Latest News Clips 2014.01.13

                       

1. Run Run Shaw, Movie Mogul Seen as Creator of Kung Fu Genre, Dies at 106 

The New York Times    January 6, 2014 

 

Run Run Shaw, the colorful Hong Kong media mogul whose name was synonymous with low-budget Chinese action and horror films — and especially with the wildly successful kung fu genre, which he is largely credited with inventing — died on Tuesday at his home in Hong Kong. He was 106. 

His company, Television Broadcasts Limited, announced his death in a statement. 

Born in China, Mr. Shaw and his older brother, Run Me, were movie pioneers in Asia, producing and sometimes directing films and owning lucrative cinema chains. His companies are believed to have released more than 800 films worldwide. 

After his brother’s death in 1985, Mr. Shaw expanded his interest in television and became a publishing and real estate magnate as well. For his philanthropy, much of it going to educational and medical causes, he was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II and showered with public expressions of gratitude by the Communist authorities in Beijing. 

Mr. Shaw enjoyed the zany glamour of the Asian media world he helped create. He presided over his companies from a garish Art Deco palace in Hong Kong, a cross between a Hollywood mansion and a Hans Christian Andersen cookie castle. Well into his 90s he attended social gatherings with a movie actress on each arm. And he liked to be photographed in a tai chi exercise pose, wearing the black gown of a traditional mandarin. 

Asked what his favorite films were, Mr. Shaw, a billionaire, once replied, “I particularly like movies that make money.” 

2. JPMorgan Settles With Federal Authorities in Madoff Case 

The New York Times     JANUARY 7, 2014 

Before Bernard L. Madoff was charged with stealing billions of dollars from his clients, and before he received a 150-year prison sentence for those crimes, JPMorgan Chase missed its chance to warn federal authorities about his Ponzi scheme. 

On Tuesday, five years after Mr. Madoff’s arrest set off a panic on Wall Street and in Washington, Mr. Madoff’s primary bank received a punishment of its own. 

Federal prosecutors in Manhattan imposed a $1.7 billion penalty on JPMorgan for two felony violations of the Bank Secrecy Act, a record payout under that 1970 law, which requires banks to alert authorities to suspicious activity. The prosecutors, essentially accusing the nation’s biggest bank of turning a blind eye to Mr. Madoff’s fraud, will require JPMorgan to pay the $1.7 billion to his victims. The bank cannot write off the sum as a tax deduction. 

Federal regulators announced their own rebuke of the bank, with the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency striking a $350 million settlement, citing the Madoff case and broader breakdowns in safeguards against anti-money laundering. All told, after paying these settlements, JPMorgan will have doled out some $20 billion to resolve government investigations over the last 12 months. 

The criminal element of the case involved a so-called deferred-prosecution agreement with the prosecutors in Manhattan, an agreement that essentially suspends for two years an indictment as long as JPMorgan admits its actions and overhauls its controls against money laundering. Deferred-prosecution agreements, while not as forceful as leveling an indictment or demanding a guilty plea, have been rarely used against a giant American bank and are typically employed only when misconduct is extreme. 

3. Chicago Colder Than South Pole as Frigid Air Clamps Down 

The Bloomberg   Jan 7, 2014 

Frigid air clamped down on much of the U.S., giving Chicago a morning temperature lower than the South Pole and breaking records across the country amid disruptions to road, rail and air transport. 

Chicago, which yesterday reached a new low for the date of minus 16 (minus 27 Celsius), hovered at 3 degrees at 4:51 p.m. local time, according to the National Weather Service. It was 9 degrees in New York, where temperatures earlier broke a record for Jan. 7 set in 1896, the agency said. 

“Today is a brutal day, and there is no way around it,” said Tom Kines, a meteorologist with AccuWeather Inc. in State College, Pennsylvania. “One of my colleagues pointed out to me that the South Pole this morning is 6 below. That means places like Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland and Pittsburgh, all those places are colder than the South Pole.” 

It may be the coldest day in 20 years, forecasters said. The cold is part of a pattern of extreme weather that occurs every decade or so and has been plaguing the U.S. with temperature swings from mild to freezing for more than a month. It extends across the upper Midwest into the South and eastward to the Atlantic, Kines said. 

The Minnesota towns of Embarrass and Brimson had recorded the lowest temperature in the contiguous U.S. as of 1 p.m. with readings of minus 35, the Weather Prediction Center in College Park, Maryland, reported. 

Citrus Crops 

“It’s amazing, the only part of the U.S. east of the Mississippi that’s above freezing is the southern two-thirds of Florida,” said Bruce Terry, a meteorologist with the center. “Today is the coldest day for a large chunk of the U.S.” 

West of the Mississippi, the only places getting above freezing were the Southwest from Texas to California and then up the Pacific Coast to the Northwest, Terry said. 

The worst cold apparently missed citrus regions of Florida, Dale Mohler, an AccuWeather meteorologist, said today. A surge in energy demand pushed power in Texas to more than $5,000 a megawatt-hour yesterday for the first time and caused disruptions to oil refineries and pipelines. 

4.Democracy needs whistleblowers. That's why I broke into the FBI in 1971 
Like Snowden, we broke laws to reveal something that was more dangerous. We wanted to hold J Edgar Hoover accountable 

Bonnie Raines         J Edgar Hoover helped Richard Nixon gain power in the US. Photograph: Bettmann/CORBIS 

the Guardian.com, Tuesday 7 January 2014  

I vividly remember the eureka moment. It was the night we broke into an FBI office in Media, Pennsylvania, in March 1971 and removed about 1,000 documents from the filing cabinets. We had a hunch that there would be incriminating material there, as the FBI under J Edgar Hoover was so bureaucratic that we thought every single thing that went on under him would be recorded. But we could not be sure, and until we found it, we were on tenterhooks. 

A shout went up among the group of eight of us. One of us had stumbled on a document from FBI headquarters signed by Hoover himself. It instructed the bureau's agents to set up interviews of anti-war activists as "it will enhance the paranoia endemic in these circles and will further serve to get the point across there is an FBI agent behind every mailbox." 

That was the first piece of evidence to emerge. It was a vindication. 

Looking back on what we did, there are obvious parallels with what Edward Snowden has done in releasing National Security Agency documents that show the NSA's blanket surveillance of Americans. I think Snowden's a legitimate whistleblower, and I guess we could be called whistleblowers as well. 

A look back at what happened 

I was 29 when my husband John and I decided to join six other people to carry out the break-in. I was a mother of three children, aged eight, six and two, and I was working on a degree in education at Temple University, where John was a professor of religion. 

We had both been heavily involved in the civil rights movement. John had been a freedom rider, and in Philadelphia we participated in anti-war protests against Vientnam. Through that activity we knew that the FBI was actively trying to squelch dissent, illegally and secretly. We knew that they were sending informants into university classrooms, infiltrating meetings, and tapping phones. The problem was that though we knew all this, there was no way to prove it. 

A physics professor at Haverford College named Bill Davidon called a few of us together at his home. Bill, who died last November, floated the idea of doing something to obtain evidence. He just came out with it: "What do you think about breaking into an FBI office to remove the files?" If it hadn't been for Bill, who was so smart and strategic, I'm not sure we would have taken it seriously. But we did.