Global News and Analysis

Source: In These Times

Two thousand and eleven is destined to become the Year of Foreclosures. The recession officially ended in June 2009, but the housing market’s implosion continues: Banks set a record by seizing more than 1 million homes in 2010, according to RealtyTrac Inc., and housing experts agree that foreclosures will soar higher this year.

Bank seizures would have been even more numerous last year if not for the “robo-signing” scandal that revealed widespread fraud and caused the country’s biggest banks to halt foreclosure proceedings in the fall. Loan servicers’ illegal habit of rapidly signing off on huge numbers of faulty mortgage documents also inspired something unprecedented: Attorneys general from all 50 states began investigating a system that had wrongfully pushed thousands of families out of their homes. read more

Source: Politico

In the halls of American power, the Arab Spring has brought Al-Jazeera in from the cold.

Seven years after then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld called the broadcaster’s reporting “vicious, inaccurate and inexcusable” and President George W. Bush joked about bombing it, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton praised it as “real news” in her recent Senate testimony.

Not only that, her staffers, as well as those of the CIA and the Obama White House, were attending the Congressional Correspondents’ Dinner as Al-Jazeera’s guests. read more

Source: Mother Jones

The oceans around Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant are beginning to show troubling signs of radioactivity. Recent tests by TEPCO found levels far surpassing legal limits, iodine by 7.5 million times and cesium by 1.1 million times. As MoJo environmental correspondent Julia Whitty has reported in several recent posts, radioactive material is now entering the marine food web, and will likely only continue to work its way up. And ocean currents are carrying the contaminants far and wide. As a result of the increased radiation levels, several countries, including Hong Kong, Russia, and India, have enacted temporary bans on Japanese seafood imports. But so far, there is no such ban in the US. read more

Source: Al Jazeera

In early March, while boisterous Carnival celebrations filled the streets of Rio de Janiero, bulldozers began clearing away Amazonian jungle for roads leading to the construction site of the Belo Monte hydroelectric dam on the Xingu River in northeast Brazil.

The $10bn dam is planned to be the third largest dam in the world. Government officials say its construction will generate thousands of jobs and create electricity for 23 million homes.

Environmental groups and indigenous activists in the area, however, condemn the project, which they say will displace some 20,000 people, and destroy over 100,000 acres of land in an area full of ecological diversity and indigenous communities. read more

Source: Counterpunch

1. Partitions.

NATO miscalculates and thrice fires on the Benghazi rebels. The NATO commanders blame this on a confused frontline. It is hard to distinguish, they say, between the Libyan rebels from the Libyan regulars. Libya is effectively partitioned between the west and the east.

Qaddafi remains in command of the west. His son, Saif-al-Islam told the BBC that his family is not keen on an exit to Saudi Arabia, Zimbabwe or Venezuela. Saif, and his brother Saadi, have made an offer that their father might consider stepping down from a position he claims not to hold, as long as the sons can remain in some form of authority (Qaddafi pere conducted the remarkable feat ofcentralization of power in the name of de-centralization). Former US Congressman Curt Weldon apparently told Qaddafi that he might be made honorary chairman of the African Union, and that his sons might be permitted to run for office in a future Libyan election. The Benghazi rebels are aghast. This is not what they hoped for. read more

Source: Al Jazeera

In a nuclear crisis that is becoming increasingly serious, Japan’s Nuclear Safety Agency confirmed that radioactive iodine-131 in seawater samples taken near the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power complex that was seriously damaged by the recent tsunami off the coast of Japan is 4,385 times the level permitted by law.

Airborne radiation near the plant has been measured at 4-times government limits.

Tokyo Electric Power Company, the company that operates the crippled plant, has begun releasing more than 11,000 tons of radioactive water that was used to cool the fuel rods into the ocean while it attempts to find the source of radioactive leaks. The water being released is about 100 times more radioactive than legal limits. read more