Foreclosures hit post-bust peak in third quarter
288K homes affected, but many could now be challenged in court
By ALEX VEIGA
Lenders seized more U.S. homes this summer than in any three-month stretch since the housing market began to bust in 2006. But many of the foreclosures may be challenged in court later because of allegations that banks evicted people without reading the documents.
A total of 288,345 properties were lost to foreclosure in the July-September quarter, according to data released Thursday by RealtyTrac Inc., a foreclosure listing service. That’s up from nearly 270,000 in the second quarter, the previous high point in the firm’s records dating back to 2005.
Living Planet: The world is not enough
A new report reveals just how fast we are consuming the Earth’s resources – and the dire consequences
By Michael McCarthy Thursday, 14 October 2010
Wildlife in the tropics, especially in poorer countries, is rapidly disappearing as human demands on natural resources soar beyond what the Earth can sustain, a new report reveals.In an authoritative and ominous warning, the 2010 Living Planet Report of the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), the definitive survey on the state of the planet’s health, signals that that tropical ecosystems are being degraded and tropical species are declining at an increasingly rapid rate, with the world’s population now consuming the output of one-and-a-half sustainable Earths.
USA
FBI breaks up alleged plot to defraud Medicare of $100m
Operation carried out by Armenian-American gangsters was largest ever to steal from Medicare, say authorities
Ed Pilkington in New York
The Guardian, Thursday 14 October 2010
Armenian-American gangsters created a fictitious medical world, complete with fake doctors and fake patients, which they extended across the US in a scheme to defraud the Medicare system of more than $100m (£62.9m), federal prosecutors said yesterday.The FBI and other authorities claimed to have broken up the largest organised criminal operation to steal from Medicare since the system of healthcare support for elderly and disabled Americans was founded in 1965.
Charges were brought against 73 people, mainly from New York and Los Angeles but also from New Mexico, Georgia and Ohio.
Bankers Ignored Signs of Trouble on Foreclosures
By ERIC DASH and NELSON D. SCHWARTZ
Published: October 13, 2010
At JPMorgan Chase & Company, they were derided as “Burger King kids” – walk-in hires who were so inexperienced they barely knew what a mortgage was.
At Citigroup and GMAC, dotting the i’s and crossing the t’s on home foreclosures was outsourced to frazzled workers who sometimes tossed the paperwork into the garbage.And at Litton Loan Servicing, an arm of Goldman Sachs, employees processed foreclosure documents so quickly that they barely had time to see what they were signing.
Europe
‘Cold turkey regime’ exposed in Russia
The director of a controversial Russian drug rehabilitation centre has been jailed for kidnapping and illegally detaining drug addicts on their parents’ orders.
By Andrew Osborn in Moscow
A court in the central Russian city of Nizhny Tagil sentenced Egor Bychkov, 23, to three and a half years in a high security prison after ruling that his attempts to wean addicts off heroin and cocaine went too far.
The court found that Mr Bychkov took payments of up to the equivalent of £500 from addicts’ parents to kidnap their children and hold them against their will until they kicked their habit.
But it dismissed accusations that he was also guilty of torture. Mr Bychkov’s “cold turkey regime” has, however, raised eyebrows. It involved handcuffing the addict to a bed for 21 days and putting them on a diet of only water, bread, onion and garlic.
French unions to extend strikes over pension reforms
The Irish Times – Thursday, October 14, 2010
RUADHÁN MacCORMAIC in Paris
FRENCH UNIONS voted yesterday to extend their strikes over the government’s pension reform plans, with trains disrupted and blockades halting fuel transport from eight of 12 refineries.However, a day after nationwide protests attracted the largest crowds so far in the unions’ campaign, President Nicolas Sarkozy said he would push the reform “right to the end”.
“Irrespective of the difficulties in putting in place such a major reform, the government must, in the common interest, continue with determination and sang froid,” spokesman Luc Chatel quoted Mr Sarkozy telling yesterday’s cabinet meeting
Middle East
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad calls for 9/11 investigation
Mahmoud fuelled his claims that the US government was behind the Sept 11 attack on America and demanded to ‘know the truth of what happened’ during his visit to Lebanon.
by Damien McElroy in Beirut
Published: 1:31AM BST 14 Oct 2010
Speaking at a late night rally, he said: “I announce that the formation of an independent and neutral team to examine the facts and discover the truth of the September 11 events is the demand of all the peoples of the region and the world.”
Earlier in the day, thousands held up flowers and Iranian flags as Mr Ahmedinejad waved through the open roof of an armoured car that carried him through the Shia Muslim strongholds of south Beirut, the Lebanese capital.
Mideast conflict blamed for Christian exodus
By NICOLE WINFIELD
VATICAN CITY – Bishops summoned to the Vatican to discuss the flight of Christians from the Middle East have blamed the Israeli-Palestinian conflict for spurring much of the exodus and warned that the consequences could be devastating for the birthplace of Christianity.
Some bishops have singled out the emergence of fanatical Islam for the flight. But others have directly or indirectly accused Israel of discriminating against Arab Christians and impeding solutions to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Asia
Communist veterans want radical free speech reform
The Irish Times – Thursday, October 14, 2010
CLIFFORD COONAN in Beijing
IN THE days leading up to a high-level plenum of the Beijing leadership, a letter by senior Communist veterans calling for freedom of expression has joined a growing number of calls for reform from within the party ranks.In a letter to the party-controlled parliament, a group of 23 retired Chinese officials, including Li Rui, once the secretary to late revolutionary leader Mao Zedong, and Jiang Ping, a former member of the Chinese parliament’s legal affairs committee.
The letter was dated October 1st, before dissident Liu Xiaobo won the Nobel Peace Prize and brought global attention to China’s record on freedom of speech and human rights, but follows on from comments by Premier Wen Jiabao on several occasions recently.
Is Yoshito Sengoku Japan’s real prime minister?
2010/10/14
BY SUSUMU OKAMOTO ASAHI SHIMBUN WEEKLY AERA
In a nation desperate for a strong leader, one politician has recently emerged who has demonstrated crisis-management abilities, gained the trust of Cabinet members and now has an effective grip over government.However, that individual is not Prime Minister Naoto Kan.
Instead, it was Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshito Sengoku who played the key role in thawing relations with China over the collision between a Chinese trawler and two Japan Coast Guard vessels near the Senkaku Islands.
Reflecting on the incident, Sengoku said, “There was likely a wake-up effect from it all.”
Africa
South Sudan leader douses civil war fears
THURSDAY, 14 OCTOBER 2010 00:00
SOUTH Sudan’s President Salva Kiir yesterday dispelled the fears that there would be a return to war in Africa’s largest country, despite mounting tensions as a referendum on the area’s independence approaches.South Sudan, which fought a two-decade civil war against the north in which some two million died, is due to vote on whether to secede or remain united with the north in a January 9 referendum set up as part of the 2005 peace deal.
However, Sudan’s foreign minister also said that though the government is opposed to splitting up the country, it “won’t object” if southerners vote for independence in an upcoming referendum.
DRC women relive terror of mass rape
Shedla Abedi’s age was no protection when the rapists came to her village.
“Imagine — a young boy of 20, and me aged 62, old enough to be his grandmother,” she said. She pointed to a frail, older woman walking with a stick. “Her too,” she said, “And she’s over 80.”The women of Kampala village, where 35 were raped, still sleep in the forest at night, for fear the rapists will return. Earlier this month, they gathered in the village to tell their troubles to Margot Wallstrom, the UN secretary general’s special representative on sexual crime in conflict.
“This is our cry for help. We are in pain,” said Abedi, to cheers and applause. “You are our fellow women and we believe our enemies wouldn’t hesitate to rape you if they were given the opportuntity.They are merciless.”
Latin America
Iron discipline that saw the 33 through
The key to the miners’ survival was their ability to put the common good before self-interest. Guy Adams salutes a remarkable team
Thursday, 14 October 2010
They may not take kindly to being called fortunate, given the fear and discomfort they endured during an incarceration that would last almost 70 days, but from the very moment at which they were first trapped underground, the 33 men who have now started to emerge from the San José mine benefited from some crucial strokes of good luck.The rockfall that trapped them struck at noon on 5 August, when the men were having lunch in a reinforced rescue shelter 700m from the surface. At any other time, during a normal working day, they would have been spread throughout four miles of tunnels, meaning that many of them would have been instantly killed.