Tag: Six In The Morning

Justice Department, SEC investigations often rely on companies’ internal probes



By David S. Hilzenrath, Monday, May 23

As the U.S. government steps up investigations of companies suspected of paying bribes overseas, law enforcement officials are leaving much of the detective work to the very corporations under suspicion.

The probes are so costly and wide-ranging that the Justice Department and Securities and Exchange Commission often let the companies investigate themselves and then share the results.

The strategy is especially common in cases of foreign corruption but also extends to domestic investigations involving issues as varied as health-care fraud and shady accounting.

US ‘would repeat Bin Laden raid

President Obama has indicated he would order a similar operation to that which killed Osama Bin Laden if another militant leader was found in Pakistan.



He said the US was mindful of Pakistani sovereignty but said the US could not allow “active plans to come to fruition without us taking some action”.

The killing of Bin Laden by US forces in a Pakistani garrison town on 2 May strained ties between the two allies.

President Barack Obama was speaking to the BBC ahead of a European visit.

Asked what he would do if one of al-Qaeda’s top leaders, or the Taliban leader Mullah Omar, was tracked down to a location in Pakistan or another sovereign territory, he said the US would take unilateral action if required.

Al-Qaida eyed oil tankers as bombing targets

Bin Laden documents show the idea had reached group’s upper echelons

By EILEEN SULLIVAN, MATT APUZZO

  Osama bin Laden’s personal files revealed a brazen idea to hijack oil tankers and blow them up at sea last summer, creating explosions he hoped would rattle the world’s economy and send oil prices skyrocketing, the U.S. said Friday.

The newly disclosed plot showed that while bin Laden was always scheming for the next big strike that would kill thousands of Americans, he also believed a relatively simpler attack on the oil industry could create a worldwide panic that would hurt Westerners every time they gassed up their cars.

Israeli PM Netanyahu rejects Obama ‘1967 borders’ view



Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu has rejected comments from US President Obama that a future Palestinian state must be based on the 1967 borders.

The BBC  20 May 2011

In a major speech to the state department, Mr Obama said “mutually agreed swaps” would help create “a viable Palestine, and a secure Israel”.

But Mr Netanyahu said those borders, which existed before the 1967 Middle East war, were “indefensible”.

Mr Netanyahu is preparing to meet Mr Obama for talks at the White House.

An estimated 300,000 Israelis live in settlements built in the West Bank, which lies outside those borders.

The settlements are illegal under international law, although Israel disputes this.

U.S. Was Warned on Vents Before Failure at Japan’s Plant



By MATTHEW L. WALD

Published: May 18, 2011

WASHINGTON – Five years before the crucial emergency vents at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant were disabled by an accident they were supposed to help handle, engineers at a reactor in Minnesota warned American regulators about that very problem.Anthony Sarrack, one of the two engineers, notified staff members at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission that the design of venting systems was seriously flawed at his reactor and others in the United States similar to the ones in Japan. He later left the industry in frustration because managers and regulators did not agree.

Did Pakistani intelligence help plan and finance Mumbai attacks?

Chicago trial will hear from businessman accused of identifying targets for militants

By Andrew Buncombe, Asia Correspondent Tuesday, 17 May 2011

Two and a half years after armed militants stormed ashore in Mumbai and launched an assault that left more than 160 people dead, court proceedings have begun in the US which could expose disturbing allegations that elements within Pakistan’s notorious intelligence agency helped plot and finance the operation.

Amid tight security at the Dirksen federal courthouse in Chicago, the jury selection process has started in the trial of the Chicago-based businessman Tahawwur Rana, who is accused of helping an old school friend scout targets in India for the Pakistani militants. Among the targets identified by David Coleman Headley were the locations in Mumbai that the 10 Lashkar-e-Taiba militants laid siege to for up to three days.

Cathay Pacific Airbus 330 makes emergency landing in Singapore

‘God, save our flight! Give us your protection!’ passengers pray

msnbc.com news services

Terrified passengers aboard a blazing jetliner prayed together before the plane made an emergency landing on Monday.

An engine on a Cathay Pacific Airbus A330-300 caught fire in midair.

Cathay Pacific said the jet, bound for Jakarta with 136 passengers on board, landed back in Singapore “without incident” just before 2 a.m. It said the crew shut down the engine after receiving a “stall warning.”

Reuters photographer Beawiharta was aboard the aircraft with his wife, two sons and daughter. About 20 minutes after take-off, there were two sharp bangs, sending cabin staff scurrying to retrieve the meals they had only just begun serving.

IMF chief held on suspicion of sexual assault on N.Y. hotel worker

Dominique Strauss-Kahn, head of the International Monetary Fund, is taken off a plane about to leave JFK, arrested and charged in the attack on a chambermaid in his luxury suite.

By Geraldine Baum, Los Angeles Times

Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

May 15, 2011, 12:07 a.m.

Reporting from New York– Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the head of the International Monetary Fund, was hauled off a flight about to leave JFK airport for Paris on Saturday and arrested on allegations he sexually assaulted a maid in a Times Square-area hotel, a police spokesman said.

Strauss-Kahn, who is also an important figure in French politics, was taken to the Harlem headquarters of the Manhattan Special Victims Unit, which investigates rape and other sex crimes. He was charged with committing a criminal sexual act, attempted rape and unlawful imprisonment in connection with a sexual assault on a chambermaid in the luxury suite of a midtown Manhattan hotel, said Paul Browne, deputy New York City police commissioner.

It’s a go: Spillway to inundate Cajun country

25,000 people hurriedly pack their things and worry that their way of life might soon be drowned



BUTTE LAROSE, La. – In an agonizing trade-off, Army engineers said they will open a key spillway along the bulging Mississippi River as early as Saturday and inundate thousands of homes and farms in Louisiana’s Cajun country to avert a potentially bigger disaster in Baton Rouge and New Orleans.

About 25,000 people and 11,000 structures could be in harm’s way when the gates on the Morganza spillway are unlocked for the first time in 38 years.

“Protecting lives is the No. 1 priority,” Army Corps of Engineers Maj. Gen. Michael Walsh said aboard a boat from the river at Vicksburg, Miss., hours before the decision was made to open the spillway.

Pakistan Army Chief Balks at U.S. Demands to Cooperate



By JANE PERLEZ

Published: May 12,

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan – Despite mounting pressure from the United States since the American raid that killed Osama bin Laden, Pakistan’s army chief, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, seems unlikely to respond to American demands to root out other militant leaders, according to people who have met with him in the last 10 days.

While the general does not want to abandon the alliance completely, he is more likely to pursue a strategy of decreasing Pakistan’s reliance on the United States, and continuing to offer just enough cooperation to keep the billions of dollars in American aid flowing, said a confidant of the general who has spoken with him recently.

Such a response is certain to test American officials, who are more mistrustful of Pakistan than ever.

Bin Laden death ‘not an assassination’ – Eric Holder



The BBC  12 May 2011

US Attorney General Eric Holder has said that the raid on Osama Bin Laden’s hideout, in which the al-Qaeda leader was killed, was “not an assassination”.

Mr Holder told the BBC the operation was a “kill or capture mission” and that Bin Laden’s surrender would have been accepted if offered.

The protection of the Navy Seals who carried out the raid was “uppermost in our minds”, he added.

Pakistanis disclose name of CIA operative



By Karin Brulliard and Greg Miller, Tuesday, May 10

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan – The public outing of the CIA station chief here threatened on Monday to deepen the rift between the United States and Pakistan, with U.S. officials saying they believed the disclosure had been made deliberately by Pakistan’s main spy agency.

If true, the leak would be a sign that Pakistan’s powerful security establishment, far from feeling chastened by the killing of terrorist leader Osama bin Laden in a Pakistani garrison city last week, is seeking to demonstrate its leverage over Washington and retaliate for the unilateral U.S. operation.

Less than six months ago, the identity of the previous CIA station chief in Islamabad was also disclosed in an act that U.S. officials blamed on their counterparts in Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence agency, or ISI.