Joyce Bateman, Tory Candidate, Lists Retired General Among 'Enemies' Of Israel

A Conservative incumbent sparked boos at a debate this week after reading out a list of Liberal candidates and volunteers she identified as "enemies" of Israel.

But those jeers reportedly turned to cries of "shame" when Joyce Bateman, running again in Winnipeg South Centre, got to Andrew Leslie, the Liberal candidate in the Ontario riding of Orléans.

Leslie is a retired Canadian Forces lieutenant-general who commanded troops during the war in Afghanistan.

Let's Close the Gap Between Canadians and Refugees

Samer tended the barbeque while his wife, Nisreen, relaxed in a lawnchair and their 9-year-old son, Mohammed, kicked a ball around with his cousins. An idyllic family get-together no different than any you might find across Canada on a warm spring day.

Until that evening, when the sky filled with helicopters and the streets with tanks.

That was the scene in Dara'a, Syria, in March, 2011--the opening of Syria's bloody civil war. Four years later, the family's happy life is lost. Nisreen, Samer and Mohammed have joined the miserable ranks of the world's 60 million refugees.

After Scrutiny, C.I.A. Mandate Is Untouched

WASHINGTON — Over a lunch in Washington in 1976, James J. Angleton, for years the ruthless chief of counterintelligence at the C.I.A., likened the agency to a medieval city occupied by an invading army.

“Only, we have been occupied by Congress,” he told a young congressional investigator. “With our files rifled, our officials humiliated, and our agents exposed.”

The spymaster had cause for worry. He had endured a public grilling about his role in domestic spying operations by a select committee headed by Senator Frank Church, a Democrat from Idaho, that spent years looking into intelligence abuses. And the Central Intelligence Agency, used to doing what it wanted while keeping Congress mostly in the dark, was in the midst of convulsions that would fundamentally remake its mission.

Barclays sets aside £500m towards forex-rigging fines

Barclays has given an indication of the scale of potential fines looming across the banking industry by setting aside £500m to cover the cost of ongoing investigations into the rigging of currency markets.

The provision is larger than the £290m the bank was fined for manipulating Libor in 2012 and has been revealed as the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) attempts to agree a settlement with six major banks over their activities in the £3.5tn-a-day foreign exchange markets.

Harper Wants Two Classes of Free Speech

Reports surfaced last week that the federal government plans to introduce a new copyright exception for political advertising within a forthcoming budget bill. The provision would allow politicians and political parties to use news content in their political advertising without prior permission.

While the revelations sparked an angry outcry from media organizations and political opponents, the real problem is the potential for copyright to stifle legitimate speech. Political speech -- even noxious attack ads -- surely qualifies as important speech that merits protection. Unfortunately, the government plans to create two classes of rights when it comes to political speech: one for politicians and political parties, and the other for everyone else.

Cop Charged With Sexually Assaulting 7 Black Women Released From Jail

Oklahoma City police officer Daniel Ken Holtzclaw was released from jail Friday as he faces charges for allegedly sexually assaulting 7 different African American women while he was on duty. Among the claims against him are forcible rape, burglary, and felonious stalking.

The judge who initially set his bond at $5 million said he researched his target victims and tracked them down before assaulting them, according to Michigan Live. The 27-year-old former college football player’s bond was later reduced and he paid $500,000 to be released from jail and placed on home arrest. Holtzclaw was removed from duty in June after a women reported a sexual assault during a traffic stop. Many other women subsequently came forward.

France's Former President Nicolas Sarkozy Calls For Two-Speed EU, Tighter Borders

PARIS, May 22 (Reuters) - Former French President Nicolas Sarkozy weighed into the European Parliament election campaign on Thursday, calling for tighter controls on immigration and a two-speed Europe with a powerful Franco-German economic zone at its heart.

The conservative former leader, who is widely expected to seek re-election in 2017, argued for a profound overhaul of EU institutions ahead of a May 25 European Parliament election in which the Eurosceptic National Front is currently tipped by polls to emerge as France's leading party.

Legal Aid Cuts Will Leave Wrongly Accused Under Pressure To Plead Guilty To Save Costs, Lawyer Warns

Legal aid is being slashed "at random" by the Ministry of Justice, leaving a system where the wrongly accused can be represented by a "pig in a poke" desperate for clients to plead guilty, a leading human rights barrister has said.

Writing for the Huffington Post UK, Francis Fitzgibbon QC warned that any ordinary, law-abiding person could find themselves without access to justice.

All lawbreakers will be punished … unless they happen to be Alberta Conservatives

In Alberta, lawbreakers must be punished, and they will be punished -- unless, of course, they happen to be supporters of the ruling Progressive Conservative Party.

So, the government announced yesterday, it will be going after the Alberta Union of Provincial Employees for the full cost of the wildcat strike by 2,500 jail guards -- a figure the government ministers were somewhat fancifully suggesting yesterday will be about $6 million.

In addition, on top of the $350,000 in fines AUPE has already paid, Justice Minister Jonathan Denis was promising to use Alberta's primitive labour laws to refuse to collect union dues from thousands of AUPE members who had nothing whatsoever to do with the strike for six months. That could cost AUPE another $8 million or so.

Toronto police officer given conditional discharge for domestic assault

A veteran Toronto police officer found guilty of assaulting his then-girlfriend, a prominent defence lawyer, and damaging her condo will be given a conditional discharge after 18 months of probation, a judge ruled Tuesday morning.

Const. Jason Peacock, 40, will also have to pay $4,300 in restitution and perform 100 hours of community service.

Jason Kenney creating a two-tier Canada

Terrorism was one reason for the inordinate delays in the processing of immigration papers to Canada — each applicant had to have a thorough security check, which took time. How is it, then, that Immigration Minister Jason Kenney has managed to rush in hundreds of thousands of temporary foreign workers in record time? Have they been given only a cursory security check — and the briefest of medicals?

When the Conservatives took office in 2006, there were 140,000 temporary foreign workers (farm labourers, nannies, professionals, etc.). That number has since jumped to 338,000.

Labour Shortage in Canada? Evidence Is Skimpy

Is there a skilled labour shortage in Canada? Many employers say there is, but even some business surveys and the government's own research suggests the evidence is at best slim and sporadic.

Amid the brouhaha triggered by a contractor of the Royal Bank to bring in temporary foreign workers to replace the bank's Canadian ones, opposition parties are itching for Parliament's return Monday to hammer the Harper government over the decision last spring to relax rules making it easier to import workers.

Insurers Fined $15 Million For Massive Fraud Kickback Scheme

For more than a decade, four mortgage insurance companies paid illegal kickbacks to banks as part of a scheme that greatly inflated insurance costs for distressed homeowners, the nation's top consumer financial regulator said Thursday.

The companies -- Genworth Mortgage Insurance Corporation, United Guaranty Corporation, Radian Guaranty Inc., and Mortgage Guaranty Insurance Corporation -- colluded with the banks, which forced borrowers to purchase policies from specific insurers, according to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. The companies agreed to pay $15 million to resolve the charges.

NYC Prosecutors Who Abuse Their Authority Almost Always Evade Punishment

The murder case against Tony Bennett seemed pretty straightforward.

Shortly before midnight on May 7, 1994, police found a 26-year-old man in the foyer of an apartment building near Flushing, Queens. Jake Powell was near death, blood pouring from a gunshot wound, but he managed to speak the name of the man who had shot him: "Tony Bennett."

Gangster Bankers: Too Big to Jail

How HSBC hooked up with drug traffickers and terrorists. And got away with it


The deal was announced quietly, just before the holidays, almost like the government was hoping people were too busy hanging stockings by the fireplace to notice. Flooring politicians, lawyers and investigators all over the world, the U.S. Justice Department granted a total walk to executives of the British-based bank HSBC for the largest drug-and-terrorism money-laundering case ever. Yes, they issued a fine – $1.9 billion, or about five weeks' profit – but they didn't extract so much as one dollar or one day in jail from any individual, despite a decade of stupefying abuses.

Judge Dismisses Most Claims In Libor Lawsuits, Ruling In Favor Of Big Banks

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Judge on Friday dismissed a "substantial portion" of claims facing a number of banks in a barrage of lawsuits accusing them of interest-rate rigging.

U.S. District Judge Naomi Reice Buchwald in Manhattan ruled for the banks, which include Bank of America Corp , JPMorgan Chase & Co and others of allegedly manipulating the London Interbank Offered Rate, commonly known as Libor.

The judge granted the banks' motion to dismiss the plaintiffs' federal antitrust claims and partially dismissed their claims of commodities manipulation. She also dismissed racketeering and state-law claims.

Original Article
Source: huffingtonpost.com
Author: Reuters

Is Steven A. Cohen Buying Off the U.S. Government?

Most scandals involving the cozy relationship between Wall Street and its regulators play out behind closed doors. Others happen in plain view, and this is one of the latter. In a Manhattan courtroom Thursday, a federal judge held a hearing on whether to approve a legal settlement in which Steven A. Cohen, one of the richest and most publicity-shy men in the country, appears to be buying off the U.S. government, which for years has been investigating wrongdoing in and around his hedge fund, SAC Capital Advisers.

Unless the judge, Victor Marrero, rejects the settlement between the Securities and Exchange Commission and SAC, which was announced a couple of weeks ago, Cohen will be free to go about his business, which has long been clouded by suspicions of insider trading, once he writes a check of six hundred and sixteen million dollars to the Securities and Exchange Commission. There will be no further sanctions and no admission of wrongdoing. And in fact, Cohen already appears to be celebrating. According to a report in the Times, he has just purchased a Picasso painting, “Le Rêve,” for a hundred and fifty-five million dollars, and an ocean-front mansion in East Hampton, for sixty million dollars.

MPs receive 1.6 per cent pay increase, annual salary now $160,200

PARLIAMENT HILL—House Speaker Andrew Scheer advised all MPs on Thursday they will be getting a minimum pay increase of $2,500 each beginning Monday, April 1, to bring their basic salaries up to $160,200 annually.

Mr. Scheer (Regina-Qu’Appelle, Sask.) announced the pay hike, which follows a three-year salary freeze, in an email to MPs as the Commons adjourned for a two-week spring break and the Easter long weekend.

Secret Service and FBI investigating leaked Obama financial records

The FBI, Secret Service and LAPD are all investigating a website that earlier in the week began publishing financial records and other sensitive information pertaining to some of the biggest names in both Washington and Hollywood.

The website Exposed.su posted the Social Security Numbers, home addresses and phone numbers to an array of influential Americans on Monday, including first lady Michelle Obama, Vice President Joe Biden, actor Mel Gibson, US Attorney General Eric Holder, FBI Robert Mueller and others. Additionally, the hackers have posted documents that they perpetrate to be legitimate credit reports for many of the victims, including singer Beyoncé, rap artist Jay-Z and Los Angeles Police Department Chief Charlie Beck, among others.

Unequal justice in Canada: Law and order for the poor, impunity for the rich

One law for the rulers and another for the rest of us -- wasn't that supposed to have ended with feudalism?

If a poor person is caught taking a computer or some other piece of property from a federal building you can bet police will be called and the thief will go before a judge to decide if she/he goes to jail. Yet when a Senator who is paid at least $132,000 per year in salary illegally claims many times the value of a stolen computer as a "living expense" they simply have to return the money.