A group of Purdue University professors says it is concerned about school President Mitch Daniels’ continued insistence that liberal historian Howard Zinn was a “fraud.” Ninety professors wrote an open letter to Daniels on Monday saying they were more troubled by his continued criticism of Zinn’s “A People’s History of the United States” now than they were by emails about the historian that he sent as governor. …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Fox US News
Yet another path to smartphone break-ins and fraud? Trouble-seeking cryptographer and security researcher Karsten Nohl, the managing director of Security Research Labs, based in Berlin, Germany, has revealed that some mobile SIM cards can be compromised as they carry encryption and software flaws. How massive is the potential damage? We are talking about a vulnerability that could affect 750 million phones. Nohl’s company has an ominous front page with a note showing handwriting, “Forever yours, Sim.” The elegant note was below a headline, “SIM cards are prone to remote hacking.” Nohl can back that up. He and his team tested close to 1,000 SIM cards for vulnerabilities, exploited by sending a hidden SMS. …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Phys.org
By Bradlee Dean
Power is not only what you have but what the enemy thinks you have.”– Saul Alinsky, “Rules for Radicals: A Practical Primer for Realistic Radicals,” p. 126
As the amnesty debate rages on, one has to ask: Why is it so important to this criminal administration to give a license to illegals to come into America? While most Americans are under the delusion that people favor this administration, the real question is, who exactly supports Barack Hussein Obama? Let’s go down memory lane and recollect just who (so you’ve been told) gives him all this support.
If you remember correctly, CNN’s president resigned last year due to the low viewership it received. Maybe this will shed some light as to why he resigned: Amber Lyon, former news anchor for CNN, said she was ordered to report fake stories, delete unfriendly stories adverse to the Obama administration, and construct stories in specific manners while working for the left-wing network. Lyon said that CNN is paid by U.S. and foreign governments for reporting on some events and not reporting on others. She also stated that the Obama administration pays for CNN content.
The New York Times actually blurted out the truth in their confusion (to their credit, I might add) that all information coming out of the Obama administration is first vetted.
Or what about MSNBC? I’m sorry I even have to bring them into the equation; but their slogan during the election campaign happened to be “Lean Forward,” which is directly derived from the communist playbook. MSNBC parades people like radical lesbian Rachel Maddow, the shameful uncivil rights want-to-be leader Al Sharpton, and Chris “it’s a terrible place to be when you’re brains are in someone else’s head” Matthews.
MSNBC’s ratings can’t get any lower than a snake’s belly, and that is just where they happen to be right now. These outlets are the ones that are attempting to remind those who do not have enough common sense to know right from wrong that Barack Hussein Obama has the support of the majority of Americans.
Nothing could be further from the truth!
Don’t you remember that in the 2010 elections, 63 Democratic representatives were unseated?
Do you remember that Barack Hussein Obama had to move the 2012 Democratic Convention from a 74,000-seat arena to a 20,000-seat arena, and he still couldn’t fill the seats by giving away free tickets?
Do you remember when it was reported in Milwaukee that people filled up an 18,000-seat arena to see Barack Hussein Obama, when in fact there were only 5,000 seats available?
Do you remember that 70 percent of Obama’s Twitter followers were found to be fake accounts, created out of thin air?
Do you remember when Stevie Wonder couldn’t get 200 people to show up for a fundraiser for Obama?
Did you forget that during the re-election inauguration, there weren’t even enough people in Washington, D.C., to fill up the hotel rooms?
And of course, you surely haven’t forgotten the massive voter fraud that took place in the United States in the last election.
Communist …read more
By Paul Roderick Gregory, Contributor
Yesterday’s post Putin Declares Himself Dictator With The Navalny Verdict stirred up a hornet’s nest of protest from Putin’s PR machine. According to Putin’s claquers, the Navalny verdict was just. He is a crook. He commands support from only one percent of Russians (All reasonable Russians love Putin). And what can you expect from a hack writer paid generously by Forbes do to do their bidding. Besides, this fool knows nothing about Russia, despite his pretensions. One critic took umbrage at my mention of Alexandra Dukhanina, the teenage girl held under house arrest for more than a year. After all, this vicious masked (wrong, she wore a stocking cap) girl hurled a bit of asphalt at heavily armed riot police. She deserved to be hauled off in a choke hold. (See picture) Despite my unmasking by Putin supporters, I continue my commentary on the Putin-Navalny shootout. The news of the day: The prosecutor has freed Navalny on bail pending his appeal. The American press has interpreted this either as a concession to Navalny supporters (wrong), as a split within the Kremlin, or as a clever maneuver to allow Navalny to campaign unsuccessfully in the September Moscow mayoral election against the Russian KGB state’s candidate, Sobyanin. Sobyanin was appointed when Putin fired his predecessor and needs the legitimacy of being elected to office. Navalny is Putin’s first victim to have charisma, an unblemished record, and a following of millions on his blog. Khodorkovsky was an evil oligarch, and the Pussy Riot girls offended traditional Russian values. Navalny represents virgin territory for Putin’s repression machine. Perhaps the Kremlin really does not know what to do. If Putin puts Navalny in jail for five years (which means he needs another sentence at the end of the term), the Navalny legend grows. But a free Navalny will be a constant thorn in Putin’s side as he exposes the theft of billions by Putin and his associates. Allowing Navalny to contest the mayoral race may be too clever by a half. Navalny will be running against a non-Muscovite (from Siberia, no less). To keep Navalny’s vote count down, there will have to be massive fraud, and it was electoral fraud that sent hundreds of thousands to the streets in December of 2011. Instead of giving Sobyanin his electoral mandate, he will go down in history as the one who stole the September 2013 election and set off the massive street demonstrations of September and October of 2013. What is a poor Putin to do? I see that Europe has responded to the Navalny sentence with harsh condemnation. President Obama is said to be concerned and following the situation. He may even cancel his visit to Moscow, but this may have more to do with fugitive Snowden than Navalny. Believe it or not, the United States has tremendous leverage over Putin at this point. Putin has staked his reputation on the success of the winter Olympics in Sochi. The treat of a U.S. boycott could …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Forbes Latest
Lawyers contesting the will of a widow who gave some $60 million to a secretive and disgraced Roman Catholic religious order are trying again to have their case heard, filing court papers in an attempt allow the woman’s niece to sue.
The papers, filed Wednesday with the Rhode Island Supreme Court, argue that Mary Lou Dauray has the right to intervene in the estate of her late aunt, Gabrielle Mee, a devout Catholic who gave most of her money to the conservative religious order the Legion of Christ. Mee died in 2008.
The lawyers seek to overturn a ruling by Superior Court Judge Michael Silverstein, who threw out Dauray’s lawsuit last year, saying she had no standing to sue. But he said at the same time that evidence existed that Mee was unduly persuaded to give the Legion her money and detailed how the Legion slowly took control of her finances as she became more deeply involved in the movement.
A church investigation determined that the Legion’s founder, the late Rev. Marcial Maciel, sexually molested seminarians and fathered three children. The Vatican took over the order in 2010 and Pope Benedict XVI ordered a wholesale reform.
Dauray’s lawyers have said that Mee was defrauded by an order whose leaders orchestrated an effort to hide its founder’s misdeeds from her aunt. Silverstein said in throwing out the lawsuit that some of what was before the court raised a red flag because Mee transferred millions to “clandestinely dubious religious leaders.”
In Wednesday’s filings, Dauray’s lawyers argue that Dauray is legally interested in Mee’s estate and that Mee’s most recent will was obtained by fraud and undue influence by the Legion.
Silverstein said in his opinion in part that Dauray disavowed her interest when she said during a deposition that she didn’t want anything for herself from Mee’s estate, but instead wanted it to go to charity. Wednesday’s filing argues that comment should not have been taken as Mee disavowing her interest.
The Legion must file a response with the court by early August. The order has not studied the filing yet but expects to prevail, said spokesman Jim Fair.
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Fox US News
She boasted that she voted twice in last November’s presidential election. Now 58-year-old Melowese Richardson, a veteran Cincinnati poll worker, will be spending the next five years in prison for voter fraud.
Crime in England and Wales was down nine percent in the year ending March 2013 from the previous year, with figures at their lowest since records began in 1981, according to figures released on Thursday.
Crime was down to less than half of its peak level reached in 1995, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) said, despite four years of cuts in police numbers.
The fall in recorded crime spanned all the main categories of “victim-based” offences — as opposed to general crimes against society — except for theft from the person, which was up nine percent, and sexual offences, which were up one percent.
Criminal damage and arson were down 15 percent and robbery by 13 percent.
Homicides stood at 552 for the year, just one less than the year before.
A total of 8.6 million crimes were recorded against households and adults over the year, plus another 800,000 crimes against children aged 10 to 15 — half of those violent crimes.
The rise in sex crimes was thought to be partly linked to publicity surrounding sexual assaults by the late TV presenter Jimmy Savile prompting more victims to come forward.
The figures combine police statistics with those from the Crime Survey for England and Wales, in which about 37,500 households provided information on their experience of crime.
Total crime recorded by police was down seven percent.
Another one million offences not officially classified as crimes, such as speeding, were dealt with by the courts during the year.
Figures from the Home Office on Thursday showed that the number of police officers in England and Wales had fallen for a fourth straight year, with government austerity after the financial crisis compelling forces to make deep cuts.
Police numbers were down 3.4 percent, or 4,516, over the year, taking the total to its lowest level since 2002.
The biggest drop was in London’s Metropolitan Police, which shed 1,742 officers.
Prime Minister David Cameron said, “I think we should congratulate the police. As a government we have asked them to do more with less resources.
“They have performed, I think, magnificently and I think all the work that has gone into crime prevention has helped as well,” he added, on a visit to London’s Hammersmith police station.
Figures for fraud appeared to be up 27 percent, with 229,018 offences, but the ONS said this might be down to a change in how offences are recorded.
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Fox World News
A Russian court will on Thursday deliver a verdict in the embezzlement trial of top protest leader Alexei Navalny, an abrasive critic of President Vladimir Putin who risks years in prison and an end to his budding political career.
Navalny, 37, who emerged as a powerful new political force in mass protests against Putin that broke out in December 2011, dismisses charges he colluded to steal money in a timber deal while acting as an unpaid advisor to the governor in the northern Kirov region.
Prosecutors in the regional capital of Kirov are seeking a six-year prison colony sentence, but any conviction would disqualify Navalny from politics.
Navalny bluntly predicted on his blog Wednesday that he would be found guilty, and that Putin would be behind the decision.
Putin would either “wimp out” and order a suspended sentence or “get up the courage and it will be a jail term”, he wrote.
The verdict comes a day after Navalny was accepted as a candidate for the high-profile Moscow mayoral race in September, raising the bizarre prospect that he could run for office while already behind bars.
Navalny’s disqualification from politics would only take effect after the appeals process is exhausted, so he could still theoretically campaign during this period.
The trial is seen by the opposition as part of a wider crackdown on activists who took to the streets to demand an end to Putin’s rule in the run-up to his return to the Kremlin in May 2012 for a third term.
Many have spent months in cells awaiting trial and face long jail terms for crowd violence.
Ahead of the trial in Kirov, a sleepy city 600 kilometres (370 miles) from Moscow, young supporters handed out leaflets on the main square urging passers-by to come to the court to back “Putin’s number one enemy.”
International journalists swarmed the city to jostle for the courtroom’s 60 seats to hear judge Sergei Blinov’s ruling.
Navalny has eloquently defended himself in the hurried trial, which began in April. Judge Blinov, who has never acquitted anyone in his career, has listened largely silently, sometimes taking notes.
The trial has given little explanation for the alleged embezzlement, given Navalny’s apparently humdrum lifestyle in a small flat in a Moscow suburb with his wife Yulia and two children.
Supporters in Kirov were downbeat ahead of the verdict, even as Navalny’s selection as mayoral candidate raised hopes of a last-minute reprieve from the authorities.
“I’d like to believe that they have a cunning plan, but they are not cunning: they have chosen the option of force,” said supporter Nikolai Lyaskin who travelled from Moscow for the trial.
With his streetwise rhetoric and charisma, Navalny emerged as the most effective of the opposition leaders who led the unprecedented protests against Putin.
Navalny has said he wants to challenge Putin in the next presidential elections in 2018 and coined the phrase “party of crooks and thieves” to describe the ruling United Russia party.
In a typically uncompromising gesture, Navalny this week published a detailed report accusing one of Putin’s closest allies, the head of Russian …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Fox World News
British lawmakers on Tuesday condemned the slow pace of the investigation into Europe’s horsemeat scandal, with no prosecutions in Britain six months after the problems emerged.
Parliament’s Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee said British and Irish authorities had failed to recognise the scale of the scandal, which led to thousands of beef products being pulled from supermarkets across Europe after they were found to contain horsemeat.
“We are concerned at the failure of authorities in both the UK and Ireland to acknowledge the extent of this and to bring prosecutions,” the committee said in a report.
It added that the scandal had revealed that a “complex, highly organised network” of companies were involved in the “fraudulent and illegal” mislabelling of meat.
“We are dismayed at the slow pace of investigations and would like assurance that prosecutions will be mounted where there is evidence of fraud or other illegal activity,” the report added.
The lawmakers acknowledged that horsemeat was found in a “relatively small” number of beef products, with only 4.66 percent of products tested across the EU found to contain more than one percent of horse DNA.
The scandal started in January, when beefburgers sold in several British and Irish supermarket chains were found to contain horsemeat, before spreading to more than a dozen other countries.
A spokesman for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs ministry said it had set up an independent review into how the problem was able to go undetected.
“The police are investigating how products containing horsemeat came to be on sale in the UK and they will take action where any unlawful activity has taken place,” the spokesman added.
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Fox World News
A federal appeals court has rejected an attempt by a former CEO of HealthSouth to get a new trial on bribery and fraud charges.
The 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Monday let stand 60-year-old Richard Scrushy’s 2006 conviction for arranging $500,000 in donations to former Gov. Don Siegelman’s lottery campaign. In return, Siegelman appointed Scrushy to a state hospital regulatory board.
Scrushy argued that he should get a new trial because of judicial and juror bias.
Defense attorney Jim Jenkins says they were disappointed and would appeal.
Scrushy served more than five years in prison and got out last year. He is now living in the Houston area. Siegelman was convicted with Scrushy, and he remains in federal prison.
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Fox US News
A Chicago-area lawyer convicted in a $2.4 billion fraud that led to the collapse of a giant independent commodities firm has been sentenced to a year and a day in prison.
Joseph P. Collins was sentenced Monday in Manhattan federal court. Collins was convicted in November of charges including conspiracy, securities fraud and wire fraud. Collins was formerly the chief outside attorney for the now-defunct financial services company Refco Group Inc.
Refco was once the nation’s largest independent commodities firm before filing for bankruptcy in 2005.
The 62-year-old Winnetka, Ill., resident was originally convicted in 2009 but the conviction was reversed last year by the federal appeals court in Manhattan.
Besides Collins, several former high-level executives at Refco have been convicted of criminal charges in the fraud.
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Fox US News
A 22-year-old man has been sentenced to a year in prison for stealing the identities and passwords of more than 700 fellow students at his San Diego-area university so he could rig a campus election.
The U.S. attorney’s office said Monday that former Cal State San Marcos student Matthew Weaver rigged the election so he could become student body president. He was one of two candidates for the position.
Weaver, of Huntington Beach, pleaded guilty in March to wire fraud, unauthorized access of a computer and identity theft.
He admits that he used small electronic devices that record a computer user’s keystrokes to steal 745 passwords.
Weaver says he used those stolen identities to cast about 630 votes for himself and for friends who also were on the ballot.
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Fox US News
BP has set up a hotline for people to report alleged fraud involving claims arising from the company’s massive 2010 oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
Monday’s launch of the hotline comes a week after a federal appeals court heard BP’s argument that it has been forced to pay hundreds of millions of dollars in settlement money to businesses with inflated or fictitious claims.
Earlier this month, a judge appointed former FBI Director Louis Freeh to investigate alleged misconduct by a lawyer who helped administer BP’s multibillion-dollar settlement with Gulf Coast residents and businesses.
BP said calls to the hotline can be anonymous and could entitle a caller to a reward if a tip leads to an indictment, recovery of money or denial of a claim.
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Fox US News
A media company heir raised in what he called a wealthy but dysfunctional family was sentenced to nine years in prison for stealing millions of dollars from his mother and disabled uncle.
A defense lawyer argued Monday that Michael Scripps has built a productive life after becoming estranged from the family in 2006.
But a federal judge says the theft caused the estrangement.
Scripps was convicted of fraud at an April trial.
Prosecutors say he persuaded his mother to let his college friend in suburban Philadelphia manage $9 million of her and her brother’s money.
Scripps then stole $3.6 million, with about $300,000 going to the friend, Richard “Duke” Gleeson. He faces sentencing later Monday.
Michael Scripps is a descendant of James E. Scripps, the founder of The Detroit News.
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Fox US News
Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy said Monday he had no plans to bow to opposition parties demands that he resign following newspaper publication of text messages in which he tells a former ruling party treasurer under a corruption investigation to “stay calm.”
“I am going to see out the mandate the Spanish electorate gave me,” he told reporters at a press conference with visiting Polish counterpart Donald Tusk. “This is a stable government that is going to fulfill its obligations.”
Rajoy, who says neither he nor other party figures received illegal payments, did not deny exchanging text messages with now jailed former Popular Party treasurer Luis Barcenas. He claimed the messages demonstrated that the state “was not bowing to blackmail. This is a serious democracy,”
A former senator, Barcenas was a top member of the party’s treasury for some 20 years until he resigned in 2009 on being named a suspect in a probe of illegal funding of the party.
The mobile phone text messages, published by El Mundo on Sunday, date from before Barcenas was sent to jail. In them, Rajoy tells the former treasurer to “stay calm” but advises him that the situation is difficult.
“Luis, nothing is easy. But we are doing what we can,” one message says. “Cheer up.”
Barcenas was jailed last month while awaiting possible trial on tax fraud and money-laundering charges after the National Court found he had held some 47 million euros ($61 million) in secret Swiss bank accounts. Speculation has been rampant since then that he might try to drag the party and the government into the scandal.
Both the Swiss bank account and the slush fund probes have rocked the party and the country. They come while Spaniards are obliged to cope with harsh austerity measures, increased taxes and tough economic reforms aimed at reducing debt and 27 percent unemployment.
Rajoy boasted that the reforms were beginning to pay off and that he was not about to allow his plans for more reforms to be derailed.
“Let no one think we are going to be distracted from getting Spain out of the crisis,” he said.
Barcenas, meanwhile, appeared again Monday before the judge investigating the alleged slush fund. Leading daily …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Fox World News
A United Nations envoy urged Cambodia Monday to let opposition leader Sam Rainsy play a “full part” in politics as the recently-pardoned politician prepares to return ahead of elections.
Sam Rainsy, who lives in self-imposed exile in France, had faced 11 years in jail after he was convicted in absentia on charges that he contends were politically motivated, including publishing a false map of the border with Vietnam.
He was pardoned by King Sihamoni on Friday and has vowed to return to Cambodia on July 19 to help his party fight national polls that are widely expected to be won by strongman premier Hun Sen.
The UN’s special rapporteur on human rights in Cambodia, Surya Subedi, said in a statement that he was “very pleased” with the royal pardon, which was “in the interests of stronger and deeper democratisation” of the country.
“I now hope that with this development, the government will take the necessary action in order to allow Sam Rainsy to play a full part in the national politics of Cambodia,” he said.
Rainsy, who is seen as the main challenger to Hun Sen, has been removed from the electoral register and is unable to run as a candidate in the July 28 general election unless parliament amends the law.
The French-educated former banker — who worked with global finance giant Paribas in the 1980s — was pardoned at Hun Sen’s request in a move welcomed by the United States.
While all political parties are free to canvass voters and hold public events, observers say there is little chance of unseating Hun Sen and his Cambodian People’s Party (CPP), which won the last two polls by a landslide amid allegations of fraud and election irregularities.
Hun Sen, now 60, has run Cambodia for 28 years, making him one of Southeast Asia’s longest-serving leaders.
In May he said he would try to stay in power until he is 74. He had previously vowed to hold office until he reached 90.
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Fox World News
By Reuters
Filed under: Goldman Sachs, SEC, Scandals and Lawsuits, Securities, Investing
By Nate Raymond
NEW YORK — The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission heads to trial Monday against a former Goldman Sachs bond trader in a case it says highlights what went wrong on Wall Street in the financial crisis.
Jury selection begins in federal court in New York in the civil fraud case against Fabrice Tourre, 34, who the SEC says misled investors in an ill-fated mortgage-securities investment called Abacus 2007-AC1.
It is the highest-profile trial to date stemming from the SEC’s investigation of the events leading up to the 2008 crisis and, legal experts say, presents a chance for the SEC to hold an individual responsible at trial.
The SEC’s case, as summed up by U.S. District Judge Katherine Forrest last month, is that Tourre “handed Little Red Riding Hood an invitation to grandmother’s house while concealing the fact that it was written by the Big Bad Wolf.”
According to the SEC, the wolf in question is John Paulson, a hedge fund billionaire whose bet against the subprime mortgage market was chronicled in “The Greatest Trade Ever” by Gregory Zuckerman.
In 2006, Paulson’s hedge fund, Paulson & Co., turned to Goldman Sachs Group (GS) for help betting against subprime mortgages, the SEC said.
They began discussing Abacus, which would give Paulson a role in picking the underlying portfolio of mortgage securities, the SEC said. Paulson could then short, or bet against, it through an insurance product called a credit default swap.
At the time, Tourre, a French national, was 28 years old and working at Goldman Sachs in New York. He became the bank’s principal employee working on what became Abacus, known in the financial industry as a synthetic collateralized debt obligation.
The SEC said Abacus’s marketing materials failed to disclose Paulson’s role in picking the underlying assets, instead saying that a subsidiary of ACA Capital Holdings selected them.
Tourre’s goal, the SEC contends, was to deceive investors into buying the liabilities of Abacus.
In a much-cited email sent on Jan. 23, 2007, to his girlfriend at the time, Tourre said of the financial markets: the “whole building is about to collapse anytime now.”
“Only potential survivor, the fabulous Fab … standing in the middle of all these complex, highly leveraged, exotic trades he created without necessarily understanding all of the implications of those monstrosities!!!”
When the underlying mortgage securities turned sour, investors including IKB Deutsche Industriebank AG and ABN AMRO Bank NV, now owned by Royal Bank of Scotland Group (RBS), lost over $1 billion, the SEC said.
Paulson, meanwhile, netted …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at DailyFinance
A Chinese court executed a man on death row without notifying his family and then defended its actions, sparking anger online, local media reported Sunday.
Businessman Zeng Chengjie was executed on Friday after being sentenced in 2011 for fraud and illegal fundraising involving 3.4 billion yuan ($550 million), the Beijing Times said.
His daughter complained on Sina Weibo, a Twitter-like microblog, that the court in Changsha, central China, had not notified the family beforehand.
The court replied via its own weibo account on Saturday, saying “the law does not have a written rule that convicts being executed must see their families”.
It generated criticism online with users criticising the “ice cold” response.
The court then apologised in a second post, stressing that its weibo account managers had not studied the law closely enough, the Beijing Times said.
It later issued a third post, saying Zeng was given the option to see his family but declined.
Weibo users dismissed the court’s replies — which along with all other posts on its account were later blocked from view — though netizens and media outlets shared images of the earlier statements.
Zeng’s daughter said: “Everything they did should be condemned”.
The controversy comes as China’s leaders have called for a more credible judiciary, even although it is largely beholden to political authorities.
“China has a long, long way to go before it has the rule of law,” weibo user Lin Lvshan wrote.
Xu Xin, a law professor, wrote online that the court had “severely damaged public confidence in judicial bodies”.
China’s new leader Xi Jinping has called in recent months for a fairer and more transparent judiciary that delivers justice for ordinary Chinese.
But China’s courts lack independence. Many cases, particularly sensitive ones, are decided beforehand by political authorities, and the country’s conviction rate is high.
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Fox World News
Cambodia’s newly pardoned opposition leader said on Saturday he would return from exile on July 19 to join his party’s campaign to defeat Prime Minister Hun Sen in upcoming elections.
Sam Rainsy, who lives in France, had faced 11 years in jail after he was convicted in absentia for charges that he contends were politically motivated, including publishing a false map of the border with Vietnam.
The French-educated former banker — who worked with global finance giant Paribas in the 1980s — was pardoned by King Sihamoni on Friday at Hun Sen’s request.
“I will arrive at Phnom Penh International Airport on Friday, 19 July, 2013 in the morning at 9:05 on a Thai Airways flight,” Rainsy wrote on his Facebook page, in a post that was widely shared and received thousands of “likes”.
A spokesman for his Cambodia National Rescue Party, Yim Sovann, confirmed the travel schedule, adding that it would take time to arrange Rainsy’s return due to some “issue with his travel document”.
Rainsy, who holds joint French and Cambodian citizenship, is travelling on his French passport as his Cambodian passport was revoked by the government after his criminal convictions.
Thousands of opposition supporters are expected to turn out to welcome him at the airport, according to his party.
Rainsy told AFP on Friday he was “very happy” to be able to return to Cambodia, adding that the pardon was “a small victory for democracy” but also warning that “much more remains to be done”.
Rainsy, who is seen as the main challenger to strongman Hun Sen, has been removed from the electoral register and as a result is unable to run as a candidate in the July 28 general election unless parliament amends the law.
Hun Sen is one of Southeast Asia’s longest-serving leaders and has steered the impoverished country from the ashes of civil war and overseen a growing economy through development, tourism, and garment exports.
But his government is regularly accused of suppressing political freedoms and muzzling activists. He is widely expected to win a majority in this month’s polls.
In May he said he would try to stay in power for another decade, until he is 74. He had previously vowed to hold office until he reached 90.
While all political parties are free to canvass voters and hold public events, observers say there is little chance of unseating Hun Sen and his Cambodian People’s Party (CPP), which won the last two polls by a landslide amid allegations of fraud and election irregularities.
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Fox World News
A former Arkansas Lottery security official has pleaded guilty to stealing and cashing almost a half-million dollars’ worth of tickets.
The lottery suspended Remmele Mazyck (rah-MEL’ mah-ZEEK’) in October and fired him three weeks later. Mazyck pleaded guilty to wire fraud and money laundering charges Friday in federal court.
State gaming officials say the thefts started shortly after the games began in September 2009. Lottery Director Bishop Woosley said between November 2009 and October 2012, Mazyck cashed 22,710 tickets worth about $478,000.
Mazyck’s lawyer, John Wesley Hall, said 34-year-old Mazyck has been released on his recognizance. His sentencing date hasn’t been set yet.
The Arkansas Lottery said its insurer would cover the losses.
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Fox US News
