WASHINGTON (CN) - Federal Reserve Chair Ben Bernanke called for a more concrete end to the era of "too big to fail" institutions during a Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission hearing Thursday, saying a promise by the Obama administration that the government will not bail out large Wall Street firms in the future is not enough.
Thursday, September 02, 2010Last Update:
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MIAMI (CN) - Democratic U.S. Senate hopeful Jeff Greene wants $500 million from two Florida newspapers that he says cost him votes by publishing false stories and editorials implicating him in a mortgage fraud case. PORTLAND, Ore. (CN) - Six men have settled their lawsuits against the Boy Scouts of America after they claimed the group failed to protect them from sexual abuse at the hands of a former scout leader.
MANHATTAN (CN) - Francesca Spero, a white music producer who claims she helped launch the career of Sean Combs, demands $12 million from Bad Boy Entertainment, Janice Combs Publishing, and Sean Combs, claiming they discriminated against and fired her for her age and disability, and false rumors "that she was on drugs," in Federal Court. It was 99 degrees as I hit the road, streets empty and still. No one stood in the quavering heat; no one lay in a back yard or weeded a garden. No dogs, no cats, no humans, no birds, no clouds. |
(CN) - The U.S. Department of Justice on Tuesday sued the Maricopa County, Ariz., Sheriff's Office, claiming it and Sheriff Joe Arpaio failed to hand over documents as part of the agency's probe into immigration enforcement operations.
FORT WORTH, Texas (CN) - State prosecutors say a Texas man swiped charitable donations "for the fallen soldiers of the military operations in Iraq, Afghanistan and the Persian Gulf," and spent the money on himself. Walter Coleman claimed he would use the money for the United States Fallen Heroes Fund, to a build a national memorial for veterans. PRESCOTT, Ariz. (CN) - A man who describes himself as "somewhat of a celebrity and a person of note, particularly in the field of alternative medicine," claims a former partner, who specialized in "brain training technology," stole his formulas and muscled him out of his life's work. Don Medicine Wolf says that when he met Ambaya Pilar Martin at a 2007 New Age festival in Sedona, she described herself as a "'businesswoman,' who is 'Mexican by birth, American by culture, Hindi by heart and Native American by destiny."
SHERMAN, Texas (CN) - A Dallas man pleaded guilty to conspiring to defraud investors of more than $535 million in oil and gas investment schemes. Joseph Blimline, 35, admitted he conspired to defraud 7,700 investors in a scheme based in Texas, and conspired to take more than $50 million in a similar, Michigan-based scam.
(CN) - The SEC today charged a Branchburg, N.J.-based investment adviser and three of her firms with defrauding investors, many of them elderly, of more than $11 in phony promissory notes. Sandra Venetis promised 6 to 11 percent tax-free returns but "looted" the money pay for business debts, international travel, gambling, and home mortgages and property taxes, the SEC said. WHITE PLAINS, N.Y. (CN) - Federal prosecutors charged nine people with fraud and aggravated identity theft in a $15 million cell phone cloning scheme. All nine worked for "a national cell phone service provider" and used its computers to get confidential information about "thousands of customers," which they used more than 16,000 times, according to the complaint. MANHATTAN (CN) - A "well qualified black photographer" claims a public relations official doing business at Madison Square Garden revoked his press credentials because he showed up at a boxing match with a white woman. ST. LOUIS (CN) - A woman who hired two men to kill her husband for the insurance money was sentenced to 20 years in federal prison. The men killed her husband in 1992 and burned his body in his truck. |
(CN) - The 9th Circuit overturned the conviction of a member of the "No More Deaths" border aid organization, ruling that the group's practice of placing bottles of water in the desert along immigrant paths does not constitute littering. (CN) - The 7th Circuit ruled that a Roman Catholic group at the University of Wisconsin at Madison can receive funding for religious activities. (CN) - A Chihuahua caught in a divorce battle was correctly awarded to the wife, a Texas appeals court ruled. (CN) - A former government official who "got more than he bargained for" when he accused the town of Cicero, Ill, of firing him to chill his free speech scored a partial victory after the 7th Circuit ruled that the town's counterclaims for breach of fiduciary will not stand. (CN) - California's prison system does a poor job of caring for developmentally disabled inmates, a federal judge ruled in rejecting the system's attempts to wriggle out of court oversight. (CN) - The Federal Circuit has ruled in favor of electronics giant Philips in a dispute over patents for recordable compact discs.
(CN) - The 7th Circuit rejected a Rastafarian's argument that a security firm discriminated against him when it told him it would only hire him if he cut his dreadlocks off. (CN) - A federal regulation to slash production of ozone-depleting chemicals cannot be made retroactive, the D.C. Circuit ruled. (CN) - Six years of litigation has left Shell Oil Co. with a $700,000 bill to owners of a store on land that was contaminated by a leaky gas storage tank in Anderson, Ind. (CN) - Billboard advertisements in St. Paul, Minn., will continue to "pop out" at residents after the 8th Circuit ruled that an ordinance restricting their use is unenforceable. (CN) - A former consultant involved in the KPMG tax shelter fraud, called "the largest criminal tax case in American history" was fined $3 million too much, the 2nd Circuit ruled. WASHINGTON (CN) - The Department of Veterans Affairs now has limited authority to stop collections on certain VA benefit debts after the debtor dies, if the death is related to war. WASHINGTON (CN) - Businesses with at least $60 million in assets and transactions per year no longer will have to report certain transactions between U.S. parent companies that are banks, bank holding companies, or financial holding companies and their bank foreign affiliates, according to a proposed change to the Commerce Department's quarterly survey of U.S. direct investment abroad. WASHINGTON (CN) - The U.S. Department of the Navy allows an attorney practicing under the Judge Advocate General to disclose a client's condition when the attorney reasonably believes that a client has diminished capacity and is at risk of substantial physical harm to him or herself unless immediate action is taken, according to a new Navy regulation. WASHINGTON (CN) - The Federal Trade Commission has proposed revisions to three key information documents that credit ratings agencies and credit providers must give to consumers. |
A woman claims injections of Allergan's Botox gave her autoimmune encephalitis, in Chesterfield County Court, Va. Stephen Goldfield, a hedge fund manager, made $14 million trading on inside information about AstraZaneca's acquisition of MedImmune, and his co-defendant James W. Self Jr., a pharmaceutical executive, gave him the illegal tips, the SEC claims in Philadelphia Federal Court. Boiron USA claims its "Children's Coldcalm" pellets will provide relief from colds and sore throats, but "the product is nothing more than a sugar tablet," a class action claims in Orange County Court, Calif. A woman claims St. Vincent New Hope, which provides services for disabled people, violated her civil rights by firing her because she refused to drive a client to the Church of the Nazarene, whose beliefs and practices made her "uncomfortable." She sued in Indianapolis Federal Court. A woman claims Twister Display's and Delta Manufacturing's ED2 dunk tank dropped her into the water every time anyone threw a ball at all at her employer's "team building" exercise, dunking her 40 times, and the seat collapsed each time she grabbed it, giving her serious injuries that required surgery, in Tulsa County Court.
Volkswagen falsely advertises that its Jettas come with "standard hands-free Bluetooth mobile connectivity calling systems," a class action claims in Los Angeles Federal Court. The class claims the system actually requires costly rewiring. The Sandy Lake Band of Mississippi Chippewa sued the U.S. Secretary of the Interior, demanding tribal recognition, in Minneapolis Federal Court. Andrew Surabian claims Daniel Adams, Fish Weir Filmworks, and Cape Filmworks owe him $320,000 for loans and work on the movie, "The Lightkeepers," in Worcester County Court, Mass. |
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MANHATTAN (CN) - In a hearing before the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals, Nassau County Attorney John Ciampoli warned that the transition from lever-pull to electronic voting machines will cause "electoral chaos" in the primaries, and that all it will take to "fix" an election is a flash drive that anyone can buy at Staples. Ciampoli said a person with a flash drive would need "approximately 5 minutes of access" to fix an election. 
HOUSTON (CN) - Co-captains claim ExxonMobil endangered them by equipping their ship with a remotely monitored "Fueltrax system" that prompted pirates to board their ship off Nigeria, pistol whip them and their crew and dismantle the system, which, ironically, had been installed to "reduce the frequency and success of fuel theft." 
TROY, Mo. (CN) - A Lincoln County Court policy that let people pay their way out of jury duty may have tainted a drug case and could affect 20 other cases. The policy let citizens avoid jury duty by paying $50 and doing 6 hours of community service. But a state appeals court this week overturned a man's 2007 drug conviction because the jury policy violated state law. 
LOS ANGELES (CN) - Litigation continues in a billion-dollar case in which Mattel claims that MGA Entertainment swiped its popular Bratz doll "and then continued stealing Mattel's confidential and proprietary information." Now Mattel claims that MGA and its CEO Isaac Larian "have fraudulently transferred and encumbered MGA's assets to ensure that no matter the outcome of the underlying lawsuit, Mattel will never be able to recover for its losses". 
SEATTLE (CN) - A passenger claims she was "terrified" during an emergency landing that was forced because the American Airlines pilot ignored "multiple warnings" about critical gear, and tried to fly from Seattle to New York on battery power, which lasts for only 30 minutes. 
SEATTLE (CN) - Six German and Chinese companies conspired to smuggle counterfeit Chinese honey into the United States, including honey contaminated with antibiotics, to duck nearly $80 million in tariffs, federal prosecutors say. A 44-count indictment in Chicago claims that 10 executives of German food conglomerate Alfred L. Wolff and the sales manager for Chinese honey exporter QHD Sanhai Honey mislabeled the honey as coming from other countries. 
