(CBS News) As bank slogans go, they don’t come worse than this: “The preferred financial institution of drug cartels and money launderers.”
That’s a quote Tuesday in a U.S. Department of Justice report about HSBC Holdings, one of the largest banks in the world.
To avoid criminal prosecution, HSBC admitted Tuesday that it laundered more than $800 million for Mexican drug cartels, and covered up illegal transactions for Burma, Iran, Sudan, Cuba, and Libya.
Those nations were under banking sanctions because of human rights atrocities, terrorism, or — in Iran’s case — a nuclear program.
The British bank will pay $1.9 billion to the U.S. government, the largest such fine in history.
While pot is still banned under federal law, voters in Colorado and Washington passed referendums legalizing marijuana for recreational use on Nov. 6. Despite claims by advocates that legalization would reduce crime, The Los Angeles Times reported Monday that “two University of Colorado Boulder students face multiple felony charges after the marijuana-laced brownies they brought to class put their professor in the hospital.”
Thomas Ricardo Cunningham, 21, and Mary Elizabeth Essa, 19, were arrested on suspicion of planning and intentionally committing second-degree assault and inducing consumption of controlled substances by fraudulent means.
Officials said “two other students were hospitalized with anxiety and lightheadedness, and five more had a ‘bad reaction.'”
“Putting marijuana into a food product and providing it to somebody without their knowledge has always been illegal, and that will continue to be illegal, even after Amendment 64,” campus police spokesman Ryan Huff said Sunday. “So I just want to make this clear that these are serious felony cases and we take these very seriously.”
The Pentagon has identified Petty Officer 1st Class Nicolas Checque as the Navy SEAL who died of injuries sustained in the successful rescue of an American doctor from the Taliban over the weekend.
Checque, who hailed from Monroeville, Pa., died of “combat related injuries,” according to a Pentagon release. Though the release only said Checque was assigned to “an East Coast-based Naval Special Warfare unit,” ABC News previously reported the fallen servicemember was a part of the Navy’s elite SEAL Team 6, the same unit that killed Osama bin Laden.
Checque, 28, sustained his mortal injuries while on a nighttime mission Saturday to free Dr. Dilip Joseph, an American doctor who worked for an non-governmental organization based in Kabul. Joseph was kidnapped by the Taliban earlier this month and American officials believed he was in imminent danger.
The Internet is abuzz with the story that the January 20th swearing in of Barrack Obama may be a private affair. Apparently the word is that Obama intends not to allow the media that installed him to attend the ceremony. Alana Goodman of Commentary Magazine reported, “Politico reports that Obama’s second inaugural oath for the ‘most transparent administration in history’ might be administered privately, without any media present.”
The web site Politico reported a quote from the NBC News White House correspondent. “Call me shell-shocked. I’m stunned that this is even an issue; it boggles the mind,” Chuck Todd told POLITICO. “This is not their oath, this is the constitutional oath. It’s not for them. It’s for the public, the citizens of the United Sates. It just boggles the mind. How is this even a debate?”
In his original swearing in ceremony, there were mistakes in the oath of office that he took. Some said that mistake nullified the oath causing another swearing in ceremony to be conducted in the White House in private.
According to the Politico office, the White House intends a public ceremony after the private ceremony. Apparently they intend to reverse the process from the first gaffed ceremony.
The excuse of the White House is alleged to be that January 20th falls on a Sunday, they will hold the ceremony privately and hold a public ceremony the following day.
“The White House Correspondents Association has reason to be concerned,” Goodman wrote in her commentary. “While Obama’s second oath of office in 2009 (if you remember, he had to do it twice) wasn’t completely closed to the media, only four reporters were allowed to attend, writes Dylan Byers.”
California State Controller John Chiang has announced that total state revenue for the month of November 2012 fell $806.8 million, or 10.8%, below budget.
Democrats thought they could hammer “the rich” by convincing voters to pass Proposition 30 to create the highest state income tax in the nation. But it now appears that high income earners have already “voted with their feet” by moving themselves and their businesses out of state, resulting in over $1 billion shortfall in corporate and income taxes last month and the beginning of a new financial crisis.
Passage of Proposition 30 set off euphoria and expectations of higher spending for public employees. The California Teachers’ Association (CTA) trumpeted: “California students and working families won a clear victory today as voters clearly demonstrated their willingness to invest in our public schools and colleges and also rejected a deceptive ballot measure aimed at silencing educators, other workers and their unions.”
State bureaucrats immediately ramped up deficit spending far beyond the state’s $6 billion annual tax increase, with the Departments of Health Services and Developmental Services increasing this month’s spending by over $1 billion versus last year. The lower tax collection and higher spending drove the State’s deficit after the tax increase to $2.7 billion for the first 5 months of this fiscal year. State Controller John Chiang reported:
November’s disappointing revenues stand in stark contrast to recent news that California is leading the nation in job growth, has significantly improved its cash liquidity to pay bills, and even long-distressed home values are starting to inch upward… This serves as a sobering reminder that, while the economy is expanding, it is doing so at a slow and uneven pace that will require the State to exercise care and discipline in how its fiscal affairs are managed in the coming year.
The improved “cash liquidity” Chiang referred to turns out to be $24.9 billion of debt.
As more states embrace legalization of marijuana—a pet cause of George Soros for decades—the British publication The Independent has published a groundbreaking series of articles by journalist Patrick Cockburn on how his son went insane smoking the drug.
Cockburn and his son Henry, who was treated for psychosis and partially recovered, have written an article in which Patrick Cockburn is quoted as saying his son played Russian roulette with cannabis “and lost.”
Henry, who smoked marijuana daily for seven years and was in mental hospitals for about eight years as a result, says, “When I reached a mental hospital, called St Martin’s, I spent three hours walking around the lunch tables trying to listen to my shoes. I thought my shoes were talking to me.”
Patrick Cockburn spent months speaking to the experts in the field and reports on the substantial evidence linking sustained marijuana use with mental illness. One expert, Sir William Paton, professor of pharmacology at Oxford University, reveals “that even limited social use of cannabis could precipitate schizophrenia in people who previously had no psychological problems,” and noted that “smoking a single joint could induce schizophrenia-like symptoms such as hallucinations, paranoia and fragmented thought processes.”
Eugene Smith, famed member of the Tuskegee Airmen who fought for his proper recognition and honor, passed away on Wednesday, November 21st, at the Harrison County Hospital in Cynthiana, Kentucky.
Eugene Smith had lived in Switzerland County for nearly 20 years, retiring to a houseboat moored at Turtle Creek Marina in Florence. He was very active in the community while residing here, including membership at Patriot Baptist Church and was a regular attendee at the Senior Mealsite in Vevay.
Born in Ohio in 1918, he was a 1939 graduate of Withrow High School in Cincinnati; and then earned his bachelor’s degree from Kentucky State University.
When World War II began, Eugene Smith volunteered to serve his country, enlisting in the Army Air Corps to become a pilot.
That’s where his unusual story of heroism begins.
Because his parents were of mixed origin with Native American ancestry, the doctor who delivered Eugene Smith listed on his birth certificate that he was “colored”, even though he was fair skinned. When he was accepted into the Air Corps and was about to begin his flight training, the Army found that his birth certificate listed his race in that way, so the Army declined to send him to flight school with “white” soldiers.
They started shortly after Larry Hagman died Thanksgiving weekend. They continued through the next week and into this one. Larry Hagman is a people’s favorite for Dallas Morning News Texan of the Year.
A sampling of the emails, starting with one from yesterday:
– From Dorothy Herrington:
I nominate Larry Hagman as Texan of the Year. Not only was he a great entertainer (who could possibly forget “J.R.”?), but he supported the South Dallas Cultural Center, launched the Larry Hagman Foundation, gave thousands to the Dallas Children’s Center, Big Thought, Artreach, Frazier Revitalization, and also organized a program for Dunbar Elementary. He advocated organ donation especially after his own transplant in 1995. The only Larry Hagman most of us knew was that he had such a zest for life, and had this uncanny ability to play his acting parts like no other.
We shall never forget him, and will miss him greatly. I would wonder what he is orchestrating upstairs right now, but am sure all those present are under his spell at this very moment. Oh, that we could see what kind of mischief he is conjuring up, as he twitches those eyebrows. You can bet it is entertaining.
Larry Hagman captivated Americans for 13 years as J.R. Ewing on “Dallas.” But the former “I Dream of Jeanie” star may have had a much more dedicated fan base, way over in Romania.
In Romania, Hagman will be remembered as the man who made capitalism cool, and eventually helped end communism in the region.
“I think we were directly or indirectly responsible for the fall of the [Soviet] empire,” Hagman told the Associated Press a decade ago. “They would see the wealthy Ewings and say, ‘Hey, we don’t have all this stuff.’ I think it was good old-fashioned greed that got them to question their authority.”
Latest malware, trying to trick users into paying a fine, claims the FBI is using audio, video, and other devices to record computer’s “illegal” activity.
Can people pay a fine online, avoid the threat of prosecution by the FBI, and unlock their locked PC all in one go?
That’s the offer made by a “Threat of Prosecution Reminder” that’s been flashing on numerous PC screens, which says that the FBI has locked the PC after finding evidence that the computer has been used to access child pornography or other illegal content. The latest version of this notice says that “all activity on this computer is being recorded using audio, video, and other devices.” But users are offered a way to pay the related fine being levied, immediately unlock their PC, and see the whole matter immediately dismissed.
The warning, however, is just a setup. “This is not a legitimate communication from the IC3, but rather is an attempt to extort money from the victim,” according to an advisory released last week by the Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3), which is a joint effort between the FBI and the National White Collar Crime Center. “If you have received this or something similar do not follow payment instruction.”
The extortion part of the scam — now also featured on the FBI’s list of e-scams — is facilitated by a malicious application known as Reveton, which according to antivirus vendor F-Secure “fraudulently claims to be from a legitimate law enforcement authority and prevents users from accessing their infected machine, demanding that a ‘fine’ must be paid to restore normal access.” Machines are typically infected with Reveton via malicious websites — using drive-by download attacks launched by Citadel crimeware — rather than being introduced via phishing attacks or malicious email attachments.
