Journalists covering Syria face growing risk of kidnapping, death
Journalists covering Syria face growing risk of kidnapping, death
BEIRUT — Behind a veil of secrecy, at least 30 journalists have been kidnapped or have disappeared in Syria — held and threatened with death by extremists or taken captive by gangs seeking ransom.
The widespread seizure of journalists is unprecedented, and has been largely unreported by news organizations in the hope that keeping the kidnappings out of public view may help to negotiate the captives’ release.
The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists says at least 30 journalists are being held and 52 have been killed since Syria’s civil war began in early 2011. The group also has documented at least 24 other journalists who disappeared earlier this year but are now safe. In a report this week, Paris-based Reporters Without Borders cited higher figures, saying at least 60 “news providers” are detained and more than 110 have been killed.
The discrepancy stems from varying definitions of what constitutes a journalist because much of the reporting and news imagery coming out of Syria is not from traditional professional journalists. Some of those taken have been activists affiliated with the local “media offices” that have sprouted up across opposition-held territory.
Only 10 of the international journalists currently held have been identified publicly by their families or news organizations: four French citizens, two Americans, one Jordanian, one Lebanese, one Spaniard and one Mauritanian. The remaining missing are a combination of foreign and Syrian journalists, some of whose names have not been publicly disclosed due to security concerns.
US wants Bank of America to pay $864M in losses from bad home loans
NEW YORK — Federal prosecutors want Bank of America Corp. to pay about $864 million over losses incurred by the government after it bought thousands of home loans made by Countrywide Financial during the housing boom.
U.S. attorney Preet Bharara made the request in documents filed late Friday with the U.S. District Court in Manhattan.
A jury last month found Bank of America Corp., which acquired Countrywide in 2008, liable for knowingly selling thousands of bad home loans to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac between August 2007 and May 2008.
The panel also returned the verdict against Countrywide and a former executive, Rebecca Mairone.
The trial related to mortgages the government said were sold at break-neck speed without regard to quality as the economy headed into a tailspin.
Government shutdown had surprise effect
on jobs numbers
WASHINGTON — The government shutdown may have affected October’s jobs numbers. But not how you think.
For weeks, the White House had braced for a dour report on hiring, with economists and aides lowering expectations and blaming last month’s partial shutdown for the inevitable bad news to come.
Then Friday’s numbers materialized: Employers appeared to have ignored the shutdown and hired away, to the tune of 204,000 jobs in October.
The shutdown, it seemed, had had no effect.
Not so fast.
In the height of irony, the 16 days of federal worker furloughs and government disruptions may have helped, not hurt, the improved jobs picture.
Typically, jobs numbers are announced on the first Friday of the month. Because of the shutdown, the Bureau of Labor Statistics delayed the release of the jobs numbers by one week to allow more time to collect payroll and household data. That extra time resulted in an above average response rate for payroll data.
So, not to get hung up on numbers, but the average participation rate by employers in payroll surveys for the nine months before October was 76.4 percent. That meant that in subsequent months, as more data was collected, the hiring numbers were adjusted, often upward.
By wire reports