The 10-Point: Holder's Squeeze on Banks, Boko Haram's Video, Disinvited Graduation Speakers, a New Search-Engine Ruling and More

I Fought the Law

Attorney General Eric Holder (pictured above) seems to be stepping up the pace in what may be his last push to pursue Wall Street for past misdeeds. We report that the Justice Department's effort to secure a guilty plea from Credit Suisse in the coming days is expected to kick off a number of multibillion-dollar bank settlements. On May 2, Mr. Holder met with a minister from Switzerland to talk about the case against Credit Suisse, which is alleged to have helped wealthy Americans evade taxes. Later that day he took a phone call from France's finance minister to talk about an investigation into BNP Paribas. Justice Department officials met with Bank of America last Thursday to try to hammer out a settlement over the bank's precrisis handling of mortgage-backed securities, while Citigroup will meet with department lawyers later this month. We note that even if Mr. Holder succeeds in obtaining a string of big-figure settlements, it may not appease his critics, including conservatives who see the push as politically motivated and liberals who want to put senior bank executives behind bars for their role in the crisis.

Held to Ransom

A potential clue surfaced on Monday in the search for more than 200 teenage girls who were abducted from their school last month in Nigeria. We report that insurgents released a video that purportedly shows more than 100 of the schoolgirls, with Boko Haram's leader Abubakar Shekau claiming several Christians among the girls have converted to Islam. Mr. Shekau, who appears in the video, said he won't release the girls until Boko Haram militants jailed by the Nigerian government are freed. The Journal obtained the video from a person who has previously distributed materials from the militant group. The U.S. State Department on Monday said it had no reason to question the video's authenticity and that U.S. intelligence officials are looking through the images for information that might help in locating the schoolgirls. A State Department spokeswoman also said Nigerian forces are "in the lead" in the search, but added that ransom payments are against U.S. policy.

Freedom of Speech

The head of the International Monetary Fund on Monday joined a growing list of graduation speakers whose plans to give commencement addresses were obstructed by student or faculty protests. We report that Christine Lagarde withdrew from a planned speech at Smith College, after nearly 500 people signed a petition objecting to IMF policies. Similar protests foiled speaking engagements by former National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice at Rutgers University and human-rights activist Ayaan Hirsi Ali at Brandeis University, among others. "I call it disinvitation season," said the president of a free-speech advocacy group. The derailments haven't been limited to colleges, we note. Last month, the White House said Michelle Obama would deliver the commencement address to graduating seniors in the Topeka, Kan., school district, but the plan was retooled when parents complained. Our story considers whether schools are succumbing to a "heckler's veto," as the leader of the American Council of Trustees and Alumni put it, or simply exercising their right to protest.

Every Breath You Take

While companies have been looking to collect heaps of data about consumers' behavior, we look at another way in which a data trove has proved to be useful: medical diagnosis. Researchers are analyzing pools of patient information collected from routine checkups to help doctors diagnose their patients better. "We should be learning from the record of routine medical practice," says the author of a study that mined electronic health records of young patients with arthritis to see if there was a connection between allergies and an eye inflammation condition called uveitis. Meanwhile, new data-collection techniques are also on the rise. We look at how the wearable-device movement is now invading the crib, targeting tech-enthused parents eager to equip their newborns with gadgets that send back all sorts of data, such as a baby's respiration, skin temperature and body position.

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Number of the Day

$50 billion

The approximate value of AT&T's potential offer for DirecTV in a deal that would involve a mix of cash and stock.

Quote of the Day

This is going to have wide implications for the Internet, for the use of the Internet, for the Internet economy.

-- Christopher Kuner, a partner at law firm Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, on a ruling by the European Union's highest court Tuesday that individuals can ask Google to remove links to news articles, court judgments and other documents in search results for their names.

What do you think of the court's ruling? Send your response to [email protected] and follow @GerardTBaker on Twitter.

—Compiled by Khadeeja Safdar

Reader Response

Many of you voiced agreement with Sen. Marco Rubio's climate-change comment, with some exceptions. Lisa English of Massachusetts wrote: "To Rubio: That's the thing about science, it doesn't matter whether you 'believe' it or not. It IS, or it IS NOT. Let's stop making resistance to global warming into a religious or political litmus test. Our children's future is more important than your ability to 'win' a political argument today." From Florida, Donald Leeber made a broad point about energy policy: "The useful life of fossil fuels is limited by 1) reserves are being depleted 2) people from whom we buy these fuels are trying to kill us…and by the way using money from us to do it and 3) yes, producing tons of CO2 is not a great thing to do, probably. A serious leadership failure exists in the fact that we have no energy policy to wean us from fossil fuels toward clean or 'almost' renewable fuels that can in fact meet our needs…We have limited time, so where is the energy equivalent to the Kennedy space program: a 'full court press' to use U.S. wealth and initiative to solve the difficult problem which is, admittedly, a hard one."

This daily briefing is named "The 10-Point" after the nickname conferred by the editors of The Wall Street Journal on the lead column of the legendary "What's News" digest of top stories. Technically, "10-point" referred to the size of the typeface. The type is smaller now but the name lives on.

photo: Melissa Golden for The Wall Street Journal