Due to schedules and technical problems we have been unable to bring you our Evening Edition. While the technical difficulties are being remedied the scheduling is going to be very tight for the next two weeks as I will be traveling and ek hornbeck will being doing his annual “playing in the mud” event (don’t ask, you really do not want to know).
Tonight’s Evening Edition will be a bit abbreviated, I have last minute shopping and packing. Thank you for your patience, for reading and we sincerely apologize for the inconvenience to our readers.
Syrian army presses scorched earth campaign in north
DAMASCUS (AFP) – The Syrian army pressed a scorched earth campaign in the northern mountains on Monday even as state media said two top officials had been banned from foreign travel in a state probe into their role in a previous bloody crackdown.
Washington called on President Bashar al-Assad to lead a transition or leave power, as Western government expressed mounting frustration at the failure of the UN Security Council to agree a resolution condemning Syria’s response to three months of protests.
“Meaningful probability” of a China hard landing: Roubini
SINGAPORE (Reuters) – China faces a “meaningful probability” of a hard economic landing and the euro zone is storing up problems for the future by not tackling the debt crisis head on, said Nouriel Roubini, the economist who predicted the global financial crisis.
He said U.S. Treasury prices, which have risen sharply as investors sought a safe haven from the euro area debt crisis and worries about a slowdown in the global economy, were fairly valued although he was cautious about U.S. equities.
New York-based Roubini is closely followed by Wall Street because he predicted the U.S. housing meltdown that precipitated the global downturn.
China avoided a hard landing during the global credit crunch but faces a downturn after 2013 as it will struggle to keep increasing fixed investments, Roubini said.
New York extends mortgage probe to trustees: source
NEW YORK (Reuters) – New York’s top legal officer is seeking information from Deutsche Bank AG and Bank of New York Mellon about their role as trustees for mortgage-backed securities, an expansion of his probe of mortgage practices, said a person familiar with the matter.
New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman’s office is examining whether the banks fulfilled their administrative duties owed to investors set out in agreements that pool mortgages into securities, according to the source.
Rivals hit Lagarde as IMF race heats up
WASHINGTON (AFP) – Rivals to lead the IMF lit into French favorite Christine Lagarde Monday, with one suggesting she had conflicting interests, as the race to head the world’s crisis lender heated up.
Mexican central bank chief Agustin Carstens said Europe’s dependence on the International Monetary Fund to bail out several of its members could challenge the French finance minister’s ability to take a cold hard stance as the Fund’s managing director.
BofA mortgage woes do not crimp capital: analysts
CHARLOTTE, North Carolina (Reuters) – Bank of America Corp (BAC.N) will not likely need to raise capital unless it is forced to recognize mortgage losses sooner than expected or is required to boost capital levels faster, a Sanford Bernstein analyst wrote on Monday.
But in the short-term, another veteran bank analyst projects mortgage issues will cut the bank’s 2011 earnings in half.
The largest U.S. bank by assets will likely be able to increase its book value and build capital to meet new industry rules while absorbing an estimated $27 billion in additional housing losses, Sanford Bernstein analyst John McDonald wrote in a note to clients.
Berlusconi suffers humiliating referendum defeat
ROME (AFP) – Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi suffered a humiliating defeat on Monday in opposition-backed referendums to block nuclear power and abolish a law intended to give him legal immunity.
It was the embattled premier’s second blow in less than a month after his People of Freedom party lost critical mayoral votes in Milan and Naples and even Berlusconi supporters were saying something needed to change quickly.
S&P slashes Greece to lowest, says default likely
ATHENS/NEW YORK (Reuters) – Greece became the lowest-rated country in the world in the rankings of Standard & Poor’s on Monday, putting it below Ecuador, Jamaica, Pakistan and Grenada.
The rating agency cut Greece three notches and warned it would view a likely debt restructuring as a default.
This was the latest blow for the country’s Socialist government, which is scrambling to push a new austerity package through parliament to clinch continued funding under a year-old bailout plan despite rising public discontent.
Obama job creation panel suggests modest steps
DURHAM, North Carolina (Reuters) – With few tools left to heal the economy, President Barack Obama pledged on Monday to act on job-boosting ideas from a panel of top executives whose modest proposals fell short of a quick fix for stubbornly high unemployment.
Obama’s jobs council, led by General Electric chief Jeffrey Immelt, called for measures to cut red tape, provide more loans, invest in energy efficiency and attract more tourists, many of which have been suggested before.
Hackers claim break-in of Senate computers
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A loosely aligned group of computer hackers calling themselves Lulz Security said they broke into the Senate’s computer network on Monday.
There was no immediate comment by the Senate Sergeant at Arms Office, which oversees the chamber’s security.
Lulz Security, who have hacked into Sony’s website and the Public Broadcasting System, posted online a list of files that appear not to be sensitive but indicate the hackers had been into the Senate’s computer network.
Complete Pentagon Papers released 40 years after leak
AUSTIN, Texas (Reuters) – The complete Pentagon Papers were made available to the public on Monday, exactly 40 years after leaked portions of the top-secret report on U.S. involvement in Vietnam were first published by the New York Times.
“There will probably be no smoking guns in this material, but for the first time it will be seen as it was created,” Regina Greenwell, a senior archivist at the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library and Museum, told reporters.
“That is new — looking at it in all its original form and in all its context.”
The documents, stamped “declassified” in red, were wheeled out on a cart and unveiled at a press conference on Monday at the LBJ Library in Austin, one of several places where researchers can now view them.
Phone taps convict three more of insider trading
NEW YORK (Reuters) – Three former securities traders were convicted on Monday on all counts of fraud and conspiracy to commit insider trading on pending mergers, in another victory for prosecutors in their probe of suspicious trading on Wall Street.
Brothers Zvi Goffer and Emanuel Goffer and a third trader, Michael Kimelman, their former partner at trading firm Incremental Capital LLC, chose to go to trial when dozens of other defendants in the broad probe have pleaded guilty.
The case is part of a wide-ranging insider trading investigation focused on hedge funds and traders, a probe marked by the use of FBI wiretaps.
Libyan rebels breakout toward Tripoli
MISRATA, Libya – Libyan rebels Monday broke out toward Tripoli from the opposition-held port of Misrata 140 miles to the east, cracking a government siege as fighters across the country mounted a resurgence in their four-month-old revolt against Moammar Gadhafi.
The rebels gained a diplomatic boost as well when the visiting the German foreign minister said the nascent opposition government was “the legitimate representative of the Libyan people.” Guido Westerwelle was visiting Benghazi, the capital of the rebel-held east of the country, to open a liaison office and hand over medical supplies.
Fight against Arizona fire moves to NM border
RESERVE, N.M. – Crews who’ve been battling a massive wildfire in eastern Arizona for two weeks shifted their focus Monday to New Mexico, where they lit fires to stop its advance and protect another mountain town in its path.
In the opposite corner of New Mexico, near the Colorado border, winds kicked up flames at a wildfire that had already forced evacuations and closed 20 miles of the main north-south highway through both states.
Wall Street ends flat as uncertainty persists
NEW YORK (Reuters) – Stocks drifted sideways on Monday, in what is likely a temporary pause in a sell-off brought on by growing fears of another economic downturn.
The benchmark S&P 500 rose for only the second time in the past nine sessions while the Nasdaq 100 (.NDX) managed to survive a fall below its 200-day moving average at 2,218, quickly reversing those losses.
Investors remained noncommittal about whether stocks have become cheap enough after six weeks of selling to pour some money back into equities again.
Airlines collected $3.4B in bag fees in 2010
NEW YORK – U.S. airlines collected $3.4 billion in bag fees last year. The 24 percent increase from 2009 shows how the airlines are increasingly reliant on charging for once-free services to make money.
The fees – typically $50 round-trip for the first piece of checked luggage – are one of the few bright spots for an industry that is caught between rising fuel costs and customers who expect rock-bottom airfares.
“If it weren’t for the fees, the airlines would most likely be losing money,” said Jim Corridore, airline analyst with Standard & Poor’s.
EU in Kosovo says Turk, Israeli trafficked organs
PRISTINA, Kosovo – A European Union prosecutor in Kosovo has indicted a Turkish and an Israeli national for involvement in an international network that falsely promised poor people money for their kidneys and then transplanted the organs into rich buyers, the bloc’s rule of law mission said Monday.
Turkish citizen Yusuf Sonmez, and Israel’s Moshe Harel were charged last week for “trafficking in persons, organized crime and unlawful exercise of medical activity,” the mission, known as EULEX, said in a statement.
Sonmez and Harel are considered at large by EU authorities and Interpol has issued a warrant for their arrest.
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