FTP: Week Ending June 15

This week on Front Page Flash: Lehman Brothers in trouble, Guantanamo Bay get some help from the Supreme Court, Clinton endorses Obama, and the U.S. gets into a little risky business on the Pakastan-Afghan border.

Lehman Brothers Raises $6bn to Offset Losses
Lehman raised the capital in order to sure up its finances after reporting a record quarterly loss of $2.8bn, resulting from its exposure to mortgage-backed securities and the general economic downtown. Although people are staying mum on the credit crunch, measures like this suggest that additional fall-out is still to come. According to Wall Street rumors, Lehman may be acquired to save it from collapse. Read more >

High Court Rebuffs Bush Over Detainees
The Supreme Court ruled yesterday that Guantanamo Bay prisoners have a constitutional to challenge their detention in front of a federal judge. The 5-4 decision flies in the face of the Bush administration’s attempt to limit the legal rights of terrorism suspects and, more specifically, its belief that the foreign prisoner camp in Cuba holds unique legal status that allows it to sidestep the American courts. The judges stressed the importance of the basic constitutional right to appear before a judge and expressed dismay that some detainees have been at Gunatanamo for six years without a trial. Read more >

Clinton Ends Campaign with Clear Call to Elect Obama
After holding on to the bitter end, Clinton held her final campaign rally on Saturday in D.C., where she conceded defeat and fully endorsed Barack Obama for president. In addition to stressing the importance of supporting Obama, she spoke at length about what her campaign meant for women: “You can be so proud that, from now on, it will be unremarkable for a woman to win primary state victories, unremarkable to have a woman in a close race to be our nominee, unremarkable to think that a woman can be the president of the United States.” Needless to say, the punditry hasn’t stopped all week: Was Hillary genuine? Was her rally pure theater? Is she angling for a VP nod? Only time will tell what her role will be in Obama’s campaign and beyond. Read more >

U.S. Drone Kills 11 Pakistan Soldiers
The U.S. released grainy footage of what the military claims are anti-Afghan guerilla fighters who were targeting coalition troops in an effort to ease tensions between Pakistan and the U.S. While it is irrefutable that an aerial drone did fire a missile into the mountainous Afghan-Pakistan border region earlier this week, the details are unclear. The Pakastani military called the strikes “unprovoked and cowardly,” but the Pentagon defended them as legitimate “self-defense.” With a relatively new government installed in Pakistan, the U.S. would prefer to brush this one under the rug to maintain good relations in order to receive support when hunting militants on the Pakistan-Afghan border. Read more >