(Reuters) - The FBI is investigating British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell and several other people linked to U.S. financier Jeffrey Epstein, who killed himself while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges, according to two law enforcement sources familiar with the investigation.
They said a principal focus of the FBI’s investigation is Maxwell, a longtime associate of Epstein, and other "people who facilitated" Epstein’s allegedly illegal behavior.
Maxwell has not been accused of criminal wrongdoing. Her lawyers Jeffrey Pagliuca and Ty Gee did not respond to a request for comment.
The FBI also is following up on many leads received from women who contacted a hotline the agency set up at its New York field office in the wake of Epstein’s arrest in July, the sources said.
One of the sources said the probe remains at an early stage.
The sources declined to give further details or identify the people they are looking at apart from Maxwell. However, they said the FBI has no current plans to interview Britain’s Prince Andrew, a friend of Epstein’s who stepped down from his public duties in November because of what he called his "ill-judged" association with the well-connected money manager.
A spokeswoman for the FBI declined to comment.
A representative for the British royal family said that whether the agency interviewed Andrew was "a matter for the FBI."
Epstein’s suicide in August, at age 66, came a little over a month after he was arrested and charged with trafficking dozens of underage girls as young as 14 from at least 2002 to 2005. Prosecutors said he recruited girls to give him massages, which became sexual in nature.
#6
Well, her daddy drowned (allegedly), her boyfriend didn't hang himself, so I'm up for a gas leak explosion or a nasty electrocution in the bathtub.
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
12/27/2019 16:21 Comments ||
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#7
The 8-Ball sez, "Outlook uncertain,"
As down falls Ghislaine's final curtain:
"I've made such a mess
that I can't face the press,
And I'm fresh out of fans! Shuddup, Merton."
[Breitbart] A wild brawl broke out at an upstate New York mall on Christmas Eve, with participants causing mayhem in the beef jerky outlet store, according to a video of the incident.
A video posted to Twitter showed at least ten people throw punches at each other and knock over display items at Albany’s Crossgates Mall on Tuesday.
The clip has since gone viral, racking up 2.8 million views as of Thursday afternoon.
"Out of the store! Out of the store!" one person could be heard yelling in the video.
It did not appear that there were any customers in the store at the time of the brawl, and the two employees’ efforts to break up the melee proved to be futile.
Towards the end of the video, the brawl moves to the front of the beef jerky store. With all the mayhem going on, a table and all its contents were knocked over in the store.
The Albany Times Union reported that police were called to keep the peace at the mall on Tuesday but no arrests have been made as of Thursday.
[MSN] Japan has hanged a Chinese man for the high-profile and brutal murder of a family of four, the first execution of a foreigner in 10 years.
Justice Minister Masako Mori: "It is an extremely cruel and brutal case"
The man, Wei Wei, carried out the murders in 2003 with two accomplices.
They fled to China, where one was executed in 2005 and the other sentenced to life in jail.
Japan has more than 100 prisoners on death row. Fifteen were executed last year, including 13 members of the Aum Shinrikyo doomsday cult.
Japan only started to disclose the names of executed inmates in 2007. Since then only one foreigner has been named - a Chinese man hanged in 2009.
Justice Minister Masako Mori said she had signed off on the execution of Wei Wei "after careful consideration".
"It is an extremely cruel and brutal case in which the happily living family members, including an eight-year-old and 11-year-old, were all murdered because of truly selfish reasons," she said.
In Japan, death row inmates are not told of their impending execution until the day it is carried out.
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
12/27/2019 00:00 ||
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HONOLULU (AP) ‐ A tour helicopter with seven people aboard disappeared in Hawaii, and a search is underway, the U.S. Coast Guard said.
The owner of the helicopter contacted the Coast Guard about 45 minutes after the aircraft was due back from a tour of Kauai's Na Pali Coast on Thursday evening, a news release said. The helicopter has an electronic locator, but no signals had been received, according to the bulletin.
The helicopter was carrying a pilot and six passengers, two of whom were believed to be minors, the release said.
"The weather conditions are challenging," said Petty Officer 1st Class Robert Cox, Coast Guard Joint Rescue Coordination Center Honolulu. "We have trained crews responding and on scene searching for any signs of the helicopter and those aboard."
According to the release, clouds and rain at the scene rendered visibility at 4 miles (6.4 kilometers), with winds at 28 mph (45 kph). Friday's forecast predicted winds at around 23 mph (37 kph).
A helicopter and crew was launched from Coast Guard Air Station Barbers Point, and additional support was provided by the U.S. Navy Helicopter Maritime Strike Squadron 37 at Kaneohe Bay. A Coast Guard cutter and crew were also launched from Honolulu.
Further searches with a search-and-rescue airplane and crew and fresh helicopter crew were scheduled for first light, if necessary.
According to the release, helicopter tours are common above the island of Kauai, much of which is a state park.
#3
Some of the gusts coming in from the north (Na Pali Coast side) can be pretty strong, especially if it's windy already.
Many of the smaller 'tour copters' might have real problems with those. A good tour company would ground their birds in such conditions but hey, it's all about the tourist cash.
Posted by: Mullah Richard ||
12/27/2019 8:55 Comments ||
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#4
Kaua'i seemed to lose about 1 every two years or so when I lived there.....
#5
7 is a lot of people for a tour helicopter even if two are minors. 7 is also exactly the number stranded on Gilligans island which is an odd coincidence.
[FP] KHORGOS, Kazakhstan—On the China-Kazakhstan border, flanked by snowcapped peaks, a highway cuts through a barren landscape to reach this terminal at Khorgos. Here, amid a collection of cranes, rail tracks, and warehouses, a growing town is poised to become a bustling inland transport hub and a vital link in China’s vast and battered Belt and Road Initiative.
Khorgos is roughly 1,550 miles from the nearest coastline, but developers have dubbed the site a “dry port,” a terminal designed to process overland cargo. It began operating in 2015 and has seen steady growth. But it is also a launching pad for Beijing’s ambitions to connect Europe to Asia through new trade and transport routes under what Chinese President Xi Jinping has called “the project of the century.”
A nearby special economic zone is already home to a few factories and boasts lofty ambitions for future investment and industry. On the Chinese side of the border, the scope and scale of the project is already visible, with a sister city of high-rises and shopping malls, also called Khorgos, home to a population of more than 100,000 people after the town was officially opened in 2014.
Kazakhstan, Central Asia’s largest economy, has fully embraced its partnership with China, branding itself as the “buckle” of China’s Belt and Road Initiative and looking to profit from the new economic opportunities provided by Beijing.
“Four or five years ago, there was nothing here,” said Nurlan Toganbayev, the director of the commercial department at the Khorgos Gateway, motioning toward railway tracks and cargo containers behind his office. “Right now, we are a terminal, but in the future we will grow into something far larger.”
China’s push into Central Asia through Belt and Road-linked investment projects has made Central Asia into a geopolitical laboratory—and a new frontier for global trade. Russia has traditionally seen the former Soviet Central Asian countries of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan as its own sphere of influence, but Beijing’s rise as the dominant economic force has changed the dynamics in the region, opening up a new era of recalibration. Beijing and Moscow aren’t the only players, either. In addition to advances from India, Japan, and the European Union, the Trump administration plans to publish a new strategy for Central Asia ahead of an expected trip by U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to the region in January.
“Central Asia is an interesting case where China is moving carefully in a hostile environment,” said Alexander Gabuev, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Moscow Center. “[Beijing] has taken a pragmatic, and at times accommodating, approach to Russia in order to leverage its position into becoming the region’s major economic power.”
#6
Germans, Poles, French and Germans did not occupy Russia...not for very long anyway. You can invade it but to occupy Russia for any length of time you must have massive numbers of troops, the kind of numbers that only Asians can bring.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
12/27/2019 14:41 Comments ||
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#7
A Chinese takeover of the Russian Far East + most of Siberia is not "nothing," Herb. Geopolitically, that would make them a global rival to us. We need a strong Russia to contain China.
[NY Post] Japan executed its first foreigner-born prisoner in a decade Thursday ‐ a Chinese man accused in the high-profile murder of a family of four, according to new reports.
The 40-year-old man, Wei Wei, was put to death by hanging. like Jeffery Epstein, he didn't hang himself
Wei burglarized the home of 41-year-old clothing dealer Shinjiro Matsumoto in June 2003 and killed him, his wife and their two children in a conspiracy with two other Chinese men, Justice Minister Masako Mori said in the final ruling, according to Kyodo News.
The trio stole valuables from the family’s home and used weights to submerge the family in the Hakata port in the city of Fukuoka, Mori said.
"It is an extremely cruel and brutal case in which the happily living family members, including an 8-year-old and 11-year-old, were all murdered because of truly selfish reasons," Mori said, according to the BBC.
Matsumoto and both kids were strangled or smothered, and his wife drowned in the bath, according to the report.
Japanese policy dictates that death row inmates are not told of their impending execution until the day it is set to happen.
Posted by: Frank G ||
12/27/2019 00:00 ||
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#1
Hanging ? Heck ! I would expect a good beheading with katanas. Really kick up some morale.
[Business Insider] Over the last five decades, Airbus has developed into a global aviation giant. The European consortium and Boeing now make up the duopoly that dominates the global commercial aircraft industry.
But most people are not aware of the substantial manufacturing footprint Toulouse, France-based Airbus has in the US. This includes helicopters in Mississippi and satellites in Florida.
And then there's the crown jewel, the commercial aircraft final assembly line in Mobile, Alabama.
This is where the company produces Airbus A320-family jets for US customers such as American, Delta, Jetblue, Frontier, Spirit, Allegiant, and Hawaiian Airlines.
The Airbus A320-family of jets, which includes the A319, A320, and A321, is also assembled in Toulouse, France; Hamburg, Germany; and Tianjin, China.
The European aviation giant first made its presence felt in Mobile with the establishment of the Airbus Engineering Center in January 2007 that has since helped develop systems for the Airbus A330, A350, and A380 airliners.
#1
They probably would have built aerial refueling planes for the Air Force here if that whole contract hadn't turned into a rolling dumpster fire. KC-46 still isn't up to snuff, fine Boeing product that it is. Just glad McSccccchtain isn't still around to mess up the GBSD contract now too.
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
12/27/2019 15:31 Comments ||
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[UPI via Breitbart] Dec. 26 ‐ U.S. stocks surged higher Thursday as a year-end rally stoked by bullish economic news pushed the Nasdaq Composite index to 9,000 for the first time in its history.
The S&P 500 also posted a fresh all-time high at 3,235.46 in late morning trading while the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose about 77 points, reaching a peak of 28,596.22 before leveling off.
The rally has been gathering momentum as the year draws to a close and was pushed along Thursday on news that retail sales for the just concluded holiday season were 3.4 percent higher than 2018, including record online sales, which were up nearly 20 percent.
The late-year bull market has seen the S&P 500 rise by 2.9 percent in December and by 29 percent for the year, putting it on the verge of posting best annual performance since 1997.
Thursday’s market gains were paced by Amazon, which announced the 2019 holiday season was its best ever without offering specific numbers. Its stock price rose 3.1 percent, reaching a high of $1,850.18.
Other factors driving the rally included continuing low unemployment and the announcement of a "phase one" trade agreement between the United States and China.
A Chinese commerce ministry spokesman said Thursday both sides were in "close communication" over the signing of the deal. Negotiators agreed on the text of the phase one agreement on Dec. 13.
#4
"Economists have accurately predicted 11 of the last 9 recessions..."
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
12/27/2019 7:22 Comments ||
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#5
All this fake financial stuff was done before leading up to world war one and has just rotated since under different schemes yet is always the same much like a plank scheme! As a matter of fact it was also done thousands of years ago social engineering!
[The Hill] At least seven people died after a passenger plane crashed near Almaty, Kazakhstan Friday, according to the BBC.
The plane, which was carrying 95 passengers and five crew members, "lost altitude during takeoff and broke through a concrete fence" en route to the capital city of Nur-Sultan, hitting a small building, according to the nation’s Civil Aviation Committee. a "concrete fence" = a WALL
That’s one of those technical civil engineering terms, right?
"At the moment, the death toll is 7 people," the committee added, saying that emergency services continue to work to rescue survivors, according to the BBC. The plane lost height around 1:22 p.m. local time.
Officials said a special commission will be established to determine the specific cause of the crash. The crash follows another accident near Almaty in January 2013, when a passenger plane went down near the city on a flight from the northern town of Kokshetau.
From the Wikipedia article: 27 December 2019: Bek Air Flight 2100 disappeared from radar at 7:05 am local time. It was carrying 98 passengers. At least 66 people survived with injuries, 50 of them hospitalized, 14 died on impact and 1 in a local hospital. Footage showed houses ruined with sections of the plane strewn across the landscape. The airport said the plane lost height at 07:22 local time (01:22 GMT), before striking a concrete barrier and crashing into a two-story building. There was no fire upon impact.
#2
crashed during takeoff, but no fire? first read sounds like somebody didn’t hit the fuel pits.
but on the bright side, the lack of a fire probably contributed greatly to the high survivor count.
[AmericanGreatness] Democrats Must Live with Consequences of Their Foolish Impeachment Farce.
It’s showtime. Let the fools’ carnival of unfeasible candidates elevate the designated Democratic piñata for this successful if edgy president to hammer through the election campaign.
#1
[Schiff and his Shitshow Clowns] produced and passed a pack of lies as an argument for impeachment. Now they are trying to assert constitutional rights they do not possess and a moral authority they squandered years ago to deprive the Senate of the control over an impeachment trial which the Constitution clearly reserves to the upper chamber.
It’s over, Madam Speaker. Go back to San Francisco and ask Santa’s elves to help you clean up the public sanitation problem of the homeless people the California Democratic miracle has put on the city’s sidewalks.
h/t Gates of Vienna
[Campus Reform] - Colleges and universities are changing both admissions and curriculum requirements in order to create more ’diversity’ within their student bodies. These changes often involve lowering of standards, and an implication that students from certain backgrounds cannot score as high on tests as their peers.
#2
This spells the end of academic merit as the main decision factor in elite university admissions, to be replaced by crude social engineering.
It means that, for the "test-optional" university, the admissions process will be driven toward predetermined ethnic, social and financial outcomes.
It's really not a big step from current practice - as the Harvard trial's massive data sets and evidence revealed. They already engineer the admissions process to ensure desired social outcomes:
- 30% athlete/legacy/dependent children of staff;
- 28% underrepresented minority;
- 30% from about 70-80 elite schools located primarily in New England and New York City;
- Not more than 20% Asian domestic/US
h/t Gate of Vienna
...Maraini, a bestselling novelist, called the God depicted in the first book of the Bible "vengeful, misogynist, intolerant, and war mongering". You forgot "vindictive", cagna
h/t Instapundit
[Alabama Com] - Employees of Southern Poverty Law Center civil rights organization the have voted to unionize, the SPLC announced Monday.
The employees voted to join the Washington-Baltimore News Guild. The vote was 142-45, according to the SPLC union twitter account.
Karen Baynes-Dunning, interim president and CEO of the Southern Poverty Law Center, said the organization's employees "have spoken through a process that gave every eligible person the opportunity to weigh in on this important decision."
#4
Does the SPLC serve any identifiable useful purpose?
Joining the News guild union? They're not a news organization. The SPLC classifies anyone who is white and conservative as a member of a terrorist organization.
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.
(Reuters) - The FBI is investigating British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell and several other people linked to U.S. financier Jeffrey Epstein, who killed himself while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges, according to two law enforcement sources familiar with the investigation.
[Breitbart] A wild brawl broke out at an upstate New York mall on Christmas Eve, with participants causing mayhem in the beef jerky outlet store, according to a video of the incident.
[NY Post] Japan executed its first foreigner-born prisoner in a decade Thursday ‐ a Chinese man accused in the high-profile murder of a family of four, according to new reports.
[Business Insider] Over the last five decades, Airbus has developed into a global aviation giant. The European consortium and Boeing now make up the duopoly that dominates the global commercial aircraft industry. 
United States Military Academy at West Point "engineering degree" graduates ? 
