GENEVA, SWTIZERLAND – A former student at a small religious school that offers nursing courses in Oakland, California has shot and killed six students at the school, reports the Los Angeles Times. He was arrested at a nearby shopping centre.
He also wounded three others at Oikos University.
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – Thirty years ago today, 2 April 1982, the Falklands War began, when the UK sent troops to rebuff what the British refer to as an invasion of the island they have ruled since 1833. Argentina sees it differently and despite defeat at the hands of the British 30 years ago, the South American nation is renewing its claims to the island it calls Malvinas. The anniversary in both countries is being observed by paying tribute to the 225 British and 650 Argentinian soldiers who died during the war, which lasted 74 days.
In the US, files from the period that are now available to the public for the first time, show President Ronald Reagan quietly backing the UK while publicly the US acted as a supposedly neutral negotiator.
Links to other sites: BBC, Buenos Aires Herald, George Washington University National Security Archives
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – Russian media Ria Novostisay reports that 31 of the 39 or 43 (accounts vary) people aboard a UTair plane flying from Tyumen to Surgut in Siberia died when the plane crashed while trying to make an emergency landing at 01:50. The crash into a snowy field near the village of Gorkovka occurred shortly after takeoff, abut 3km from the airport. The eight passengers who were injured are reportedly in serious condition.
The plane was an Italian-French ATR-72 jet.
Eyewitness reports indicate that smoke was coming out of the engines and that there was a bang and a flash. Russian officials have reportedly ruled out terrorism and are saying that the accident was most likely a technical failure.
An eyewitness said he saw smoke coming from the plane’s twin engines as it plunged to the ground at around 01:50 GMT.
Another witness said there had been a “bang” and a flash before the craft crashed in a snowy field just outside the village of Gorkovka.
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – Apple will email Australian buyers of its newest iPad models with an offer to refund their purchases after a consumer group sued the company for misleading advertising.
The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission said Tuesday 27 March that the electronics giant misinformed consumers that the latest “iPad with wifi and 4G” will work in Australia, not the case because it is not compatible with either of the 4G networks available in the country.
A lawyer for the company, Colin Golvan, reportedly told an Australian court that Apple will notify consumers that the latest iPad is not compatible with Australian 4G LTE networks and WiMAX networks in the coming week.
On Wednesday afternoon Apple’s Australian website was still advertising its newest iPad as being 4G compatible. The iPad launched earlier in March in Australian stores.
Links to other sources: Aljazeera, Financial Times, Bloomberg, Sydney Morning Herald, Vancouver Sun, The West Australian
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – Pope Benedict XVI will end a two-day Cuban visit on Wednesday 28 March with an open-air Mass in Revolution Square in Havana and an unscheduled meeting with former leader Fidel Castro, the Associated Press reports.
The plaza’s famous image of revolutionary leader Che Guevara now has a huge poster of the country’s patron saint, the Virgin of Charity of Cobre, opposite it. The papal visit coincides with the 400th anniversary of her apparition as a statue.
The leader of the Catholic Church met for an hour on Tuesday with Fidel’s brother, Raul Castro, the current head of state. The pope asked that Good Friday be made a national holiday. The Cuban regime agreed to reintroduce Christmas as a holiday, following the last papal visit, by John Paul II in 1998, after banning it for nearly 30 years.
Only ten percent of Cuba’s population is Catholic today and Benedict’s visit to Cuba is widely seen as an effort to improve relations between the Catholic Church and the secular socialist state and to renew the church.
Links to other sources: The Telegraph, CNN, BBC, Vatican
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – North Korea’s plan to launch a long-range rocket next month upstaged talks at the 53-leader summit on nuclear security as it came to a close Tuesday 27 March in Seoul, South Korea.
The North Korean foreign ministry said it would carry out plans to launch a satellite missile into orbit next month to commemorate the 100th birthday of the regime’s founder, Kim Il-Sung. The ministry declared in a statement published by state news agency KCNA, “We will never give up the launch of a satellite for peaceful purposes” and that North Korea has “as much right to launch our satellite as other countries do”.
The United States, Japan, South Korea and other states expressed concerns that the launch breaches a United Nations ban and would violate an agreement concluded last month between the US and North Korea.
Meanwhile world leaders at the Seoul meeting called for closer cooperation to deal with nuclear terrorism, and issued a joint communiqué calling for an effort to secure “vulnerable nuclear material”.
Eyes, or rather ears, were raised at the summit on Tuesday, when US President Barack Obama was heard telling Russian President Dimitri Medvedev, as his microphone was on, that he would be more flexible about discussing missile defense following US elections in November.
Obama later explained his not-so -private exchange with the Russian leader to reporters, “You can’t start that a few months before presidential and Congressional elections in the United States, and at a time when they just completed elections in Russia, and they’re in the process of a presidential transition.”
Links to other sources: BBC, New York Times, The Telegraph
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – One of the most widely-watched US Supreme Court cases is underway this week in Washington DC, with the judges holding hearings 27-29 March on President Barack Obama’s health care plan. The plan was signed into law in 2010, but immediately challenged, initially by the State of Florida.
The hearing is key for a number of reasons:
- the sheer breadth of the plan, which would have a major impact on how Americans receive health care and how money is spent on it
- the outcome of the plan, considered Obama’s signature legislation, could have a major impact on this year’s presidential election
- Obama’s legislation writes into law the requirement for all Americans to have health care coverage, which its opponents say is unconstitutional
- the three days of hearings make it the longest case in over 50 years.
The Guardian explains that a key issue right now is to determine if the court can really hear the case:, noting that it “focused on whether the punishment for not buying mandatory health insurance under the new law is a tax or a penalty. If it is a tax, then under a 19th century law, the Anti-Injunction Act, the legislation cannot be challenged until the tax is collected beginning in 2015, and the court would not be able to hear the case now. If it is a penalty, the lawsuit can go ahead.”
A decision will be made in June based on this week’s hearings.
Links to other sites: Boston.com, CNN, Economist (UK), Fox News, The Globe & Mail, Canada, Guardian (UK), Voice of America
Kofi Annan
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – Syria has agreed to accept a United Nations six-point peace plan, the organization’s former Secretary General Kofi Annan, now a special envoy on the Syria problem for the UN, said through his spokesperson, Ahmad Fawsi, Tuesday 27 March. Fawsi said Monday that Annan had received a response from Syria but would study it before responding.
Annan is currently in China, following talks in Russia. He has obtained the backing for the agreement from both countries, which have been under fire for vetoing two UN resolutions condemning Syrian government violence.
The plan was endorsed by the UN Security Council in New York 21 March. It calls for dialogue coupled with a ceasefire. There is no implementation date.
Annan’s reaction to the acceptance by Syria was reserved, with the envoy noting that the next step is to see how to implement the plan.
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – Former IMF (international Monetary Fund) chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn was charged Monday evening 26 March with involvement in a prostitution ring in the northern French city of Lille.
Investigating judges in a case known in France as the Carlton Affair accused Strauss-Kahn of “aggravated pimping”. He was required to pay a bail of €100, 000 and forbidden to contact any witnesses in the case or the press.
The charges state that the former IMF chief had violated of a French legal code regarding pimping which is defined as “committed by anyone in any manner aiding, assisting, or protecting the prostitution of others” according to Le Figaro. If found guilty, Strauss-Kahn faces a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison.
Strauss-Kahn was accused last year of sexual assault in two separate cases, including attacking a hotel maid in New York. Both charges were later dropped.
He denied the latest accusations in Lille. His lawyer, Richard Malka, stated in front of the courthouse that his client “never had the least inkling that the women he met could have been prostitutes”.
Links to other sources: Reuters, TF1, BBC
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – Tens of thousands of students protested in Montreal, Canada this week against a planned increase in tuition fees at Quebec universities, announced by the liberal government lead by Prime Minister Jean Charest. The city has seen daily marches since Monday 19 March.
Quebec’s tuition fees, which are by far the lowest in Canada, will increase by C$325 a year, for a five-year period, in order to improve university funding and reduce the province’s debt. Fees will thus rise to C$3,793 in 2017 from their current level at C$2,415.
While many students from other provinces as well as from overseas have been attracted to the province by the low tuition rates, administrators have long claimed that the universities are underfunded, and they welcome the hikes.
Daniel Zizian, head of the Conference of Rectors and Principals of Quebec Universities told The Canadian Press, “We can’t think that Quebec universities can continue to offer a quality education in the long term with a $600 million shortfall year after year.”
An 1978 agreement between Quebec and France allows French students to benefit from the same low tuition as Canadians. There are currently over 8,000 French students in the province.
Links to other sources: CBC, Montreal Openfile, The Globe and Mail
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – An independent report into the deaths of 115 children in state care in Ireland, was described as “very harrowing” by the country’s Minister for Children Frances Fitzgerald. She spoke on RTE’s Morning Ireland Thursday 22 March.
The account, compiled by the children’s charity Barnardos reports on the deaths of children from unnatural causes between 2000 and 2010 while in care. The minister said that she expected it to be made public “within several weeks”, following a review by the attorney general’s office.
On Tuesday a report into the abuse of children within Catholic dioceses in Ireland was published by the Vatican, the Irish Times notes.
Fitzgerald said that the government was committed to call a referendum of children’s rights this year.
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – The decorated but previously injured US soldier who appears to have gone on a solo shooting rampage in Afghanistan will be charged with the deaths of the 17 civilians who died, in addition to other charges, the US Army announced. Robert Bales, 38, was flown to Kuwait a week ago and then to Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, where he is imprisoned. The charges will be read to him there Friday. He could face the death penalty, but the trial is widely expected to last months or years, a fact that has upset Afghanistan, which has called for a swift trial.
Bales is accused of entering homes and shooting sleeping villagers the night of 11 March. Afghan witnesses say there was more than one soldier, but there are no other suspects. His lawyer is playing down stories that Bales was drunk the night of the shootings, saying that his client recalls little of that night. The day before the shootings he had seen a friend’s leg blown off. He is the father of two and the family lives in Washington state.
Links to other sites: BBC, AP/Fox News, Guardian, Times of India
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – For what must have been a few exhilerating hours Russian convict Alexei Shestakov left his prison for a hijacked helicopter ride then found himself scooting across Moscow in a taxi. At that point, however, police caught up with the escaped convict and put him behind bars again. The 34-year-old is serving 24 years for murder, but with the help of accomplices who rented the helicopter, then took it to the prison, he gained a few hours of freedom. He climbed out of the prison yard using a rope let down by the helicopter. Prison guards shot at him but missed, according to one report, while another says it is unclear how he evaded them.
Links to other sites: ABC News Australia, Gazeta Russia
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – The Los Angeles County Coroner’s office has officially ruled singer Whitney Houston’s death “accidental” from drowning, with cocaine, found in her system, and heart disease as factors.
The toxicology report cited by a number of US media shows the presence of drugs that did not contribute to the death of the 48-year-old, including marijuana, Alprazolam (Xanax), Cyclobenzaprine (Flexeril) and Diphenhydramine (Benadryl).
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – Trains were halted and public transport in Lisbon stopped on Thursday 22 March as Portugal’s largest union vowed to bring the country to a standstill in protest over new labour reforms imposed as part of a €78 billion bail-out package.
Arménio Carlos, president of the confederation of unions (CGTP), told the Wall Street Journal, “Austerity didn’t work for Greece, and it won’t work for Portugal.” He said protests would be held in the capital and other cities throughout the country.
The union opposes the new labour laws that make it easier to hire and fire employees, which bailout officials feel is essential to make Portugal more competitive in global markets. Other rules would reduce the number of paid vacation days.
Portugal is facing its deepest recession since the 1970s, with the government expecting the economy to contract by 3.3 percent and unemployment to rise to 14.5 percent this year. The economy in 2011 shrank by 1.5 percent, and 12.7 percent of the working force was unemployed.
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – Mohamed Merah, suspected of a aeries of fatal shootings in Toulouse, France over the last week, died in a violent police raid on his home, French Interior Minister Claude Guéant declared Thursday 22 March.
An assault was ordered on the suspect’s apartment Thursday morning after Merah refused to surrender alive. Merah, who had been holed up in his bathroom at the time of the attack, tried to escape, armed, through a window, as police reached him.
Three officers were reportedly injured in the assault.
Merah, a French national of Algerian descent and self-confessed Al Qaeda militant, was suspected in the killing of three French soldiers in nearby Montauban last week and of four people at a Jewish school in Toulouse Monday .
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – China has ordered the content of Maoist web sites to be censored following the recent removal of a high-level government official, Bo Xilai, the Associated Press reports.
Access to some content on two sites, Utopia and Maoflag, which admired Bo, the fallen Communist party boss of Chongking, is reportedly blocked. Bo, who was widely perceived to be on a campaign to join the nine-member national standing committee, had strongly promoted Mao-era stories and songs, from which the government has distanced itself in recent years.
Bo Xilai’s dismissal, which is seen as part of an ongoing secret power struggle in China, followed news that the Chongqing chief of police sought refuge in a US consulate in late February.
Western media report that Communist party memos have been circulating on the web saying that Bo attempted to sideline the police official, Wang Lijun, after he had warned Bo that a family member was under investigation. Bo’s son, Bo Guagua, who had allegedly attended Harvard and Oxford Universities with full scholarships, has been in the limelight following revelations of his use of a Ferrari.
Bo Xilai was seen in another light in Chinese media as recently as 9 March, when China Daily reported that he was on a cleanup campaign to rid Chinese cities of gangs.
Links to other sites: BBC, China Daily, Financial Times, The Toronto Star
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – Civil rights leaders and community residents in Florida, USA, are pressing authorities to arrest a community watch volunteer who has admitted shooting a African-American teenager in Florida in self-defense.
George Zimmermann, who shot 17-year-old Trayvor Martin on February 28 as he returned to his father’s girlfriend’s house, has not been charged in the shooting. Zimmermann has identified himself as white, while his family says he is hispanic.
Leaders of the NAACP, American Civil Rights Union and the Nation of Islam called for the arrest at a town hall meeting in Sanford, a small community near Orlando, where the shooting took place. Benjamin Jealous, president of the NAACP said, “The rules of justice in this nation have failed when an innocent teenage boy can be shot to death by a vigilante and no arrest is made for weeks.”
The case has gained national attention as audio recording of calls to the police from Zimmerman and panicked neighbors became public.
The US Justice Department opened Monday an investigation into the case in its Civil Rights Division.
Links to other sources: Huffington Post, New York Times, Los Angeles Times
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – A victory by Mitt Romney in Tuesday’s Republican party primary in Illinois would be key toward winning the party’s nomination for the US presidential election as he continues his state-to-state duel with Rick Santorum.
Polls have put the former Massachusetts governor ahead of Santorum by an average of 7.5 percent, according to Real Clear Politics. The state’s demographics are favorable to Romney’s electoral appeal to date in the primaries, being more urban than rural. Sixty-five percent of Illinois’s population lives in or around Chicago.
The 2008 Republican Presidential nominee John McCain said a win in President Barack Obama’s home state could “get this marathon to an end” and see Romney facing the president in the November elections, according to the Daily Mail.
Romney currently holds 54 percent of nominees, just over the majority, with 521 delegates, against 253 for Santorum and 50 representatives for Ron Paul, according to AP.
Links to other sources: Christian Science Monitor, International Business Times
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – Candidates in the French presidential election suspended their campaigns following the killing Monday of four people at a Jewish school in Toulouse, as authorities began their search for the assassin.
The country was put on the highest level of alert as authorities began looking for what was probably a single gunman, also suspected in earlier fatal shootings of three soldiers of North African origin last week in nearby Montauban. Authorities are considering various main lines of investigation, including the involvement of a far-right extremist or an Islamist motive.
Bloomberg reports that three soldiers who had been dismissed for neo-Nazi activities from their base in Montauban in 2008 had been considered as potential suspects.
The attacks come at a time of increasingly xenophobic rhetoric in France’s centre and rightist political camps ahead of the first round of elections in April. President Nicolas Sarkozy recently said, “We have too many foreigners on our territory and we can no longer manage to find them accommodation, a job, a school.” Sarkozy is facing a serious challenge from extreme-right leader Martine La Pen, who has a support level of 17 percent in polls.
Campaigning will resume on Wednesday following the funeral of Monday’s victims.
Links to other sites: The Globe and Mail, BBC, TF1
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – Iraq is being hit by a series of deadly bomb blasts, with the death toll Tuesday 20 March inching up towards 5. , Close to 200 people are reported to be injured. The attacks come a week before an Arab League meeting hosted by Iraq. CNN says the attacks took place in several cities: Baghdad, Kirkuk, Karbala, Hilla, Tikrit, Baiji, Ramadi and Falluja and that “some of them targeted police or government facilities.”
Nine years ago today US troops entered the country in a move that brought about the end of Saddam Hussein’s rule.
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – Apple says Tuesday 20 March that 3 million of its new iPads have been sold since they hit the market Friday, four days earlier. It announced Monday that it will be paying investors dividends later this year, for the first time since 1995. But not everyone is happy. A group of 22 well-known writers in China are suing Apple for copyright infringement, saying their e-book versions of their works have appeared in the Apple store without their permission or involvement.
They are seeking $7.9 million in damages.
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – Dozens of women protesting the continuous detention of political prisoners in Cuba were arrested over the weekend in Havana, just a week before Pope Benedict XVI is due to visit the island.
Thirty-six members of a group, Ladies in White, who were staging their weekly protest, were forcefully loaded into buses when they left their authorized route. This followed earlier arrests of 18 other Ladies, including their leader Berta Soler, on Saturday. Further arrests were reported in other cities.
A number of the group’s members were freed Sunday night, El Pais reports.
The weekly marches, the only authorized public protests in Cuba, commemorate the detention in 2003 of 75 political dissidents, sons and husbands of the protesters. They were freed in a 2010 agreement brokered by the Catholic church. The group has said it would like all other political prisoners to be freed.
Links to other sites: The Guardian, BBC, 20Minutos.es
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – Three people were trampled to death Monday at the memorial service held in central Cairo for Egypt’s Coptic pope, Shenouda III, Aljazeera reports.
The incident occurred as tens of thousands of devotees assembled around St Mark’s Cathedral to see the leader of the largest Christian community in the Middle East, sitting in state, according to tradition. Aljazeera said that streets were congested for kilometers as a result of the massive crowds.
Shenouda III, who died on Saturday at age 88, had lead the Coptic church’s for over 40 years. Ten percent of Egypt’s population of 80 million are Coptic Christians.
Following his initial support for the post-Mubarak military regime, the pope reacted to attacks on Coptic Christians, saying officials needed to address the community’s concerns.
After Monday’s deaths, Egypt’s Armed Forces announced the closure of the Cathedral, and the transfer of Shenouda to Wadi Al-Natroun, a desert monastery where he chose to be buried.
Links to other sites: Aljazeera, BBC, Daily Mail
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – The UK budget, to be unveiled Wednesday 21 March, could well hold some surprises, but one of its most unusual features is already under discussion: a partial privatization plan that would allow wealth funds from sovereign states to lease British motorways and highways. The Guardian reports that “In his most eye-catching proposal, [Prime Minister David] Cameron will announce that the Treasury and Department for Transport are to carry out a feasibility study looking at using private-sector funds to improve and maintain trunk roads and motorways.”
China is one of the targeted countries, but any funds investing in the roads programme would need to meet a set of targets to improve roads and reduce congestion, areas where the government says Britain is falling behind.
Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne, reports the Wall St Journla, says that “the bulk of the measures in the budget will be aimed at helping low and middle income earners, in a move that is likely to appease junior coalition partners the Liberal Democrats and offset speculation about a controversial cut to the top income tax rate.”
Links to other sites: Guardian, Independent, Wall St Journal
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – Four students and an adult died Monday morning 19 March and five other people were injured when a gunman on a scooter opened fire at the Ozar Hatorah Jewish school in the Roseraie district in Toulouse, France. The man has not been found and French officials suspect he may be the same person who shot and killed two soldiers Thursday 15 March in Montauban and another soldier 21 March in Toulouse. The weapon has been reported by some media to be of the same caliber but the stories appeared very shortly after the killings, the gunman and the weapon have not been found and police have not confirmed the information. The French public prosecutor said Monday during the day, however, that there are now “important elements” that appear to link the shootings.
French media are also reporting that the gunman had contact by Internet with one of his earlier victims and that police are carrying out cyber investigations linked to this.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy and Interior Minister Claude Guéant are flying to Toulouse during the day.
Links to other sources: in French: Figaro, Le Monde, TF1; in English: Reuters
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – Russian media Saturday 17 March quoted Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov as saying he spoke to UN Syrian mediator Kofi Annan after Annan and Bashar al-Assad spoke, in early March and “I can assure you that there was no talk about Assad’s departure.: The remarks were published by Russia’s foreign ministry on its website. They are from an interview on Russian television Saturday night. Two days earlier he told the Duma that Russia will continue its military cooperation with Syria and that “Russia aims to defend not the regime of Bashar Assad but the right of Syrians to choose their own leader and stability in the Middle East,” reports the Moscow Times.
In other Syrian news, 27 people are reported to have died Saturday when two bombs went off at security installations in Damascus, and Thursday 15 March Saudi Arabia announced it was closing its Syrian embassy and removing staff.
Links to other sites: Ahram, Moscow Times, RiaNovosti news agency
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – A Canadian naval intelligence officer accused of counterespionage has inflicted “grave injury” on relations with the country’s allies, The Globe and Mail reports, citing anonymous government sources. They are quoted as saying that the full extent of the damage will be fully gauged only once the government determines the content of classified information he allegedly passed to a foreign power.
The case of sub-lieutenent Jeffrey Delisle, who worked at an intelligence hub in Halifax and who was arrested in January, has been very sensitive with few officials knowing the extent of the damage. No details about the case have been disclosed publicly.
Defense Minister Peter MacKay reacted by saying that the allies maintain “full confidence in Canada”.
The newspaper says that there has been concern among officials over the years that as a “net importer” of intelligence from allies, Canada may, as a result of the spy case, be excluded from receiving such information.
Delisle, the first person accused of violating the country’s post-9/11 Security of Information Act, allegedly began leaking material in July 2007.
Six Russian diplomats were expelled from Canada in January following Delisle’s arrest.
Links to other sites: The Globe and Mail, The Huffington Post
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – (#agriculture #women) Women’s agricultural production is an average 25 percent lower in developing countries than that of male farmers, the first-ever Global Conference on Women in Agriculture says, in a call for greater gender equity in agriculture as a means to combat world hunger.
Forty-three percent of agriculture in developing countries is done by women, but access to property ownership, know-how, technology and even basic such as fertilizers is more limited than for men.
The international conference in New Dehli this week has emphasized the impact on of this disparity in fighting the world’s growing food crisis.
Government ministers, farmers, agricultural researchers and gender experts from around the world met for the to discuss ways of achieving greater equality in agriculture.
“The global sidelining of women farmers puts our food security at great risk,” says Mark Holderness, executive secretary for the Global Forum on Agricultural Research.
The UN Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) calculates that boosting women’s farm production could increase output in developing countries by 2.5- 4 percent, reducing poverty by 12-17 percent, representing 100 to 150 million people. There are some 925 million undernourished people globally, according to the World Food Program.
Natural disasters, the financial crisis, political conflicts, over-use of land, increasing production of land for biofuel production are some of the factors straining food production as the world’s population is estimated to increase to 9 billion by 2012.
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND - A Goldman Sachs executive who publicly criticized the firm’s “toxic” environment in the Op-Ed column of the New York Times Wednesday has sparked debate about whether any change has taken place on Wall Street since start of the financial crisis in 2008.
Greg Smith, head of US derivatives trading in London at the investment firm, decried in an unprecedented manner, a greed-infested corporate culture where “people talk about ripping their clients off”.
Goldman’s CEO Lloyd Blankfein replied that he was “disappointed to read the assertions made by this individual that do not reflect our values.”
Meanwhile CNN reported former US Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volker saying he believed Wall Street firms focus too much on maximizing profit and not enough on their clients’ interests.
William Cohan, author of a book about Goldman entitled “Money and Power” says “nothing has changed (because) incentives haven’t changed”. While many employees questioned Smith’s comments as those of a disgruntled employee, his letter nonetheless went viral on the internet.
Reuters reports that JP Morgan Chairman Jamie Dimon, As a result of the uproar created by the resignation, warned employees in an internal memo ”I want to be clear that I don’t want anyone here to seek advantage from a competitor’s alleged issues or hearsay—ever. It’s not the way we do business.”
