man who reportedly drove off after a bank teller mistakenly gave him $3,350 that was supposed to go to another customer now faces felony theft charges.
Sunday, August 22, 2010
Sweden withdraws warrant for WikiLeaks founder | Seattle Times Newspaper
Swedish prosecutors withdrew an arrest warrant for the founder of WikiLeaks on Saturday, saying less than a day after the document was issued that it was based on an unfounded accusation of rape.
He was in Sweden last week seeking legal protection for the whistle-blower website, which angered the Obama administration for publishing thousands of leaked documents about U.S. military activities in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Click on the following for more details: Nation & World | Sweden withdraws warrant for WikiLeaks founder | Seattle Times Newspaper
SEC Charges NJ -- is IL Next?
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) charged the state of New Jersey Wednesday with lying and withholding information to investors in billions of dollars worth of municipal bond deals.
The allegations involve $26 billion of bond offerings from 2001 to 2007 in which the state obfuscated its underfunding of public employee pension funds, creating a false impression of fiscal stability.
[Does this sound like Illinois?]
Click on the following for more details: Illinois Policy Institute - Blog - SEC Charges NJ -- is IL Next?
Cook County Budget Deficit Could Lead to Big Cuts
John Daley says he supports 10 percent across-the-board cuts to help balance the budget.
He says the biggest reason for the shortfall is the loss of tax revenue, in part due to the county's sales tax cut. Daley says he doesn't recall any elected county officials opposing the tax cut.
City Room™ - News In Brief - Reported Cook County Budget Deficit Could Lead to Big Cuts
Amcore Financial files for Chapter 11 | Finance | Crain's Chicago Business
This is just a legal technicality—AMCORE’s holding company will be gone.
In the Aug. 19 Chapter 11 filing in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Chicago, Rockford-based Amcore Financial Inc., whose bank unit was acquired from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. by Chicago-based Harris N.A. in April, listed assets of $7.2 million and liabilities of $75.4 million.
The biggest creditors were holders of subordinated debt totaling $57 million and J. P. Morgan Chase & Co., Amcore's lender, which listed a claim of $11.9 million, according to the filing.
Amcore Financial files for Chapter 11 | Finance | Crain's Chicago Business
ShoreBank fails; will be reincarnated as Urban Partnership Bank
ShoreBank, the South Side lender that carved out a national reputation by successfully lending in low-income urban neighborhoods for three decades, was seized by regulators Friday after an extraordinary rescue effort featuring the nation’s largest financial firms fell short.
Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. For the FDIC, the estimated hit to its insurance fund from the failure will be $367.7 million.
Before salmonella outbreak, egg firm had long record of violations
In the past 20 years, according to the public record, the DeCoster family operation, one of the 10 largest egg producers in the country, has withstood a string of reprimands, penalties and complaints about its performance in several states.
-- In 1996, DeCoster was fined $3.6 million for health and safety violations at the family's Turner egg farm, which then-Labor Secretary Robert Reich termed "as dangerous and oppressive as any sweatshop we have seen." Regulators found that workers had been forced to handle manure and dead chickens with their bare hands and to live in filthy trailers.
-- In 1999, the company paid $5 million to settle a class-action lawsuit involving unpaid overtime for 3,000 workers.
-- In 2001, the Iowa Supreme Court ruled that DeCoster was a "repeat violator" of state environmental laws, citing violations involving the family's hog-farming operations. The family was forbidden to expand its hog-farming interests in the state.
-- Also in 2001, DeCoster Farms of Iowa settled, for $1.5 million, a complaint brought by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission that the company had subjected 11 undocumented female workers from Mexico to a "sexually hostile work environment," including sexual assault and rape by supervisors.
-- In 2002, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration fined the family's Maine Contract Farming branch $345,810 for an array of violations. The same year, DeCoster Egg Farms of Maine paid $3.2 million to settle a lawsuit filed in 1998 by Mexican workers alleging discrimination in housing and working conditions.
-- In 2003, Jack DeCoster paid the federal government $2.1 million as part of a plea agreement after federal agents found more than 100 undocumented workers at his Iowa egg farms. It was the largest penalty ever against an Iowa employer. Three years later, agents found 30 workers suspected of being illegal immigrants at a DeCoster farm in Iowa. And in 2007, raids at other DeCoster Iowa farms uncovered 51 more suspected undocumented workers.
-- In 2006, Ohio's Agriculture Department revoked the permits of Ohio Fresh Eggs because its new co-owners, including Hillandale founder Orland Bethel, had failed to disclose that DeCoster had put up $126 million for the purchase, far more than their $10,000, and was heavily involved in managing the company. By playing down DeCoster's role, the owners had avoided a background check into DeCoster's "habitual violator" status in Iowa. An appeals panel overturned the revocation, saying the disclosure was adequate.
-- In 2008, OSHA cited DeCoster's Maine Contract Farming for violations that included forcing workers to retrieve eggs the previous winter from inside a building that had collapsed under ice and snow.
Click on the following for more of this Washington Post story: Before salmonella outbreak, egg firm had long record of violations
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