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Obama promises all-out relief effort in Haiti – Yahoo! News

Kali — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 17:27:20 +0000

WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama on Wednesday promised an all-out rescue and humanitarian effort to help the people of Haiti overcome a “cruel and incomprehensible” tragedy, the ruinous earthquake that ravaged the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere.
The president said the relief effort is gearing up even as the U.S. government is working to account for Americans who were on the island nation when the disaster struck late Tuesday afternoon.
Obama said he named U.S. Agency for International Development administrator Rajiv Shah to coordinate American efforts, and the president called upon all nations to join in helping stricken Haitians.
Obama spoke Wednesday in the White House Diplomatic Reception Room. Later, spokesman Robert Gibbs told reporters the president had no plans to go to Haiti.
“We’ve mobilized resources to help rescue efforts. Military overflights have assessed the damage, and by early afternoon our civilian disaster assistance team are beginning to arrive,” the president said. Obama adjusted his Wednesday schedule, canceling a jobs event in Maryland to better monitor the situation in Haiti.
Obama encouraged Americans who want to help to go to http://www.whitehouse.gov to find options for contributing to the aid effort.
The president received updates on the situation in Haiti and the U.S. response Wednesday morning from his national security adviser and the Department of Homeland Security.
It would take some days for the ship, in port in Baltimore, to be serviced, supplied and arrive at Haiti, one official said.
The 7.0-magnitude earthquake caused thousands of buildings to collapse in Haiti’s capital, Port-au-Prince, trapping untold numbers

All but one American employed by the embassy have been accounted for, State Department officials said.

Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said there are about a dozen wounded people — embassy staff, American citizens and family members of local embassy personnel — being treated at the embassy or the ambassador’s residence for non life-threatening injuries like broken bones. The first Disaster Assistance Response Team (DART) from USAID is expected to arrive in Haiti from San Jose, Costa Rica around 1:30 p.m. Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Wednesday that U.S. military personnel worked throughout the night in response to the disaster in Haiti.

“An awful lot of people are working in that direction right now.”

Former President Bill Clinton, who is U.N. special envoy for Haiti, said in a statement: “My thoughts and prayers are with the people of Haiti.

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Bipartisan panel to grill Wall Street CEOs – Yahoo! News

Kali — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 10:21:20 +0000

WASHINGTON – Top bank executives can expect a grilling when they appear before a congressionally appointed panel investigating the causes of the 2008 financial collapse.
Four of Wall Street’s most powerful leaders — Goldman Sachs Group Inc. Chairman-CEO Lloyd Blankfein, JPMorgan Chase & Co. CEO James Dimon, Morgan Stanley Chairman John Mack and Bank of American Corp. CEO-President Brian Moynihan — were to give sworn testimony before the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, which was holding its first session Wednesday.
The banking executives summoned to testify spent the days leading up to the hearings in meetings with corporate lawyers and government relations specialists.
Mack’s testimony also was to highlight regulatory failures and would include calls to improve regulators’ tools to oversee financial activity, said another person familiar with Mack’s plans.
The hearings come at a sensitive time for the banking industry. Congress is writing a full-scale overhaul of financial regulations, bankers are about to announce huge bonuses for their executives and the Obama administration is considering extracting a fee from banks to cover about $120 billion in taxpayer losses from a government Wall Street bailout fund.
The bankers’ demeanor before the commission, the tone of the commission’s questions and the continuing inquiry could affect public perceptions and influence how lawmakers and the White House deal with the industry.
A coalition of liberal activist groups is urging the commission to work aggressively and look beyond the bankers to the actions of former government regulators. In newspaper ads set to appear in Washington publications Wednesday, the group, Accountable America, singles out former Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Christopher Cox for not detecting Bernie Madoff’s Ponzi scheme.
The commission is chaired by former California Treasurer Phil Angelides, a Democrat. In an interview last week, Thomas expressed impatience with bankers who worry that some additional government scrutiny and demands for transparency will hobble the industry.
It was named after Ferdinand Pecora, the committee’s chief lawyer.
Congress instructed the new commission to explore 22 issues, ranging from the effect of monetary policy on terms of credit to bank compensation structures.

___

Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission: http://www.fcic.gov

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AP source: Obama to announce bank fees Thursday – Yahoo! News

Kali — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 04:35:20 +0000

WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama plans to announce a new fee Thursday on the country’s biggest financial firms to recover up to $120 billion in taxpayers’ money used to prop up corporations during the economic crisis, a senior administration official said.
In proposing a multiyear levy on big banks, Obama is targeting an industry whose political deafness has vexed his administration. The $120 billion recovery goal is the most that administration officials expect to lose from the government’s $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program that bailed out banks, automakers and other financial firms.
Congress would have to approve any fee plan.
The proposed levy could put Obama on the popular side of public opinion that is decidedly against Wall Street and angry over shortfalls in a $700 billion bank bailout fund.
Obama’s announcement would come one day after the nation’s top bankers testify before the congressionally created Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission. The hearings come at an ultra-sensitive time for the banking industry. In addition to Obama’s fee proposal, Congress is writing a full-scale overhaul of financial regulations.
The administration official said Obama’s plan has been in the works since August and would seek modifications to the law that sent billions of dollars in bailout money in 2008 and 2009 to a flailing Wall Street that was approaching collapse.
The 2008 law that created the Troubled Asset Relief Program requires the president to seek a way to recoup unrecovered TARP money from financial institutions, but five years after the law was enacted. The administration’s plan raises a series of questions.
Administration officials already have ruled out a fee on financial transactions. An industry official said consideration of a levy now would be premature.
“Current law doesn’t trigger this tax proposal for another four years,” said Scott Talbott, chief lobbyist for the Financial Services Roundtable, an industry group for some of the largest financial firms.

Banks have been repaying their infusions, in part to get out from under compensation limits imposed on the bailout recipients. Banks have also paid dividends from the government help.

With public anger over the bailout still strong, Obama has embraced populist rhetoric in an effort to shame bank executives into paying back the government more quickly and their executives less lavishly.

Funds collected from such a levy would go to pay down the $1.4 trillion deficit amid the Obama-backed stimulus package and aid to Detroit’s automakers.

Washington spent about $245 billion to help banks in the Troubled Asset Relief Program, much less than President George W. Bush’s Treasury Department secured to keep financial firms afloat.

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AP Exclusive: Obama wants $33 billion more for war – Yahoo! News

Kali — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 01:51:05 +0000

WASHINGTON – The Obama administration plans to ask Congress for an additional $33 billion to fight unpopular wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, on top of a record request for $708 billion for the Defense Department next year, The Associated Press has learned.
The administration’s Quadrennial Defense Review, the main articulation of U.S. military doctrine, is due to Congress on Feb. 1. Top military commanders were briefed on the document at the Pentagon on Monday and Tuesday. The pilotless drones used for surveillance and attack missions in Afghanistan and Pakistan are a priority, with a goal of speeding up the purchase of new Reaper drones and and expansion of Predator and Reaper drone flights through 2013.
Obama ordered an extra 30,000 troops for that war as part of an overhaul of the war strategy late last year.
U.S. officials outlined the coming requests on condition of anonymity because the budget request will not be sent to Congress until later this month.

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AP sources: Conn. Sen. Chris Dodd to retire – Yahoo! News

Kali — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 06:09:30 +0000

WASHINGTON – Democratic officials tell The Associated Press that Connecticut Sen. Christopher Dodd won’t seek re-election this fall.
Dodd is facing troubling poll numbers and his popularity has dropped since his 2008 failed run for president.

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Grim Obama says terror attack ‘dots’ not connected – Yahoo! News

Kali — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 02:30:21 +0000

WASHINGTON – A grim-faced President Barack Obama declared Tuesday there was a deep failure of national intelligence in the botched Christmas Day airliner terror attack over Detroit, telling the nation the government had enough information to thwart potential disaster but could not “connect those dots.”
“The information was there,” Obama said, blistering agencies and analysts for not figuring out the threat — but without singling any out by name.
“I will accept that intelligence, by its nature, is imperfect,” Obama said. Obama never said who, if anyone, in the government might be held accountable, and the White House would not say whether any officials would be fired.
The director of national intelligence, Dennis Blair, said in a statement that the intelligence community had received the president’s message. The president’s own analysis is centered on identifying security gaps and filling them. Obama announced no new steps to improve the intelligence or security systems. Since the attack, the government has added dozens of names to its lists of suspected terrorists and those barred from flights bound for the United States. One of those countries, Cuba, summoned the top U.S. diplomat on the island on Tuesday to protest extra screening for Cuban citizens flying into the United States, calling the new step “this hostile action.”
“When a suspected terrorist is able to board a plane with explosives on Christmas Day, the system has failed in a potentially disastrous way,” Obama said. Tight security — and perhaps nerves — was showing up far from the White House.
A Bakersfield, Calif., airport was temporarily shut down Tuesday after officials said a passenger’s luggage tested positive for TNT. As for Obama’s meeting with security aides, the White House released a statement later quoting him as telling them: “This was a screw-up that could have been disastrous. Obama also is suspending the transfer of Guantanamo prison detainees to Yemen. “Make no mistake, we will close Guantanamo prison,” Obama said. The camp, he said, “was an explicit rationale for the formation of al-Qaida” operating in Yemen.

“Our intelligence community failed to connect those dots which would have placed the suspect on the no-fly list,” he said. “This was not a failure to collect intelligence, it was a failure to integrate and understand the intelligence that we already have.”

Obama said that it was clear the government knew that the suspect, Abdulmutallab, had traveled to Yemen and joined with extremists there.

“It now turns out that our intelligence community knew of other red flags that al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula sought to strike not only American targets in Yemen, but the United States itself. Before Obama’s comments, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said the president still has full confidence in his three top national security officials: Blair, CIA Director Leon Panetta and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano.

They were among the 20 high-level officials who sat down with Obama in the White House Situation Room for a meeting that lasted over 90 minutes.

Abdulmutallab remains in federal custody, charged with trying to destroy the Northwest Airlines flight as it approached Detroit. That omission prompted a review of the National Counterterrorism Center’s massive Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment database.

___

Associated Press writers Darlene Superville, Joan Lowy, Philip Elliott, Matthew Lee and Faryl Ury in Washington, and Ahmed Al-Haj in San’a, Yemen, contributed to this report.

___

Transportation Security Administration: http://www.tsa.gov

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Obama to announce new airline safety measures – Yahoo! News

Kali — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 11:37:09 +0000

WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama is announcing new measures Tuesday to beef up airline security after an alleged terrorist attempt to destroy a Detroit-bound U.S. airliner on Christmas Day.
Fresh off a Hawaiian vacation dominated by news of the incident, Obama scheduled a meeting Tuesday afternoon with high-ranking government officials charged with carrying out two reviews he ordered after the botched attack — on screening for airline passengers and on the U.S. terror watch-list system.
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, Defense Secretary Robert Gates, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, CIA Director Leon Panetta and FBI Director Robert Mueller were among those expected to meet with Obama in the White House Situation Room.
Attorney General Eric Holder; Dennis Blair, director of national intelligence; Michael Leiter, director of the National Counterterrorism Center; national security adviser James Jones; and John Brennan, the president’s counterterrorism adviser, also were to attend.
Brennan will update the president on his own review of the system of watch lists and outline his initial findings. Agency heads will comment on their internal reviews.
Obama prepared Monday afternoon by meeting privately with national security aides.
The government also has added dozens of names to its lists of suspected terrorists and those barred from U.S.-bound flights. The addition of names to the government’s terrorist watch list and the no-fly list came after U.S. officials scrutinized a larger database of suspected terrorists, an intelligence official said Monday. That omission prompted a review of the National Counterterrorism Center’s massive Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment (TIDE) database.
___
Transportation Security Administration: http://www.tsa.gov

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AP sources: Bomber at CIA base was a double agent – Yahoo! News

Kali — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 01:44:00 +0000

WASHINGTON – The suicide bomber who killed eight people inside a CIA base in Afghanistan was a Jordan-born terrorist double agent who was invited to the base because he claimed to have information targeting Osama bin Laden’s second-in-command, a former senior U.S. intelligence official and a foreign government official confirmed Monday
The bombing killed seven CIA employees — four officers and three contracted security guards — and a Jordanian intelligence officer, Ali bin Zaid, according to a second former U.S. intelligence official. The former senior intelligence official and the foreign official said the bomber was Humam Khalil Abu-Mulal al-Balawi, a 36-year old doctor from Zarqa, Jordan, who had been recruited by Jordanian intelligence. Zarqa is the hometown of slain al-Qaida in Iraq leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. The CIA declined to comment on the report.
Hajj Yacoub, a self-proclaimed spokesman for the Taliban in Pakistan, identified the bomber on Muslim militant Web sites as Hammam Khalil Mohammed, also known as Abu-Dujana al-Khurasani. Al-Balawi was not searched for bombs when he got onto Camp Chapman, according to both former officials and a current intelligence official.
The bodies of seven CIA employees arrived Monday at Dover Air Force Base in a small private ceremony attended by CIA Director Leon Panetta, other agency and national security officials, and friends and family, said CIA spokesman George Little.
SITE said Monday that al-Balawi used his pseudonym — identified as Khorsani — in the postings, describing how he rose through the ranks of online jihadist forums. A Jordanian government official, who was not authorized to speak to the press, said the Jordanian government has no connection to the bomber. The official said the Jordanian government had not verified whether the bomber was Jordanian.
The Taliban’s Yacoub said the Jordanian intelligence officer, bin Zaid, was helping the CIA recruit agents to spy on al-Qaida in Afghanistan. Bin Zaid allegedly recruited the suicide bomber.
Jordan’s state news agency Petra identified bin Zaid as an army officer on a humanitarian mission in Afghanistan. The Jordanian military released a brief statement acknowledging bin Zaid had been killed in Afghanistan, but it did not mention he was working with Jordanian intelligence or cooperating with the CIA.

Bin Zaid’s family declined to comment.

Bin Zaid is known to be a relative of Jordan’s King Abdullah II. Jordan is known to have acted as a proxy jailer for the CIA in 2004, when Jordanian intelligence officers interrogated several al-Qaida militants who were flew in on rendition flights from Guantanamo Bay.

Jordan denied the link to the CIA and the abuse allegations.

A key U.S. ally in the Mideast, Jordan also contributed valuable intelligence data to the United States, which helped track down the former al-Qaida in Iraq leader, Jordanian-born Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, in 2006. Associated Press writer Jamal Halaby in Amman, Jordan, contributed to this report.

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Threats against federal judges, prosecutors are up – Yahoo! News

Kali — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 15:37:25 +0000

WASHINGTON – A government review has found threats to federal judges and prosecutors have increased dramatically in the past six years.
Justice Department Inspector General Glenn Fine concludes there are still gaps in reporting and responding to such threats. No federal judges or prosecutors have been killed in the six year period.

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Obama adviser: No smoking gun in airline bomb plot – Yahoo! News

Kali — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 03:48:25 +0000

WASHINGTON – U.S. intelligence agencies did not miss a “smoking gun” that could have prevented an alleged attempt to blow up a U.S. airliner on Christmas Day, President Barack Obama’s top counterterrorism adviser said Sunday.
White House aide John Brennan cited “lapses” and errors in the sharing of intelligence and clues about the Nigerian man accused in the foiled attempt.
“There is no smoking gun,” Brennan said. The Transportation Security Administration announced Sunday that, starting Monday, passengers flying into the United States from Nigeria, Yemen and other “countries of interest” will be subject to enhanced screening techniques, such as body scans and pat-downs. All passengers on U.S.-bound international flights will be subject to random screening, the agency said.
Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the Nigerian student who allegedly tried to set off an explosive device aboard the Northwest airliner, has told U.S. investigators he received training and instructions from al-Qaida operatives in Yemen.
Brennan is leading a White House review of the incident. The president has summoned homeland security officials to meet with him in the White House Situation Room on Tuesday.
Brennan cited “a number of streams of information” — the 23-year-old suspect’s name was known to intelligence officials, his father had passed along his concern about the son’s increasing radicalization — and “little snippets” from intelligence channels. It didn’t, and she clarified her remarks to show she meant that the system worked only after the attack was foiled, Brennan said.
He said the situation was not like before the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, when intelligence agencies failed to share tips and information that might have uncovered the plot.
“There’s no evidence whatsoever that any agency or department was reluctant to share” information.

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