(Credit: USA Today)
Utah Gay Marriage: Court Allows Same-Sex Marriages To Continue, Denying State"s Request To Halt Weddings
Showing posts with label Halt. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Halt. Show all posts
Tuesday, December 24, 2013
Utah Gay Marriage: Court Allows Same-Sex Marriages To Continue, Denying State"s Request To Halt Weddings
Utah Gay Marriage: Court Allows Same-Sex Marriages To Continue, Denying State"s Request To Halt Weddings
Tuesday, October 1, 2013
Vatican Bank To Shut All Embassy Accounts To Halt Money Laundering
Zero Hedge
Oct. 1, 2013
Following Pope Francis’ demand that the Vatican Bank review its procedures, Reuters reports that the bank is likely to close all accounts held by foreign embassies, following concerns about large cash deposits and withdrawals by the missions of Iran, Iraq and Indonesia, according to people with knowledge of the situation. The private bank IOR has around EUR7.1 billion in assets but is concerned it could be “an unwitting vehicle for money laundering and other illicit finances.”
The Vatican bank is likely to close all accounts held by foreign embassies, following concerns about large cash deposits and withdrawals by the missions of Iran, Iraq and Indonesia, according to people with knowledge of the situation.
The Vatican’s financial watchdog, which examined the transactions in 2011, believed the embassies’ justifications for the transactions were too vague or disproportionate to the amounts — up to 500,000 euros at a time — these people said. In one case, a large cash withdrawal was said to be for “refurbishment”, one person added.
Now the bank and the watchdog want to reduce the possibility that the Institute for Religious Works (IOR), as the bank is called, could be an unwitting vehicle for money laundering and other illicit finances.
Four people with knowledge of the matter said the closure of the accounts was likely to be a key recommendation of a broad review that Pope Francis has ordered of the bank, whose scandal-tainted history has long been an embarrassment for the Holy See.
…
The IOR is a private bank – currently with about 7.1 billion euros in assets under management – whose stated goal is to hold and manage funds for religious orders of priests and nuns, Catholic charities, Vatican employees, and other Catholic institutions. But the number of account holders has swelled to 19,000 over the years and diversified beyond the original categories with the right to hold accounts.
…
The bank is also coming clean on possible illicit financial activities. The Vatican has said it detected six possible attempts to use the IOR to launder money last year, and at least seven in the first half of this year. In one case, a prelate who had close ties to the IOR was arrested in June on suspicion of plotting to smuggle 20 million euros in cash into Italy from Switzerland to give to rich friends in southern Italy. The prelate, who will be tried in December, says he was not acting for personal gain.
This article was posted: Tuesday, October 1, 2013 at 9:46 am
Vatican Bank To Shut All Embassy Accounts To Halt Money Laundering
Wednesday, August 21, 2013
Cameron was behind UK attempt to halt Snowden reports: sources
Pedestrians walk past the entrance of the Guardian newspaper building in London August 20 2013.
Credit: Reuters/Suzanne Plunkett
LONDON |
LONDON (Reuters) – British Prime Minister David Cameron ordered his top civil servant to try to stop revelations flowing from the Guardian newspaper about U.S. and British surveillance programs, two sources with direct knowledge of the matter said.
News that Cabinet Secretary Jeremy Heywood had contacted the Guardian drags Cameron into a storm over Britain’s response to media coverage of secrets leaked by fugitive U.S. intelligence contractor Edward Snowden.
Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger said on Tuesday that he had been approached by “a very senior official claiming to represent the views of the prime minister” after his paper had published a series of exposes based on the Snowden material.
The sources named the official as Heywood, who is Cameron’s most senior policy adviser. “The prime minister asked the Cabinet Secretary to deal with this matter, that’s true,” one source told Reuters.
Government supporters say information leaked by Snowden, who has obtained asylum in Russia, could threaten national security. However, rights groups have accused the government of an assault on press freedom over a series of incidents.
These include the detention of a Guardian reporter’s partner, and news that the paper had been forced to destroy computer files containing information from Snowden under threat of government legal action.
A Downing Street spokeswoman said: “We won’t go into specific cases but if highly sensitive information was being held insecurely we have a responsibility to secure it.”
Cameron is on holiday in southwestern England.
The government had tried to distance itself from Rusbridger’s allegation that the Guardian was made to destroy the computer hard drives, and from the detention of David Miranda, partner of reporter Glenn Greenwald who has led the paper’s coverage of the Snowden leaks.
It has argued that these were operational security matters.
On Tuesday a White House spokesman said he could not comment on the destruction of Snowden material. But spokesman John Earnest said he could not see U.S. authorities destroying an American media company’s hard drives to protect national security. “That’s very difficult to imagine a scenario in which that would be appropriate,” he said told reporters.
Britain says its security agencies act within the law and that Snowden’s leaks are a grave threat to national security.
“STOLEN INFORMATION”
Miranda was held for nine hours on Sunday under an anti-terrorism law at Heathrow airport, where he was in transit on his way from Germany to his native Brazil.
He was released without charge minus his laptop, phone and memory sticks. He had been ferrying documents between Greenwald and a Berlin-based journalist contact of Snowden.
Brazil has said Miranda’s detention had “no justification”, while Miranda has launched legal action against the police and the government, accusing them of abusing anti-terrorism powers to get hold of sensitive journalistic material.
Home Secretary Theresa May, the British interior minister, said on Tuesday police were right to detain Miranda if they thought he was “in possession of highly sensitive, stolen information that could help terrorists, that could risk lives”.
But the controversy over Miranda’s detention has been fuelled by Rusbridger’s revelations on Tuesday about events several weeks ago, when the paper came under pressure to hand back or destroy intelligence material obtained from Snowden.
Rusbridger described conversations with the official now said to be Heywood and with “shadowy Whitehall figures”, a reference to the seat of government, and said he was told: “You’ve had your fun. Now we want the stuff back.”
Later, two agents from the secretive Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) came to the paper’s offices and watched while Guardian staff destroyed hard drives containing files obtained from Snowden.
Rusbridger said he agreed to this because there were other copies of the documents elsewhere. He said neither Miranda’s detention nor the destruction of the material would stop the Guardian from publishing more of Snowden’s leaks as it could conduct its reporting work outside of Britain.
(Additional reporting by Mark Hosenball in Washington, writing by Estelle Shirbon; editing by Guy Faulconbridge and David Stamp)
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Cameron was behind UK attempt to halt Snowden reports: sources
Thursday, July 25, 2013
House narrowly rejects effort to halt NSA program
Rep. Justin Amash, R-Mich. returns to his office on Capitol Hill in Washington, Wednesday, July 24, 2013, after a meeting with constituents, before the vote on the Defense spending bill in the House containing his amendment to cut funding to the National Security Agency’s program that collects phone records. The White House and congressional backers of the NSA’s electronic surveillance program are warning that ending the massive collection of phone records from millions of Americans would put the nation at risk from another terrorist attack. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
Rep. Justin Amash, R-Mich. returns to his office on Capitol Hill in Washington, Wednesday, July 24, 2013, after a meeting with constituents, before the vote on the Defense spending bill in the House containing his amendment to cut funding to the National Security Agency’s program that collects phone records. The White House and congressional backers of the NSA’s electronic surveillance program are warning that ending the massive collection of phone records from millions of Americans would put the nation at risk from another terrorist attack. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
FILE – This June 6, 2013 file photo shows the sign outside the National Security Administration (NSA) campus in Fort Meade, Md. The authority of the National Security Agency to collect phone records of millions of Americans sharply divided members of Congress on Tuesday as the House pressed ahead on legislation to fund the nation’s military. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky, File)
Rep. Justin Amash, R-Mich. walks through a basement tunnel to the House of Representatives on Capitol Hill, Wednesday, July 24, 2013, for the vote on his amendment to the Defense spending bill that would cut funding to the National Security Agency’s phone surveillance program. The White House and congressional backers of the NSA’s electronic surveillance program are warning that ending the massive collection of phone records from millions of Americans would put the nation at risk from another terrorist attack. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
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WASHINGTON (AP) — The House narrowly rejected a challenge to the National Security Agency’s secret collection of hundreds of millions of Americans’ phone records Wednesday night after a fierce debate pitting privacy rights against the government’s efforts to thwart terrorism.
The vote was 217-205 on an issue that created unusual political coalitions in Washington, with libertarian-leaning conservatives and liberal Democrats pressing for the change against the Obama administration, the Republican establishment and Congress’ national security experts.
The showdown vote marked the first chance for lawmakers to take a stand on the secret surveillance program since former NSA systems analyst Edward Snowden leaked classified documents last month that spelled out the monumental scope of the government’s activities.
Backing the NSA program were 134 Republicans and 83 Democrats, including House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, who typically does not vote, and Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi. Rejecting the administration’s last-minute pleas to spare the surveillance operation were 94 Republicans and 111 Democrats.
It is unlikely to be the final word on government intrusion to defend the nation and Americans’ civil liberties.
“Have 12 years gone by and our memories faded so badly that we forgot what happened on Sept. 11?” Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Mich., chairman of the Intelligence Committee, said in pleading with his colleagues to back the program during House debate.
Republican Rep. Justin Amash of Michigan, chief sponsor of the repeal effort, said his aim was to end the indiscriminate collection of Americans’ phone records.
His measure, offered as an addition to a $ 598.3 billion defense spending bill for 2014, would have canceled the statutory authority for the NSA program, ending the agency’s ability to collect phone records and metadata under the USA Patriot Act unless it identified an individual under investigation.
The House later voted to pass the overall defense bill, 315-109.
Amash told the House that his effort was to defend the Constitution and “defend the privacy of every American.”
“Opponents of this amendment will use the same tactic that every government throughout history has used to justify its violation of rights: Fear,” he said. “They’ll tell you that the government must violate the rights of the American people to protect us against those who hate our freedom.”
The unlikely political coalitions were on full display during a spirited but brief House debate.
“Let us not deal in false narratives. Let’s deal in facts that will keep Americans safe,” said Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., a member of the Intelligence committee who implored her colleagues to back a program that she argued was vital in combatting terrorism.
But Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., a senior member of the Judiciary Committee who helped write the Patriot Act, insisted “the time has come” to stop the collection of phone records that goes far beyond what he envisioned.
Several Republicans acknowledged the difficulty in balancing civil liberties against national security, but expressed suspicion about the Obama administration’s implementation of the NSA programs — and anger at Director of National Intelligence James Clapper.
“Right now the balancing is being done by people we do not know. People who lied to this body,” said Rep. Mick Mulvaney, R-S.C.
He was referring to Clapper who admitted he gave misleading statements to Congress on how much the U.S. spies on Americans. Clapper apologized to lawmakers earlier this month after saying in March that the U.S. does not gather data on citizens — something that Snowden revealed as false by releasing documents showing the NSA collects millions of phone records.
With a flurry of letters, statements and tweets, both sides lobbied furiously in the hours prior to the vote in the Republican-controlled House. In a last-minute statement, Clapper warned against dismantling a critical intelligence tool.
Since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, Congress has authorized — and a Republican and a Democratic president have signed — extensions of the powers to search records and conduct roving wiretaps in pursuit of terrorists.
Two years ago, in a strong bipartisan statement, the Senate voted 72-23 to renew the Patriot Act and the House backed the extension 250-153.
Since the disclosures this year, however, lawmakers have said they were shocked by the scope of the two programs — one to collect records of hundreds of millions of calls and the other allowing the NSA to sweep up Internet usage data from around the world that goes through nine major U.S.-based providers.
Although Republican leaders agreed to a vote on the Amash amendment, one of 100 to the defense spending bill, time for debate was limited to 15 minutes out of the two days the House dedicated to the overall legislation.
The White House and the director of the NSA, Army Gen. Keith Alexander, made last-minute appeals to lawmakers, urging them to oppose the amendment. Rogers and Rep. C.A. Dutch Ruppersberger, D-Md., leaders of the House Intelligence Committee, implored their colleagues to back the NSA program.
Eight former attorneys general, CIA directors and national security experts wrote in a letter to lawmakers that the two programs are fully authorized by law and “conducted in a manner that appropriately respects the privacy and civil liberties interests of Americans.”
White House press secretary Jay Carney issued an unusual, nighttime statement on the eve of Wednesday’s vote, arguing that the change would “hastily dismantle one of our intelligence community’s counterterrorism tools.”
Proponents of the NSA programs argue that the surveillance operations have been successful in thwarting at least 50 terror plots across 20 countries, including 10 to 12 directed at the United States. Among them was a 2009 plot to strike at the New York Stock Exchange.
Rogers joined six GOP chairmen in a letter urging lawmakers to reject the Amash amendment.
“While many members have legitimate questions about the NSA metadata program, including whether there are sufficient protections for Americans’ civil liberties,” the chairman wrote, “eliminating this program altogether without careful deliberation would not reflect our duty, under Article I of the Constitution, to provide for the common defense.”
The overall defense spending bill would provide the Pentagon with $ 512.5 billion for weapons, personnel, aircraft and ships plus $ 85.8 billion for the war in Afghanistan for the next budget year.
The total, which is $ 5.1 billion below current spending, has drawn a veto threat from the White House, which argues that it would force the administration to cut education, health research and other domestic programs in order to boost spending for the Pentagon.
In a leap of faith, the bill assumes that Congress and the administration will resolve the automatic, across-the-board spending cuts that have led the Pentagon to furlough workers and cut back on training. The bill projects spending in the next fiscal year at $ 28.1 billion above the so-called sequester level.
By voice vote, the House backed an amendment that would require the president to seek congressional approval before sending U.S. military forces into the 2-year-old civil war in Syria.
Rep. Trey Radel, R-Fla., sponsor of the measure, said Obama has a “cloudy foreign policy” and noted the nation’s war weariness after more than 10 years of conflict in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The administration is moving ahead with sending weapons to vetted rebels, but Obama and members of Congress have rejected the notion of U.S. ground forces.
The House also adopted, by voice vote, an amendment barring funds for military or paramilitary operations in Egypt. Several lawmakers, including Rep. Kay Granger, R-Texas, who heads the panel overseeing foreign aid, expressed concerns about the measure jeopardizing the United States’ longstanding relationship with the Egyptian military.
The sponsor of the measure, Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., insisted that his amendment would not affect that relationship.
The overall bill must be reconciled with whatever measure the Democratic-controlled Senate produces.
House narrowly rejects effort to halt NSA program
Tuesday, July 16, 2013
General strike brings Greece to a halt, as unions protest austerity
- A general strike affects public transit, flights, garbage collection and hospital staffing
- It is the fourth general strike called by the labor unions this year
- Parliament is to vote Wednesday on further austerity measures
- Greece has to reform its public sector in order to receive international bailout funds
Athens (CNN) — A 24-hour general strike called Tuesday in protest over further austerity measures has brought many public services in Greece to a grinding halt.
Public transit systems, flights and garbage collection services are affected by the nationwide action — the fourth such to be held this year — while hospitals are running on skeleton staffing.
Labor unions held a rally in central Athens on Tuesday morning, to be followed by a march to the national parliament building.
A rally was also held outside parliament Monday night, but it did not attract large numbers of protesters. Many people have left the capital to escape the summer heat.
The general strike takes place ahead of a vote in parliament Wednesday on a bill containing further austerity measures. One would make it easier to fire people in the civil sector.
They must be voted in for Greece to receive the next tranche of international bailout funds.
The measures are expected to go through, as the coalition government holds a slim majority in parliament.
Greece, the first country to receive a European Union bailout more than three years ago, is struggling to bring its huge public debt under control.
The country is in its sixth straight year of recession, and unemployment stood at 26.8% as of March this year, according to official figures. The jobless rate among young people in Greece has soared to nearly 60%.
CNN’s Elinda Labropoulou reported in Athens, and Laura Smith-Spark wrote in London.
CNN.com Recently Published/Updated
General strike brings Greece to a halt, as unions protest austerity
Sunday, June 30, 2013
Justice Kennedy denies motion to halt gay marriage
WASHINGTON (AP) — Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy has denied a request from Proposition 8 supporters in California to halt the issuance of same-sex marriage licenses in the nation’s most populous state.
Kennedy turned away the request on Sunday with no additional comment.
Same-sex marriage opponents asked him to step in on Saturday, a day after the federal appeals court in San Francisco allowed same-sex marriages to go forward. Numerous weddings were performed at San Francisco City Hall following the court decisions.
The opponents said the appeals court had acted about three weeks too soon. Proposition 8 supporters could continue their efforts to halt gay marriage by filing their request with another Supreme Court justice.
Justice Kennedy denies motion to halt gay marriage
Friday, June 21, 2013
GOP Group Vows To Halt Hillary"s 2016 Chances
With more than three years of 2016 speculation left to go, Hillary Clinton’s presidential plans are anything but finalized.
The chance of her running is still enough for one Republican super PAC to mount a website against her potential campaign. CNN reported on Thursday that America Rising launched “Stop Hillary 2016″ — a fundraising effort aimed at quelling support for the former Secretary of State, senator and first lady.
“America Rising was formed to prevent Americans from ever having to see another Clinton in the White House,” the website reads. “We’ve seen what a President Hillary Clinton would be like from her time as Secretary of State. We can’t afford another Clinton administration after eight years of President Obama.”
Launched in March, America Rising is run by some notable GOP faces — former Mitt Romney campaign manager Matt Rhoades, and former RNC strategists Tim Miller and Joe Pounder. According to a McClatchy report, the group’s focus is opposition research that serves as the “counter-weight to the Democratic equivalent, American Bridge.”
“We plan to start this enterprise because so many Republicans seem to agree there is a need on our side of the aisle for an entity that is focused solely on holding Democrats accountable for their actions and records using research, candidate tracking, rapid response and digital tools,” Rhoades said in a statement included in the McClatchy report.
America Rising’s effort to stop Clinton comes on the heels of two Democrats, Sens. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) and Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), voicing public support this week for a 2016 run.
“It’s important that we start early, building a grassroots army from the ground up, and effectively using the tools of the Internet –- all things that President Obama did so successfully –- so that if Hillary does decide to run, we’ll be ready to help her win,” McCaskill said in a statement released by Ready for Hillary, a super PAC behind the possibility of Clinton running.
“I am personally urging Secretary Clinton to run,” Gillibrand added at a Third Way think tank event, according to The Hill. “I’ve told her I plan to support her in any way I can.”
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GOP Group Vows To Halt Hillary"s 2016 Chances
Friday, June 14, 2013
Detroit manager pitches debt recovery plan to creditors involving halt of debt payments
Matt Helms, Joe Guillen and Alisa Priddle
Detroit Free Press
June 14, 2013
Emergency manager Kevyn Orr on Friday laid out an extraordinary, complex and painful path back to solvency for the city of Detroit in a proposed plan to creditors.
It would spin off the city’s water department, reduce city-provided health care for retirees and immediately stop debt payments and then use that money to keep the city operating while reinvesting $ 1.5 billion over the next decade to boost crucial public services like police and fire, step up blight removal and transform an antiquated, failing city government.
The impact of the document Orr released publicly and to creditors in Friday’s historic meeting cannot be understated.
This article was posted: Friday, June 14, 2013 at 1:18 pm
Tags: domestic news, economics
Detroit manager pitches debt recovery plan to creditors involving halt of debt payments
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