Ex-Enron CEO seeking early release from prison

Jailed Enron Ex CEO Seeks Early Release

Former Enron Corp. CEO Jeffrey Skilling and his attorney are in talks with prosecutors to shorten his 24-year jail sentence for his role in the massive fraud that led to the company's collapse.

Skilling, 59, oversaw the energy and commodities trading firm before it declared bankruptcy in December 2001. He was convicted in 2006 on 19 counts of insider trading, lying to auditors, securities fraud and conspiracy.

Read more: 7 Notorious Insider Trading Scandals

The former executive has served over six years of his sentence.

Before the bankruptcy of WorldCom in 2002, Enron's bankruptcy was the largest in U.S. history.

Skilling's attorney, Daniel Petrocelli, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

In 2009, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit ordered that Skilling be re-sentenced, and that his sentencing guideline range should be reduced.

Earlier this week, the Justice Department issued a notice to victims of Enron's fraud, including former Enron employees and stockholders, saying that it was "considering entering into a sentencing agreement" with Skilling, as first reported by Reuters.

The notice stated that they had until April 17 to submit objections.

Sherri Saunders, 65, a former Enron employee of 24 years before she was laid off in 2001, expressed dismay at the possibility of a shortened sentence.

"I think it's disgusting," she said. "I think he should do his whole sentence. He harmed a lot of people including me and I think he should serve the full term."

Saunders lost almost $1 million in retirement savings, ultimately selling the last shares of her company stock at around 50 cents a share. Saunders continues working for a hospital in Houston while her husband, 82, is retired.

"We're just now getting to the point where we have our bills paid off," she said. "We're doing okay now, but our retirement fund is very, very low."

Saunders said she will "probably never retire."

"I have a lot of friends in the same boat. A lot of us lost that jobs that day," she said referring to Enron's collapse.

A spokesman for the Justice Department told ABC News, "The department's goal is, and has always been, to ensure that Mr. Skilling be appropriately punished for his crimes, and that victims finally receive the restitution they deserve."

Skilling is being held at a prison in Littleton, Colo.

Johnnie Nelson, a former Enron pipeline worker from Bloomfield, N.M., lost over $300,000 in retirement savings in Enron stock. He said he's not surprised at the possibility of early release, but he would be disappointed if it happens.

"He will get out and resume his wealthy lifestyle. That's not fair to everyone that lost everything because of him and [Andrew] Fastow," he said of Enron's former chief financial officer.

Nelson said he received two reimbursement checks from the Enron scandal totaling less than $10,000. His wife of 25 years died around the time of the Enron scandal. He said he has been living in his RV for the last six years.

"They send him to a country club with a fence around it and call it jail. That's bulls***," Nelson, 52, said.

Read more: 10 Things We Didn't Learn from the Enron Scandal

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Source: http://news.yahoo.com/jailed-enron-ex-ceo-seeks-163606037.html

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Italy pardons U.S. pilot convicted in CIA rendition case

ROME (Reuters) - Italy's president on Friday pardoned a U.S. Air Force officer convicted of kidnapping an Egyptian Muslim cleric who was taken away for interrogation on a CIA "rendition" flight.

Such covert flights were among the tactics used to wage the "War on Terror" under the administration of former U.S. President George W. Bush, after the 9/11 attacks. They have been condemned by human rights groups as a violation of international agreements.

Italian President Giorgio Napolitano said he had pardoned Colonel Joseph L. Romano, who was the only person not a member of the CIA among 23 Americans sentenced for the kidnapping of Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr in Milan in 2003.

Romano's lawyer had requested the pardon. The clemency was granted because the United States and Italy are close allies that "share the common goals of promoting democracy and security" around the world, a statement from the president said.

The Egyptian cleric, also known as Abu Omar, was secretly flown to Egypt for interrogation, where he says he was tortured for seven months. He was a resident in Italy at the time of the abduction.

Italy was the first country to convict American nationals for their involvement in a rendition.

Romano and 21 others received seven-year jail terms for kidnapping, while the former CIA Milan station chief Robert Seldon Lady was sentenced to nine years in jail.

All were tried in absentia and the Italian government has so far shown little indication it will ask for them to be extradited to serve the terms. No reason was given for why Romano was awarded clemency while the 22 CIA members were not.

U.S. President Barack Obama has tried to distance himself from heavy-handed intelligence tactics employed by the Bush administration, and ordered the CIA to close its long-term prisons in 2009.

(Reporting by Naomi O'Leary; Editing by Steve Scherer and Pravin Char)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/italy-pardons-u-pilot-convicted-cia-rendition-case-193425904.html

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Inslee shift on grading of schools irks state GOP

Gov. Jay Inslee distanced himself this week from a campaign proposal to grade schools A-F, telling some lawmakers he wants the issue more carefully studied.

The Democratic governor?s opposition to Senate Bill 5328 represents a blow to a top priority of Republicans seeking to shake up public education ? and a shift from Inslee?s full-throated endorsement of letter grades during the campaign.

?Without a doubt, it would have been much easier if the governor had maintained his position,? said state Sen. Bruce Dammeier, R-Puyallup, who called Inslee?s new stance surprising and disappointing.

The bill narrowly passed the Senate last month but has stalled in the House.

Under the proposal, school grading would start in a pilot program this fall and be based on test scores, graduation rates, college readiness and other factors.

The grades are meant to clearly convey school performance, increase accountability and spur parent involvement. But the state teachers union and others view grades as an oversimplification, noting the state already has an achievement index that describes schools in adjective form.

The education platform on Inslee?s campaign website vows to ?institute a system of public accountability that gives a grade to every high school, middle school and elementary school.? Candidate Inslee clarified in interviews with reporters and advocacy groups that he meant a letter grade.

Gov. Inslee still prefers an A-F school-grading system, according to his staff members. But he doesn?t like the details of Senate Bill 5328, and he?s open to other metrics.

?What I saw in the campaign is that he supported a letter grade as a way to be efficient and accountable to our public,? said Mary Alice Heuschel, the governor?s chief of staff and a former Renton school superintendent. ?The bottom line is that he is committed to making sure there is an effective and efficient way to communicate school performance ... whether that is a grade or number or label or anything else.?

Inslee?s shift comes during an important week for K-12 education policy.

Wednesday marked the cutoff for nonbudget-related legislation that passed one chamber to make it through a committee in the other. All bills that failed are now theoretically dead, although proposals are sometimes revived when seen as important to a budget deal.

Ahead of the cutoff, the education committees in the Democrat-controlled House and Republican-run Senate each declined to vote on bills valued by the other.

In particular, the House committee didn?t vote on the grading bill or another contentious proposal to allow principals to reject teachers assigned to their building.

The committee also scaled back several bills.

The Senate version of one proposal, for example, would require students who fail the state?s third-grade reading test to repeat the grade, go to summer school or participate in another intensive program. The House version instead focuses more on funding early-grade reading programs. For anything to pass, the chambers will have to reconcile their differences.

Some of the most difficult negotiations may surround the A-F grading bill.

Despite the bill not making it out of the House committee, Senate Republican leaders signaled they will make the proposal a priority during end-of-session budget negotiations.

?We?ll be looking at investing something like $1 billion in our schools,? said state Sen. Steve Litzow, a Mercer Island Republican and chairman of the Senate Education Committee. ?With that kind of investment, we need to ensure that we get outcomes for students.?

The bill is based on a system implemented in Florida by then-Gov. Jeb Bush in 1999.

Several studies have indicated the system and other education-policy changes raised test scores. Opponents say there is more to education than test scores.

Bush has since founded the Foundation for Excellence in Education to push his policy ideas.

School-grading laws now exist in 11 states, according to the foundation.

In Washington, the push began when Bush attended a June fundraiser for GOP gubernatorial candidate Rob McKenna.

A foundation spokeswoman said the group worked with Litzow on the bill language. The proposal was thought to have a better chance than other GOP education proposals because it was supported by Inslee during the campaign.

Republicans, upset about losing that advantage, accused the governor of flip-flopping. ??I support school grading; now I don?t support school grading,?? said Cathy Dahlquist, the ranking Republican on the House Education Committee, mocking Inslee?s positions. ?He seems very conflicted.?

Source: http://www.thenewstribune.com/2013/04/06/2545649/inslee-shift-on-grading-of-schools.html?storylink=rss

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Keep Your Boring Job Interesting by Swapping Tasks with Others

Over time it's easy to get a little burnt out on a job. If you haven't changed positions in any way, you're bound to get bored and feel like it's time for a change. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but if you want to stay at your company, The New York Times suggests expanding your job description on your own.

When you get stuck in particular roles in a company it's easy to lose sight of what you actually enjoy doing there. Eventually, you feel like you've reached your limit and it's time to leave. Speaking with The New York Times, psychologist Adam Grant suggests that if you need to stick around, you need to hunt down more interesting projects:

I usually judge limits on years of work experience by whether you're continuing to learn and gaining responsibility and impact. When your development stalls, and when your contributions don't expand, I think it's often time for a change. Many people assume that this means finding a new role, overlooking that meaningful change can occur in the context of an existing role. Amy Wrzesniewski, Jane Dutton and Justin Berg have done fascinating research on job crafting, the ways that we take initiative to modify our own tasks and relationships?adding projects that are interesting or challenging, delegating and swapping tasks with others and choosing to spend more time collaborating with particular people. They've developed an activity, the Job Crafting Exercise, in which you can map the key building blocks of your job, and then formulate a more ideal?but still realistic?plan for crafting your job to align more closely with your interests, skills and values. It's also an excellent way to identify new ways of adding value.

If all else fails, remember that you can often learn new skills on the job, the problem might actually be you, and sometimes it's just good to know when it's really time to quit.

Helpful Workplace Hints From the World's Most Helpful Guy | The New York Times

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/lifehacker/full/~3/LEQQ46lfRLU/keep-your-boring-job-interesting-by-swapping-tasks-and-collaborating-with-particular-people

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House DFLers pledge to protect funding for caregivers (Star Tribune)

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Source: http://news.feedzilla.com/en_us/stories/politics/top-stories/296765427?client_source=feed&format=rss

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The Facebook Phone: It's Finally Sorta Real (UPDATING LIVE)

We've been talking about it for years now—half dread, half excitement—and now it's no longer just our imaginations. The Facebook Phone is as real as it's probably ever going to get: a complete Android takeover that converts your smartphone. More »

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/pnBPks2spx4/the-facebook-phone-its-finally-real

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FULL COMMITTEE HEARING: To consider the president's proposed budget for the Department of Energy for fiscal year 2014

10:00 AM

The purpose of this hearing is to receive testimony on the U.S. Department of Energy?s budget for fiscal year 2014.

The hearing will be webcast live on the committee's website, and an archived video will be available shortly after the hearing is complete. Witness testimony will be available on the website at the start of the hearing.

Source: http://www.energy.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/hearings-and-business-meetings?ContentRecord_id=e0014b0f-a147-4543-bd5e-ff13cd780d79

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