Conrad Black sells Palm Beach home: report

Former media Tycoon Conrad Black sees in this photo of January 13, 2011, arriving to the Federal Court in Chicago. (AP Photo/Charles Rex Arobasgt) Charles Rex Arobasgt/Associated Press

There is a report that the fallen media magnate Conrad Black has sold his mansion in Palm Beach, Florida.

The Palm Beach Daily News reported that the manor was purchased by a family of California 23.1 million US dollars, or $21.97 CDN.

The newspaper attributed information to a deed of guarantee of the Palm Beach County Clerk's Office.

Black was released last summer, while the courts deal with the appeals of his fraud and convictions for obstruction of justice that landed him a prison sentence of 6 1/2 years in the United States.

The manor house built in 1973 allegedly has five bedrooms, six bathrooms and a guest house.

Municipal archives indicate that the property is a "total" square feet of 21,672 which includes a tunnel under the street which allows the main property to be connected to the beach.

Real estate broker that Moens Lawrence told the newspaper that he has received two written offers other potential buyers interested in the House.

"I had buyers and sellers of great," Moens said Thursday, describing black and his wife, Barbara Amiel Black, "gracious people.".

Two of the three Black fraud convictions were quashed in October by a U.S. Court of appeals. He confirmed the conviction of fraud and the other for obstruction of justice.

His lawyers have formally requested at the top of the Court to consider the two convictions against him.

The black last year has tried in vain to convince a Chicago judge to enable him to return to the Canada while out on bail. He cited health problems not disclosed his wife.

Amiel would have lived in the Manor of Palm Beach couple most of imprisonment of 28 months of her husband, in a federal prison in Coleman Fla.

His lawyer told the Court last year that the home of Palm Beach was not "a suitable residence in his State" in the heat of flames of a Florida summer.

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Advisor of said Japan decline of the nuclear threat: report - AFP

Advisor of said Japan decline of the nuclear threat: report (AFP) - 4 hours ago

TOKYO - The Japanese Advisor special of the Prime Minister on nuclear crisis says that the immediate risk of a leak of major radiation of the power plant of Fukushima decreased, the Wall Street Journal reported.

The Government could not say the situation had been completely stabilized at the factory, but after studying the possibility of a serious deterioration Tokyo was comfortable with the current of the evacuation policy, Goshi Hosono said the paper in an interview on Saturday.

"There is no way Tokyo or Kyoto will be in danger," said Hosono, Special Adviser to the Prime Minister Naoto Kan on the management of the nuclear crisis.

The atomic plant, where the reactor cooling systems have been eliminated, was struck by a series of explosions and radiation leak in the air, ground and sea in the worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl world 25 years ago.

The Government imposed a 20 kilometre (12 mile) exclusion zone around the plant, giving legal weight to an exclusion zone for fear of the effect of exposure to radiation on residents long term last week.

More than 85,000 people have left for shelter areas around the plant, including a wider zone of 30 km, where people were said to remain in the Interior and later urged to leave.

Hosono said of the levels of radiation in damaged reactors must be lowered before work would be carried out, and they had to find ways to treat the water contaminated by radiation of efforts to cool the reactors and spent fuel rod pool.

Workers poured thousands of tons of radioactive water at low altitude, in the Pacific Ocean, the concern of contamination of the marine environment concerned neighbouring countries.

"Our objective is very clear: preventing the spread more radiation in the atmosphere and the ocean,"Hosono told the paper."."

"To achieve this, we need to restore stable cooling functions." It is technically extremely difficult. ?

Plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Company, said that he does not expect a "cold shutdown" of all the reactors for another period of six to nine months.

Hosono said officials had begun to examine the causes and treatment of the nuclear accident.

"When we look at the accident, it will naturally become clear where the problems were, including issues with the Japan nuclear regulatory policy," he told the paper.

Hosono, Member of the Democratic Party of the Japan to power said that it was not the right time to decide whether the country should turn to non-nuclear energy sources or continue to continue to use atomic power.

I just don ' t think we can make a judgment dispassionate in the current atmosphere, "the cited book telling him."

"For the moment, we must maintain options and let the people decide in time".

DPJ Secretary General Katsuya Okada Friday, said the Government would review its policy of energy in the light of the disaster, but could be established with nuclear energy.

Japan poor in resources, very dependent on oil from the Middle East, brings about a third of its energy needs, nuclear power, but its high-tech companies are also world leaders in numerous environmental and energy technologies.

Copyright ? AFP 2011. All rights reserved. "More".

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Goldman traders tried to manipulate the market in 2007, according to a report

April 13, 2011, 11: 28 PM EDT By Christine Harper and Joshua Gallu

April 14 (Bloomberg) - Goldman Sachs Group Inc. mortgage traders tried to manipulate prices of derivatives linked to subprime home loans in May 2007 for their own benefit, according to a U.S. Senate report.

Company documents show traders led by Michael j. Swenson sought to encourage a "short squeeze" by putting artificially low prices on derivatives that would gain in value as mortgage securities fell, according to the report yesterday by the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. "the idea, abandoned after market conditions worsened, was to drive holders of such credit-default swaps to sell and help goldman sachs traders buy at reduced prices, according to the report.""We began to encourage this squeeze, with plans of getting very short again," Deeb Salem, a trader in the structured product group, said in a 2007 self-evaluation excerpted in the report. Swenson, Salem's supervisor, sent e-mails in May 2007 urging traders to offer prices that will "cause maximum pain" and "have people totally demoralized." In interviews with the committee, Salem and Swenson denied attempting a short squeeze, the report said.Salem "claimed that he had wrongly worded his self-evaluation", the report said. "He said that reading his self-evaluation as a description of an intended short squeeze put too much emphasis on 'words.'"The subcommittee cited the episode as an example of how Goldman Sachs traders placed the firm's interests ahead of its customers' as the value of mortgage-linked investments tumbled in 2007. The subcommittee, led by Senator Carl M. Levin, a Michigan Democrat and Tom Coburn, Republican of Oklahoma, has called on regulators to craft strict bans on proprietary trading and conflicts of interest to keep the problems from recurring.'Poor Quality Investments'"Conflicts of interests related to proprietary investments led Goldman to conceal its adverse financial interests from potential investors, sell poor quality investments, and place its investors financial interests before those of its customers," according to the subcommittee.Goldman Sachs traders abandoned the short - squeeze attempt after discovering on June 7, 2007, that two Bear Stearns Cos. hedge funds that specialized in sub-prime-mortgage investments were collapsing. "Salem e-mailed Swenson and another colleague to suggest trying to buy short positions, known as"protection,"on collateralized debt obligations, or CDOs, from hedge fund Magnetar Capital LLC, according to the subcommittee's report."We need to go to magnetar and see if we can buy a bunch of cdo security ' Tell them we Can have a protection buyer, who is looking to get into this trade now that spreads have tightened back in. "'Great Idea'Swenson expressed "no concerns about the proposed deception" and responded to Salem that it was a "great idea," according to the report.The report comes almost a year after the committee spent more than 10 hours grilling Lloyd c. Blankfein, Goldman Sachs's chairman and chief executive officer, and six current and former employees in one of the most hostile political showdowns in the aftermath of the financial crisis.That hearing happened 12 days after the Securities and Exchange Commission sued New York - based Goldman Sachs for fraud in a case that the firm settled for $550 million in July.In an effort to address issues raised by the SEC lawsuit and the subcommitteeBlankfein convened a committee of Goldman Sachs executives to review the firm's practices. In January, the firm published 39 recommendations aimed at better managing conflicts and client relationships, as well as governance and employee training.Citigroup, Merrill LynchGoldman Sachs disagrees with "many of the conclusions" in the report and cited the standard business committee as evidence that "we take seriously the issues explored by the subcommittee," the firm said in a statement released by Lucas van Praaga company spokesman.As rivals including Citigroup Inc. and Merrill Lynch & Co. posted losses on mortgage-related investments during 2007, Goldman Sachs reported record earnings that benefited from the firm's negative view of the sub-prime-mortgage market.Blankfein and other executives at the firm have said that its traders placed "short" bets, which sufferings when prices of mortgage-linked securities fell, to hedge against losses. He also said in last year's hearing that Goldman Sachs was acting as a "market maker" in selling CDOs and other mortgage-backed investments to customers as the company's own traders were betting against them.'Massive Short'"We didn't have a massive short against the housing market, and we certainly did not bet against our client," Blankfein, 56, who received a record $67.9 million bonus for his performance in 2007, told the subcommittee last year. "Rather, we believe that we managed our risk as our shareholders and our regulators would expect."The subcommittee said that documents uncovered in its two-year investigation of the financial crisis show that Goldman Sachs's mortgage traders did have a large short position during 2007 and the sales team aggressively sought customers to buy CDOs that the traders expected would decline in value.One executive "Goldman instructed staff not to provide written information to investors about how Goldman was valuing" a CDO called Timberwolf, according to the report, "and its sales force no. offered additional assistance to potential investors trying to evaluate the 4,500 underlying assets."Joshua s. Birnbaum, who ran a unit called the ABX Trading Desk, said in an October 2007 internal presentation that a short position established by the structured product group after the collapse of two Bear Stearns hedge funds was "not a hedge" against CDOs and residential mortgage-backed securities, or RMBS, owned by the firm, the report said.'Not a Hedge'"by june, all retained cdo and RMBS were identified already hedged positions," the presentation said. "In other words, the shorts were not a hedge."The subcommittee's report describes four CDOs that the firm created and sold in an effort to reduce Goldman Sachs's exposure to sub-prime-mortgage risk. It describes Goldman Sachs as having given misleading descriptions of some of the CDOs and in some cases seeking out buyers who were inexperienced Examiner with them.The report also says that the mortgage desk reversed its view on how it marked values derivatives based on its position in the market. Customers with short positions complained that Goldman Sachs was undervaluing those bets during the squeeze attempt. "After the traders abandoned that strategy in June 2007 and increased their wagers against the mortgage market, other clients complained the firm was overvaluing the short positions.""Once it began buying cds shorts, the GSP Desk immediately changed its CDS short assessments and began increasing their value," the report said. "Customers with long positions began to complain that the marks were too high, and internal business units also raised questions Goldman."

-Editors: Peter Eichenbaum, Dan Kraut

To contact the reporters on this story: Christine Harper in New York at charper@bloomberg.net. Joshua Gallu in Washington at jgallu@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: David Scheer at dscheer@bloomberg.net.

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Report: Mubarak denies giving the order to shoot demonstrators of the Egypt - Ha'aretz

Stripped of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak said investigators questioning on charges of corruption never awarded order of draw or beat protestors who demanded his eviction, the Egyptian newspaper Al-Masry Al-Youm reported, said Radio Israel.

When questioned, Mubarak said that he had asked the army to intervene in violent clashes to safeguard and protect the Egyptian people. Mubarak added that if someone said that he gave the order to shoot at demonstrators, while this person is a liar.

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, announcing that he will leave in the next elections, in a televised speech to the nation, February 1, 2011.

Between January 25 and February 11, millions of Egyptians filled the streets of cities across the country, in protest against the railway as a rule show with 30 years of Mubarak. After 18 days, Mubarak has finally succumbed to popular pressure and abandoned the reins of power, to resign from his duties.

Since that time, Mubarak and his family have been to one of their houses located holiday in the Sinai resort town of Sharm El-Sheikh. He has been banned from travelling and its assets were frozen. Many of his senior aides have already been questioned or detained pending investigations.

Mubarak also told investigators that he intended to resign as well before him. He said he was satisfied not to smoke when he wanted, four days after protests started, because he had been advised that protesters wanted only the resignation of his cabinet, and that without him, Egypt would be falling into chaos.

There were conflicting reports coming from Al-Masry Al-Youm on the health of Mubarak, Israel Radio reported. Since the arrest of Mubarak, his psychological condition began to deteriorate. But doctors say that he does not have cancer, or any other deadly disease, and that physical health is good.

Mubarak was taken to an intensive care unit Tuesday after having suffered a heart attack during interrogation on charges of corruption, AFP reported Tuesday.

Dozens of protesters picketed at the Hospital where Mubarak was taken, denouncing the President and carrying a sign reading "here's the butcher". They had with Mubarak supporters in a massive security presence.

Security two officials said Mubarak arrived under police protection heavy at the main hospital and two doctors at the hospital, he is out of his naked armored Mercedes and was taken to the presidential suite in the building in the shape of pyramid.

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Tories under fire in the flight of the G8 report

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A leaked draft report on G8/G20 summit spending that alleges the Conservative government lavished millions on a prominent cabinet member's riding and "misled" Parliament has put Stephen Harper's campaign on the defensive a day before the first leaders' debate.

But Auditor General Sheila Fraser cautioned Canadians on Monday, saying in a statement that only her final report will represent her audit's findings and conclusions when it is tabled in Parliament.

Fraser said the final report cannot be released until Parliament returns, despite all four parties calling for the document to be made public immediately.

"I strongly caution the public to wait until our final report on the G8 Legacy Infrastructure Fund has been tabled in Parliament and made public," Fraser said. "Sometimes during the process of fact validation, additional information is brought to our attention."

The Canadian Press reported earlier Monday that the Conservative government allegedly misinformed Parliament to win approval for a $50-million G8 fund that spread taxpayers' money on dubious projects in a Conservative riding, sparking parties to call for the release of the report.

A chapter of a Jan. 13 draft report, seen by the news agency, said Fraser suggests the process may have been illegal. The Canadian Press said the draft was obtained by a supporter of an opposition party.

Conservative candidate John Baird, who served as transport minister and later government House leader, told reporters that statements such as "Parliament was misinformed" do not appear in a later draft of the auditor general's report, which he said he had seen. Baird said "it's common" for versions of reports to be changed substantially.

"I told you what was not in the report. I don't have the authority to release subsequent drafts. I haven't seen the final draft," Baird said.

"We are very comfortable to ask for the report to be made public so people can come to their own conclusions and their own judgments. I think that is being open. I think that is being incredibly transparent."

But CBC News has learned that while the reference to misleading of Parliament was removed, the changes in the final report were not substantial.

"I have spoken to someone who has read several versions of this (auditor general's report) right up to the final one, who says there's not really a big substantial change," the CBC's Greg Weston said on Power & Politics with Evan Solomon.

"There may have been that change, that one change, but there’s a lot of other stuff in that report. … There is a lot of damning information in that report."

The QMI news agency later in the day published what it said was a February draft of the report, and as Baird said it did not contain the words "Parliament was misled," but did have as one section title: "The funding request was not made in a transparent manner."

According to The Canadian Press, the Jan. 13 draft reveals that then-Industry Minister Tony Clement, the mayor of Huntsville and the general manager of Deerhurst Resort chose the 32 projects that received funding — with no regard for the needs of the summit or the conditions laid down by the government.

Tony Clement at Land of the Lakes public school in Burks Falls, Ont., during a candidates' meeting in the riding of Parry Sound-Muskoka. Dave Seglins/CBC

Clement said Monday on Twitter that he was glad Fraser indicated the leaked document was not her final report, which is the version that represents her findings.

Later, Clement told CBC News: "It is pure politics by the opposition. It is acknowledged that this report was illegally leaked to (a) political party. It is no coincidence that this came out the day before the leaders' debate."

Meanwhile, Huntsville Mayor Claude Doughty said during a news conference that there were no private meetings with Clement and Deerhurst, which was sold in January of this year for a reported $26 million to Skyline International Development, which has corporate offices in Toronto.

There were never any "discussion of merits of the G8 application discussed at private meetings between myself and the leadership of Deerhurst and Tony Clement. I had no authority to determine G8 funding," said Doughty.

CBC News has learned Fraser wrote a scathing letter on Friday rebuking the Conservatives for recycling an older and unrelated quote by her in a separate parliamentary report by Tory committee members on the costs of the G8/G20 summits in Ontario last summer.

The Conservatives' report, presented to the Commons the morning Parliament was dissolved last month, quotes Fraser giving high marks to the Harper government for prudent spending on the summits.

The tabled report quoted the auditor general as saying: “We found that the processes and controls around that were very good, and that the monies were spent as they were intended to be spent.”

But in her letter addressed to members of the Commons committee, which was received by the clerk and members on Monday, Fraser said the quote had nothing to do with the summits, and was taken not from parliamentary evidence, but was a comment she made in 2010 on security spending by a previous Liberal government after the Sept. 11, 2001.

“The comments attributed to me in the [Conservative] report are completely unrelated to G8/G20 spending,” Fraser writes in her letter. “I would appreciate it if the report could be modified as it is clearly erroneous.”

Earlier Monday, Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff called the allegations contained in the report "an absolute scandal" and asked the report to be released immediately.

"We knew that they wasted $1.2 billion on a G8/G20 summit. We knew that they have been spraying money around like drunken sailors in Tony Clement's riding What we didn't know is that they lied to Parliament. What we didn't know is they may have broken the law," Ignatieff told reporters in Ottawa.

"This is not me telling you this. This is the Auditor General of Canada, Sheila Fraser, a respected public servant."

The Liberal leader said the G8 spending is about a broader issue of trust, adding that Harper now has "no choice" but to release the report immediately.

"He has to release this report today, and he has got to explain to Canadians how he could have so scandalously abused public money, and so scandalously misled Parliament and so scandalously disobeyed the law."

The findings are contained in a draft of a confidential report Fraser was to have tabled in Parliament on April 5, according to The Canadian Press.

The report was shelved when Stephen Harper's minority government was toppled and is not due to be released until after the May 2 election. Despite the government's defeat, the opposition parties — the Liberals, NDP and Bloc Québécois — called last week for the auditor general's report to be released on the original date.

When asked whether the Conservative government leaned on Fraser to change the draft report, Baird laughed and said the auditor general "is not someone that is pushed around."

But shortly after Baird spoke, the Bloc Québécois said the auditor general's office confirmed the final report has been released to the Privy Council Office —the bureaucratic support arm of the Prime Minister's Office — meaning Harper can order it released if he chooses.

"We are prepared to help facilitate the release of the final version of the report in any way necessary," said Nina Chiarelli, acting director of communications for Harper.

An olympic-size hockey arena and aquatics centre in Huntsville, Ont., was funded by G8 funds, but was never used and never slated to be used for the actual summit last June. Dave Seglins/CBC

NDP Leader Jack Layton said the leaked report bolsters his party's call for a public inquiry on the G8 and G20 summits.

He said there are ongoing questions about human rights violations at the protests in Toronto at the G20 meeting.

On the G8 legacy project funding, Layton said it shows "that the priorities of this government continue to be wrong."

He said the Conservatives put their own political interests and the interests of their "buddies" ahead of the interests of Canadian families and small businesses.

"This is all a part of the culture of secrecy," Layton said in reference to Harper's government.

Layton said the Conservatives have established a pattern of trying to withhold information from the public.

"They don't like to release information about what they do," he said, adding that Harper goes to great lengths to "hide the truth."

"We have a prime minister that is incredibly secretive," Layton told reporters at a news conference in Ottawa.

Layton and Ignatieff both want the full report released before Tuesday night's debate.

Duceppe told reporters Monday he also wants the report released before the leaders' debate on Tuesday.

"We need to know exactly what happened before the debates," Duceppe said.

"It is unacceptable, we want clarity on this. Mr. Harper must show transparency on this."

Baird disputed that report when he met with reporters on Monday in Ottawa. He said the final decisions for which projects received money were made at Infrastructure Canada, which he headed as transport minister in Harper's government.

“Those three individuals didn’t make the final decisions,” Baird said. “I did.”

The auditor general's report analyzed the $1-billion cost of staging last June's G8 summit in Ontario cottage country and a subsequent gathering of G20 leaders in downtown Toronto.

The demand for Fraser to release her office's report into the G8 summit has incited debate over what government agencies can release reports during election campaigns.

Fraser is an independent officer of Parliament, so her duty is to report directly to the institution. When the election was called, Parliament was dissolved, so there is currently no one to receive the report.

Kevin Page, the parliamentary budget officer, released a report into the cost of the military mission in Afghanistan during the 2008 election campaign.

However, unlike the auditor general, Page is not an independent parliamentary officer. Instead, he is an employee of the Library of Parliament, which means he does not have the same restrictions on when he can release his findings.

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Afghan training mission risk of losses: report

Plan of the Canada to extend Afghanistan mission in three years in a training support role involves high risks and a low chance of success, according to a report published Monday.

Last November, Prime Minister Stephen Harper announced that Canadian Forces would act in a role of training combat safer until 2014.

But according to the report by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives and the Rideau Institute soldiers are likely to be killed or injured attempting a task that is doomed to failure.

According to analysts Michael Byers and Stewart Webb, always training, to pose hazards, and the Taliban have increasingly targeted training facilities all in infiltrating the Afghan army and police.

The report cites dozens of incidents in which staff with the International Security Assistance Force NATO attacked and killed by infiltrators among the Afghan army and police.

In the past six months:

On 29 November, an Afghan police officer killed six of its American trainers in the East of the Afghanistan. The Taliban claimed that he had been a sleeper agent.January 20, an Afghan soldier shot and killed two Italian soldiers the military base.February 18, an Afghan soldier three German soldiers wounded six others on a base in the province of Baghlan.Le 4 April, an Afghan border police officer killed two American trainers within a compound in the North of Faryab province.

The report explains that widespread illiteracy and the high rates of desertion among Afghan soldiers and police and a worsening of security in the country as a whole would condemn the effort to fail.

Even if training efforts are successful to some extent, the potential implosion of "the most corrupt and inefficient Karzai Government" leaves open the question of what sort of the scheme of these soldiers and police would, according to the report.

"Although they admit it, Western Governments more have already given up on the country," said co-author of the report Byers. "The mission of training is clearly an exit strategy that more Canadians will cost their lives".

The decision to extend the mission in Afghanistan beyond 2011 was made without a debate in Parliament, with the consent of the Liberal Opposition. Harper argued that an extension of the mission in a non-combatant role, no parliamentary vote was necessary.

"When we are simply talking about the technical missions or training, I think this is something the Executive can do on its own," said Harper.

Canadian trainers will remain "inside the wire," at their base, Harper said, but the report suggests that the need to provide training on the ground and security for databases will inevitably lead in "mission creep" and the need to engage in fighting with insurgents.

The report argues that attempts to train the Afghan army and police to take over security are a facade designed to facilitate an exit "with honour."

"Which raises the question," according to the report. "Why should Canadian soldiers suffer more victims in a prolonged mission"training", if the decision to abandon the Afghanistan to its fate has already been made."

The authors of the report concern the public debate on the mission in Afghanistan was set aside by the elections.

"Canadians must be aware of the risks of this mission," said Webb.

The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives described himself as an independent, non-partisan Research Institute, concerned with social, economic and environmental justice issues.

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Special report: how not to pay no tax

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