Five alarm: Webster Parish Fire Chief David Camp was arrested Tuesday on improper spending charges, bringing the five-year total of parish chiefs arrested to five. The arrest of the 47-year-old came just hours before a counterpart in a neighboring district resigned amid a criminal investigation on similar allegations. In January 2010, former Shongaloo Fire Chief Charles Ray Duke Jr. was arrested on multiple felony charges related to allegations he used taxpayer money and donations to pay household bills and make personal purchases. Former Cullen Assistant Fire Chief Mark Eubanks was arrested in 2007 on child pornography charges. Camp was booked on charges of malfeasance and unauthorized use of an access device over $5,000. His bond was set at $20,000.
Down the road: The government will face a major test on whether it has the capacity to govern when it faces big tax and budget decisions at the end of the year, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said today ahead of a meeting on Friday of finance ministers from the Group of 20, representing the world’s leading industrialized and emerging market economies. Before 2013, the country will be forced to deal with the expiration of tax cuts that affect nearly all taxpayers, automatic budget cuts, as well as another debate over raising the country’s debt limit. “It will be a big test in Washington, a big test of the country to govern itself,” Geithner says. Reuters has the complete story here.
Trolling for company: With companies like Yahoo, Facebook, Google and Oracle waging intellectual property wars in the courts, Twitter on Tuesday took an intriguing stand by pledging it will not impede innovation in the future by becoming a patent troll, The San Francisco Chronicle reports. Twitter drafted an “Innovator’s Patent Agreement,” or IPA, that the San Francisco firm proposes as a new standard licensing document for the entire tech industry. “The IPA is a new way to do patent assignment that keeps control in the hands of engineers and designers,” Twitter vice president of engineering Adam Messinger wrote in a company blog. Get the full story for more details on the IPA and industry reaction to it here.
