TV News LIES

A New York hedge fund manager allegedly swindles $12 million from a prominent Baltimore family. An Indiana couple is accused of bilking hundreds of customers by charging for free trials of cosmetic products. A financial manager in Texas promises 23-percent returns but absconds with $33.5 million of his investors’ money in a classic Ponzi scheme.

All three cases have one thing in common: money that ended up in offshore accounts and trusts set up in tax havens around the world.

To the ranks of civil rights and anti-war activists who’ve marched on Washington, get ready to add white-frocked scientists.

Thousands of prominent cancer and other medical researchers will rally in the nation’s capital Monday to protest federal funding cuts that began several years ago and were accelerated by additional forced reductions beginning to take effect under the congressionally mandated process of sequestration.

Banks being probed over alleged interest-rate manipulation scored a big victory in their battle against scores of private lawsuits seeking billions of dollars in potential damages.

A federal-court judge on Friday agreed to dismiss claims that the 16 banks targeted by the suits broke federal antitrust laws through alleged suppression of the London interbank offered rate, or Libor.

Now that voters in Colorado and Washington have legalized recreational marijuana use, dope smokers there can light up without the usual paranoid fear that the cops are at the door. The taxman is another matter.

Cash-starved legislators are seeing dollar signs in dime bags — with talk that a tax on marijuana could pump hundreds of millions or even billions into budgets still reeling from the recession.

$16 billion. That's how much JPMorgan Chase has paid in fines, settlements and other litigation expenses in the last four years alone.

More than half of that amount, $8.5 billion, was paid out in fines and settlements as the result of illegal actions taken by bank executives.
$8.5 billion is almost 12 percent of the net income the mega-bank brought in during the same period.

The Federal Aviation Administration said on Friday it will close 149 air traffic control towers beginning on April 7 to meet required automatic spending cuts.

Another 40 towers previously slated for closure will remain open, the agency said in a statement.

"We heard from communities across the country about the importance of their towers and these were very tough decisions," transportation secretary Ray LaHood said. "Unfortunately we are faced with a series of difficult choices that we have to make to reach the required cuts under sequestration."