This Hacker Rigged Elections in 9 Latin American Countries

A highly sophisticated Colombian hacker rigged elections across Latin America in favor of right-wing candidates for almost eight years, pulling in hefty paychecks for highly-coveted dirty work in at least nine different countries’ elections, including for Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto's rise to power.

A Bloomberg Business article published Thursday told his story for the first time, forcing the Mexican government to deny on Friday that Peña Nieto's campaign spied on rivals.

Andres Sepulveda, now in jail in Colombia, was in the business of the “whole dark side of politics that nobody knows exists but everyone can see,” he told Bloomberg Business.

He started with small jobs in 2005, but quickly ramped up to helping presidential campaigns in Colombia, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, and Venezuela smear, hack, and spy on their left-wing rivals for a bill of at least US$12,000 per month, and often more.

His first gig was for the re-election campaign of former right-wing Colombian President Alfaro Uribe in the lead-up to the 2006 election, which Uribe won. Sepulveda hacked a rival’s website and campaign database.

But the jobs grew in budget and scope over the years. In the lead-up to Mexico’s 2012 presidential election, Sepulveda hacked, spied, and manipulated social media for President Enrique Peña Nieto’s campaign with a US$600,000 budget as the PRI aimed to regain power after losing it in 2000 for the first time in over 70 years.

Peña Nieto, who was shown ahead in the polls early in the campaign, won the election amid widespread allegations of electoral fraud. His main rival, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, then of the PRD, demanded a full vote recount.

Sepulveda also had a role in the 2009 campaign of Honduras’ right-wing post-coup National Party President Porfirio Lobo, and spearheaded malicious campaigns against Nicaragua’s socialist President Daniel Ortega in 2011 and Venezuela’s former President Hugo Chavez in 2012.

All the while, Sepulveda told Bloomberg Business that he was working for Miami-based political consultant Juan Jose Rendon, who former Salvadoran leftist President Carlos Mauricio Funes accused in 2014 of running dirty campaigns across the region. Rendon denied to Bloomberg Business of having collaborated with Sepulveda on illegal jobs.

Sepulveda is now serving 10 years behind bars for various crimes including espionage and conspiracy to commit crime linked to hacking during Colombia’s 2014 election.

He told his story to Bloomberg Business in hopes of getting a lighter sentence by showing he’s owned up his dark past.

It is interesting that all these revelations (Panama papers), were published just before the primaries in Russia (22 May).

Kremlin warns of planned ‘information attack’ against Putin. 28 March, 2016.

Russian President Vladimir Putin; Dmitry Peskov © Sergey Guneev / Sputnik

Presidential press secretary Dmitry Peskov has said that Western mass media intends to launch a new slander attack on Vladimir Putin and expressed regret that reporters’ professionalism is often “sacrificed to political demands.”

According to Peskov, the fresh set of false reports made with intent to harm the president’s reputation will be released in the nearest future. He said the presidential administration received letters with requests to comment on more unfounded allegations.

He went on to blame “certain public groups, NGOs, Western special services and certain mass media outlets” for attempts to destabilize the situation in Russia ahead of parliamentary and presidential elections by attempting to discredit senior officials and above all, Putin.

“Another piece of spin, which is claimed to be sensational and objective, will happen in the nearest days. We have received some excessively-rich requests that, however, in their form were more like questions at an interrogation,” Peskov said.

He explained that the letters contained some personal questions about Putin, as well as questions about Russian president’s family, his childhood friends and some businessmen.

“They are repeating themselves. ‘Is it true that the amount of your personal accumulated wealth is about US$40 billion?’ ‘Is it true that you possess gigantic residences, mega-yachts and other assets?’

“They claim that the president maintains close relations with Sergey Raldugin and they speculate that if Raldugin is running some business, this must have immediate relation to the president. ‘Is it true that when you were young you spent time together on the Leningrad streets, that you ate, drank and got into street fights together?’ I have just quoted an actual question,” Peskov told reporters.

“We deeply respect the work of journalists and such form of it as an investigative report. We admire this work when it’s professional and objective. But when we talk about these idle conversations, about sending us questions that have been already asked and answered hundreds of times… Here we see no intent to conduct objective investigations, we see just an intention to publish a hatchet job; to direct, put together and release a media attack on to the informational agenda,” he said.

Peskov recalled a recent film released by BBC that contained similar accusations without any proof supporting them. Source: rt.com

'Panama Papers' revelations trigger global probes

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/putin-aides-among-world-leaders-expo...

Panama City (AFP) - Several countries launched tax evasion probes Monday after a massive leak of confidential documents lifted the lid on the murky offshore financial dealings of a slew of politicians and celebrities.

The scandal erupted on Sunday when media groups began revealing the results of a year-long investigation into a trove of 11.5 million documents from the Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca, which specialises in creating offshore shell companies.

Among those named in the "Panama Papers" are close associates of Russian President Vladimir Putin, relatives of Chinese leader Xi Jinping and Iceland's Prime Minister Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson, as well as Barcelona striker Lionel Messi.

"We have opened an investigation for money laundering in relation to the law firm," a judicial source at Spain's National Court told AFP after the release of the documents, which named Oscar-winning Spanish film director Pedro Almodovar among others with offshore holdings.

Messi's family immediately came to his defence, saying he was innocent of all wrongdoing and "accusations he created a... tax evasion plot, including a network of money-laundering, are false and insulting".

Messi has been charged with tax fraud in a separate case that is due to go to trial in May.

Australia said it had launched a probe into 800 wealthy Mossack Fonseca clients. Prosecutors in France and tax authorities in the Netherlands also announced investigations, while the United States said it was reviewing the files.

In Iceland's capital Reykjavik, thousands took to the streets late Monday to demand the prime minister's resignation over allegations that he and his wife used an offshore firm to hide millions of dollars of investments.

- Kremlin denials -

The trove of documents was anonymously leaked to German daily Sueddeutsche Zeitung and shared with more than 100 media groups by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ). More information is expected over the coming weeks.

The first revelations elicited a chorus of denials, including from the Kremlin, which suggested a US plot after the leaks put a close friend of Putin's at the top of an offshore empire worth more than $2 billion that has made his circle fabulously wealthy.

Offshore financial dealings are not illegal in themselves but may be used to hide assets from tax authorities, launder the proceeds of criminal activities or conceal misappropriated or politically inconvenient wealth.

Among other key findings of the probe, which named about 140 political figures, including 12 current or former heads of state:

-- The families of some of China's top brass -- including President Xi Jinping -- used offshore tax havens to conceal their fortunes, including at least eight current or former members of the Politburo Standing Committee, the ruling Communist Party's most powerful body.

-- Iceland's Prime Minister Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson secretly owned millions of dollars in bank bonds at a time when his country's banking system was collapsing in 2008. He has so far steadfastly refused to step down.

-- A Panamanian shell company may have helped hide millions of dollars from a $40 million British gold bullion robbery at London-Heathrow Airport in November 1983 that is etched in criminal folklore, according to the ICIJ.

- 'An attack on Panama' -

The papers, from around 214,000 offshore entities covering almost 40 years, also name the president of Ukraine and the king of Saudi Arabia, as well as sporting and movie stars including Jackie Chan.

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko denied any wrongdoing, but he may face an attempt to impeach him.

French newspaper Le Monde cited documents showing that Syria used Mossack Fonseca to create shell companies to help it break international sanctions and fund its war effort.

Pascal Saint-Amans, head of tax policy at the OECD, said the leaks showed that Panama is now almost unrivalled as a world tax haven.

"Among the countries that refuse to automatically exchange information, there are Bahrain, Nauru, Vanuatu and Lebanon," he told AFP. "Switzerland is really making progress, so there is a concentration of problems in Panama."

One of the Panama law firm's founders, Ramon Fonseca, told AFP the leaks were "a crime, a felony" and "an attack on Panama".

Panama's government said it had "zero tolerance" for shady deals, and vowed to "vigorously cooperate" with any legal investigations.

More than 500 banks, their subsidiaries and branches have worked with Mossack Fonseca since the 1970s to help clients manage offshore companies. UBS set up more than 1,100 and HSBC and its affiliates created more than 2,300.

The documents show "banks, law firms and other offshore players often fail to follow legal requirements to make sure clients are not involved in criminal enterprises, tax dodging or political corruption," the ICIJ said.

Mossack Fonseca is already subject to investigations in Germany and Brazil, where it is part of a huge money laundering probe that has threatened to topple the current government.

HSBC was among the most active in registering shell companies that move money around the world on behalf of rich and politically connected clients

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-04-04/hsbc-was-active-i...

http://www.newsmax.com/Finance/Economy/panama-oecd-transparency-lea...

US, Like Panama, Is 'Playground for the World's Dirty Money'

Tuesday, 05 Apr 2016 07:26 AM

Panama and the U.S. have at least one thing in common: Neither has agreed to new international standards to make it harder for tax evaders and money launderers to hide their money.

Over the past several years, amid increased scrutiny by journalists, regulators and law enforcers, the global tax-haven landscape has shifted. In an effort to catch tax dodgers, almost 100 countries and other jurisdictions have agreed since 2014 to impose new disclosure requirements for bank accounts, trusts and some other investments held by international customers — standards issued by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, a government-funded international policy group.

Places like Switzerland and Bermuda are agreeing, at least in principle, to share bank account information with tax authorities in other countries. Only a handful of nations have declined to sign on. The most prominent is the U.S. Another, Panama, is at the center of a storm over tax evasion and global cash flight that broke out over the weekend.

A law firm there helped set up tens of thousands of shell companies, according to a report by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists. ICIJ and other news organizations published reports they said showed global efforts to hide wealth, undertaken by global politicians and the ultra-rich, with the aid of banks and lawyers. The central tool: shell companies that people used to shield the identity of the owners’ assets. While such structures can be legal, they can also support efforts to avoid taxes.

U.S. Secrecy

The latest reporting "underscores the secrecy in Panama," said Stefanie Ostfeld, the acting head of the U.S. office of the anti-corruption group Global Witness. "What’s lesser known, is the U.S. is just as big a secrecy jurisdiction as so many of these Caribbean countries and Panama. We should not want to be the playground for the world’s dirty money, which is what we are right now."

Advisers around the world are increasingly using the U.S. resistance to the OECD’s standards as a marketing tool — attracting overseas money to U.S. state-level tax and secrecy havens like Nevada and South Dakota, potentially keeping it hidden from their home governments.

Last month, members of Congress in both the House and Senate introduced bills to require disclosure of the true owners of U.S. companies, an effort to crack down on money laundering and tax evasion.

US government, Soros funded Panama Papers to attack Putin – WikiLeaks. 6 April, 2016.

© Jason Reed / Reuters

Washington is behind the recently released offshore revelations known as the Panama Papers, WikiLeaks has claimed, saying that the attack was “produced” to target Russia and President Putin.

On Wednesday, the international whistleblowing organization said on Twitter that the Panama Papers data leak was produced by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), "which targets Russia and [the] former USSR." The "Putin attack" was funded by the US Agency for International Development (USAID) and American hedge fund billionaire George Soros, WikiLeaks added, saying that the US government's funding of such an attack is a serious blow to its integrity.

Organizations belonging to Soros have been proclaimed to be "undesirable" in Russia. Last year, the Russian Prosecutor General’s Office recognized Soros’s Open Society Foundations and the Open Society Institute Assistance Foundation as undesirable groups, banning Russian citizens and organizations from participation in any of their projects.

Prosecutors then said the activities of the institute and its assistance foundation were a threat to the basis of Russia’s constitutional order and national security. Earlier this year, the billionaire US investor alleged that Putin is "no ally" to US and EU leaders, and that he aims "to gain considerable economic benefits from dividing Europe."

Earlier this week, the head of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), which worked on the Panama Papers, said that Putin is not the target of the leak, but rather that the revelations aimed to shed light on murky offshore practices internationally. "It wasn’t a story about Russia. It was a story about the offshore world," ICIJ head Gerard Ryle told TASS.

His statement came in stark contrast to international media coverage of the "largest leak in offshore history." Although neither Vladimir Putin nor any members of his family are directly mentioned in the papers, many mainstream media outlets chose the Russian president’s photo when breaking the story.

"The degree of Putinophobia has reached a point where to speak well about Russia, or about some of its actions and successes, is impossible. One needs to speak [about Russia] in negative terms, the more the better, and when there's nothing to say, you need to make things up," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has said, commenting on anti-Russian sentiment triggered by the publications.

Panama Papers not 'responsible journalism,' should be released in full

WikiLeaks spokesman and Icelandic investigative journalist Kristinn Hrafnsson has called for the leaked data to be put online so that everybody could search through the papers. He said withholding of the documents could hardly be viewed as "responsible journalism."

"When they are saying that this is responsible journalism, I totally disagree with the overall tone of that," the co-founder of the Icelandic Center for Investigative Journalism told RT's Afshin Rattansi in Going Underground, when asked about his reaction to the ICIJ head saying that the consortium is not WikiLeaks, and is trying to show that journalism can be done responsibly by not releasing the papers in full.

"They should be available to the general public in such a manner so everybody, not just the group of journalists working directly on the data, can search it," Hrafnsson said.

The WikiLeaks spokesman also told RT he's not surprised that there have been no big American names in the leaked 11.5 million documents of the Panamanian law company.

"It seems to be skewed at least a way from American interest. There's always a possibility that it's not a journalistic bias but simply a bias in the documents themselves," Hrafnsson said, adding that Mossack Fonseca "is simply one law firm in Panama servicing and providing tax haven companies mostly out of the BVI [British Virgin Islands]." Source: rt.com

http://www.middleeastrising.com/brazil-arrests-worlds-richest-banker/

Apr 6, 2016 

-Wikileaks clarified what they meant...

Claims that #PanamaPapers themselves are a 'plot' against Russia are nonsense. However hoarding, DC organization & USAID money tilt coverage https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/717810984673484800

- Panama Papers reveal London as centre of 'spider's web'

(Difference between London & the "tax haven" City of London: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LrObZ_HZZUc )

- David Cameron left dangerously exposed by Panama Papers fallout

One Day After the Panama Papers were Leaked, IRS Headquarters Closes then Catches Fire

Ahttp://thefreethoughtproject.com/fire-breaks-basement-irs-building-panama-papers-leak/

As we have been covering this week, the release of the Panama Papers has created a panic among world governments, by exposing some of their darkest secrets.

In the leak, 11.5 million documents were stolen from Mossack Fonseca and were leaked to Suddeutsche Zeitung, who then turned to the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists to examine the documents. In the time since, media organizations have been scrambling to sift through a large number of documents, in hopes of finding stories that they can spin to fit their narrative.

So far, most of the information to be released through the mainstream media has been directed at foreign governments and leaders, with a passing mention of several hundred American citizens who store their money offshore without reporting it to the IRS. Ironically enough, at the height of the Panama Papers publicity, a fire broke out in the basement of the IRS headquarters, leading to a full closure of the headquarters for over a week.

According to a short report from the Associated Press:

IRS headquarters in Washington will remain closed for the rest of the week while repairs are made after a basement fire in the building.The agency said in a news release Tuesday that Monday afternoon’s fire affected the air handling system. No one was hurt in the fire. The IRS says telework-ready employees are expected to telework from their approved location. Officials say tax returns are not processed at headquarters; taxpayers should continue to file their returns.

The timing of the fire and the closure have led many to speculate that perhaps the fire is an inside job, and created intentionally for the purpose of destroying records, which could possibly be evidence that correlates to Panama Papers revelations.

The building was closed and workers sent home approximately 45 minutes before flames engulfed the basement “due to electrical issues with the air-conditioning system,” an IRS spokesman said. He said that about 2,000 people work there but that “a few hundred” were still in the building when the fire broke out.

So far, there has been no indication from local authorities or representatives at the IRS as to whether the fire was an accident or an act of arson, and it is likely that this news will never be revealed. However, it is important to point out that the IRS headquarters is one of the most secure buildings in the country, which would make it nearly impossible for someone to start a fire in the basement unless they had authorized access to the area.

Aside from the mention of some American’s use of so-called “tax havens,” there have been no reports of the IRS being implicated in the Panama Papers through the mainstream media. But the mainstream media has yet to report on the full scope of the 11.5 million documents that were released. It is, however, possible that the IRS is expecting some sort of fallout from sensitive information, and is taking protective measures to safeguard their secrets.

It is also possible that they are somehow connected or complicit in the offshore tax avoidance that has been practiced by some American citizens. It is also yet another possibility that this is just a mere coincidence, but when there is smoke, there is usually fire.

#CurseDavidCameron trends as PM admits to profiting from Panama fund

https://www.rt.com/uk/338865-twitter-curse-david-cameron-panama/

The PM admitted to having had “a difficult few days” lately. Well, bad luck, Dave. Seems that these days have only just begun.

SpaceX successfully lands its rocket on a floating drone ship for the first time

http://www.theverge.com/2016/4/8/11392138/spacex-landing-success-fa...

SEC Charges Texas Attorney General with Fraud

http://fortune.com/2016/04/11/sec-charges-texas-attorney-general-wi...
The Securities and Exchange Commission today filed fraud charges against current Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton. The charges are related to an investment in a Texas tech startup that Paxton helped promote before being elected in November 2014.

Paxton was already facing securities fraud charges in a related case in Texas, but has refused to resign.

The charges against Paxton involve Servergy Inc., a McKinney, Texas-based company that between 2009 and 2013 raised $26 million from outside investors. The company’s basic pitch was that it was making data center servers that were equally powerful, but more energy efficient than comparable offerings from companies like Dell, IBM IBM and Hewlett Packard HPE . According to the SEC, however, Servergy fraudulently told investors that its “cleantech servers” came with 64-bit processors (like its rivals’ newest offerings), even though they actually had less powerful 32-bit processors. The company and its CEO, William Mapp, also would allegedly make other misrepresentations to investors, such as having received an order from Amazon AMZN . In reality, an Amazon employee had simply inquired about the server so that he could test it for personal use.

Among those helping to pitch Servergy to investors was Paxton, who at the time was a private attorney and member of the Texas House of Representatives. He would successfully solicit nearly $1 million from friends and business associates in exchange for a previously agreed-upon stock commission, but the SEC says that Paxton never disclosed that he was being compensated by Servergy for his services. Moreover, Paxton did not ever register with the SEC as a broker-dealer.

From the complaint:

According to Paxton, he met Mapp at a Dairy Queen restaurant in McKinney, Texas in July or August 2011, intending to invest $100,000 of his own money in Servergy. But, according to Paxton, Mapp refused his investment and stated, “I can’t take your money. God doesn’t want me to take your money.” Consequently, Paxton claims, he later accepted the shares as a gift.

The SEC, however, does not buy Paxton’s version of events. It also argues that while Paxton did not have direct knowledge of Mapp’s alleged deception when it came to the company’s business dealings, he also conducted no independent due diligence before soliciting investments.

Among those also charged by the SEC today are Servergey (which agreed to pay a $200,000 fine), Mapp (who has since been fired as CEO) and Caleb White (another placement agent who has simultaneously settled with the SEC by paying $66,000 in disgorgement and returning his shares to the company).

This video is incredibly surprising given the DNC / Hillary hold of the corporate media. Watch how morning Joe absolutely breaks open the fact the Sanders and voters were cheated out of delegates in Wyoming (even though he won the popular vote). Could tides be turning based on the Puppet Master and the CoW where people in corporate media (anchors) begin to question the legitimacy of the voting process in the US, basically calling the system rigged:

(the vitriol etc... starts at ~2:30 of the video)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dGeyhgp2N8A

Panama papers: Tax queries go out to all the names revealed

http://indianexpress.com/article/india/india-news-india/panama-pape...

Officials said that the communications have already been dispatched to around 50 people in different cities and that these are in two parts. One query asks for confirmation of identity, second seeks details on firm, capital and permissions.

With the Prime Minister seeking the first status report on the probe into The Panama Papers within 15 days, units of the Income Tax (Investigation) across the country have dispatched detailed questionnaires to all Indian clients of Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca who were named by The Indian Express as part of an ongoing investigation.

Officials said that the communications have already been dispatched to around 50 people in different cities and that these are in two parts. The first is a clarification on whether they are the persons named in The Indian Express report and whether they gave comments attributed to them on the offshore entities listed against their names. The clients have been given three days to respond.

Also read | EU to force multi-national companies to report earnings, raise acco...

The second communication is a more detailed questionnaire which has sought replies on the following: permissions sought by the client before incorporating the offshore entity; the manner in which money was routed for opening it; details of shareholders/directors/beneficial owners of the offshore entity; details of transactions and deposits in it; details of assets maintained by it; the extent of deposits made in the entity under the Liberalised Remittance Scheme (LRS) and so on.

Watch | Explained: What Do The Panama Papers Reveal

Sources said that depending on the number of offshore entities incorporated by the addressee and the complexity of the investments involved, people have been given up to 20 days to respond to the questionnaire.

It is learnt that prior to the dispatch of the questionnaires, the IT (Investigation) units had already made an assessment from existing databases of the categories of people covered in The Panama Papers. This was done almost immediately after Finance Minister Arun Jaitley made the announcement on April 4 that a multi-agency panel was being constituted to exclusively probe The Panama Papers leak and the Indians named in it.

Also read | In the season of Panama Papers, recalling birth of FEMA and PMLA

Officials in the Ministry of Finance said they have found that several people were correctly quoted as saying that they had only made deposits under the LRS scheme and also declared the existence of the offshore entities to the tax authorities. However, there are also cases of “partial disclosure” wherein some offshore entities have been declared with tax authorities and others omitted from a mention in Income Tax returns (ITRs) .

There is another category of people, including some prominent Delhi and Mumbai-based Mossack Fonseca clients named in The Indian Express, who had made no disclosure about the offshore firms and they may be the first to receive notices from the IT department. As yet, officials said they are yet to find Mossack Fonseca clients who had declared incorporation of entities in tax havens during last year’s “compliance” scheme.

=======================

A video on the Panama Papers and what they reveal:

http://thefreethoughtproject.com/saudi-arabia-threatens-crash-dolla...

http://www.usapoliticstoday.com/watch-video-goes-viral-local-tv-anc...

Video goes viral after local TV anchor exposes this George Soros plot.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DAeAbX4RLns

Emergency bank meetings, summits, trigger speculation

http://www.trunews.com/emergency-bank-meetings/

What is the world is going on with banks this week?  Emergency meetings, banker summits, crashing European banks, and the worst bank reports since the Great Depression, David Haggith of  The Great Recession Blog offers his latest insights and research on the number of meetings that banks are participating in this week.  David writes:

Just about every major banker and finance minister in the world is meeting in Washington, D.C., this week, following two rushed, secretive meetings of the Federal Reserve and another instantaneous and rare meeting between the Fed Chair and the president of the United States. These and other emergency bank meetings around the world cause one to wonder what is going down. Here’s a bullet list of the week’s big-bank events:

• The Federal Reserve Board of Governors just held an “expedited special meeting” on Monday in closed-door session.
• The White House made an immediate announcement that the president was going to meet with Fed Chair Janet Yellen right after Monday’s special meeting and that Vice President Biden would be joining them.
• Immediately after Monday’s special meeting, the Federal Reserve also posted an announcement of another expedited closed-door meeting for Tuesday for the specific purpose of “bank supervision.”
• A G-20 meeting of finance ministers and central-bank heads starts in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday, too, and continues through Wednesday.
• Then on Thursday the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund meet in Washington.
• The Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta just revised US GDP growth for the first quarter to the precious of recession at 0.1%.
• US banks are expected this coming week to report their worst quarter financially since the start of the Great Recession.
• The press stated that the German government will sue the European Central Bank if it launches a more aggressive and populist form of quantitative easing, often called “helicopter money.”
• The European Union’s new “bail-in” procedures for failing banks were employed for the first time with Austrian bank Heta Asset Resolution AG.
• Italy’s minister of finance called an emergency meeting of Italian bankers to engage “last resort” measures for dealing with 360-billion euros of bad loans in banks that have only 50 billion in capital.

The Return of Kepler: NASA Brings Planet-Hunter Back From The Dead Again

http://www.techtimes.com/articles/150701/20160416/return-kepler-nas...

The Kepler spacecraft is once again in good health, following a glitch that sent the planet-hunting observatory in emergency mode.

Mission engineers at NASA managed to repair the vehicle, using a step-by-step process, while it was 75 million miles from Earth.

Kepler is currently in the second stage of its mission, exploring nearby stars for signs of alien worlds. When mission planners attempted to contact the craft on April 7, they found the vehicle had placed itself into a shutdown mode, usually reserved for emergencies. In this state, the solar panels on the vehicle turn to face the sun, as the observatory slowly rotates in space.

Following a series of commands, engineers were able to place Kepler into safe mode on April 15.

Controllers switched Kepler to a point rest state, during which time the vehicle uses little fuel, and priority is given to communication with controllers. On April 12, NASA officials were able to download enough information about the spacecraft to diagnose the problem.

After that, engineers were able to devise a series of commands designed to switch on non-critical segments of the spacecraft.

The rescue plan was first tested on a Kepler simulator. When the plan worked there, the instructions were sent to the Kepler spacecraft.

"The recovery started slowly and carefully, as we initially merely tried to understand the situation and recover the systems least likely to have been the cause," said Charlie Sobeck of the Ames Research Center, managed by NASA. "Over the last day and a half, we've begun to turn the corner, by powering on more suspect components. With just one more to go, I expect that we will soon be on the home stretch and picking up speed towards returning to normal science operations."

Engineers are still diagnosing the data returned by Kepler, in order to deduce the events that could have led to the observatory entering emergency mode. However, fault indicators within the observatory are designed to be sensitive, and it is possible systems were overwhelmed by several alarms going off at one time.

"The thing to keep in mind is K2 had been remarkably trouble free and I think we'll be trouble free going forward. I don't believe this signals the end of the mission at all," Sobeck said.

Kepler was launched in March 2009, in order to hunt for planets around other stars. Since that time, it has found more than 1,000 confirmed exoplanets, as well as 3,500 suspected planetary candidates.

This is not the first time mission engineers have been able to bring Kepler back from a crisis. In 2013, the second of four reaction wheels gave out, eliminating navigational ability. Engineers found a way to use pressure from sunlight to guide the observatory. This revitalized mission became known as K2, and now includes observations of supernovae and other celestial events.

While Kepler is in safe mode, the vehicle allows one more error to take place. However, if another alarm had signaled while Kepler were in emergency mode, NASA would have lost the $600 million observatory.

Petition on whitehouse.gov

INVESTIGATE THE VOTER FRAUD AND VOTER SUPPRESSION IN ARIZONA 3/22/2016 DEMOCRATIC PARTY.

Petition to have the Obama Administration investigate the voter fraud and voter suppression on 3/22/2016 in ARIZONA. Numerous voters who switched from Independent to Democrat could not vote and were turned away or given provisional ballots which in turn were never counted. We the people of the United States of America find this act alarming and would like a complete investigation to uncover the violations that occurred during the Arizona voting on 3/22/2016 and prosecute those responsible to the fullest extent of the law. Source: petitions.whitehouse.gov

Panama Papers: US launches criminal inquiry into tax avoidance claims

http://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/apr/19/panama-papers-us-ju...

US attorney for Manhattan says Department of Justice has opened investigation related to revelations exposed in massive leak of documents

The US Department of Justice has launched a criminal investigation into the widespread international tax avoidance schemes exposed by the Panama Papers leak, published by the Guardian and other journalistic partners.

Preet Bharara, the US attorney for Manhattan, said he had “opened a criminal investigation regarding matters to which the Panama Papers are relevant”.

Bharara has written to the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), which coordinated the unprecedented leak of 11.5m files from offshore law firm Mossack Fonseca, to ask for further information to assist with his criminal investigation.

The inquiry comes after Barack Obama described the revelations from the leaks – which have caused political tumult across the world – “important stuff” and global tax avoidance as a “huge problem”.

“There is no doubt that the problem of global tax avoidance generally is a huge problem,” Obama told reporters in an unscheduled appearance in the White House briefing room earlier this month. “The problem is that a lot of this stuff is legal, not illegal.

“A lot of these loopholes come at the expense of middle-class families, because that lost revenue has to be made up somewhere.”

The US president said the leak from Panama illustrated the scale of tax avoidance involving Fortune 500 companies and running into trillions of dollars worldwide.

“We shouldn’t make it legal to engage in transactions just to avoid taxes,” he added, praising instead “the basic principle of making sure everyone pays their fair share”.

The US attorney general’s office was unable to provide any further details about the criminal investigation because it is ongoing.

Bharara, who as US attorney general for the southern district of New York has led several crusades against criminal wrongdoing in the financial sector, is already investigating several of the more than 200 US citizens named in the papers.

Among them is Wall Street financier Benjamin Wey, who has been charged with securities fraud, wire fraud, conspiracy and money laundering for using family members to help him amass ownership of large blocks of stock in companies through so-called “reverse merger” transactions between Chinese companies and US shell companies. He made tens of millions of dollars of illegal profit by manipulating the companies’ stock prices, according to the indictment.

The Panama Papers leak shows that Mossack Fonseca helped set up the offshore companies used in the stock manipulation.

“Ben Wey fashioned himself a master of industry, but as alleged, he was merely a master of manipulation,” Bharara said when he announced the indictment against Wey in September. Wey, the chief executive of New York Global Group, denies the charge.

The release of the Panama Papers has sparked public outrage across the world, including the resignations of the the prime minister of Iceland and Spain’s industry minister following revelations about their offshore tax arrangements.

David Cameron, the British prime minister, has also been forced to defend his family’s tax arrangements after disclosures about an offshore fund established by his late father. He also has taken the unprecedented step of publicly releasing details from his tax returns.

The offices of Mossack Fonseca in Panama were raided by police officers last week on the orders of the country’s attorney general in an attempt to “establish the use of the firm for illicit activities”.

Mossack Fonseca is the world’s fourth biggest offshore law firm. It specialises in incorporating companies in offshore jurisdictions such as the British Virgin Islands.

The leaders of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) have warned that the industrial scale of international tax avoidance revealed by the Panama Papers represents a “great concern” for the global economy and is having a “tremendously negative effect on our mission to end poverty”.

Jim Yong Kim, the president of the World Bank, said last week that the revelations that many of the world’s richest and most powerful people are avoiding paying millions in taxes by hiding money from the taxman in offshore havens is a “great, great concern” and “very, very damaging” to the bank’s “mission to end extreme poverty”.

“When taxes are evaded, when state assets are taken and put into these havens, all of these things can have a tremendous negative effect on our mission to end poverty and boost prosperity,” he said.

Christine Lagarde, managing director of the IMF, said the world’s financial regulators had long been “alarmed” about Panama’s lax approach to taxation and corruption but failed to take action.

In her strongest comments yet addressing the scandal exposed by the Panama Papers, Lagarde said: “In the case of Panama there had been alert and alarm raised, but there had not been the level of implementation that was expected.”

She said the leak showed that “the [international tax] rules appear to be skewed towards” the global rich. “Clearly what has resulted from the review of these Panama Papers indicates that however important [international tax rules to prevent] base erosion and profit shifting … it is unfinished business,” she said in an opening address to the meeting.

Philippine electoral records breached in 'largest ever' government hack

Did a Ukrainian fighter jet shoot down MH17? BBC documentary claims Boeing 777 may have been targeted by another plane 

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3556177/Was-MH17-shot-Ukrai... 

New evidence suggests that the downing of the Malaysian Airlines plane MH17 was caused by a shot from a Ukrainian fighter jet rather than a ground-to-air missile. 

The damning allegations will be revealed in a BBC documentary which puts forward a number of theories as to why the aircraft exploded.

It is even argued that the tragedy was caused by a CIA-backed 'terrorist operation.'

North Korea Makes Second Failed Missile Test

http://www.valuewalk.com/2016/04/north-korea-fail-missile-test/

North Korea continues to invest a large proportion of its GDP in military spending, despite the fact that it citizens live in poverty.

The Hermit Kingdom carried out another missile test on Thursday, firing what is thought to have been a Musudan intermediate-range ballistic missile (IRBM) from its east coast. However a military official says that the launch was unsuccessful..

Second unsuccessful launch in the space of a few weeks

North Korea already tried to launch the same missile on April 15. The previous launch was also a failure.

“North Korea tried to launch a missile believed to be a Musudan from an area near Wonsan at about 6:40 a.m.” the official said on the condition of anonymity. “The launch is presumed to have failed as the missile fell into the sea a few seconds after liftoff.”

The launch was detected by a United States reconnaissance satellite. Both the U.S. and South Korea are investigating the exact cause of the crash.

In the first failed launch it appears that the missile exploded during its booster phase. This meant it didn’t have time to fix its angle and enter orbit.

IRBMs could reach U.S. bases on Guam

Musudan missiles, also known as BM-25, have a range of 3,000-4,000 kilometers. As a result they can reach Guam, where U.S. naval and air bases are situated.

North Korea first deployed the Musudan missiles in 2007. At that stage they had not carried out any tests. These two consecutive failed tests indicate that North Korea’s missile program is less complete than many had thought, according to military experts.

South Korean armed forces are preparing for possible provocations from the North. This may include a fifth nuclear test. It is thought that a new test could take place around the seventh ruling Workers’ Party Congress on May 6.

North Korea has continued to test missiles and nuclear weapons despite United Nations Security Council (UNSC) resolutions prohibiting it from doing so. Harsher sanctions were introduced in March following a fourth nuclear test in January and a long-range missile test in February.

However those sanctions have done little to convince North Korea to end military testing. In fact Pyongyang has protested the ruling by firing short- and mid-range missiles, while also testing a new 300-millimeter multiple-rocket launcher.

North Korea facing tough choices

Military tensions in the Korean Peninsula continue to be high. North Korea has called for an end to joint U.S.-South Korea military drills, which Pyongyang alleges are being held in preparation for an invasion of its territory.

Pyongyang continues to invest 25% of GDP in military spending at the expense of living conditions for its citizens. Nuclear weapons in particular are seen as a trump card that preserves the country’s independence and freedom from foreign independence. For a country that long suffered under imperialism, this is of paramount importance.

While the leadership and many citizens say that the nuclear program keeps North Korea strong, the calorie deficit among the population continues to rise. Some academics argue that economic sanctions only hurt the poor, as they have had little effect on curbing North Korea’s nuclear ambitions.

Despite the loss of much needed foreign aid and ever more stringent economic sanctions, North Korea pushes forward with its military programs. The question now is how much longer can the country survive under these policies.

Silvio Berlusconi faces sex and lies charges in seven cities across Italy

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/apr/30/silvio-berlusconi-face...

Courts will try the disgraced former prime minister and young women he is accused of bribing to lie under oath

Colombian authorities have arrested a prominent Panama businessman sought by the United States and dismantled an empire of banking, real estate and retail businesses that the U.S. says were part of a top worldwide money-laundering organization

http://www.usnews.com/news/business/articles/2016-05-06/colombia-ar...

BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) — Colombian authorities have arrested a prominent Panama businessman they're calling the world's most-wanted money launderer and froze assets belonging to dozens of companies linked to him that were allegedly used to hide millions in illegal drug profits.

The coordinated operation was announced Thursday as the U.S. Treasury Department froze assets belonging to 68 companies in this Central American nation and in Colombia under a drug kingpin designation.

On Friday, Colombian police showed videos taken during the arrest of Nidal Waked, who the U.S. has signaled as the co-leader with his uncle, Abdul Waked, of a money laundering network that stretched across an empire of real estate, financial and retail businesses in 14 Latin American nations.

Nidal Waked, 44, was arrested Wednesday night on a U.S. drug warrant upon arrival to Bogota's international airport from Panama City. Police said he seemed surprised but was cooperative and explained he had traveled to the Colombian capital on business and with a family member who he was accompanying for a medical appointment. Born in the Colombian city of Barranquilla, he's being held in Bogota pending a U.S. extradition request.

A statement from U.S. Attorney's Office in Miami described Nidal Waked as one of "the most significant money launderers and drug traffickers in the world." If convicted, he faces up to 70 years in prison.

The U.S. law enforcement operation has come as a major shock to Panama, which is still reeling from a huge leak of documents known as the Panama Papers detailing how the world's rich and famous used the Central American nation to hide their wealth. On Friday, the Obama administration announced tougher rules and proposed legislation to prevent wealthy individuals, including politicians, from using offshore shell companies to embezzle money or avoid paying taxes.

Panama's tradition for financial secrecy and crossroads location along the path of South American cocaine heading to the U.S. has long made it an attractive money-laundering center.

President Juan Carlos Varela, who was in Washington when the sting took place, said he had instructed his finance minister to work with U.S. authorities to protect the jobs of Panamanians affected by the asset freeze. He said Panamanian prosecutors are also investigating and banking regulators taking action so that depositors and capital markets aren't hurt.

"I want to assure Panamanians that our independent system of justice and regulators are doing their jobs," Varela said in a statement.

Meanwhile, Abdul Waked has taken distance from his nephew's alleged actions, saying that he hadn't conducted any business with his older brother's family since the 1980s.

"He's not my partner and he's never been," Waked told Colombian radio station La W, adding that he was unaware of any money-laundering investigations against his companies until Thursday. "I want to defend myself. My books are open. And I'll do everything to defend my honor, that of my family and my children."

Abdul Waked, who was born in Lebanon and immigrated to Colombia's Caribbean coast, is behind some of Panama's highest-profile investments including a luxury mall, a bank and the country's oldest newspaper, La Estrella de Panama. Grupo Wisa, the family's holding company, employs more than 6,000 people who work at duty-free zones at airports across the Americas, including Mexico City's international terminals.

The base of operation was Panama City's international airport, a major travel hub that has come under U.S. scrutiny before. In 2007, Grupo Wisa along with the owners of Panama's Copa Airlines paid $173 million to run the airport's duty free zone.

A leaked 2009 U.S. diplomatic cable published by Wikileaks described the airport as "tainted by a seamy underside of alien smuggling, money laundering, narcotics trafficking and corruption." Passengers in transit could launder money through the many jewelry, perfume and electronics shops found at every turn and which face little regulatory scrutiny, the cable said.

"The duty-free zone at Tocumen is a good example of the kind of live-and-let live attitude permeating the airport," the cable said.

Grupo Wisa issued a terse statement saying the accusations "are false and unfounded." The company said it had instructed its lawyers to cooperate fully in the investigation announced by Panamanian officials.

It's still unclear who they believe the Waked family was allegedly laundering drug proceeds for.

A law enforcement official, who agreed to discuss the matter only if not quoted by name because he was not authorized to discuss the case publicly, said the family worked with a wide range of drug cartels from Colombia and Mexico as well as independent drug-trafficking organizations.

The indictment unsealed against Nidal Waked and a co-defendant alleges the two conspired to defraud Ocean Bank by misrepresenting transfers into their account at the Miami bank as loans from another financial institution in Panama.

Romanian hacker Guccifer: I breached Clinton server, 'it was easy'

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2016/05/04/romanian-hacker-guccifer...

The infamous Romanian hacker known as “Guccifer,” speaking exclusively with Fox News, claimed he easily – and repeatedly – breached former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s personal email server in early 2013.   

"For me, it was easy ... easy for me, for everybody," Marcel Lehel Lazar, who goes by the moniker "Guccifer," told Fox News from a Virginia jail where he is being held.

Guccifer’s potential role in the Clinton email investigation was first reported by Fox News last month. The hacker subsequently claimed he was able to access the server – and provided extensive details about how he did it and what he found – over the course of a half-hour jailhouse interview and a series of recorded phone calls with Fox News.

Fox News could not independently confirm Lazar’s claims.

In response to Lazar’s claims, the Clinton campaign issued a statement  Wednesday night saying, "There is absolutely no basis to believe the claims made by this criminal from his prison cell. In addition to the fact he offers no proof to support his claims, his descriptions of Secretary Clinton's server are inaccurate. It is unfathomable that he would have gained access to her emails and not leaked them the way he did to his other victims.”

The former secretary of state’s server held nearly 2,200 emails containing information now deemed classified, and another 22 at the “Top Secret” level.

The 44-year-old Lazar said he first compromised Clinton confidant Sidney Blumenthal's AOL account, in March 2013, and used that as a stepping stone to the Clinton server. He said he accessed Clinton’s server “like twice,” though he described the contents as “not interest[ing]” to him at the time. 

“I was not paying attention. For me, it was not like the Hillary Clinton server, it was like an email server she and others were using with political voting stuff," Guccifer said.

The hacker spoke freely with Fox News from the detention center in Alexandria, Va., where he’s been held since his extradition to the U.S. on federal charges relating to other alleged cyber-crimes. Wearing a green jumpsuit, Lazar was relaxed and polite in the monitored secure visitor center, separated by thick security glass. 

In describing the process, Lazar said he did extensive research on the web and then guessed Blumenthal’s security question. Once inside Blumenthal's account, Lazar said he saw dozens of messages from the Clinton email address.

Asked if he was curious about the address, Lazar merely smiled. Asked if he used the same security question approach to access the Clinton emails, he said no – then described how he allegedly got inside.

“For example, when Sidney Blumenthal got an email, I checked the email pattern from Hillary Clinton, from Colin Powell from anyone else to find out the originating IP. … When they send a letter, the email header is the originating IP usually,” Lazar explained. 

He said, “then I scanned with an IP scanner."

Lazar  emphasized that he used readily available web programs to see if the server was “alive” and which ports were open. Lazar identified programs like netscan, Netmap, Wireshark and Angry IP, though it was not possible to confirm independently which, if any, he used.

In the process of mining data from the Blumenthal account, Lazar said he came across evidence that others were on the Clinton server.

"As far as I remember, yes, there were … up to 10, like, IPs from other parts of the world,” he said. 

With no formal computer training, he did most of his hacking from a small Romanian village.

Lazar said he chose to use "proxy servers in Russia," describing them as the best, providing anonymity. 

Cyber experts who spoke with Fox News said the process Lazar described is plausible. The federal indictment Lazar faces in the U.S. for cyber-crimes specifically alleges he used "a proxy server located in Russia" for the Blumenthal compromise.

Each Internet Protocol (IP) address has a unique numeric code, like a phone number or home address.  The Democratic presidential front-runner’s home-brew private server was reportedly installed in her home in Chappaqua, N.Y., and used for all U.S. government business during her term as secretary of state.  

Former State Department IT staffer Bryan Pagliano, who installed and maintained the server, has been granted immunity by the Department of Justice and is cooperating with the FBI in its ongoing criminal investigation into Clinton’s use of the private server. An intelligence source told Fox News last month that Lazar also could help the FBI make the case that Clinton’s email server may have been compromised by a third party.

Asked what he would say to those skeptical of his claims, Lazar cited “the evidence you can find in the Guccifer archives as far as I can remember." 

Writing under his alias Guccifer, Lazar released to media outlets in March 2013 multiple exchanges between Blumenthal and Clinton. They were first reported by the Smoking Gun. 

It was through the Blumenthal compromise that the Clintonemail.com accounts were first publicly revealed.

As recently as this week, Clinton said neither she nor her aides had been contacted by the FBI about the criminal investigation. Asked whether the server had been compromised by foreign hackers, she told MSNBC on Tuesday, “No, not at all.”

Recently extradited, Lazar faces trial Sept. 12 in the Eastern District of Virginia. He has pleaded not guilty to a nine-count federal indictment for his alleged hacking crimes in the U.S. Victims are not named in the indictment but reportedly include Colin Powell, a member of the Bush family and others including Blumenthal. 

Lazar spoke extensively about Blumenthal’s account, noting his emails were “interesting” and had information about “the Middle East and what they were doing there.”

After first writing to the accused hacker on April 19, Fox News accepted two collect calls from him, over a seven-day period, before meeting with him in person at the jail. During these early phone calls, Lazar was more guarded.

After the detention center meeting, Fox News conducted additional interviews by phone and, with Lazar's permission, recorded them for broadcast.  

While Lazar's claims cannot be independently verified, three computer security specialists, including two former senior intelligence officials, said the process described is plausible and the Clinton server, now in FBI custody, may have an electronic record that would confirm or disprove Guccifer’s claims.

"This sounds like the classic attack of the late 1990s. A smart individual who knows the tools and the technology and is looking for glaring weaknesses in Internet-connected devices," Bob Gourley, a former chief technology officer (CTO) for the Defense Intelligence Agency, said.   

Gourley, who has worked in cybersecurity for more than two decades, said the programs cited to access the server can be dual purpose. "These programs are used by security professionals to make sure systems are configured appropriately. Hackers will look and see what the gaps are, and focus their energies on penetrating a system," he said.

Cybersecurity expert Morgan Wright observed, "The Blumenthal account gave [Lazar] a road map to get to the Clinton server. ... You get a foothold in one system. You get intelligence from that system, and then you start to move."

In March, the New York Times reported the Clinton server security logs showed no evidence of a breach.  On whether the Clinton security logs would show a compromise, Wright made the comparison to a bank heist: "Let’s say only one camera was on in the bank. If you don‘t have them all on, or the right one in the right locations, you won’t see what you are looking for.”

Gourley said the logs may not tell the whole story and the hard drives, three years after the fact, may not have a lot of related data left. He also warned: "Unfortunately, in this community, a lot people make up stories and it's hard to tell what's really true until you get into the forensics information and get hard facts.” 

For Lazar, a plea agreement where he cooperates in exchange for a reduced sentence would be advantageous. He told Fox News he has nothing to hide and wants to cooperate with the U.S. government, adding that he has hidden two gigabytes of data that is “too hot” and “it is a matter of national security.”  

In early April, at the time of Lazar’s extradition from a Romanian prison where he already was serving a seven-year sentence for cyber-crimes, a former senior FBI official said the timing was striking.

“Because of the proximity to Sidney Blumenthal and the activity involving Hillary’s emails, [the timing] seems to be something beyond curious,” said Ron Hosko, former assistant director of the FBI’s Criminal Investigative Division from 2012-2014.

The FBI offered no statement to Fox News.

Here are the most critical parts of the State Department inspector general report on Clinton’s email use

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2016/05/25/here-...

May 25, 2016

The State Department’s independent watchdog released an 83-page report Wednesday to lawmakers concluding that Hillary Clinton’s email practices did not comply with department policies.

Below are some of the most revealing parts of the findings:

1. The report concludes that Clinton’s use of a personal email account was “not an appropriate method.” This knocks down a key argument made in Clinton’s defense — that because she had emailed State Department officials on their government accounts, records of her communications were preserved.

2. In January 2011, there were two hacking attempts on the Clinton email system in one day. An adviser to President Bill Clinton tried to shut down the server each time.

3. There were warnings issued to senior State Department officials that hackers were targeting personal email accounts. Below, an excerpt from a March 11, 2011, memo written by the assistant secretary of diplomatic security.

[Hillary Clinton’s email problems just got much worse]

4. The audit also covered Clinton’s aides, some of whom did not cooperate when asked to respond to a questionnaire about email use. Some of the aides used their personal email accounts extensively for official business.

5. The package of emails turned over by Clinton was “incomplete.”

'We could have done a better job' with email preservation, State Dept. says

6. IT security officials were concerned about Clinton’s use of personal email and held meetings to discuss the need to preserve records and security. One staff member said the security director said the email system had been approved by state’s legal staff. The IG did not find evidence that the department’s legal adviser had reviewed or approved Clinton’s email system. 

Another staff member who raised issues was told that their mission was “to support the Secretary, and instructed the staff never to speak of the Secretary’s personal email system again.”

7. The report also criticizes Colin Powell’s handling of official emails during his tenure as secretary of state, saying it was also “not an appropriate method” for preserving emails that are part of the federal record. When asked to defend her email system, Clinton has said that her predecessors also used personal accounts.

But the report also notes that by the time Clinton became secretary of state, the guidance on email use was much more detailed, suggesting that pointing to Powell is not an entirely fair comparison.

Read more at http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=370_1464277401#7IjDr4apwMbPRArf.99

After Turkish journalists were arrested for the revelations about IS, and Germany's Chancellor approved arrest of the comedian, the Brits have come up with a humorous way of getting back at Johnny Turk with a competition in magazine called the Spectator.

The Spectator’s President Erdogan Offensive Poetry Competition was won by Boris Johnstone - who has turkish ancestors - and is as follows:

There was a young fellow from Ankara

Who was a terrific wankerer

Till he sowed his wild oats

With the help of a goat

But he didn’t even stop to thankera.

I apologise if this offends, gets either flamed or blocked by the moderators - but hey - this is not as much of a joke as The Texan Cretin was elected POTUS.....!

http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2016/05/the-story-behind-boris-johnson...

there is also the following....

There was once a president from Turkey
Whose financial and political conduct was murky
He shut down opposition newspapers
Who tried to expose his illegal capers
The gaffes in his speeches made him seem quirky

Wikileaks will publish ‘enough evidence’ to indict Hillary Clinton, warns Assange

https://www.rt.com/usa/346534-wikileaks-clinton-assange-fbi/

Tokyo Governor Yoichi Masuzoe resigns over spending scandal

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-36535624

The governor of Tokyo has said he is standing down amid a spending scandal, Japanese media report.

Yoichi Masuzoe has faced fierce criticism over allegations he used official funds to pay for holidays, art and comic books for his children.

He had been expected to lose a no-confidence vote in the Japanese capital's assembly later on Wednesday.

The scandal, which threatened to embarrass the 2020 Olympic host city, comes ahead of upper house elections.

It is being seen as potentially damaging to Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's Liberal Democratic Party's (LDP) chances in the 10 July vote.

Mr Masuzoe, who won election promising a scandal-free administration, has denied breaking the law, but admitted to ethical lapses around his lavish spending.

Spas and shirts

In April, it was revealed that Mr Masuzoe was using his official car to be driven to a weekend cottage south of Tokyo.

Further allegations later emerged of excessive spending on official trips, accommodation in high-end spas, lavish family outings and expensive clothing.

He said many of the items, including Chinese silk shirts, were research or work-related materials. He also initially said reservations had been made by his assistants and that his accountant may have erroneously booked some personal expenses as work-related.

He was quoted in Japanese media as saying it was important for him to visit his holiday home regularly as it had a bigger bath, enabling him to stretch out his legs and keep him refreshed.

The governor later said he would return money that he admitted had been wrongly claimed and promised to rein in spending.

His predecessor, Naoki Inose also quit over a funding scandal in 2013, soon after Tokyo won the right to host the Olympics - a project that has itself been hit by scandal, overspend and other administrative fumbles.

Mr Masuzoe's resignation means a stand-in governor is likely to accept the Olympic flag for Tokyo at the end of the Rio Olympics in August.

Russia Is Reportedly Set To Release Clinton's Intercepted Emails

14 June, 2016. Reliable intelligence sources in the West have indicated that warnings had been received that the Russian Government could in the near future release the text of email messages intercepted from U.S. Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s private e-mail server from the time she was U.S. Secretary of State. The release would, the messaging indicated, prove that Secretary Clinton had, in fact, laid open U.S. secrets to foreign interception by putting highly-classified Government reports onto a private server in violation of U.S. law, and that, as suspected, the server had been targeted and hacked by foreign intelligence services.

The reports indicated that the decision as to whether to reveal the intercepts would be made by Russian Federation President Vladimir Putin, and it was possible that the release would, if made, be through a third party, such as Wikileaks. The apparent message from Moscow, through the intelligence community, seemed to indicate frustration with the pace of the official U.S. Department of Justice investigation into the so-called server scandal, which seemed to offer prima facie evidence that U.S. law had been violated by Mrs Clinton’s decision to use a private server through which to conduct official and often highly-secret communications during her time as Secretary of State.

U.S. sources indicated that the extensive Department of Justice probe was more focused on the possibility that the private server was used to protect messaging in which Secretary Clinton allegedly discussed quid pro quo transactions with private donors to the Clinton Foundation in exchange for influence on U.S. policy.

The Russian possession of the intercepts, however, was designed also to show that, apart from violating U.S. law in the fundamental handling of classified documents (which Sec. Clinton had alleged was no worse than the mishandling of a few documents by CIA Director David Petraeus or Clinton’s National Security Advisor Sandy Berger), the traffic included highly-classified materials which had their classification headers stripped. Russian (and other) sources had indicated frustration with the pace of the Justice Dept. probe, and its avoidance of the national security aspects of intelligence handling. This meant that the topic would be suppressed by the U.S. Barack Obama Administration so that it would not be a factor in the current U.S. Presidential election campaign, in which President Obama had endorsed Mrs Clinton.

Moscow’s discreet messaging about a possible leak of the traffic, in time to impact the U.S. elections, was designed to pressure faster U.S. legal action on the matter, but was largely due to Russian concerns about possible U.S. strategic policy in the event of a Hillary Clinton presidency.

Apart from the breach of U.S. Federal law in the handling of classified material, the Clinton private server was, according to GIS/Defense & Foreign Affairs analysts, always likely to have been a primary target for foreign cyber warfare interception operations, particularly those of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), Russia, and North Korea (DPRK), but probably also by others, including Iran Source: zerohedge.com

SpaceX’s landing streak comes to an end as Falcon 9 breaks apart during touch down

15 June, 2016. A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket successfully launched two satellites into orbit this morning, but the company failed to land the vehicle on a floating drone ship at sea afterward. Prior to the launch, the company said this landing would be difficult, since the rocket was going to a very high orbit known as geostationary transfer orbit, or GTO. Sending satellites to GTO uses up a lot of fuel during the initial ascent, leaving less fuel to pull off the vehicle's return.

This Falcon 9 landing caused a bit of drama, since SpaceX wasn't sure at first if the vehicle actually made it down in one piece. Once the rocket landed, it shook the drone ship pretty violently, causing the ship's onboard camera to freeze. The last shots of the vehicle before the camera cut out showed the Falcon 9 standing upright on the ship, but there were also some flames around the bottom.

Afterward, a SpaceX employee announced on the company's webcast that the vehicle was indeed lost. "We can say that Falcon 9 was lost in this attempt," said Kate Tice, a process improvement engineer for SpaceX. Later CEO Elon Musk confirmed that the Falcon 9 suffered an RUD, or a rapid unscheduled disassembly. That's "Musk speak" for an explosion.

Later, Musk said that the problem had to do with low thrust in the one of the rocket's three main engines, and that all the engines need to be operating at full capacity to handle this type of landing. He noted that the company is already working on upgrades to the Falcon 9 so that it can handle this type of "thrust shortfall" in the future.

The video of the landing will be released later, according to Musk, once the company gets access to the drone ship's camera. Musk said it could be the hardest landing they've had yet, but the drone ship is still okay. However, the failure does put an end to SpaceX’s recent landing streak. The company has pulled off successful landings after its past three launches, all of which touched down on the drone ship. So far the company has landed four Falcon 9s in total — three at sea and one on solid ground.

SpaceX will have many more chances to land its rockets again soon. The company will launch a cargo resupply mission to the International Space Station for NASA on July 16th. After that launch, SpaceX will try to land the Falcon 9 on solid ground at Cape Canaveral, Florida — something it hasn’t attempted since its first rocket landing in December. And after that, SpaceX has another satellite launch slated for August.

Meanwhile, the company still has an impressive stockpile of landed rockets in its possession. SpaceX is keeping its four recovered rockets in a hangar at Launch Complex 39A, a launch site at Kennedy Space Center in Florida that the company leases from NASA. That hangar can only store five Falcon 9 rockets at a time, though. So whenever SpaceX does land its next rocket in Florida, the building will be at full capacity. Source: theverge.com

The Leaked List Of Hillary Clinton's Mega Donors

16 June, 2016. While the media's focus following the leaked DNC documents by lone (and hardly a group of Russian operatives hacker "Guccifer2" has been understandably on the Democrats' documents in which they reveal they strategy how target Trump and his republican peers, what we found more interesting was the list of the candidate's mega donors, those who have provided $100,000 and above, as per the leaked confidential documents.

For those interested in whose "generous" pocket Hillary Clinton will be found, if she is elected president, here is the answer. Source: zerohedge.com

Is the WikiLeaks Insurance File About Hillary Clinton?

http://heavy.com/news/2016/06/wikileaks-insurance-file-hillary-clin...

WikiLeaks just released a mysterious filed labeled “WIKILEAKS INSURANCE” for people everywhere to download in advance of a huge upcoming announcement. This file serves as a type of “deadman’s switch” that is currently encrypted. WikiLeaks will release a second encryption key to unlock the file if they are prevented from making a planned announcement. Because of previous statements made by WikiLeaks and Julian Assange, many people are wondering if this insurance file is meant to ensure that WikiLeaks can release potentially damaging information about Hillary Clinton.

Here’s what you need to know.

Brexit vote strips billions of dollars from UK's richest people

http://www.stuff.co.nz/business/world/81450698/Brexit-vote-strips-b...

The richest people in the UK lost US$5.5 billion (NZ$7.7 billion) on Friday after the country stunned global markets by voting to leave the European Union.

The drop for the 15 wealthiest Britons tracked by the Bloomberg Billionaires Index came as European markets headed for the biggest fall since 2008 and the sterling plunged to its lowest level in more than 30 years.

Peter Hargreaves, co-founder of Hargreaves Lansdown, the UK's largest retail broker, supported the leave campaign and paid the price in the market reaction to the vote. His net worth tumbled 19 per cent to US$2.9b in mid-day trading, the largest percentage drop among the British billionaires.

The billionaire made the largest donation - £3.2 million - to the leave campaign, according to filings with the UK's Electoral Commission. After stepping down from the Hargreaves Lansdown board in April 2015, the billionaire said that he would welcome the chance to work with the UK Government as it prepares for a future as a non-EU member.

Both sides of the heated campaign over whether to leave or remain in the 28-nation bloc drew prominent billionaire backers. Inventor James Dyson and construction-equipment magnate Anthony Bamford were vocal advocates of Brexit while Richard Branson, Li Ka-shing and George Soros were among those urging to stay.

The country's 15 richest citizens lost a collective US$5.5b as of 3.30pm in London, according to the Bloomberg index. Britain's richest person, Gerald Grosvenor, led the decline with a loss of US$1b, followed by Topshop owner Philip Green, fellow land baron Charles Cadogan and Bruno Schroder, majority shareholder of money manager Schroders Plc.

Green lost almost US$500m and Schroder lost more than US$600m. Grosvenor and Cadogan, whose fortunes are derived mostly from London property, lost a combined US$1.6b based solely on the drop in sterling.

BILLIONAIRE REACTION

Virgin Money Holdings, the UK-listed finance business controlled by Richard Branson's closely held Virgin Group, saw its shares fall by the most since November 2014. In a post on Virgin Group's website in response to the referendum's result, Branson said the decision to leave the EU will create volatility and cause damage to Britain's economy, but stressed acceptance of the decision and the nation coming together.

"The UK and its amazing, resilient people have weathered many storms - and with determination, resolve and sense of what is right," Branson wrote in the post, which paid tribute to Labour Party MP Jo Cox, who was killed in her West Yorkshire constituency during the referendum campaign. "Those qualities will be needed over the testing months and years to come."

South Africa's richest person Christo Wiese, who owns UK assets including fashion retailer New Look and grocer Iceland, said his "preference was unguardedly for the UK to remain" and was surprised by the result.

"I don't think it's the end of the EU, I think it's the end of EU as it's currently structured," Wiese said. "It's always had unattractive features alongside it's attractive features. This will make people sit up and say how can we make it better."

Wiese, whose bid for British discount retailer Poundland was rejected last week, said he had no plans to scale back his UK investments or change his strategy.

"We're by and large at the value end of the business scale and that's a very good place to be in Britain today."

BREXIT CONFIDENCE

Hargreaves was unmoved by the negative market reaction. The billionaire said he was confident the decision is the best for Britain and made a bid to help the country shape its economic future.

"I have enormous experience of business, enormous experience of negotiation, enormous experience of economics, and I'm one of Britain's most successful businessmen," he said. "If they don't involve me, they're crazy."

Brexiters’ Rage against the Elites

http://nationalinterest.org/feature/brexiters-rage-against-the-elit...

Repeat after me: The status quo in the West is not working. . . . The status quo in the West is not working. That’s the meaning of the seminal “Brexit” vote in the United Kingdom on Thursday. It wasn’t merely that those who voted for Britain’s exit from the European Union didn’t like the status quo. Or that it wasn’t serving their particular interests and needs. It was that the status quo is broken. Old structures are crumbling. The West is in a crisis of the old order.

And those pleading with UK voters to cast their ballots for the status quo had essentially placed themselves on the side of dysfunction, of chaos, of menacing threats to the very essence of the West. Uncontrolled immigration. Economic stagnation. A loss of national identity. These constitute the legacy of Europe’s seventy-year march toward more and more integration. Add to that the steady erosion of democratic structures as EU countries ceded more and more control over the lives of their citizens to nameless and faceless bureaucrats in Brussels whose constant preoccupation is the stealthy accumulation of political power—a mission at which they are brilliant.

The wonder of it isn’t that British voters issued this “stunning” rebuke to the status quo. It wasn’t really that stunning in the context of the hydra-headed crisis besetting Europe these days. The wonder of it is that so many British leaders and institutions fought so desperately to preserve a status quo that clearly isn’t working. But that’s always the way. The leaders, the elites, the establishment—those most heavily invested in the status quo—always stand athwart change, even when the voters are telling them that it’s time for new structures, new experiments, new directions.

Consider the most fundamental fault line revealed by the Brexit vote—globalism versus nationalism. Globalism is the ideology of the status quo and of the elites desperately trying to preserve the status quo. These people have contempt for borders and for those who want to preserve borders in order to preserve the national heritage. Nationalism is the cry of ordinary people who don’t hang out at Davos and who wonder why their cultural heritage is under such attack in their own lands.

With the Brexit vote we can make a definitive statement about the tenor of our times. Globalism is out. Nationalism is in. The majority essentially slapped down the UK elites that, like the elites of just about every country throughout the West, have been undermining the traditional culture of Western civilization with a sneering attitude toward those who wished to preserve the values and mores of yore.

The weapon of choice for these elites has been mass immigration, which in England has brought about what writer Benjamin Schwarz has called “the most profound social transformation since the Industrial Revolution.” Schwartz, writing in the American Conservative (of which he is national editor), added that mass immigration in England “hasn’t merely embellished, changed, or even assaulted” the country’s national culture. “Rather, by its very nature . . . it perforce obliterates that culture.”

The Brexit vote reveals the anger and frustration percolating over this development throughout Western societies. In reporting the outcome, the New York Times says, “It was a remarkable victory for the country’s anti-Europe forces, which not long ago were considered to have little chance of prevailing.”

But was it really that remarkable? Wasn’t it inevitable that the people of Britain would rebel against the globalist elites bent on eroding British sovereignty, opening up its borders, assaulting its cultural heritage and turning governmental authority over to Brussels bureaucrats with little or no accountability to UK voters?

Closer to home, one could say the same thing about Donald Trump’s capture of the Republican presidential nomination in this year’s GOP primaries. To paraphrase the Times: “It was a remarkable victory for the country’s anti-elite forces, which not long ago were considered to have little chance of prevailing.” Take the immigration issue. As Trump said in the first GOP nomination-fight debate, the issue wouldn’t even have been getting aired had it not been for him. The status-quo elites didn’t want to talk about it until they could slip amnesty for current illegals into the equation without suffering any political backlash. Who was going to bring it up? That scion of status quo thinking, Jeb Bush? Marco Rubio, he of the burnt fingers? Trump forced the issue, and it turned out to be powerful.

The Brexit vote and the Trump emergence are part of the same Western phenomenon—a gathering backlash against globalism and the antinationalist forces that dominate elite institutions such as big news organizations, universities, think tanks, NGOs and governmental bureaucracies. Europe has been moving inexorably toward more and more integration pretty much since the 1950s. No more. This vote constitutes a turning point. We can’t know precisely what will emerge as Britain and Europe struggle to find a new direction offering greater hope to greater numbers of people marginalized by the bureaucratized EU. But it won’t be the status quo.

As Schwarz wrote some months ago, “The impotent seething abundantly in evidence among Old Britain is rooted in their disfranchisement, in the disdain with which their political and cultural leaders have forsaken them, and in their realization that those leaders, ensorcelled by fatuous slogans and intellectual fashion, in pursuit of vacuous and untested ideas, have irretrievably transformed an ancient nation.” That’s a harsh judgment—and pretty pessimistic on the future of Britain. Perhaps the Brexit vote will prove that Britain’s transformation isn’t quite so irretrievable after all.

Robert W. Merry is a contributing editor at the National Interest and an author of books on American history and foreign policy.

Image: Pixabay/Public domain

Hacker releases Clinton Foundation documents

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/hacker-releases-clinton-foundatio...

A hacker who claims to have infiltrated the Democratic National Committee's server posted documents on Tuesday he says came from the party's digital files.

The hacker, who identified himself as "Guccifer 2.0" after the Romanian hacker who claimed to have breached Hillary Clinton's ..., published documents that detailed Clinton's weaknesses as a candidate, including a collection of negative press clips about the Clinton Foundation and a list of defenses against attacks on her private email use.

Another document, titled "2016 Democrats Positions Cheat Sheet," listed major policy issues and indicated where Clinton, Bernie Sanders, Martin O'Malley, Jim Webb, Lincoln Chaffee, Elizabeth Warren and Joe Biden — all former or possible rivals for the Democratic nomination — stood on each issue.

Many of the new documents contained information about how the Clinton campaign and its allies should respond to criticism of the Clinton Foundation's revenue sources given controversy over the fact that the philanthropic network accepted donations from foreign entities while Clinton served as secretary of state.

A memo titled "Attacks on Clinton Family Members" chronicled criticisms of Chelsea Clinton for her inability to answer questions about Clinton Foundation donations and other instances in which Bill Clinton was called a "sexual predator" for his past indiscretions.

Yet another document listed the Clintons' extensive use of private jets funded by corporations and other groups, with potentially problematic trips and their costs highlighted.

The hacker has posted batches of documents purported to have originated on the DNC's server.

The DNC has not yet confirmed or denied the authenticity of the leaked documents.

A cybersecurity breach of the committee's digital infrastructure this month was blamed on the Russian government, although the Kremlin denied any involvement.

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This is what was the latest just days prior....?

Stunner! DOJ wants to keep Clinton Foundation docs quiet until 2018

http://www.wnd.com/2016/06/stunner-doj-wants-to-keep-clinton-founda...

Only a couple of days after Attorney General Loretta Lynch’s tête-à-tête with former President Bill Clinton in Phoenix, her department is asking a federal court for permission to delay release of Clinton Foundation communications with federal employees until 2018 – when Hillary Clinton hopes to be half way through a first term in the White House.

The Daily Caller reported the DOJ motion asking for permission to delay for 27 months producing the correspondence between Hillary Clinton’s top aides while she was secretary of state and the Clinton Foundation’s private operations.

“If the court permits the delay, the public won’t be able to read the communications until October 2018, about 22 months into her prospective first term as president,” the Daily Caller noted. “The four senior Clinton aides involved were Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Michael Fuchs, Ambassador-At-Large Melanne Verveer, Chief of Staff Cheryl Mills, and Deputy Chief of Staff Huma Abedin.

New estimates suggest there are more than 34,000 “potentially responsive documents,” which include communications between Hillary Clinton’s aides and either the Clinton Foundation or Teneo Holdings, where Bill Clinton was a paid consultant, the report said.

The documents had been sought by Citizens United, whose president, David N. Bossie, said the plan is “totally unacceptable.” He accused the federal government of “using taxpayer dollars to protect their candidate, Hillary Clinton.”

Previously the government was supposed to release the documents by July 21, well in advance of the November election and in plenty of time for voters to learn what went on.

But DOJ lawyers told U.S. District Court Judge Rudolph Contreras they wanted more time.

A report developing at virtually the same time documented the calls for Lynch to recuse herself from a DOJ decisio...

The calls were prompted because of a brief meeting Lynch held with Bill Clinton.

WND reported Wednesday that Lynch confessed to meeting with Bill Clinton briefly at the Phoenix airport, which raised questions because of the time and location.

At the time, Lynch claimed the two talked about grandchildren, travels and the like but not the FBI investigation.

Now, Michael Cutler at Front Page Magazine is offering a simple solution to all the questions of propriety that are being raised.

“The stakes could not be higher – yet Loretta Lynch acted in a way that she should clearly understood created that illusion of wrong-doing. … It is impossible to understand her motivation or what she was thinking as she sat on her airplane meeting with Bill Clinton – but one thing is now perfectly clear, she must recuse herself from any involvement in the decision making process where the investigation/prosecution of Hillary Clinton is concerned,” he wrote.

Former DOJ attorney J. Christian Adams, at PJ Media, sounded off.

“Whenever Bill Clinton gets on a plane to meet a woman, he’s usually up to no good,” he wrote. “Attorney General Loretta Lynch said her impromptu tarmac summit at Phoenix Sky Harbor was a purely social affair. Golf and grandchildren were on the agenda, she said – and not how a home-brew server crammed with classified information ended up in Bill’s basement.

“However, the attorney general normally doesn’t meet with family members of a target in an active FBI criminal investigation. Hillary is just that – a target in an FBI criminal investigation.”

He continued: “Many won’t believe Lynch and Clinton only discussed grandkids and golf in her cozy jet. But I do. That’s all they needed to discuss for Bill to interfere with a criminal prosecution. Sophisticated insiders don’t need to use clumsy and explicit language. Merely having the tarmac summit interferes with the investigation, even if golf and grandkids were the only topics discussed. The tarmac summit sent a signal. It is a signal to all of the hardworking FBI agents who have the goods on Hillary.

“The attorney general has made it clear what team she is on. The attorney general isn’t on the side of justice. She’s on the Democratic Party team. This is the unspoken message from Lynch to all of the FBI agents on the case and to all the front-line lawyers at the Justice Department: When you send your recommendation to refer Hillary’s case to the grand jury, you had better realize your burden to convince me I should sign off on a grand jury request is higher than you thought. These are my friends.”

MPs plan to impeach Tony Blair over Iraq War using ancient law

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/tony-blair-chilcot-in...

The coup against Corbyn was planned to stop him calling for Blair’s head after Chilcot

http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/14594947.The_coup_against_Corbyn...

Tony Blair decided to invade Iraq before telling public but was 'looking for a reason to do it', says Admiral Lord West

http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/politics/tony-blair-decided-...

(Lord West was the head of the Royal Navy at the time.)

He told The House magazine: "Of course Blair and everyone else will say, 'No, we didn't make the decision until right up to it'. You can always say that, can't you?

"But I would not have told the fleets, the Royal Navy and the Marines, to be ready for war in the northern Gulf by the end of the year. I would not have sailed the Mine Counter-measures Force for the Middle East so they were in place for operations.

FBI recommends no indictment re: Clinton emails

https://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/4rczh8/fbi_directer_come...

House Benghazi Report Finds No New Evidence of Wrongdoing by Hillary Clinton

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/29/us/politics/hillary-clinton-bengh...

WASHINGTON — Ending one of the longest, costliest and most bitterly partisan congressional investigations in history, the House Select Committee on Benghazi issued its final report on Tuesday, finding no new evidence of culpability or wrongdoing by Hillary Clinton in the 2012 attacks in Libya that left four Americans dead.

The 800-page report delivered a broad rebuke of the Defense Department, the Central Intelligence Agency and the State Department — and the officials who led them — for failing to grasp the acute security risks in Benghazi, and especially for maintaining outposts there that they could not protect.

The committee, led by Representative Trey Gowdy, Republican of South Carolina, also harshly criticized an internal State Department investigation that it said had allowed officials like Mrs. Clinton, then the secretary of state, to effectively choose who would examine their actions. In addition, it included some new details and context about the night of the attacks on the American diplomatic compound and reiterated Republicans’ complaints that the Obama administration had sought to thwart the investigation by withholding witnesses and evidence.

The report, which included perhaps the most exhaustive chronology of the attacks to date, did not dispute that United States military forces stationed in Europe could not have reached Benghazi in time to rescue the personnel who died — a central finding of previous inquiries.

Still, it issued stinging criticism of the overall delay in response and the lack of preparedness on the part of the government.

“The assets ultimately deployed by the Defense Department in response to the Benghazi attacks were not positioned to arrive before the final, lethal attack,” the committee wrote. “The fact that this is true does not mitigate the question of why the world’s most powerful military was not positioned to respond.”

But the lack of any clear finding of professional misconduct or dereliction of duty was certain to fuel further criticism of the length of the investigation — more than two years — and the expense, estimated at more than $7 million. It also bolstered Democrats’ allegations that the inquiry was specifically intended to damage Mrs. Clinton’s presidential prospects.

After a campaign stop in Denver, Mrs. Clinton said that the investigation had uncovered nothing to contradict past findings, and that the House committee’s work had assumed a “partisan tinge.”

“I’ll leave it to others to characterize this report,” she said, “but I think it’s pretty clear it’s time to move on.”

Yet even as Mrs. Clinton seemed eager to press forward, she must still contend with the fallout from the committee’s most significant, if inadvertent, discovery: that she exclusively used a private email server during her four years as secretary of state. That revelation has spurred separate investigations into whether classified material was mishandled, including a continuing inquiry by the F.B.I.

In a sign that Mr. Gowdy was also facing pressure from the right, two of the committee’s conservative members, Representatives Jim Jordan of Ohio and Mike Pompeo of Kansas, wrote a 48-page addendum including somewhat harsher criticism of Mrs. Clinton and the Obama administration.

Gretchen Carlson Sues Fox News For Sexual Harassment

Six More Women Allege That Roger Ailes Sexually Harassed Them

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2016/07/six-more-women-allege-...

Hidden Video: Hillary Clinton Admits To Using Emails Illegally

http://yournewswire.com/hidden-video-hillary-clinton-admits-to-usin...

EU Banks Need $166 Billion, Deutsche Bank Economist Tells Welt

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-07-10/eu-banks-need-166...

Europe urgently needs a 150 billion-euro ($166 billion) bailout fund to recapitalize its beleaguered banks, particularly those in Italy, Deutsche Bank AG’s chief economist said in an interview with Welt am Sonntag.

"Europe is extremely sick and must start dealing with its problems extremely quickly, or else there may be an accident," Deutsche Bank’s David Folkerts-Landau said, according to the newspaper. "I’m no doomsday prophet, I am a realist."

With Italian banks weighed down by 360 billion euros of soured loans, the government has been sounding out regulators on ways to shore up lenders amid a renewed selloff after Britain voted to leave the European Union.  Lorenzo Bini Smaghi, a former member of the European Central Bank’s executive board who now chairs Societe Generale SA, said Wednesday that Italy’s banking crisis could spread to the rest of Europe and rules limiting state aid to lenders should be reconsidered to prevent greater upheaval.

"I do not expect a second financial crisis like in 2008," Folkerts-Landau said, according to Welt. "The banks are much more stable today and have more equity. What we face this time is a slow, long downward spiral."

The Bloomberg Europe 500 Banks and Financial Services Index has tumbled 33 percent this year, falling to the lowest level in more than seven years on Thursday. Deutsche Bank’s stock price has fallen 48 percent during that period.

Folkerts-Landau said he had recently bought 100,000 Deutsche Bank shares and was optimistic about the outlook for his employer.

BlackRock Inc. Vice Chairman Philipp Hildebrand said earlier this month the European Commission should allow governments to take temporary equity stakes in their banks, similar to what the U.S. did with its Troubled Asset Relief Program during the 2008 cr

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Brussels urgently needs a €150 billion bailout to begin a major recapitalization program for its banks, according to Deutsche Bank’s David Folkerts-Landau.In the aftermath of UK’s Brexit vote, the focus of attention has switched to Italy’s banking sector, which has accumulated €360 billion in bad loans, and growing.

A former member of the ECB executive board Lorenzo Bini Smaghi, and now chairman at Societe Generale, has warned the banking crisis in Italy could spread to the entire EU.

“Europe is extremely sick and must start dealing with its problems extremely quickly, or else there may be an accident. I’m no doomsday prophet, I am a realist,” he said in an interview to Welt am Sonntag.

According to Folkerts-Landau, Brussels should follow Washington’s steps that helped US banks with a $475 billion bailout.

"In Europe, the bailout does not need to be so large. A €150 billion program should be enough to help European banks recapitalize,” he said.

The decline in bank stocks is only the symptom of a much larger problem, which is low growth, high debt and dangerous deflation, Folkerts-Landau added.

Over the last 12 months, Deutsche Bank shares have plummeted 48 percent. Another major European bank, Credit Suisse is down 63 percent since July 31 last year. All in all, the Bloomberg Europe 500 Banks and Financial Services Index has nosedived 33 percent in 2015 to the lowest level in more than seven years as of last Thursday.However, the economist said a new global crisis is less probable, as the banks have grown more stable and have more equity. Despite this, they face “a slow, long downward spiral.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mdxVh03dJZk

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Coup looks very suspicious - could be means of identifying possible rebels, catch them in trap and clear out the military - other aspects of state have been taken over the last area of independence which could and has threatened government in the past is the military.