Exec’s pension ‘unjustifiable’
Amid growing public and political clamor, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said Friday that he would seek ways to block a nearly $1-million-a-year pension awarded to a banking executive whose stewardship plunged one of the country’s biggest financial institutions into ruin.
Former Royal Bank of Scotland chief Fred Goodwin has insisted that the generous retirement package provided by the company is rightfully his. He rebuffed calls to forgo the money, even though the bank has been partially nationalized and this week posted the biggest annual corporate loss in British history, $34 billion in 2008.
Brown said the government was looking for legal means of preventing Goodwin from receiving the pension, which will be paid in large part by taxpayers because of the nationalization, calling the amount “unjustifiable.”
“When people make mistakes and when banks fail the public, then the people who make the mistakes cannot and should not run off with entitlements and with additional discretionary payments,” Brown told the British Broadcasting Corp. “This is unjustifiable, unacceptable, and we’re going to clean up the banks so that this doesn’t happen again.”
Bloomingdale, Ill.
Man dies after setting self on fire
Police in a Chicago suburb say a Wal-Mart employee has died after setting himself on fire outside the store where he worked.
Police watch commander Randy Sater said 58-year-old Larry Graziano of Carol Stream set himself ablaze late Thursday outside the store in Bloomingdale.
Sater said Graziano told police he “couldn’t take it anymore.”
Police say bystanders tried to help, but Graziano fought them off.
Wal-Mart spokesman Dan Fogleman said Graziano had been with the company for seven years and that he had no reported personnel issues.
Washington
Court allows eavesdropping suit
A federal appeals court on Friday allowed a lawsuit alleging that the U.S. illegally eavesdropped on two American attorneys and an Islamic charity in Oregon to proceed despite a last-minute plea from the Obama administration to delay the case.
The order, by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit in San Francisco, means that U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker can grant the plaintiff’s lawyers access to top secret documents under secure conditions and allow them to litigate their case against the administration.
The Justice Department had argued that the lawsuit jeopardized national security.
The lawsuit, filed by the now-defunct Al Haramain Islamic Foundation chapter in Oregon, accuses the government of violating the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which requires domestic surveillance to be authorized by a secret court.