[An Nahar] A Vatican monsignor already on trial for allegedly plotting to smuggle 20 million euros ($26 million) from Switzerland ...home of the Helvetians, famous for cheese, watches, yodeling, and William Tell... to Italia was enjugged Drop the gat, Rocky, or you're a dead 'un! Tuesday in a separate case for allegedly using his Vatican bank accounts to launder money.
Financial police in the southern Italian city of Salerno said Monsignor Nunzio Scarano had transferred millions of euros in fictitious donations from offshore companies through his accounts at the Vatican's Institute for Religious Works. Police said millions have been seized and that other arrest warrants were also issued.
Scarano's lawyer, Silverio Sica, said his client merely took donations from people he thought were acting in good faith to fund a home for the terminally ill. He conceded, however, that Scarano used the money to pay off a mortgage.
"We continue to strongly maintain the good faith of Don Nunzio Scarano and his absolute certainty that the money came from legitimate donations," Sica told The News Agency that Dare Not be Named.
The Salerno investigation was already under way when Scarano, dubbed "Monsignor 500" for his purported favored banknotes, was arrested in June in Rome on the smuggling accusations.
Prosecutors say he, a financier and a carabinieri officer devised an elaborate plot to transport 20 million euros in a private jet from Switzerland to Italia avoid paying customs duties. The plot fell apart because the financier reneged at the last minute.
His lawyer has said Scarano in that case was merely acting as a middleman.
Prosecutors and the priest's lawyer say the money involved in both the Swiss smuggling case and the Salerno money-laundering case originated with one of Italia's most important shipping families, the d'Amicos. The family, from Scarano's hometown of Salerno, denied its involvement in a July 1 statement. They did not respond to an email seeking fresh comment Tuesday. No one in the family has been arrested in either case.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/22/2014 00:00 ||
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[Dhaka Tribune] Police recovered 6 pieces of a housewife's body after she was allegedly killed by her husband in the Rowshan Road area of Chandina, Gazipur on Tuesday morning.
The dear departed was identified as Chaina, 27, wife of Reazul Karim Ranju.
Local people called the police when they smelt an odour from the rented house of Ranju.
Upon receiving information, police recovered six of Chaina's limbs kept in sacks, luggage. I'm guessing that either Chaina was a 130 pound housefly, or the old man chopped her off at the armpits, the hips, and the knees. Or maybe they just mean six body parts.
They tossed in the calaboose Drop the rod and step away witcher hands up! her husband Ranju, Joydevpur cop shoppe SI Ekram Hossain said.
He added: "At a stage of altercation over familial matter, Chaina was killed and cut to pieces by her husband on Sunday night at their rented house in the Barabari area of Gazipur Sadar upazila." "[Bzzzt!] Help me! Help me!"
[SWAT!]
Later on Monday, Ranju left the Barabari area and rented another house in Chandina of Gazipur with the pieces of his wife's body, he added.
Chaina hailed from Lohagara of Narail, while Ranju hailed from Pangsha of the Rajbari district. ...which explains everything.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/22/2014 00:00 ||
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[An Nahar] Two directors of the company that employed a bogus sign language interpreter for Nelson Mandela's memorial service have quit their jobs in South Africa's ruling African National Congress, a party front man said Tuesday.
Reverend Bantubahle Xozwa, who was head of the party's religious affairs department, and his wife Cikizwa, a personal assistant to the ANC's chief front man, resigned after interpreter Thamsanqa Jantjie was exposed as an impostor.
"They resigned in December," ANC front man Keith Khoza told Agence La Belle France Presse.
He said he could not remember the date the couple left "but it was after the incident". He said they had given no reason for their departure.
The couple were directors at SA Interpreters, the company that employed Jantjie.
Jantjie's performance sparked outrage among sign language experts who accused him of gesticulating gibberish at the December 10 memorial.
Jantjie translated the eulogies -- including those by U.S. President Barack Obama Republicans can come along for the ride, but they've got to sit in the back... , U.N. chief the ephemeral Ban Ki-moon ... of whom it can be said to his credit that he is not Kofi Annan... and Mandela's grandchildren.
His signing amounted to little more than "flapping his arms around", one expert said. He was "just making funny gestures", said another.
Jantjie has claimed he is a qualified signer for the deaf but that his performance on the day was caused by a sudden episode of schizophrenia.
The South African government launched a probe into the incident shortly after the memorial, but six weeks on there has been no update on its progress.
The ANC has admitted Jantjie previously worked for it at a party conference, but said it was unaware of any complaints regarding the quality of his services.
After the incident, the government formally apologized for any offence caused, and admitted a "mistake" had been made.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/22/2014 00:00 ||
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#1
Poor nutcase Janfjie and careless SA security are not news, or the problem. Politics is the problem.
[Egypt Independent] Nine Ugandan soldiers have been killed and 12 others maimed during a month fighting in South Sudan, the army said Tuesday, dismissing rebel claims to have killed scores.
Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni confirmed last week that troops had been killed during combat in the war-ravaged young nation in support of President Salva Kiir.
However, there's no worse danger than telling a mother her baby is ugly... army front man Paddy Ankunda said Tuesday that nine had died in a single rebel ambush.
"Let there be no speculation any more," Ankunda said. "Uganda has lost nine soldiers and 12 injured in South Sudan."
Ugandan troops deployed in South Sudan five days after fighting began last month, and have a taken a key role in the combat, including the recapture of the strategic town of Bor on Saturday.
Last week however Kampala's parliament endorsed the decision to send troops to South Sudan, with the defence minister saying the army had help avert "genocide."
Deadlocked ceasefire talks in Æthiopia are being mediated by the East African regional bloc IGAD, even though Kampala is a key member and the rebels have expressed concern ...meaning the brow was mildly wrinkled, the eyebrows drawn slightly together, and a thoughtful expression assumed, not that anything was actually done or indeed that any thought was actually expended... about its neutrality, claiming Ugandan fighter jets have tried to kill their commanders.
The rebels, led by former vice-president Riek Machar, have demanded Uganda withdraw all forces.
No announcement has been made as to how many -- and for how long -- Ugandan troops would be deployed.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/22/2014 00:00 ||
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[Dhaka Tribune] The ruling Awami League has given BNP Chairperson the loathesome Khaleda Zia Three-term PM of Bangla, widow of deceased dictator Ziaur Rahman, head of the Bangla Nationalist Party, an apparent magnet for corruption ... 24 hours for withdrawing her statement and apologise to the nation for questioning the country's illusory sovereignty and interfering in the operations of patriotic armed forces.
General Secretary Syed Ashraful Islam made the announcement yesterday while expressing his party's reaction over Khaleda's speech given at a rally at Suhrawardy Udyan on Monday.
Also the LGRD minister, Ashraf said the BNP chief had made the comments by not heeding to the apology the daily Inqilab sought for the "false news" it had published on January 16.
Khaleda delivered a similar speech on the law enforcer's crackdown in Satkhira on the people responsible for violence before and after the election saying that the Indian army had carried out the operation together with the Bangladeshi law enforcers.
Issuing a note of warning to the BNP chairperson, the AL leader said: "Withdraw your false statement within 24 hours and apologise to the nation. Otherwise, the government will take necessary steps."
He was speaking at a presser held at the party chief's Dhanmondi office when party leaders Nul-Ul Alam Lenin, Mahbub-Ul-Alam Hanif, BM Mozammel Haque, Khalid Mahmud Chowdhury and Hasan Mahmud were present.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/22/2014 00:00 ||
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[Dhaka Tribune] Six detained BNP leaders have to remain behind bars as their bail pleas in different cases were rejected yesterday.
Dhaka Metropolitan Magistrate Asaduzzaman Noor denied bail to BNP standing committee members Moudud Ahmed, MK Anwar and Rafiqul Islam Miah, vice-chairman Hafizuddin Ahmed and chairperson's special assistant Shimul Biswas.
Meanwhile, ...back at the comedy club, Boogie sadly admitted that he was a better peeping Tom than he was a comedian... Dhaka Metropolitan Sessions Judge Md Jahrul Haque refused bail to ASM Hannan Shah, who is accused in three cases filed during recent anti-government protests.
However, it's easy to be generous with someone else's money... Moudud, Anwar, Rafiqul, Shimul and BNP chairperson's adviser Abdul Awal Mintoo were granted bail by the High Court bench of Justice Nizamul Huq and Md Jahangir Hossain in two other cases filed with Motijheel cop shoppe.
Of them, only Mintoo could be released from jail any time as no other case remains against him.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/22/2014 00:00 ||
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[BLOGS.TELEGRAPH.CO.UK] Some people believe Labour's defining legacy is Iraq. Others think it is the hunting ban. But the issue which has affected most people and which has damaged the fabric and appearance of British community more than anything else is the loss of the local pub.
The British pub is internationally famous. It is entirely bound with the nation's history. Yet 26 are closing per week -- more than 1,000 a year -- changing the look of the nation. Town and countryside are littered with pub corpses, boarded up and often awaiting permission for conversion to flats or houses.
And it is not as if something else has come along to bring communities together. Instead, people sit in front of their televisions. This terrible process started with the ban on smoking. Labour was warned that it would result in pub closures, but went ahead regardless. The people it was supposed to protect -- the bar staff -- have suffered catastrophic job losses as a result (though this is rarely noticed, as so many bar staff are non-unionised, cash-in-hand foreigners). Labour knew this would happen, as the state of British Columbia in Canada had introduced a similar ban a couple of years earlier and the immediate result had been bar closures and (I have been told) one third of bar jobs lost.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/22/2014 00:00 ||
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#3
The local trick Americans came up with was to redefine the 'bar' as a 'members club', paying one or ten dollars for a year or lifetime membership. As a private club, the establishment was no longer 'public' and subject to most of the local anti-smoking regs any more than a home. Keeping the kids out also took that nanny state means of intrusion into the joint as well.
#5
Because they are better/smarter than the rest of us.
Posted by: Bobby ||
01/22/2014 13:28 Comments ||
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#6
If you're in a pub in Colorado you can't smoke tobacco but you can smoke a joint...
Posted by: Steve White ||
01/22/2014 14:35 Comments ||
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California's first year of no in bar smoking resulted in an average of 20% lost employees income. Those bars that could, opened outside seating to beat the law and keep the customers.
[An Nahar] Colombian army troops killed at least seven FARC guerrillas Tuesday in an operation in the central department of Tolima, the military said.
The latest fighting comes after 14 guerrillas were reported killed over the weekend in an army air and ground assault on a rebel base in a rural area near the Venezuelan border.
In a statement issued from Madrid, where he was on an official visit, President Juan Manuel Santos praised the military operation, saying it was critically important not to ease up on the rebels, even with peace talks underway for more than a year.
"The military offensive will continue until we have an accord, just as if there no talks going on," he told Spanish media.
The Colombian government and the FARC have been in peace talks since November 2012, but Santos has vowed to be relentless in pressuring the country's largest leftist guerrilla group.
The army said the latest combat occurred in the Tolima municipality of Planadas, a mountainous area east of the city of Cali.
It said the preliminary result was "the death of seven members of the Heroes of Marquetalia and the Alfredo Gonzalez mobile columns."
The army said five rebels, including one who was maimed, were captured during the operation.
An army front man said fighting was continuing in the area.
A half century of hostilities between the leftist FARC and the government in Bogota has claimed hundreds of thousands of lives and displaced some 4.5 million Colombians.
The government blamed FARC for a bombing attack Monday in the southwestern town of Toribio, which killed one person.
It said another FARC bombing last week claimed one life and injured about two dozen others.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/22/2014 00:00 ||
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The husband of a former federal prosecutor was sentenced to one year and a day in federal prison for leaking wiretap information to one of the targets of a federal gun smuggling investigation.
Retired school superintendent Danny Burnett was convicted last fall at trial for leaking the information to Angelo Vega, who at the time was the police chief in Columbus, and then lying about it to federal investigators. Prosecutors said Burnett was Vegas mentor when he was a teenager in Carrizozo and Burnett was in charge of the small school system.
Prosecutors claimed Burnett told Vega about the investigation over lunch in February 2011.
Burnetts wife, Paula Burnett, was the chief of the criminal division of the U.S. Attorneys Office at that time. She was never charged with any wrongdoing and retired last year after her husbands conviction.
According to trial testimony, Vega was earning $2,000 a month on top of his police salary for the work he did for the cartel plus $1,500 each time he allowed the cartel to use village and police vehicles to carry out their smuggling operation.
All told, prosecutors estimated Vega was paid $40,000 to be the badge in the pocket of the smugglers, vouching for honesty of members of the gun smuggling ring to other law enforcement officers, identifying undercover federal agents and providing counter surveillance.
By disclosing the existence of a wiretap to former Columbus [NM] Police Chief Angelo Vega, Mr. Burnett undermined a federal investigation of the trafficking of firearms into Mexico and put law enforcement agents in jeopardy, U.S. Attorney Robert Pitman, of San Antonio, said in a statement.
[An Nahar] Spanish police said Tuesday they had locked away Please don't kill me! a suspected Colombian hitman nicknamed "El Nino" (The Kid), accused of killing and then cutting up two compatriots whose remains were found in a Dutch canal.
The 33-year-old man is accused of murdering the two Colombian residents of Spain, whose chopped-up body parts turned up May 31 last year in a canal in the town of Pijnacker Nootdorp, near The Hague, Spanish police said in a statement.
The Colombian victims had traveled from Spain to the Netherlands for a drugs deal that went wrong, and they were murdered in a supposed settling of scores, police said.
Spanish police said they arrested the suspected hitman on January 16 in the town of Majadahonda, near Madrid, after the Dutch authorities had issued a European detention order.
The man was also charged with drug trafficking, money laundering and extortion, police said.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/22/2014 00:00 ||
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Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel was warned last month that the U.S. Navys new aircraft carrier, the most expensive warship ever built, is unlikely to meet its goal for handling aircraft. The USS Gerald R. Fords sortie generation rate -- the ability to launch and recover aircraft -- is based on unrealistic assumptions, and key launching systems are currently suffering from development problems and have poor or unknown reliability, Pentagon Director of Operational Testing Michael Gilmore told Hagel in a Dec. 9 memo.
I am transmitting this report to you because it deals with a high-visibility program, and it is likely Congress will request copies, Gilmore wrote. He attached a 30-page report outlining his early operational assessment of the CVN-78 program, which calls for spending at least $40 billion to develop and build three carriers.
The Navy has said the new carrier promises about a 25 percent increase in sortie generation over the current Nimitz class. The Ford, already the most expensive warship ever built, is projected by the Navy to cost $12.8 billion in current dollars, 22 percent more than estimated five years ago. Adjusted for inflation, the cost is closer to $13.9 billion, said the Congressional Budget Office.
The memo will likely form part of the context for Congress consideration of the fiscal funding request for the CVN-78 program, said Ronald ORourke, a naval analyst for the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service.
Navy program documents indicate that the service intends to request about $2.6 billion for the program next year, up about $1 billion from the current years request.
The poor reliability of critical subsystems -- such as the new electromagnetic catapult system, advanced arresting gear, dual-band radar and weapons elevators for moving munitions to the flight deck -- will be the most significant risk to the carriers success in combat testing and deployment, Gilmore said.
Both the assessment sent to Hagel and an upcoming annual report on weapons testing highlight poor or uncertain reliability currently demonstrated by critical new technologies, Gilmore spokeswoman Jennifer Elzea said in an e-mail statement.
A section of Gilmores report obtained by Bloomberg News said the Navy to date has conducted limited reliability testing of these systems.
If the reliability problems are not solved and drive CVN-78s sortie generation rate well below that of the current Nimitz class carriers, the result could be significant to strategic planners assessing wartime needs, Gilmore wrote.
The Navy plans for Ford-class carriers to launch and recover 160 aircraft a day over a sustained period and 270 during a wartime surge; the Nimitz-class requirement is 120 a day and 192 during a surge.
Posted by: Steve White ||
01/22/2014 00:00 ||
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#1
Assign all the F-35s to it and you will have a lovely backdrop for photo-ops.....
#3
Just like in the Carter era: every new piece of equipment developped teething troubles. What a coincidence the same thing happens during Obama's presidency.
#4
already the most expensive warship ever built, is projected by the Navy to cost $12.8 billion in current dollars, 22 percent more than estimated five years ago.
Only 22% over? Seems blike Air Force contracts exceed estimates by lots more than that. Get with the program, Navy.
Iraqs government said on Tuesday it had decided in principle to create three new provinces from contested parts of the country in an apparent attempt to address Sunni grievances and counter the expansion of the Kurdish self-rule region.
On their way to 57 states...
One of those provinces would be centered on Fallujah, a city overrun earlier this month by Al Qaeda and allied insurgents after more than a year of protests there and in other Sunni cities against what they consider second-class citizen treatment. Separate province status was not a major Sunni demand, but it could allow the area to receive increased federal funding.
The other two areas Tuz Khormato and the Ninevah Plain border Iraqs northern Kurdish self-rule region. The former is a mixed city containing Arabs, Kurds, and ethnic Turkomen while the latter has a large Christian population.
A statement said the Cabinet had agreed in principle to turn the areas of Tuz, Fallujah and the Ninevah Plain into provinces and the Cabinet will decide after the fulfilment of the necessary requirements. It did not give a reason for the decision.
Turkomen and Christians, many of whom fear absorption into the Kurdistan Regional Government, have been demanding separate province status for Tuz Khormato and Ninevah Plain for years. The Fallujah announcement however was unexpected.
Posted by: Steve White ||
01/22/2014 00:00 ||
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#5
For those interested in adding to their Rantburg library, FM 3-05-70, Survival. Check in on Chapter 23, Survival in Man Made Hazards. Research paid by the Atomic veterans.
#6
With "O's" and Kerry's naive agreement with Iran, it seems like it pushes the doomsday clock closer to a mushroom cloud over a Western city instead of pushing it back. What ever happened to the concept of MAD (mutually assured destruction). Oh, I forgot about the mad mullahs looking forward to the 12th imam's descension from hokumland.
#7
John, I expect that the first city to disappear under a mushroom cloud will be Tel Aviv. Of course, it won't be the last. Tehran, Qom, and several other Iranian cities will follow.
Posted by: Rambler in Virginia ||
01/22/2014 14:01 Comments ||
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#8
When the doomsday clock folks starting mentioning lack of global warming prep in their rationalizations I decided they were hacks. Kind of thought so before but reserved doubt.
[LATIMES] Thai officials proclaimed a state of emergency Tuesday to contain increasingly violent anti-government protesters trying to oust Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra and derail an election she has called.
The 60-day emergency state gives the government sweeping powers to impose curfews, ban public gatherings, censor news media and arrest people without charges or warrants, news agencies reported in Bangkok, the capital.
Yingluck's embattled government needs the emergency measure "to take care of the situation," said Deputy Prime Minister Surapong Tovichakchaikul, the Bangkok Post reported.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/22/2014 00:00 ||
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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.
[An Nahar] A Vatican monsignor already on trial for allegedly plotting to smuggle 20 million euros ($26 million) from 
[Dhaka Tribune] Police recovered 6 pieces of a housewife's body after she was allegedly killed by her husband in the Rowshan Road area of Chandina, Gazipur on Tuesday morning.
the ephemeral Ban Ki-moon
[BLOGS.TELEGRAPH.CO.UK] Some people believe Labour's defining legacy is Iraq. Others think it is the hunting ban. But the issue which has affected most people and which has damaged the fabric and appearance of British community more than anything else is the loss of the local pub.
[An Nahar] Colombian army troops killed at least seven FARC guerrillas Tuesday in an operation in the central department of Tolima, the military said.
[An Nahar] Spanish police said Tuesday they had 
