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Month: May 2019

Deutsche Bank staff saw suspicious activity in Trump and Kushner accounts

Deutsche Bank staff saw suspicious activity in Trump and Kushner accounts

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The New York Times reports: Anti-money-laundering specialists at Deutsche Bank recommended in 2016 and 2017 that multiple transactions involving legal entities controlled by Donald J. Trump and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, be reported to a federal financial-crimes watchdog. The transactions, some of which involved Mr. Trump’s now-defunct foundation, set off alerts in a computer system designed to detect illicit activity, according to five current and former bank employees. Compliance staff members who then reviewed the transactions prepared so-called suspicious activity…

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In a popular mobile game, players are given the goal of killing a journalist

In a popular mobile game, players are given the goal of killing a journalist

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The Washington Post reports: The mission is called Breaking News. It’s the seventh mission in the game, and it comes after you’ve upgraded your sniper rifle to shoot at a distance of nearly 1,000 feet with accuracy. By now, you’ve already taken out, among others, a gunman who allegedly killed several people at a pizzeria last year, someone who stole a backpack from a tourist, a sniper who (without a trace of irony) is killing innocent people, and three men…

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Finland is winning the war on fake news. What it’s learned may be crucial to Western democracy

Finland is winning the war on fake news. What it’s learned may be crucial to Western democracy

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CNN reports: On a recent afternoon in Helsinki, a group of students gathered to hear a lecture on a subject that is far from a staple in most community college curriculums. Standing in front of the classroom at Espoo Adult Education Centre, Jussi Toivanen worked his way through his PowerPoint presentation. A slide titled “Have you been hit by the Russian troll army?” included a checklist of methods used to deceive readers on social media: image and video manipulations, half-truths,…

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Scandal in Austria’s Freedom Party; ties to Putin and Trump

Scandal in Austria’s Freedom Party; ties to Putin and Trump

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Politico reports: Turns out Russian collusion isn’t a “witch hunt hoax” after all. At least not in Austria. The country’s government collapsed on Saturday after Chancellor Sebastian Kurz said he was pulling the plug on his ruling coalition after just 17 months in office. The move came barely 24 hours after the release of a bombshell video showing Heinz-Christian Strache, the far-right leader of his junior coalition partner, trying to trade public contracts for party donations from a woman he…

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How Europe’s ‘Identitarians’ are mainstreaming racism

How Europe’s ‘Identitarians’ are mainstreaming racism

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Anne Applebaum writes: Was it an invitation to cocktails or the start of a far-right conspiracy? In Europe, these days, it can be hard to tell. But this week Austrian media are reporting that the links between Martin Sellner and Brenton Tarrant were rather more extensive. Sellner is the clean-cut leader of the Austrian Identitarian Movement; Tarrant is the man charged with shooting up two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand. The two exchanged emails in 2018 after Tarrant made a…

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The balance has shifted: The data on impeachment favor moving ahead

The balance has shifted: The data on impeachment favor moving ahead

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Jill Wine-Banks writes: Sidney Blumenthal’s opinion piece in Just Security has rightly provoked a lively conversation about the impeachability of President Donald Trump. More importantly, it solves the political conundrum at the center of the debate about how to balance the potential political impact of impeachment on the 2020 election with the moral and constitutional obligations of Congress to hold this president accountable in the face of the corruption and wrongdoing reported in the Mueller Report and the nightly news….

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Trump’s conduct reaches ‘threshold of impeachment’ says first GOP lawmaker

Trump’s conduct reaches ‘threshold of impeachment’ says first GOP lawmaker

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The New York Times reports: Representative Justin Amash, an iconoclastic Republican of Michigan who has considered a run against President Trump in 2020, became the first member of his party serving in Congress to publicly suggest that the president’s conduct had reached the “threshold of impeachment.” Mr. Amash, 39, used Mr. Trump’s favorite medium — Twitter — to join a groundswell of Democrats who have concluded that the president’s behavior, including instances of potential obstruction of justice laid out in…

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A path for regulators to break up Facebook remains unclear

A path for regulators to break up Facebook remains unclear

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April Glaser writes: Facebook is big. Possibly too big. Which is why the chorus of experts and former Facebookers who think it’s time to break the company up is getting louder. Last Thursday, Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes wrote a mammoth op-ed in the New York Times about why the company that made him very wealthy should be less powerful. In his view, the way to do that is to make the market more competitive. To do that, Hughes recommends (among…

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Lending practices like those behind 2008 financial crash devastated a generation of taxi drivers

Lending practices like those behind 2008 financial crash devastated a generation of taxi drivers

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The New York Times reports: The phone call that ruined Mohammed Hoque’s life came in April 2014 as he began another long day driving a New York City taxi, a job he had held since emigrating from Bangladesh nine years earlier. The call came from a prominent businessman who was selling a medallion, the coveted city permit that allows a driver to own a yellow cab instead of working for someone else. If Mr. Hoque gave him $50,000 that day,…

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What happened in what was supposed to be Australia’s climate change election?

What happened in what was supposed to be Australia’s climate change election?

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The New York Times reports: The polls said this would be Australia’s climate change election, when voters confronted harsh reality and elected leaders who would tackle the problem. And in some districts, it was true: Tony Abbott, the former prime minister who stymied climate policy for years, lost to an independent who campaigned on the issue. A few other new candidates prioritizing climate change also won. But over all, Australians shrugged off the warming seas killing the Great Barrier Reef…

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Has the politics of climate change finally reached a tipping point?

Has the politics of climate change finally reached a tipping point?

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John Vidal writes: Last week a small campaign group in the staunchly conservative town of Shrewsbury called a public meeting about climate change. The organisers were delighted when 150 people turned up. Even they were surprised, though, when people unanimously said they were prepared to give up flying, change their boilers and cars, eat less meat and even overthrow capitalism to get a grip on climate change. But this was just a straw in the political wind whipping through middle…

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Trump shows signs he will pardon servicemen accused or convicted of war crimes

Trump shows signs he will pardon servicemen accused or convicted of war crimes

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The New York Times reports: President Trump has requested the immediate preparation of paperwork needed to pardon several American military members accused or convicted of war crimes — including high-profile cases of murder, attempted murder and desecration of a corpse — indicating that he is considering pardons for the men on or around Memorial Day, according to two United States officials. The requests are for Special Operations Chief Edward Gallagher of the Navy SEALs, who is scheduled to stand trial…

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Barr’s FBI investigation, Trump and the threat from within

Barr’s FBI investigation, Trump and the threat from within

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Frank Figliuzzi, former FBI assistant director for counterintelligence, writes: On Monday, Attorney General William Barr, acting more like defense counsel for a cornered president than the nation’s top law enforcement official, ordered a U.S. Attorney review the FBI’s decision to open a counterintelligence investigation into alleged ties between Trump associates and Russia in 2016. This action, coupled with Barr’s previous reckless conduct, unwittingly promotes the interests of America’s enemies as Barr perpetuates dangerous conspiracy theories about secret Washington cabals and…

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The partisan divide on how to read the intelligence on Iran

The partisan divide on how to read the intelligence on Iran

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The Atlantic reports: Adam Schiff, the combative chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, didn’t contest the recent intelligence that the Trump administration said was behind its newly aggressive posture toward Iran. Nor did he accuse the White House of misrepresenting it. Instead he returned to a critique that Democrats have made of Trump’s hawkish Iran policy from the start: that it will lead America down the path of an ill-planned confrontation. “It’s not that I think there isn’t intelligence to…

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