Bail

The alarm over potential bank runs in Greece and Spain this week has highlighted an often-overlooked fact: Europe's debt crisis is also, in many ways, a major banking crisis. In capitals such as Athens, Madrid and Rome, large portions of the sovereign debt racked up by spendthrift governments are owed to the countries' own banks, locking governments and the banks in an embrace so tight that disaster for one would almost certainly spell doom for the other. International bailouts for Greece, Ireland and Portugal have helped to keep not just their governments but also their banks afloat, as well as financial institutions in other parts of Europe with large exposure to those nations' debts.

The family of the woman accused of being a multimillion-dollar madam has taken a page - web, that is - from the latest fundraising tool to help defendants find a way through the labyrinth of the criminal justice system. Anna Gristina's family has created a website , helpanna.org, to help the woman accused of being a top-drawer Manhattan madam raise money for bail. She is being held in lieu of $2-million bail, and her family wants her home. “We have created our website to tell you our story, about how much we miss our Mom, and what you can do to bring her back to us,” reads the opening message as family portraits and pictures of rescued animals revolve through the opening sequence.

A bondsman posted bail for the mother of a missing toddler and said he hoped her release would help lead investigators to the girl, officials said. Casey Anthony, 22, has been in the Orange County jail in lieu of $500,200 bail since mid-July. Police say she lied to them and didn't report her 3-year-old daughter, Caylee, missing for more than a month. She faces charges of child neglect, making false statements and obstructing an investigation. A group from a California bail bonds company flew to Florida to help local bondsman Albert Estes, who shares the same surety group, post the bond.

ATLANTA - George Zimmerman apologized to the parents of the unarmed black teenager he fatally shot, as a Florida judge set his bail at $150,000, offering the former neighborhood watch volunteer a path to freedom after more than a week in jail. By midafternoon Friday, Zimmerman was still in custody, but his freedom was "being worked on as we speak," said Jimmy Woods, a spokesman forMark O'Mara, Zimmerman's attorney. Zimmerman, 28, appeared in the Sanford, Fla., courtroom at 9 a.m. in a dark suit and gray tie, his hair in a buzz cut, his hands bound by a chain circling his waist.

A judge Tuesday reduced the bail for the son of former California Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez and three other co-defendants in the alleged murder of a San Diego college student to $1 million each. Brad Patton, lawyer for Esteban Nunez, said the family will be able to meet the bail requirements. Nunez, 19, was expected to be released from jail in San Diego by late Tuesday night. Judge David Szumowski reduced the bail over the protest of Deputy Dist. Atty. Jill DiCarlo, who said it should remain at the $2 million set last week when Nunez and the three co-defendants were arraigned.

An Anaheim man who fled to Montana after allegedly killing his wife and then confessed in a letter to a newspaper columnist was ordered held without bail Wednesday by an Orange County judge. David Lee Schoenecker, 48, is accused of fatally shooting his 40-year-old wife, Gail, at their Anaheim Hills home on May 5. Municipal Judge Kazuharu Makino in Fullerton revoked the $500,000 bond that had been set after Schoenecker's return Tuesday night from Missoula, Mont., and ordered the suspect held until a May 31 arraignment.

A registered sex offender whose Cleveland residence contained the remains of 10 bodies and a human skull stored in a bucket was ordered held without bond Wednesday as police prepared to tear down the walls of his home in search of more bodies. At the bond hearing, Cuyahoga County Assistant Prosecutor Brian Murphy told the court that Anthony Sowell, 50, could face the death penalty if convicted of the murders and called him "an incredibly dangerous threat to the public." Kathleen DeMetz, Sowell's court-appointed defense attorney, argued that Sowell should be granted bond because of medical concerns.

Once again Michael Ramirez misses the mark with his editorial cartoon of Northwest Airlines mechanics parachuting from an aircraft (Opinion, Aug. 23). May I suggest you cut his salary by 25%, in the hope that he will bail out of The Times? NEIL SYMONDS Newbury Park

I am writing to take issue with the (May 3) article "Federal Courts in San Diego Tough on Bail" by Alan Abrahamson, which presents a misleading picture of the bail practices in this district by selectively presenting only some of the statistics. The article claims it is harder to get out on bail in this district than any other district in the country, but relies exclusively on statistics about defendants who do not make monetary bail at their first court appearance. The story then claims that these "statistics explain why the federal Metropolitan Correctional Center . . . is packed."

Re "Bail for Stalking Rises Fivefold After Slaying," Dec. 24. They still don't get it. The judges who voted to raise the county's mandatory bail in cases of felony stalking from $20,000 to $100,000 still don't understand. All they accomplished was to raise the price of a stalking murder. They did nothing to protect women from being stalked and killed by angry, violent men. The problem here is not the amount of bail. In Vicki Shade's case, and many others like it, the problem is a system that permitted Roland Sheehan, Shade's stalker and murderer, to violate a restraining order 15 times, with apparent impunity.

George Zimmerman, charged with second-degree murder in the death of Trayvon Martin, will seek a bail hearing on April 20, his lawyer, Mark O'Mara, told reporters Friday. Meanwhile, the 28-year-old Zimmerman is lodged in a 67-square-foot cell, reportedly working crossword puzzles and eating chocolate creme cookies and root beer barrels. Zimmerman briefly appeared in court on Wednesday to formally hear the charges against him. He's accused in the Feb. 26 shooting death of Martin, an unarmed African American 17-year-old, in Sanford, Fla. According to a probable cause affidavit by investigators, Zimmerman “profiled” Martin, 17, and began following him before the shooting.

For the last 40 years or so, many baby boomers have saved and invested diligently for their retirement. Now they may face a much different challenge: finding buyers for the mutual funds, individual stocks and other assets they'll need to sell to pay for their golden years. The demographic bulge of the 70-million-some boomers has driven U.S. economic and market trends in each decade since World War II. They powered the housing market for much of that period, inspired an explosion of brand-name consumer goods and, in the 1980s and '90s, helped stoke the greatest stock bull move of all time.

SAN DIEGO - For the last two months, the whispers in the Dodgers' camp have become louder and louder: Dee Gordon could be special. Manager Don Mattingly said it. General Manager Ned Colletti said it. Gordon's teammates said it. Saturday, Gordon showed how special he could be. The fleet-footed 23-year-old shortstop stole three bases. He scored the Dodgers' first run. He also scored their second, which ignited a three-run surge in the third inning. And after the bullpen magnificently blew a five-run lead, Gordon singled in A.J. Ellis in the 11th inning to deliver the Dodgers a 6-5 victory that preserved their perfect record.

WASHINGTON — The Treasury Department is launching a sale of $6 billion worth of the $41.8 billion in common stock it holds in insurance giant American International Group Inc., which received the biggest bailout of the financial crisis in 2008. The department announced the sale Wednesday. It's a step by the government, which still owns 77% of AIG's common stock, toward disentangling itself from the company. The Treasury Department said AIG plans to buy as much as $3 billion of the stock being sold.

A Rowland Heights doctor accused of recklessly prescribing narcotic painkillers and other addictive drugs has been charged with murder in connection with three fatal overdoses, a rare attempt to hold a physician criminally liable for patients' deaths. Hsiu-Ying "Lisa" Tseng,  42, was arrested Thursday and led handcuffed from her office in a strip mall off the 60 Freeway where authorities say patients — many of them men in their 20s — once came to get prescriptions for drugs as potent as heroin.

A judge ruled Friday that the doctor convicted in Michael Jackson's death must remain behind bars while lawyers appeal his case. Dr. Conrad Murray had asked to be released from jail, where he is serving two years for manslaughter, but Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Michael Pastor denied the bail motion, saying the physician is a flight risk. "The bottom line is the defense does not have significant property or employment or family ties in the Los Angeles or California area," Pastor said of Murray, a native of the Caribbean who practiced medicine in Nevada and Texas.

In a dramatic escalation of the war against illegal supergraphics in Los Angeles, authorities have jailed a businessman accused of posting an eight-story movie advertisement on an office building at one of Hollywood's busiest intersections. Kayvan Setareh, 49, of Pacific Palisades was arrested at his home Friday night and ordered held on $1-million bail. An arrest warrant obtained by Los Angeles City Atty. Carmen Trutanich accuses Setareh of three misdemeanor city code violations, two of them related to the city sign law, according to William Carter, Trutanich's chief deputy.

A federal judge set bail at $6 million on Friday for tomato scion Frederick Scott Salyer, the former SK Foods owner charged with multiple counts of racketeering, conspiracy and fraud. Salyer would be confined to his Pebble Beach, Calif., home once he posts bail. The court order, which came over the objections of federal prosecutors, also requires him to wear an electronic monitoring device and to turn over to authorities his passport and airplane pilot's license. Salyer, who was arrested Feb. 4 at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York, is accused of masterminding a scheme to defraud large food companies by bribing their employees to purchase inferior tomato products from his Lemoore, Calif.

Lest anyone doubt his solidarity with the American blue-collar worker, President Obama left the office Tuesday afternoon and spent some quality time with a Camaro. He never cranked up the stereo and took it for a spin, of course, but rather admired it on the showroom floor of the Washington Auto Show. But the photo op with the classic American muscle car gave Obama the chance to brag that the 2009 bailout he pushed through Congress ended up saving the big automakers. “The U.S. auto industry is back!

Megaupload.com founder Kim Dotcom must remain in a New Zealand jail until a judge determines whether the alleged leader of a $175-million criminal conspiracy to pirate copyrighted material is eligible for bail. The German-born Dotcom, who legally changed his name from Schmitz, is scheduled to return to court Wednesday to learn whether the judge will set bail and allow him to return to his mansion, where police seized luxury cars, guns and art in a raid Friday. Dotcom and three other men appeared in court Monday in Albany, a suburb of Auckland, on U.S. criminal charges of copyright infringement and money laundering.