Turkish foreign minister: Defense deal with Russia 'done' despite US threats

Turkey’s foreign minister on Wednesday said that his country will “definitely” go through with buying a Russian air defense system despite U.S. moves to halt Ankara’s participation in the F-35 fighter jet program.

Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu also said “it’s not sure yet” whether the United States will withhold the F-35s, suggesting President Trump indicated to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan that Ankara could still get the jets.

“S-400 deal is a done deal, and we will not step back from this,” Cavusoglu said during an event in Washington on Wednesday.

“Trump himself admitted on the phone that the U.S. made the mistake not to sell Patriots to Turkey, and he promised Erdogan that he will take care of this issue,” Cavusoglu said, adding that the phone call took place “recently.”

The comments from Cavusoglu, who is in Washington as part of NATO’s 70th anniversary celebration, are the first on the issue from a Turkish official since the Pentagon announced Monday it was suspending deliveries and activities related to Turkey’s participation in the F-35 program.

The Pentagon move was the latest effort to ramp up pressure on Turkey to abandon its deal with Moscow to buy an S-400 long-range air defense system.

A day after the Pentagon's announcement, acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan expressed confidence Turkey would change its mind about the S-400 and ultimately receive the F-35s.

The Trump administration has been trying to convince Turkey to buy the U.S.-made Patriot anti-missile system instead, offering Ankara a discount.

U.S. officials are worried about the F-35, the United States’ most advanced aircraft, operating in close proximity with the S-400 and allowing the Russians to gather information about U.S. capabilities.

The United States and other NATO allies have also warned the S-400 system will not work with NATO defense systems.

Cavusoglu dismissed those concerns Wednesday, saying that the S-400 “doesn’t have to be integrated into the NATO system” because “it’s for our own use” and that Turkey has proposed to the United States a “technical working group to make sure that this system will not be a threat” to the F-35 or other NATO systems.

Cavusoglu blamed Turkey’s decision to buy the S-400 on the Obama administration not selling Ankara the Patriot system. But he also said the Trump administration’s offer fell short of a guarantee that Turkey would get the Patriot.

Cavusoglu also highlighted that parts of the F-35 are built in Turkey, saying Turkey has “fulfilled all obligations.”

“We are a part of this program, so it shouldn’t be that simple,” he said.

The Pentagon’s announcement Monday said the department is looking for alternatives for the Turkish-made parts.

https://thehill.com/policy/defense/437125-turkish-foreign-minister-defense-deal-with-russia-done-deal-despite-us-threats

Wasn't Hussein best buds with Erdogan? Wasn't it reported that Hussein talked with no other leader more than Erdogan?

I imagine Flynn would have more insight on the matter. Need him back at work!

Re-posting from /LB

According to a lengthy investigation by Bloomberg on Google's struggle to maximize profit while addressing calls to censor 'toxic' material, a rogue employee decided to ignore the advice of corporate attorneys and created a new "vertical" category to internally track so-called "alt-right" content - described as "the political ensemble loosely tied to Trump."

What they found was fascinating; alt-right videos are an absolute monster category for the video-hosting platform, right up with "music, sports and gaming" as the most popular.

One telling moment happened around early 2018, according to two people familiar with it. An employee decided to create a new YouTube “vertical,” a category that the company uses to group its mountain of video footage. This person gathered together videos under an imagined vertical for the “alt-right,” the political ensemble loosely tied to Trump. Based on engagement, the hypothetical alt-right category sat with music, sports and gaming as the most popular channels at YouTube, an attempt to show how critical these videos were to YouTube’s business. -Bloomberg

Three days after the 2016 US election, YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki and her staff convened for their weekly meeting, where one employee "fretted aloud about the site's election-related videos that were watched the most," as they were "dominated by publishers like Breitbart News and Infowars, which were known for outrage and provocation."

Obviously providing a watering hole for conservatives - which Bloomberg and Google can't help but associate with 'toxic' content - is highly profitable. On social media platform Reddit, pro-Trump forum "The_Donald" is roughly the 264th largest "subreddit" by size, while ranked #3 in terms of user activity on the site, according to "redditlist."

YouTube, meanwhile, has been trying to figure out how to properly pay content "creators" who were growing frustrated over the pay structure. To meet the challenge, the company would pitch an overhaul of their entire business model which would revolve around "engagement" - how many people watched a video, and for how long. They called it "Project Bean."

Wojcicki and her lieutenants drew up a plan. YouTube called it Project Bean or, at times, “Boil The Ocean,” to indicate the enormity of the task. (Sometimes they called it BTO3 – a third dramatic overhaul for YouTube, after initiatives to boost mobile viewing and subscriptions.) The plan was to rewrite YouTube’s entire business model, according to three former senior staffers who worked on it.

It centered on a way to pay creators that isn’t based on the ads their videos hosted. Instead, YouTube would pay on engagement—how many viewers watched a video and how long they watched. A special algorithm would pool incoming cash, then divvy it out to creators, even if no ads ran on their videos. The idea was to reward video stars shorted by the system, such as those making sex education and music videos, which marquee advertisers found too risqué to endorse. -Bloomberg

https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-04-02/rogue-youtube-employee-discovers-something-amazing-about-alt-right-content

THE Queen's pilot and first Concorde captain to fly supersonic from London to New York has been found dead with his wife in a suspected murder-suicide.

Tony Meadows, 84, and wife Paula, 83, died at their £1.3million farm house near Bucklebury, Berks - just two miles from Kate Middleton’s family home.

A blue police tent and forensic lights remained on the driveway if their house today and a police car parked outside after the double tragedy last night at around 7.35pm.

Thames Valley Police said it had launched a murder investigation but are not looking for anyone else in connection with their deaths.

One neighbour claims Tony and Paula - who have three children and celebrated their 60th wedding anniversary last month - died in a murder-suicide.

BA CONCORDE PILOT

Tony served as a captain with British Airways and flew some of the first commercial Concorde flights.

He was co-pilot on inaugural trip from Heathrow to New York in December 1977 and took full control on return leg.

Tony was also at the helm for the first Concorde flight to Singapore weeks later.

In 1979, he flew the Queen on the supersonic jet and has also piloted planes with Princess Diana on board.

Thames Valley Police said officers were called to the property at around 7.35pm on Tuesday and officers discovered that a woman and a man, both in their eighties, had died.

https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/8778835/oap-couple-in-their-80s-found-dead-at-home-in-berkshire-as-cops-launch-murder-probe/

Panama Papers investigation helps recover more than $1.2 billion around the world

First-time gains in Panama, France and Iceland have pushed above $1.16 billion the global tally of fines and back taxes resulting from the Panama Papers investigation’s exposure of the offshore finance industry.

On the third anniversary of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists-led investigation, which included the Miami Herald and McClatchy’s Washington Bureau, the fallout from it is gathering pace through hundreds of separate investigations into undisclosed wealth across scores of nations.

Since June 2018, the United Kingdom alone has added $119 million, to bring its total to more than $252 million; Australia has collected another $43 million to eclipse $92 million; and Belgium has added an extra $6.5 million to its government coffers to surpass $18 million. French tax authorities have confirmed nearly $136 million has now been recovered — and that figure is expected to rise. They have carried out more than 500 inspections since April 2016.

Canada’s Revenue Agency, which also raided two properties last week in connection to the investigation, has revealed it had recouped nearly $6.8 million in federal taxes and fines from 66 audits. The agency said it planned to audit about 234 more taxpayers linked to the probe. Fewer than 10 criminal investigations are ongoing.

“The audit work will take several years to complete as many taxpayers are using litigation to obstruct CRA audits,” the CRA told ICIJ’s Canadian partner, the Toronto Star.

In Iceland, the Directorate of Tax Investigations has finished 24 investigations relating to the Panama Papers and estimates it has recouped $25.5 million. Icelanders took to the streets after the 2016 investigation was released, and the former prime minister Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson resigned just days after the first stories were published.

And in Panama, authorities have clawed back more than $14 million in the past three years. Investigations are continuing in numerous countries including Austria (where regulators are examining whether two major banks followed procedures to prevent money laundering), Germany, France, and Norway.

ICIJ, together with the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung and more than 100 other media partners, spent more than a year sifting through 11.5 million leaked files to expose offshore holdings.

The files, which were leaked to Süddeutsche Zeitung, came from a little-known but powerful law firm based in Panama, Mossack Fonseca, that had branches in Hong Kong, Miami, Zurich and more than 35 other places around the globe.

The first American charged in relation to the Panama Papers, Richard Gaffey, 74, a Massachusetts accountant, is due to be tried in October for conspiracy to commit tax evasion, money laundering and wire fraud. He has pleaded not guilty.

“The public didn’t fully grasp this reality before but it certainly does now.”

In each country, these are the amounts recovered, in American dollars:

Australia – $92,880,415

Austria – $2,725,869

Belgium – $18,749,009

Colombia – $88,884,000

Czech Republic – $36,462,741

Denmark – $47,500,000

Ecuador – $84,300,000

France – $135,696,000

Germany – $183,193,536

Iceland – $25,525,959

Lithuania – $358,830

Luxembourg – $2,393,837

Malta – $10,706,938

Mexico – $21,568,200

Netherlands – $8,283,390

New Zealand – $410,400

Panama – $14,132,128

Slovenia – $1,000,000

Spain – $164,104,468

Sweden – $19,295,056

UK – $252,762,000

Uruguay – $1,000,000

https://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/article228762754.html

Warren introduces legislation making it easier to jail top executives

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) introduced legislation Wednesday making it easier to jail executives if they or their corporations break the law or commit civil violations.

The Corporate Executive Accountability Act would be expand criminal liability to negligent executives of corporations with more than $1 billion in annual revenue.

The Massachusetts Democrat also reintroduced the Ending Too Big to Jail Act, which seeks to hold big bank executives accountable when their banks break the law.

“Corporations don’t make decisions, people do, but for far too long, CEOs of giant corporations that break the law have been able to walk away, while consumers who are harmed are left picking up the pieces,” Warren, who formally announced her presidential ambitions in February, said in a statement.

“These two bills would force executives to responsibly manage their companies, knowing that if they cheat their customers or crash the economy, they could go to jail.”

Executives who violate the Corporate Executive Accountability Act would be hit with a fine and/or one year in jail for a first offense and could face up three years in jail for subsequent convictions. The Massachusetts Democrat noted the legislation has the support of several watchdog groups, including Public Citizen, Americans for Financial Reform, Take On Wall Street, and the Consumer Federation of America.

Warren, who has a long reputation as a chief critic of Wall Street and other corporate titans, made headlines in 2016 with her harsh rebuke of Wells Fargo after it was revealed that bank employees fraudulently opened fake accounts. She has long lamented that big business executives often skirt jailtime when they and their corporations are found guilty of wrongdoing.

“Too often, prosecutors don’t even try to hold top executives criminally accountable. They claim it’s too hard to prove that the people at the top knew about the corporate misconduct. This culture of complicity warps the incentives for corporate leaders. The message to executives? So long as you bury your head in the sand, you can keep collecting fat bonuses without risk of facing criminal liability,” she wrote in a Washington Post op-ed Wednesday.

Warren has made economic justice and corporate oversight a centerpiece of her presidential campaign, promoting the intricacies of her policies as a way of differentiating herself in a crowded primary field. However, she has struggled to gain traction as several of her Senate colleagues also run for the presidency on progressive platforms.

https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/437128-warren-introduces-legislation-making-it-easier-to-jail-top-business

What is her angle? All bark no bite? And does this even have a chance in hell to pass?

With the resignations going on at major corporations world wide does this legislation provide cover?