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discocrisco01's JournalSupreme Court won't hear New York City rent case
Source: Reuters
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Supreme Court on Monday refused to hear a constitutional challenge to a New York City rent stabilization law and regulations that control rent increases and evictions for nearly 1 million apartments.
The justices turned down an appeal by a couple, James and Jeanne Harmon, who own and live in a small brownstone building in Manhattan. They claimed three tenants in their building pay government-set rents at 59 percent below market value.
The couple sued in 2008, claiming the rent stabilization law violated their constitutional rights by taking their property without just compensation. They also claimed the law violated the Due Process Clause, the Equal Protection Clause and the Contracts Clause of the U.S. Constitution.
A federal judge dismissed the lawsuit. The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, in a six-page ruling by summary order, agreed and rejected the various arguments by the Harmons on the grounds they were without merit.
Read more: http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/sns-rt-us-usa-newyork-rentbre83m0v6-20120423,0,5219888.story
Phone left in restroom triggers Delta bomb scare
Source: Associated Press
UBLIN - A Delta Air Lines flight made an emergency landing Monday in Dublin because of a suspicious object on board, but airport authorities and police said it was a false alarm.
Irish Aviation Authority spokeswoman Lilian Cassin said the pilot requested an emergency landing "because of a suspicious device on board."
Ireland's national police force, the Garda Siochana, said officers searched the aircraft, but found no bomb and made no arrests.
Delta spokesman Anthony Black said the Boeing 767 aircraft traveling from Istanbul, Turkey, to New York's John F. Kennedy Airport had 208 passengers and 11 crew members. He said the aircraft was refueled to continue its journey later Monday.
Read more: http://www.heraldtribune.com/article/20120416/API/1204160763
Death Row Inmate’s Best Lawyer Was Himself
Source: New York Times
WASHINGTON — Albert Holland Jr., a death row inmate in Florida, has no legal training and seems to be suffering from a mental illness — “perhaps a disorder involving paranoia or delusional thoughts,” a federal judge wrote recently.
But he turns out to be a pretty good lawyer. Two years ago, in allowing Mr. Holland a fresh chance to make his case after his court-appointed lawyer blew a crucial deadline, the Supreme Court praised Mr. Holland’s legal acumen. Indeed, Justice Stephen G. Breyer wrote, Mr. Holland had had a better understanding of the complicated time limits for challenging death sentences in federal court than his lawyer had.
Mr. Holland made good use of the opportunity the Supreme Court gave him. A couple of weeks ago, he won a decision granting him a new trial. In the process, he opened a window on the astoundingly spotty quality of court-appointed counsel in capital case
Read more at http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/17/us/inmates-ordeal-shows-vagaries-of-capital-cases.html?ref=us
World Economy In Meltdown
Source: Financial Times
The world economy “remains on life support” from central banks and has deteriorated since last autumn, the latest Brookings Institution-Financial Times tracking index shows, despite some recent signs of stabilisation.
Economic weakness extends across the Group of 20 leading economies, according to the TIGER (Tracking Indices for the Global Economic Recovery) index, but advanced economies have deteriorated more than developing countries.
The index provides support for the message Christine Lagarde, managing director of the International Monetary Fund, sent last week that although there has been some improvement since the turn of the year, “the risks remain high, the situation fragile”.
Although financial markets recovered significantly in the first quarter of the year as investors welcomed the European Central Bank’s massive injection of liquidity into the eurozone’s banks, the outlook for growth and jobs has become more precarious almost everywhere except in the US
Professor Eswar Prasad of the Brookings Institution said: “The global economic recovery is still sputtering due to a lack of robust demand, policy tools that are stretched to their limits and unable to muster much traction, and enormous risks posed by weak financial systems and political uncertainty.”
The TIGER index combines measures of real economic activity, financial variables and indicators of confidence according to the degree to which they are all moving up or down at the same time. Using sophisticated statistical methods it can capture the co-movements of data which are measured on a very different basis and across many countries.
The real economy component of the index has been hard hit as growth prospects in Europe, already fragile after the 2011 crisis, have been further undermined by brutal austerity plans in many countries. “This is stifling growth, worsening debt to GDP ratios in the short run, and generating an unsustainable political situation at the domestic and pan-European levels,” Prof Prasad said.
The US recovery, by contrast has become more robust although it remains vulnerable to shocks and its growth remains modest.
Read more at (http://bit.ly/HBfwYJ)
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