http://video.ap.org/?f=TNKIN&pid=jxsJH0JhB8dmTtaGkhINiBWr7sXUf7MZ

(AP) 

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - A California judicial commission has admonished a retired judge for ordering that an attorney who settled a class-action lawsuit be paid in $10 coupons for women's apparel.

The lawsuit accused Windsor Fashions Inc. of invading customers' privacy by requesting personal information during credit card transactions.

As part of the January 2009 settlement, the company issued coupons to the plaintiffs, and Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Brett Klein ordered that the attorney fee of $125,000 be paid similarly.

The Commission on Judicial Performance, which disciplines state judges, said Tuesday that Klein was biased and abusive. It also said he improperly communicated with the press by e-mailing his decision to a small newspaper.

Klein later rescinded his order to pay the attorney with coupons. He retired in November.

Man Quits Smoking After Cigarette Explodes in His Mouth

Tuesday, February 02, 2010

 News Core

An Indonesian tobacco company has agreed to pay the medical expenses of a man who lost six teeth when a cigarette mysteriously exploded in his mouth, AFP reported Tuesday.

Security guard Andi Susanto, 31, told Metro TV in an interview from his hospital bed that cigarette producer PT Nojorono Tobacco Indonesia had offered to pay for his treatment.

"The company's officials have talked to my family and we agreed to settle it amicably, as an out-of-court settlement. They will pay all the medical expenses," he said through bandaged lips.

The cause of the explosion remains unknown. Susanto said he wasn't chewing anything when he lit the Clas Mild cigarette and didn't notice anything strange about its odor, color or taste.

He said he would quit smoking after the incident. 

Indonesia is one of the most profitable tobacco markets in the world, and more than 60 per cent of Indonesian men smoke.

Plea for help with terminal cancer was a scam, friends say

Woman out on bail after she was given support, money

Nick Madigan |

January 27, 2010

Last Updated February 1, 2010 

Leone sent out pictures of herself with a bald head, saying she had lost her hair to chemotherapy. Some of the women said she collected thousands of dollars from them, and that she was even treated to a trip to California for a "final" visit to Disneyland.

It was all a scam, according to a Baltimore County grand jury, which indicted her in November for theft and conspiracy. Leone appeared last week in circuit court, where a judge set bail at $25,000, enabling her to leave the county detention center.

"There was no physical evidence of her being treated for cancer, and no medical evidence," said Assistant State's Attorney Adam Lippe, referring to the findings of a police search in September of the home she shares with her husband, Patrick Leone, on Glen Arbor Drive in Rosedale.

The prosecutor said Leone claimed to have been treated at Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center, but "that was not accurate." Checks with other hospitals in the area were similarly fruitless, he said.

Neither Leone nor her husband could be reached for comment. The attorney who represented her at last week's hearing, Gary Maslan, did not return a call.

The charges against Leone involve just two of the women who gave her money - more than $12,000. One of those two victims is Jennifer Lasek, a former classmate in Dundalk and wife of the nationally ranked skateboarder Bucky Lasek. Moved by her plight, the Laseks, who live near San Diego, flew Leone to the West Coast last summer and treated her to a visit to Disneyland, one of her "dying wishes," Lippe said.

In an e-mail message, Jennifer Lasek said that because she is a witness in the case unfolding against Leone she would decline to comment for now, but conceded that there were "many people throughout the communities in Baltimore" who have been affected by Leone's actions.

Leone's friends and others said they began to suspect her story when, among other things, she suddenly turned up bald at the end of May, instead of losing her hair over time, or when she could not respond to basic medical questions. In addition, Lippe said, she had a so-called port-a-cath - a small appliance that ostensibly transferred medications from a catheter to a vein in her upper body - that seemed to switch locations on her chest, indicating that it was not hooked up to a vein at all.

"Several times I'd ask her what chemo drugs she was taking, and she would blow off the question," said Vicky Squires, a 38-year-old Abingdon resident who is in remission for breast cancer and whom Leone found through Facebook. Squires now suspects Leone contacted her so that she could gain some knowledge about a true cancer survivor's experience.

When pressed about her medications, Leone mentioned taking Tamoxifen - a drug Squires knew all too well, since it is used to treat breast cancer, not the stomach cancer Leone claimed to have.

Squires recalled thinking it odd that Leone claimed to be receiving chemo treatments at home, and that she'd had breast cancer a decade ago but that it "went away."

"She said she was in a lot of pain," said Squires, who ultimately confronted Leone over the discrepancies. "I never could imagine in my worse nightmare that someone would lie about such a horrible disease. I was very upset because I felt like I'd been helping a fellow cancer survivor in need. I went through hell because of cancer."

Leone has a criminal history, mostly involving passing bad checks and in one case running a mortgage scam. In 2004, she faced 24 charges of theft in Carroll County; she was found guilty of a single theft-scheme count and sentenced to 18 months, suspended. Three years later, she was again found guilty of theft in Carroll County and served two months in jail.

LINK TO VIDEO

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/baltimore-county/bal-md.leone27jan27,0,2192946.story

LINK TO PHOTOS BEFORE AND AFTER

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1247631/Mother-uses-Facebook-tens-thousands-pounds-school-friends-pretending-dying-cancer.html#ixzz0ePscXPzo

Reuters

February 2, 2010 - 10:39am

The Obama administration's plan to cut more than $1 trillion from the deficit over the next decade relies heavily on so-called backdoor tax increases that will result in a bigger tax bill for middle-class families.

In the 2010 budget tabled by President Barack Obama on Monday, the White House wants to let billions of dollars in tax breaks expire by the end of the year — effectively a tax hike by stealth.

While the administration is focusing its proposal on eliminating tax breaks for individuals who earn $250,000 a year or more, middle-class families will face a slew of these backdoor increases.

The targeted tax provisions were enacted under the Bush administration's Economic Growth and Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2001. Among other things, the law lowered individual tax rates, slashed taxes on capital gains and dividends, and steadily scaled back the estate tax to zero in 2010.

If the provisions are allowed to expire on December 31, the top-tier personal income tax rate will rise to 39.6 percent from 35 percent. But lower-income families will pay more as well: the 25 percent tax bracket will revert back to 28 percent; the 28 percent bracket will increase to 31 percent; and the 33 percent bracket will increase to 36 percent. The special 10 percent bracket is eliminated.

Investors will pay more on their earnings next year as well, with the tax on dividends jumping to 39.6 percent from 15 percent and the capital-gains tax increasing to 20 percent from 15 percent. The estate tax is eliminated this year, but it will return in 2011 — though there has been talk about reinstating the death tax sooner.

Millions of middle-class households already may be facing higher taxes in 2010 because Congress has failed to extend tax breaks that expired on January 1, most notably a "patch" that limited the impact of the alternative minimum tax. The AMT, initially designed to prevent the very rich from avoiding income taxes, was never indexed for inflation. Now the tax is affecting millions of middle-income households, but lawmakers have been reluctant to repeal it because it has become a key source of revenue.

Without annual legislation to renew the patch this year, the AMT could affect an estimated 25 million taxpayers with incomes as low as $33,750 (or $45,000 for joint filers). Even if the patch is extended to last year's levels, the tax will hit American families that can hardly be considered wealthy — the AMT exemption for 2009 was $46,700 for singles and $70,950 for married couples filing jointly.

Middle-class families also will find fewer tax breaks available to them in 2010 if other popular tax provisions are allowed to expire. Among them:

* Taxpayers who itemize will lose the option to deduct state sales-tax payments instead of state and local income taxes;

* The $250 teacher tax credit for classroom supplies;

* The tax deduction for up to $4,000 of college tuition and expenses;

* Individuals who don't itemize will no longer be able to increase their standard deduction by up to $1,000 for property taxes paid;

* The first $2,400 of unemployment benefits are taxable, in 2009 that amount was tax-free.

http://www.<snip>.com/news/weird/2010/02/9-year-old-girl-gives-birth-in-china

                                       LINK 2 

City Evening News reports on January 25, Changchun hospital gynaecology department took in a special patient, a 9-year-old girl who was 8 and half months pregnant.  On January 27, at noon, this girl gave birth by cesarean section to a 2.75 kilogram (about 6 lbs) baby boy.

On January 25, reporter went to the gynaecology department of the hospital, most of the patients and family members were asleep; the hospital hallway was very quiet.  Reporter approached the hospital staff asking for information on this girl and the staff member said please do not disturb because the girl and the family were already asleep.  Reporter than asked about this girl’s personal circumstances and situation, but the staff member did not disclose anything.  The reporter learned the 9-year-old girl’s name from the registration form and the registration condition was “pregnant…”

On January 26, the reporter once again went to the hospital to ask about the situation, but the hospital workers avoided the subject like it was a taboo. The reporter learned from the nurse in the ward, the pregnant girl’s family is from Songyuan and she looks very mature, but was unclear about how she got pregnant, her family never talked about the matter.

On January 27 at noon, the girl in the hospital gave birth to a baby boy after a caesarean section, the baby weighted 2.75 kilograms.  Currently both mother and child are in good health.

Who impregnated a 9-year-old girl?  It is still unknown at this time.  But it was said that the girl’s family already reported the incident to the police.  lawyer Liu from Liu Gongcheng Law Firm in Jilin said, in view of women under the age of 14 do not have sexual rights, so any argument of “being consensual” (not going against women’s will) in defense is completely untenable.  Anyone who had sexual relation with a girl under 14 constitutes rape, and is to be punished severely.

It is understood that women have 5 development periods in their lives; they are infancy, adolescence, maturity, menopause and post-menopause.  When women in maturity, due to ovary being fully mature and ovulate on a regular bases, also periodically produce hormones, therefore they have the reproductive capability.  Usually girls hit their puberty after age 11.  Normally speaking, a woman can give birth only after menstruation.  However in May of 1939, a 5-year-old girl in Peru was pageant and successfully gave birth to an infant.

A female doctor, long time gynecologist told the reporter, a 9-year-old girl getting pregnant and giving birth is very rare.

Alleged Naked Landlord Arrested, Charged

FOX 8

Staff Writer

10:58 AM EST, February 1, 2010

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/sns-ap-us-budget,0,4229795.story

Sunday, 01.31.10

Jets coach Rex Ryan apologizes for obscene gesture

New York Jets coach Rex Ryan makes an obscene gesture during a mixed-martial arts event Saturday night, Jan. 30, 2009 at BankAtlantic Center in Sunrise. DAVID M. HILDENBRAND

The Associated Press

Atlanta Business News 8:16 a.m. Sunday, January 31, 2010 

Bank leaves trail of flipping, fraud

  Russell Grantham

But the only thing growing at Omni these days is the list of casualties racked up since the bank’s failure 10 months ago.

Hundreds of homes that should have been improved instead sit vacant and crumbling. Though most depositors weren’t hurt, the bank’s demise has cost the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.’s insurance fund an estimated $289 million and wiped out shareholders who owned about half the company, once valued at about $100 million.

Meanwhile, the number of Omni-related arrests has reached four, including the bank’s co-founder, Jeffrey L. Levine, who pleaded guilty to bank fraud two weeks ago.

The story of Omni’s rapid rise and sordid fall goes far beyond the usual tale of woe at Georgia’s many failed banks, where risky loans blew up when the real estate bubble burst. More people may be charged in the wide-ranging probe of Omni, and the charges already filed suggest fraud pervaded the bank’s operation.

Federal prosecutors said in court filings that bank records, for instance, were routinely doctored to hide losses, and a loan officer took kickbacks in return for doling out loans. The bank allowed people to “flip” houses three, four and even five times, artificially inflating their value, prosecutors said.

Omni also has been linked to at least two large mortgage fraud operations uncovered by regulators, one involving an ex-con who stole multiple identities and another by a Lithonia man who falsified the income and employment records of borrowers he steered to Atlanta-based Omni.

An attorney for Omni’s co-founder and former chief executive, Stephen Klein, says he is not a target of the investigation; federal investigators won’t say.

A federal audit indicates that even as Omni’s leadership was enriched by the bank’s rapid growth, it masked the institution’s shaky foundation by hiding foreclosures, using flawed appraisals and lending to questionable borrowers, including a convict who got a loan just days after his release from prison — for mortgage fraud.

Through their attorneys, Levine and Klein declined to be interviewed.

Levine “admitted his wrongdoing quite some time ago to the government and has been cooperating with the government’s investigation of Omni since that time,” said his attorney, Jack Williams. Levine, who pleaded guilty to falsifying the bank’s books, faces up to 30 years in prison and a fine as much as $1 million.

Said Klein’s attorney, Craig Gillen: “Mr. Klein was cooperating fully with the investigation and was perceived as a witness.”

From lenders to bank

This wasn’t how things were supposed to turn out when, in the early 1990s, the two men launched a private loan business that eventually became Omni National Bank.

Klein had been director of a Michigan bank and had owned an insurance and real estate investment business. In 1992, he partnered with Levine, a real estate lawyer, to start a firm that made short-term loans of $20,000 or so to inner-city home renovators who didn’t have easy access to loans from traditional banks.

The company made big profits bankrolling the rehabilitation of derelict homes and declining neighborhoods — sometimes making loans with hefty upfront fees and interest rates exceeding 18 percent.

“Our borrowers were more than glad to pay that, because there was no other source of funding available to them,” Klein told a group of investors in 2007, according to a transcript on investor Web site SeekingAlpha.com .

Starting in 2000, Omni expanded rapidly. It acquired a collection of banks, which allowed it to tap a new, cheap source of funds: bank customers’ deposits, which were FDIC-insured — “backed by the full faith and credit of the United States government,” as the FDIC’s motto goes.

Omni’s growth continued. Fueled by deposits that reached $797 million by the time it failed, Omni’s assets grew more than ninefold between 2001 and 2009, to $956 million.

Meanwhile, it spread out from its southeastern base, adding bank branches or loan offices in Chicago, Birmingham, Philadelphia and Dallas. Omni’s reported profits soared, rising from $685,000 in 2002 to $9.3 million in 2006.

But much of those profits turned out to be a mirage. Like many of Georgia’s hundreds of small banks, Omni was swept up in the real estate boom in metro Atlanta and other cities, making a growing pile of loans that were based on seemingly ever-rising property values.

By 2007, rehab and other commercial real estate loans totaled $488 million — 75 percent of Omni’s loans.

When the real estate market crashed later that year, the loans quickly soured and the bank eventually failed.

That’s a story common to many of the 32 Georgia banks that have failed in the past 17 months. But the federal probe and interviews with those familiar with the bank reveal a darker tale at Omni.

A magnet for flippers

For years, Omni was a magnet for so-called property flippers, some of whom do superficial repairs and resell homes at inflated prices. Often, a scammer recruits straw buyers to obtain fraudulent loans.

The scammers obtain ever-bigger mortgages through a series of fraudulent sales transactions, often in collusion with appraisers, loan officers and real estate attorneys who lie about home values and the borrower’s income in loan documents. They then keep the proceeds from the home sales at inflated prices but often don’t repay some of the loans.

A number of such schemes, say federal investigators, were run by a Lithonia man, Delroy Davy, who ran a one-stop shop for wannabe house flippers in metro Atlanta that promised a road map to riches.

For hefty fees reaching $30,000, Davy offered access to bargain-priced properties and a team of expert renovators, and even found Section 8 renters to cover short-term expenses.

Davy now sits in federal custody on charges that he defrauded many of his customers as well as the banks that financed the deals, according to the U.S. Attorney’s office in Atlanta. His go-to lender in many cases: Omni National Bank.

Perhaps the most explosive allegation among the charges: Davy paid kickbacks to an unnamed loan officer at Omni who gave approval for funding to investors who wanted to buy Davy-owned properties.

Ralph Roberts, a Michigan-based author of how-to books on real estate investing who runs a flippers Web site, said people across the country told him they were victims of the scheme. Some said they were chauffeured around Atlanta on a tour that included a stop at his sprawling mansion.

“Everyone I talked to lost everything they put in,” said Roberts. “It wasn’t set up to make [them] money. It was set up to make Delroy Davy money.”

‘Most egregious’ lender

In another flipping case, an East Point man, Mark Anthony McBride, pleaded guilty to falsifying his identity and using straw borrowers to obtain millions in loans from Omni and other banks.

Amazingly, he began working on the scheme in 2006 while still in prison for mortgage fraud, collecting his first Omni loan only days after his release.

Such schemes have worsened the damage in some of Atlanta’s struggling neighborhoods, said Brent Brewer, a civil engineer turned neighborhood activist. Several houses flipped with Omni financing have driven up property taxes in his West End neighborhood, he said. Yet the homes mostly sit vacant, attracting criminals and squatters.

Omni is “the most egregious of the lenders because they’re local. They can ... see if the appraisals are correct,” he said.

Brewer said Omni repossessed, sold and financed one house near him three separate times, even though for much of that time it sat vacant and windowless, with huge sections of its exterior walls torn away. (See accompanying story.)

Property records confirm Omni took possession and resold the house three times in two years at rising values — following a pattern that allowed the bank to hide its growing number of foreclosures, federal auditors said.

The audit said Omni often sold and refinanced foreclosed properties before month’s end to keep them off monthly reports. Omni CEO Klein later halted the foreclosure sales when falling prices would have forced the bank to book more losses, the audit said.

Success brings spoils

While all this was happening, the fortunes of Omni’s founders were soaring.

In 2002, Levine bought a riverfront home in Sandy Springs for $1 million, according to Fulton County tax records. A year later, Klein and his wife built an 8,398-square-foot home downriver worth $1.7 million, according to tax records. Meanwhile, a condominium they had bought in Fernandina Beach, Fla., in 2000 they later sold for $2.1 million, according to Nassau County records.

Klein, a private pilot, also sold his Cessna jet to Omni for $2.6 million in 2004. Despite the sale, Klein retained use of the jet for up to 40 hours a year as an executive perk.

In 2006, Klein and Levine decided in 2006 to take Omni public, selling $33 million worth of stock to investors.

At one point, the deal valued Klein’s 30 percent stake at $32 million and Levine’s 11 percent stake at almost $12 million. The pair were also the highest-paid employees at Omni. Klein’s salary, stock and other compensation in 2006 was $597,199; Levine’s was $521,997.

Then in 2007, the real estate market collapsed. Soon, Omni was awash in foreclosures, setting off a chain of events that led to criminal conduct as the bank tried to cover up losses and turn money-losing loans into earning assets.

Bad debts come to light

Omni tried to mask its growing pile of foreclosed properties from banking regulators and investors, according to the Treasury Department audit.

Many foreclosed properties were “sold with new Omni-financed redevelopment loans within the same month” so Omni could avoid reporting the foreclosed properties on monthly reports, auditors said. “In some cases, properties were foreclosed and sold multiple times for higher amounts to avoid losses and mask the bank’s condition.”

A sampling of property records for some of Omni’s largest home loans in Fulton County bears out that pattern.

Of the top dozen Omni deals ranging from $226,500 to $500,000, about half showed signs of being involved in flipping schemes. Often, Omni financed the deals two or three times at rising prices. In some cases, their values ballooned more than 100 percent.

Indeed, Omni recycled bad loans on 169 foreclosed properties with $25 million worth of new loans during a 12-month period in 2006 and 2007, the audit shows. Those loans accounted for about one-sixth of its redevelopment loans.

Auditors criticized Omni’s primary regulator, the federal Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, for not catching the bank’s lending practices and other problems until late 2007. Even then, the OCC took almost a year to take formal enforcement action, in October 2008, though a new examiner had found “severe management and control deficiencies,” according to the audit.

The OCC agreed that its supervision came up short, but disagreed that it took too long to take formal action because Omni had already shut down its redevelopment lending.

Indeed, with property values crashing in 2008, Omni could no longer sell foreclosed properties with new loans big enough to cover the old ones.

But according to the audit, the bank’s CEO still tried to avoid reporting losses. Klein “directed bank managers to refrain from selling foreclosed properties at discounted prices because it would force the bank to recognize significant losses,” according to the audit.

Auditors said Omni also violated banking rules by inflating the value of foreclosures on its books and telling appraisers to come up with inflated property values to support new loans.

In summer 2008, regulators ordered the bank to write off a third of the value of its foreclosed properties. Within seven months, Omni was shut down.

“This case demonstrates the damage that can result when senior bank officials ignore rules and regulations designed to protect a bank,” acting U.S. Attorney Sally Quillan Yates said when announcing Levine’s guilty plea.

-------------------------

How we got the story

After a key former executive and the bank’s second-largest shareholder pleaded guilty two weeks ago to fraudulently hiding its financial condition, we decided to take a deeper look at Omni National Bank, which failed last March. We interviewed officials with the U.S. Attorney’s Office, lawyers for people involved in the investigation and the banking industry, and people in the neighborhoods affected by alleged property-flipping schemes that were financed by Omni. We also reviewed property records and a federal audit conducted after Omni failed, as well as court documents and indictments related to federal investigators’ probe into the bank and various mortgage fraud schemes connected to the bank.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/01/31/roger-ailes-on-this-week_n_443555.html

Web site domain king GoDaddy.com says this ad about an effeminate former football player has been rejected by CBS to air during the Super Bowl.

http://www.wbaltv.com/video/22368024/

http://abcnews.go.com/WN/tim-tebow-super-bowl-ad-cbs-air-controversial/story?id=9667638

Rollover leads to large drug bust

Updated: Saturday, 30 Jan 2010, 11:18 PM MST
Published : Saturday, 30 Jan 2010, 11:18 PM MST 

Devon Armijo

TUCUMCARI, N.M. (KRQE) - A man stashing a cash crop rolled his car Saturday and now he's got bigger troubles than a wrecked car.

New Mexico State Police patrolling Interstate 40 near Tucumcari Saturday morning responded to an accident call.

Henry Alan, 40, of El Paso lost control of his sedan and crashed into a snow pile along the interstate.

Officers noticed tracks leading back and forth from the trunk of the rolled car.

They discovered 238 pound of marijuana in large plastic-wrapped bundles. The street value of the pot is around $643,000.

Lowe was treated for a gash to the head. Then police arrested him and booked him into the Quay County Detention Center.

LINK TO VIDEO:   

http://www.krqe.com/dpp/news/crime/rollover-leads-to-large-drug-bust