The Muslim center planned near the site of the World Trade Center attack could qualify for tax-free financing, a spokesman for City Comptroller John Liu said on Friday, and Liu is willing to consider approving the public subsidy.
The Democratic comptroller’s spokesman, Scott Sieber, said Liu supported the project. The center has sparked an intense debate over U.S. religious freedoms and the sanctity of the Trade Center site, where nearly 3,000 perished in the September 11, 2001 attack.
“If it turns out to be financially feasible and if they can demonstrate an ability to pay off the bonds and comply with the laws concerning tax-exempt financing, we’d certainly consider it,” Sieber told Reuters.
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Outrageous: Ground Zero mosque may get taxpayer funding
Iran has material for 1-2 atom bombs
Iran has stockpiled enough low-enriched uranium for 1-2 nuclear arms but it would not make sense for it to cross the bomb-making threshold with only this amount, a former top U.N. nuclear official was quoted as saying.
In unusual public remarks about Iran’s disputed nuclear programme Olli Heinonen, the former chief of U.N. nuclear inspections worldwide, told Le Monde newspaper that Iran’s uranium reserve still represented a “threat.”
Until he stepped down earlier this month for personal reasons, Heinonen was deputy director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency and head of its nuclear safeguards department, which verifies that countries’ nuclear programmes are not being diverted for military use.
A no-nonsense Finn, he was one of the U.N. agency’s leading experts on Iran, which denies Western suspicions that its nuclear programme is aimed at making bombs despite intelligence indications to the contrary, which he investigated for years.
Kagan confirmed
President Barack Obama’s nomination of Elena Kagan to the Supreme Court won Senate approval on Thursday, his second appointment to the court that decides abortion, death penalty and other contentious cases.
The Democratic-led Senate voted largely along party lines, 63-37, to confirm the former Harvard Law School dean as the fourth female justice in U.S. history and the 112th high court member.
Kagan was Obama’s solicitor general, arguing government cases before the Supreme Court, when he named her in May as his choice to replace the retiring liberal Justice John Paul Stevens.
Ahmadinejad survives assasination attempt
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad survived an attack with a homemade explosive device on his motorcade during a visit to the western city of Hamadan on Wednesday, a source in his office said.
The source said Ahmadinejad’s convoy was targeted as he was traveling from Hamadan’s airport to give a speech in a local sports arena and the president was unhurt but others had been injured in the blast.
One person had been arrested, the presidency source said. There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack.
The populist, hard-line Ahmadinejad has accumulated enemies in conservative and reformist circles in the Islamic Republic as well as abroad.
VA judge rules Obamacare challenge can proceed
A U.S. judge ruled on Monday that the state of Virginia could proceed with its challenge to President Barack Obama’s landmark healthcare law, a setback that will force the White House to defend its reforms in the middle of a tough congressional election campaign.
In the opening salvo of the legal fight, U.S. District Judge Henry Hudson refused to dismiss the state’s lawsuit, which argued the requirement that its residents must have health insurance is unconstitutional and conflicts with state law.
Hudson, who noted that his ruling was only an initial step, decided the issue the state raised — whether forcing residents to buy something, namely healthcare, is constitutional — had not been fully tested in court and was ripe for review.
Migrants sell up, flee Arizona ahead of crackdown
In a sign of a gathering exodus, Mexican businesses from grocers and butcher shops to diners and beauty salons have shut their doors in recent weeks as their owners and clients leave.
On Saturday and Sunday, Reuters counted dozens of impromptu yard sales in Latino neighborhoods in central and west Phoenix.
“They wanted to drive Hispanics out of Arizona and they have succeeded even before the law even comes into effect,” said Aguilar, 28, a mother of three young children who was also offering a few cherished pictures and a stereo at one of five sales on the same block.
Bailout reaches $3.7T
Increased housing commitments swelled U.S. taxpayers’ total support for the financial system by $700 billion in the past year to around $3.7 trillion, a government watchdog said on Wednesday.
The Special Inspector General for the Troubled Asset Relief Program said the increase was due largely to the government’s pledges to supply capital to Fannie Mae (FNMA.OB) and Freddie Mac (FMCC.OB) and to guarantee more mortgages to the support the housing market.
Increased guarantees for loans backed by the Federal Housing Administration, the Government National Mortgage Association and the Veterans administration increased the government’s commitments by $512.4 billion alone in the year to June 30, according to the report.
Chavez’s “communes”
Tucked into forested hills in southwest Caracas, a red-brick housing complex for the poor is a testing ground for Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez’s latest step to build socialism in the Latin American oil producer.
The phalanx of simple five-storey apartment blocks, some still being built, anchors the “Cacique Tiuna Commune”. This is one of a network of “socialist communes” that Chavez and his supporters want to extend across the nation in a political and legislative offensive to dismantle “bourgeois” capitalism.
Not surprisingly in a country whose politics is as flammable as gasoline, the project enshrined in a package of “power to the people” laws is stoking a political firestorm.
Russia rejects US allegations of spying as baseless
A statement by the Russian foreign ministry official on Tuesday said of the allegations: “In our opinion, such actions are groundless and pursue unseemly aims.”
It added: “In any case, it is highly deplorable that all of this is happening against the background of the reset in Russia-US ties announced by the US administration itself.”
The ministry later said that some of those arrested in the US included Russian citizens, but insisted they had done nothing to hurt US interests.
A statement said Moscow wanted the US to show “proper understanding” taking into account the “positive character” of US-Russian relations.
Obama: Global recovery requires level playing field
President Barack Obama said on Sunday it was important for global growth that there be a level playing field, and that involves market-driven currency policies.
Obama also mentioned China’s move toward more currency flexibility at a news conference at the close of the Group of 20 summit in Canada.
“A strong and durable recovery also requires countries not having an undue advantage. So we also discussed the need for currencies that are market-driven,” Obama said. “As I told President Hu yesterday, the United States welcomes China’s decision to allow its currency to appreciate in response to market forces.”
Hugo Chavez spearheads raids as food prices skyrocket
CNBC (Reuters), “Hugo Chavez Spearheads Raids as Food Prices Skyrocket”
Mountains of rotting food found at a government warehouse, soaring prices and soldiers raiding wholesalers accused of hoarding: Food supply is the latest battle in President Hugo Chavez’s socialist revolution.
Venezuelan army soldiers swept through the working class, pro-Chavez neighborhood of Catia in Caracas last week, seizing 120 tons of rice along with coffee and powdered milk that officials said was to be sold above regulated prices.
“The battle for food is a matter of national security,” said a red-shirted official from the Food Ministry, resting his arm on a pallet laden with bags of coffee.
It is also the latest issue to divide the Latin American country where Chavez has nationalized a wide swathe of the economy, he says to reverse years of exploitation of the poor.
CNBC (Reuters) article continues here.
U.S debt to rise to $19.6 trillion by 2015
Reuters, “U.S debt to rise to $19.6 trillion by 2015”
The U.S. debt will top $13.6 trillion this year and climb to an estimated $19.6 trillion by 2015, according to a Treasury Department report to Congress.
The report that was sent to lawmakers Friday night with no fanfare said the ratio of debt to the gross domestic product would rise to 102 percent by 2015 from 93 percent this year.
“The president’s economic experts say a 1 percent increase in GDP can create almost 1 million jobs, and that 1 percent is what experts think we are losing because of the debt’s massive drag on our economy,” said Republican Representative Dave Camp, who publicized the report.
Reuters article continues here.
U.S. drops criminal probe of AIG executives
Reuters, “U.S. drops criminal probe of AIG executives”
by Christian Plumb
The U.S. Justice Department has dropped a probe of American International Group Inc executives involving the credit default swaps that sent the insurer to the brink of bankruptcy and forced a huge taxpayer bailout, lawyers for the executives said on Saturday.
The investigation had centered on AIG Financial Products, which nearly brought down the giant insurer after writing tens of billions of dollars on insurance-like contracts on complex securities backed by mortgages that turned out to be toxic.
The U.S. government stepped in with a $182 billion bailout to avert a bankruptcy filing by AIG.
The criminal probe had focused on whether Joseph Cassano, who ran the financial products unit, and Andrew Forster, his deputy, knowingly misled investors about the company’s accounting losses on its credit default swaps portfolio.
Reuters article continues here.
Iran concedes to UN fuel-swap plan, but vows to increase enrichment
Yahoo! News (Reuters), “Iran agrees atom fuel deal with Turkey, Brazil”
by Parisa Hafezi and Fernando Exman
Iran agreed with mediators Brazil and Turkey on Monday it would send some of its uranium abroad, abruptly ending its refusal to countenance such a deal just as the U.N. Security Council readied tougher sanctions.
In a sign of Western skepticism despite Iran’s apparent concessions to revive a U.N.-drafted fuel swap plan, Britain said work on further U.N. sanctions on Tehran must continue until it can assure the world its nuclear program is peaceful.
Iran made clear it had no intention of heeding demands to suspend sensitive atomic activities which the West suspects are aimed at making bombs, including work to enrich uranium to a level of 20 percent it launched in February.
“There is no relation between the swap deal and our enrichment activities,” Ali Akbar Salehi, head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization, told Reuters.
Yahoo! News (Reuters) article continues here.
Budget deficit four times larger than in April 2009
Reuters, “U.S. posts 19th straight monthly budget deficit”
by Glenn Somerville
The United States posted an $82.69 billion deficit in April, nearly four times the $20.91 billion shortfall registered in April 2009 and the largest on record for that month, the Treasury Department said on Wednesday.
It was more than twice the $40-billion deficit that Wall Street economists surveyed by Reuters had forecast and was striking since April marks the filing deadline for individual income taxes that are the main source of government revenue.
Department officials said that in prior years, there was a surplus during April in 43 out of the past 56 years.
The government has now posted 19 consecutive monthly budget deficits, the longest string of shortfalls on record.
Reuters article continues here.