Staff Blog
What We’ve Found: Philly’s stimulus share, GMAC asks for aid.. again, Sarkozy’s extravagance, C.I.A. funding Karzai’s brother, Afghan entertainer seeks asylum and R&B aid foundation flat broke
Julia Harte with your morning fix.
A Daily News report found that of the $157 million Philadelphia has so far received in federal stimulus money, the city has spent less than $1 million and saved a paltry 52 jobs.
The lending branch of General Motors was begging the Treasury Department for a third infusion of taxpayer money, which would make it the only U.S. company to receive three rounds of aid and possibly make the government majority stakeholder in the company.
A $500,000 shower was among the ostentatious expenses racked up by French President Sarkozy during his European Union presidency -- one of the costliest in history -- and funded by EU taxpayers.
The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency was found to be paying Ahmed Wali Karzai, brother of Afghan president Hamid Karzai and suspected opium lord, to organize a paramilitary force in Kandahar that follows C.I.A. orders.
The former presenter of "Afghan Star" -- that country's version of American Idol -- sought asylum in the United States after a documentary he produced about the show earned him death threats from extremists. He now works at Voice of America radio, and says "in America, I was born again."
The Philadelphia-based Rhythm and Blues Foundation, which has provided cash assistance to R&B artists in need for twenty years, is now out of money itself because donations have dried up over the last year.
