Maryland moves closer to extending tuition breaks to illegal immigrants

WASHINGTON POST

With anti-illegal-immigrant sentiment rising in the United States, a growing number of states are considering legislation that would forbid public universities from offering in-state tuition breaks to illegal immigrants.

But this week, the Maryland legislature, dominated by Democrats, took a step in the opposite direction, voting to guarantee in-state tuition to illegal immigrants. Gov. Martin O’Malley (D) is expected to sign the bill.

Sponsors overcame years of entrenched opposition with a provision that steers undocumented students to community colleges instead of the increasingly competitive flagship school, the University of Maryland, lessening the risk that they will crowd out others for coveted spots.

Whether illegal immigrants should reap the benefits of residency at public universities is one of the more contentious issues to emerge in the national immigration debate. In this legislative session alone, at least eight states took up bills to extend in-state tuition to illegal immigrants and as many considered bills to deny it, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Maryland is the only state this year to pass a bill extending benefits.

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Report Criticizes Banks for Handling of Mortgages

Banks did a poor job of handling the flood of foreclosures over the last several years, in some cases even moving ahead with evictions when they clearly should not have, according to a long-awaited report released Wednesday by federal regulators.

In response to the problems detailed in the report, 14 mortgage servicers have now signed consent agreements promising changes, including new oversight procedures.

Regulators said the enforcement actions were tough measures that would make the banks accountable. “The banks are going to have to do substantial work, bear substantial expense, to fix the problem,” the acting comptroller of the currency, John Walsh, told reporters in a conference call.

JPMorgan Chase, one of the servicers signing the agreement, said that it was adding as many as 3,000 employees to meet the new regulatory demands. Jamie Dimon, its chief executive, called it “a lot of intensive manpower and talent to fix the problems of the past.”

Other servicers who signed agreements included Bank of America, Citigroup and GMAC. Two firms that handle aspects of the foreclosure process, Lender Processing Services and Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems, also signed consent agreements. But consumer activists were unimpressed, saying the reforms let the banks police themselves.

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In Financial Crisis, No Prosecutions of Top Figures

NY TIMES

It is a question asked repeatedly across America: why, in the aftermath of a financial mess that generated hundreds of billions in losses, have no high-profile participants in the disaster been prosecuted?

Answering such a question — the equivalent of determining why a dog did not bark — is anything but simple. But a private meeting in mid-October 2008 between Timothy F. Geithner, then-president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, and Andrew M. Cuomo, New York’s attorney general at the time, illustrates the complexities of pursuing legal cases in a time of panic.

At the Fed, which oversees the nation’s largest banks, Mr. Geithner worked with the Treasury Department on a large bailout fund for the banks and led efforts to shore up the American International Group, the giant insurer. His focus: stabilizing world financial markets.

Mr. Cuomo, as a Wall Street enforcer, had been questioning banks and rating agencies aggressively for more than a year about their roles in the growing debacle, and also looking into bonuses at A.I.G.

Friendly since their days in the Clinton administration, the two met in Mr. Cuomo’s office in Lower Manhattan, steps from Wall Street and the New York Fed. According to three people briefed at the time about the meeting, Mr. Geithner expressed concern about the fragility of the financial system.

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Dr. Michio Kaku: Fukishima is a Ticking Time Bomb

In the United States, nuclear power is uninsurable. Or at least it would be, without an explicit law that limits operator liability and puts the taxpayer on the hook for paying the costs of a meltdown.

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Bankers Running Rings Around Regulators

In 2009, as the financial crisis entered its darkest days, G20 leaders descended on London for a meeting aimed at bringing the world economy back from the brink.

President Obama outlined the "unprecedented steps to restore growth and prevent a crisis like this from happening again."

Banker bashing was rife, with Gordon Brown comparing the masters of the universe to children who needed some tough love.

"In our families we raise our children to work hard, to do their best, and do their bit. We don't reward them for taking risks that... put them or others in danger," said Brown as he hosted the G20 meeting which was painted at the time as the summit that saved the global economy.

Last weekend Brown admitted the great and the good meeting at the G20 that week in March 2009, when global equity markets bottomed, didn’t really understand what was going on.

“We didn't understand how risk was spread across the system, we didn't understand the entanglements of different institutions with the other and we didn't understand even though we talked about it just how global things were, including a shadow banking system as well as a banking system,” said Brown in a speech in New Hampshire in the United States.

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Jobless Claims Unexpectedly Rise; Inflation Pressure Grows

New claims for unemployment benefits unexpectedly rose last week, bouncing back above the key 400,000 level, while core producer prices clumbed faster than expected in March, government reports showed on Thursday.

Initial claims for state unemployment benefits rose 27,000 to a seasonally adjusted 412,000, the Labor Department said.

Economists polled by Reuters had forecast claims slipping to 380,000.

The prior weeks figure was revised up to 385,000 from the previously reported 382,000.

The four-week moving average of unemployment claims—a better measure of underlying trends—climbed 5,500 to 395,750.

The rise in claims interrupted a downward trend that had kept them below the 400,000 threshold for four weeks. That level is normally associated with steady job growth. Despite last weeks rise, the four-week average held below the 400,000 mark for a seventh straight week.

A Labor Department official said claims tend to rise the first week of a new quarter.

The number of people still receiving benefits under regular state programs after an initial week of aid fell 58,000 to 3.68 million in the week ended April 2, the lowest level since September 2008.

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Banks Face $3.6 Trillion 'Wall' of Debt: IMF

The world's banks face a $3.6 trillion "wall of maturing debt" in the next two years and must compete with debt-laden governments to secure financing, the IMF warned on Wednesday.

Many European banks need bigger capital cushions to restore market confidence and assure they can borrow, and some weak players will need to be closed, the International Monetary Fund said in its Global Financial Stability Report.

The debt rollover requirements are most acute for Irish and German banks, with as much as half of their outstanding debt coming due over the next two years, the fund said.

"These bank funding needs coincide with higher sovereign refinancing requirements, heightening competition for scarce funding resources," the IMF said.

Overall, the IMF said global financial stability has improved over the past six months.

The most pressing challenges in the coming months will be funding of banks and sovereigns, particularly in vulnerable euro area countries, it said.

The IMF and European Union bailed out Greece and Ireland, and are in talks with Portugal on a lending program as sovereign borrowing costs surge.

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The Presidential Divider: Obama's toxic speech and even worse plan for deficits and debt

WSJ

Did someone move the 2012 election to June 1? We ask because President Obama's extraordinary response to Paul Ryan's budget yesterday—with its blistering partisanship and multiple distortions—was the kind Presidents usually outsource to some junior lieutenant. Mr. Obama's fundamentally political document would have been unusual even for a Vice President in the fervor of a campaign.

The immediate political goal was to inoculate the White House from criticism that it is not serious about the fiscal crisis, after ignoring its own deficit commission last year and tossing off a $3.73 trillion budget in February that increased spending amid a record deficit of $1.65 trillion. Mr. Obama was chased to George Washington University yesterday because Mr. Ryan and the Republicans outflanked him on fiscal discipline and are now setting the national political agenda.

Mr. Obama did not deign to propose an alternative to rival Mr. Ryan's plan, even as he categorically rejected all its reform ideas, repeatedly vilifying them as essentially un-American. "Their vision is less about reducing the deficit than it is about changing the basic social compact in America," he said, supposedly pitting "children with autism or Down's syndrome" against "every millionaire and billionaire in our society." The President was not attempting to join the debate Mr. Ryan has started, but to close it off just as it begins and banish House GOP ideas to political Siberia.

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Busby: 400,000 to develop cancer in 200 km radius of Fukushi

'Manning needs UK consular visit'

The mother of a US soldier detained on suspicion of leaking US military secrets has urged British consular officials to visit her son, whose "physical and mental health is deteriorating."

Private Bradley Manning's Welsh mother, Susan Manning, has written a letter to British Foreign Secretary William Hague, expressing grave concerns over the health of her 23-year-old son, the Guardian reported on Wednesday.

She called on the UK consular officials to visit and check on the health of the US Army soldier who has been held since last July in a maximum security cell in Virginia.

The American soldier, who faces a military court-martial on charges of providing the website WikiLeaks with classified information, has been in custody under inhumane conditions that has promoted criticism worldwide.

In her letter, Susan Manning said that she visited her son in Quantico marine base in Virginia in February, travelling along with a number of relatives, who "were not allowed to see him."

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New C.I.A. Drone Attack Draws Rebuke From Pakistan

WASHINGTON — C.I.A. drones fired two missiles at militants in Pakistan’s tribal areas on Wednesday, two days after Pakistan’s spy chief threatened to curtail the drone strikes and demanded more information about the Central Intelligence Agency’s operations there.

The strikes drew a sharp rebuke from a Pakistani government that is increasingly public in its criticism of the C.I.A.’s covert role in its country.

“Pakistan strongly condemns the drone attack,” according to a statement from the Foreign Ministry in Islamabad, which said it had lodged “a strong protest” with the United States ambassador there, Cameron P. Munter. “We have repeatedly said that such attacks are counterproductive and only contribute to strengthen the hands of the terrorists.”

On Monday, the chief of Pakistan’s main spy agency, Lt. Gen. Ahmed Shuja Pasha, met with the C.I.A. director, Leon E. Panetta, and Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, to try to resolve tensions between the two counterterrorism allies, most recently over the arrest in Pakistan of Raymond A. Davis, a C.I.A. security officer who killed two Pakistani men in January during what he said was a robbery attempt.

After the meeting, American and Pakistani officials said that Pakistan’s request for advance notice of C.I.A. missile strikes, for fewer strikes over all, and for a fuller accounting of C.I.A. officers and contractors working in Pakistan “is being talked about.” The American official added: “The bottom line is that joint cooperation is essential to the security of the two nations.  The stakes are too high.”

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Bahraini woman willing to die if family is not released

A Bahraini woman who witnessed her father, a well-known human rights activist, being seized by masked soldiers, beaten unconscious and then taken into custody, has told the Guardian that she is willing to die on hunger strike unless he is released.

Zainab al-Khawaja, 27, will today enter her fourth day without food in protest at the violent arrest and subsequent disappearance of the outspoken dissident Abdulhadi al-Khawaja, 50, along with her husband and brother-in-law.

Zainab, who was brought up in exile in Denmark, is taking only water, and told the Guardian she is already feeling weak, with breast-feeding sapping her strength faster than she had expected. She says she will leave her 18-month-old child with family members if she dies.

Around a dozen masked and heavily armed soldiers, apparently from Bahrain's special forces, stormed her apartment in the capital, Manama, at 2am on Saturday. Her father had previously called for Bahrain's king to face trial for murder, torture and corruption.

The family's attempts to find out from the police what has happened to the men have failed and they fear they are being tortured. Zainab, who started her fast on Monday, said she now dreams about her father's fate.

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Mortar attack jolts US base in Iraq

A mortar attack has rocked a US military base in southern Iraq, with the number of possible casualties still unknown.

This is the third such attack on US forces in Iraq over the past week. On Sunday, three rockets targeted a US camp in Diwaniyah, a city south of the capital Baghdad.

In August 2010, the United States declared an end to its combat mandate in Iraq but left 50,000 of American troops in the country for what it called "advising and training" purposes.

The United States and its allies invaded Iraq in 2003, citing concerns over alleged weapons of mass destruction wielded by the executed Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein's Ba'athist government.

No such weapons were ever found in Iraq. However, nearly 50,000 American troops still remain in the country.

The US forces, however, are expected to fully withdraw from the Iraqi soil by the end of 2011 despite a recent plea by US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates for further extension of their troop's deployment in the war-torn country.

American troop presence in Iraq is widely unpopular in the country. Iraqi politicians were quick to reject the American request for a longer stay of its forces.

Peter Dale Scott’s exclusive interview for Voltaire Network

VoltaireNet: Professor Scott, as your work is not as widely known as it ought to be in French-speaking countries, could you please start by defining what “Deep politics” is, and explain the distinction between what you call the “Deep state” and the “Public state”?

Peter Dale Scott: The term “Deep state” comes from Turkey. They invented it after the wreck of a speeding Mercedes in 1996 in which the passengers were a Member of Parliament, a beauty queen, a local senior police captain, and an important drug trafficker in Turkey who was also the head of a criminal paramilitary organization – the Grey Wolves – that went around killing people. And it became very obvious in Turkey that there were a covert relationship between the police who officially were looking for this man – even though a policeman was there with him in the car – and these people who committed crimes on behalf of the state. The state that you commit crimes for is not a state that can show its hand to the people, it’s a hidden state, a covert structure. In Turkey, they called it the Deep state, [1] and I had been talking about deep politics for a long time so I used the term in The Road to 9/11. This is why I have defined deep politics as all those political practices and arrangements, deliberate or not, which are usually repressed rather than acknowledged. So the term “Deep state” – coming from Turkey – is not mine.

It refers to a parallel secret government, organized by the intelligence and security apparatus, financed by drugs, and engaging in illicit violence, to protect the status and interests of the military against threats from intellectuals, religious groups, and occasionally the constitutional government. In this book, I adapt the term somewhat to refer to the wider interface in America between the public, the constitutionally established state, and the deep forces behind it of wealth, power, and violence outside the government.

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U.S. Stays Mum as Bahrain Unleashes Brutal Crackdown

“No leniency [1].” That was the warning from Bahrain’s crown prince last week as government forces continued cracking down on protesters, activists, journalists and doctors. It was issued alongside yet another promise of reform by the Bahraini government.

The warning was also met with silence from the United States. The U.S., which has long considered Bahrain a key ally [2] in the region, condemned [3] the violence in mid-March, and two weeks later noted that arresting bloggers “doesn’t help [3]” promote an inclusive national dialogue. 

But so far this month—as reports of increasing intimidation, censorship and brutality emerge—the U.S. doesn’t seem [4] to have had a public response. In one of the State Department's last statements, spokesman Mark Toner told reporters [5] on March 22,  “Our position towards Bahrain is crystal clear. We’re going to continue to work with the Bahraini Government.”

We called the State Department to ask why the violence in Bahrain hadn't been broached in recent press briefings. "We respond to reporters' questions," a State Department spokesman told me, noting that "there's a lot going on throughout the entire Middle East."

Human rights groups have reported that at least 26 people [6] have been killed since the Bahraini government declared martial law [7] in mid-March. At least three activists have also died [8] in police custody. More than 400 have been detained and dozens are missing.

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Obama pivots, eyes Medicare changes, tax increases

 President Barack Obama, two years into a presidency that increased spending to prime a weak economy, is turning his attention to the nation's crushing debt and trying to counter a Republican anti-deficit plan with a framework of his own that tackles politically sensitive health care programs while also increasing taxes.

The president on Wednesday was to deliver a speech outlining his proposal to reduce spending in Medicare and Medicaid, raise taxes on the wealthy and cut defense costs. In a pre-emptive response Tuesday, House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, called any proposed tax increase "a nonstarter."

The White House wouldn't offer details of the president's approach ahead of the speech. But an official commenting on the condition of anonymity said the plan borrows from the December recommendations of Obama's bipartisan fiscal commission, which proposed $4 trillion in deficit reduction over 10 years.

In a preview of the speech, the White House said it aims to achieve "balanced" deficit reduction by keeping domestic spending low, reducing the defense budget, cutting excess health care spending in the nation's biggest benefit programs, and eliminating loopholes and breaks in the tax system.

Obama's speech will draw contrasts with a Republican plan that cuts $5 trillion in spending over the next decade and which the White House says unfairly singles out middle-class taxpayers, older adults and the poor.

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Bradley Manning case sparks UN criticism of US government

A senior United Nations representative on torture, Juan Mendez, issued a rare reprimand to the US government on Monday for failing to allow him to meet in private Bradley Manning, the American soldier accused of being the WikiLeaks source and held in a military prison. It is the kind of censure the UN normally reserves for authoritarian regimes around the world.

Mendez, the UN special rapporteur on torture, said: "I am deeply disappointed and frustrated by the prevarication of the US government with regard to my attempts to visit Mr Manning."

Manning's supporters claim that the US is being vindictive in its treatment of Manning, who is held at the marine base at Quantico, Virginia, in conditions they describe as inhumane.

Mendez told the Guardian: "I am acting on a complaint that the regimen of this detainee amounts to cruel, inhumane or degrading treatment or torture … until I have all the evidence in front of me, I cannot say whether he has been treated inhumanely."

Mendez said the vast majority of states allowed for visits to detainees without conditions. But the US department of defence would not allow him to make an "official" visit, only a "private" one. An official visit would mean he meets Manning without a guard. A private visit means with a guard. Also, anything the prisoner says could be used in a court-martial.

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China accuses US of human rights double standards

The Chinese government has attacked the US for targeting WikiLeaks while campaigning for internet freedom overseas.

Beijing has a doctrine of non-interference in other countries' internal affairs, but the State Council Information Office releases an annual report on the US human rights record as a riposte to Washington's criticisms. The document says it underlines the hypocrisy of the US and "its malicious design to pursue hegemony under the pretext of human rights".

Last week the secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, criticised China's "worsening" record – citing the detention of artist Ai Weiwei and others – as she released the annual state department survey of the human rights situation around the world. An introduction to the Chinese document, by the state news agency Xinhua, said the report was "full of distortions" and the US "turned a blind eye to its own terrible human rights situation".

Much of the document focuses on social and economic issues such as poverty, crime and racism. It attacks the US for the large number of civilian casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan and the prisoner abuse scandals that have dogged counterterrorism initiatives. It adds: "The violation of [US] citizens' civil and political rights by the government is severe … the United States applies double standards … by requesting unrestricted 'internet freedom' in other countries, which becomes an important diplomatic tool for the United States to impose pressure and seek hegemony, and imposing strict restriction within its territory.

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Two US soldiers killed in friendly-fire drone attack in Afghanistan

Two members of the US military were accidentally killed last week in a drone attack, the first American victims of the unmanned aircraft, NBC has reported.

The two had been on foot and were approaching Helmand province's Sangin base, centre of some of the fiercest fighting in Afghanistan over the last decade. They were mistaken for the Taliban by marines, who were under fire at the time and who called in a missile strike from a Predator drone, NBC said.

The Pentagon is refusing to confirm or deny the story, saying that the incident is still under investigation. It reported last week that the two were killed but did not say where or how.

The two killed were named by the Pentagon as Marine Staff Sergeant Jeremy Smith, 26, from Texas and Navy Corpsman Benjamin Rast, 23, from Michigan.

The US has increasingly been using drones in both Afghanistan and Pakistan against suspected Taliban and al-Qaida targets, a controversial policy mainly because of the number of innocent civilians killed.

The marines under fire had been watching pictures of the battlefield being fed to them by the Predator. NBC said they saw a number of 'hotspots' – infra-red images – moving towards them and assumed, wrongly, they were the Taliban.

The hotspots had, in fact, been Smith and Rast, part of a unit sent to reinforce those under fire.

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Japan ups nuke crisis severity to match Chernobyl!!!

Japan's nuclear regulators raised the severity level of the crisis at a stricken nuclear plant Tuesday to rank it on par with the 1986 Chernobyl disaster.

An official with the Nuclear Safety Commission of Japan, speaking on national television, said the rating was being raised from 5 to 7 — the highest level on the international scale.

The official, who was not named, said the amount of radiation leaking from the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant was around 10 percent of the Chernobyl accident.

The level 7 signifies a "major accident" with "wider consequences" than the previous level, according to the standards scale.

"We have upgraded the severity level to 7 as the impact of radiation leaks has been widespread from the air, vegetables, tap water and the ocean," said Minoru Oogoda of Japan's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency.

NISA officials said one of the factors behind the decision was that the total amount of radioactive particles released into the atmosphere since the incident had reached levels that apply to a Level 7 incident.

The action lifts the rating to the highest on an international scale designed by an international group of experts in 1989 and is overseen by the International Atomic Energy Agency.

In Chernobyl, in the Ukraine, a reactor exploded on April 26, 1986, spewing a cloud of radiation over much of the Northern Hemisphere. A zone about 19 miles (30 kilometers) around the plant was declared uninhabitable, although some plant workers still live there for short periods and a few hundred other people have returned despite government encouragement to stay away.

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