Source: http://news.feedzilla.com/en_us/stories/politics/top-stories/290038799?client_source=feed&format=rss
imbibe msg network ray j anthony shadid gary carter this means war bobby brown
Saturday, March 9, 2013
Friday, March 8, 2013
Rovio Pulls Down Paywall For Original Angry Birds On iPhone, iPad To Reignite Downloads On Legacy Games
Angry Birds may be one of the most popular apps of all time, but it's also not exactly a spring chicken, and so, to boost its downloads, publisher Rovio is now making the original iOS versions for iPhone and iPad free. According to Ouriel Ohayon of Appsfire, who was the first to have spotted this, this is the first time Rovio has taken down the paywall on these versions. The moves come as some have observed that Rovio has of late fallen out of the top 80 highest grossing iPhone apps -- for the first time since May 2010.Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/7QciPpoXqGo/
gossip girl Ink Master Jenni Rivera Funeral aspergers Richard Engel Daniel Inouye steelers
Syria says uncovers Israeli spy equipment near coast
BEIRUT (Reuters) - Syria said on Thursday it had uncovered an Israeli spy camera monitoring a "sensitive site" on its Mediterranean coast.
State television showed pictures of what it said was a camera, six large batteries and transmission gear along with fake rocks used to camouflage the equipment.
It quoted an official source as saying the equipment was found in the last few days at a coastal location not specified, and that the discovery highlighted the role Israel had played in the uprising against President Bashar al-Assad.
It said the camera had relayed pictures in real time and had been used in the service of both Israel and "armed terrorist groups" - the label Syrian officials give to insurgents fighting to topple Assad.
An Israeli military spokeswoman said she was checking the report and made no further comment.
Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor would not comment on the report of the spy equipment, saying: "We will not be dragged into the Syrian civil war. Not on the verbal or propaganda battlefield, nor on the real one."
The equipment shown on Syrian television - and the artificial rocks used to disguise it - closely resembled items seized in Lebanon in recent years that Lebanese authorities said were also used by Israel to monitor movements inside Lebanon.
Syria is engulfed in a civil war which the United Nations says has killed 70,000 people and erupted nearly two years ago with initially peaceful protests against Assad.
(Reporting by Dominic Evans in Beirut, Maayan Lubell and Ari Rabinovitch in Jerusalem; Editing by Mark Heinrich)
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/syria-says-uncovers-israeli-spy-equipment-near-coast-145556897.html
photo of whitney houston in casket carrot top george huguely whitney houston casket photo match play championship the national enquirer marie colvin
2 Chainz, Snoop Among Young Jeezy's VIP Partiers In 'R.I.P.' Video
'I'm a party dude. I'm a club animal,' Snowman tells MTV News on the set of his upcoming visual.
By Rob Markman, with reporting by James Lacsina
Young Jeezy
Photo: MTV News
Source: http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1703181/young-jeezy-2-chainz-rip-video.jhtml
prometheus grand canyon skywalk tonga pid corned beef hash the walking dead season 2 finale born free
Armored cars added to money-laundering fight
ST. LOUIS, March 6 (Thomson Reuters Accelus) - Mexican drug cartels are using armored-car firms to help shield their efforts to smuggle and launder billions of cash dollars into legitimate-looking business profits, U.S. authorities believe, and financial regulators are seeking to crack down.
The Treasury's anti-money laundering unit, the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), is preparing guidance for banks on how they should report receipt of large sums of cash from customers via armored-car deliveries, a Treasury official said. Current reporting practices have allowed for gaps in tracking the money.
The goal is to give law-enforcement authorities access to better information about the people involved in large cash transactions, which increasingly include large sums of currency repatriated having been smuggled to Mexico by drug traffickers eager to hide their source.
"Based on some of the activity we've seen as a result of the currency restrictions in Mexico, the activity of armored-car companies and the different business models that they use, we've begun to think about how we should be dealing with that industry as a whole," said FinCEN official Jamal El Hindi.
U.S. authorities estimate that cartels smuggle tens of billions of dollars across the U.S.-Mexico border every year. U.S. anti-money laundering rules make it hard for cartels to deposit large sums of cash generated by illicit drug sales in the United States directly into U.S. banks.
So the cartels smuggle the cash into Mexico and turn it over to money launderers who own or control front companies such as money changing outfits that can claim the cash as legitimate business proceeds.
The money launderer then ships the cash to the United States, either by plane or armored car, so that it can be deposited into a U.S. bank account belonging to a seemingly above-board Mexican business.
If the U.S. bank receiving the cash does not collect sufficient information from the armored-car firm it becomes harder to determine the origin of the funds.
Concerns about the use of armored cars grew after Mexican banking regulations in late 2010 limited domestic deposits of U.S. dollars. That measure was aimed at weakening the cartels, which are engaged in open warfare with the Mexican government.
Those regulations have compelled the drug cartels to return more of their cash to the United States under the guise of legitimate commerce, according to a FinCEN advisory issued last year and interviews with former law enforcement officials.
In carrying out such laundering, U.S. banks are feared to be unwittingly accepting drug-money overflow via armored car deliveries originating from Mexico as well as U.S. cities along the border.
A $2 MILLION SEIZURE
The role of armored cars was highlighted last March when Homeland Security agents seized $2 million from a company called Rochester Armored Car in the South Texas border town of Pharr, a suburb of McAllen. The company has not been accused of wrongdoing.
Federal prosecutors say the money belongs to Mexican national Filemon Garcia Ayala, who is suspected of laundering money for drug cartels. Garcia, 64, and several of his companies were blacklisted by the Treasury Department last month. He is a fugitive wanted by Mexican authorities.
Garcia was duped by federal agents pretending to be U.S.-based money launderers and he planned to pass the $2 million to them to be cleaned, according to a complaint seeking forfeiture of the assets. The complaint was filed in federal court in Orlando, Florida.
The document says that between January 2010 and January 2012, Garcia used a Mexico-based money changing business he owns called Prodira Casa de Cambio, which also operates out of Colorado, to funnel $130 million in drug money into the U.S. financial system.
"The funds were then taken by armored car and deposited into U.S. bank accounts held by money-service businesses or other companies who contracted with Prodira to move its money," the complaint states.
Finally, the money was reportedly wired through Garcia's accounts around the world to disguise its illicit origin.
Miami lawyers representing Prodira confirmed in a court filing that Garcia is part owner of the company, but they denied involvement in money laundering.
PUSH TOWARD TRANSPARENCY
Scrutiny of armored-car companies' roles in cartel laundering schemes comes as Treasury is developing broader rules to force U.S. banks and non-bank financial institutions to find out more about customers' identities and financial activities.
As for armored cars, it has been unclear for some time how banks should be completing the so-called Currency Transaction Reports they must file with Treasury after accepting more than $10,000 in cash from an armored-car delivery. The uncertainty has limited the usefulness of the documents to law enforcers.
One issue FinCEN has examined is whether banks should be using the names of armored-car drivers to complete the reports, or whether they should instead record the names of the armored-car firms and company officials aware of who owned the money being carried.
Banks should be recording the name of the armored car company, said Larry Sabbath, Executive Director of the National Armored Car Association (NACA), which represents major U.S. firms and has met with FinCEN to discuss the matter.
"Having the driver's name doesn't tell them anything. What is important from a law enforcement perspective is where the money originated. That information is with the armored car company. There is a pretty good chain of custody that we keep, of course, because we're talking about pretty significant money," he said.
FinCEN is working with regulators to produce guidance that will provide "some relief" to banks by instructing them on what information to collect in situations involving armored cars, El-Hindi told a Miami conference on anti-money laundering issues in February.
The agency may have additional steps in mind, El-Hindi suggested, but he stopped short of saying that it is contemplating new requirements that the armored-car industry develop anti-laundering systems and report suspicious activity, as is required of money transmitters, check-cashers, and other non-bank industries that handle a lot of cash.
(Editing by Randall Mikkelsen and David Brunnstrom)
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/u-fighting-armored-cars-money-laundering-000205330--sector.html
Aj Mccarron Girlfriend linkedin linkedin CES 2013 joe budden notre dame notre dame football
Monday, March 4, 2013
McConnell readying for tough re-election fight
U.S. Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell is gearing up for a tough re-election fight next year in Kentucky.
He wants to prevent one, too.
McConnell is trying to head off a GOP primary challenge by cozying up to the tea party. He's also trying to scare off potential Democratic contenders ? actress Ashley Judd is one ? by providing a glimpse of his no-holds-barred political tactics.
The strategy seems to be working, so far. No serious Republican opponent has emerged. Democrats haven't fielded a candidate yet, though Judd, a Kentucky native who lives in Tennessee, is considering a run. She would have to re-establish a residence in Kentucky before she could challenge McConnell.
The lack of an opponent hasn't kept McConnell from sounding an alarm over his potential vulnerability. It's a tactic rooted in reality and intended to help raise money.
"We know that President Obama's allies in Washington are doing everything they can to find a candidate to run against me in a primary or a general election," McConnell said in a statement to The Associated Press. "They've made no secrets about their willingness to back anybody right, left, or center to get me out of their way."
Defeating McConnell would be the Democrats' biggest prize of the 2014 election.
His seat is one of 14 that Republicans are defending while Democrats try to hold onto 21, hoping to retain or add to their 55-45 edge.
The 71-year-old McConnell, first elected to the Senate in 1984, is a resilient politician with an unbroken string of victories and a reputation of pummeling opponents. He's taking no chances even with an election more than a year away.
He has amassed a hefty bank account, with $7.4 million on hand of the $10 million he's already raised, mostly from out-of-state donors. That's a huge amount in Kentucky, where TV advertising rates are less expensive than elsewhere.
Given his leadership post and fundraising prowess, McConnell could double that as the election nears.
He spent more than $20 million in 2008 and won by just 6 percentage points over Louisville businessman Bruce Lunsford. This time, he'll probably need as much as he can collect. Polls show that McConnell is widely unpopular in the state, and Democratic-leaning groups have started running ads against him.
To endear himself to voters, McConnell has promoted his efforts to protect jobs in Kentucky. In doing so, he has sent them a not-so-subtle message that his clout as Republican leader is reason enough to give him a sixth term.
Factory representatives have credited him with helping preserve some 3,000 Kentucky jobs last year alone. Many were in small sewing factories that were at risk of losing federal military contracts. A deal he brokered with Energy Secretary Steven Chu saved 1,200 jobs at the Paducah gaseous diffusion uranium enrichment plant.
The longest-serving senator in Kentucky history has presided over a GOP revival in the state over the past three decades. Republicans hold both Senate seats and five of the state's six seats in the U.S. House. All were won with help from McConnell, who may not look the part of a political powerhouse but whose keen instincts have kept him at the top.
The chairman of Kentucky's Democratic Party, Dan Logsdon, says McConnell's longevity will be a critical issue. "He's become a part of Washington, and Kentuckians all across our commonwealth have said it's time to make a change," Logsdon says.
McConnell counters: "I have no sense of entitlement about representing Kentucky. Kentuckians always choose the person who earns their support."
As the face of the Republican establishment, McConnell saw his standing in the state threatened during the 2010 elections when his chosen candidate for a vacant Senate seat, then-Secretary of State Trey Grayson, lost to tea party-backed Rand Paul in a primary campaign that pitted the old guard in the GOP against a new band of insurgents.
McConnell's answer to bridging those divisions and, perhaps, insulate himself from a primary challenge was to form strong tea party ties himself.
He quickly mended fences after Paul won the GOP nomination, and helped Paul raise money and develop strategy for the general election. The two have had a relationship of tolerance on Capitol Hill.
The tea party leader praised McConnell as a friend before hundreds of tea party activists last year on the Statehouse steps, and McConnell drew cheers. McConnell has recruited Paul's former campaign manager, Jesse Benton, to lead his own re-election effort.
The moves signaled that potential tea party opponents should stand down even if they still disagree with McConnell.
He agitated tea party activists anew when he joined with Vice President Joe Biden late last year to work out a compromise on the "fiscal cliff," which threatened automatic tax increases and spending cuts. One of those activists, David Adams of Nicholasville, said that deal "is just more smoke and mirrors from someone who has a decades-long track record of mostly smoke and mirrors."
Despite grousing, Kentucky tea party groups have had little luck trying to recruit a strong primary challenger. At least two businessmen with tea party ties, John Kemper of Lexington and Matt Bevin of Louisville, are considering runs.
Beyond any primary, McConnell also is taunting would-be Democratic challengers in a comical online video intended to raise second thoughts about taking on a politicians known as brawler. Never hugely popular with his constituents, McConnell has managed to win elections by making his opponents even more unpopular.
The video shows Judd, who has a home in the Nashville, Tenn., suburbs, saying "Tennessee is home" and that San Francisco is "my American city home." It also shows some of Kentucky's leading Democrats, including Lt. Gov. Jerry Abramson, U.S. Rep. John Yarmuth, Attorney General Jack Conway and Auditor Adam Edelen, saying they won't run against McConnell.
Republican-leaning group American Crossroads is assailing Judd in its own online video that plays up the fact that she lives in Tennessee, and that she campaigned for President Barack Obama, who is unpopular in Kentucky.
Judd has been discussing the prospects of challenging McConnell with Democratic leaders, including Gov. Steve Beshear. Her interest has other Democrats sitting on the sidelines until she makes a decision. She has kept silent in the face of the early attack, as has the state Democratic Party.
Republican strategist Larry Forgy, a Lexington lawyer and former gubernatorial candidate, said it appears McConnell and his allies are giving Judd a taste of what she'd face as a candidate ? a barrage of attack ads playing nonstop for months.
"They figure she's not thick-skinned, that she won't put up with this, that she'll see they'll say everything in the world," Forgy said. "Mitch McConnell is not afraid of her, because she's just not politically positioned in this state philosophically to beat him. But he'd rather run against nobody."
Also ReadSource: http://news.yahoo.com/mcconnell-readying-tough-election-fight-125008616.html
superbowl ads Super Bowl Ads 2013 Buffalo Wild Wings Superbowl Start Time Iron Man 3 cbs Jim Harbaugh
LAX ghost town a home to memories and rare butterflies
The remains of what was once one of Los Angeles' most coveted neighborhoods can be seen behind a fence topped with barbed wire.
Weeds sprout through cracks along streets lined with majestic palms. Retaining walls and foundations of custom homes peek through the brush. Rusty utility lines that have wiggled their way above ground bake in the sun like scattered bones.
Two throttled-up passenger jets simultaneously take off from LAX and soar overhead, the thundering cacophony a reminder of why the community of Surfridge was forced to disappear.
Developed in the 1920s and 1930s, Surfridge was an isolated playground of the wealthy, among the last communities built on miles of sand dunes that once dominated the coast. Hollywood elites built homes here that commanded views from Palos Verdes to Malibu.
The small airfield to the east that opened in 1928 was a good place to see an air show. It would take nearly two decades for it to become the city's primary airport.
Today, Surfridge is a Los Angeles curiosity ? a modern ghost town inhabited by a rare butterfly.
The El Segundo blue butterfly was near extinction when the last of Surfridge's 800 homes were removed in the early 1970s, the victim of an expanding Los Angeles International Airport.
In the decades since, the federally protected endangered species has made a comeback due to the establishment of a 200-acre butterfly preserve managed by the city. Nonnative plants were removed and native buckwheat ? where the butterflies feed and lay their eggs ? was reintroduced.
Now, more than 125,000 butterflies take flight each summer, unfazed by the constant thunder of jets overhead.
LAX may have wiped Surfridge off the map, but the airport has turned out to be a perfect neighbor for a growing community of butterflies.
"It's a remarkable recovery," said Richard Arnold, an entomologist who has worked as a consultant at the preserve. "But you've got to realize that insects have a remarkable reproductive capacity if their natural food source is there."
Soon there will be more. The California Coastal Commission recently approved a $3-million plan to restore portions of 48 acres at the northern end of the old subdivision. The project is part of a settlement of a lawsuit between LAX and surrounding cities over the airport's expansion plans.
Some streets, curbs, sidewalks, home foundations and utilities visible to neighboring homeowners will be removed. Six acres will be reseeded with native plants ? sagebrush and goldenbush, primrose, poppies and salt grass among them ? that will return this sliver of dunes back to where it was a century ago.
"They wanted us to fix what they consider to be an eyesore," airport spokeswoman Nancy Suey Castles said.
The story of Surfridge is a parable for a century's worth of urban growth destruction.
"It was paradise when I was a kid," said Duke Dukesherer, a business executive and amateur historian who has written about the area. "Everybody who sees it now asks the same question: What the hell happened here?"
A development company held a contest in 1925 to name its newest neighborhood, awarding $1,000 to a Los Angeles man who submitted "Surfridge."
"The outstanding name was (chosen) due to its brevity, euphony, ease of pronunciation?" The Times reported. "But above all because it most satisfactorily tells the story of this new wonder city."
Prospective buyers picked up brochures in downtown Los Angeles and drove to the coast, where salesmen worked out of tents. Lots went for $50 down and $20 a month for three years.
Home exteriors were required to be brick, stone or stucco ? no frame structures allowed. And no one "not entirely that of the Caucasian race," according to the development's deed restrictions "except such as are in the employ of the resident owners."
world financial center shabazz muhammad angela corey zimmerman charged bonobos charles manson al sharpton
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)