Monday, April 23, 2007

ID Theft Task Force Wants Stronger Laws

The U.S. government plans to establish a national identity theft law enforcement center and create a multiyear public education campaign.
IDG News Service
The U.S. government plans to establish a national identity theft law enforcement center and create a multiyear public education campaign about the dangers of ID theft, as part of a series of recommendations released by a task force Monday.

The President's Identity Theft Task Force, created by George Bush in May 2006, also called for national data protection standards for private companies that collect and sell personal information, as well as a national law requiring companies to tell customers when their personal data has been compromised.

Federal agencies should stop the unnecessary use of Social Security numbers, and the federal government should step up its efforts to educate agencies about data security best practices and regulations in place, the task force recommended.

ID theft is a "personal invasion, done in secret, that can rob innocent men and women of their good names," U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said at a press conference. Gonzales, co-chairman of the task force, called ID theft a national security issue.

The task force recommendations target both private companies and federal agencies. Recent news reports of data breaches at federal agencies are "problematic," Gonzales said.

Congress debated several data breach notification bills but failed to pass them during its last session. Five data breach notification bills have been introduced this year.

The task force report, available at the new Web site IDtheft.gov, includes 31 recommendations.

A comprehensive approach is needed to combat ID theft, said Deborah Platt Majoras, chairwoman of the U.S. Federal Trade Commission and co-chairwoman of the ID theft task force.

"It is a blight on America's privacy and security landscape," she said. "It erodes a critical element of our economy -- trust in a person's good name and credit."

In addition to recommendations targeting federal agencies and private companies, the task force report targets criminals. The report focuses on the "entire life cycle" of ID theft, Majoras said.

The report calls on U.S. attorney's offices to designate a prosecutor who will focus on ID theft, and it recommends tougher laws for ID theft, including those targeting spyware makers and keystroke loggers. The U.S. should also create new sentencing guidelines that make it easier for judges to increase sentences for ID thieves who steal multiple identities, the report said.

Some of the task force recommendations have already been implemented, and others should be implemented within the next year, Gonzales said. The task force in September made several interim recommendations, including the creation of nationally accepted police reports that victims could fill out online, and a change in U.S. law that would require those convicted of such crimes to pay victims for the time used to clear up identity problems.

It`s raining jobs; foreign banks to hire over 50,000 in India

zeenews
New delhi, April 23: British banking giant Barclays' plan to shift thousands of jobs to low-cost India is the latest in a series of such decisions by European and American banks that are expected to hire more than 50,000 professionals in the country over the next three years.

The combined headcount of ABN Amro and UK's Barclays PLC is set to expand by up to 10,000 employees in India following the 91 billion dollar takeover of the Dutch banking major.

Together with Barclays-ABN Amro, about a half a dozen foreign banks such as Citigroup, HSBC and Standard Chartered could hire over 50,0000 employees in India in the next three years. These would be across various operations, including back-end jobs, to be moved from high-cost developed countries.

Seeking to expand their presence in the world's second-fastest growing major economy and benefit from low-cost opportunities in IT enabled back-end operations, foreign banks are increasingly going bullish with their headcount expansion plans in India, an industry observer said.

While announcing their 91-billion dollar cash and stock merger deal, Barclays and ABN Amro today said they would move 10,800 jobs to low-cost locations like India. The deal would also result in net reduction of 12,800 jobs from their combined workforce of 2,17,000 employees.

As a result, sources close to the two firms said, the combined entity could create 8,000-10,000 jobs in India. This would include jobs offshored from other locations and previous hiring plans announced separately by Barclays and ABN Amro.

ABN has about 2,000 people on its payrolls in India. It had said last month it planned to double this number in one year. Barclays, which has close to 1,000 employees in India, also said last month it would move over 200 jobs to India after closing a call centre in the UK.

Besides, the world's largest financial services firm Citigroup, which recently announced a massive reduction of over 17,000 jobs worldwide, is planning to move thousands of jobs to low-cost locations like India.

The Indian payrolls of the US firm, which already employs over 22,000 people in the country, is likely to increase by 5,000-8,000 employees following this restructuring.

Another British banking giant HSBC is also planning to increase India headcount by about 8,000 employees to take its employee strength to 30,000 by next year.

UK-based Standard Chartered Bank also plans to double its over 5,000-strong India headcount in the next three years.

Besides, a number of European banks, such as Dresdner Bank of Allianz Group and Royal Bank of Scotland, which was one of the suitors for ABN Amro, are seeking to expand their presence into India. Their entry would also result in thousands of new jobs being created here.

Besides the usual B-school graduates, banking jobs are being pursued by engineers from institutions like IITs as well in the country.

According to a recent survey conducted by Acnielsen and Org-Marg, investment banking was named in the top five industries preferred by the students of premier engineering colleges of the country, while investment banking giants like Goldman Sachs and Lehman Brothers were named to the top 10 list of most coveted employers.

Religion News in Brief

ap
WASHINGTON - Efforts to remove religion's influence from the public square will fail, in large part because faith plays such a major role in most Americans' lives, the recently appointed Roman Catholic archbishop of Washington said.

Archbishop Donald Wuerl's comments came at the National Catholic Prayer Breakfast on April 13. President Bush was the headline speaker.

Wuerl said the church's moral theology has helped frame debates over the Iraq war, abortion, embryonic stem cell research, physician-assisted suicide and immigration. Religious faith, Wuerl said, continues to play a significant role in both promoting social justice issues as well as "defending all innocent human life."

In his address, Wuerl echoed Pope Benedict XVI's frequent warnings about the threat of secularism.

"The dramatic shift that would substitute a secular vision of life for the traditional, faith-inclusive one disconnects us from our history," Wuerl said. "The assertion that the secular model of society is the only acceptable way of addressing public policy issues causes us to look again at the place of religion and Gospel values in our efforts to build the common good."

Wuerl's predecessor in Washington, Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, led a committee of U.S. bishops that crafted guidelines on the role of Catholics in public life. The guidelines left it to individual bishops to decide whether to withhold Holy Communion from Catholic politicians who take positions in conflict with the church.

The prayer breakfast has not been without controversy. A liberal Catholic group, Catholics United for the Common Good, called it a partisan event organized by a board of directors supportive of Republicans.

http://www.adw.org/

'Stagnant' church giving threatens programs

NEW YORK (AP) _ Donations to 65 Christian denominations rose slightly in 2005, but not enough to outpace inflation, while giving to church relief efforts was flat, according to a report by the National Council of Churches USA.

More than $34 billion in total church giving was reported to the denominations, a 2.7 percent increase from the previous year, according to findings published last month in the Yearbook of American & Canadian Churches.

Individual congregants gave an average of $713 to their churches in 2005. Some donors, meanwhile, are contributing to parishes with declining memberships, causing even greater financial challenges, the yearbook said.

Benevolence giving _ or contributions to church programs such as relief efforts and feeding or housing the homeless _ remained flat at 15 percent.

"This level of giving for benevolence will be the source of sober reflection," the report concludes. The giving trends could lead to "less support for church-sponsored day care, fewer soup-kitchen meals, less emergency help to persons with medical problems, or reduced transportation to the elderly."

http://www.ncccusa.org/

Growing Pentecostal denomination elects new leader

MEMPHIS, Tenn. (AP) _ Bishop Charles E. Blake, an influential Southern California pastor, has been named presiding bishop of the Church of God in Christ Inc., the world's largest predominantly black Pentecostal denomination.

Blake, pastor of West Angeles Church of God in Christ in Los Angeles, replaces Presiding Bishop G.E. Patterson, who died in March at 67 of heart failure. The Memphis-based church body claims 6.5 million members worldwide, mostly in the United States.

Blake's church has a history of involvement in the local community and in global outreach programs, and he said he planned to continue that tradition.

"In addition to pursuing the basic principles of service to God and our ministry to the community in spiritual areas, my focus has always been on community development and global involvement," Blake said after his appointment, which came at the church's general assembly this month. "I certainly intend both to preserve those things and to do them on a higher level now, if we can."

The church Blake has led since 1969 is the denomination's largest congregation, with a membership of about 24,000. It has long been a key stop for California's Democratic politicians.

Blake also is founder and chief executive of Save Africa's Children, an organization that supports programs for orphans in countries throughout Africa. Actor Denzel Washington and singer Kanye West have been among its more prominent supporters.

http://www.cogic.com/

St. Paul schools sued over religious flier ban

ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP) _ An evangelical Christian group is suing the city's public school district in a bid to overturn its ban on religious fliers, contending that the First Amendment gives it the same right as Boy Scout troops and Little League teams that distribute recruitment material at schools.

While administrators acknowledge the district's ban on materials of a sectarian nature, a school lawyer said the district's opposition to the St. Paul Area Evangelicals' flier is that it asks parents to take their children out of class each week.

The evangelical group runs Crossroads Ministries, which for 50 years has offered Bible classes to students. It relies on a Minnesota law that allows parents to release their children from school up to three hours a week for religious education. Some schools in the district had allowed distribution in past years, according to the lawsuit, but the district now restricts access completely.

Jordan Lorence, an attorney for the Alliance Defense Fund, an Arizona-based Christian civil rights group representing the churches, said if the district has a problem allowing students to use in-school time for religious education, it should take up the issue with the state Legislature.

Jeff Lalla, attorney for the school district, said groups like the Boy Scouts or sports leagues are allowed to advertise on school grounds because their programs aren't held during school hours. Just because state law allows students to miss school for religious instruction programs, "that doesn't mean we have to advertise that they're available," Lalla said.

Jesuits closing Boston church that serves many gays

BOSTON (AP) _ A Roman Catholic religious order is closing a Boston church with a largely gay congregation, citing cost pressures.

The Jesuit Urban Center in the city's South End will close at the end of July, said the Rev. Thomas Regan, the superior of the New England Jesuits.

The sexual orientation of many in the congregation did not play a role in the decision, and there was no pressure from the Vatican or the Boston Archdiocese to shutter the church, Regan said.

The order has become financially reliant on salaries paid to members who teach at Boston College, College of the Holy Cross, and Fairfield University _ all Jesuit schools _ but as they retire or die, the order is being forced to cut back on its activities, he said.

About one-third of the order's 342 priests in New England are retired.

"A lot of people are still in the church because of the Jesuits," Regan said. "We do not want to abandon these people. ... There's a spirit among this group, and I think that's going to be lost, and that's very sad."

The Jesuit Urban Center costs the order about $350,000 a year to support, and its only significant remaining activity is a weekly Mass attended by 150 to 200 people who generate weekly collections of about $2,400, Regan said. The building, the Church of the Immaculate Conception, was dedicated in 1861 and needs $4 million to $8 million in renovations, he said.

Jesuits will continue to welcome gays and lesbians to worship at St. Ignatius of Loyola, a parish they oversee adjacent to Boston College, Regan said.

http://www.jesuit.org/

A service of the Associated Press(AP)

BofA Agrees to Acquire LaSalle Bank

forbes

Bank of America Corp. confirmed Monday it will purchase LaSalle Bank Corp. from ABN Amro North America Holding Co. for $21 billion.

The deal initially was announced by ABN Amro (nyse: ABN - news - people ) when the Dutch bank agreed to sell itself to Barclays (nyse: BCS - news - people ) for nearly $91.2 billion. The net cost to Charlotte-based Bank of America (nyse: BAC - news - people ) will be $16 billion after a return of $5 billion in excess capital.

Bank of America said it expects the deal to immediately enhance its earnings per share and added that it expects around $800 million in after-tax cost savings. Restructuring costs also are expected to be around $800 million, the bank said.

LaSalle is a top-20 U.S. bank holding company, with $113 billion total assets.

The combination of LaSalle and Bank of America creates a leading banking franchise in metropolitan Chicago, the No. 3 banking market in the United States, and in Michigan.

In the last four years, Bank of America has grown its retail presence in Chicago from a single financial center to 56 locations. Once combined with LaSalle's 141 Chicago area offices, Bank of America will have more than 14 percent of the deposit market share in metropolitan Chicago.

The purchase will significantly deepen Bank of America's Chicago presence and add LaSalle's 17,000 commercial banking clients, 1.4 million retail customers, 411 banking centers and 1,500 ATMs in the Chicago area, Michigan and Indiana.

It also will mark Bank of America's retail branch entry in Michigan, where it will have 264 offices and be the largest bank with a 23 percent deposit market share.

Bank of America also will acquire LaSalle's six offices in Indiana.

Iraqi premier orders work halted on wall around Sunni area

He says barrier in Baghdad's Sunni area is a reminder of 'other walls'
AP

BAGHDAD — The U.S. ambassador to Iraq said today that the American military will "respect the wishes" of the Iraqi government regarding a barrier being built around a Sunni enclave in Baghdad, but he stopped short of saying construction would stop.

Meanwhile, bombings around Iraq killed at least 27 people and wounded nearly 60, authorities said.

Ambassador Ryan Crocker spoke at a news conference a day after Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki said he had ordered the building of the barrier in Azamiyah to stop after the project drew strong criticism from residents and Sunni leaders.

"Obviously we will respect the wishes of the government and the prime minister," Crocker said at a news conference. "I'm not sure where we are right now concerning our discussions on how to move forward on this particular issue."

But he defended the principle behind the Azamiyah barrier, saying it was aimed at protecting the community, not segregating it.

Crocker, who replaced Zalmay Khalilzad as ambassador, said "these months ahead are going to be critical" and he urged Iraqi legislators to pass key legislation that it is hoped will help bring minority Sunnis into the political process.

He said the security plan was important but its main purpose was to "buy time for what ultimately has to be a set of political understandings among Iraqis.

"Clearly the road is going to be a tough one," he said. "It's going to be very, very difficult, but I certainly believe success is possible otherwise I wouldn't be standing here."

As he spoke, some 2,000 of Iraqis took to the streets in the area in northern Baghdad to protest the wall's construction, which residents have complained would isolate them from the rest of the city.

"The people of Azamiyah reject turning Baghdad into a new Green Zone," the protesters shouted, referring to the area in Baghdad that houses the Iraqi government and the U.S. and British embassies, and is fortified by tall concrete walls and checkpoints to protect it from the capital's frequent suicide car bombings, and other attacks.

Crocker said the intention of the barrier in Azamiyah as well as those constructed around markets in the capital is "to try and identify where the fault lines are and where avenues of attack lie and set up the barriers literally to prevent those attacks."

"It is in no one's intention or thinking that this is going to be a permanent state of affairs," he added.

Al-Maliki said he has ordered a halt to the U.S. military construction of the barrier Sunday in Cairo, Egypt, as he began a regional tour to shore up support from mostly Sunni Arab nations for his Shiite-dominated government.

The U.S. military announced last week that it was building a three-mile long and 12-foot tall concrete wall in Azamiyah, a Sunni stronghold whose residents have often been the victims of retaliatory mortar attacks by Shiite militants following bombings usually blamed on Sunni insurgents.

U.S. and Iraqi officials defended plans for the barrier as an effort to protect the neighborhood, but residents and Sunni leaders complained it was a form of discrimination that would isolate the community.

U.S. military spokesman Lt. Col. Christopher Garver declined to comment on whether construction of the wall would stop, saying only that all security measures were constantly under discussion.

"We will coordinate with the Iraqi government and Iraqi commanders in order to establish effective, appropriate security measures," he said.

The Sunni Iraqi Islamic Party had denounced the wall's construction earlier Sunday.

"Isolating parts of Baghdad with barbed wire and concrete barriers will inflict social and economic damage and it will lead to more sectarian tension," it said. "This measure will harm the residents and it will have a negative impact on the areas instead of solving the problems."

Aides to al-Sadr, who had been a key al-Maliki backer but has since withdrawn his support, also criticized the barrier as an "unacceptable" move by the United States, saying they feared Shiite areas in Baghdad like Sadr City would be next.

On Monday, three suicide bombers in different parts of Iraq killed at least 22 people and wounded more than 50, police and politicians said.

Separately, a parked car bomb also exploded outside the Iranian Embassy in Baghdad, killing one civilian, and a drive-by shooting wounded two guards at Tunisia's Embassy in the capital, police said.

One of the attacks occurred near the northern city of Mosul when a suicide attacker detonated his car in front of an office of the Kurdistan Democratic Party of Massoud Barzani, leader of the autonomous Kurdish region in Iraq, an official with the group said.

At least 10 people were killed and 20 wounded in the attack in Tal Uskuf, nine miles north of Mosul, said Abdul-Ghani Ali, a KDP official.

A suicide car bomber also struck a police station in Baqouba, 35 miles northeast of Baghdad, killing at least 10 people and wounding 23, police said.

In central Baghdad, a bomber wearing an explosives belt blew himself up in an Iraqi restaurant in the neighborhood of Karradah Mariam, killing at least seven people and wounding 16, police said.

The attack occurred at about 11 a.m. less than 100 yards outside the heavily fortified Green Zone, home to the U.S. and British embassies and the Iraqi government's headquarters. At the time, Crocker was giving a news conference in the Green Zone.

Gunmen kill 23 Iraqi religious sect members

ny daily

BAGHDAD - Gunmen shot and killed 23 members of an ancient Christian religious sect yesterday after stopping their bus and separating them from followers of other faiths, police said.

The gunman checked identifications and removed Christians from the bus before driving with the Yazidis to eastern Mosul, where they were executed, Police Brig. Mohammed al-Wagga said.

Yazidi is a primarily Kurdish sect that worships an angel figure considered to be the Devil by some Muslims and Christians.

Abdul-Karim Khalaf, a police spokesman for Ninevah Province, said the killings were in response to the stoning two weeks ago of a Yazidi woman. She ran off with a Muslim but was dragged home to Bashika by her family and stoned to death, Khalaf said.

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, meanwhile, refuted widespread reports of "a civil or sectarian war" yesterday.

He also said he would halt construction of a U.S. military-proposed barrier that would have separated a Sunni enclave from surrounding Shiites in Baghdad.

In all, at least 72 people were killed or found dead in Iraq yesterday, including 24 bullet-riddled bodies.

The U.S. military also reported the deaths of three soldiers - two in attacks in Baghdad on Saturday and a third from an unidentified noncombat cause.