[Guardian] The FBI has asked officials in Cyprus for financial information about a defunct bank that was used by wealthy Russians with political connections and has been accused by the US government of money laundering, two sources have told the Guardian. Someone is finally reading Peter Schweitzer? Could there be a connection ?
The request for information about FBME Bank comes as Cyprus has emerged as a key area of interest for Robert Mueller, the US special counsel who is investigating a possible conspiracy between Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign and the Kremlin.
People familiar with the FBI request told the Guardian that federal investigators and the US Treasury approached the Central Bank of Cyprus in November seeking detailed information about FBME, which was shut down earlier this year.
One person familiar with the FBI request said it appeared to be connected to Mueller’s ongoing examination of Paul Manafort, the former Trump campaign manager who was indicted in October, and money that flowed between former Soviet states and the US through Cypriot banks. Paul Manafort? Please keep digging.
The Central Bank of Cyprus, which in 2014 placed FBME under administration in a direct response to the US action and obtained full access to the bank’s data, declined to comment. The US special counsel’s office also declined to comment.
FBME has vigorously denied accusations that it has been a conduit for money laundering and other criminal activity.
The owners, the Lebanese brothers Ayoub-Farid Saab and Fadi Michel Saab, issued a statement following a series of recent critical articles about the bank and denied all wrongdoing. Could explain the Lebanese Hezbollah piece as mentioned at #1.
Bloomberg reported last week that FBME was the subject of two US investigations: one into the bank’s credit card unit, and another into alleged laundering of money from Russia. Bloomberg said the Russia-related investigation, which is being led by the US attorney’s office in New York, was connected to a flow of illegal Russian funds into the New York real estate market.
FBME, previously known as the Federal Bank of the Middle East, was based in Tanzania but about 90% of its banking was conducted in Cyprus. A report by the US Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) in 2014 said the bank was an institution of "primary money laundering concern". Thank you FinCEN, now please provide the FBI and former Director Mueller with the 'rest of the story.'
The report found that the bank was evading efforts by the Central Bank of Cyprus to supervise its activities, and that FBME was facilitating money laundering, terrorist financing, transnational organised crime, fraud, sanctions evasion, weapons trading, and political corruption.
[ENGLISH.ALARABIYA.NET] A drug pusher carrying a large amount of cannabis got into a police car in Copenhagen after mistaking it for a taxi, Danish police said.
"Last night a cannabis dealer from Christiana, rushing to get home, got into a taxi. He got a big surprise when he realized he was riding in a police car," Copenhagen police tweeted Thursday.
Christiana is a free-wheeling, semi-autonomous district of the Danish capital which was founded by hippies in the 1970s and has a long history of openly trading drugs.
The man had about 1,000 joints on him, said police, who promptly tossed in the clink ... anything you say can and will be used against you, whether you say it or not... him.
Police said he could face a custodial sentence.
Posted by: Fred ||
12/24/2017 00:00 ||
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#1
A drug pusher carrying a large amount of cannabis got into a police car in Copenhagen after mistaking it for a taxi,
[CHICAGO.SUNTIMES] Eleven people have been maimed in shootings across reliably Democrat Chicago, aka The Windy City or Mobtown ... home of Al Capone, a succession of Daleys, Barak Obama, and Rahm Emmanuel,... in the first 14 hours of the Christmas holiday weekend.
The most recent shooting happened about 12:50 p.m. Saturday on the Northwest Side. A 21-year-old man was sitting in his vehicle in the 4700 block of West Belmont when someone walked up and fired shots at him before running away, according to Chicago Police. The man was shot in the left thigh and was taken to Illinois Masonic Medical Center, where his condition was stabilized.
Less than three hours before that, a 15-year-old boy was shot in the Austin neighborhood on the West Side. He was shot in the leg at 10:27 a.m. in the 600 block of North Leamington, police said. He was taken to West Suburban Medical Center in Oak Park and his condition was stabilized.
A man was maimed in another shooting about 6:15 a.m. in the South Side Englewood neighborhood. The 27-year-old man was shot in the temple in the 7000 block of South Carpenter, according to Chicago Police. The gunman, another male, left the scene after the shooting. The victim was taken to Christ Medical Center in Oak Lawn, where his condition stabilized. Police said the incident appears to be domestic-related.
Posted by: Fred ||
12/24/2017 00:00 ||
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#1
A decent total considering the weather has been cold.
#2
11 wounded and none killed? Chicago criminals have run out of accurate shooters? Dr. Steve et al are miraculously patching all of them up? The cold is freezing the blood before they can bleed out?
#3
I noticed a subtle "word swap" on the ABC Chicago 7 news last night. Ravi B. said 2 people were shot and killed and 11 were "injured", avoiding the double ungood word "shot" in his report, leaving it up to the viewers to figure out is a number of the "injured" had simply pulled their groins or something. Listen up in your local ABC "blue state" coverage to see if the memo has been sent to the writers to make the weekly shooters score a little less transparent.
#8
I'll watch it when I get away from the kids, thanks for the cheer.
The Other Night -
Wife: Why don't you put on a Christmas movie?
Me: (puts on a Battle of the Bulge documentary)
Wife: ????What is this?
Me: Christmas movie. Couldn't find Die Hard.
Wife: (gives that look)
[ENGLISH.ALARABIYA.NET] Sudanese activist Winnie Omar who was being tried for wearing "indecent clothes" was found innocent by a Khartoum court.
The judge presiding the session said evidence was not enough to convict Omar and he ordered her release.
Omar was being prosecuted under Article 152 of the Public Order Court Law which penalizes women if convicted of wearing "scandalous clothes." Penalties can include whipping and paying a fine.
Earlier this month, 24 girls were acquitted after they were charged of wearing shorts and short skirts at an all-female party which police raided.
Local and international human rights ...which are usually entirely different from personal liberty... organizations have demanded cancelling or amending Article 152 because it is vague and it depends on the assessment of coppers or judges and hence paves way towards violating women’s right.
Posted by: Fred ||
12/24/2017 00:00 ||
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[MAIL] Towns in rural America are attempting to revitalize their increasingly anemic communities by incentivizing people to move out to the countryside.
Cash grants, student loan pay offs and free land giveaways are just some of the enticements smaller communities are offering to a younger generation of Americans looking to leave the big city, where in some places individuals can utilize up to $80,000 worth of incentives to relocate.
According to USA Today, rural America encompasses 75 per cent of the country, but only 16 per cent of its population, the lowest in the nation's history.
Numbers show that 54 per cent of the population in 1910 lived in rural communities, but dropped to just 19 per cent in 2010, according to a report by real estate website Zillow.
USA Today explains the phenomenon is a complicated mix of many factors, but essentially boils down to rural Americans facing fewer opportunities following technological advancement and the continued consolidation of the agricultural industry.
Academics have also argued that an increasingly globalized world where free trade and competition from emerging foreign markets have created a dearth of options for Americans living in the more bucolic regions of America.
'Meanwhile, the growth of steel, automobile and other industries, along with a college education, pulled young people into urban areas where they got married and had children. Most did not return to their rural roots,' William Frey, a demographer at the Brookings Institution, explained to USA Today.
#1
What rural electrification did under FDR could be applied to bringing broadband width digital communications to rural areas. That will make access to the 'world market' easier and away from metro hubs. Why live in overcrowded commuter hell cities if you have the same infrastructure access to markets?
#6
I don't WANT more neighbors. And I don't need more broadband (10 Gb of satellite will do as long as I stay away from sites with lots of animated ads.)
#7
Infrastructure, well they forget that problem. Then who will relocate?. The left thinking most likely. They will make many demands. The resources will not be there. Drug use and abuse will prevail. Many small towns don't have police coverage. I can think of one example in Pennsylvania. An officer is dispatched from Somerset Pennsylvania to Meyersdale Pa. The responding officer is required to write $300. ticket total to justify trip. Then to Hyndman Pa. I was told $700. dollars but I can't verify that amount. This town is a bit further away from Somerset. It would be far better to keep them in the city. City people have ideas that will be alien in a rural area. They will cling to what they believe in and as with a salad remain distinct and different.
#11
Of course not. However, when they have to haul food et al, they'll grasp the sudden need for proper transport (not some urban 'Smart Car') and quickly grasp the connection of oil prices and their pocket book. Certain perspectives will smack them right in the thick forehead.
#13
Where there's a will there's a way. Some tales from flyover country: (1) Elderly man in an outlying rural town gets chest pains during a blizzard. Needs to go to a hospital with advanced cardiology care 70 miles away. Highways & interstates, closed. Even choppers are grounded. No possibility of EMS transport. Local highway dept. gets its 3 snow plows in tandem & parallel, and they form a convoy leading the ambulance with the patient, which then clears the path all the way to Fargo & back. Man's life is saved. This would not even happen in more civilized parts of the midwest. (2) A closed USAF radar station outside of town had a fiberoptic comm line installed back in the 1980s or 1990s when it was still open. After base closure, its housing was relocated by trailer a few miles away into town. A local internet entrepreneur creates an ISP which benefits from the old USAF fiber optic line. Puts a high powered WiFi router on top of the grain elevator & provides very fast broadband to the entire (very small) town for a very low price, undercoating the wired ISP price of the local telephone monopoly by quite a bit. (3) One by one, unoccupied town homes are torn down after the elder owners die off, one by one, and are not replaced. Small ND town changes it zoning laws & allows vacant town lots to be converted into improved RV pads for use during the summer season by its elderly snowbird alumni who would at least like to live close to friends, while spending the worst of the winter in Arizona. The lots are immaculately maintained whether occupied or not. (In my unenlightened part of the midwest, I am prohibited by zoning laws from sleeping in my own tent in my own backyard). Another town tore down a home and is offering the improved town lot for just $100, located on the main state highway through town. Nice homes abut. No takers of this plot for years.
a dearth of options for Americans living in the more bucolic regions of America
This due more to a blinkered mindset and an attitude of "we've always done it this way" than anything else, and more in the urban regions than in the bucolic ones.
#16
With the reduction of the deduction for state sales taxes and state income taxes, the mass exodus from Californicate, Illionis, New York, and Connecticut will escalate.
The new land rush is people with jobs and disposable incomes relocating to states with little or no income taxes, low property taxes, and relatively low sales taxes.
Californicate in particular is looking at a mass migration of individuals with incomes over $50,000 and replacing them with gardeners, burger flippers, burglars, and thieves.
#3
Headed for redundancy and elimination. The departure of the NAAFI (PX/BX) was a clear signal.
I'm sure our US Army Directorate of Heraldry is scrambling as well. There are those unit patches with lightning bolts. Perhaps a Schutzstaffel connection? How can we be sure ?
#6
By stepping in to block the branding changes at such a late hour he risks showing contempt for the Army's chain of command.
I wonder if it ever occurred to the ass-kissing prog officer who said this, that the contempt was well deserved for the morons that wanted to ditch the slogan as "elitist" and the crest as "non-inclusive"?
Fortunately some combat experienced officers have spoken up as well...
It has never been about them looking down at anyone in society, so any suggestion it is elitist is nonsense. The Army needs to be the best and to know that it is. Be the Best is popular because it encapsulates the desire for our troops to be better than their enemies. Credibility is secured by our abilities on the battlefield, our fighting spirit and our resources.
"And at a time when the defence budget is being squeezed, it is lunacy to squander money on a futile branding project."
#2
Find one without the subtitles. I could do without that bit about the Pope raping children.
Even though I thoroughly dislike this lefty socialist Jesuit pope, Anyone that thinks that's OK to say, well, F you. You have an enemy in me, you bigot.
#4
Not directed at you, but more at whoever put the subtitles on it - they aren't needed, much less the stupidity and grammar school level intellect they display.
[DAWN] An attempt to marry a 12-year-old girl to a 55-year-old man was thwarted by Sukkur police on Saturday, according to SSP Mohammad Amjad Sheikh.
According to details provided by the SSP, the police had been tipped off that a minor was being married in the Micro Colony area of the city, following which he immediately directed New Pind police officials to conduct a raid.
The police arrived at the scene of the crime before the marriage had taken place and tossed in the clink I ain't sayin' nuttin' widdout me mout'piece! the bridegroom, named Allah Dino, along with three of his relatives: two women and a man.
The child was also taken into custody and shifted to a women's cop shoppe. She will be presented to a special court on Sunday when a case against the accused will be registered under to the Child Marriage Restraint Act.
Posted by: Fred ||
12/24/2017 00:00 ||
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#1
Was he not senior enough or was it his.... micro status?
[DAWN] An eight-year-old girl was allegedly raped in Bloody Karachi ...formerly the capital of Pakistain, now merely its most important port and financial center. It is among the largest cities in the world, with a population of 18 million, most of whom hate each other and many of whom are armed and dangerous... 's Shah Latif Town Friday evening, police said on Saturday.
Shah Latif Town Station House Officer (SHO) Amanulalh Marwat told Dawn that the girl had left her home in Zafar Town, located off National Highway, to purchase bread from a nearby restaurant (tandoor) on Friday evening when someone took her away on the pretext of giving her some eatables.
She was subsequently raped at a deserted place in the area, he stated.
The girl has been sent to the Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre (JPMC) for a medical examination.
Posted by: Fred ||
12/24/2017 00:00 ||
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[BARENAKEDISLAM] APPARENTLY, Donald Trump is making good on his campaign promise to withhold funding from sanctuary cities
The Los Angeles Police Department has been denied $3 million in federal aid for law enforcement. While there is no official announcement as to why, it is more than likely that it has everything to do with LA’s "sanctuary city" status for harboring illegal aliens. Donald Trump and Attorney General Jeff Sessions have repeatedly said they would strip funding from such sanctuary cities. Now they are.
The L.A. Times reports: This year, L.A. officials applied for more than $3 million in federal funding to help bring the same program to Harvard Park, a South L.A. neighborhood scarred by violence.
The request was denied.
The U.S. Department of Justice hasn’t offered the LAPD an explanation of why the department didn’t receive any of the $98 million in grants recently awarded to scores of law enforcement agencies across the nation. A spokesman for the federal agency declined to comment when asked by The Times last week.
But after the Trump administration’s repeated threats to withhold federal money from cities that don’t cooperate with its immigration crackdown, some LAPD officials said they believe the move was retaliatory ‐ and a troubling sign of what could come.
Steve Soboroff, president of the civilian Police Commission that oversees the LAPD, said that he believes the Justice Department denied the funding request because of the LAPD’s well-publicized, hands-off approach to immigration enforcement. Soboroff said he worries future funding may also be at risk.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
[Guardian] The FBI has asked officials in Cyprus for financial information about a defunct bank that was used by wealthy Russians with political connections and has been accused by the US government of money laundering, two sources have told the Guardian.
[CHICAGO.SUNTIMES] Eleven people have been 
[MAIL] Towns in rural America are attempting to revitalize their increasingly anemic communities by incentivizing people to move out to the countryside. 
Man has historically been moving hither and thither. Sometimes Gawd is blamed, sometimes man. 
[DAWN] An attempt to marry a 12-year-old girl to a 55-year-old man was thwarted by Sukkur police on Saturday, according to SSP Mohammad Amjad Sheikh.
[DAWN] An eight-year-old girl was allegedly raped in 
