Month: October 2013

From Anonymity to Scourge of Wall Street

NEW YORK TIME: The architect of a recent legal crackdown on Wall Street’s dubious mortgage practices was not the attorney general, a United States attorney or a rising star in the Justice Department. Instead, it was Leon W. Weidman, an unassuming 69-year-old career prosecutor, toiling away in anonymity 3,000 miles from Washington…

NBC/WSJ Poll: Obama Approval Rating at All-Time Low

NEWSMAX: …Only 42 percent approve of [President] Obama’s job performance, according the poll. That’s down 5 points from early October. And 51 percent disapprove of his performance, which is tied for his all-time high disapproval. And for the first time in the poll’s history, Obama’s personal approval ratings were lower than his disapproval ratings. The […]

Pakistan says 3% of drone deaths civilians

USA TODAY: The Pakistani government said Wednesday that 3% of 2,227 people killed in U.S. drone strikes since 2008 were civilians, a surprisingly low figure that sparked criticism from groups that have investigated deaths from the attacks. The number, which was provided by the Ministry of Defense to the Senate, is much lower than past […]

NewsLanc’s sister publication in Hungary asks “Stupidity or corruption?”

BUDPEST BEACON: Was it stupidity or corruption that led the Hungarian parliament to adopt the new campaign finance law earlier this year? According to Political Capital and Transparency International Hungary, Law LXXXVI of 2013 allows hundreds of millions of forints in government campaign funds to be paid in cash to political parties running as few as 27 individual candidates in national parliamentary elections.

US budget deficit falls below $700bn

FINANCIAL TIMES: The years of vast US budget deficits appeared to be at an end after the gap between revenues and spending fell to just 4.1 per cent of gross domestic product in the last fiscal year. According to the US Treasury, in the fiscal year ended September, the deficit was $680bn, compared with $1.09tn […]

Google ‘outraged’ by latest surveillance claims

FINANCIAL TIMES: Google on Wednesday declared that it was “outraged” by apparent US government attempts to siphon information about millions of its users from its network, as the latest revelations in the internet surveillance scandal left it struggling to reassure its global users about the security of their personal information. The strong denunciation followed a […]

LANCASTER NEW ERA

Endorsement editorial “Charlie Smithgall a hands-on leader” (not posted at www.LancasterOnLine.com) says: “Even with respect to the $177.6 million downtown Lancaster convention center and hotel – the single-biggest economic-development project in city history – Gray and Smithgall can share in the bragging rights.” WATCHDOG: Not quite. Rick Gray disclosed new and startling information during last […]

Message to the Intell editor

As you failed to mention in your editorial “Re-Elect Rick Gray”, the other candidate has a first name. It’s Charlie as in ‘Charlie Smithgall’. Or better yet, like in ‘former mayor Charlie Smithgall.’ We did like one part of the editorial: “Smithgall was active in pursuing state and federal grants, so much so that the […]

Judge to Decide Later on Paterno Family Lawsuit

ABC NEWS / AP: …[Judge John B. ]Leete is considering a host of issues, including whether Penn State itself is an indispensable party to the lawsuit, which challenges the NCAA penalties imposed on Penn State as a result of the Jerry Sandusky child-molestation scandal. The Paterno family — joined by four university trustees, four faculty […]

Starting Teacher SAT Scores Rise As Educators Face Tougher Evaluations

Taken together, the articles show an evolving workforce that raises questions about the often extreme hand-wringing over teacher quality. “Although teachers in the U.S. are more likely to be drawn from the lower end of the academic achievement distribution than are teachers in selected high-performing countries, the picture is a bit more nuanced than the rhetoric suggests,” Goldhaber and Walch wrote.