|
|||||||||
|
|||||||||
|
 |
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
"Allegations about poor treatment of our workers by Signal are false, unfounded and personally hurtful," Marler said.
Marler said Signal currently employs more than 100 temporary workers from India.
Guest Workers Fired After Protesting 'Slave' Conditions
David Bacon, New America Media
Guest workers from India accuse a Mississippi shipyard of exploiting and treating them
like slaves
Mar 20 07:34
|
NEW YORK (AP) -- A lawyer who claims he was defamed by an episode of television's "Law & Order" can continue pressing his $15 million lawsuit against the show's producers, a judge has ruled.
In a decision made public Wednesday, State Supreme Court Judge Marilyn Shafer rejected series creator Dick Wolf's bid to get the lawsuit dismissed. The judge said viewers might indeed conflate the real attorney, Ravi Batra, with an unsavory lawyer character with a similar name in a November 2003 episode concerning judicial corruption.
Batra applauded the ruling, saying the long-running crime drama known for its ripped-from-the-headlines stories had "recklessly undermined public confidence in the rule of law and the noble judiciary."
Pam Golum, a spokeswoman for Wolf's company, Wolf Films, declined to comment on the lawsuit. A spokesman for NBC Universal, which airs the show and is also named as a defendant, said the network was confident that evidence would ultimately disprove Batra's claim.
"No character in the 'Law & Order' episode at issue depicts Ravi Batra," said the spokesman, Curt King.
In the episode, "Floater," an attorney named "Ravi Patel" bribes a judge. Like Batra, the character is Indian-American and sports a bald head and facial hair.
The episode aired around the same time former state Assemblyman Clarence Norman -- Batra's former law firm associate -- was indicted on charges of pressuring judges to hire favored consultants. Norman was found guilty last year of grand larceny in a plot to shake down a judicial candidate and is serving a two-to-six-year prison term.
Batra was not charged with any crime.
Wolf's lawyers have described any similarities between Batra and the Patel character as "abstract." The attorneys have noted such differences as the fact that the real-life lawyer is based in Manhattan, while the character works in Brooklyn.
But the judge said viewers wouldn't necessarily know about the discrepancies in the details. She said there was "a reasonable likelihood that the ordinary viewer, unacquainted with Batra personally, could understand Patel's corruption to be the truth about Batra."
------
Information from: The New York Times, http://www.nytimes.com
Mar 19 20:09
By GREGG AAMOT
Associated Press Writer
|
ST. PAUL, Minnesota (AP) -- The U.S. ambassador to Laos said Wednesday that he is working with Laotian officials to find three American men who went missing while touring in Laos in August, reportedly at the hands of the Laotian military.
"We have not been successful in finding them at this point, but we are pursuing the issue and working with Laotian officials," Ambassador Ravic R. Huso said during a tour of The International Marketplace, a cluster of Hmong shops in St. Paul.
Last August, the families of Hakit Yang, Conghineng Yang and Trillion Yunhaison, all from St. Paul, reported that the men had gone missing after traveling to Laos to sight-see and pursue business opportunities.
Hmong advocacy groups claimed the men were arrested by Laotian military and security forces, though the government of Laos has denied that allegation.
Huso, appointed by U.S. President George W. Bush eight months ago, traveled to St. Paul to meet with refugees who have made the city one of the largest Hmong enclaves in the United States. As many as 60,000 Hmong, many of whom fled Laos in the aftermath of the Vietnam War, have built lives here while remaining closely tied to their homeland.
Mar 20 00:20
By SUDHIN THANAWALA
Associated Press Writer
|
HONOLULU (AP) -- State lawmakers considering a 10-year moratorium on genetically engineering taro heard arguments from both sides of the emotionally charged issue Wednesday.
Supporters of the moratorium say the taro plant, which is used to make the starchy food poi, is a vital part of Hawaiian culture and should be kept pure, not genetically altered.
"(Taro) is in our beliefs and our culture," Walter Ritte, 63, told the House Agriculture Committee. "It is in us."
Supporters held signs that read, "No GMO taro" and "Save the taro," and carried taro plants as they spoke.
Hanohano Naehu, 31, a taro farmer on Molokai, said biotechnology companies were looking to profit from genetically modified taro.
"This is about greed," he said.
But opponents of the moratorium say Hawaii's taro is in danger from insects and diseases, and genetic modification could produce taro capable of withstanding these threats.
Previous research has involved introducing disease-resistant genes from other plants into the native taro.
"It would be foolish to throw away any potential tool that could help to sustain taro production on Hawaii," said Susan Miyasaka, an agronomist at the University of Hawaii at Manoa.
The bill lawmakers are considering would ban taro genetics research at the university and other institutions.
Miyasaka said disease has contributed to a decline in the number of Hawaiian varieties of taro as well as its yield per acre.
Alan Takemoto, executive director of the Hawaii Farm Bureau, said lawmakers should reject the moratorium but find a way to protect Hawaiian varieties with cultural significance.
"We are unable to support (the moratorium) because it puts a restraint on research and technology that could benefit our farmers," he said.
Other opponents say the moratorium would create the perception that Hawaii was against scientific research and technology, which could keep businesses away and hurt the state's economy.
The House Agriculture Committee heard hours of testimony Wednesday. It is expected to vote on the measure at a later date.
Mar 19 22:57
By RYAN NAKASHIMA
AP Business Writer
|
LOS ANGELES (AP) -- It was in August 2007 when investigator Eric Bremner found evidence in a shredder at Olympic Escrow Inc. he said confirmed borrowers' complaints that they had never signed the mortgage documents that pushed them into a new financial hell.
Bremner found pieces of documents that had been cut to remove signatures and notary seals. Loan applications, escrow agreements and other documents had signatures that had been taped on, he said.
"That validated the statements that the victims had been making over and over again: That they did not recall signing these documents and they did not agree to the terms of the loans they were given," said Bremner, a senior investigator in the real estate fraud unit of the San Bernardino County district attorney's office.
The discovery was the turning point in an investigation that led to Tuesday's closure of seven brokerage and escrow companies in an ongoing campaign against predatory lenders.
A family of accused con artists is suspected of leading an operation that processed thousands of home loans in California during the past several years in a widespread refinancing scam.
The case has brought renewed calls for tighter regulation of the troubled mortgage industry that threatens to take the U.S. economy down with it.
Experts said the fraud occurred in a weak regulatory environment in a business that offered huge financial incentives to brokers willing to cheat.
"There's no regulatory oversight, it's all complaint-based," said Dustin Hobbs, communication director for the California Mortgage Bankers Association. "Like these people found out, until you file a complaint, there's no oversight of these brokers."
Prosecutors called it the most brazen case they had ever seen, and an operation that had slipped past loan officers and regulators in a booming housing market fueled by greed.
"I haven't seen anything this extreme ever before," said Christina Tusan, the California deputy attorney general assigned to the civil case in which the web of companies is being sued for more than $20 million.
Lenders in that booming period were interested in rapid approvals and high volumes and failed to raise questions about suspect deals, said Paul Leonard, California director for the nonprofit Center for Responsible Lending.
"Their levels of due diligence for reviews of their loans coming in from brokerage channels were not particularly rigorous," he said.
The group is accused of targeting unknowing homeowners whose homes had escalated in value by offering dreamlike mortgage refinancing offers, with promises of cash back and lower monthly payments, Bremner said.
Victims later learned they had been locked into high interest rate loans, excessive fees and unfavorable terms. In some cases, the cash back never materialized.
Late Tuesday, the alleged ringleader in the scam, 25-year-old Eric Pony, and his sister, Paulette Pony, 23, turned themselves in to police to face charges including conspiracy, grand theft, forgery and elder abuse. Five other suspects were also arrested. It wasn't immediately known if they had retained an attorney.
The crackdown began with Eric Pony's company, Lifetime Financial Inc., and spread to others after Pony lost his real estate license last September and transferred his operations to other companies with active mortgage broker licenses, authorities said.
Paulette Pony had her commission as a notary revoked last December, after investigators uncovered a misdemeanor forgery conviction in 2003, more than a year before she became a legal notary.
The pair, working with their mother, Wilma Pony, channeled most of their mortgage applications through New Century Mortgage Corp., which has since folded. Wilma Pony has not been charged criminally, but is a defendant in the lawsuit filed Monday by the attorney general.
Bremner said loan documents often ran a cumbersome 300 pages. In many cases, problems were missed amid the rush to earn commissions for quickly approving deals.
"Based on the volume of loans that New Century was doing at the time, it was either a combination of just missing these items or just looking the other way," he said.
Several proposed laws attempting to address the collapse of the industry are pending before the state Legislature.
It includes AB 2880, a bill that would impose a greater fiduciary duty on mortgage brokers to act in the best interests of the borrower, and limit the use of "yield spread premiums," which are incentives paid to brokers to sign borrowers at interest rates that are higher than the rate for which they are qualified.
Other bills include AB 512, which would require documents to be translated into languages like Spanish or Chinese when contracts are negotiated in that language. Many of Lifetime Financial's alleged victims spoke Spanish or Tagalog but the contracts were in English.
"Those bills together represent a fairly comprehensive package of reforms," Leonard said. "They would fix some of the distorted incentives around kickbacks to brokers ... and strengthen the system of accountability for everyone in the mortgage origination process."
For Tracylyn Sharrit, 40, the regulations would be too late. After meeting with Eric Pony, she said she found her signature forged on loan documents and the monthly payments on her three-bedroom, 1,100-square-foot home in San Bernardino jumped from $1,070 to $1,868.
The money promised to her in an equity cash-out has been whittled away on ` fees, and her loan amount ballooned from $167,000 to more than $260,000.
Making ends meet is harder than before for the marketing director of a nonprofit company.
"I took my daughter to the doctor's the other day, and I'm thinking, 'How much is the co-pay?' I've never had to think about that before," she said.
|
[Back to Asian-American Village Home]
|
IMDiversity.com is committed to presenting diverse points of view. However, the viewpoint expressed in this article is the opinion of the author and is not necessarily the viewpoint of the owners or employees at IMD. |
|
