Seismic change

June 10, 2015 - Daily News Briefing

Nepal’s deadly earthquake may have shifted the political ground after years of deadlock.

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Dennis Hastert appeared in court Tuesday for the first time since he was indicted, pleading not guilty to charges that he violated banking rules and lied to the FBI in a scheme to pay $3.5 million in hush money to conceal misconduct from his days as a high school teacher. Defense attorney Thomas C. Green entered the pleas on behalf of the former House speaker, who looked visibly ill-at-ease during the 20-minute hearing. He stood motionless before the judge's bench, his shoulders hunched, his hands folded and his eyes cast downward to the floor.

HSBC Holdings, Europe's largest bank by market value, will cut up to 50,000 jobs globally to reduce costs and shift its center of gravity further toward the fast-growing Asian economies where it started operations 150 years ago. The bank, which is based in London and has a value of around $184 billion, said Tuesday it is "undertaking a significant reshaping of its business portfolio" and "redeploying resources to capture expected future growth opportunities."

The Irish government should heed the shifting of opinion demonstrated by the people's backing of gay marriage, by easing restrictions on abortion, the head of Amnesty International said on Tuesday. Ireland voted to allow gay marriage last month in a referendum that signaled a major change in attitudes in what was once a strongly Catholic and socially conservative society. But its abortion laws remain among the most restrictive in the world and a complete ban was only lifted in 2013 when terminations were allowed if the mother's life is in danger.

President Obama says he has no alternate plan if the Supreme Court invalidates a key benefit of his health-care law and he places the burden on the Republican-controlled Congress to fix the law if the high court wipes out insurance for millions of Americans. Voicing confidence he will prevail before the court, Obama insisted Monday that the health-care law is working and that the justices "will play it straight" and leave the law intact. Should he lose, he added: "Congress could fix this whole thing with a one-sentence provision." Obama's assessment of the case against the five-year-old Affordable Care Act came as the high court prepares to announce a decision sometime later this month that could wipe out health insurance for millions of people.

Emergency services stopped a fuel depot fire outside Kiev from spreading on Tuesday, officials said, but the fate of three firemen missing after the blaze triggered a powerful explosion was unknown. The fire burned overnight and by morning had spread to at least 16 tanks, most of them storing petrol. That sent a huge pall of black smoke over the area around the depot near Vasylkiv, 19 miles from Kiev. The depot's owners said they suspected arson.

Eritrea's government is responsible for systematic and widespread human rights violations and keeps its people in a state of fear through a "pervasive control system," a United Nations commission of inquiry said Monday. The authoritarian northeast African country is one of the major origins of refugees who have been trying to cross the Mediterranean Sea to Europe. The three-member commission of inquiry on its human rights record was set up by the UN Human Rights Council a year ago. Its report, released in Geneva, said that "information gathered through the pervasive control system is used in absolute arbitrariness to keep the population in a state of permanent anxiety." It highlighted the plight of people fleeing a "seemingly hopeless situation they feel powerless to change" and said that Eritrean refugees need international protection.

It was a clear spring day in 1937 when Amelia Earhart, ready to make history by flying around the world, brought her personal photographer to a small Southern California airport to document the journey's beginning. Al Bresnik took dozens of still photos, including a few that have likely been seen by millions. His brother John, who tagged along, made a very dark, grainy 3.5-minute home movie almost nobody saw — until now. The film, "Amelia Earhart's Last Photo Shoot," is being released this month by The Paragon Agency publishing house, along with an 80-page book of the same name that documents a journey that ended tragically short of the finish line when Earhart's plane vanished somewhere over the Pacific Ocean.

A government plan to wipe out loans for many of the students who attended the now-disgraced for-profit Corinthian Colleges raises serious questions about whether the White House or Congress should have done more to prevent the debacle. Education Secretary Arne Duncan on Monday announced that the government would make it easier for former Corinthian students to erase their debt. About $3.6 billion in federal loans has been given to these students since 2010. That potentially puts the taxpayer on the hook for that amount, although officials say it's unlikely that every loan will qualify for relief.

“The object of the Monitor is to injure no man, but to bless all mankind.” – Mary Baker Eddy

The Daily News Briefing is published Monday through Friday by The Christian Science Publishing Society in Boston, Massachusetts.

To send a comment to the Editor, email editor@csmonitor.com.

“The object of the Monitor is to injure no man, but to bless all mankind.” – Mary Baker Eddy

The Daily News Briefing is published Monday through Friday by The Christian Science Publishing Society in Boston, Massachusetts.

To send a comment to the Editor, email editor@csmonitor.com.

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