A group of campaigners linked to the Occupy Wall Street movement is buying-up distressed loans for pennies in the pound and cancelling them to "liberate debtors at random".

The Rolling Jubilee project is seeking donations to help it buy-up distressed debts, including student loans and outstanding medical bills, and then wipe the slate clean by writing them off.

Individuals or companies can buy distressed debt from lenders at knock-down prices if it the borrower is in default or behind with payments and are then free to do with it as they see fit, including cancelling it free of charge.

As a test run the group spent $500 on distressed debt, buying $14,000 worth of outstanding loans and pardoning the debtors. They are now looking to expand their experiment nationwide and are asking people to donate money to the cause.

David Rees, one of the organisers behind the project, writes on his blog: "This is a simple, powerful way to help folks in need - to free them from heavy debt loads so they can focus on being productive, happy and healthy.

In a landslide victory Tuesday night, Montana voters approved an initiative stating "that corporations are not entitled to constitutional rights because they are not human beings" -- corporations are not people.

The initiative directly challenges the now infamous Citizens United decision, which allows corporations to contribute unlimited amounts of money for campaign groups know as super PACS and 'shadow money' organizations.

Initiative 166 will win roughly 75 percent to 25 percent, according to the likely, but not yet final, results, Montana's Billings Gazette reports.

The initiative states:

"Ballot initiative I-166 establishes a state policy that corporations are not entitled to constitutional rights because they are not human beings, and charges Montana elected and appointed officials, state and federal, to implement that policy. With this policy, the people of Montana establish that there should be a level playing field in campaign spending, in part by prohibiting corporate campaign contributions and expenditures and by limiting political spending in elections..."

The measure, proposed by the group Stand with Montanans, will determine state policy on prohibiting corporate contributions and expenditures in state and national elections, and will charge state lawmakers with furthering the state's policy on the matter, asking congressional delegates to support efforts to overrule the Citizens United decision by amending the U.S. Constitution.

Similarly, Colorado Amendment 65 looks like a victory. 65 instructs Colorado's congressional delegation to propose and support an amendment to the U.S. Constitution that allows congress to overturn Citizens United.

Results from the CO Secretary of State show a YES for Amendment 65 with a margin of 73% with 23 of 64 counties reporting.

How's this as a man of the people: The president of Uruguay, José Mujica, has earned a nickname, "el presidente mas pobre" (translation: "poorest president").

The 77-year-old recently admitted to the Spanish newspaper El Mundo that he donates almost all of his presidential salary, making him the poorest, or, as Univision pointed out, most generous president, in the world.

El presidente explained he receives $12,500 a month but keeps only $1,250. The public servant told the newspaper, "I do fine with that amount; I have to do fine because there are many Uruguayans who live with much less."

He and his wife - a senator who also donates part of her salary - live in a farmhouse in Montevideo. His biggest expense is his Volkswagen Beetle, valued at $1,945.

Loughner pleaded guilty to attack in Tucson in 2011 that left six dead and 12 other including Gabrielle Giffords injured



The man who pleaded guilty to shooting the former US representative Gabrielle Giffords, in an attack that left six dead and 12 others injured, has been sentenced to life in prison.

US district judge Larry Burns sentenced Jared Lee Loughner, 24, on Thursday to seven consecutive life terms plus 140 years in prison for the January 2011 shooting.

Loughner pleaded guilty to federal charges under an agreement that guarantees he will spend the rest of his life in prison without the possibility of parole.

The hearing marked the first time victims including Giffords could confront Loughner in court. Her husband spoke on her behalf, saying Loughner changed his wife's life forever but could not dent her spirit.

President Obama called on lawmakers Friday to immediately freeze income tax rates for most Americans while allowing taxes on the wealthy to increase, in his opening bid in the high-stakes struggle with Republicans over the nation's ballooning debt.

Offering his first public remarks since returning to Washington after his election victory, Obama called senior lawmakers of both parties to the White House next Friday to discuss how to avoid the year-end "fiscal cliff," the automatic series of tax hikes and spending cuts that economists warn could plunge the nation into recession.

His invitation is the latest in a series of conciliatory moves by leaders of both parties in the immediate aftermath of the election.

"I'm not wedded to every detail of my plan. I'm open to compromise," Obama told an audience in the East Room of the White House. "But I refuse to accept any approach that isn't balanced. I am not going to ask students and seniors and ­middle-class families to pay down the entire deficit while people like me, making over $250,000, aren't asked to pay a dime more in taxes."

While demanding that the wealthy pay more in taxes, Obama did not specifically insist that their income tax rates must rise. The administration has traditionally said that the George W. Bush tax cuts for the wealthy must expire as scheduled at year's end, raising rates for ­upper-income earners to 39.6 percent. Republicans strongly oppose that position and have said it cannot be part of any deal to avert the fiscal cliff.

It was not clear whether Obama had intended to signal new flexibility over how to tax the wealthy.

But close observers, including top Republicans, quickly said there were potential grounds for compromise if the White House was willing to seek increased revenue from the wealthy without raising rates - for example by cutting deductions and loopholes that disproportionately benefit the wealthy.

Dozens of people who sold hi-tech items on the internet site leboncoin.fr have been defrauded in a complex scam that involved fake PayPal accounts, a fake job and a fake British company linked to traders in Ghana.

The fraud was discovered by police in Brest after a woman living at the other end of the country complained that she had not been paid for a tablet computer she had sold on the site. The woman, from Saint-Raphael in the Var, said she had sent the tablet to an address in Brest but the PayPal payment she got in return was from a false account.

Police discovered that the Var complaint was just one of many and each person had sent the items to the same address in Brest. They raided the address and discovered a woman who said she had been hired just a fortnight previously to post the goods to Ghana.

Gendarmes in the Var have decided to go for a friendlier image by warning of road checks via a Facebook page.

The Gendarmerie du Var Facebook page, which has 2,140 "likes", is a "way of being a bit nicer [sympa]", said the brigade's chief Colonel Damien Choutet.

Last Friday, for example, officers posted that "with the good weather back again, and this weekend a lot of coming and going for the All Saints' holiday, we suggest you take care on the roads. We'll obviously be checking on speed, with lots of checks in places like Saint-Maximin, Le Luc, Roquebrune-sur-Argens or La Londe-des-Maures".

Minneapolis -- Officials are asking a judge to terminate the parental rights of a Minnesota couple accused of starving one of their four children, saying the 8-year-old boy suffered egregious harm and it's not in the best interest of any child to be in their care.

The boy, who weighed less than 35 pounds last month, was released from the hospital Wednesday, Mayo Clinic officials said Thursday. He's now in foster care, and his siblings remain with their parents, Russell and Mona Hauer.

The Hauers, of North Mankato, are charged with six felonies, including neglect and malicious punishment of a child. Authorities said they spanked the boy with a 2-by-4, made him sleep in a sled because he wet the bed and put an alarm on his door so he would not steal food. He was given a bucket to urinate in, and was taken outside to be hosed off on some mornings, the complaint said.

"He was treated like an animal," said Nicollet County Sheriff's Investigator Marc Chadderdon.

Neil Heywood, the 41-year-old British businessman who was murdered in China, had been providing information to the British secret service, the Wall Street Journal reports.

Heywood, who drove around Beijing with a "007″ licence plate, had been giving information to MI6 about top politician Bo Xilai for about a year before he died, according to the newspaper.

Bo's wife, Gu Kailai, was sentenced to death for Heywood's murder in August, although her execution was suspended. Heywood's initial cause of death in November 2011 was listed as alcohol poisoning, but at her trial, Gu admitted to poisoning him.

Bo was the Communist Party chief of the southwestern city of Chongqing and a leading contender for the leadership of China. His former police chief, Wang Lijun, has also been jailed over Heywood's death.

Giuseppe "Joe" Di Maulo, a venerable lion of the Montreal Mafia, was an amazing acrobat, or so went an unkind joke among mob hangers-on, although usually said in whispers. It was not because of any prowess in gymnastics but his ability to be so flexible - his speed at flipping to support a winning side.

Mr. Di Maulo's ability to spot and back a winner may have backfired Sunday night when someone killed him outside his large home in a suburb of Montreal, on a street nestled in the woods of a well-manicured golf course, where almost every home has a swimming pool.

And while the death of Mr. Di Maulo, 70, ended the life of a legendary mobster, it is the prospect of his murder being the beginning of something more that most concerns police.

It is precisely one month since Vito Rizzuto, long the overlord of organized crime in Montreal, returned to Canada from a U.S. prison, where he served eight years for three racketeering murders.