build new massive prison in Bagram
As the Obama administration announced plans for hundreds of billions of dollars more in domestic budget cuts, it late last week solicited bids for the construction of a massive new prison in Bagram, Afghanistan.
Posted on the aptly named FedBizOps.Gov website which it uses to announce new privatized spending projects, the administration unveiled plans for "the construction of Detention Facility in Parwan (DFIP), Bagram, Afghanistan" which includes "detainee housing capability for approximately 2000 detainees."
There's More to Equality Than Asking and Telling
Don't Ask, Don't Tell is dead. But the fight for equality in the military is nowhere near finished. While the official end of DADT at midnight on Monday is a historic turning point, unresolved issues with the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) and military regulations mean that service members and their partners in same-sex relationships will continue to suffer second-class treatment.
Stephen Peters knows what it's like to live a lie, both as a serviceman and as a serviceman's partner. In 2007, he was discharged under DADT after informing his commanding officer that he was gay. Peters had just reenlisted in the Marines—but he didn't want to hide who he was anymore.
US court rules against Chevron in Ecuador oil case
A US court has overturned a block on Ecuadoreans collecting damages totalling $18.2bn (£11.5bn) from Chevron over Amazon oil pollution. The order reversed a previous judge's ruling that froze enforcement of the fine outside Ecuador.
But it is not the end of the legal saga, which is also going through the courts in Ecuador.
Texaco, which merged with Chevron in 2001, was accused of dumping toxic materials in the Ecuadorean Amazon.
(Prescription) Drug deaths now outnumber traffic fatalities in U.S., data show
Fueling the surge are prescription pain and anxiety drugs that are potent, highly addictive and especially dangerous when combined with one another or with other drugs or alcohol.
Drugs exceeded motor vehicle accidents as a cause of death in 2009, killing at least 37,485 people nationwide, according to preliminary data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Wall Street protesters: over-educated, under-employed and angry
Inspired by Tahrir Square, those who gathered in lower Manhattan are keen to mount a more permanent protest at corporate influence in US politics.
In the heart of New York's financial district, the marble and concrete floor of lower Manhattan's Zuccotti Park was strewn with untidy clumps of people, gathered in small groups amid a jumble of sleeping bags, mattresses and home-made banners, protesting against the banks and institutions that towered over them.
The silent battle for servicewomen: sexual assault
They are the nation's women in uniform, and they are being sexually harassed, abused and assaulted at an alarming rate by their fellow soldiers and officers. Since 9/11, with unprecedented numbers of women serving in Iraq and Afghanistan, the nation's military leaders say that misogyny is undermining troop readiness.
Three earthquakes hit Guatemala
Three earthquakes struck southern Guatemala Monday within 90 minutes, shaking buildings in the capital and killing three people.
The quakes struck near Guatemala's southwestern coast in the sugar cane-growing region around Santa Rosa, forcing the evacuation of about 400 people and cutting electricity and telephone services, emergency services said.
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