US plans to indict Cuba's Raul Castro, DOJ official says

May 14 (Reuters) - The United States plans to indict Cuba's Raul Castro, a U.S. Department of Justice official said late on Thursday.

The timing ‌of the potential indictment, which would need to be approved by a grand ‌jury, was not immediately clear, but the official said it sounds imminent.

The potential indictment of the 94-year-old former ​president of Cuba and brother of Fidel is expected to focus on the downing of aircraft, the official said on condition of anonymity.

CBS previously reported that the case relates to Cuba's deadly 1996 shootdown of planes operated by humanitarian group Brothers to the Rescue.

Representatives for Cuba's foreign ‌ministry did not immediately respond ⁠to a request for comment outside of normal business hours. A U.S. Justice Department spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for ⁠comment.

The development comes amid heightened tensions between Washington and Havana. The Trump administration has described Cuba's current communist-run government as corrupt and incompetent and is pushing for a regime change.

President Donald Trump ​has heaped ​pressure on the island, effectively imposing a blockade ​by threatening sanctions on countries supplying ‌it with fuel, igniting power outages and delivering blows to its economy.

The U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of Florida has been overseeing an effort to examine potential criminal charges against senior Cuban government officials.

However, on Thursday, the Cuban government confirmed it had ​met with CIA chief John Ratcliffe.

Ratcliffe told intelligence officials ​in Cuba that the U.S. was ​prepared to engage on economic security issues if Cuba makes "fundamental changes," ‌a CIA official said.

The United States has ​previously used criminal cases ​against foreign political figures to justify military actions.

In January, when the U.S. military attacked Venezuela, the Trump administration described the raid as a "law enforcement operation" to bring ​Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro to ‌New York to face criminal charges.

Trump in March threatened that Cuba "is next" after ​Venezuela.

(Reporting by Jana Winter and Kanishka Singh in Washington; Writing by Jan ​Wolfe; Editing by Noeleen Walder and Himani Sarkar)

https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/us-plans-indict-cubas-raul-005107018.html

https://www.thetimes.com/uk/technology-uk/article/rabbi-behind-pornhub-worlds-biggest-porn-site-z83fv6r80

Meet the rabbi behind the world’s biggest porn site

>Solomon Friedman is the public face of Pornhub. How does someone who was ordained as a rabbi end up defending a site that includes explicit videos accessible to children?

Solomon Friedman spent his formative years studying how to be good. After an Orthodox Jewish childhood in Canada he graduated from high school and moved to Israel for rabbinical training. He passed the exams and was ordained as a rabbi, although he never practised. Instead, he has spent his time doing work that he argues is righteous, doubly necessary because so many disagree. Friedman is very good at arguing. This is a long-winded way of saying it is a strange experience to finally meet the people who have become the public face of Pornhub.

I began writing about porn three years go. The owners of nearly all the major sites — among the most profitable, political and influential online — hide in the shadows. They are sex educators for our children, but are also accused of normalising incest or brutally painful sexual acts on women, and beset by lawsuits concerning sex trafficking and child sexual abuse. No wonder they refuse to talk.

The new ownership behind Pornhub claims to be different, leading reform even. Included in this approach is a new openness and a chance for me to quiz its backers. The biggest of Big Porn, this site had 4.2 billion visitors in March, according to data from digital analysts Semrush. This ranked Pornhub as the ninth most popular site on the planet, more popular than X, Amazon, TikTok or LinkedIn. Pornhub defines our culture, whether you like it or not (or lie about it or not). When I meet Friedman and his colleagues at the private equity firm that owns Pornhub, I have to hold two realities in my head at the same time.

The first is in the light. The hotel terrace in London where we sit in the sunshine. I drink tea, the Canadians have coffee. I ask Friedman, who at 40 could pass as a driven, geeky tech entrepreneur, if he is a feminist. He replies with gusto. “Yes, of course. Who isn’t a feminist? What kind of troll do you have to be?” Later, he adds, as if self-evident proof, “Also, we’re Canadian!” We all laugh.

The second reality is darker: the one I saw on Pornhub hours before our meeting. Of the “hot videos in Canada” list, I note that 9 out of the top 14 feature incest-like scenarios, often in ways that suggest the girlishness of the female, such as, at number 11, “Stepdad unleashes big load into tiny stepdaughter”, or one described as “family therapy”, with the title “Sharing my bed with tiny step-sis”. In another, titled “Adorable stepdaughter won’t stop until stepdad tears up her new PJs”, the young-looking female is in pigtails.

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