[NY Post] Every morning, the petite blonde with the bright red lipstick walks the few blocks from her nondescript condo to the Upper Crust Bagel Company on Sound Beach Avenue, the main drag in this picturesque New England hamlet of 6,600 people.
Just about everyone who lives here knows it’s Ruth Madoff in exile, and they mostly leave her alone.
They know the broad outlines of her fall -- how her privileged world exploded in December 2008 when her husband, Bernie, confessed to the biggest Ponzi scheme in history, an $18 billion fraud for which he is serving a 150-year sentence.
Ruth lost everything -- her money, social status, husband and her two sons. Mark, the eldest, committed suicide in 2010, and Andrew died of cancer in 2014.
Ruth will turn 76 this week, two days before HBO airs "Wizard of Lies," a dramatic retelling of the fall of the house of Madoff, starring Robert de Niro as Bernie and Michelle Pfeiffer as Ruth.
[Free Beacon] The Department of Justice charged a California man on Thursday with dealing heroin, illegally manufacturing machine guns, and illegally selling those same guns.
"Illegally manufacturing and brokering the sale of guns and drugs on the streets of San Diego poses a tremendous danger to our community," acting U.S. attorney Alana W. Robinson said in a statement. "Prosecuting firearms offenses is a top priority for the U.S. Attorney’s Office, and we will continue our efforts to disrupt the availability of illegal guns in our city."
The Department of Justice alleges in a complaint filed in federal court that 39-year-old La Jolla, Calif., resident Paul Joseph Holdy sold a variety of firearms to undercover agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives as well as the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The agencies say they covertly purchased 19 firearms from Holdy over the course of several months in 2016--included were a number of fully automatic firearms that Holdy had manufactured himself.
Since Holdy was previously convicted of dealing drugs, he was prohibited from possessing any firearms. Additionally, since he did not have a license to manufacture or sell firearms, he was prohibited from building or selling them. Web search produced no photograph.
#1
The agencies say they covertly purchased 19 firearms from Holdy over the course of several months in 2016--included were a number of fully automatic firearms that Holdy had manufactured himself.
Any luck with Holdy's client base? Did he stop 'cooperating' or was the delay in arrest due to a heavy case load ?
Friday's cyber attack hit 200,000 victims in at least 150 countries and that number could grow when people return to work on Monday, the head of the European Union ...the successor to the Holy Roman Empire, only without the Hapsburgs and the nifty uniforms and the dancing... 's police agency said on Sunday.
Cyber security experts say the spread of the virus dubbed WannaCry - "ransomware" which locked up computers in car factories, hospitals, shops and schools in several countries - has slowed, but that any respite might be brief.
Europol Director Rob Wainwright told ITV's Peston on Sunday programme the attack was unique in that the ransomware was used in combination with "a worm functionality" so the infection spread automatically.
#1
Factually incorrect: he tracks exploits for his employer, and in examining the the 'trackback' on this run he found that the malware would 'phone home' to a non existent website, get a 404, and continue. So he paid the $11, registered the site (which he routinely does in tracking exploits), and the exploit shut down.
Evidently the nonsite was included as a kill switch, or was supposed to have control code available on it.
Posted by: ed in texas ||
05/14/2017 9:49 Comments ||
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#2
bit tricky to look for anyone with a hosts file that points to that DNS address.
Somebody will find a hole in the 'Epic' healthcare management software system currently being used to follow the ACA guidelines for a lot of major US health systems (Surprise! The software company owner is a BIG-TIME lefty donor).
[AlAhram] On a monthly basis, core inflation increased by 1.10 percent from 0.97 percent recorded in March.
Not having to trade borrowed money for as much oil and natural gas will help a lot. Egypt has just begun negotiating current contracts to stretch out deliveries, as they won't need to import as much.
[OANN] Mutinous soldiers in Ivory Coast shot three people on Saturday and cut off access to the second largest city, Bouake, as a revolt escalated over demands for bonus payments.
The revolt began in Bouake early on Friday before spreading quickly, following a similar pattern to a mutiny by the same group in January that paralyzed parts of Ivory Coast and marred its image as a post-war success story.
Mutineers seized control of the national military headquarters and defense ministry in the center of the commercial capital Abidjan on Friday.
They stepped up the pressure on Saturday, blocking roads out of Bouake, the epicenter of January’s uprising, and protesting around the country, including the northern city of Korhogo, where two men on a cycle of violence were shot in the legs as they tried to get through a roadblock manned by the mutineers.
"They shot at them. They were maimed and transported to the hospital," said witness Amadou Yeo.
In Bouake, soldiers fired on a group of demobilized former rebels seriously wounding one of them, according to their front man and a local politician.
Sergeant Seydou Kone, a front man for the mutineers, said the ex-fighters, who went through a disarmament program following the country’s 2011 civil war, were planning their own protest, as they did early this week, and his men had opened fire to stop them.
"We do not want to negotiate with anyone," said Kone by phone from Bouake in the center of the country. "We’re also ready to fight if we are attacked. We have nothing to lose."
In a statement on state television ... and if you can't believe state television who can you believe?
late on Friday, General Sekou Toure, the army’s chief of staff, threatened the soldiers with severe sanctions if they did not end the revolt.
Ivory Coast’s defense minister and government front man could not be reached for comment on Saturday.
The soldiers were promised bonus payments by the government after the January mutiny but it has struggled to disburse the money following a budget crunch caused by the collapse in the price of cocoa, Ivory Coast’s main export.
"WE WANT OUR 7 MILLION"
Ivory Coast has emerged as one of the world’s fastest growing economies following a decade-long political crisis ended by a 2011 civil war. But deep divisions persist, particularly in a military assembled from former rebel and loyalist combatants.
The government has already paid 8,400 soldiers ‐ most of them former rebels who helped bring President Alassane Ouattara ...the current president-for-life of Ivory Coast. He actually beat his predecessor in an election before having to eject him from the presidential palazzo.... to power ‐ bonuses of 5 million CFA francs ($8,400) each as part of a deal to end the January revolt.
On Thursday, following a meeting with authorities in Abidjan, a front man for the group said they would forego demands for remaining bonuses of 7 million francs.
But that decision was rejected by some of the soldiers.
"We want our 7 million and that’s it," said Kone.
Bouake residents said shops were closed as soldiers fired weapons in the air and patrolled the streets in cars.
Mutineers also took control of the northern city of Odienne and there was sporadic gunfire in Daloa, the main cocoa growing hub in southwestern Ivory Coast, which is the world’s top producer of the chocolate ingredient.
Hundreds of people, meanwhile, gathered for a rally against the revolt close to the military headquarters in Abidjan, which was still being held by the mutineers.
Posted by: Fred ||
05/14/2017 00:00 ||
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[11124 views]
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[Reuters] North Korea, defying calls to rein in its weapons program, fired a ballistic missile that landed in the sea near Russia on Sunday, days after a new leader came to power in South Korea pledging to engage Pyongyang in dialogue.
The U.S. military's Pacific Command said it was assessing the type of missile that was fired but it was "not consistent with an intercontinental ballistic missile". The U.S. threat assessment has not changed from a national security standpoint, a U.S. official said.
Japanese Defense Minister Tomomi Inada said the missile could be a new type. It flew for 30 minutes before dropping into the sea between North Korea's east coast and Japan. North Korea has consistently test-fired missiles in that direction.
A U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the missile landed 97 km (60 miles) south of Russia's Vladivostok region.
[ENGLISH.ALARABIYA.NET] A top North Korean diplomat says Pyongyang would be willing to meet with the Trump administration for negotiations "if the conditions are set."
Choi Sun-hee, the top North Korean diplomat who handles relations with the US, spoke briefly to news hounds in Beijing on Saturday en route to Pyongyang. She was traveling from Norway, where she led a delegation that held an informal meeting with US experts.
Choi did not elaborate on what the North’s conditions are, but her comments raise the possibility of North Korea and the US returning to negotiations for the first time since 2008, when six-nation talks over Pyongyang’s nuclear weapons program fell apart.
President Donald Trump ...New York real estate developer, described by Dems as illiterate, racist, misogynistic, and what ever other unpleasant descriptions they can think of, elected by the rest of us as 45th President of the United States... opened the door this month to talks, saying he would be "honored" to meet North Korean leader Kim Pudge Jong-un ...the overweight, pouty-looking hereditary potentate of North Korea. Pudge appears to believe in his own divinity, but has yet to produce any loaves and fishes, so his subjects remain malnourished... .
Posted by: Fred ||
05/14/2017 00:00 ||
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[11126 views]
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#1
Restore peaceful relations within your neighborhood with China, South Korea and Japan before we support warrior class locals such as these people from Nagasaki, Japan who have a special hate for nukes after your fat arse.
[Independent] A sperm bank boss used his own samples to impregnate women through IVF treatment, it has been claimed.
Parents and children are now going to court to ask for DNA tests on Jan Karbaat, who ran the Bijdorp clinic near Rotterdam in the Netherlands.
Mr Karbaat died last month aged 89.
Women who used the medical centre claimed they have noticed their children have similar features to Mr Karbaat and that features such as eye colour do not match their official donors' profiles, the Daily Telegraph reported.
One even said he had admitted the practice, boasting to her of his good health and intelligence, and claiming he told her it was a noble thing to do. "I see at home how my son's life has been affected. He was so angry when Karbaat died, and that he was taking this to his grave," she said.
Their lawyer, Tim Bueters, told Dutch media the women felt "like they were raped by Karbaat", who reportedly told them he was obtaining "fresh seed" from a room adjacent to where insemination took place.
#3
Considering that the Clintonistas blame him for them losing the election, it a smart move for Comey to get some happy-face pictures out there. This guy doesn't look suicidal to me. He should also stay out of dangerous neighborhoods and take a refresher course on safe driving.
Posted by: Matt ||
05/14/2017 11:02 Comments ||
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[DAWN] Bakhtawar Bhutto-Zardari has severely criticised the Ehtram-e-Ramazan (Amendment) Bill which prohibits eating and drinking in public during the month of Ramazan.
In a tweet, the daughter of former president Asif Ali Zardari said, "People are going to die from heat stroke and dehydration with this ridiculous law. Not everyone is able. This is not Islam."
Posted by: Fred ||
05/14/2017 00:00 ||
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[11128 views]
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If there's two things we know for sure, it's that traveling can be extremely stressful and adorable little animals brighten people's days.
The Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport also realizes this, so they've enlisted the help of Seven Oaks Farm -- a non-profit organization in southwest Ohio-- to bring miniature therapy horses to the airport to cheer up travelers.
SEE ALSO: This stag with a bra stuck on its antlers has some serious explaining to do
Twice a month a few of the farm's 34 horses make their way to the airport to connect with children and relieve the airport stresses of adults.
"It's just to ease anxiety levels, put smiles on faces. Clearly that's working," the airport's senior manager of customer relations, Wendi Orlando, told NPR. "When you look at the passengers walking by, it just never gets old. They love seeing the horses."
#1
That's my airport. I wonder why Mr. Wife hasn't mentioned seeing this? It's true he is allergic to horses, or more likely the hay they are forced to wallow in, but even so.
On the other hand, twice a month kind of limits the odds that he'll intersect with their presence, given he isn't travelling by air as often as he used to. Twice a month also limits how much destressing the adorable little beasts can provide. To achieve the effect the airport claims to want, they would have needed to calculate the most stressful time of day/week/month/year, and make sure the horses were available on those days at those times. And had they done the work, they would have trumpeted it.
[Defense One] The first "mission center" launched since the spy agency’s 2015 reorganization, it is also the most narrowly focused.
Two years after the CIA reorganized itself to create 10 "mission centers," the spy agency is adding a new one devoted specifically to North Korea.
Then-director John Brennan launched that 2015 restructuring -- it also created the Directorate for Digital Innovation, the agency’s first new directorate in half a century -- to modernize the agency and eliminate stovepipes between its analysts, agents, and hackers. Instead of offices built around kinds of expertise, the new mission centers house cross-functional teams focusing on a threat or a region. That allows them to "harness the full range of CIA’s operational, analytic, support, technical and digital capabilities," the CIA said in a Facebook post.
The new Korea Mission Center at CIA headquarters in Virginia is intended to do the same thing for a country that at least one intelligence expert calls "the hardest of hard targets."
In a press release, CIA Director Mike Pompeo said the new center "allows us to more purposefully integrate and direct CIA efforts against the serious threats to the United States and its allies emanating from North Korea."
Pompeo also said the move reflects the CIA’s agility. Keeping the organizational chart malleable and adding the new center is part of the agency’s efforts to stay responsive as national security threats evolve and priorities shift.
#3
"We trained hard, but it seemed that every time we were beginning to form up into teams we would be reorganized. Presumably the plans for our employment were being changed. I was to learn later in life that, perhaps because we are so good at organizing, we tend as a nation to meet any new situation by reorganizing; and a wonderful method it can be for creating the illusion of progress while producing confusion, inefficiency and demoralization."
~ Charlton Ogburn (1911–1998) in "Merrill's Marauders: The truth about an incredible adventure" in the January 1957 issue of Harper's Magazine
#4
You'd a thought (naaa) that they'd task specific groups with specific targets.
You know, so's they might be familiar with what they were looking at.
(This is also what's wrong with American business. Absolute interchangability of employees.)
Posted by: ed in texas ||
05/14/2017 20:10 Comments ||
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[Defense One] Trump's new intelligence chief, Dan Coats, says he’s already moving on GOP lawmakers’ request to streamline all 17 agencies, including his own ODNI.
In one breath, President Donald Trump’s new director of national intelligence told lawmakers that threats to the United States are growing in size and complexity -- and in the next, that he is looking for cuts across the entire U.S. intelligence community.
Director Dan Coats told a Senate panel Thursday that he is looking to "streamline" the 17 federal agencies that comprise the IC.
"As part of the administration’s goal of an effective and efficient government, we have already begun a review of the entire intelligence community, to include the office of the DNI," Coats testified to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.
In any other year, declaring one’s intention to hunt for taxpayer savings would be a stock statement by an agency head telling Congress what members always like to hear. But Coats spoke two days after Trump fired James Comey over what many senators believe was the FBI director’s investigation of potential links between the Trump campaign and the Russian government. It also comes after months of disparagement by candidate and now President Trump of the U.S. intelligence community’s work on everything from the ISIS War to Russian influence, including frequent allegations that they were working against him and his White House bid. So Coats’ revelation quickly drew a flurry of online reactions from Trump critics.
Trump aides, and a lot of good reporting, long have pointed to a coming review of the entire U.S. intelligence community, but particularly of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. For one, retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, who was a Trump confidante and first national security advisor, had advocated a major re-design of intelligence processes as head of the Defense Intelligence Agency. His ideas were rejected and, famously, for many reasons he was not promoted into the loftiest ranks of U.S. military officers. (In recent months, many intelligence leaders have praised the Obama administration’s recent reorganizations, which aimed to modernize the CIA by adding a digital directorate and to help America’s spy agencies diversify their workforce.) Emphasis added.
[Free Beacon] Sen. Chuck Grassley (R., Iowa) is threatening to block one of President Donald Trump's nominees to a position in the CIA until the agency responds to his letters.
Grassley sent a letter in April 2014 and another one last month. Neither of them have received a response, the Hill reported Friday.
The letters are about two whistleblower notifications being declassified. In the second letter, Grassley frustratingly described how he has not heard back from the agency for three years.
"More than three years have passed since my initial request, and I still have not received declassified versions of the documents or an explanation of why the documents have not been declassified," Grassley said.
The Congress has become a really bad joke in the last 30 years. Somehow I can't picture Tip O'Neill letting Reagan's executive branch get away with such disrespect as has become normal since GHWB.
#3
This the staff of an elementary school telling a class: "if you don't behave, I'm not going to send a substitute teacher in there". Boy, that'll learn 'em.
Posted by: ed in texas ||
05/14/2017 9:55 Comments ||
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#4
The Congress has become a really bad joke in the last 30 years.
Far more than that. When the decision was made to engage in entangling foreign alliances after WWII, all the power started gravitating to the Executive which the Founders feared in a powerful executive. When in the 60s, it allowed judicial activism take hold in order to avoid making hard decisions (they told us to do this, ergo we're not the blame), power shifted to an unelected and non-representative new aristocracy. When they decided to loot the social security funds for immediate social gratification, the cancer spread without remission. They just want to collect their paychecks and cash in on the insider game. The old republic was bought and sold.
Breitbart poster comments: Its kind of funny. When I'm out and about and see some lady with that name tag, I point out that there's some transversal guy running around using that name now. One lady at a grocery store looked at me and said, "Yeah, I know. With ALL of the names in the world to use, that POS picks mine".
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
North Korea
[Independent] A sperm bank boss used his own samples to impregnate women through IVF treatment, it has been claimed.
[Free Beacon] Sen. Chuck Grassley (R., Iowa) is threatening to block one of President Donald Trump's nominees to a position in the CIA until the agency responds to his letters.
