❖ Two points of light? “Chile’s Recent Lead Negotiator on Trans-Pacific Partnership Warns It Could Be a ‘Threat to Our Countries’”. There’s also concern in Japan.

❖ Ireland’s a wee bit uncomfortable with Apple’s disclosure of its Irish tax breaks. Ireland’s Finance Minister pointed to the 150,000 Irish jobs generated by the Apple tax arrangement. Prime Minister Enda Kenny called for a “new international consensus on tax regimes for multinationals” as he headed out the door to a EU meeting.

❖ The West, TX fertilizer plant explosion last month “highlights the failing of a U.S. federal law intended to save lives during chemical accidents”

❖ “Timothy Geithner Is Key to IRS Scandal“. Apparently, the chain of command goes from Steve Miller > Doug Shulman > Timothy Geithner > White House. And yet, “Geithner’s name just keeps not coming up”. Will it in the future?

❖ Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) is saying there’s a memo showing the IRS was “targeting people who were opposed to the president.” He hasn’t seen it, but he’s sure it exists.

❖ VA state Sen Mark Obenshain (R) “once introduced a bill that would charge women with a Class 1 misdemeanor if they failed to report a miscarriage to police.” Obenshain is running for the state attorney general.

❖ A lesbian couple in TX has been ordered to either live apart or give up custody of their children.

❖ The “US State Department has been essentially acting as a de facto global-marketing arm of the ag-biotech industry” through “a concerted strategy to promote agricultural biotechnology overseas, compel countries to import biotech crops and foods that they do not want” and to plan biotech crops. “900 diplomatic cables [Wikileaks] . . . showed a carefully crafted campaign to break down resistance to GM products”.

❖ 14 North American retailers refused to sign the Accord on Fire and Building Safety in Bangladesh.

❖ Good news! Giant leatherback turtles are making a “comeback in a corner of the Caribbean,” Trinidad. Don’t miss the photos.

❖ CIA Director John Brennan has been in Israel talking to the Israeli Prime Minister, Defense Minister, Military Chief of Staff and Mossad Chief.

❖ OK Gov. Mary Fallin (R) has signed a bill she’s long pined for that “allows businesses to opt out of the worker’s compensation system as long as they provide equivalent benefits to injured workers.”

❖ Is JPMorgan Chase considering suing Bloomberg?

❖ Investigators at the West, TX fertilizer plant don’t know what caused the explosion, but have not ruled out “an intentional, criminal act.”

❖ “84 percent [of] NY fast food workers report wage theft”.

❖ KBR, “recipient of the largest government services contract in U.S. history”, $38b, says they’ll need “13 years and half a billion dollars to finish off . . . work stemming from the Iraq war.” KBR’s very interesting history.

❖ The Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction: ”The Afghan government [with no legal basis] has charged a tax bill of nearly $1bn . . . to foreign firms working for the US military and government over the last five years”

❖ Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) has written to the Securities & Exchange Commission, Federal Reserve and Justice Department, asking them “to justify their policy of settling charges with Wall Street’s bad actors out of court.”

❖ The great Ry Cooder takes on the Koch Brothers. He’s also involved in the protests against the Kochs taking over the Tribune company (including the Los Angeles Times).

❖ “Guantanamo hunger strikers subject to harsh new method of force feeding. Lawyers for inmates say humiliating body searches instituted for prisoners who wish to talk to their representatives.”

❖ Bangladesh’s Minister for Textiles “announced the creation of a panel of union representatives and factory owners to raise the minimum wage”; 18 garment factories are shut “for safety reasons”; “a number of people” have been arrested for “causing deaths by negligence”.

❖ Bill Black on why the bill by Senators Sherrod Brown (D-OH) and David Vitter (R-LA) aimed at controlling the banks “Will Not and Cannot Work but it is Criminogenic.”

❖ “Military recruiters across the country have been caught in a string of sex-crime scandals over the past year, exposing another long-standing problem for the Defense Department”.

❖ Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu will be meeting Russian President Valdimir Putin next week–in Russia. Will he be using that $127,000 bed on his flight?

❖ “Tax avoidance, secret mining deals and financial transfers are depriving Africa of the benefits of its resources boom, ex-UN chief Kofi Annan has said.”

❖ While the US and transnational corporations are negotiating–in secret–the Trans Pacific Partnership trade agreement, results for the first year of the Free Trade Agreement between the US and Korea have come in: US exports to Korea are down 10% ($4.2

❖ Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) says Obama could be impeached over Benghazi and accused Hillary Clinton of a “‘forceful attitude’ you usually ‘don’t hear from women’.”

❖ One woman was found alive today in the rubble of the garment factory building that collapsed in Bangladesh. 1,000+ dead, 2,437 rescued, ”of whom about 1,000 had suffered serious injuries.”

❖ The Chamber of Commerce and the US Supreme Court: hand-in-glove?

❖ Former Sen. Judd Gregg (R-NH) is the “leading candidate” to be CEO and president of the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association, “one of the biggest lobbying groups for Wall Street.”

❖ Latest from that horrific building collapse in Bangladesh in April: 1000 bodies have now been found.

❖ Three weeks ago Rust Consulting sent almost 100,000 checks to homeowners “as compensation for foreclosure abuses”, but the checks bounced. Now, they’ve mailed out more checks, “written for the wrong amounts”, although they didn’t bounce.

❖ “Hundreds of billions of dollars in federal contracts, grants, loans, concession agreements and property leases go to private companies that pay low wages, provide few benefits, and offer employees little opportunity”. Austerity USA.