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________________________________________________________________________ Pelosi declines to call for Weiner's resignation
June 10. 2011
WASHINGTON – Amid increasing calls for Rep. Anthony Weiner to resign, House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi says the decision should be up to the congressman and his New York constituents.
The former speaker said in San Francisco that she believes the decision should be made by "the individual member" and the people in his district.
Weiner, a seven-term Democrat, has admitted sending sexually explicit photos and messages over the Internet to a half dozen women over the past three years. Pelosi has asked the House Ethics Committee to investigate whether Weiner used any government resources.
Weiner told a newspaper Thursday he would not resign. At least nine House members and three senators said he should quit.
Two former Democratic Party chairmen also said he should resign.
Weiner did pick up support from Rep. Charles Rangel, a New York Democrat who was censured by the House last year for ethics violations.
Rangel suggested that other members of Congress had done things more immoral than Weiner.
Rangel said Weiner "wasn't going with prostitutes. He wasn't going out with little boys."
In a recent poll of registered voters in Weiner's district, 56 percent said he should stay in office while 33 percent said he should leave.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi has formally requested a House ethics panel probe of New York Rep. Anthony Weiner. Pelosi on Tuesday sent a brief letter to the leaders of the committee noting that Weiner had "disclosed conduct that he described as inappropriate."
Pelosi had urged the panel Monday to launch a probe shortly after Weiner had given a public confession in his online sex scandal.
AP Photo/John Minchil
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Headquarters: FBI Releases Bank Crime Statistics for First Quarter of 2011
During the first quarter of 2011, there were 1,092 reported violations of the Federal Bank Robbery and Incidental Crimes Statue, a decrease from the 1,183 reported violations in the same quarter of 2010. Full Story
Chicago: Chicago Businessman Convicted in Plot Against Danish Paper
Tahawwur Hussain Rana, a Pakistani native who operated a Chicago-based immigration business, was convicted of participating in conspiracy involving a terrorism plot against a Danish newspaper and providing material support to a terrorist organization based in Pakistan. The jury acquitted Rana of conspiracy to provide material support to the November 2008 terrorist attacks in Mumbai, India, that killed more than 160 people, including six Americans. Full Story
Charlotte: North Carolina Man Pleads Guilty to Terrorism Charge
Zakariya Boyd pled guilty to one count of conspiracy to provide material support to terrorists. Boyd was first charged along with seven other defendants in an indictment returned in 2009. Full Story
Baltimore: Delaware Businessman Pleads Guilty to Campaign Finance Violations and Tax Charges
Christopher J. Tigani pled guilty to a four-count criminal information charging him with two counts of violating the Federal Election Campaign, and two counts of making a materially false statement on an income tax return. Tigani faces a maximum of 16 years imprisonment. Full Story
Denver: Suspect Sought in Kidnapping and Sexual Assault of an 8-Year-Old Child
The Denver Police Department and the FBI Rocky Mountain Safe Streets Task Force are continuing their investigation into the kidnapping and sexual assault of an eight-year-old child, and locating the suspect, Bret Lee Luckett Thompson. Full Story
Dallas: City of Dallas to Pay $2.47 Million to Resolve False Claims, Medicaid Fraud Violations
The city of Dallas agreed to pay the U.S. and Texas $2.47 million and enter into certain compliance obligations to resolve allegations that it violated the civil False Claims Act and Texas Medicaid Fraud Prevention Act. Full Story
Minneapolis: FBI Announces Identity of Somalia Checkpoint Suicide Bomber
FBI Minneapolis identified Farah Mohamed Beledi as one of the two suicide bombers responsible for the suicide bombing attack at a Transitional Federal Government checkpoint in Mogadishu, Somalia on May 30. Full Story
Atlanta: Georgia Doctor Guilty of Billing Medicare, Medicaid for Sessions with Dead Patients
Robert Williams pled guilty to health care fraud in connection with a scheme in which he submitted more than $2 million in fraudulent claims for group psychological therapy that he never provided. Full Story
Washington Field: U.S. Subsidiary of Belgian Pharmaceutical Manufacturer Pleads Guilty to Off-Label Promotion
The U.S. subsidiary of Belgian pharmaceutical manufacturer UCB S.A. pled guilty to the off-label promotion of its epilepsy drug Keppra and will pay more than $34 million to resolve criminal and civil liability arising out of its illegal conduct. Full Story
Los Angeles: Police Officer, Defense Attorney Indicted and Arrested in California on Bribery Charges
An Inland Empire police officer and an Orange County criminal defense attorney were taken into custody on federal bribery charges. Both surrendered to the FBI after being named in a three-count indictment. Full Story
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By PALLAVI GOGOI AP Business Write
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NEW YORK (AP) -- Citigroup's disclosure that the names, account numbers and email addresses of 200,000 of its credit card customers were stolen strikes at the core of modern-day financial life - the ways people buy groceries and pay the power bill.
It's only the latest major data breach. In just the past three months, hackers have penetrated 100 million Sony PlayStation accounts, the networks of Lockheed Martin and the customer email databases of a company that does marketing for Best Buy and Target.
But half of all Americans, 154 million people, have a credit card. The Citi attack is a reminder that the technology used to protect their information was built by humans, security analyst Jacob Jegher notes - and it can be breached by humans, too.
"People rely on the safety net of a bank to take care of their information," says Jegher, a senior analyst at Celent, a research firm that focuses on information technology in the financial industry. "Unfortunately, that net has a lot of holes."
Citi says all of the customers whose information was stolen will receive a notification letter, and most of them will get a new card, although it has declined to say exactly how many. The bank says its enforcement division and authorities are investigating.
The victims will have to endure the hassle of updating the credit card numbers on any number of online accounts, but they probably won't lose any money. For one thing, federal laws protect credit card customers from fraud beyond $50, and in most cases, the bank that issues the card will cover up to that amount.
And the Citi hackers didn't get to the three-digit numbers that appear on the backs of credit cards, a security feature known as the CVV code. That means the hackers, or whoever they might sell the information to, would have trouble making direct charges.
The danger is that someone might use the information that was compromised to mount a sophisticated "phishing" attack, in which criminals send out convincingly designed emails pretending to be from the bank and gain access to account information.
The relatively small number of accounts taken from Citi, which has 21 million credit card customers in North America, suggests the hackers used spyware that captured the data of customers who logged in to its website to conduct online banking, one expert says.
"The thing in the Citi case which is good is they detected it quickly and shut it down," says Dave Jevans, chairman of security firm IronKey Inc. and chairman of an anti-phishing nonprofit group made up of 2,000 government agencies and companies, including Citi.
"They've got systems that are going to look at the data leaving the network and are able to see that somebody's sending information out," he adds. Banks are ahead of most other industries in this regard, he explains, and other businesses will have to catch up.
CVV codes can't be stored with a simple magnetic swipe of a credit card, and the businesses that process payments are not allowed to store the codes after a transaction, so they provide another defense against fraud.
Deloitte, the audit and consulting firm, said in a report last year that security threats to customer account and other information were on the rise. The good news: Companies are taking notice.
The number of companies that said they didn't spend enough on security fell to 36 percent in 2010 from 56 percent the year before. The survey found that 67 percent of U.S. banks are making encryption, a process to protect digital information, a top initiative.
Still, Deloitte also reported that of all nations, the United States had the most financial institutions that were still "catching up" on security, as opposed to being ready or "on plan." And the number of high-profile attacks in recent weeks is frightening.
Tyler Lesthaeghe, a senior at Iowa State University, got a call from Citi on a Saturday morning two weeks ago and was told that his credit card number had been stolen. No fraudulent charges were made, and he received a new card two days later.
Lesthaeghe's case appears unrelated to the attack that Citi disclosed Thursday. Credit card information can be stolen in ways other than a direct attack on the bank, from sophisticated attacks elsewhere in the network that processes card payments to a corrupt waiter who writes down the numbers.
He says he expects this sort of thing to happen more often in the Internet age and checks his credit report regularly and his account statements every month.
"You have to be diligent about it," he says. "It seems like large amounts of credit card numbers are getting stolen. It's kind of scary to hear that."
Security experts say there are several steps you can take to protect yourself:
-Check your credit report regularly to make sure stolen information isn't being used to open new accounts. That scenario is unlikely in the Citi case because the hackers didn't get enough information, but it's good to check anyway.
"Where consumers have to be very concerned is when information like their date of birth, their Social Security number or their mother's maiden name is breached," says Tom Osherwitz, chief privacy officer at ID Analytics.
Everyone is entitled to a free annual report from each of the three major credit reporting companies, Experian, Equifax and TransUnion. Those reports can be accessed at annualcreditreport.com, which also explains how to set fraud alerts. Ordering one every few months and rotating the companies essentially allows you to check your credit regularly for free.
-Vary the user names and passwords on your online accounts, and make sure to change any user names and passwords that match those in an account that may have been hacked.
-Third-party services will monitor accounts established in your name and alert you to something suspicious. If you decide to pay for one, make sure it covers all three credit bureaus and tells you about all activity in a timely manner. Otherwise, it's not worth the money.
-If you are the victim of identify theft, report it to the authorities. Details on how to do that are at onguardonline.gov, a security site developed by several federal agencies.
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Associated Press Writers Eileen AJ Connelly and Joseph Pisani in New York and Ryan Nakashima in Los Angeles contributed to this report.
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______________________________________________________ ___________________________ . . VIDEO: MISSOURI THE BEAUTIFUL Take a patriotic tour of the Show Me State's natural wonders . . _____________________________________________________________________________
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______________________________________________________ ___________________________ . . VIDEO: MISSOURI THE BEAUTIFUL Take a patriotic tour of the Show Me State's natural wonders . . _____________________________________________________________________________
Nixon cuts college funding, busing aid for public schools
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS June 10, 2011
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JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. • Gov. Jay Nixon on Friday cut millions of dollars for state programs and services from the state budget.
Many of the cuts fell on education programs. Nixon is cutting basic state aid by 7 percent for public colleges and universities for the next school year _ an increase from the 5.5 percent reduction that had been approved by lawmakers.
The governor also plans to cut about $8 million from what lawmakers had approved for busing aid to public school districts. That money could later be restored if revenues are strong enough.
The cuts would come from Missouri's $23 billion budget for the 2012 fiscal year that starts July 1.
Nixon's budget director said as recently as two weeks ago that $113 million would need to be cut from the $23 billion budget passed by lawmakers.
Part of that is attributable to recent disasters. Nixon has pledged $25 million each for response and recovery efforts for the Joplin tornado and for flooding in southeast Missouri along the Mississippi River. Neither of those expenses were anticipated when lawmakers approved the budget.
Missouri's 2012 fiscal year begins July 1 and runs until June 30, 2012.
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