Brazil Refuses to Allow 17 American Executives to Leave Country Over OIl Spill

By Noel Brinkerhoff and David Wallechinsky

Brazil - Chevron and another American company are under attack from the government of Brazil after allowing an oil leak from an offshore well.

Seventeen executives from Chevron and oil platform operator Transocean face criminal charges for an oil discharge, about 110,000 gallons, which occurred last November. The equivalent of about 3,000 barrels, it so far pales in comparison to the 4 million-barrel BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010. Transocean was also held partially responsible for that disaster.

The 17 include George Buck, chief operating officer for Chevron’s Brazilian division. Buck and the others have been told by Brazilian prosecutors to turn over their passports and remain in the country.

When more oil was spotted in the water on Friday near the original leak, Chevron agreed to suspend production, which had been turning out more than 60,000 barrels of oil a day, even after the November incident.

Prosecutors also have filed a civil lawsuit seeking $11.2 billion in damages from Chevron, which has accused the government of overreacting to the size of the spill. Prosecutor Eduardo Santos de Oliveira told Reuters that Chevron executives may face criminal charges for drilling in an unsafe location or an unsafe manner.

Nation's Biggest Spy Center Settles into Utah

By David Wallechinsky and Noel Brinkerhoff

 

Utah - Officially called the Utah Data Center, the enormous facility under construction will eventually house one million square feet of computers. Its mission will be to intercept, decipher, analyze and store large volumes of communications collected by the NSA from around the world.

 

Everything from private emails to cell phone calls to Google searches and more will be stored at the center, which is scheduled to operational in September 2013. It will also collect the details of financial transactions, big and small, secret communication of foreign governments, suspected terrorists and, perhaps, just about everybody else.

 

“It is, in some measure, the realization of the ‘total information awareness’ program created during the first term of the Bush administration—an effort that was killed by Congress in 2003 after it caused an outcry over its potential for invading Americans’ privacy,” according to James Bamford in an excellent article in Wired. Bush went ahead anyway, enlisting the aid of the telecoms, and the Obama administration has moved the strategy forward.

 

The Utah Data Center will also be a center for cryptanalysis—code breaking—since one of its primary targets will be password-protected and intricately encrypted information.

 

The Data Center is expected to have at least 200 full-time employees and cost $40 million a year to maintain.

JPMorgan Chase Caught “Misrepresenting” Credit Card Collections; Whistleblower Fired

By David Wallechinsky and Noel Brinkerhoff

 

San Antonio - After cutting corners and relying on poor accounting, JPMorgan Chase shut down its legal operation against credit card debtors, some of whom may have been wrongly sued by the bank. It would appear to be another example of greed overcoming honesty. Ten years ago, Chase was recovering about $130 million a year in bad debt collections. By 2009, they were raking in $1.2 billion on credit card recoveries alone. The problem, legally and ethically, was that Chase was misrepresenting what they were selling to professional debt collectors. The increase in profits—and the decrease in ethical standards—would appear to have begun in 2008 when Edmond Helaire and his right-hand man, Jason Lazinbat, were put in charge of the credit card debt division in San Antonio, Texas.

 

A former bank employee, Linda Almonte, first drew attention to the problem after she was fired for complaining that Chase was selling credit cards debts with erroneous balances to collection companies. Almonte then filed a whistleblower lawsuit contending she was wrongfully terminated.

 

Almonte had barely settled into her new job at Chase’s credit card litigation support section in San Antonio in 2009 when she was given responsibility for organizing a parcel of almost $200 million worth of delinquent credit card bills to be sold to a debt collector. It did not take long for her to realize that many of the unpaid bills, or judgments, were not what they were supposed to be. She wrote to her superiors that almost half of the judgments were missing documents or lacked dates and signatures. In addition, for almost a quarter of the judgments, Chase was exaggerating the amount that was owed.

 

Another former bank employee, Howard Hardin, who oversaw a team handling tens of thousands of debt files, backed up Almonte’s story, telling American Banker his division “did not verify a single one” of the affidavits attesting to the amounts that the bank was seeking to collect. “We were told [by superiors] ‘We’re in a hurry. Go ahead and sign them,’” he said.

 

The revelations prompted the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency to launch an investigation. Chase also has stopped suing delinquent borrowers for the time being.

Drug Companies Still Outsourcing Dangerous Trials to Poor Nations

By Noel Brinkerhoff and David Wallechinsky

Worldwide - Despite getting into trouble in Africa, U.S. drug manufacturers are still going overseas, with increasing frequency, to test new medicines and take advantage of poor economic conditions…and lax regulation legal responsibility should anything go wrong.

India is one popular destination for pharmaceutical companies wanting to avoid tougher regulatory guidelines for using test subjects in the U.S.

And getting volunteers is easy when so many Indians live in poverty.

In a nation where the average worker makes 50 cents a day, pharmaceutical corporations can offer $400 to participants in drug trials.

“Whether the studies are for birth control, diabetes, migraines or high blood pressure, money often draws volunteers into Indian drug trials,” reports NBC’s Dateline.

But paying locals what amounts to huge sums of cash is a violation of India’s Drugs and Cosmetics Act, said Dr. Chandra Gulhati, editor of the Monthly Index of Medical Specialties, an Indian medical journal. Payments are allowed, but, “It should never be so much that it works as an inducement,”

Indian government figures show that more than 1,500 people have died during clinical drug trials, but it is not known how many would have died anyway if untreated. Last year foreign drug companies paid an average of about $4,800 to relatives of 22 Indians who died during or after drug trials. This is a fraction of what payouts would have been had the deaths happened in the United States.

Federal Prosecutors Work without Pay

By Noel Brinkerhoff and David Wallechinsky

 

Washington D.C. - Tight on money but loaded with cases to prosecute, the U.S. Attorney’s office in Kansas City has been using unpaid attorneys fresh out of law school to help out.

 

According to The Kansas City Star, U.S. Attorney Beth Phillips implemented the program because of a hiring freeze that prevented her from adding any more salaried positions to her staff.

 

With unemployment among lawyers at about 5% in Missouri, and underemployment among young lawyers close to 30%, Ryan Hershberger decided to spend a year serving as a special assistant U.S. Attorney without getting paid in order to gain valuable career experience.

 

A member of the narcotics unit, Hershberger has handled an eight-person drug conspiracy case, while another unpaid special assistant has indicted more than two dozen gun defendants as part of her work for the violent-crimes strike force.

 

What is happening in Kansas is part of a larger trend across the nation. Unpaid lawyers are known as “Special Assistant U.S. Attorneys (SAUSA).” A typical call for unpaid attorneys reads, “The Office of the United States Attorney for the District of Connecticut is seeking applications from attorneys who are willing to accept an unpaid temporary position that offers a valuable opportunity to gain exposure to the office while also obtaining litigation experience and conducting trials.

Georgia Law Would Outlaw Picketing Homes of Corporate Executives

By Noel Brinkerhoff and David Wallechinsky

 

Georgia - Coming only days after a protest outside a major telecommunications company, Republican lawmakers in Georgia have introduced a bill that would subject non-violent demonstrators involved in a labor dispute to heavy fines and felony convictions.

 

If SB 469 passes, picketing outside the homes of company executives would be forbidden. The bill’s wording defends the executives’ right to “quiet enjoyment.” Protesters also could face fines and felony charges if they demonstrate outside businesses that have won court rulings ordering the sit-ins to stop.

 

The legislation was introduced on February 21, only eight days after a demonstration inside AT&T’s headquarters in Atlanta, where 12 people were arrested for criminal trespass, which currently is a misdemeanor. Since the arrests, Occupy Atlanta and union groups have camped out in front of the building.

 

SB 469 was introduced by four Republican state senators, Don Balfour, Bill Hamrick, Bill Cowsert and Ross Tolleson, who are members of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). Funded by corporations, ALEC creates model bills for sympathetic state legislators, including proposed laws they fight labor unions. ALEC also drafted Arizona’s controversial anti-immigration bill as a way of helping one of members, Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), the nation’s largest private prison company.

Exxon Sues for Return of Document It Gave Law Firm by Mistake

By David Wallechinsky and Noel Brinkerhoff

 

United States - ExxonMobil is suing to recover a document it accidentally gave to attorneys of plaintiffs who are battling the oil company in court over environmental-related injuries. ExxonMobil wants the information returned because it supposedly contains evidence that the corporation deliberately withheld air sample data.

 

Over the past decade, ExxonMobil has been sued by thousands of people who claim that they or deceased members of their family were harmed by exposure to radioactive materials that accumulated in pipes used in the production of oil. In March 2010, a jury in New Orleans ruled that 16 former employees of Intracoastal Tubular Services (ITCO) who had cleaned the pipes without being warned they were dangerous deserved compensation for increased risk of cancer. Exxon had previously been forced to compensate the owners of the property where the pipes were cleaned. One of the property owners happened to be a retired state judge, Joseph Grefer. When the state 4th Circuit Court of Appeal upheld that judgment, the justices called Exxon’s behavior “reprehensible.”

 

On August 28, 2008, Exxon inadvertently turned over a 1988 memorandum from Exxon attorney Rosemary Stein regarding the results of air sample tests performed by an ExxonMobil industrial hygienist on an experimental pipe cleaning unit. The oil giant is trying to stop the document from being used in a punitive damage claims trial due to commence on March 5.

 

The attorneys being sued after refusing to return the paperwork are Timothy Falcon and Jeremiah Sprague of the Falcon Law Firm, and attorney Frank M. Buck Jr. The Falcon firm was the one that received the information by mistake, and then shared it with Buck.

42% of Women Die Within a Year of a Heart Attack, but Only 24% of Men

By Noel Brinkerhoff and David Wallechinsky

From AllGov

 

Women are less likely than men to survive a heart attack, according to recent statistics. A study found that 42% of women who have heart attacks die within one year compared with 24% of men.

 

Researchers attribute the discrepancy in heart attack survivals to a variety of possible factors. For one, women tend to develop heart disease about 10 years later in life than men, and they are more likely to have coexisting chronic conditions, such as breast cancer involving chemotherapy that may affect some women who have heart attacks. Also, women may not be diagnosed or treated as aggressively as men for their heart problems.

 

A 2004 study of 5,887 people who made 911 calls found that, on average, women arrived at the hospital 2.3 minutes slower than men. Another study, published in the Journal of Stroke and Cardiovascular Diseases, concluded that “female and black stroke patients are less likely than others to receive care to prevent subsequent strokes.”

 

Cardiovascular disease is the number one killer of women in the United States, with about 50% of female mortalities attributed to either heart attack or stroke.

San Francisco Sues U.S. Government Over Deadly Pipeline Explosion

By Noel Brinkerhoff and David Wallechinsky 

 

San Francisco - The U.S. Department of Transportation and one of its agencies is being sued by the city of San Francisco for the deadly gas pipeline explosion that occurred two years ago.

 

According to its lawsuit, the city claims the department’s Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA) “has been shirking its duty for over a decade, if not longer” and has failed to properly maintain national safety standards and adequate oversight of pipelines. The PHMSA is also accused of not ensuring that pipelines in the state complied with federal safety standards under the Pipeline Safety Act.

 

San Francisco authorities accuse PHMSA of creating “a regulatory scheme that improperly delegates to gas pipeline operators responsibility for the safe operation and maintenance of gas pipeline facilities.”

  

The Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) pipeline explosion occurred in San Bruno, where eight people were killed on September 9, 2010, and destroyed more than 100 homes. The lawsuit also cites another deadly PG&E natural gas line explosion in Rancho Cordova in 2008 and a non-lethal explosion in Cupertino in 2011.

Obama Fights to Retain Warrantless Wiretapping

By Matt Bewig and David Wallechinsky

 

United States - Despite being propelled to victory by progressive supporters critical of the Bush administration’s record on civil liberties, President Barack Obama has directed the Justice Department to defend many of the policies of George W. Bush, including warrant-less wiretapping. Last week, the Justice Department filed papers asking the Supreme Court to overturn an appeals court ruling that allowed the continuation of an ACLU lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of a 2008 law giving the government unprecedented authority to monitor Americans’ international emails and phone calls.

 

That monitoring has its origins in the wake of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, when, a few years later, President Bush instructed the National Security Agency (NSA) to intercept Americans’ telephone calls without warrants, which were required by the Constitution and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). FISA, a post-Watergate statute meant to rein in domestic surveillance, created a special court, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC), to approve or reject requests for domestic surveillance.

 

Between 1978 and 1992, presidents Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush presented 7,030 applications for warrants and the court approved all of them as submitted. During his eight years in office, President Bill Clinton and his Justice Department presented 6,057 warrant applications. The FISC approved 6,055 of them, modified one and rejected one.

 

However, the harmonious relationship between the executive branch and the FISC changed after George W. Bush became president. The court rejected six requests outright and modified 179. It is worth noting that all eleven members of the Bush-era FISC were selected by conservative Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rehnquist. Annoyed by the FISC judges’ refusal to rubber-stamp his policies, Bush bypassed the law and ordered the NSA to secretly conduct illegal wiretapping.

 

When Bush’s secret program was revealed by The New York Times in 2005, the Bush administration first agreed to seek FISC approval, and when that failed, got Congress to permit the previously prohibited warrantless wiretapping by passing the FISA Amendments Act of 2008. President Bush signed the bill into law on July 10, 2008, and the ACLU filed its challenge less than an hour later. The provisions of the act are scheduled to end at the end of 2012.

 

The appeals court ruling, which was issued in March 2011, rejected the Obama administration’s argument that the case should be dismissed because the ACLU’s clients could not prove their communications would be collected under the law, which was true largely because the law creates great secrecy around the wiretaps in the first place–a true “Catch-22.”

FBI Warns that People Who Use AOL at Internet Cafés Could be Terrorists

By Noel Brinkerhoff, David Wallechinsky

 

United States - America Online users beware: If you access your AOL account from a computer at an Internet café, your name may wind up on a terrorist-watch list.

 

According to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), AOL users at public computer venues are just one possible type of suspicious person that business owners need to keep tabs on.

 

The FBI has been distributing flyers to paintball centers, banks, dive shops and even tattoo shops to educate them on how to spot potential terrorist activities.

 

In addition to noting who is accessing AOL, Internet café owners should watch out for and report customers who always pay for their service with cash, attempt to shield their screen from other people in the room, communicate through video games or use VOIP, all of which are signs of a would-be terrorist, says the FBI.

 

The flyers do remind business owners and their employees that “It is important to remember that just because someone’s speech, actions, beliefs, appearance, or way of life is different; it does not mean that he or she is suspicious.”

Obama Administration Making it Harder for Military Families to Sue for Medical Malpractice

By Noel Brinkerhoff and David Wallechinsky

 

United States - In defending the U.S. military’s medical system in court, the U.S. Department of Justice is arguing that service personnel and their families are not allowed to sue for medical malpractice regardless of the circumstance.

 

As a general rule, military members are barred from taking the government to court, which has been established in several court cases, in particular the 1950 Supreme Court decision in Feres v. United States. But now government lawyers are trying to expand the scope of Feres to make it impossible for families of soldiers to sue for medical malpractice, if at the time of the bad care the service member was on active duty.

 

“This is a whopper of a theory and it immediately raised the hackles of attorneys who practice in this field,” wrote Andrew Cohen for The Atlantic. “Now, all of sudden, family members of military personnel can't sue the U.S. for negligence because their loved ones are on active duty?”

 

Eugene Fidell, an expert in military law at Yale University told the Military Times that the Feres Doctrine was not intended to protect military hospitals sued by civilians. “If the government can plausibly take a position like this, something is basically wrong,” said Fidell. “The outcome the government is arguing for is intolerable. If the government wins this motion, Congress has to step in.”

Insecticides May Be Linked to Bee Die-offs: Purdue University

By David Wallechinsky and Noel Brinkerhoff

 

United States - Agricultural chemicals may be partly responsible for the massive die-off of honeybees in the U.S., according to researchers at Purdue University. Entomologists have found the presence of neonicotinoid insecticides, which are used on corn and soybean seeds and are known to be “highly toxic to bees; we found them in each sample of dead and dying bees,” Christian Krupke, associate professor of entomology, told Purdue Daily. Except for organically grown crops, almost all corn seeds planted in the United States are coated with neonicotinoid insecticides, leading to exposure to honeybees foraging near corn fields.

 

Honeybees pollinate about 30% of all food consumed and contribute $15-20 billion a year in agriculture revenue for the U.S. The U.S. is currently losing about one-third of its honeybee hives each year. Some researchers (and pesticide manufacturers, such as Bayer) have maintained that the die-offs have been caused not by pesticides, but by viruses and fungi.

FBI to Create Spy System: AP

By David Wallechinsky and Noel Brinkerhoff

 

United States - The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is creating a spy system that will allow it to monitor social media websites, including Facebook and Twitter.

 

FBI analysts are hoping to pick up tips about future terrorist threats by examining “publicly available” material from Facebook, Twitter and other social media sites, as well as national and local television news, including Fox News, CNN and MSNBC. The bureau intends to zero in on keywords relating to terrorism, surveillance operations, online crime and other criminal matters. It also hopes to better “track hurricane paths and timelines for landfall and other natural disasters.”

 

Applicants who believe they can provide the system the FBI is seeking must be able to view tweets in at least 12 languages and translate them into English. They must also have the “Ability to display video feeds from traffic cameras to monitor traffic patterns, obstructions, bottle necks, protestors, and flash mobs.”

 

The Central Intelligence Agency has already been spying on Facebook and Twitter, as well as news outlets, as part of its effort to glean intelligence on upcoming threats or overseas upheaval, such as revolutions, before they begin. Doug Naquin, director of the CIA’s Open Source Center, told the Associated Press that the best analysts are those who, like the heroine of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, know “how to find stuff other people don’t know exists.”

Median Income for White Families in U.S. Almost Double Blacks and Latinos

By Noel Brinkerhoff and David Wallechinsky

 

Whites today enjoy considerable economic advantage over the largest minority groups in the United States—a disparity that's expected to exist far into the future even as Caucasians shrink in numbers and no longer represent a majority of the American population.

 

According to a new report published by the group United for a Fair Economy, the median family income of black and Latino families was 57% of that earned by white families.

 

At different times over the last 30 years, the income inequality between whites and blacks and Latinos was not as great. In 1981, the median Latino family earned 71 cents to each dollar of income by a white family. For blacks, better times were had as recently as 2000, when their family income was 62% of whites.

 

If current trends continue, the situation is expected to improve somewhat in the coming decades for African-Americans. By 2042, the typical black family would make about 61 cents for every dollar of income earned by the median white family.

 

But Latino income would continue to decline relative to white income. Thirty years from now, Latinos will earn only 45 cents for every dollar of white median family income.

 

By that time whites will no longer constitute a majority of the U.S. population and make up only 49.9% of all Americans.

 

Even more dramatic than the racial income gap is the wealth gap. Net wealth is calculated by subtracting debt from assets, and can be passed on from generation to generation. According to figures for 2007, the median black family held only 10 cents in wealth for every dollar owned by the median white family, while Latinos held 12 cents.

 

A more recent study, done by the Pew Research Center, calculated that between 2005 and 2009, the median white household lost 16% of its wealth to $113, 149. Black households fell to $5,677, a decline of 53%, while Latinos fell 66% to $6,325.

Indiana Law Would Criminalize “Inappropriate” Singing of National Anthem By David Wallechinsky and Noel Brinkerhoff

Claiming there’s a right and wrong way to do it, a lawmaker in Indiana has introduced legislation that bans the inappropriate singing of the national anthem.

 

Republican Senator Vaneta Becker’s bill would set specific “performance standards” for “The Star-Spangled Banner” at events sponsored by public schools and state universities, or by private schools receiving state or local scholarship funds or vouchers.

 

The bill’s language does not offer a definition of an acceptable version of the song. Instead, Becker is leaving that up to the State Department of Education and the Commission for Higher Education.

 

If the measure becomes law, those not abiding by the appropriate standards will be fined $25.

 

Indiana citizens have been particularly sensitive to the singing of the “The Star-Spangled Banner” since May 2001 when Aerosmith lead singer Steven Tyler, performing at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, changed the last line from “the home of the brave” to “the home of the Indianapolis 500.”

 

Massachusetts law forbids the use of “The Star-Spangled Banner” as dance music, as part of a medley or as an exit march…punishable by a fine of up to $100.

 

In October 2010 the House of Representatives of the Philippines passed a law that included jail time for improper singing of the Filipino national anthem, but the bill died in the Senate.