A destination on the Interweb to brighten your day (now get back to work!)
RefBan
Friday, May 27, 2011
The Morning Scoop - Inside Donald Trump's Sleazy Empire
If you are on a mobile device or cannot view the images in this message, click here to view this email in your Web browser. To receive the text-only version of The Morning Scoop click here. Please add thedailybeast@e.thedailybeast.com to your address book.
With lawsuits pending, real estate tycoon and Celebrity Apprentice star Donald Trump's business empire could never have withstood the close scrutiny of a presidential campaign, and even his kids might have been muddied. The Daily Beast's Wayne Barrett, who first exposed Trump's ties to organized crime in his 1992 book, looked into the Donald's most recent business dealings and discovered a web of his associates involved in fraud and even sex trafficking.
It's time for some serious diplomacy. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Admiral Mike Mullen made a surprise trip to Pakistan aimed at calming tensions between he two countries following the mission against Osama bin Laden. Their meeting with President Asif Ali Zardari appeared strained, with little smiling and few opportunities for press. Clinton had been scheduled to visit Pakistan a month ago, but the trip was called off while the U.S. gauged Pakistan's reaction to the bin Laden raid. That reaction wasn't encouraging: They outed the CIA station chief and asked the Pentagon to remove its military advisers. This time, the visit was kept secret until the last moment and is scheduled to last no more than six hours. The State Department's Mike Grossman and the CIA's Mike Morrel went to Pakistan last week to prepare for Clinton's visit and to convince Pakistani intelligence to let the U.S. revisit the compound where bin Laden was killed, something they appear to have agreed to.
Technology: It lets you tap phone lines, and it lets you sign the bill remotely that authorizes you to do so. Visiting France at the moment, President Obama used a machine that holds a pen and signs his actual name to approve an extension of the Patriot Act minutes before it was set to expire. The last-minute extension was largely the result of Republican Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky, who held up the vote for days while demanding the law be tempered to protect individual privacy. The extension allows law enforcement to conduct roving wiretaps-taps on a person rather than a single device-and court-ordered searches of business records, and surveillance of non-American suspects without ties to terrorist groups. FBI Director Robert Mueller and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper sent letters to congress warning of the threat to national security posed by allowing the Patriot powers to expire.
Indicted genocidal war criminal Ratko Mladic is back in court for his extradition to the Hague after his lawyer called off the hearing yesterday. Mladic's lawyer cancelled the hearing yesterday when he said Mladic was unable to communicate. The lawyer is arguing that his client is unfit to stand trial, a claim the Serbian war-crimes prosecutor says is an exaggeration and a delaying tactic. Serbian media says that one of the 69-year-old former commander's arms is paralyzed, probably because of a stroke. Mladic was indicted in 1995 for the killings of about 7,500 Bosnian Muslim men and boys in Srebrenica, among other crimes. Serb nationalists still regard him as a hero, however, and his arrest sparked clashes between ultra-nationalists and police in the northern city of Novi Sad.
North Korea says it will free an American arrested in November. Eddie Jun was detained for crimes unknown, but the South Korean press says he was accused of spreading Christianity. Apparently all it took to get the charges dropped was for U.S. envoy Robert King, who is in the country to monitor food aid, to say he regretted the incident and would do all he could to prevent its repetition. North Korea guarantees freedom of religion, but Christians are viewed with suspicion and sometimes detained as Western agents. Several Americans have been detained in recent years and were freed only after high-profile negotiations by people like Former Presidents Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton. The news came on the day Kim Jong Il returned from a trip to China thought to be an attempt to secure aid and investment.
Powerful New York Times tech reviewer David Pogue's new romance with a key Silicon Valley PR executive has many buzzing about a possible conflict of interest.
Obama's Millions for Fannie, Freddie Execs. But Who's Counting? by John Solomon & Julie Vorman The Obama administration's approval of $34.4 million for six top officials, with little or no market guidance, is raising new questions about the inner workings of the failing mortgage giants. John Solomon and Julie Vorman, of the Center for Public Integrity's iWatch News, report.
10 Most Expensive Sex Scandals by The Daily Beast As Strauss-Kahn succumbs to house arrest, Schwarzenegger deals with a possible criminal probe, and John Edwards faces indictment, The Daily Beast ranks which sex scandals hit the wallet hardest.
No comments:
Post a Comment