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Court won't hear Clinton pay lawsuit
Law Center |
2010/06/07 07:15
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The Supreme Court won't hear arguments that Hillary Rodham Clinton is ineligible to be secretary of state. The high court on Monday refused to hear an appeal by Judicial Watch, a conservative watchdog group. The Constitution says no member of Congress can be appointed to a government post if that job's pay was increased during the lawmaker's current term. Clinton was serving as New York senator when the secretary of state's salary was raised to its current level of $191,300. Congress lowered the salary so that Clinton could take the position. Judicial Watch says the congressional fix doesn't change the fact that Clinton's appointment was illegal.
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Lehman, Nortel, Bank of America, Google in Court News
Business |
2010/06/07 07:14
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Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc.’s ex- Chief Executive Officer Richard Fuld asked a judge to dismiss a lawsuit accusing him and his colleagues of failing to disclose Repo 105, a financing method allegedly used to conceal billions of dollars of debt, according to court records. Separately, Ernst & Young LLP, the Lehman auditor, also asked the judge to dismiss the lawsuit in a court filing June 4, saying its work met all applicable professional standards. The class-action lawsuit, based on a 2,200-page report by Lehman bankruptcy examiner Anton Valukas, was filed April 23 on behalf of retirement funds including the Alameda County Employees’ Retirement Association in Oakland, California, and the Government of Guam Retirement Fund. The Lehman executives denied in court papers that the investors had lost money on Lehman securities because of misstatements and omissions in offering documents. Lehman’s accounting for Repo 105 transactions conformed to generally accepted accounting principles and was approved by Ernst & Young, they said. “Plaintiffs’ effort to turn the report into a basis for securities law violations fails,” they said in a filing in federal court in Manhattan. |
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2 New Jersey Terror Suspects to Appear in Court
Court Watch |
2010/06/07 06:12
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Two young New Jersey men are scheduled to appear in federal court in Newark Monday morning on charges of trying to join a terrorist group. The two were arrested Saturday at John F. Kennedy International Airport before they could board separate flights to Egypt, where they hoped to continue on to Somalia to join the terrorist group al-Shabab, a militant organization with links to Al Qaeda. New York City Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said Mohamed Mahmood Alessa, 21, and Carlos Eduardo Almonte, 23, had gone to Jordan in 2007. From there, they tried to get into Iraq but were turned back. "It's a cause for concern," Kelly told reporters during a press conference on Sunday. "It's not unlike other cases that we've seen recently where individuals who express an interest to do 'jihad' go overseas and then are turned around" and "come back to attempt acts of violence in the United States," he said, citing other high-profile cases, like Najibullah Zazi and Faisal Shahzad, both charged with plotting separate acts of terror inside the United States.
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Lesbian couple weds in Portugal's 1st gay marriage
Breaking Legal News |
2010/06/07 05:14
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A lesbian couple wed Monday in Portugal's first same-sex ceremony since the predominantly Catholic country introduced a law allowing gay marriage last month. Teresa Pires and Helena Paixao, divorced Portuguese mothers in their 30s who have been together since 2003, married in a 15-minute ceremony at a Lisbon registry office. "This is a great victory, a dream come true," Pires said as the couple kissed and hugged. "Now we're a family, that's the important thing," Pires said, adding they would continue to fight for equal rights for homosexuals, including adoption. The ceremony came less than a month after Portugal's conservative president ratified a gay marriage law passed by Parliament in January. His approval made Portugal the sixth in Europe to let same-sex couples wed. The center-left Socialist government said the law is part of its effort to modernize Portugal, where homosexuality was a crime until 1982. Three years ago the same government lifted Portugal's ban on abortion, despite church opposition.
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Oil spill continues to demand President Obama's time
Political and Legal |
2010/06/07 05:11
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White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs's briefing, which normally comes in the afternoon, takes place at 10 a.m., and will be conducted by Adm. Thad Allen, the national incident commander in charge of the response to the Gulf of Mexico disaster. The briefing is happening early to make way for a Facebook video chat with energy czar Carol Browner, who has become one of the go-to oil spill people at the White House in the past week. President Obama also plans to hold a full meeting of his Cabinet -- not a common event during his first year and a half in office -- to discuss what the administration is doing to stop the leak and to clean up the coastlines of several states. Over the weekend, even as BP appeared to have some success diverting a bit of the oil from the broken undersea gusher, it became clear that the crisis above water will be just as difficult to deal with. More images of oil-covered animals began emerging, and there were increasing complaints about the lack of cleanup effort at beaches . One local official wondered aloud why Obama didn't order workers from other oil companies to help BP clean up the spill. |
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Appeals court rules for US Airways pilot union
Labor & Employment |
2010/06/07 02:16
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A federal appeals court has ruled against pilots from the old America West airlines in their dispute with their union at US Airways. The two airlines combined in 2005, but their pilots are still fighting over seniority rights. Six pilots from the old America West sued their union, saying it planned to ignore an arbitrator's decision that it believed had favored the America West pilots. Last year a judge agreed with the America West pilots and ordered the union to follow the arbitrator's decision. Friday's decision from a three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals says it's too soon to say that the union has harmed the America West pilots because a new contract would have to be ratified first.
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Illinois couple guilty of $41M Best Buy fraud
Tax |
2010/06/04 08:53
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A federal jury has found an Illinois couple guilty of defrauding Best Buy out of $41 million by over-billing the Richfield-based company for computer parts. Russell Adam Cole, 50, and Abby Rae Cole, 53, of Deerfield, Ill., were found guilty Thursday of mail fraud, wire fraud, conspiracy, tax evasion and conspiracy to commit money laundering in connection with the scheme. The IRS led the investigation into the case. According to prosecutors, Best Buy created a repair service on products in the early 2000s and solicited vendors to submit bids on certain parts they wanted to supply for the repair service. The Coles owned and operated a computer parts distribution company called the Chip Factory, Inc. For about four years ending in August 2007, Best Buy accounted for most of Chip Factory's sales. But court records showed that the Coles made Chip Factory quote fraudulently low prices in Best Buy's auction system to obtain computer repair parts. After winning bids, the Coles billed Best Buy prices that were higher than the ones quoted in the bidding process. Over time, prosecutors said the Coles billed Best Buy for more than $41 million than had been agreed to in the bidding process. A former Best Buy employee, 39-year-old Robert Paul Bossany of Prior Lake, helped carry out the scheme. Bossany pleaded guilty in January 2009 to accepting bribes from Chip Factory and conspiring to defraud Best Buy while working as Best Buy's primary contact with Chip Factory.
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