The US Observer Enters Mark Turners Case

Here It Is: Goldman's Secret Pitch Letter To Clients On Facebook (GS)
Email Sent! You have successfully emailed the post. The Wall Street Journal landed the secret memo Goldman Sachs is sending to clients about investing in Facebook. It's sort of eerie, and doesn't mention Facebook. It's just "a private company," which "trades in a limited manner on certain private markets." “When you have a chance I wanted to find a time to discuss a highly confidential and time sensitive investment opportunity in a private company that is considering a transaction to rais...

Goldmans Facebook Pitch To Clients
Via the WSJ: “When you have a chance I wanted to find a time to discuss a highly confidential and time sensitive investment opportunity in a private company that is considering a transaction to raise additional capital. For confidentiality reasons, I am unable to tell you the name of the company unless you agree not to use such information other than in connection with your evaluation of the investment opportunity and to keep all information that we reveal to you strictly confidential. All I...

Police Seek Suspect Wanted In Staten Island Killing
NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) — Police on Staten Island are looking for a suspect they said murdered one man and tried to kill another. Authorities said a 21-year-old man got into a physical altercation with 19-year-old Drew B. Casseus, who took out a gun and began shooting on Port Richmond Avenue on December 28. The Victim was shot in the leg and was able to walk to Richmond University Medical Center for treatment. A second Victim - identified as 19-year-old Jonathan Vasquez, of Staten Isla...

Interrogated by the Secret Travel Police
Writes a friend:Last night at a big-city airport, on my way to catch a flight, I was stopped by undercover agents. I had already checked my baggage, and during the check the Customer Service agent did leave me in the middle of the baggage check for about three minutes, but the undercover agents said my stop was random. It occurred roughly three minutes after I completed checking two bags. Here’s what happened. After I checked my two bags and began walking toward the security gate, a  t...

Interrogated By the Secret Travel Police
Writes a friend: Last night at a big-city airport, on my way to catch a flight, I was stopped by undercover agents. I had already checked my baggage, and during the check, the Customer Service agent did leave me in the middle of the baggage check for about three minutes, but the undercover agents said my stop was random. It occurred roughly three minutes after I completed checking two bags. Here’s what happened. After I checked my two bags and began walking toward the security gate. A  ...

Creating another House
One criticism I occasionally hear about Filibuster reform is that if we get rid of the filibuster, we'll just have two Houses of Representatives. One response to that criticism is, so what? But probably a more accurate one is, no we won't. As Koger and others pointed out in their letter to the U.S. Senate, the Constitution contains plenty of provisions that ensure that the Senate will be a more deliberative body than the House. Specifically, it is a smaller chamber (meaning members will know ea...

Goldman, Digital Sky Technologies invest in Facebook: report
Bangalore | Mon Jan 3, 2011 1:16pm EST Bangalore (Reuters) - Facebook has raised $500 million from Goldman Sachs and Russian Internet investment group Digital Sky Technologies in a deal valuing the social networking site at $50 billion, the New York Times reported citing people involved in the transaction. Goldman has invested $450 million and Digital Sky Technologies, which has already invested about half a billion dollars in Facebook, put in an additional $50 million, the paper said. Facebo...

Injured "Spider-Man" Talks about Terrifying Fall
Like this Story? Share it: (CBS) NEW YORK - It was a horrific moment for a death-defying performer. "Spider-Man: Turn of the Dark" actor Christopher Tierney tumbled 30 feet before a stunned audience on Dec. 20, 2010. His safety harness was not correctly attached. Tierney, 31, spoke exclusively with Dana Tyler from CBS Station WCBS. Scroll down to watch video from her exclusive report. "It was just, you know, a bit of Human Error," says Tierney. "I'm supposed to jump off the bridge but it catc...

Argentina thieves dig into bank
Bank robbers in Argentina have tunnelled into a vault and emptied more than 100 safety deposit boxes, police say. The Robbery in Buenos Aires was only detected when bank staff returned to work after the new year weekend. The thieves are thought to have spent six months digging a 30m (100ft) tunnel complete with lights and ventilation. Alarms went off several times overnight but police saw the doors of the bank were shut and took no further action. Bank executives did not say how much was sto...

Exoneration Hearing Set for Parolee
DALLAS - A 51-year-old Texas man who spent 30 years in Prison for aggravated Robbery will likely have his conviction set aside after DNA testing proved his innocence. An exoneration hearing for Cornelius Dupree Jr. is scheduled for Tuesday in Dallas. If his conviction is overturned, Dupree would have spent more time wrongly imprisoned than any other DNA exoneree in Texas. The District Attorney's office said Monday it supports Dupree's innocence claim. Dupree was charged in 1979 with raping and r...

alicublog
SERVICE ADVISORY. Sorry to have dropped off the grid again, friends, but the past few days have been a challenge. My Harlem sublet came to an end, and none of the tickets I had out on a follow-up came through, so I was obliged to lodge with an old friend in Inwood, way up by Fort Tryon. It is a fascinating, hideous neighborhood. Here is a picture of an orange-seller on Dyckman, sweeping away the foul remnants of the late storm so that her customers can come right up to her, instead of flinging c...

DNA clears Texas man who spent 30 years in prison
(01-03) 09:16 PST Dallas, CA (AP) -- A 51-year-old Texas man who spent 30 years in Prison for aggravated Robbery will likely have his conviction set aside after DNA testing proved his innocence. An exoneration hearing for Cornelius Dupree Jr. is scheduled for Tuesday in Dallas. If his conviction is overturned, Dupree would have spent more time wrongly imprisoned than any other DNA exoneree in Texas. The District Attorney's office said Monday it supports Dupree's innocence claim. Dupree was cha...

China develops nuclear fuel technology
BEIJING, Jan. 3 (UPI) -- China says it has developed the technology to reprocess spent Nuclear Fuel and use the recycled material to keep Nuclear Power plants going. The breakthrough will have major implications for China as it moves from its historic dependence on coal to an ambitious program of building a number of Nuclear Power stations, the BBC reported Monday. Reprocessing Nuclear Fuel is a complex and costly procedure that Chinese researchers reportedly have spent 24 years perfecting, but ...

Three decades of a joke that just won't die
What would happen if you spent 30 years making fun of the same man? What if for the last decade, you had been mocking his imminent death -- and yet he continued to stay alive, making all your jokes about his immortality seem a bit too uncomfortably close to the truth? Egyptians, notorious for their subversive political humor, are currently living through this scenario: Hosni Mubarak, their octogenarian president, is entering his fourth decade of rule, holding on to power and to life through she...

US-built projects crumbling
WASHINGTON — Roads, canals and schools built in Afghanistan as part of a special US Military program are crumbling under Afghan stewardship, despite new steps imposed over the past year to ensure reconstruction money is not being wasted, according to government reports and interviews with Military and civilian personnel. US Troops in Afghanistan have spent $2 billion in the past six years on 16,000 humanitarian projects through the Commander’s Emergency Response Program which gives ...

Nancy
I’m missing Nancy Pelosi already. I called my daughter when Pelosi was elected Speaker to discuss the historic nature of the event, but she didn’t pick up, and I had moved on by the time I saw her. If she had picked up, I’m sure I’d have some profound yet spontaneous exchange to share with you. Instead, here’s my favorite Pelosi quote: So the Democrats would thunderously attack Bush and argue there was no Social Security crisis and therefore no need for them to pu...

NATO: $20 billion spent in 2 years for Afghan Training
Source: Associated Press By the end of the year, NATO will have spent $20 billion on developing Afghan security forces since the start of 2010 and will maintain a training presence through at least 2016, the commander of the training mission said Wednesday. Soaring illiteracy rates among service members and a shortage of specialized trainers, however, remain major hurdles as Afghans prepare to take control of securing their nation by the 2014 deadline for NATO to withdraw combat forces, said U....

Landmark Coal Mine Safety Enforcement Case Settled
The Labor Department's first-ever use of its toughest enforcement tool has resulted in a court-supervised settlement with Coal Mine giant Massey Energy. The agreement involves Massey's Freedom Mine #1 in Pike County, Ky., which is described in court documents as a mine so dangerous it requires court supervision. Freedom was singled out for an unprecedented Federal Court injunction due to a persistent "pattern of violations" of Mine Safety law, which "constitutes a continuing hazard to the health...

NOW suspends assistant editor over hacking claims
Sienna Miller, who is suing News Group, accusing them of breaching her Privacy and of harassing her. Photograph: Samir Hussein/Getty Images A senior News of the World executive has been suspended by the paper following a "serious allegation" that he was involved with phone hacking when the paper was edited by Andy Coulson, now the Prime Minister's director of communications. It was revealed today that Ian Edmondson, the title's assistant editor, was "suspended from active duties" before Chri...

Michael Jackson's Employees Testify
(NewsCore) - The defense team representing Dr. Conrad Murray, Michael Jackson’s personal physician and the man accused of killing the pop star, is expected to argue that Jackson killed himself accidentally with an Overdose of the drug Propofol, Fox News Channel reported Tuesday. The preliminary hearing got underway Tuesday morning in Los Angeles. Jackson's mother Catherine, sister LaToya and brother Jackie arrived shortly before 9:00am. Murray arrived moments later in a black Mercedes with...

Florida attorney wants copy of escort service's black book
Attorney Paul DeCailly, who represents Miami Companions co-owner Greg Carr, is coming to Detroit on Friday. He hopes to convince a judge to let him view and copy the Escort Service’s black book, which includes names and contact information of thousands of customers. “Looking at it does me no good,” DeCailly said. “I want the whole thing, the whole nationwide list. I want it all” DeCailly has been butting heads with Federal Prosecutors in Detroit ove...

US 'execution drugs' row flares up again as trail points to London
The Controversy over the use of British-made drugs in executions in the United States flared up last night after court documents emerged in Arizona which suggested that the supply could be traced to an address in west London. An invoice seen by The Independent shows the Arizona State Prison Complex invoicing a small company for a cocktail of three drugs used in the Lethal Injection process. Sodium thiopental, potassium chloride and pancuronium bromide – worth a combined £4,253.25 &nda...;

Caseworker cleared infant who later died
A caseworker who said she visited 2-month-old Quasir Alexander on Dec. 21 had pronounced him and his twin brother "healthy and well" despite the fact that Quasir weighed only about four pounds, sources close to the investigation say. The boy, who lived in a West Philadelphia Homeless Shelter with his mother and five siblings, would be dead two days later from Starvation and Dehydration. Quasir's mother, Tanya Williams, 32, was charged Friday night with Murder. "It should have been...

AIPAC Protests Disclosure of Its Secret Files
On Dec. 23, 2010, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee filed a 53-page motion [.pdf] asking Judge Eric Christian to sanction former employee Steven J. Rosen over the illicit possession and release of sensitive internal AIPAC documents.Rosen's $20 million Defamation suit against his former employer seeks compensation for derogatory public statements AIPAC made to justify firing him after he was indicted under the Espionage Act in 2005 and their joint defense agreement collapsed. AIPAC i...

Efraim Diveroli, 20-Something Arms-Dealing Fraudster, Sentenced To Four Years In Prison
Even as Floridians brace for a new wave of fraudulence to consume their waking existence, they can happily shut the door on another local bit of criminality as Efraim Diveroli, whose youthful exploits as a twenty-something arms contractor endangered lives and enshrined him as a tangential plot point in Jonathan Franzen's Freedom, was sentenced to four years in Prison for that time he shipped "millions of rounds of prohibited Chinese-made ammunition to Afghan forces fighting alongside U.S. troo...