Monday, January 31, 2005

Metlife announced on 01/31/05 that they were going to acquire Travelers Life and Annuity from Citigroup. Travelers Life and Annuity is an insurance underwriter. MetLife is a large life insurance and annuities underwriter. MetLife will have to borrow a lot of money to pay for the company, so rating agencies like S&P warn that the AA credit rating of MetLife might be lowered. This would cause the interest rates at which all of MetLife’s debt must be repaid to increase.

Citigroup committed to continue distributing Travelers life insurance and annuities through its Smith Barney stock brokers, Primerica agents, and Citibank branches.

Citigroup was previously known as Travelers Insurance before it bought Citicorp. First the Property and Casualty business of Travelers was spun off, and now the life insurance division has been sold off. This is primarily because insurance underwriters get a lower price to earnings multiple from the stock market because of the cycles and uncertainty associated with the insurance business. Also, having an insurance underwriter and a bank together does not usually create “cross-sell” opportunities, because consumers and businesses almost always buy life insurance and annuities through brokers who have a duty to give them other options. Citigroup will continue to sell insurance through its brokers as before.

Friday, August 31, 2007

Finland’s National Bureau of Investigation, a division of Finland’s national police, has ten suspects currently, in its recent investigation into alleged dog fighting in the south of the country.

All the suspects are male Finns residing in southern Finland. The new developments are the result of an investigation into four to six alleged dog fights. Dog fighting is a breach of animal cruelty laws in Finland, and the case will be considered for prosecution in October. They are being investigated under suspicion of breaching the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act.

Chief Inspector Olli Töyräs of the Keskusrikospoliisin told reporters, “I would not like to speculate on the motives for the arranging of these dog fights. At least thus far there has been no evidence of illegal gambling on the outcome of fights. There also does not seem to be any large-scale organisation behind the incidents or connections with organised crime groupings. It would appear to be the pastime of a group of individuals.” Despite this, the group is known to have links throughout Scandinavia, as well as possible links to Russia.

He added that about a dozen pit bulls from America were involved in the incidents.

Key evidence includes video footage and testimony from veterinary surgeons, who were present when police raided several locations suspected to be involved. “Statements by veterinary surgeons are a significant part of the investigation. They play the same role here as forensic pathologists would in a normal violent crime investigation,” Inspector Töyräs said.

The investigation was begun as a result of an investigation into dog fighting in the United Kingdom by the state-run British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC). A BBC journalist teamed up with a man with military experience to infiltrate a notorious dog fighting ring from Ulster, Ireland, known as The Farmer Boys. This uncovered links to a group involved in comparable activity in Finland. The documentary, which is part of the Panorama series, was broadcast in Finland yesterday by YLE.

The BBC had contacted Finland regarding it’s discoveries in April. The BBC itself had begun it’s investigation after Gerard Cavlan, a football player from Northern Ireland, was convicted on charges related to dog fighting.

The programme included graphic scenes of a dog fight in Finland, filmed using hidden cameras. The show’s team also purchased a pit bull from a dealer in Finland with false documents showing it to be another breed (pit bulls are illegal in Britain) and successfully transported it back without detection via Germany and Ireland, taking a ferry into England from Northern Ireland.

The dog breeder is a member of SATHY, an organisation which describes itself as “a Finnish club devoted to dog breeds not recognized by FCI related associations (such as the Finnish Kennel Club, and some others). [The] Most important breeds for us are the American Bulldog, American Pit Bull Terrier, Toy Fox Terrier, American Hairless Terrier and Olde English Bulldog.”

SATHY has issued a statement via their website to the affect that they felt the programme was misleading, and that Finnish dog breeders have initiated legal proceedings against the British journalist responsible for the programme. One of the dog breeders shown during the programme denied any criminal activity when approached by the Finnish Helsingin Sanomat news service.

Privacy laws in Finland required the faces of those believed to be involved to be pixelated during the Finnish version of the broadcast, although this was not mirrored in the UK screening – which, in an unprecedented move, coincided exactly with the showing in Finland. The show was widely discussed on the internet, with large volumes of material requiring deleted by site administrators as breaching Finnish privacy legislation.

The investigation is the only one ever conducted into dog fighting in Finland. Töyräs explained the problem to journalists: ”We have only had vague unconnected hints of this sort of activity in the past, and on the basis of these it was not possible to mount an earlier investigation.”

Monday, June 14, 2021

Arthur Oliver Kostendt, a candidate running in the mayoral election of the US city of Cleveland, Ohio set to take place November 2, discussed his campaign and policies with Wikinews this spring.

According to Cleveland Scene, 29-year-old Kostendt is a member of the Cuyahoga County, Ohio Republican Party but has referred to his campaign as “casual”. According to his web site’s personal biography, he was a cadet for the Army Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC), scout platoon leader for the 2nd Squadron of the 107th Cavalry Regiment of the Ohio Army National Guard and logistics officer for the 1st Battalion of the 145th Armored Regiment. He served in Kuwait, Iraq, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia and assisted coalition force detachments in Southeast Asia.

Kostendt is a graduate of the University of Notre Dame and summa cum laude graduate of Cleveland State University. He writes he uses an apostrophe to abbreviate his middle name as “Arthur O’Kostendt” instead of the customary period after the O to emphasise his Irish heritage.

A poll published May 5 by Baldwin Wallace University, which does not feature Mr Kostendt, has Dennis Kucinich and Basheer Jones leading in the mayoral race by 17.8 and 13.3 points, respectively, with a margin of error of up to five per cent either way. 48% of those surveyed were undecided. Incumbent mayor Frank G. Jackson, who won the 2017 Cleveland mayoral election with 59% of the vote, is eligible for a fifth term but announced on May 6 he would retire.

Wednesday, February 2, 2005

Eben Moglen, Columbia University Law Professor, will head the newSoftware Freedom Law Center (SFLC). An initial 4 million dollars has been provided by Open Source Development Labs (OSDL) to fund the project.

The law center will provide free legal service for open source projects and developers. In 2004 OSDL established a separate $10 million Linux Legal Defense Fund providing legal support for Linus Torvalds, Linux kernel creator and end user companies subjected to Linux-related litigation by the SCO Group. The new law center will not be affiliated with the OSDL.

“This is about taking care of the goose that laid the golden egg and not letting wolves come in the middle of the night and steal it away,” Moglen said during a press conference. “This is a legal firm not involved so much in litigating and defending as it will be for counseling and advising and nurturing non-profits and to prevent millions of dollars in litigation.”

Moglen will serve as chairman and director-counsel of the non-profit organization. Also on board as directors are: Lawrence Lessig, law professor at Stanford Law School; Daniel Weitzner, director of the World Wide Web Consortium‘s technology and society activities; and Diane Peters, general counsel at the OSDL. Daniel Ravicher, executive director of the Public Patent Foundation, will help manage as legal director.

Moglen, one of the world.s leading experts on copyright law as applied to software, will run the new Law Center from its headquarters in New York City. The Law Center will initially have two full-time intellectual property attorneys on staff and expects to expand to four attorneys later this year. Initial clients for the Law Center include the Free Software Foundation and the Samba Project.

Other services provided by the SFLC include: asset stewardship, to avoid intellectual property claim conflict; license review and compatibility analysis; legal consulting and lawyer training.