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Bank of America (BAC) must turn over excess funds from a record $335 million discrimination fine to community organizing groups. Critics say it's a "political backdoor" to subsidize Democrat-tied Acorn "clones." The unusual mandate is buried in a Justice Department filing last month detailing settlement terms with the nation's largest bank. Prosecutors had alleged BofA's Countrywide Financial mortgage unit discriminated against minority homebuyers in the years leading up to the financial crisis. Funds not passed out to alleged victims after two years will be handed out to "qualified" groups unconnected to the case that provide credit and housing counseling and...

The untold story of the Obama Administration’s widely reported, $335 million discrimination settlement with Countrywide Financial Corporation is that, under a secret Justice Department program, a chunk of the money won’t go to the “victims” but rather leftist groups not connected to the lawsuit. The Department of Justice (DOJ) will determine which “qualified organizations” get leftover settlement cash and Democrat-tied groups like the scandal-plagued Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) and the open-borders National Council of La Raza (NCLR) stand to get large sums based on the

PA reportedly submits new Quartet offer to restart negotiations, demand Israel releases 100 Palestinian prisoners; Israel rejects offer fearing renewal of only low-grade talks. The Palestinian leadership submitted a proposal to renew peace talks with with Israel that drops their long-standing demand that Israel ceases all West Bank settlement construction, a top Israeli official said on Wednesday. According to officials with knowledge of the proposal, the Palestinian Authority informed the Quartet two weeks ago that it would renege on its demand for a settlement freeze if Israel releases 100 prisoners as a show of good will.

US Ambassador tells Yishai freeze will help counter Palestinian UN bid; interior minister: No Israeli gov't has frozen settlements, nor will we. Israel denied a request by the United States on Thursday to temporarily freeze settlement construction in order to promote peace talks with the Palestinians. In a meeting with Interior Minister Eli Yishai, US Ambassador Dan Shapiro requested the freeze - a repeated Palestinian precondition for negotiations - in order to bolster political goodwill as the US tries to counter Palestinian efforts to seek full UN membership. Shapiro promised that the United States would veto such efforts regardless of...

Prosecutors are reportedly set to ask a judge to abandon the case against Dominique Strauss Kahn. Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance is preparing to ask that all charges against the former head of the IMF accused of attempting to rape hotel maid Nafissatou Diallo are dropped Tuesday. Such requests from the DA 'are never denied', an expert told the New York Post meaning Strauss-Kahn could finally return to his home country after being forced to remian in the U.S for months.

I'm seeking advice from Freepers who have used a debt settlement service. I've just received a financial windfall, and want to settle out over $30,000 in credit card debt (mostly from a family business that failed that ended up on my credit, unfortunately.) I don't want to do it on my own, as I want to make sure that all debt is settled and I don't have anything hanging over me, and it appears part of it went to court without service. Sorry for the vanity, but couldn't find another recent thread on the topic, and I'm sure that there's...

This Article explains that certain features of U.S. law, particularly copyright law, contributed to Google’s willingness to undertake the Google Book Search (GBS) project in the first place and later to its motivation to settle the lawsuit charging Google with copyright infringement for scanning in-copyright books. Approval of this settlement would achieve several copyright reforms that Congress might find difficult to accomplish, some of which would be in the public interest. This Article considers whether the quasi-legislative nature of the GBS settlement is merely an interesting side effect of the agreement or a reason in favor of or against approval...

A new study of DNA suggests North America was originally populated by just a few dozen people who crossed a land bridge from Asia during the last Ice Age. About 14,000 years ago, humans crossed the Bering land bridge from Siberia to North America, most experts agree. But just how many intrepid explorers were involved in spawning subsequent populations has not been known. "The estimated effective size of the founding population for the New World is about 70 individuals," said Jody Hey, a professor of genetics at Rutgers University.

A panel of federal judges on Monday ruled that Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss can't back out of the settlement deal they made in a lawsuit charging that Mark Zuckerberg stole their idea for Facebook. Twin brothers Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss claim they enlisted Zuckerberg to finish software code for their ConnectU social-networking website while they were all students at Harvard in 2003. Zuckerberg, a second year student at the time, took their code and their idea and launched Facebook in February 2004 instead of holding up his end of the deal, according to the brothers. Facebook rejects that account. Hollywood...

The News & Observer reports that the IRS "has filed a $6.5 million tax lien against Reade Seligmann for 2007, the same year the former Duke lacrosse player settled with the university over its handling of rape allegations against him and two other players. But a Charlotte lawyer who represented Seligmann during the criminal proceedings said that his client paid the tax and that the lien is incorrect." The News & Observer cites a North Carolina tax attorney, who said a tax of that amount would represent a settlement of about $18 million. If Colin Finnerty and Dave Evans, the...

This morning news broke that the White House is pushing a big, $20 billion global settlement to end the foreclosuregate mess. There's one surprising thing. The market is taking this to be an actual punishment of the news. Our presumption would be that any settlement would somehow end up being a positive, but maybe a punishment is a punishment... The market is down, but the big banks, like Bank of America (down over 2.3%) are getting hit much wors

Over the last couple of years I have been battling the IRS over a persecution issue. They admitted their wrongdoing and after some negotiation a settlement amount was agreed upon. All of the papers were signed and I was waiting for my check to be mailed. THe IRS then backed out of the agreement and I have recieved notice they want to take this to court because the amount tha they agreed to was too high. My question is; how can they do this when they had already agreed to the settlement amount -- an amount they put forward and...

What began as a startling NAACP suit accusing US Airways Group Inc. of discriminating against its African American employees at Philadelphia International Airport has ended with a settlement and a pledge by the airport's largest carrier to strengthen workplace diversity. On the matter of the monetary terms and whether the three former US Airways employees named as plaintiffs in January's federal class-action suit would get - or even want - their old jobs back, no one would say.

The US president called for a two-month renewal of the moratorium on settlement construction and offered wide-ranging incentives and guarantees to Netanyahu. The offer, which Harvard Professor Stephen Walt denounced as "begging", and which US officials attempted to deny as soon as it was leaked out… Tehran analysts attribute the recent "green light" given by Washington for Russia's World Trade Organization entry to a behind-the-scenes bargain whereby Moscow is handsomely rewarded for its cooperation with the West against Iran. The Israeli press has been reporting a "secret US-Russia deal".

He’s the largest developer in Germantown, and is also the community’s largest employer, which partly explains why politicians, both white and black, have always liked him: everyone from Governor and ex-mayor Ed Rendell, who used to call him “Manny,” to Congressman Bob Brady, who scored him a $250,000 federal earmark in 2009, to Councilwoman Donna Reed Miller, whose daughter, Shakira, was paid $55.14 an hour by a Freeman-run nonprofit to “consult” with her mother, using walking-around money controlled by legislators and administered by Rendell’s Department of Community and Economic Development (DCED). (Brady didn’t respond to an interview request, and Miller...

Israeli historian Yaacov Lozowick is in favor of continuing the settlement freeze that’s set to expire later this month — as long as the freeze is only in West Bank settlements that are actually up for discussion and that might plausibly be dismantled in a future peace deal with Palestinians. “Not in Modi’in Illit,” he said, referring to an ultra-Orthodox settlement immediately adjacent the Green Line, “which will remain in Israel no matter what, and certainly not in any part of Jerusalem.” Israel annexed all of Jerusalem decades ago. And while very few Jews move to and build in Arab...

The possibility of extending, or ending Israel's moratorium on West Bank settlement construction will be discussed within the context of upcoming direct Middle East peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians, a senior U.S. official said Monday. The comment by U.S. State Department spokesman Philip J. Crowley came after Palestinian officials had said in recent days that the resumption of settlement construction beyond the September 26 moratorium expiration date would cause the Palestinian Authority to withdraw from the recently accounted direct peace talks.

An engineering firm that consulted on the Interstate 35W bridge in Minneapolis that collapsed three years ago has agreed to pay $52.4 million to victims. San Francisco-based URS Corp. had been sued by more than 100 people. They accused the company of missing warning signs on the bridge before its rush-hour collapse into the Mississippi River on Aug. 1, 2007. Thirteen people died and 145 were injured. URS had argued that its engineers didn't know about a design flaw in the bridge that made it vulnerable when it collapsed. "Aug. 1, 2007, marked the greatest manmade catastrophe our state has...

Renewed Israeli construction in settlements after the end of the construction freeze in late September would bring the newly-launched direct negotiations to a grinding halt, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has warned in letters sent to U.S. President Barack Obama, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and the High Representative of the European Union on Foreign Policy, Catherine Ashton. "It's impossible to conduct negotiations alongside settlement construction," wrote Abbas. The future of the construction freeze in West Bank settlements is expected to become the first significant obstacle facing the Israeli and American governments in the direct talks.

WASHINGTON -- One of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's top lieutenants demanded yesterday that Rep. Charles Rangel quickly settle the swirling ethics charges against him rather than face a trial tomorrow that could embarrass Democratic candidates across the country -- but the disgraced pol isn't going without a fight. "I think it's best that he settle," Rep. George Miller, an influential California Democrat who helped engineer Pelosi's rise to power, told The Post. "Because I just said so, that's why. That's my feeling," he added. Amid mounting pressure on Rangel, Miller's blunt statement is the most direct message from any member...

The Duchess of York has held secret talks with Princess Diana's lawyers about renegotiating her 'paltry' divorce settlement with Prince Andrew. Sarah Ferguson consulted Anthony Julius at Mishcon de Reya, who famously negotiated a £17million pay off for Princess Diana when she divorced Prince Charles. The figure is in stark contrast to the £15,000 a year which the duchess receives from Prince Andrew after their marriage ended after ten years in 1996.

(Reuters) - Goldman Sachs Group Inc's lawyers are in talks with representatives of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to settle the fraud charges brought against it by the regulator, the Wall Street Journal said, citing people familiar with the situation. Goldman's co-general counsel Gregory Palm, along with other lawyers and SEC officials participated in the preliminary discussion, the paper said, adding that the talks did not include any terms, such as the amount of fine or agreements Goldman could make with the agency. On Tuesday, Fox Business Network reported that Goldman may enter talks with the SEC to get...

<p>WASHINGTON (AP) - The Obama administration has reached a deal with black farmers....</p>

Most lawyers are like the opportunistic infections that attack the weakened immune system of heroin addicts. You can scrape off the scabs that encrust the skin, but if you don’t treat the underlying addiction, they’ll just grow back. Or more plainly, lawyers are the symptoms and not the disease. That there are so many is an indication of deeper trouble, signs of a fundamental imbalance with the body politic. In many “tort” lawsuits of the slip-’n-fall kind, at least three things have gone wrong: 1. A greedy plaintiff, with no notion of personal responsibility, decides that “somebody” has to pay...

sraeli officials reacted angrily Thursday night to a British decision to advise retailers and importers to distinguish on labels whether imported produce from the West Bank is being made in the settlements or by Palestinians. According to a statement released by the British Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs, "Importers, retailers, NGOs and consumers have asked the Government for clarity over the precise origin of products from the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPTs). The label 'West Bank' does not allow consumers to distinguish between goods originating from Palestinian producers and goods originating from illegal Israelisettlements."

Today Bibi Netanyahu played a brilliant move, in Yiddish its called Hey put tuchas offen tisch, literally, Hey put your "arse" on the table (put up or shut up). He offered a ten month freeze in settlement building in exchange for restarting the peace plans. I doubt very strongly the freeze will every happen. The truth is the real reason there is no peace is the Palestinians don't want peace. No other country in the world has made concessions the way Israel has. Since 1977, we they given up areas of land three times the size of the State of...

US fury as Israel defies settlement freeze call An ultra-Orthodox Jew prays at sundown at the 'outpost' settlement of Givat Sefer, near Modi'in Sheera Frenkel in Jerusalem Israeli plans to authorise the construction of hundreds of houses in the occupied West Bank sparked furious protests from American and Palestinian officials yesterday. In a nod to US requests to suspend all building work at Jewish settlements, Binyamin Netanyahu, the Prime Minister, is offering a freeze on construction at a later date — a peace gambit that did little to mollify those involved in the negotiations leading to a new Middle East...

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu departed Monday afternoon for a four-day visit to Europe. He will meet with Special U.S. Envoy to the Middle East George Mitchell on Wednesday in London to determine Israel's future construction policy in Judea and Samaria. While in London, he is scheduled to meet with British Prime Minister Gordon Brown. From there he will fly to Germany for talks with Chancellor Angela Merkel. On Sunday night, the Prime Minister assessed that talks with the Palestinian Authority will resume by the end of next month. During Netanyahu’s absence, Minister for Regional Development Silvan Shalom will stand in...

A settlement has been reached between Caltrans and the San Diego Minutemen that gives the anti-illegal-immigration activists what they were hoping for: the right to keep their Adopt-A-Highway sign on northbound Interstate 5, a cash payment, and litter cleanup on an additional stretch of the freeway. The settlement was reached Monday, according to federal court records. In ending the lawsuit the group filed last year, the state conceded that the San Diego Minutemen sign near the Border Patrol's San Clemente checkpoint will remain for the duration of a five-year permit, and that the group may continue to clean the highway...

ISRAEL and the United States have reached a deal allowing the Jewish state to build about 2500 housing units already under construction in West Bank settlements. But the United States dismissed the report in Maariv as "inaccurate". US State Department spokesman Ian Kelly said "the bottom line" for President Barack Obama's administration has not changed, "that all parties in the region have to honour their obligations". He was referring to obligations laid out in the 2003 internationally-agreed roadmap for Palestinian-Israeli peace that calls for an Israeli settlement freeze.

According to the Israeli Newspaper Ha'Aretz, Prime Minister Netanyahu believes that President Obama is only picking a fight with Israel over the settlements in an attempt to win over the Arab world. Netanyahu's opinion is that, the Obama feels that an open and Nasty controversy with Israel would serve the Obama administration's main objective of improving U.S. relations with the Arab world. For the past two weeks Obama has bee overly hard on the Jewish State, ignoring previous agreements pushing for the end to settlements, even to the point of Making up evidence to prove his point. I am not...

Open Space Authority to Return Assessment Funds San Jose, CA, May 29, 2009 – Property owners who have property within the jurisdiction of the Santa Clara County Open Space Authority will soon be able to claim refunds of an assessment charged by the Authority on their real estate tax bills between 2002 and 2008. In 2001, the Authority approved a $20 annual assessment on single-family homes located within the Authority’s territory to help purchase and maintain open space and parkland. Higher amounts were charged for multi-family and commercial properties. The Silicon Valley Taxpayers Association, the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association, and...

A barrier threatening to delay or stop construction of the $420 million fourth bore of the Caldecott Tunnel between Orinda and Oakland was cleared Friday when Caltrans settled a lawsuit with Oakland and Berkeley neighborhood groups worried about noise and traffic from the project. Now the Highway 24 project to ease traffic congestion needs one more thing to begin: a state budget settlement to free up voter-approved state bond money for the extra bore. "This settlement is great news for drivers. We badly need this project to help us with this traffic bottleneck," said Amy Worth, an Orinda city councilwoman...

In a locally-notorious case of Second Amendment rights violation, the City of Norfolk, Virginia, has thrown in the towel and agreed to pay a settlement of $15,000 to activist Chet Szymecki of Yorktown.

FRANKFURT, Germany – Siemens AG — rocked by a series of corruption cases that has cost the company both prestige and money — agreed Monday to pay more than $1 billion in fines in Germany and the U.S. as it moved a step forward in closing a dark chapter in its history. Munich-based Siemens agreed to pay more than $800 million in fines to settle long-standing corruption charges in the United States and another 395 million euros ($533.6 million) to European authorities. The announcements of the amounts of both fines came Monday. Siemens, which makes products ranging from wind turbines...

My syndicated column today expands on yesterday’s eHarmony post (link). As I note, eHarmony will be forking over $5,000 to the gay plaintiff and $50,000 to New Jersey’s Civil Rights office. Here’s the entire settlement the company agreed to, via onlinedatingmagazine. There’s more on the class-action lawsuit against eHarmony proceeding in California here. And Jacob Sullum weighs in. *** The eHarmony shakedown by Michelle Malkin Creators Syndicate Copyright 2008 Congratulations, tolerance mau-mauers: Your shakedown of a Christian-targeted dating website worked. Homosexuals will no longer be denied the inalienable “right” to hook up with same-sex partners on eHarmony. What a landmark...

NEW YORK (Legal Newsline)- Pfizer Inc. has settled with 34 state attorneys general over complaints that the pharmaceutical company illegally marketed its Bextra and Celebrex medications. Pfizer has agreed to pay a $60 million settlement to resolve the enforcement action against it and its subsidiary, Pharmacia, Inc. Celebrex and Bextra are Cox-2 inhibitors, were illegally marketed to treat acute surgical pain, while the medications were only approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to treat common pain and inflammation.

Prehistoric settlement found in Qatar 6/23/2008 2:25:18 DOHA • A prehistoric settlement in what is now Qatar may confirm alternative theories on how early humans emigrated from the African continent, a report in a Danish newspaper said. Danish archaeologists have uncovered a settlement they believe may be over 700,000 years old, making it the oldest organised human community ever found, reported Berlingske Tidende newspaper. Eight dwellings in the desert region of Qatar indicate that an early human species crossed what is now the Red Sea to leave their origins in Africa, according to the scientists. There is still uncertainty within...

Unique Dutch settlement discovered from Bronze Age May 23, 2008, 8:52 GMT Amsterdam - Archaeologists have found a settlement dating back to the Bronze Age just north of Eindhoven, a city in the southern Netherlands, Dutch archaeologist Nico Arts told Dutch media Friday. The discovery was made during preparations for the building of a highway junction at Ekkersrijt, north of Eindhoven. The settlement may be the largest ever discovered in the Netherlands, and is definitely the largest settlement ever found in the southern Netherlands. Bronze Age settlements (1500-850 BC) have also been discovered in the province of Drenthe in the...

Egypt's Earliest Agricultural Settlement UnearthedA fragment of a bangle made of a shell found only at the Red Sea suggests possible trade links with the cradle of agriculture in the Near East. (Credit: Copyright UC Regents) ScienceDaily (Feb. 15, 2008) — Archaeologists from UCLA and the University of Groningen (RUG) in the Netherlands have found the earliest evidence ever discovered of an ancient Egyptian agricultural settlement, including farmed grains, remains of domesticated animals, pits for cooking and even floors for what appear to be dwellings. The findings, which were unearthed in 2006 and are still being analyzed, also suggest possible...

Dana Point (KNX 1070 NEWSRADIO) -- In one of the biggest legal settlements in Orange County history, the city of Dana Point has agreed to pay a total of more than $49 million dollars to two women who were made quadriplegics when they were hit by a car while jogging along Pacific Coast Highway. The deal was announced just before the lawsuit brought by 35-year-old Stacy Neria and 42-year-old Carol Daniel (shown on KNX main page) -- both mothers of three who live in San Clemente -- was set to go to trial on Tuesday. They had alleged that the...

Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick and the City of Detroit will drop an appeal of a $6.5-million judgement in the whistleblower lawsuit and settle another case before it goes to trial.

2007-08-17 19:38Sardinia's Phoenician settlement New digs on western coast may unearth ancient Othoca (ANSA) - Oristano, August 17 - An ancient Phoenician colony on the western coast of Sardinia may soon yield some of its long-buried secrets during new excavations. Othoca, founded by the Phoenicians some 2,600 years ago, partly evolved into the modern-day town of Santa Giusta but most remnants of the original settlement lie buried under a thick layer of mud at the bottom of a large lake. Experts believe the lake, separated from the sea by a narrow bridge of land, was once the port of Othoca,...

An archaeological study and colonial documents indicate that "Henries Towne" has been found. Construction crews are rebuilding the buildings and fort that made up the colonial village of Henrytowne. (Joe Fudge, Daily Press) Fort Story archaeologists and Virginia officials are building an early colonial town site believed to be Henrytowne, which was founded in 1609 about five miles west of Fort Story in Virginia Beach. Donald Proffett works on the palisade wall. (Joe Fudge, Daily Press) FORT STORY -- Army scientists sifting through a 52-year-old archaeological study and a small but compelling stream of early colonial records have identified a...

8,400-year old settlement unearthed in Ýzmir’s Ulucak Tumulus Monday, September 25, 2006 ÝZMÝR - Turkish Daily News A team of archaeologists working at the Ulucak tumulus, located in Ýzmir's Kemalpaþa district, have unearthed a Neolithic settlement area dating back some 8,400 years, an archaeologist announced last week. Archaeologist Fulya Dedeoðlu of Ege University told the Doðan News Agency that excavations had been under way in the area since 1995. She said they believed their latest discovery could be the oldest settlement dating from the Neolithic period unearthed to date and added that further excavations on the lower levels could reveal...

Archaeologists discover more than 70 ancient settlement areas in Yozgat Thursday, August 24, 2006 ANKARA - Turkish Daily News Archaeologists working at the ancient settlement of Tavium located in what is today Yozgat have discovered more than 70 previously unknown ancient settlements in the area. The Central Anatolian province, mostly famous for the Chalcolithic Period discoveries at its Aliþar Tumulus and the Hittite era artifacts at Kerkenes, is likely to hold much more archaeological wealth than previously believed, and archaeologists say the new studies will shed more light on history. Austrian archaeologist Professor Karl Strobel, who is currently heading surveys...

WASHINGTON - American Indians suing the government over billions of dollars in lost royalties say they are contemplating an offer by members of Congress to resolve their lawsuit for $8 billion. The offer is considerably lower than the $27.5 billion plaintiffs offered to settle for a year ago. But plaintiffs say they are considering it seriously, bringing them closer than ever to ending the lawsuit, which has bogged down the Interior and Justice departments for 10 years. "Eight billion dollars is something I wish was higher, but I'm glad they were able to bring something forward that was equitable," the...

SACRAMENTO - California will have to revamp the way it incarcerates juvenile offenders by using smaller and more modern lockups to replace the warehouse-style prisons it currently uses, according to a court-mandated report from the state corrections department. The report marks a compromise between the state and a nonprofit legal center and is the latest indication of how attempts to solve systematic problems in the state's corrections department will end up costing California taxpayers. The state already faces hundreds of millions of dollars in additional costs to reform its adult prison system and the way it manages inmate health care....

OXFORD ARCHAEOLOGY UNEARTHS SAXON SETTLEMENT IN SOUTHAMPTON by Roz Tappenden 24/03/2006 Excavated 19th century cellar. © Oxford Archaeology An archaeological dig in Southampton’s medieval city centre has unearthed Saxon structural remains and a WWII pharmacy. Archaeologists were called in last November to investigate the 0.5-hectare site in the centre of bustling Southampton after an evaluation by the City Council. The plot, between the city’s High Street and French Street has been earmarked for redevelopment, but the discovery of medieval vaults and structural remains dating from the late Saxon period prompted developers, Linden Homes, to delay building work while investigations take...

Archaeologists unearth 9,000-year-old settlement in Seydiþedir Thursday, March 16, 2006 As a result of four years of painstaking excavation, a settlement dating back 9,000 years was discovered in central Anatolia. The tumulus is unique for the region as it is surrounded by walls ANKARA - Turkish Daily News A settlement dating back 9,000 years was discovered during archaeological excavations in Seydiþehir, a district of the central Anatolian province of Konya. Following a visit to Gökhüyük, where the settlement was unearthed, Konya's Provincial Culture and Tourism Director Abdüssettar Yarar told the Anatolia news agency that excavations have been conducted for the...