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Category: Politics

Deutsche Bank faces criminal investigation for potential money-laundering

Deutsche Bank faces criminal investigation for potential money-laundering

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The New York Times reports: Federal authorities are investigating whether Deutsche Bank complied with laws meant to stop money laundering and other crimes, the latest government examination of potential misconduct at one of the world’s largest and most troubled banks, according to seven people familiar with the inquiry. The investigation includes a review of Deutsche Bank’s handling of so-called suspicious activity reports that its employees prepared about possibly problematic transactions, including some linked to President Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser,…

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Why Elizabeth Warren’s appeal is wider than expected

Why Elizabeth Warren’s appeal is wider than expected

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McClatchy reports: Many moderate Democratic leaders have reached a surprising conclusion about Elizabeth Warren: They’d actually feel comfortable if she won the party’s presidential nomination. She might be an unabashed liberal, they say, but at least she’s a talented candidate — and she’s much more acceptable than democratic socialist Bernie Sanders. “The thing about Warren is that she is staying within the lines of what is manageable,” said Matt Bennett, co-founder of the center-left group Third Way, who also praised…

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Facebook’s path to global domination: Take over the internet, then the world’s financial system

Facebook’s path to global domination: Take over the internet, then the world’s financial system

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Thomas Claburn writes: Facebook – the global ad business pilloried repeatedly over the past 15 years for privacy disasters – on Tuesday announced a scheme to allow account holders to buy credits and spend the digitized funds online through a network of partners, under a “strong commitment to privacy.” The antisocial network’s blockchain-tracked currency, Libra, will reside in a digital wallet named for the company’s newly formed financial services subsidiary Calibra. This coin-storing code will be available initially in WhatsApp…

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Environment reporters facing harassment and murder, study finds

Environment reporters facing harassment and murder, study finds

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The Guardian reports: Thirteen journalists who were investigating damage to the environment have been killed in recent years and many more are suffering violence, harassment, intimidation and lawsuits, according to a study. The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), which produced the tally, is investigating a further 16 deaths over the last decade. It says the number of murders may be as high as 29, making this field of journalism one of the most dangerous after war reporting. On every continent…

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‘The Saudis couldn’t do it without us’: the UK’s true role in Yemen’s deadly war

‘The Saudis couldn’t do it without us’: the UK’s true role in Yemen’s deadly war

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Arron Merat writes: For more than four years, a brutal Saudi air campaign has bombarded Yemen, killing tens of thousands, injuring hundreds of thousands and displacing millions – creating the world’s worst humanitarian crisis. And British weapons are doing much of the killing. Every day Yemen is hit by British bombs – dropped by British planes that are flown by British-trained pilots and maintained and prepared inside Saudi Arabia by thousands of British contractors. The Saudi-led military coalition, which includes…

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Syrian refugees have become pawns in their host nations’ politics

Syrian refugees have become pawns in their host nations’ politics

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Gerasimos Tsourapas writes: As the number of refugees globally reaches records, states are developing diverse yet similar strategies of linking their management of forced displacement to foreign policy goals. In May, Iran’s deputy foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, said that if crude exports continue to decrease in light of American sanctions, “it is possible that we ask our Afghan brothers and sisters to leave Iran.” In September, Turkey threatened to open the border with Syria and allow internally displaced Syrians into…

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Trump, Falwell, the ‘pool boy,’ the comedian, and the hush money

Trump, Falwell, the ‘pool boy,’ the comedian, and the hush money

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The New York Times reports: Senator Ted Cruz was running neck and neck with Donald J. Trump in Iowa just before the caucuses in 2016, but his campaign was expecting a last-minute boost from a powerful endorser, Jerry Falwell Jr. Mr. Falwell was chancellor of one of the nation’s largest Christian colleges, Liberty University, and a son of the Rev. Jerry Falwell Sr., the televangelist and co-founder of the modern religious right. Months earlier, Mr. Falwell had provided Liberty’s basketball…

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Trump vows mass immigration arrests while slashing aid to Central America

Trump vows mass immigration arrests while slashing aid to Central America

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The Washington Post reports: President Trump said in a tweet Monday night that U.S. immigration agents are planning to make mass arrests starting “next week,” an apparent reference to a plan in preparation for months that aims to round up thousands of migrant parents and children in a blitz operation across major U.S. cities. “Next week ICE will begin the process of removing the millions of illegal aliens who have illicitly found their way into the United States,” Trump wrote,…

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In face-off with Iran, escalation may depend on who prevails inside Washington and Tehran

In face-off with Iran, escalation may depend on who prevails inside Washington and Tehran

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The New York Times reports: As Iran and the United States face off in the Gulf of Oman, the risk may not be just at sea, but in Tehran and Washington, where both Iranian and American hard-liners are seizing on the moment for political advantage. The attacks this week on two tankers in the gulf, instantly attributed to Iran by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and then President Trump, emboldens the hard-liners in both countries, each able to argue their…

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‘There’s no accountability’: Trump, White House aides signal a willingness to act with impunity in drive for reelection

‘There’s no accountability’: Trump, White House aides signal a willingness to act with impunity in drive for reelection

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The Washington Post reports: Slumping in the polls and at war with his political rivals, President Trump has signaled a willingness to act with impunity in his drive for reelection, taking steps over the past week that demonstrate a disregard for legal boundaries meant to hold him accountable and protect the sanctity of American democracy. Trump said in an interview that he would accept damaging information on his election opponents from foreign entities, defiantly unrepentant after spending 2½ years trying…

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Paul Manafort seemed headed to Rikers. Then the Justice Department intervened

Paul Manafort seemed headed to Rikers. Then the Justice Department intervened

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The New York Times reports: Paul J. Manafort, President Trump’s former campaign chairman who is serving a federal prison sentence, had been expected to be transferred to the notorious Rikers Island jail complex this month to await trial on a separate state case. But last week, Manhattan prosecutors were surprised to receive a letter from the second-highest law enforcement official in the country inquiring about Mr. Manafort’s case. The letter, from Jeffrey A. Rosen, Attorney General William P. Barr’s new…

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Mohamed Morsi, Egypt’s first democratically elected president, dies in court

Mohamed Morsi, Egypt’s first democratically elected president, dies in court

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The New York Times reports: Mohamed Morsi, Egypt’s first democratically elected president, collapsed and died while on trial in a Cairo courtroom on Monday, six years after the military ousted him in tumultuous circumstances that pushed Egypt back to autocratic rule. Egyptian authorities gave no official cause of death, but critics blamed the poor conditions in the prison where Mr. Morsi had spent the past six years. They said the authorities had deprived him of vital medicine for diabetes, high…

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How the Sunrise Movement changed the Democratic conversation

How the Sunrise Movement changed the Democratic conversation

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Ruairí Arrieta-Kenna writes: “When we were taught about the civil rights movement as kids, it was told to us as if a few big marches just happened and then the laws changed,” Emily LaShelle told me last weekend as she smoked a cigarette. Behind her, a group of her peers played Frisbee in a field while the sun set behind them. “But there was so much more work and effort by activists behind the scenes,” she said. “And that’s the…

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Joe Biden and the ‘electability’ delusion — and why the media keep making the same mistake

Joe Biden and the ‘electability’ delusion — and why the media keep making the same mistake

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Margaret Sullivan writes: As Iowa journalist Robert Leonard talks to voters around his state, he finds himself baffled at the national portrayal of Joe Biden’s dominance in the presidential campaign. The local Democrats he encounters respect the former vice president, he told me, but many of them also feel his time has passed. They’re far more excited about other candidates, five in particular: Sen. Elizabeth Warren (Mass.); Pete Buttigieg, the mayor of South Bend, Ind.; Sen. Kamala D. Harris (Calif.);…

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Sucker: Netanyahu’s ‘Trump Heights’ publicity stunt fools no one — except for Trump

Sucker: Netanyahu’s ‘Trump Heights’ publicity stunt fools no one — except for Trump

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BBC News reports: Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu has unveiled a new settlement in the occupied Golan Heights, named after US President Donald Trump. At a naming ceremony on Sunday, Mr Netanyahu said Trump Heights honoured Mr Trump for his decision to recognise Israeli sovereignty over the territory. Building work has yet to begin but a sign bearing Mr Trump’s name and US and Israeli flags was unveiled. Critics called the move a publicity stunt with no legal authority. Israel seized…

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