| | January 09, 2012 | | TENSE As if relations between the U.S. and Iran could get worse, Iran announced Monday that it is sentencing American Amir Mirzaei Hekmati to death for espionage. Separately, diplomats confirmed reports that Iran had begun uranium enrichment in an underground bunker. Hekmati, a former U.S. Marine, was arrested while visiting his grandmother in Iran this August. After leaving the Marines in 2005, he ran his own linguistics company, working for the military and civilian businesses. Iran claims he was being sent by the CIA to deliver information to Iran that would later be used to link them to terrorist activities. Hekmati's family denies the charges. INSURGENT A new poll out of New Hampshire, which holds its Republican primary on Tuesday, shows Mitt Romney with a huge lead. But Jon Huntsman’s strategy of pouring everything into the state may finally be paying off—two days out, he scored his best debate performance ever and zoomed to third place in the polls. Is it enough to save his campaign? The Daily Beast’s Patricia Murphy reports. NEGATIVE Mitt Romney may have New Hampshire in the bag, but a Newt Gingrich group is waiting for him in South Carolina with a $5 million ad attacking Romney as a predatory capitalist. Wealthy casino owner Sheldon Adelson gave the money to a Gingrich-supporting PAC for an ad composed partly of emotional interviews with people who lost jobs at companies Bain bought. Talking Points Memo calls the preview a “swift-boat-style” ad. Gingrich is getting help from other third parties as well, with Joseph McQuaid, the publisher of New Hampshire's Union Leader ripping into Romney in a front-age editorial, and Tea Party figure Carl Paladino telling Ron Paul to “get on the mother-ship” and urge voters to support Gingrich. DOWNWARD Uh oh. The reports you’ve heard about Wall Street’s dismal year are about to get real—for Wall Street workers, that is. As fourth-quarter results come in and banks decide on final bonuses for the past year, The Wall Street Journal reports that compensation is likely to fall to its lowest level since the 2008 financial crisis. Goldman Sachs will see 2010 paychecks cut in half, while fixed-income trading businesses may get smaller by 60 percent. Morgan Stanley will reportedly cut bonuses by 40 percent. Goldman employees received about $431,000 on average in 2010—that number will fall to $385,000 in 2011. (In 2007, employees received an average of $661,000 each.) The pay worries were only increased in the last months with stocks rising and falling and anxiety over global markets. WAR ON DRUGS It seems to have gone better than Fast and Furious. Documents disclosed by the Mexican Foreign Ministry— in a case against a Colombian cocaine supplier, Harold Mauricio Poveda-Ortega, also known as “The Rabbit”—reveal an elaborate operation by the U.S Drug Enforcement Administration. U.S. agents posed as money launderers, sometimes moving millions of dollars in drug money around the world, in an effort to gain the trust of Ortega's cartel. The document describes one part of the operation in which DEA agents in Texas posed as pilots and transported cocaine around the world for $1,000 per kilo. At another point, undercover Ecuadorean agents helped transport 330 kilos of cocaine from Ecuador to Spain, where it was seized. | |
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