President Barack Obama on Sunday chose former Ohio Attorney General Richard Cordray to head the new agency charged with protecting U.S. consumers from abusive mortgage lending practices and hidden credit card fees.
The pick allows Obama to sidestep some of the controversy he would have faced had he nominated Elizabeth Warren, who is credited with conceiving the idea for the new consumer agency but is viewed by many on Wall Street as a foe.
Obama picks bank critic Cordray for consumer job
Senior aide to Karzai assassinated
A group of armed men have killed a senior adviser to the Afghan president and a member of the parliament in a daring attack in the capital, Kabul.
Initial reports about the fate of Jan Mohammad Khan, the Hamid Karzai aide, and Mohammad Hashim Watanwal, the parliamentarian, were conflicting, but a senior government official confirmed to Al Jazeera that both men had been killed in Sunday's assault.
Ten Years Ago Portugal Legalized All Drugs -- What Happened Next?
When the nation legalized all drugs within its borders, most critics predicted disaster. But a decade later, drug use has plunged dramatically.
Back in 2001, Portugal had the highest rate of HIV among injecting drug users in the European Union—an incredible 2,000 new cases a year, in a country with a population of just 10 million. Despite the predictable controversy the move stirred up at home and abroad, the Portuguese government felt there was no other way they could effectively quell this ballooning problem. While here in the U.S. calls for full drug decriminalization are still dismissed as something of a fringe concern, the Portuguese decided to do it, and have been quietly getting on with it now for a decade. Surprisingly, most credible reports appear to show that decriminalization has been a staggering success.
ADHD, learning issues may be linked to secondhand smoke
Children exposed to secondhand smoke in their homes face a higher risk of developing attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, other behavioral problems and learning disorders, a new study finds.
The research doesn't definitively prove that tobacco smoke can harm children's brains, and it doesn't say how much smoke is too much. However, it does add to the evidence that children may be especially vulnerable to the effects of smoke exposure.
Little-known firms tracking data used in credit scores
Atlanta entrepreneur Mike Mondelli has access to more than a billion records detailing consumers’ personal finances — and there is little they can do about it.
The information collected by his company, L2C, comes from thousands of everyday transactions that many people do not realize are being tracked: auto warranties, cellphone bills and magazine subscriptions. It includes purchases of prepaid cards and visits to payday lenders and rent-to-own furniture stores. It knows whether your checks have cleared and scours public records for mentions of your name.
GOP Bill Would Undermine the Clean Water Act and Should Provoke Backlash
Back in 1995, the last time conservative Republicans took control of the House of Representatives, one of the first laws they attacked was the Clean Water Act. As early as today, the House will vote again to undermine that 1972 landmark law, and I hope the results will be the same: a public backlash that stalls environmental rollbacks.
The measure the House is considering this week (H.R. 2018) is narrower than the more comprehensive rewrite of the Clean Water Act that House Republicans failed to get enacted in 1995, but it's just as destructive. The bill targets the very heart of the Clean Water Act: the notion that a federal backstop is needed to ensure that states don't give a pass to polluters.
9/11 ANNOUNCEMENT: Long-awaited International Hearings Set for September, 2011
Objectives of the Hearings: To present evidence that the U.S. government’s official investigation into the events of September 11, 2001 is seriously flawed and has failed to describe and account for the 9/11 events.
The Hearings are not in themselves a new investigation, but rather a gathering and presentation of the evidence collected over the last 10 years showing that the government account is incorrect and that a new investigation is needed to fully explore the lines of evidence presented.
Florida foreclosure investigators say they were forced to resign
Theresa Edwards and June Clarkson had headed up investigations on behalf of the Florida attorney general’s office for more than a year into the fraudulent foreclosure practices that had become rampant in the Sunshine State. They issued subpoenas and conducted scores of interviews, building a litany of cases that documented the most egregious abuses.
That is, until the Friday afternoon in May when they were called into a supervisor’s office and forced to resign abruptly and without explanation.
War With Iran? US Neocons Aim to Repeat Chalabi-Style Swindle
n 1991, Iraqi exiles set up the Iraq National Congress (INC) with funding from the CIA. Under the leadership of Ahmad Chalabi, and flush with tens of millions dollars in US government funding, the INC allied itself with the neoconservatives in Washington and unceasingly beat the drums of war, presenting itself as the popular democratic alternative to Saddam Hussein and feeding faulty intelligence to an eager media and Bush administration.
Eventually, they succeeded in dragging the United States into disastrous war that cost Americans and Iraqis their lives and caused incalculable damage to American prestige and power. Now, history may be repeating itself.
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