Tag: Docudharma Times

Never Forget That

The Bush Administration Has Violated U.S. And

International Law

As Outlook Dims, Obama Expands Recovery Plans



By JACKIE CALMES

Published: December 20, 2008

WASHINGTON – Faced with worsening forecasts for the economy, President-elect Barack Obama is expanding his economic recovery plan and will seek to create or save 3 million jobs in the next two years, up from a goal of 2.5 million jobs set just last month, several advisers to Mr. Obama said Saturday.

Even Mr. Obama’s more ambitious goal would not fully offset as many as 4 million jobs that some economists are projecting might be lost in the coming year, according to the information he received from advisers in the past week. That job loss would be double the total this year and could push the nation’s unemployment rate past 9 percent if nothing is done.

The new job target was set after a meeting last Tuesday in which Christina D. Romer, who is Mr. Obama’s choice to lead his Council of Economic Advisers, presented information about previous recessions to establish that the current downturn was likely to be “more severe than anything we’ve experienced in the past half-century,” according to an Obama official familiar with the meeting. Officials said they were working on a plan big enough to stimulate the economy but not so big to provoke major opposition in Congress.

Bush E-Mails May Be Secret a Bit Longer

Legal Battles, Technical Difficulties Delay Required Transfer to Archives

By R. Jeffrey Smith

Washington Post Staff Writer

Sunday, December 21, 2008; Page A01

The required transfer in four weeks of all of the Bush White House’s electronic mail messages and documents to the National Archives has been imperiled by a combination of technical glitches, lawsuits and lagging computer forensic work, according to government officials, historians and lawyers.

Federal law requires outgoing White House officials to provide the Archives copies of their records, a cache estimated at more than 300 million messages and 25,000 boxes of documents depicting some of the most sensitive policymaking of the past eight years.

USA

Executive Pay

After years of watching the top echelons of corporate management take home billions, shareholders want to know: Will inflated pay packages get slashed?

By David S. Hilzenrath

Washington Post Staff Writer

Sunday, December 21, 2008; Page F01

Angelo R. Mozilo, whose Countrywide Financial came to symbolize the failings of the mortgage industry, took home more than half a billion dollars from 1998 to 2007, including $121.7 million from cashing in options last year alone. Charles O. Prince, who led Citigroup to the brink of disaster, was awarded a retirement deal worth $28 million. Now, in a show of purported restraint, top Wall Street executives are going without bonuses.

If you’re angry that so many executives got paid so much for screwing up so spectacularly, you might take solace in the fact that shares they still hold have lost value, too. But if you think executive pay is finally succumbing to the force of gravity — if you’d like to believe that an epic destruction of investor wealth will fundamentally and permanently change the way chief executives are paid, or that you, dear shareholder, have the power to join forces with others just like you and create a more rational order — don’t bet on it.

The Auto Bailout: Means

Screw The Workers And Their Union

Madoff Scheme Kept Rippling Outward, Across Borders



By DIANA B. HENRIQUES

Published: December 19, 2008

By the end, the world itself was too small to support the vast Ponzi scheme constructed by Bernard L. Madoff.

Initially, he tapped local money pulled in from country clubs and charity dinners, where investors sought him out to casually plead with him to manage their savings so they could start reaping the steady, solid returns their envied friends were getting.

Then, he and his promoters set sights on Europe, again framing the investments as memberships in a select club. A Swiss hedge fund manager, Michel Dominicé, still remembers the pitch he got a few years ago from a salesman in Geneva.

Iraqi shoe-thrower was beaten by security, says judge

• Chief investigator says journalist may be pardoned

• Doubts cast on apology as ‘shoe intifada’ spreads

Ian Black, Middle East editor

The Guardian, Saturday 20 December 2008

Muntazer al-Zaidi could hardly have anticipated the extraordinary reaction when he hurled his shoes at George Bush on Sunday to protest at the invasion of Iraq. His “farewell kiss” to the US president has kept the previously unknown TV journalist in the centre of global attention – a hero across the Arab world and beyond.

Zaidi, who was wrestled to the ground by security men, was beaten on the face, investigating judge Dhia al-Kinani revealed in Baghdad yesterday. But claims that he has asked the Iraqi prime minister to forgive him for his “big ugly act” were immediately questioned by his brother.

Zaidi’s emergence as a role model for anti-American resistance was confirmed by the Iranian ayatollah Ahmad Jannati, who praised what he called the “shoe intifada [uprising]” at Tehran University, where demonstrations against the “Great Satan” have been routine for 30 years.

USA

Aid in Hand, Clock Ticks for Detroit

With $17.4 Billion, a Mandate: Restructure by March or Go Bankrupt

By Steven Mufson, David Cho and Cecilia Kang

Washington Post Staff Writers

Saturday, December 20, 2008; Page A01

President Bush put the government into the daunting role of industrial oversight yesterday by grudgingly throwing a $17.4 billion lifeline to General Motors and Chrysler, a politically sensitive mission that President-elect Barack Obama will soon inherit.

The emergency loans mark the first time the administration has extended its bailout to companies outside the financial sector and will head off imminent bankruptcy for the ailing Detroit automakers, which have said they lack enough cash to make major payments due to suppliers by the beginning of January.

By The Time Bush Bails Out

The Big Three

It Will Be Just Another

In A Long List Of Failures

NASA’s spending is under scrutiny

Obama’s transition team wants to know about the agency’s basic money management, including cost overruns.

By Mark K. Matthews and Robert Block

December 19, 2008

Reporting from Washington — Most nights it’s possible to look skyward with a pair of cheap binoculars and see a $100,000 mistake circling the Earth. The glowing object — an orbiting NASA tool bag — was lost last month by an astronaut during a routine spacewalk.

The canvas-and-acrylic caddy contained two grease guns, a scraper, a trash bag and some wipes, hardly cutting-edge technology. So why did it cost $100,000?

NASA officials said they had no answer to that question — beyond the fact that, as spokesman Allard Beutel put it, “space flight is expensive.” That expense is drawing serious scrutiny from the incoming administration of President-elect Barack Obama.

Of 74 questions submitted to the agency by Obama’s NASA transition team, more than half asked about basic spending issues, including cost overruns.

UN tribunal jails Rwanda genocide mastermind for life

Theoneste Bagosora, country’s defence chief of staff, denies directing massacre of 800,000 by Hutu militia

Chris McGreal

guardian.co.uk

An international court has sentenced the mastermind of the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, Theoneste Bagosora, to life imprisonment in what prosecutors hailed as the most significant verdict of its kind since Nuremberg.

The five-year trial of Bagosora, who was the chief of staff in Rwanda’s defence ministry, established that he oversaw a complex and extensive conspiracy to commit genocide, including years organising and arming the “Interahamwe” militia which led the killing of about 800,000 Tutsis in 100 days.

The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, sitting in Tanzania, heard that in April 1994 he personally ordered the murder of individual politicians, including Rwanda’s moderate prime minister, Agathe Uwilingiyimina, and the killing of 10 Belgian peacekeepers to drive the UN out. Bagosora then unleashed the genocide against the Tutsi minority, mobilising the general Hutu population to support the Interahamwe and the army in the mass killings.

USA

W. Mark Felt, Watergate Deep Throat, Dies at 95



By TIM WEINER

Published: December 19, 2008

W. Mark Felt, who was the No. 2 official at the F.B.I. when he helped bring down President Richard M. Nixon by resisting the Watergate cover-up and becoming Deep Throat, the most famous anonymous source in American history, died Thursday. He was 95 and lived in Santa Rosa, Calif.His death was confirmed by Rob Jones, his grandson.

In 2005, Mr. Felt revealed that he was the one who had secretly supplied Bob Woodward of The Washington Post with crucial leads in the Watergate affair in the early 1970s. His decision to unmask himself, in an article in Vanity Fair, ended a guessing game that had gone on for more than 30 years.

The Bush Lying Tour Continues

Maybe Your City Is Next?

35 Iraq Officials Held in Raids on Key Ministry



By CAMPBELL ROBERTSON and TARIQ MAHER

Published: December 17, 2008

BAGHDAD – Up to 35 officials in the Iraqi Ministry of the Interior ranking as high as general have been arrested over the past three days with some of them accused of quietly working to reconstitute Saddam Hussein’s Baath Party, according to senior security officials in Baghdad.

The arrests, confirmed by officials from the Ministries of the Interior and National Security as well as the prime minister’s office, included four generals, one of whom, Gen. Ahmed Abu Raqeef, is the ministry’s director of internal affairs. The officials also said that the arrests had come at the hand of an elite counterterrorism force that reports directly to the office of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki.

The involvement of the counterterrorism unit speaks to the seriousness of the accusations, and several officials from the Ministries of the Interior and National Security said that some of those arrested were in the early stages of planning a coup.

Spinning Quirky Yarns

Film Industry in Small Indian Textile Town Makes Low-Budget Parodies Of Bollywood Smash Hits With a Lot of Heart, Local Flavor and Ingenuity

By Rama Lakshmi

Washington Post Foreign Service

Thursday, December 18, 2008; Page A19

MALEGAON, India — Past a narrow alleyway filled with sleeping goats, water tanks and women washing clothes, Shaikh Nasir’s modest home is a landmark. This is where he thinks up new ways to make the people of this grim textile town laugh.

Nasir is the father of a homegrown film industry that is famous for its parodies of blockbuster movies from Bollywood, India’s Hindi film capital.

USA

Dollar’s Slump Erases Months Of Solid Gains



By Anthony Faiola

Washington Post Staff Writer

Thursday, December 18, 2008; Page A01

The dollar yesterday staged one of its biggest one-day drops against the euro and fell to a 13-year low against the Japanese yen as near-zero interest rates and the Federal Reserve’s plan to print vast sums of cash dilute the value of the greenback.

The drops dramatically accelerated the dollar’s reversal of fortune over the past three weeks after months of solid gains. The slide underscores the risks the Federal Reserve is taking to jump-start the U.S. economy through aggressive monetary policy.

On Monday, the Fed cut its target for the federal funds rate, at which banks lend to each other, from 1 percent to a target range of 0 percent to 0.25 percent, and effectively vowed to print as much money as it needs to try to pull the United States from a worsening recession.

The Bush Legacy

So What

Meaning I Don’t Care

What You Think

Big Oil Projects Put in Jeopardy by Fall in Prices



By JAD MOUAWAD

Published: December 15, 2008

From the plains of North Dakota to the deep waters of Brazil, dozens of major oil and gas projects have been suspended or canceled in recent weeks as companies scramble to adjust to the collapse in energy markets.

In the short run, falling oil prices are leading to welcome relief at the pump for American families ahead of the holidays, with gasoline down from its summer record of just over $4 to an average of $1.66 a gallon, and still falling.

But the project delays are likely to reduce future energy supplies – and analysts believe they may set the stage for another surge in oil prices once the global economy recovers.

Arctic melt passes the point of no return



By Steve Connor, Science Editor

Tuesday, 16 December 2008

Scientists have found the first unequivocal evidence that the Arctic region is warming at a faster rate than the rest of the world at least a decade before it was predicted to happen.

Climate-change researchers have found that air temperatures in the region are higher than would be normally expected during the autumn because the increased melting of the summer Arctic sea ice is accumulating heat in the ocean. The phenomenon, known as Arctic amplification, was not expected to be seen for at least another 10 or 15 years and the findings will further raise concerns that the Arctic has already passed the climatic tipping-point towards ice-free summers, beyond which it may not recover.

USA

Obama Picks Chicago’s Schools Chief For Cabinet



By Anne E. Kornblut and Philip Rucker

Washington Post Staff Writers

Tuesday, December 16, 2008; Page A01

President-elect  Barack Obama will nominate Chicago schools executive Arne Duncan as his education secretary at an event in the city today, transition aides said, and is expected to tap Sen.  Ken Salazar (D-Colo.) later this week to serve as secretary of the interior, all but finalizing his selections for major Cabinet posts.

Obama plans to introduce Duncan this morning at Dodge Renaissance Academy, a Chicago elementary school that the two visited together in 2005.

Duncan, 44, has been chief executive of the Chicago public schools since 2001, steering the nation’s third-largest school district, which has more than 400,000 students.

Always Making Sure

The Rich Get Theirs

While The Middle Class Gets Nothing

Executive Pay Limits May Prove Toothless

Loophole in Bailout Provision Leaves Enforcement in Doubt

By Amit R. Paley

Washington Post Staff Writer

Monday, December 15, 2008; Page A01

Congress wanted to guarantee that the $700 billion financial bailout would limit the eye-popping pay of Wall Street executives, so lawmakers included a mechanism for reviewing executive compensation and penalizing firms that break the rules.

But at the last minute, the Bush administration insisted on a one-sentence change to the provision, congressional aides said. The change stipulated that the penalty would apply only to firms that received bailout funds by selling troubled assets to the government in an auction, which was the way the Treasury Department had said it planned to use the money.

Face to face with the Taliban

Exclusive report from a Taliban veteran’s compound in Afghanistan and on the battlefield

Ghaith Abdul Ahad in Afghanistan

guardian.co.uk, Sunday 14 December 2008 19.44 GMT

Qomendan Hemmet sat cross-legged under a window of the mud-walled room. His shoulder, sunk in an old military jacket, rested against the wall and a radio antenna stuck out of his pocket. Next to him sat his deputy, wrapped in a big blanket, silent and sleepy. Around the room sat his men, their faces contorted by years of fighting and poverty, dressed in shalwar kameez and magazine pouches, eyes dark as the kohl lining them. Radios crackled, phones rang non-stop, and more fighters came, drank tea and left with orders.

“Salar is the new Falluja,” declared Qomendan Hemmet emphatically. “The Americans and the Afghan army control the highway, and five metres on each side. The rest is our territory.

USA

States’ Funds for Jobless Are Drying Up



By JENNIFER STEINHAUER

Published: December 14, 2008

With unemployment claims reaching their highest levels in decades, states are running out of money to pay benefits, and some are turning to the federal government for loans or increasing taxes on businesses to make the payments.

Thirty states are at risk of having the funds that pay out unemployment benefits become insolvent over the next few months, according to the National Association of State Workforce Agencies. Funds in two states, Indiana and Michigan, have already dried up, and both states are borrowing from the federal government to make payments to the unemployed.

Unemployment taxes are collected by states from employers, but the rate varies from state to state per employee. In good times states build up trust funds so that when unemployment is high there is enough money to cover the requests for benefits, which are guaranteed by the federal government.

Blaming Others For Your Failures   Making Sure You Take No Responsibility

Report Spotlights Iraq Rebuilding Blunders



By JAMES GLANZ and T. CHRISTIAN MILLER

Published: December 13, 2008

BAGHDAD – An unpublished 513-page federal history of the American-led reconstruction of Iraq depicts an effort crippled before the invasion by Pentagon planners who were hostile to the idea of rebuilding a foreign country, and then molded into a $100 billion failure by bureaucratic turf wars, spiraling violence and ignorance of the basic elements of Iraqi society and infrastructure.

The history, the first official account of its kind, is circulating in draft form here and in Washington among a tight circle of technical reviewers, policy experts and senior officials. It also concludes that when the reconstruction began to lag – particularly in the critical area of rebuilding the Iraqi police and army – the Pentagon simply put out inflated measures of progress to cover up the failures.

Views on Auto Aid Fall On North-South Divide

Tennessee’s Nonunion Workers Bristle At Bailout Talk for Detroit’s Big Three

By Peter Whoriskey

Washington Post Staff Writer

Sunday, December 14, 2008; Page A01

SMYRNA, Tenn., Dec. 13 — People in this small town surrounding one of Nissan’s busiest U.S. car plants have followed the news of the auto bailout with particular interest.

Namely, they wonder, what about us?

Nissan is a Japanese automaker, but the Altimas, Maximas and Pathfinders that roll out of the factory are built by locals who are “Americans too,” they like to point out. And just like the other automakers, Nissan is inflicting some of the economic pain on its employees, cutting shifts and pay.

USA

Stimulus Package To First Pay for Routine Repairs



By Alec MacGillis and Michael D. Shear

Washington Post Staff Writers

Sunday, December 14, 2008; Page A01

President-elect  Barack Obama calls it “the largest new investment in our national infrastructure since the creation of the federal highway system in the 1950s.” New York Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg compares it to the New Deal — when workers built hundreds of bridges, dams and parkways — while saying it could help close the gap with China, where he recently traveled on a Shanghai train at 267 mph.

Most of the infrastructure spending being proposed for the massive stimulus package that Obama and congressional Democrats are readying, however, is not exactly the stuff of history, but destined for routine projects that have been on the to-do lists of state highway departments for years. Oklahoma wants to repave stretches of Interstates 35 and 40 and build “cable barriers” to keep wayward cars from crossing medians. New Jersey wants to repaint 88 bridges and restore Route 35 from Toms River to Mantoloking. Scottsdale, Ariz., wants to widen 1.5 miles of Scottsdale Road.

Republicans Tell Blue Collar Workers

Go Straight To Hell  

Questions Are Raised in Trader’s Massive Fraud



By ALEX BERENSON and DIANA B. HENRIQUES

Published: December 12, 2008

For years, investors, rivals and regulators all wondered how Bernard L. Madoff worked his magic.

But on Friday, less than 24 hours after this prominent Wall Street figure was arrested on charges connected with what authorities portrayed as the biggest Ponzi scheme in financial history, hard questions began to be raised about whether Mr. Madoff acted alone and why his suspected con game was not uncovered sooner.

As investors from Palm Beach to New York to London counted their losses on Friday in what Mr. Madoff himself described as a $50 billion fraud, federal authorities took control of what remained of his firm and began to pore over its books.

Are the Greek riots a taste of things to come?

Greece’s riots are a sign of the economic times. Other countries should beware, says Peter Popham in Athens

Saturday, 13 December 2008

After firing 4,600 tear-gas canisters in the past week, the Greek police have nearly exhausted their stock. As they seek emergency supplies from Israel and Germany, still the petrol bombs and stones of the protesters rain down, with clashes again outside parliament yesterday.

Bringing together youths in their early twenties struggling to survive amid mass youth unemployment and schoolchildren swotting for highly competitive university exams that may not ultimately help them in a treacherous jobs market, the events of the past week could be called the first credit-crunch riots. There have been smaller-scale sympathy attacks from Moscow to Copenhagen, and economists say countries with similarly high youth unemployment problems such as Spain and Italy should prepare for unrest.

USA

White House Moves Toward Auto Bailout

Program to Rescue Banks Could Expand to Carmakers

By Steven Mufson

Washington Post Staff Writer

Saturday, December 13, 2008; Page A01

The Bush administration yesterday moved to pull Detroit’s automakers back from the brink, saying it would drop its opposition to tapping the $700 billion financial industry rescue package to help General Motors and Chrysler survive through year’s end.

The White House said it would explore all financing options, including drawing on the Treasury’s Troubled Asset Relief Program, which until now has been used exclusively to aid banks and other financial firms. The automakers and some members of Congress were also hoping that the Federal Reserve would make a loan to aid the firms and preserve tens of thousands of jobs.

Killing The UAW

By Killing The Auto Bailout  

Senate Abandons Automaker Bailout Bid



By DAVID M. HERSZENHORN

Published: December 11, 2008

WASHINGTON – The Senate on Thursday night abandoned efforts to fashion a government rescue of the American automobile industry, as Senate Republicans refused to support a bill endorsed by the White House and Congressional Democrats.

The failure to reach agreement on Capitol Hill raised a specter of financial collapse for General Motors and Chrysler, which say they may not be able to survive through this month.

After Senate Republicans balked at supporting a $14 billion auto rescue plan approved by the House on Wednesday, negotiators worked late into Thursday evening to broker a deal, but deadlocked over Republican demands for steep cuts in pay and benefits by the United Automobile Workers union in 2009.

World markets slump as US car industry bail-out fails



Julia Kollewe

guardian.co.uk, Friday 12 December 2008 08.28 GMT

Stockmarkets tumbled around the world after a $14bn (£10bn) bail-out package for the struggling US automotive industry collapsed last night.

The London market followed Asian shares into the red. The FTSE 100 index fell 176 points to 4212 in early trading, a drop of nearly 4%.

A partisan dispute over union wage cuts in the US Senate derailed a last-ditch effort to revive the emergency aid for US carmakers before the end of the year. The breakdown left the car industry – which employs 3 million people – in limbo. General Motors and Chrysler have warned that they will go bankrupt this month if they do not receive $14bn in taxpayer funds.

The Senate majority leader, Harry Reid, called the breakdown a “a loss for the country”. “I dread looking at Wall Street tomorrow. It’s not going to be a pleasant sight,” he said.

USA

U.S. keeps silent as Afghan ally removes war crime evidence



By Tom Lasseter | McClatchy Newspapers

DASHT-E LEILI, Afghanistan – Seven years ago, a convoy of container trucks rumbled across northern Afghanistan loaded with a human cargo of suspected Taliban and al Qaida members who’d surrendered to Gen. Abdul Rashid Dostum, an Afghan warlord and a key U.S. ally in ousting the Taliban regime.

When the trucks arrived at a prison in the town of Sheberghan, near Dostum’s headquarters, they were filled with corpses. Most of the prisoners had suffocated, and others had been killed by bullets that Dostum’s militiamen had fired into the metal containers.

Bush Is A Lame Duck

Yet The Democrats Bend To The Will Of

Mr. 22%    

Massacre Unfurls in Congo, Despite Nearby Support



By LYDIA POLGREEN

Published: December 11, 2008

KIWANJA, Congo – At last the bullets had stopped, and François Kambere Siviri made a dash for the door. After hiding all night from firefights between rebels and a government-allied militia over this small but strategic town, he was desperate to get to the latrine a few feet away.

“Pow, pow, pow,” said his widowed mother, Ludia Kavira Nzuva, recounting how the rebels killed her 25-year-old son just outside her front door. As they abandoned his bloodied corpse, she said, one turned to her and declared, “Voilà, here is your gift.”

In little more than 24 hours, at least 150 people would be dead, most of them young men, summarily executed by the rebels last month as they tightened their grip over parts of eastern Congo, according to witnesses and human-rights investigators.

U.S. Joins Effort to Bar Claims on Iraqi Coffers



By STEVEN LEE MYERS and JAMES GLANZ

Published: December 10, 2008

George Charchalis says he has never really recovered from the ordeal he endured after Saddam Hussein’s Iraq invaded Kuwait in August 1990.

He hid for more than a month in Kuwait City but was ultimately arrested, “roughed up pretty good” and taken to Iraq. He was held there for nearly three months as a human shield against American bombing.

After the 2003 invasion of Iraq, Mr. Charchalis, now 78, had every reason to believe that he and 240 other Americans held during the Persian Gulf war of 1991 would be compensated under expansive laws that allow Americans to claim assets of foreign governments like Iraq’s. President Bush, after all, had seized Iraqi assets just before the war and paid other people used as human shields nearly $100 million.

USA

Auto Bailout Clears House but Faces Hurdles in Senate

Many in GOP Doubt Aid Will Save Detroit

By Lori Montgomery and Paul Kane

Washington Post Staff Writers

Thursday, December 11, 2008; Page A01

The House last night approved an emergency plan to prevent the collapse of the nation’s domestic automobile industry, but the measure faces serious opposition in the Senate, where Republicans are revolting against a White House-brokered deal to speed $14 billion to cash-starved General Motors and Chrysler.

After battling through the weekend to reach a compromise with congressional Democrats, the White House yesterday dispatched Chief of Staff Joshua Bolten to sell the plan to restive Republican senators. But many GOP lawmakers emerged from a combative luncheon with Bolten unconvinced the plan would compel Detroit automakers to make the painful changes necessary to restore them to profitability.

Alabama’s Two Senators Are Trying To Kill The Auto Bailout Because?

They Don’t Like Unions Or Is There Some Secret Reason?  

Washington Takes Risks With Its Auto Bailout Plans



By DAVID E. SANGER

Published: December 8, 2008

WASHINGTON – When President-elect Barack Obama talked on Sunday about realigning the American automobile industry he was quick to offer a caution, lest he sound more like the incoming leader of France, or perhaps Japan.

“We don’t want government to run companies,” Mr. Obama told Tom Brokaw on “Meet the Press.” “Generally, government historically hasn’t done that very well.”

But what Mr. Obama went on to describe was a long-term bailout that would be conditioned on federal oversight. It could mean that the government would mandate, or at least heavily influence, what kind of cars companies make, what mileage and environmental standards they must meet and what large investments they are permitted to make – to recreate an industry that Mr. Obama said “actually works, that actually functions.”

Mexico gang killings more than double in 2008

Drug cartels are fighting increasingly bloody battles among themselves

Associated Press

MEXICO CITY – Organized-crime slayings in Mexico more than doubled in the first 11 months of 2008, as powerful drug cartels fought increasingly bloody battles for control of trafficking routes and territory, the government said Monday.

Attorney General Eduardo Medina Mora said gangland killings rose by 117 percent to 5,376 as compared to the first 11 months of 2007, when there were 2,477 slayings. The government had previously not provided a total number for such killings and the figure came days after Washington began releasing funds from an anti-drug aid package.

Underscoring the brutality of the conflict, authorities on Monday reported that at least 18 people were killed in a single day in southern Guerrero state and two human heads were left in buckets outside the governor’s office.

USA

Internal Warnings Sounded on Loans At Fannie, Freddie

Executives Were Told of Subprime Risk

By Zachary A. Goldfarb

Washington Post Staff Writer

Tuesday, December 9, 2008; Page D01



Internal Freddie Mac documents show that senior executives at the company were warned years ago that they were offering mortgages that could pose dangers to the firm, hurt borrowers and generate more risky loans throughout the industry.

At Fannie Mae, top executives were told it was necessary to develop “underground” efforts to buy subprime mortgages because of competitive pressures, although there were growing risks and borrowers often didn’t understand the terms of the loans, documents show.

The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, which has the documents, is holding a hearing today to discuss Fannie and Freddie’s downfall.

 Prepare For The No Pain No Gain

Economic Recovery  

Pakistan’s Spies Aided Group Tied to Mumbai Siege

This article was reported by Eric Schmitt, Mark Mazzetti and Jane Perlez and written by Mr. Schmitt.

By ERIC SCHMITT, MARK MAZZETTI and JANE PERLEZ

Published: December 7, 2008

WASHINGTON – Lashkar-e-Taiba, the Pakistan-based militant group suspected of conducting the Mumbai attacks, has quietly gained strength in recent years with the help of Pakistan’s main spy service, assistance that has allowed the group to train and raise money while other militants have been under siege, American intelligence and counterterrorism officials say.

American officials say there is no hard evidence to link the spy service, the Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence, or ISI, to the Mumbai attacks. But the ISI has shared intelligence with Lashkar and provided protection for it, the officials said, and investigators are focusing on one Lashkar leader they believe is a main liaison with the spy service and a mastermind of the attacks.

In Hard Times, Russia Moves In to Reclaim Private Industries



By CLIFFORD J. LEVY

Published: December 7, 2008

BEREZNIKI, Russia – In late October, one of Vladimir V. Putin’s top lieutenants abruptly summoned a billionaire mining oligarch to a private meeting. The official, Igor I. Sechin, had taken a sudden interest in a two-year-old accident at the oligarch’s highly lucrative mining operations here in Russia’s industrial heartland.

Mr. Sechin, who is a leader of a shadowy Kremlin faction tied to the state security services, said he was ordering a new inquiry into the mishap, according to minutes of the meeting. With a deputy interior minister who investigates financial crime at his side, Mr. Sechin threatened crippling fines against the company, Uralkali.

USA

New Auto Rescue Plan Focuses on Oversight

Some Lawmakers Want To Replace GM Chief

By Lori Montgomery

Washington Post Staff Writer

Monday, December 8, 2008; Page A01

Congressional Democrats are drafting legislation that would give the teetering Detroit automakers at least $15 billion in emergency loans early next week and grant the federal government broad authority to manage a massive restructuring of their operations.

The proposal, which could be put to a vote in Congress as soon as tomorrow, would establish a seven-member “auto board” of Cabinet officials and a chairman to be appointed by President Bush to oversee both the short-term loans and a long-term effort to restore the faltering industry to profitability. If the companies take the cash, they would be accountable to the government for nearly every move, and for every transaction of $25 million or more.