Tag: Docudharma Times

As jurors go online, U.S. trials go off track

Facebook, Twitter and smart phones cause mistrials, appeals and overturned verdicts

Reuters  

ATLANTA – The explosion of blogging, tweeting and other online diversions has reached into U.S. jury boxes, raising serious questions about juror impartiality and the ability of judges to control courtrooms.

A Reuters Legal analysis found that jurors’ forays on the Internet have resulted in dozens of mistrials, appeals and overturned verdicts in the last two years.

For decades, courts have instructed jurors not to seek information about cases outside of evidence introduced at trial, and jurors are routinely warned not to communicate about a case with anyone before a verdict is reached. But jurors these days can, with a few clicks, look up definitions of legal terms on Wikipedia, view crime scenes via Google Earth, or update their blogs and Facebook pages with snide remarks about the proceedings.

9th Circuit judges explore narrow routes to reinstate gay marriage

U.S. appeals court appears to be seeking a way to restore same-sex marriage in California while avoiding a decision that would send Prop. 8 to the U.S Supreme Court.

By Maura Dolan and Jessica Garrison, Los Angeles Times

December 7, 2010, 12:18 a.m.

Federal appeals court judges Monday seemed headed toward a decision that could reinstate same-sex marriages in California while avoiding a ruling of national sweep that would invite U.S. Supreme Court action.

The judges explored at least two routes that could achieve that goal. One would be a ruling that California, having granted marriage rights to same-sex couples, could not take them away by popular vote.

E-mails from the front lines of the Iraq war

E-mails from sources in Iraq describe the daily carnage; these terse missives are an almost poetic chronicle of the war. No commas. No names. Is punctuation necessary when meaning is so clear?

By Jeffrey Fleishman, Los Angeles Times

December 6, 2010

Reporting from Cairo – They arrive nearly every day, these sad, strange e-mails from Iraq.

They are unsentimental and hard, gathered by stringers scattered across a country at war. They’re often tough to follow, terse poems with broken rhythms and words landing in wrong places. But there’s an unadorned power that speaks to things beyond style and grammar.

“An IP source said that some gunmen assassinated yesterday evening staff brigadier general in the Iraqi army and his wife in Tobchi (west Baghdad) while he was driving his car… both were killed instantly.”

Fed workers told: Stay away from those leaked cables

Directive notes the content ‘remains classified’; Columbia U. also warns future diplomats

msnbc.com staff and news service reports

NEW YORK – With tens of thousands of U.S. diplomatic cables still to be disclosed by WikiLeaks, the Obama administration has warned federal government employees, and even some future diplomats, that they must refrain from downloading or even linking to any.

“Classified information, whether or not already posted on public websites or disclosed to the media, remains classified, and must be treated as such by federal employees and contractors,” the Office of Management and Budget said in a notice sent out Friday.

The New York Times, which first reported the directive, was told by a White House official that it does not advise agencies to block WikiLeaks or other websites on government computer systems. Nor does it bar federal employees from reading news stories about the leaks.

Democrats try to regain balance in fight over tax cuts

Emboldened Republicans seem unlikely to back down on extending breaks for wealthy taxpayers.

By Lisa Mascaro and Kathleen Hennessey, Tribune Washington

Reporting from Washington – Congressional Democrats searched for leverage Friday in their bitter debate with Republicans over extending George W. Bush-era tax cuts, lashing out against giving “tax breaks to millionaires” and preparing for a rare weekend session in the Senate on the issue.

But the increasingly aggressive Democratic posture may come too late in the protracted battle over the fate of tax cuts that are set to expire Dec. 31. The White House has indicated it would consider an agreement with Republicans to temporarily extend all tax breaks, even for households earning more than $250,000 annually, if the GOP agreed to concessions and withdrew its block on certain Democratic priorities.ties.

WikiLeaks goes off-line after ‘multiple’ attacks

U.S. firm says denial of service attacks on site threatened nearly 500,000 others

msnbc.com staff and news service reports

WikiLeaks went off-line late Thursday after a U.S. firm providing its domain name system said the controversial website had come under mass denial-of-service attacks.

EveryDNS.net said it had “terminated” its services to WikiLeaks as the attacks and ones expected in the future would “threaten the stability” of the company’s services to nearly 500,000 other websites.

WikiLeaks has been continuing to release classified cables sent by U.S. officials, causing huge embarrassment to diplomats and world leaders amid growing outrage and calls for WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange to be prosecuted under the U.S. Espionage Act.

Fed aid in financial crisis went beyond U.S. banks to industry, foreign firms



By Jia Lynn Yang, Neil Irwin and David S. Hilzenrath

Washington Post Staff Writers

Thursday, December 2, 2010; 12:15 AM

The financial crisis stretched even farther across the economy than many had realized, as new disclosures show the Federal Reserve rushed trillions of dollars in emergency aid not just to Wall Street but also to motorcycle makers, telecom firms and foreign-owned banks in 2008 and 2009. The Fed’s efforts to prop up the financial sector reached across a broad spectrum of the economy, benefiting stalwarts of American industry including General Electric and Caterpillar and household-name companies such as Verizon, Harley-Davidson and Toyota. The central bank’s aid programs also supported U.S. subsidiaries of banks based in East Asia, Europe and Canada while rescuing money-market mutual funds held by millions of Americans.

Estimate of TARP losses falls to $25 billion

The projected cost of the $700-billion financial bailout fund drops sharply, according to a new report from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.

By Jim Puzzanghera, Los Angeles Times

November 30, 2010

Reporting from Washington –

The projected cost of the $700-billion financial bailout fund – initially feared to be a huge hit to taxpayers – continues to drop, with the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimating Monday that losses would amount to just $25 billion.

That’s a sharp drop from the CBO’s last estimate, in August, of a $66-billion loss for the Troubled Asset Relief Program, known as TARP. Going back to March, the budget office estimated that the program would cost taxpayers $109 billion.

Cables shine light into secret diplomatic channels

The confidential material was obtained by WikiLeaks and released despite requests by the U.S. government not to do so

By Scott Shane and Andrew W. Lehren

WASHINGTON  – A cache of a quarter-million confidential American diplomatic cables, most of them from the past three years, provides an unprecedented look at backroom bargaining by embassies around the world, brutally candid views of foreign leaders and frank assessments of nuclear and terrorist threats.

Some of the cables, made available to The New York Times and several other news organizations, were written as recently as late February, revealing the Obama administration’s exchanges over crises and conflicts. The material was originally obtained by WikiLeaks, an organization devoted to revealing secret documents. WikiLeaks intends to make the archive public on its Web site in batches, beginning Sunday.

The anticipated disclosure of the cables is already sending shudders through the diplomatic establishment, and could conceivably strain relations with some countries, influencing international affairs in ways that are impossible to predict.

N. Korea preps missiles amid U.S. war games

Pyongyang warns of ‘merciless’ assault if further provoked as joint naval drills begin

msnbc.com news services

YEONPYEONG ISLAND, South Korea – The sound of new artillery fire from North Korea just hours after the U.S. and South Korea launched a round of war games in Korean waters sent residents and journalists on a front-line island scrambling for cover Sunday.

None of the rounds landed on Yeonpyeong Island, military officials said, but South Korea’s Defense Ministry later ordered journalists off the island.

U.S. now in Afghanistan as long as Soviets were

The last Red Army troops left in 1989, driven out after nine years and 50 days by U.S.-backed fighters known as mujahedin. Despite contrasts, the U.S. and Soviet wars have common narrative elements.

By Laura King and Sergei L. Loiko, Los Angeles Times

November 27, 2010

Reporting from Kabul, Afghanistan, and Moscow – As wartime days go, Friday was a fairly quiet one in Afghanistan. Helicopters skittered across the sky; convoys rumbled along desert roads; soldiers in mountain outposts scanned the jagged peaks around them.

But one thing set the day apart: With its passing, the length of the U.S. military’s campaign in Afghanistan matched that of the Soviet Union’s long and demoralizing sojourn in the nation.ion.

Britain’s austerity plan leaves many bracing for painful changes

Prime Minister David Cameron plans to slash $128 billion in spending over four years, upending a culture of governmental responsibility in a nation that provides everything from free healthcare to aid for mothers.

By Henry Chu, Los Angeles Times

Reporting from Wimbledon, England – Britain is about to undergo an extreme makeover. And Festus Grant is worried.

The 71-year-old was crippled by a stroke early this year, and he doesn’t know how he would have coped without the “angel of mercy” who knocked on his door a few days after he came home to his modest flat after three months in the hospital.

The care worker from the Stroke Assn. helped him piece his life back together. She arranged follow-up trips to the doctor and signed him up for a shuttle service that takes him shopping once a week.