Bhanwari case: CBI to submit status report

New Delhi: The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) will on Monday submit a status report on its probe into alleged kidnapping and suspected murder of auxiliary nurse midwife (ANM) Bhanwari Devi in Rajasthan High Court. 

The central probe agency will also resume today the questioning of sacked Rajasthan minister Mahipal Maderna, who is a key suspect in the case. 

Bhanwari Devi’s case has unleashed a political storm in the state politics since it involves a number of ministers belonging to the ruling Congress government led by Ashok Gehlot. 

On September 26, the Rajasthan government had filed a status report in the Jodhpur High Court on its probe into the suspected kidnapping and murder of Bhanwari Devi. 

The government was then instructed by the HC to expedite the investigation into the case. 

The court had earlier admitted a habeas corpus petition filed by Bhanwari Devi’s husband and issued notices to the Home Secretary and senior police officers in this connection. 

The habeas corpus petition was filed by Amarchand, husband of Bhanwari Devi who went missing on September 1. 


Amarchand had alleged involvement of a powerful minister Mahipal Maderana in the disappearance of Devi. 

The CBI on October 11 took over probe in the mysterious disappearance case of the nurse . 

Bhanwari Devi, 36, was posted as ANM at a sub-centre in Jaliwada village when she went missing. 

Congress last week suspended sacked Rajasthan Minister Mahipal Maderna from the primary membership of party for his role in the missing nurse’ abduction case. 

Action against Maderna was on the cards with the RPCC contemplating action after a CD purportedly showing him in a compromising position with Bhanwari, an auxilliary nurse, came into public domain. The controversy involving Maderna has hit the Ashok Gehlot government amid calls by opposition BJP for the Chief Minister's resignation. 

A CD purportedly showing Maderna and Malkhan in compromising position with 36-year-old Bhanwari, posted as a nurse midwife at a sub-centre in Jaliwada village, had come to light after she went missing from Jodhpur's Bilara area on September 1. 

NASA spacecraft is orbiting massive asteroid

PASADENA, Calif.—NASA's Dawn spacecraft was captured into orbit around the massive asteroid Vesta after a 1.7 billion-mile journey and is preparing to begin a study of a surface that may date to the earliest era of the solar system, the space agency said Monday.

The entry into orbit occurred while the spacecraft's antenna was pointed away from Earth, so mission controllers had to wait for Dawn to re-establish contact to confirm its success.

The capture was estimated to have occurred at 10 p.m. PDT Friday, when Dawn was 9,900 miles from Vesta and 117 million miles from Earth in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, according to a statement from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

"We are beginning the study of arguably the oldest extant primordial surface in the solar system," the mission's principal investigator, Christopher Russell from the University of California, Los Angeles, said in the statement.

NASA said that after the orbital capture, Dawn sent an initial close-up image taken for navigation purposes. Before the Dawn mission, images of Vesta were obtained by ground- and space-based telescopes but did not show much surface detail.

Vesta, 330 miles in diameter, is the second-most massive object in the asteroid belt and is believed to be the source of many meteorites that fall to Earth.

Dawn will continue to approach Vesta over the next three weeks, search for possible moons and make more navigation images. It begins

Citigroup Estimates It Has $22 Billion at Risk in Five European Countries

Citigroup Inc. (C), the third-biggest U.S. bank, estimated it has at least $22 billion in loans, trading assets and other “exposures” to Greece,Italy, Portugal, Spain and Ireland.
The net figure includes $13 billion in so-called funded exposure as of June 30, mostly in the form of credit to financial institutions and companies, according to an earnings presentation today on the New York-based firm’s website. Sovereign entities account for “a little more than” $1 billion of that amount, it said.
The remaining $9 billion is unfunded exposure, mainly to international companies based in the five countries, where Citigroup provides settlement and clearing services, according to the presentation. Estimates were based on the firm’s internal risk measures, it said.
“Our exposure to the businesses and the sovereigns in those countries certainly is appropriate given our size, our stature and our business model,” Chief Financial Officer John Gerspach, 57, told reporters today on a conference call.
Citigroup, led by Chief Executive Officer Vikram Pandit, tumbled 5.3 percent in New York Stock Exchange trading on July 11 as concern mounted that Europe’s debt crisis may engulf Italy, which has the region’s second-highest borrowings.
The bank previously disclosed $12.3 billion in loans to Italian customers at the end of 2010, including banks and public entities, and a further $18.4 billion in legally binding “commitments.” This figure doesn’t include so-called hedges, when an investor makes a bet to protect against potential loss on an existing position. The company hadn’t made detailed disclosures on the five countries since then.

Gross Exposure

Pandit and Gerspach declined to tell analysts in a separate conference call what the bank’s gross exposure to the five countries was, not including hedges. In response to questions from Michael Mayo, an analyst at Credit Agricole SA in New York, Gerspach said the figure was irrelevant while Pandit defended the bank’s hedges and risk-management approach.
“If Europe turns into a real problem, the net exposure guidance or disclosure you gave isn’t going to give investors any comfort whatsoever,” Michael Holton, an analyst with Boston Co. Asset Management LLC, said on the call. “I would encourage you to give the gross exposure at some point if you’re not going to do it today.”
In addition to the $22 billion, Citigroup said it has money at risk to retail customers and small businesses through locally funded lending. Most of that is through Citi Holdings, a division that contains businesses tagged for sale, and is focused on Greece and Spain, it said.

Maintaining Relationships

“We fully expect to maintain our long-standing relationships” in the five countries, Citigroup wrote in the presentation.
JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM) reported yesterday that its outstanding loans and contracts to the five countries total about $15 billion. Chief Executive Officer Jamie Dimon, 55, said the amount “bounces around by several billion” after taxes and taking into account hedges against that risk. In the worst-case scenario, the bank may lose about $3 billion, he said.
“We’ve not dramatically reduced those exposures,” Dimon said. “We’re still doing a lot of business in Europe.”
Bank of America Corp., the largest U.S. bank by assets, said in a May regulatory filing that it has $16.9 billion at risk in the five countries as of March 31.
Citigroup today reported second-quarter net income of $3.34 billion, a 24 percent increase from a year earlier that beat analysts’ estimates, as it earned more from investment-banking fees and reduced losses tied to troubled assets.

SBI says its net interest margin betters to 3.6%

KOLKATA: The State Bank of India is weighing several combinations to raise Rs 20,000 crore for the next three years while its net interest margin improved to 3.6% for the quarter, exceeding its expectation by 10 basis points . The country's largest lender has so far failed to get the government's clearance for the proposed rights issue of Rs 20,000 crore. 

SBI has preferred this option over other instruments since early 2010 as it did not want to dilute the government's stake but is now forced to look at other options. The bank's capital raising issue may be discussed at a special board meeting on August 6, which will be addressed by finance minister Pranab Mukherjee. Speaking at a Ficci event here, SBI chairman Pratip Chaudhuri said: 

"The government is committed to SBI and acknowledged its contribution towards nation building." He expects to complete fund raising by March 2012. The bank will soon place three separate fund-raising structures with the government for its consent. Mr Chaudhuri said the bank is also open to a combination of rights issue plus private placement of equity, or even rights issue plus a FPO. 

The SBI chairman said the bank needs Rs 47,000 crore to support business growth in the next three years and Rs 20,000 crore out of this requirement will be raised from the market. He said SBI looks to plough back Rs 9,000 crore from profit every year till 2014. SBI expects to restore "normal profit" from the third quarter. 

The bank will need to continue with making high provisions in the first quarter too as per RBI guidelines. Yet, Mr Chaudhuri said the Q1 profit would be better backed by a better interest rate margin. "Our margin would be 3.6%, more than our guidance of 3.5% for the first quarter. This could offset the impact of higher provisioning," he said.

FBI Investigates News Corp Following 9/11 Phone Hack Allegations

After nearly a decade of fighting to preserve his son's legacy, Jim Riches said the emerging News Corp scandal involving 9/11 victims is the ultimate slap in the face.

"I think it’s abominable, and if these people could pry and hack into 9/11 family members, then they’re making money off the dead,” said Riches, who lost his son on September 11th.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation is now looking into allegations that reporters with the now-defunct News of the World attempted to hack phones of people who were killed during the terror attacks.

Riches' son, Jimmy Jr., was a 29-year-old firefighter who died when the towers collapsed.

"They might have been trying to pry into my phone records or my son’s phone records or whatever, but we are asking the FBI to look into this,” said Riches. “We want to sit down with them and we want to see the results of the investigation.”

Rupert Murdoch's News Corp is at the center of a firestorm that has sparked investigations in Britain and Washington.

It all started when word leaked that Murdoch's employees hacked into the phone of a British teenage murder victim.

Explosive allegations that a News of the World reporter tried to buy phone records of 9/11 victims from a private investigator in New York followed.

9/11 family members like Jim Riches say the allegations are deeply troubling, and if they prove to be true, he wants the parties involved prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

Members of Congress are also calling for a full-scale investigation.

"We have the 10th anniversary, the wounds are already opened up, there’s no closure, my son is never going to walk back through that door,” said Riches. “The wounds are open and this just reopens them again."

Next week, Rupert Murdoch and his son, James, will face Britain's Parliament to address allegations of phone hacking and bribery.

Looking for debt deal, Obama outlines cuts

WASHINGTON — President Obama implored congressional leaders Thursday to reach a deal on raising the nation's $14.3 trillion borrowing limit by this weekend to reassure jittery world financial markets, and he suggested he could settle for a smaller deficit-reduction package than he originally sought.

Rather than continue to push for $4 trillion in savings over the next decade, Obama outlined a plan that would achieve roughly $2 trillion, almost entirely from spending reductions. That marks a major concession — one the president is likely to address at a news conference scheduled for 11 a.m. ET this morning.

At the same time, Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell and Democratic leader Harry Reid forged ahead with an even smaller deal of their own, one that represents a second fallback plan. It would allow Obama to raise the debt limit and create a process by which Congress would vote in the future on spending reductions.

Two Democratic and two Republican officials with direct knowledge of the continuing negotiations offered these details on the condition they not be identified speaking about private meetings:

• STORY: Impact of U.S. default in dispute

In Obama's $2 trillion plan, tax increases would come from a 35% limit on itemized deductions and the elimination of special-interest tax breaks for oil and gas companies, corporate jet owners and producers of ethanol. If tax rates on upper-income people returned to 36% and 39.6% in 2013, as Obama wants, the limit on deductions would save about $120 billion.

Obama also is seeking to extend a payroll tax cut enacted last December for another year and possibly extend it to small businesses. For that reason, Republicans could claim that the package is revenue-neutral rather than representing a tax increase — but at the meeting, Republicans still refused to go along.

The remainder of the package would be spending cuts and savings on interest, but not the major reductions in Medicare or Social Security that Obama had been willing to accept as part of a $4 trillion deal.

"He wants to keep hope alive for the big deal, but he also knows the clock is running," one of the Democratic official said.

McConnell said the session was a good one. "We're going to continue to discuss a way forward over the next couple of days and see what happens," he said.

Fueling Obama's demand for swift action: Standard & Poor's ratings service placed the United States on watch for a possible downgrade of its credit rating. It warned of "at least a one-in-two likelihood that we could lower the long-term rating on the U.S. within the next 90 days."

Speaking to Republicans and Democrats meeting at theWhite House for a fifth consecutive day, Obama and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said any deal should include new borrowing authority to avoid default as well as a plan to reduce future budget deficits.

That prompted House Speaker John Boehner to throw the challenge back at the president, arguing that Obama still had not presented a plan to resolve the nation's debt problem.

Thursday's meeting was more cordial than some of the previous ones. Republicans listened patiently to pitches about health care savings, taxes and debt caps from top administration officials. House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, the outspoken leader of congressional conservatives, was silent.

At the end of the meeting, Obama tasked congressional leaders to reach a conclusion by the weekend, urging that it be as bold on deficit reduction as politically possible.

"It's decision time," the president said, according to a Democratic official. "We need concrete plans to move this forward."

The fledgling bipartisan plan being devised by McConnell and Reid — which would raise the debt limit and appoint yet another group of lawmakers to come up with spending cuts — might represent the final fallback plan if all else fails.

Geithner warned that there is no way to extend the Aug. 2 deadline for the government to raise the debt ceiling and avoid a first-ever default on its loans.

"We have looked at all available options, and we have no way to give Congress more time to solve this problem," Geithner said. "We're running out of time."

Before the meeting, key Republicans continued to reject any discussion of tax increases. "Republicans will not be reduced to being tax collectors for the Obama economy," McConnell said.

Without bigger tax increases — such as raising tax rates on individuals with income over $200,000 and couples over $250,000 beginning in 2013 — the president and congressional Democrats won't consider politically difficult cuts in popular benefit programs.

Those could have included raising the age for Medicare from 65 to 67 over the next two decades, as well as changing the way inflation is measured, which would reduce Social Security cost-of-living increases.