Ship Seized in Record $1.3 Billion Cocaine Bust Belongs to JPMorgan
July 10th, 2019Fascinating.
Via: ZeroHedge:
Today we learn that the vessel, the MSC Gayane, is owned by JP Morgan, and has been seized by US authorities according to the Wall Street Journal. The Gayane is the world’s second-largest container ship – operated by Switzerland-based Mediterranean Shipping Co, MSC.
Ross Perot Dead at 89
July 9th, 2019Via: Reuters:
H. Ross Perot, the feisty Texas technology billionaire who rattled U.S. politics with two independent presidential campaigns in the 1990s that struck a chord with disgruntled voters, died on Tuesday at the age of 89, his family said.
New Zealand Gun Owners Refusing to Turn Over Firearms to Government
July 8th, 2019Via: Reason:
Once again, responding to a horrendous crime by inflicting knee-jerk, authoritarian restrictions on innocent people proves to be an ineffective means of convincing people to obey. Specifically, New Zealand’s government—which also stepped up censorship and domestic surveillance after bloody attacks on two Christchurch mosques earlier this year—is running into stiff resistance to new gun rules from firearms owners who are slow to surrender now-prohibited weapons and will probably never turn them in.
Officials should have seen it coming.
“Police are anticipating a number of people with banned firearms in their possession won’t surrender them,” Stuff reported at the end of May, based on internal government documents.
As of last week, only around 700 weapons had been turned over. There are an estimated 1.5 million guns—with an unknown number subject to the new prohibition on semiautomatic firearms—in the country overall.
Deutsche Bank Cuts 18,000 Jobs, Exits Equities
July 7th, 2019Via: Bloomberg:
Deutsche Bank AG unveiled a radical overhaul that will see the lender exit its equities business, post a 2.8 billion-euro ($3.1 billion) second-quarter loss and cut the workforce by a fifth to reverse a slide in profitability.
How to Enable DNS-Over-HTTPS (DoH) in Firefox
July 6th, 2019Via: ZDNet:
A step by step guide to enable DNS-over-HTTPS (DoH) support in the Firefox browser.
Skywatcher Captures Rare Image of Mysterious X-37B Military Space Plane
July 6th, 2019Via: LiveScience:
Skywatcher and satellite tracker Ralf Vandebergh of the Netherlands recently caught a rare glimpse of the U.S. Air Force’s secretive X-37B space plane.
Vandebergh said he’d been hunting for the robotic spacecraft for months and finally managed to track it down in May. But it took a bit longer to get photos of the vehicle.
“When I tried to observe it again [in] mid-June, it didn’t meet the predicted time and path,” Vandebergh explained. “It turned out to have maneuvered to another orbit. Thanks to the amateur satellite observers’ network, it was rapidly found in orbit again, and I was able to take some images on June 30 and July 2.”
The X-37B’s recent passes were almost overhead, Vandebergh added.
Jeffrey Epstein Arrested, Charged with Sex Trafficking of Minors
July 6th, 2019Via: Bloomberg:
U.S. prosecutors have arrested fund manager Jeffrey Epstein and charged him with sex trafficking of minors, according to a person familiar with the matter.
Epstein, who had been previously accused of molesting young girls, is expected to appear in Manhattan federal court on Monday, according to the person, who declined to comment publicly because the charges remain private.
Suspicions about Epstein date back more than a decade, when his alleged victims said he used employees to bring local teen girls to his Florida mansion for sex and paid them to recruit new victims. The girls were as young as 13-years-old. Epstein eventually pleaded guilty in 2008 to two counts of soliciting a prostitute and served 13 months in a Florida state prison in Florida, while avoiding prosecution for federal sex-trafficking offenses.
What Is This?
July 4th, 2019The first part. Any prosaic explanations for this? Do any of the many physicists, engineers, video experts reading want to take a stab at calculating the acceleration of this thing?
The second part is probably some de-orbiting satellite or space junk.
Via: Thirdphaseofmoon:
“Italy Arrests 18 for Allegedly Brainwashing and Selling Children”
July 4th, 2019This story will disappear quickly.
Via: AFP:
Italian police have arrested 18 people including a mayor, doctors and social workers for allegedly brainwashing vulnerable children into thinking their parents had abused them so they could then be sold to foster parents.
Police in the northern city of Reggio Emilia made the arrests after an investigation started in 2018 revealed an alleged network of carers who used methods including electroshock to make the children believe they had been sexually abused.
The network then allegedly gave the children to foster families in exchange for cash, while keeping gifts and letters sent to the children by their real parents hidden in a warehouse that was discovered by police.
…
The accused include psychotherapists working for a social work association in Moncalieri, near Turin, and the mayor of Bibbiano.
To brainwash the children, those arrested allegedly forged child-like drawings with sexual connotations and used electroshock therapy as a “little memory machine” to create fake abuse memories, while the therapists are accused of dressing up as “wicked” children’s story characters.
The probe codenamed “Angels and Demons” revealed a scheme to “pass off as a model welfare system for abused minors what was in reality an illegal business to the children’s detriment,” La Repubblica newspaper reported.
“According to investigators, the aim of the arrested group was to take children away from families in difficult social situations and to give them, for money, to other parents,” said the Corriere della Sera newspaper.
Some of the foster parents have been accused of sexually abusing the children they paid money for, La Repubblica reported.
Police declined to say how many children were involved, or of what age.
Hundreds of thousands of euros were involved, Italian media reported.
Mirror: Italy Arrests 18 for Allegedly Brainwashing and Selling Children
Why Does the Pope’s Audience Hall at the Vatican Look Like a Giant Snake Head?
July 4th, 2019I’m think I’ve posted this before, but just in case…
Via: Reddit:
More: Inside the Pope’s Reptilian Audience Hall in Vatican City
