[AP] Johannesburg -- A South African newspaper on Friday published a 2007 letter linking the country's chief World Cup organizer to a $10 million payment made to projects linked to Jack Warner, then a FIFA executive and now a suspect in a corruption probe.
In the letter published by the Mail and Guardian newspaper, Danny Jordaan, then-head of South Africa's World Cup organizing committee, says the money should be paid by FIFA, not the South African government. U.S. investigators have accused unnamed South African officials of channeling $10 million through FIFA to Warner as a bribe for backing the country's successful World Cup bid.
[New York Times Magazine] Around 8:30 a.m. on Sept. 11 last year, Duval Arthur, director of the Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness for St. Mary Parish, Louisiana, got a call from a resident who had just received a disturbing text message. "Toxic fume hazard warning in this area until 1:30 PM," the message read. "Take Shelter. Check Local Media and columbiachemical.com."
St. Mary Parish is home to many processing plants for chemicals and natural gas, and keeping track of dangerous accidents at those plants is Arthur's job. But he hadn't heard of any chemical release that morning. In fact, he hadn't even heard of Columbia Chemical. St. Mary Parish had a Columbian Chemicals plant, which made carbon black, a petroleum product used in rubber and plastics. But he'd heard nothing from them that morning, either. Soon, two other residents called and reported the same text message. Arthur was worried: Had one of his employees sent out an alert without telling him?
If Arthur had checked Twitter, he might have become much more worried. Hundreds of Twitter accounts were documenting a disaster right down the road. "A powerful explosion heard from miles away happened at a chemical plant in Centerville, Louisiana #ColumbianChemicals," a man named Jon Merritt tweeted. The #ColumbianChemicals hashtag was full of eyewitness accounts of the horror in Centerville. @AnnRussela shared an image of flames engulfing the plant. @Ksarah12 posted a video of surveillance footage from a local gas station, capturing the flash of the explosion. Others shared a video in which thick black smoke rose in the distance.
Dozens of journalists, media outlets and politicians, from Louisiana to New York City, found their Twitter accounts inundated with messages about the disaster. "Heather, I'm sure that the explosion at the #ColumbianChemicals is really dangerous. Louisiana is really screwed now," a user named @EricTraPPP tweeted at the New Orleans Times-Picayune reporter Heather Nolan. Another posted a screenshot of CNN's home page, showing that the story had already made national news. ISIS had claimed credit for the attack, according to one YouTube video; in it, a man showed his TV screen, tuned to an Arabic news channel, on which masked ISIS fighters delivered a speech next to looping footage of an explosion. A woman named Anna McClaren (@zpokodon9) tweeted at Karl Rove: "Karl, Is this really ISIS who is responsible for #ColumbianChemicals? Tell @Obama that we should bomb Iraq!" But anyone who took the trouble to check CNN.com would have found no news of a spectacular Sept. 11 attack by ISIS. It was all fake: the screenshot, the videos, the photographs. Related: Telegraph Article.
#4
Caitlyn Jenner offer is based upon an Onion article, right Jack Warner ? Jack is the former FIFA vice president, who cited 'Onion' article in video rant, maintaining his innocence following last week’s FIFA corruption indictments.
Posted by: Titus Gonque1285 ||
06/07/2015 17:46 Comments ||
Top||
#5
I am beyond tired of hearing about the Jenner-Kardashian-Kanye West freak show of a clan. I want them to go away, to never see any of those ferret-faced exhibitionists on the front pages of the so-called news media ever again.
[ABCNEWS.GO] Former Guantanamo Bay detainee Adel bin Muhammad El Ouerghi looked out his apartment window Friday and smiled as he showed off his wedding ring to a handful of cheering onlookers below.
The 50-year-old Tunisian married Roma Blanco, a 24-year-old Uruguayan who converted to Islam. The union was the first of two weddings being organized by men resettled in the South American country.
"Adel is humble, respectful, nice and very gentlemanly," Blanco said. "He is everything that a woman can expect from a man."
Blanco added that she liked her husband's sincerity, and how he treated her 5-year-old son from a previous relationship.
She said she converted to Islam four months ago and planned to take the name Samira. She and El Ouerghi met a month ago at a mosque. Blanco wore a light purple scarf and a violet jacket with gold-colored lacing. She also had henna designs on her hands, customary for Moslem women for the marriage ceremony.
The wedding took place in the two-bedroom apartment where the couple plans to live. Samir Selim, a holy man and director of the Egyptian Islamic Center in Montevideo, officiated at the ceremony.
In a phone interview before the ceremony, Blanco said the couple would take out a wedding license next week.
Having a license is required in Uruguay for a union to be recognized. Also, according to the law, a priest or other person officiating can be fined or even tossed in the calaboose Please don't kill me! for overseeing a ceremony if a license hasn't been obtained.
The two men and four other former detainees were resettled in Uruguay in December after spending nearly 13 years in Guantanamo. All were detained in Afghanistan in 2002 with alleged ties to al-Qaeda. The men were never tried or convicted and the U.S. government decided to release them. They were invited to resettle in Uruguay as a humanitarian gesture by former President Jose Mujica, himself a prisoner for 13 years.
Irina Posadas, another Uruguayan woman who converted to Islam, told the AP that she and 34-year-old husband-to-be Omar Abdelhadi Faraj, from Syria, planned to wed on Saturday. She said they also had yet to obtain a license, and planned to get it next week.
"I believe in Islam and I'm going to marry (by the rules of) Islam," she said.
Posadas, who began presenting herself as Fatima after converting to Islam a year and a half ago, said she met Faraj in February. Posadas, a Chinese teacher who declined to give her age, would go to the house where the men were living to help them with Spanish.
Posted by: Fred ||
06/07/2015 00:00 ||
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[FreeBeacon] Three nuclear-capable bombers deployed to Europe this week for large-scale military exercises near Russia, the Strategic Command announced Friday night.
The B-52s from Minot Air Force Base, North Dakota, are currently operating from a base in Britain and joined maritime naval exercises in the Baltic Sea called Baltops 15, the largest naval exercise by NATO forces in the region this year.
The exercises are being held on and above international waters in the Baltic Sea and in Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia--the Baltic states--and Poland.
All four nations fear Russia's military aggression in Crimea and continuing destabilization in eastern Ukraine will be followed by Moscow's use of military force against them.
The Baltic states last month asked NATO to permanently deploy up to 5,000 troops to the region to deter Russian aggression. Poland also wants a permanent NATO military presence.
Russian generals told U.S. officials in March during a meeting in Germany that Russia would take destabilizing actions against the Baltic states if NATO troops are stationed there.
Russia threatened to conduct a "spectrum of responses from nuclear to non-military," the Times of London reported, quoting a participant at the meeting.
The Russian generals compared the situation in the Baltics to the conditions in Ukraine prior to the annexation of Crimea. Well, I guess there is precedence.
#1
* FYI BIGNEWSNETWORK > PUTIN SAYS ONLY AN INSANE PERSON WILL THINK THAT RUSSIA WILL ATTACK NATO.
Yeeeuuup.
Pragmatically, despite Murphy's Law, "Mahanism", + "Great Game" theres really no need at present for Darth Vlad = Russia to attack NATO, IN PARTICULAR BECAUSE US POTUS OBAMA IS AN ANTI-US US = ANTI-AMERICAN AMERIKAN OWG GLOBALIST ALREADY DEDICATED TO SSSHHHH ...CCCCCC PCORRECTLY-DENIABLY HELPING RUSSIA, CHINA, + IRAN EXPAND THEIR RESPECTIVE SPHERES OF INFLUENCE IN THIER REGIONS OR CONTINENTS AT THE EXPENCE OF THE US-WEST + ALLIES.
RUSSIA, CHINA, + IRAN, OTHER? CAN'T RISE TO GLOBIES-DESIRED "US-STYLE" CO-SUPERPOWERHOOD UNLESS THE US ITSELF [Self?]RETREATS, DECLINES, OR OTHERWISE GIVES UP POWER-N-INFLUENCE, ETC. IN THEIR BACKYARDS.
* E.G. SOUTH CHINA SEA > CHINA FOREIGN MINISTRY = "WE [China] HAVEN'T BUILT ANY OVERDSEAS MILITARY BASES", as due to the mostly Pro-US, Anti-China or US, West-leaning NAM Govts-Nations in East Asia + IOR NOT giving China any, hence China began its island-improvement = reclamation activities in the SCS. CHINA IS UNLIKELY TO STOP ITS ATIVITIES IN THE SCS EVEN IFF IT MEANS WAR WID THE US.
* OWG GLOBALISM = MILPOL OR GEOPOL "PARITY" WID THE US, N-O-T "INFERIORITY" TO THE US = CHINA WANTS ITS 1/2 OF THE PACIFIC AS BEFITTING ITS DESIRED GLOBAL POWER = "PAR WID THE US" OWG CO-SUPERPOWER STATUS.
* FYI WORLD MILITARY FORUM > REPORT: CHINA DISPATCHES/DEPLOYS SURVEILLANCE SHIPS OFF HAWAII. in response to US-proposed SCS Air-Sea Patrols agz China's island-reclamation activities.
versus
* DRUDGEREPORT > US PENTAGON STRUGGLES FOR SOUTH CHINA SEA STRATEGY | [FT.com] US PENTAGON STRUGGLES TO COUNTER CHINA'S ISLAND-BUILDING.
Again, CHINA-N-ONLY-CHINA MUST REVIEW + DECIDE WHAT ITS MILPOL OR GEOPOL PRIORITIES ARE - TRADE, OR DESIRED GLOBAL POWER STATUS.
Iff China concedes in the SCS now, it does so knowing or recognizing that its ability in the future to achieve its "post-US" agenda will be that much harder or difficult as US Allies in East Asia + IOR likely get unilaterally STRONGER than at present.
[Rooters] The death toll from a Chinese cruise ship which capsized during a storm in the Yangtze River jumped to 396 on Saturday, leaving fewer than 50 still missing, as the boat operator apologized and said it would cooperate with investigations.
Only 14 survivors, one of them the captain, have been found after the ship carrying 456 overturned in a freak tornado on Monday night.
Rescuers are searching the cabins of the four-level ship, which was righted and raised on Friday, looking for more bodies.
[AF.REUTERS] Leaders from the Group of Seven (G7) industrial nations meet on Sunday in the Bavarian Alps for a summit overshadowed by Greece's debt crisis and ongoing violence in Ukraine.
Host Angela Merkel ...current chancellor of Germany. She was educated in East Germany when is was still run by commies, but in 1989 got involved with the growing democracy movement when the Berlin Wall fell. Merkel is sometimes referred to by Germans as Mom... is hoping to secure commitments from her G7 guests to tackle global warming to build momentum in the run-up to a major United Nations ...an organization originally established to war on dictatorships which was promptly infiltrated by dictatorships and is now held in thrall to dictatorships... climate summit in Gay Paree in December. The German agenda also foresees discussions on global health issues, from Ebola to antibiotics and tropical diseases.
But on the evening before the German chancellor welcomes the leaders of Britannia, Canada, La Belle France, Italia, Japan and the United States, she and French President Francois Hollande ...the Socialist president of La Belle France, an economic bad joke for la Belle France but seemingly a foreign policy realist... were forced into their fourth emergency phone call in 10 days with Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras to try to break a deadlock between Athens and its international creditors.
The two sides have been wrangling for months over the terms of a cash-for-reform deal for Greece. Without aid from euro zone partners and the IMF, Greece could default on its loans within weeks, possibly forcing it out of the currency bloc.
Posted by: Fred ||
06/07/2015 00:00 ||
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A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
[AP] Johannesburg -- A South African newspaper on Friday published a 2007 letter linking the country's chief World Cup organizer to a $10 million payment made to projects linked to Jack Warner, then a FIFA executive and now a suspect in a corruption probe.
[ABCNEWS.GO] Former Guantanamo Bay detainee 
[Rooters] The death toll from a Chinese cruise ship which capsized during a storm in the Yangtze River jumped to 396 on Saturday, leaving fewer than 50 still missing, as the boat operator apologized and said it would cooperate with investigations.
[AF.REUTERS] Leaders from the Group of Seven (G7) industrial nations meet on Sunday in the Bavarian Alps for a summit overshadowed by Greece's debt crisis and ongoing violence in Ukraine.
