Bout will become a symbol of Moscow’s commitment to its own
After a quiet swap in the United Arab Emirates, Brittney Griner is out of a Russian prison while the Russian arms dealer and presumed intelligence asset Viktor Bout is out of a US one. A little glimmer of humanity amid Cold War 2.0, or a dangerous hostage exchange with Moscow getting the best of the deal? Sadly, this is more the latter.
A Times Magazine-ProPublica investigation reveals how the U.S. painstakingly built a case against a Mexican general suspected of links to organized crime — and then decided to let him go.
1. THE ARREST
When the Cienfuegos family landed at Los Angeles International Airport on Oct. 15, 2020, they looked excited and maybe a bit relieved. With the pandemic still ravaging Mexico, they had come to vacation in Southern California. Arranging such a visit wasn’t a problem, even on short notice: The patriarch, retired Gen. Salvador Cienfuegos Zepeda, had made powerful American friends during his six years as Mexico’s defense minister. When he needed a favor — like visas for his wife, daughters and granddaughters — he could still call someone at the Pentagon or the C.I.A.
I watched Ozark recently, it seems entirely plausible.
A string of attacks on power facilities in Oregon and Washington has caused alarm and highlighted the vulnerabilities of the US electric grid.
The attacks in the Pacific north-west come just days after a similar assault on North Carolina power stations that cut electricity to 40,000 people.
As first reported by Oregon Public Broadcasting and KUOW Public Radio, there have been at least six attacks, some of which involved firearms and caused residents to lose power. Two of the attacks shared similarities with the incident in Moore county, North Carolina, where two stations were hit by gunfire. Authorities have not yet revealed a motive for the North Carolina attack.
Are Islamic honor killings really just “domestic violence”?
Well over a decade ago when I was working part-time in a Philadelphia calling center, one of the employees, an artist, asked a fellow employee if he would pose for him for a series of sketches he was doing for an art class. Although the situation seemed innocent enough, the 20-year-old employee who was asked to pose told his family about the artist’s “proposition,” and that’s when nasty stuff hit the fan.
A Michigan man dropped his pants and bared his bum in front of the female judge during a bond hearing after he was accused of hurling anti-Semitic slurs outside a temple.
Hassan Chokr, 35, faces two felony counts of ethnic intimidation after his most recent incident that took place Friday outside Temple Beth El, a reform synagogue located in West Bloomfield.
He was in court on Tuesday for a separate charge that included resisting arrest.
A nonprofit group has discovered 48 new overseas police stations with ties to China’s communist regime, including two previously unknown facilities in Los Angeles and New York City.
The newly identified sites are among more than 100 police outposts that are spread out across 53 nations.
The facilities have been used by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to carry out an illicit campaign of transnational repression, according to Safeguard Defenders, a nonprofit organization that published a Dec. 5 update to its findings from a previous investigation released in October.
The House Committee on Ethics released a statement Wednesday that Democrat Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (NY-14) is under investigation for ethics violations. All three evening news broadcasts ABC’s World News Tonight, CBS Evening News & NBC Nightly News ignored this story in an apparent attempt to protect Ocasio-Cortez.
Russia has released jailed WNBA star Brittney Griner in exchange for notorious arms dealer Viktor Bout, known as the “Merchant of Death” after months of negotiations and hostility on both sides.
The Department of Energy under President Joe Biden is touting a $200 million grant it gave to a lithium battery company that would help the United States grow its domestic sources of green energy, even though it “primarily” operates in China, according to a report.
Death to “Killadelphia.”
A Philadelphia gas station owner has taken drastic measures against soaring crime — hiring heavily armed security with AR-15s to patrol outside.
Fox 29 filmed a group of officers guarding a Karco gas station while wearing military-style clothing — including Kevlar bulletproof vests — while toting shotguns and even assault rifles.
Smugglers are flooding the border with opioids
In the hills of Mexico City’s luxurious Lomas suburb, close to an embassy and UN offices, is a white pillared mansion that was the site of the world’s biggest ever drug cash bust. In 2007, Mexican federal agents stormed through its ornamental gates to discover a mountain of $205 million in bills, along with pesos, Euros and Hong Kong dollars. It did not, however, belong to one of Mexico’s scarred and bloodthirsty drug lords from the mountains; instead it was the property of the suited Chinese-born businessman Zhenli Ye Gon.
The House Committee on Ethics is investigating Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), according to a statement the panel issued on Wednesday.
Details about the subject of the inquiry were not provided. The nonpartisan Office of Congressional Ethics forwarded its inquiry into Ocasio-Cortez to the House ethics panel in June, according to the report. Typically, when that office forwards an investigation, it’s because it has reason to believe an ethics law was broken.
Swanton Sector Border Patrol agents experienced an increase of nearly 484 percent in the number of migrants apprehended in the first two months of the new fiscal year. In October and November this year, agents apprehended 473 migrants compared to only 81 apprehensions during the same period last year.
Can’t say that I blame them for wanting to get out of war torn Canada.
Three plaintiffs credibly allege that Twitter became a government tool by censoring their speech at the behest of the Department of Health and Human Services.
Mark Changizi, Michael Senger, and Daniel Kotzin became active Twitter users in March 2020, focusing on criticism of government pandemic policy and rapidly gaining large followings. Many of their more-controversial contentions—for instance, that lockdowns and mandates for masks and vaccines would be ineffective at curbing viral spread while having deleterious societal effects—have turned out to be true.
Dr. Anthony Fauci feigned ignorance throughout his November 23 deposition as part of Louisiana and Missouri’s lawsuit against the Biden administration and federal officials, asserting that he is disassociated from social media. Yet, the public health official admitted he talked to Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg about pushing vaccines and noted that one of his daughters worked as a software engineer at Twitter.
