In order to convert the sleepy, Indian Ocean island of Diego Garcia into a dominating military base, the U.S. forcibly transported its 2,000 Chagossian inhabitants into exile and gassed their dogs.

By banning journalists from the area, the U.S. Navy was able to perpetrate this with virtually no press coverage, says David Vine, an assistant professor of anthropology at American University and author of "Island of Shame: the Secret History of the U.S. Military on Diego Garcia (Princeton University Press)."

"The Chagossians were put on a boat and taken to Mauritius and the Seychelles, 1,200 miles away, where they were left on the docks, with no money and no housing, to fend for themselves," Vine said on the interview show "Books Of Our Time," sponsored by the Massachusetts School of Law at Andover.

"They were promised jobs that never materialized. They had been living on an island with schools, hospitals, and full employment, sort of like a French coastal village, and they were consigned to a life of abject poverty in exile, unemployment, health problems, and were the poorest of the poor," Vine told interview host Lawrence Velvel, dean of the law school.

Their pet dogs were rounded up and gassed, and their bodies burned, before the very eyes of their traumatized owners, Vine said.

Six Russian Sukhoi-27 fighter jets and three transport planes have been deployed at Bobruisk airfield in Belarus. Earlier this week Belarus President Aleksandr Lukashenko invited Russian forces to fend off potential NATO threat.

"In case of continuing build-up of military forces in countries bordering Belarus, the country will take adequate response measures," says a statement from the country's Defense Ministry in Minsk.

NATO is sending 12 F-16 craft in Poland, in the wake of the Crimea crisis, and Polish President Bronislaw Komorowski has asked for an even greater US presence. Baltic states have also requested military assistance from NATO.

Just like their NATO counterparts, the Russian aircraft in Belarus will participate in a joint training exercise.

As Belgium's capital and host to the EU and Nato, Brussels is used to deploying heavy security when big names pop by. But US President Barack Obama's visit on Tuesday will strain the city like never before with €10m ($10.4m, £8.4m) of Belgian money being spent to cover his 24 hours in the country.

The president will arrive on Tuesday night with a 900-strong entourage, including 45 vehicles and three cargo planes. Advance security teams orchestrating every last detail have combed Brussels already, checking the sewers and the major hospitals, while American military helicopters were last week given the green light for overflights. The city hosts at least four EU summits a year, with each of these gatherings costing €500,000 in extra police, military and transport expenses. "But this time round, you can multiply that figure by 20," said Brussels mayor, Yvan Mayeur.

The city's four-stage security scale will be raised from two to three during the visit, Obama's first to the country. A tight cordon will surround The Hotel, the 27-storey former Hilton in the Toison d'Or shopping district where the president will spend the night.

Belgium itself is mobilising 350 police and military on motorbikes to secure the president's routes to EU and Nato summits on Wednesday, while a convoy of nine US helicopters will take Obama to an American first world war cemetery.

U.S. president tells European audience that Crimea crisis is not new cold war and Russia will eventually understand it can't get what it wants through brute force.

While pledging to continue to oppose the Russian takeover of Crimea with all the tools at his disposal, President Barack Obama stated on Wednesday night that the crisis in Ukraine was "not another cold war."

Unlike in the past, Obama told an audience of European leaders at the Palais Des Beaux-Arts in Brussels, "Russia leads no bloc of nations" and does not represent any global ideology. It was simply operating on the "belief that bigger nations can bully smaller ones to get their way."

Russia will not be dislodged from Crimea through military force, Obama stated, but it will realize over time that it can't achieve "what it seeks through brute force."

In a delicately nuanced speech that expressed strong opposition to Russia while keeping the door open to negotiations, Obama stressed that "peace will only come through negotiations."

So far, he stated, Russia "has resisted diplomatic overtures."

Barack Obama's speech on Ukrainian crisis seems to have left the public confused as he claimed that Kosovo broke away from Serbia "after a referendum". But attentive listeners quickly pointed Obama's gaps in history - there was no referendum in Kosovo. Video here.

President Obama was speaking Wednesday at The Center for Fine Arts in the heart of Brussels, Belgium, and was telling the youth crowd mostly about Russian-Ukrainian conflict over the strategic Crimean Peninsula.

He lashed out at Russia for "violation of international law, its assault on Ukraine's sovereignty and territorial integrity."

Obama recalled the conflict around Kosovo and NATO's involvement, making a counter-argument to Russia officials' statements, in which they cited Kosovo independence from Serbia in 2008 as the precedent.

He said: "And Kosovo only left Serbia after a referendum was organized not outside the boundaries of international law, but in careful cooperation with the United Nations and with Kosovo's neighbors. None of that even came close to happening in Crimea."

In fact, "none of that even came close to happening" in Kosovo either.

Thanks to bank misconduct, odds are that trouble will present itself again soon. And this is what it will look like

Bloomberg financial reporter Bob Ivry has written an entertaining new book, The Seven Sins of Wall Street, which, instead of rehashing the various illegal activities that triggered the financial meltdown, focuses on what the banks have been up to since the crisis. Much of it would be familiar to readers of this space: the Bank of America whistle-blowers who were instructed to lie to homeowners, and received gift card bonuses for pushing them into foreclosure; the London Whale derivatives trade that lost JPMorgan Chase more than $6 billion; the investment banks who traded commodities while also operating physical commodity warehouses and facilities; and more. All the while, megabanks continue to enjoy subsidies on their borrowing costs because of the (accurate) perception that they will get bailed out in the event of any trouble.

The odds are that trouble will present itself soon.

Ivry's opening quote in the book comes from Jamie Dimon, whose daughter asked him, "'Dad, what's a financial crisis?' Without trying to be funny, I said, 'It's something that happens every five to seven years.'" A quick check of the calendar reveals that we're almost six years out from the bursting of the housing bubble and the fall of Lehman Brothers.

So are we on the precipice of another financial crisis, and what will it look like?

To be sure, danger still lurks in the mortgage market. The latest get-rich-quick scheme, with private equity firms buying up foreclosed properties and renting them out, then selling bonds backed by the rental revenue streams (which look suspiciously like the bonds backed by mortgage payments that were a proximate cause of the last crisis), has the potential to blow up. And continued shenanigans with mortgage documents could lead to major headaches. A new court case against Wells Fargo uncovered a bombshell, a step-by-step manual telling attorneys how they can fake foreclosure papers on demand; the fallout could throw into question the true ownership of millions of homes. Even subprime mortgages are in the midst of a comeback, because what could go wrong?

Announcement comes amid spotlight on banker pay after mis-selling scandals and attempts to sidestep EU bonus cap

Bailed-out Lloyds Banking Group has handed its top management team - including chief executive António Horta-Osório - bonuses potentially worth more than £27m.

The announcement by the 33% taxpayer-owned bank covers awards of bonuses for 2013 and 2014 - some of which do not pay out for three years - and follows its disclosures this month that its senior executives shared £12m of bonuses that had paid out from previous years.

It comes amid a sharpened focus on bankers' pay following a series of mis-selling scandals and attempts by the top banks to sidestep the EU bonus cap, which restricts bonuses to 100% of salary or 200% if shareholders approve.

The latest handouts by Lloyds include 2.1m shares for Horta-Osório - worth £1.7m at current prices - for his bonus for 2013, which is linked to the share price remaining above 73.6p for 123 consecutive days. The price of 73.6p is the average paid by taxpayers for their stake in the bank following its rescue of HBOS and bailout in 2008.

The Saga Ends...Or Does It?

Prestidigitation: sleight of hand

a : a cleverly executed trick or deception
b : a conjuring trick requiring manual dexterity
c : skill and dexterity in conjuring tricks

Najib Razak "Malaysia Airlines deeply regrets that we have to assume beyond any reasonable doubt that MH370 has been lost and that none of those on board survived... we must now accept all evidence suggests the plane went down in the Southern Indian Ocean." (NY Times)

Razak, Malaysia's prime minister has announced that missing flight MH370 crashed in the southern Indian Ocean.

Razak based his announcement on new analysis by British satellite firm Inmarsat, which provided satellite data, and the UK's Air Accidents Investigation Branch (AAIB) which used that data to access the probability of the aircraft's ability to reach dry land.

Cities of the Former Yugoslavia are commemorating all those who fell victim to NATO's bombings in 1999

March 24, 2014, marks the 15th anniversary of the beginning of NATO-led operation against Yugoslavia codenamed Operation Allied Force. The facilities situated on the territories of Serbia and Montenegro became the targets of the attacks that were carried out by NATO's bombers and cruise missiles.

The failure of talks on Kosovo in Ramboulliet in France and Serbia's refusal to sign a "peace plan', and also the mass graves of the peaceful Albanian civilians who were allegedly killed by the Serbian troops that were discovered in the village of Racak served as a pretext for an act of aggression against Former Yugoslavia in which 19 NATO member-states led by the U.S. took part. Later it became known that is was a falsification that was organized by the Western special services - the majority of graves belonged to the militants of the "Kosovo Liberation Army". As a result of those bombings which lasted 78 days, 2,000 civilians were killed, and nearly 7,000 people were wounded, with children, making up 30 percent of them.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel could teach US President Barack Obama one or two things about how to establish a dialogue with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

As if Obama would listen. He'd rather boost his constitutional law professor self, and pompously lecture an elite eurocrat audience in the glittering Palais des Beaux-Arts in Brussels, like he did this Wednesday, on how Putin is the greatest threat to the US-administered global order since World War II. Well, it didn't go that well; most eurocrats were busy taking selfies or twittering.
Putin, meanwhile, met with the CEO of German engineering and electrical conglomerate Siemens, Joe Kaeser, at his official residence outside Moscow. Siemens invested more than US$1.1 billion in Russia over the past two years, and that, Kaeser said, is bound to continue. Angela was certainly taking notes.