| Rep. Swalwell: Trump 'makes us look like geniuses every day for impeaching him' Posted: 02 Jul 2020 04:25 PM PDT  Rep. Eric Swalwell to the Yahoo News "Skullduggery" podcast: Recent disclosures that the White House failed to act on intelligence showing that Russian operatives were paying bounties to kill American soldiers fully vindicates impeachment.
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| Watch Florida police laugh after shooting protesters with rubber bullets Posted: 02 Jul 2020 09:53 AM PDT  The department said it is conducting a review of 8,000 minutes of body camera footage, but it is defending the officers involved in the video, first published by the Miami Herald.
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| Ghislaine Maxwell was arrested at a $1 million luxury 4-bedroom New Hampshire house that was bought last year in cash Posted: 03 Jul 2020 04:38 AM PDT  Maxwell, a former girlfriend of Jeffrey Epstein, is accused of helping him sexually abuse underage victims over the course of many years.
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| Catholic priest suspended from church for calling Black Lives Matter protesters ‘maggots and parasites’ Posted: 02 Jul 2020 02:35 PM PDT  A Catholic priest in Indiana has been suspended from his public ministry, after he called Black Lives Matter (BLM) protesters "maggots and parasites".Reverend Theodore Rothrock, assigned to St Elizabeth Seton Catholic Church in Carmel, Indiana, was suspended on Wednesday, after he disparaged BLM protesters in a bulletin published on Sunday, according to Huffpost.
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| North Korea's response to coronavirus has been a 'shining success', says Kim Jong-un Posted: 02 Jul 2020 09:03 PM PDT  Kim Jong-un has said that North Korea has stopped the coronavirus making inroads in his country and his response to the pandemic has been a "shining success". According to state news agency KCNA, Mr Kim told a meeting of the politburo of the ruling Workers Party that North Korea had "thoroughly prevented the inroad of the malignant virus and maintained a stable anti-epidemic situation despite the worldwide health crisis, which is a shining success achieved." He warned against complacency or relaxation in the anti-epidemic effort and urged North Koreans to maintain "maximum alert", KCNA said in a statement. The politburo meeting on Thursday comes as many hard-hit countries are easing lockdowns, even as the world moves quickly past the grim milestones of 10 million confirmed infections and 500,000 deaths. North Korea has reopened schools but kept a ban on public gatherings and made it mandatory for people to wear masks in public places as part of its response to the coronavirus threat, a World Health Organisation (WHO) official said on Wednesday.
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| WHO Quietly Changes COVID Timeline following Republican Questioning Posted: 02 Jul 2020 07:43 AM PDT  The World Health Organization quietly changed its timeline of the coronavirus pandemic's first days on Tuesday, clarifying that the Chinese Communist Party never informed the organization of the pandemic on December 31, despite previous claims to the contrary.In the new timeline, which the WHO says has been updated "in light of evolving events and new information," the organization reveals that its Chinese Office "picked up" an online statement — which has since been deleted — made by the Wuhan Municipal Health Commission describing cases of "viral pneumonia." The WHO says it also received open-source intelligence suggesting there was "pneumonia of unknown cause" in Wuhan.The additions clarify the WHO's previous timeline, which simply stated that on December 31, "Wuhan Municipal Health Commission, China, reported a cluster of cases of pneumonia in Wuhan" — implying the report was made to the WHO. In its initial report on the outbreak, the WHO said its China office "was informed" of the unknown pneumonia cases, without clarifying that the information was not provided by the Chinese Communist Party.The lack of clarity led multiple outlets — including Axios, the Washington Post, and the BBC — to report that Chinese authorities told the WHO's China office about the outbreak on December 31. But an interim report released last month by Republicans on the House Foreign Affairs Committee scrutinized that claim, and argued the CCP never actually told the WHO about the outbreak."I'm glad to see the WHO and the Chinese Communist Party have both read my interim report on the origins of the pandemic and are finally admitting to the world the truth — the CCP never reported the virus outbreak to the WHO in violation of WHO regulations," HFAC Lead Republican and China Task Force Chairman Michael McCaul (R., Texas) told National Review. "The question now is whether the CCP will continue their false propaganda campaign that continues to claim they warned the world, or whether they will come clean and begin to work with the world health community to get to the bottom of this deadly pandemic."The WHO did not respond to a request for comment.McCaul, along with China Task Force member Jim Banks (R., Ind.), have argued that China violated the WHO's International Health Regulations by failing to be transparent about the origins of the pandemic.
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| A massive economic crisis and the coronavirus pandemic are pushing Lebanon towards a famine Posted: 03 Jul 2020 12:39 AM PDT  There are estimates from the World Bank that 75% of the country's population could end up living in poverty, France24 reported.
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| New Yahoo News/YouGov July 4 poll: A staggering 62 percent of Americans no longer see America as Ronald Reagan's 'shining city on a hill' Posted: 02 Jul 2020 01:29 PM PDT  This Fourth of July, a new Yahoo News/YouGov poll shows that no matter how polarized they might be politically, Americans finally seem to agree on one thing: America itself is getting worse.
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| As coronavirus surges, Fox News shifts its message on masks Posted: 02 Jul 2020 01:08 PM PDT  However haltingly and incompletely, the president's favorite news outlet has started to acknowledge that the coronavirus is a far graver threat than even Trump will acknowledge.
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| Duckworth to hold up confirmations to ensure impeachment witness Vindman's promotion isn't blocked Posted: 02 Jul 2020 10:58 AM PDT  Duckworth said her blockade on senior nominees would exempt Army Gen. Gustave Perna, nominated to lead the effort to develop a coronavirus vaccine.
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| 'We're not going anywhere': Seattle's Chop zone dismantled but cause lives on Posted: 02 Jul 2020 06:33 AM PDT  The special police-free zone set up by protesters has now been cleared, but activists say they won't stop the fight for justiceThe occupied protest zone near downtown Seattle known as the Capitol Hill Organized Protest, or "Chop", effectively came to a swift end early on Wednesday morning when officers largely cleared the area of people and encampments, despite some protests lingering overnight into Thursday.Now activists say the relationships built and lessons learned over the last three weeks in the self-proclaimed police-free zone have already had a lasting impact that will live on past the physical presence of Chop."We won, we're winning, we made history," said Rick Hearns, who had become head of security at Chop. "Look what we did here. The world saw it."But the protest area also became the location of a series of night-time shootings, which left a 16-year-old boy and a 19-year-old man dead and several others seriously injured.In a series of tweets on Wednesday afternoon, Seattle's mayor, Jenny Durkan, highlighted the violence in the zone, saying "the recent public safety threats have been well documented" and "this violence demanded action".She said: "Our conversations over the weekend made it clear that many individuals would not leave, and that we couldn't address these critical public safety concerns until they did."The autonomous zone emerged organically following a series of dangerous clashes between protesters and law enforcement during marches against police brutality sparked by the killing of George Floyd, and African American, by a white police officer, in Minneapolis in May.Officers in Seattle abandoned their east precinct building as demonstrations closed in, after which protesters camped out around it, with the intention of protecting the building from possible destruction that might be blamed on them.In the days that followed, hundreds more joined, and suddenly several blocks of the city's streets were teeming with people of different ethnicities and socio-economic backgrounds, focused on calling for the defunding the city's police department – echoing such protest cries emerging coast to coast, which can mean diverting money budgeted for police departments to social and education services, or even dismantling an entire department and restructuring the law enforcement system.And they wanted an end to police brutality against black people, explained Tarika Powell, an organizer with Seattle Black Collective Voice.> We're going to organize sit-ins, we're going to spam the city officials, we're going to show up> > Jessie Livingston"It was a space where people came to learn. We screened documentaries, we put on people's assemblies every day where people had the opportunity to speak and share their feelings and ideas … we put on educational events every single day," she told the Guardian."We had a space called the conversation cafe where people could come to learn about racism and to talk about it in ways they don't get to do in their daily lives."It spurred not only important conversations and learning, but also lasting bonds, which have since resulted in the organizing of anti-racist protests and the creation of social justice groups.The Seattle Black Collective Voice, for example, was formed after a group of organizers and protesters met in the Chop, explained Powell.Today, there are about 40 people involved with the collective, and they hold weekly educational events, and organize neighborhood cleanups and mental health outreach for people in the African American community."We would have not been able to come together and engage in the work that we're doing if it had not been for Chop," she said.Pay the Fee Tiny Library was launched in a tent at the Chop, and now organizers have set up the library, which includes black, indigenous and people of color and LGBTQ literature, around the city and held events. And a garden started in the Cal Anderson Park is now expected to become a permanent addition to the neighborhood.Protesters have repeatedly stressed that the shootings and violence was not directly connected with Chop, and may have happened anyway . But it resulted in a dramatic decline in occupiers, it concerned local businesses and residents, and amplified officials calling on occupants to disperse.By the time police cleared Chop on Wednesday, following Mayor Durkan's emergency executive order, the area had largely been reduced to a small number of activists and many homeless people, explained Powell.The truth is they "went in and did a violent sweep on homeless people, throwing away their tents and belongings", she said."Those homeless people had come into Chop to be safe from the sweeps. That is the vast majority of people that were in that space since the shooting started."Officers reported on Twitter that they arrested 31 people during the sweep.Some activists have argued that the police precinct was needed as a bargaining chip in order to get their three main demands met, which involve defunding the police, using that money to invest in community health and services, and dropping criminal charges against protesters. Others say another occupation in the city could be a future possibility.Jessie Livingston, 36, a protester who has been camped at Chop almost every day since it was founded, said she didn't know exactly the form the movement might take, but said: "We're going to organize sit-ins, we're going to spam the city officials, we're going to show up to city council meetings, we're going to do everything we know how to do."She added: "We're not going anywhere."
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| Police officer filmed punching black woman at Miami International Airport Posted: 02 Jul 2020 04:20 AM PDT  The police department in Miami-Dade has dismissed two officers after one punched a black woman at Miami International Airport.The department ordered an investigation into the incident on Wednesday night when a video – dated 1 July – was shared online.
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| Alabama college students are throwing 'COVID parties' where they invite infected people and gamble on who gets sick first, officials say Posted: 02 Jul 2020 02:48 AM PDT  As of Thursday, Alabama reported more than 38,000 coronavirus cases. State health authorities have warned intensive-care-unit beds might run out.
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| Uruguay, Paraguay, Argentina get best marks in Latin America for pandemic response - poll Posted: 03 Jul 2020 06:42 AM PDT  Uruguay, Paraguay and Argentina are the Latin American countries that earned the best grades for their response to the coronavirus, according to a poll conducted in the region and released on Friday, while Brazil was tagged as the worst performer. The survey by the consulting firm Trespuntozero, to which Reuters had exclusive access, shows that in eight of the 10 countries in which the study was conducted, the respondents considered Uruguay one of the best controllers of the pandemic. According to the poll, the performance of Uruguayan President Luis Lacalle Pou against the pandemic had 77.8% approval in his own country; that of Paraguayan Mario Abdo, 76.7%; and that of Argentina's Alberto Fernandez, 68%.
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| India Kanpur: Eight policemen killed in clash with gang members Posted: 03 Jul 2020 01:11 AM PDT  Gang members fired at the officers during a raid in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh.
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| US victims of FARC rebels win claim to Venezuelan's fortune Posted: 02 Jul 2020 09:12 PM PDT  Three American defense contractors held for five years by leftist rebels in Colombia moved closer to collecting on a $318 million judgment against their former captors when a U.S. Supreme Court justice rebuffed an appeal by a sanctioned Venezuelan businessman whose assets they seek to claim. Justice Clarence Thomas refused to hear an emergency appeal by Samark López, letting stand an order by a federal appeals court immediately turning over $53 million from the businessman's previously seized U.S. bank accounts, though the appeals court judgment is being contested.
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| ‘We’ll be waiting on you.’ Florida sheriff wants to deputize gun owners against protesters Posted: 02 Jul 2020 07:49 PM PDT  A Florida sheriff warned people protesting police brutality that he would call on individual gun owners to defend themselves if peaceful demonstrations got out of hand.
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| Fact check: Before Obama there was no Black Lives Matter, but there was ISIS and antifa Posted: 02 Jul 2020 07:19 AM PDT  A claim that before President Barack Obama there was no "war on cops," antifa, ISIS or Black Lives Matter is partly false.
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| There is no epidemic of fatal police shootings against unarmed Black Americans Posted: 03 Jul 2020 12:15 AM PDT  Ideally officers would never need to take anyone's life. But the data on police killings doesn't support reducing or abolishing law enforcement.
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| Huge bird of prey catches shark-like fish and flies off in viral video Posted: 03 Jul 2020 05:14 AM PDT  Visitors to a beach last week would have seen a shark-like fish soaring above their heads thanks to one bird's actions.A video shared online showed one huge predatory bird seen with what appeared to be a shark suspended in its claws above crowds at South Carolina's Myrtle Beach.
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| Did Russia Give Us a Sneak Peak of Its New Nuclear Hunter-Killer Attack Submarine? Posted: 03 Jul 2020 01:00 PM PDT  Russia has one of the largest submarine fleets in the world, but it is aging.
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| Chicago announced a mandatory 14-day quarantine for anyone traveling from 15 states with COVID-19 outbreaks Posted: 03 Jul 2020 09:21 AM PDT  Chicago is requiring individuals from 15 states experiencing COVID-19 outbreaks to quarantine for 14 days when traveling to the city.
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| Virus concerns grow — as do crowds flocking to Jersey Shore Posted: 03 Jul 2020 06:25 AM PDT  New Jersey's casinos have reopened, along with amusement rides and water parks. Beaches are open, though at reduced occupancy levels.
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| Finland's air force drops swastika emblem after century in use Posted: 02 Jul 2020 04:57 AM PDT  Finland's air force has quietly removed the last swastikas from unit emblems after over a century in use. Until recently the country's Air Force Command emblem depicted a pair of wings around a swastika, a symbol which pre-dates its associations with Nazism. The change was first observed by Teivo Teivainen, a politics professor at the University of Helsinki, who argued its negative associations made the swastika's ongoing use politically fraught. Professor Teivainen, who has written widely on the issue, said using the swastika could cause difficulties for the Nato-aligned country, particularly if worn on the uniforms of deployed personnel. "I have not found many reasonable arguments to support its military usefulness," Mr Teivainen wrote on Twitter on Thursday. The symbol's association with Finland's air force dates to its founding in 1918, when Swedish count Eric von Rosen donated a plane painted with swastikas to the newly independent country. The German Nazi Party adopted the swastika as its logo in 1920. Finland removed the swastika from its aircraft following a postwar armistice with the Soviet Union, but until recently the symbol remained on Air Force Command emblems and some flags and decorations. A spokesman for Finland's air force told the BBC, "as unit emblems are worn on uniform, it was considered impractical and unnecessary to continue using the old unit emblem, which had caused misunderstandings from time to time."
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| The surgeon general refused to give a yes or no answer when asked if he would advise people to attend large gatherings for the 4th of July Posted: 03 Jul 2020 10:37 AM PDT  During an appearance on the "Today" show, US Surgeon General Jerome Adams didn't advise people not to attend large gatherings for the 4th of July.
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| The Nigerian Email Scammer Who Stole Millions From Premier League Club, NY Law Firm, Banks Posted: 03 Jul 2020 02:15 PM PDT  Ramon Olorunwa Abbas, who went by the name Ray Hushpuppi, made no secret of his extraordinary wealth. On an Instagram account with 2.3 million followers, he posted photos of himself dripping in high-end watches, wearing robes with his name emblazoned on the back, and driving a $300,000 Mercedes or a white Rolls Royce Cullinan with the hashtag AllMine.He took private jets to Paris, shopped at Gucci and Louis Vuitton, and indulged in cakes depicting himself surrounded by Fendi bags. His address was 1706 Palazzo Versace in Dubai.On Snapchat, under the username "hushpuppi5," he called himself "The Billionaire Gucci Master!!!"Abbas claimed to be a real estate developer. But his wealth was instead the result of running elaborate email scams and hacking schemes, U.S. federal prosecutors argue—a rare example of a Nigerian email scam that actually fooled major companies into handing over millions. "The FBI's investigation has revealed that Abbas finances this opulent lifestyle through crime," FBI Special Agent Andrew Innocenti wrote in a lengthy arrest affidavit, filed in the District Court for the Central District of California on Thursday.Abbas, 37, was arrested when he arrived in Chicago from Dubai on Thursday night. He faces criminal charges for being the leader of a transnational network that allegedly conspired to launder hundreds of millions of dollars through email scams and other schemes, some of which targeted a New York law firm, a foreign bank and an English Premier League soccer club.Abbas and a small group of co-conspirators allegedly had a network of "money mules" that they used to carry out the email scams and then launder money through a slew of foreign bank accounts. The group would usually hack into a business' email account and either block or redirect emails, according to the FBI. They would then use the hacked email account to trick a victim or a company into sending money to them, often changing bank transfer information by just one or two numbers.However, when one member was arrested in October, 2019, shortly after a New York law firm was duped into wiring almost $1 million, investigators obtained a search warrant to go through his iPhone and found messages that blew open the inner workings of the group.Abbas had allegedly tricked one of the law firm's paralegals into wiring $922,857, intended for a client's real estate refinancing, to a Chase Bank account controlled by Abbas. The paralegal emailed a Citizens Bank email address to verify instructions for the wire transfer but it was a spoof email address set up by Abbas. About half the amount was instantly wired to a Canadian bank account and images of the wire transfer were shared between the group. "Did the big hit?" one group member texted, according to excerpts in the affidavit. "Yessir," another replied. In another instance, a foreign bank was defrauded $14.7 million in Feb. 2019 when the group gained access to the bank's computer network and sent fake SWIFT messages—utilizing software used by financial institutions to sends payment orders to each other. One co-conspirator texted Abbas to ask if he had any bank accounts that could take large amounts of the stolen money. Abbas responded with the details for Romanian, Bulgarian and U.S. bank accounts.In one text message, the co-conspirator wrote: "my guy also deleted history logs at the bank so they won't even c the transaction."But the following day, the cyber-heist hit the news and the transfers didn't reach Abbas' Romanian account."Today they noticed and pressed a recall on it , it might show and block or never show," the co-conspirator texted Abbas. "Look it hit the news." Abbas replied: "damn."The pair appeared undeterred. "Next one is in few weeks will let U know when it's ready. to bad they caught on or it would been a nice payout," he wrote to Abbas.In March, the group discussed how they could launder £100 million (about $124 million) from an unnamed English Premier League Club but it's not clear what happened to the money.At one point, the group were making $1 million to $5 million through a scam once or twice a week."This was a challenging case, one that spanned international boundaries, traditional financial systems and the digital sphere," said Jesse Baker, a Secret Service agent in the Los Angles Field Office.Abbas was expelled from the United Arab Emirates, for reasons that were unclear, and is expected to be transferred from Chicago to Los Angeles in the coming weeks. He did not yet have a lawyer appointed.Read more at The Daily Beast.Get our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.
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| Senator warns of political pressure on U.S. probe into hackers of green groups Posted: 03 Jul 2020 07:11 AM PDT  A Democratic U.S. senator says he has written to Attorney General William Barr outlining his concerns about potential "political interference" by the Trump administration in an investigation of a private espionage firm that targeted environmental groups in the United States. Last month Reuters reported https://www.reuters.com/article/us-india-cyber-mercenaries-exclusive/exclusive-obscure-indian-cyber-firm-spied-on-politicians-investors-worldwide-idUSKBN23G1GQ that U.S. law enforcement was investigating aspects of a seven-year-long hack-for-hire operation carried out by a New Delhi-based firm called BellTroX InfoTech Services on behalf of unknown clients. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, who sits on the Senate Judiciary Committee, said in a letter https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/6980750-20200702-Letter-from-Whitehouse-to-Barr.html to Barr and in an interview with Reuters on Thursday that the investigation was being carried out by prosecutors in New York and that unnamed sources had alerted his office that the Department of Justice has taken what he said was "an interest in this matter which seems inconsistent with ordinary procedure."
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| Man and woman who led police on hour-long pursuit were wanted in at least three St. Louis counties Posted: 02 Jul 2020 12:43 PM PDT  Court records reveal that the man who led police on a pursuit through the St. Louis Metro Area has been in repeated trouble with drugs.
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| Yes, World War II Is Still Killing People (This Picture Is Proof) Posted: 02 Jul 2020 04:30 AM PDT  Unexploded bombs are a lasting danger in Europe.
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| Woman calls police on black couple building patio at their own home Posted: 03 Jul 2020 11:37 AM PDT  A video of a New Jersey woman calling the police on her black neighbours went viral and eventually spawned a protest outside the woman's home.The incident occurred on Monday when Fareed Nassor Hayat, an attorney and a professor of law at City University of New York, and his wife, Norrinda, were in the backyard building a stone patio.
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| A Black woman questioned her hotel bill — and an employee called police, NC suit says Posted: 02 Jul 2020 05:22 PM PDT  The suit comes days after a video showed a worker at another hotel in North Carolina call police on Black guests at the hotel pool.
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| School districts pushed to reopen say there isn't enough money to do it safely Posted: 03 Jul 2020 02:00 AM PDT  "They're caught between a rock and a hard place, and the biggest fear is they're going to be forced to open schools without the safety guidelines."
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| Former Bush officials unite to support Biden over Trump Posted: 02 Jul 2020 11:31 AM PDT  "Our democracy is at stake," the group says.
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| Carlos Ghosn: Japan ask US to extradite ex-Green Beret and son over Japan escape Posted: 02 Jul 2020 04:21 PM PDT  The ex-soldier and his son are held in the US for allegedly helping the ex-Nissan boss flee Japan.
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| Dozens mourn man who killed himself in busy Beirut district Posted: 03 Jul 2020 09:18 AM PDT  Dozens of people lay flowers on a main Beirut street where a man killed himself on Friday, with some blaming his death on the country's economic collapse that has left more and more Lebanese hungry. Reuters could not establish the motive for the apparent suicide. The 61-year-old man shot himself in the head in front of a Dunkin' Donuts store in the capital's busy Hamra district, witnesses said.
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| Ghislaine Maxwell reportedly ready to work with FBI and name names Posted: 03 Jul 2020 02:38 PM PDT  Jeffrey Epstein's alleged madam is reportedly set to cooperate with the FBI after her arrest; reaction and analysis on 'The Five.'
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| Letters to the Editor: If the Golden State Killer doesn't deserve the death penalty, no one does Posted: 02 Jul 2020 03:00 AM PDT  If a man who admits to 13 murders and dozens of kidnappings and burglaries doesn't get the death penalty, why should anyone?
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| America's World War II Nightmare: Hitler Tries to Invade the U.S. Homeland Posted: 03 Jul 2020 03:30 PM PDT  Invading a country doesn't guarantee success.
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| Police arrest armed man on the grounds where Trudeau lives Posted: 02 Jul 2020 07:15 AM PDT  An armed man crashed his truck through a gate on the grounds where Prime Minister Justin Trudeau lives Thursday before being arrested two hours later. Police identified the suspect as a member of Canada's armed forces. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police said in a statement that Trudeau was not present at the time of the incident in Ottawa.
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| Delta expects to see an 80% decline in travelers over the 4th of July weekend, and it shows how abysmal things are right now in the airline industry Posted: 02 Jul 2020 10:51 AM PDT  Delta expects 600,000 passengers over the July 4th weekend — an improvement over the coronavirus norm, but far below last year's numbers.
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| Syria harvest boom brings hope as hunger spikes Posted: 02 Jul 2020 09:36 PM PDT  Watching a combine harvester grind through his golden wheat, farmer Yahya Mahmoud is relieved the yield looks good this year, even as a tanking economy leaves millions hungry across war-torn Syria. Before the war erupted in 2011, Syria produced enough wheat to feed its entire population but harvests then plunged to record lows, boosting reliance on imports, mainly from regime ally Russia. Heavy rains and reduced violence in parts of the country this year have led to a much improved harvest, one that farmers and officials hope will soften the blow of an economic crunch that has plunged millions into food insecurity.
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| Afghan Contractor Handed Out Russian Cash to Kill Americans, Officials Say Posted: 02 Jul 2020 05:11 AM PDT  KABUL, Afghanistan -- He was a lowly drug smuggler, neighbors and relatives say, then ventured into contracting, seeking a slice of the billions of dollars the U.S.-led coalition was funneling into construction projects in Afghanistan.But he really began to show off his wealth in recent years, after establishing a base in Russia, though how he earned those riches remained mysterious. On his regular trips home to northern Afghanistan, he drove the latest model cars, protected by bodyguards, and his house was recently upgraded to a four-story villa.Now Rahmatullah Azizi stands as a central piece of a puzzle rocking Washington, named in U.S. intelligence reports and confirmed by Afghan officials as a key middleman who for years handed out money from a Russian military intelligence unit to reward Taliban-linked fighters for targeting U.S. troops in Afghanistan, according to American and Afghan officials.As security agencies connected the dots of the bounty scheme and narrowed in on him, they carried out sweeping raids to arrest dozens of his relatives and associates about six months ago but discovered that Azizi had sneaked out of Afghanistan and was likely back in Russia. What they did find in one of his homes, in Kabul, was about half a million dollars in cash.American and Afghan officials for years have maintained that Russia was running clandestine operations to undermine the U.S. mission in Afghanistan and aid the Taliban.But U.S. officials only recently concluded that a Russian spy agency was paying bounties for killing coalition troops, including Americans, which the Kremlin and the Taliban have denied.According to officials briefed on the matter, U.S. intelligence officials believe the program is run by Unit 29155, an arm of the Russian military intelligence agency known as the GRU that has carried out assassinations and other operations overseas.That a conduit for the payments would be someone like Azizi -- tied to the U.S. reconstruction effort, enmeshed in the regional netherworld but not prominent enough to attract outside attention -- speaks to the depth of Russia's reach into the increasingly complicated Afghan battlefield, exploiting a nexus of crime and terror to strike blows with years of deniability.The public revelation last week of that conclusion has touched off a political firestorm in Washington. White House officials said at first that President Donald Trump was never briefed on the matter, but it emerged that the intelligence assessment was included in a written briefing to the president in late February, if not earlier.As Democratic and Republican officials have expressed alarm at the news, and the administration's lack of action in response, the White House has insisted that the information was uncertain.Details of Azizi's role in the bounty scheme were confirmed through a dozen interviews that included U.S. and Afghan officials aware of the intelligence and the raids that led to it; his neighbors and friends; and business associates of the middle men arrested on suspicion of involvement. All spoke on condition of anonymity to avoid retaliation.U.S. intelligence reports named Azizi as a key middleman between the GRU and militants linked to the Taliban who carried out the attacks. He was among those who collected the cash in Russia, which intelligence files described as multiple payments of "hundreds of thousands of dollars." Those files were among the materials provided to Congress this week.Through a layered and complex Hawala system -- an informal way to transfer money -- he delivered it to Afghanistan for the missions, the files say. The transfers were often sliced into smaller amounts that routed through several regional countries before arriving in Afghanistan, associates of the arrested businessmen said.Afghan officials said prizes of as much as $100,000 per killed soldier were offered for American and coalition targets.Just how the money was dispersed to militants carrying out attacks for the Taliban, and at what level the coordination occurred, remains unclear. But officials say the network had grown increasingly ambitious and was in communication with more senior levels in Taliban military ranks to discuss potential targets.About six months ago, Afghanistan's intelligence agency, the National Directorate of Security, raided the offices of several Hawala businessmen both in Kabul, the capital, and in Kunduz, in the north, who were believed to be associated with the bounty scheme, making more than a dozen arrests."The target of the operation was Rahmat, who was going back-and-forth to Russia for a long time and said he worked there, but no one knew what he did," said Safiullah Amiry, deputy head of Kunduz provincial council, referring to Azizi. But by the time the raid took place, "Rahmat had fled.""From what I heard from security officials, the money had come from Russia through Rahmat," he added.Russia was initially seen as cooperating with U.S. efforts after the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, as its interests in defeating al-Qaida, an international Islamic terror group, aligned with those of the United States.But in recent years, as the two powers clashed elsewhere, the Kremlin grew wary of the prolonged U.S. presence and moved closer to the Taliban, hedging its bets on who would take power in a post-American Afghanistan.The Russians also saw an opportunity for long-awaited payback for the Soviet humiliation in Afghanistan in the 1980s, when the Red Army withdrew after being unable to defeat a U.S.-backed insurgency.Russia has walked a fine balance in recent years, eager to bloody the American nose but wary of Afghanistan collapsing into a chaos that could spill over its borders. Publicly, Russia has admitted only to information-sharing with the Taliban in fighting the Islamic State in Afghanistan, a common foe.The U.S. conclusion in 2019 that the Russians were sending bounty money to the Taliban came at a delicate time in the conflict, just as the United States was deep into negotiations with the insurgents over a deal to withdraw the remaining American troops from the country.Some of the attacks believed to be part of the bounty scheme were carried out around the time the Trump administration was actively reaching out to Russia for cooperation on those peace talks. Zalmay Khalilzad, the U.S. special envoy leading the talks, repeatedly met with Russian officials to build consensus around the U.S. endgame.The Afghan battlefield is saturated with smaller terrorist groups in addition to the Taliban, who are still responsible for the majority of the violence. Criminal networks, profiteers and terror training experts also freelance their services -- often to several groups at the same time.Azizi, who neighbors and relatives said is in his 40s, thrived in that convoluted, murky environment.A friend who has known him since his early days in Kunduz, as well as later in Russia, said he had started off with smuggling small shipments of drugs into Iran in his 20s, but that venture was not very successful. He had returned to northern Afghanistan, and somehow won contracts from the U.S.-led coalition forces to build stretches of a couple roads in Kunduz, before making his way to Russia.None of those interviewed who know Azizi were surprised when his associates were raided about six months ago and one of his brothers taken into custody with the half-million dollars in cash. As one of his friends put it, he had gone from "not even having a blanket" to having multiple houses, fancy cars, and security escorts.This article originally appeared in The New York Times.(C) 2020 The New York Times Company
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| Nagaland dog meat: Animal rights groups hail ban as 'major turning point' Posted: 03 Jul 2020 06:20 PM PDT  Animal rights groups say a ban on the sale of dog meat in Nagaland is a milestone.
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| The world's largest Confederate monument faces renewed calls for removal Posted: 03 Jul 2020 04:05 AM PDT  Stone Mountain Confederate Memorial, a nine-story-high bas-relief sculpture carved into a sprawling rock face northeast of Atlanta, is perhaps the South's most audacious monument to its pro-slavery legacy still intact. Despite long-standing demands for the removal of what many consider a shrine to racism, the giant depiction of three Confederate heroes on horseback still towers ominously over the Georgia countryside, protected by state law. The monument - which reopens on Independence Day weekend after the COVID-19 pandemic forced it to close for weeks - has faced renewed calls for removal since the May 25 killing of George Floyd, a Black man who died during an arrest by a white police officer who pinned his neck to the ground with a knee.
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| Daveed Diggs on what Fourth of July means to Black Americans Posted: 03 Jul 2020 09:09 AM PDT  "What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim."
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