Yesterday, former CIA Director David Petraeus was handed two years of probation and a $100,000 fine after agreeing to a plea deal that ends in no jail time for leaking classified information to Paula Broadwell, his biographer and lover.
“I now look forward to moving on with the next phase of my life and continuing to serve our great nation as a private citizen,” Petraeus said outside the federal courthouse in Charlotte, North Carolina on Thursday.
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Baltimore’s under-fire criminal justice system risked antagonising its already seething local community on Wednesday by suspending legal procedures and imposing bail bonds of up to half a million dollars on the city’s most impoverished residents.
In one especially stark case, a 19-year-old charged with eight offences allegedly committed on Saturday, including riot, theft and disorderly conduct, was set a bail of $500,000. Court records show the defendant, a black man, was sent to jail after failing to produce the funds.
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Plans by the Conservatives and Labour for a fresh round of deficit reduction after the general election are being strongly attacked by one of the world’s leading economists who warns that renewed austerity will hold back a still-incomplete recovery.
Paul Krugman, a Nobel prize-winning US economist, challenges David Cameron’s claim to have rescued the economy by stressing that growth only resumed halfway through the 2010-15 parliament once the coalition abandoned its plan to repair the public finances within five years.
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Federal prosecutors on Monday urged a judge to impose a “severe” sentence on a former CIA officer convicted of giving classified information to a New York Times reporter, arguing that the officer’s case was unique and that a stiff penalty would dissuade others with access to government secrets from giving them away.
Prosecutors did not recommend a prison term for Jeffrey Sterling, 47, but they said they thought the probation office had correctly calculated the range in the federal sentencing guidelines as 19 years 7 months on the low end and 24 years 5 months on the high end. Sterling was convicted of nine criminal counts in January after jurors determined unanimously that he gave a Times reporter classified information about a secret operation to put faulty nuclear plans in the hands of Iranian officials.
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Angela Merkel’s government has been accused of lying to the country’s parliament after it was alleged that it knew German spies were conducting economic espionage for the NSA. Revelations show that some spooks were even spying on German companies.
Germany’s interior minister, Thomas de Maiziere, who is a close ally of Chancellor Merkel denied on Wednesday that he had lied to parliament about the German Intelligence Agency (BND) cooperating with the National Security Agency (NSA). He said that the allegations are untrue and he could disprove the claims through documents, which need to remain secret.
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