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Tories cry electoral fraud, claim students voted twice using loophole, no evidence of allegations found


RT
Tue, 18 Jul 2017 14:42 UTC
election voting
© Clodagh Kilcoyne / Reuters
An investigation has been launched into "troubling" reports of thousands of people illegally voting twice in Britain's June 8 general election.

The Electoral Commission says it has received 1,000 emails from members of the public complaining about people "double-voting." The watchdog has also received letters of complaint from 38 MPs.

There is currently a loophole in the electoral system which allows students to register to vote in both their home constituency and their university town, meaning they can potentially vote twice. However doing so is a criminal offence.

Comment: Sounds like the Tories are unhappy that their likely vote rigging didn't turn out as they hoped.

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Passport

Egypt revokes visa-free travel to Qatar nationals while Turkey sends more troops


RT
Tue, 18 Jul 2017 14:49 UTC
A man walks past Qatar Airways office in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
© ReutersA man walks past Qatar Airways office in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
Egypt has scrapped visa free travel for Qatari nationals amid the ongoing diplomatic crisis between Qatar and four Arab nations. Turkey has meanwhile pledged to ramp up deployment of its troops in Qatar despite the quartet's calls for them to be expelled.

Egypt announced Monday that it will suspend visa-free travel to Qatari nationals, the latest punitive measure introduced against Doha for its alleged support of terrorism and meddling in the domestic affairs of other nations.

The introduction of the new visa regime, confirmed by Qatar's Foreign Ministry, will however, not affect Qatari students studying at Egyptian universities or spouses and children of Egyptian nationals, Cairo said.

"It does not make sense to keep making exceptions for Qatar and giving it privileges in light of its current positions," Egyptian Foreign Ministry spokesman Ahmed Abu Zeid said Monday, according to Reuters.
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Stock Up

US charges Ukraine three times more for American coal


RT
Tue, 18 Jul 2017 14:43 UTC
coal digging
© Kristina Barker / Reuters
The US has almost tripled the price for coal shipped to Ukraine in the first quarter of the year compared to the same period in 2016, according to a report by the US Energy Information Administration.

Kiev has been buying US coal at $206 per short ton since January through March, which is almost triple the $71 the US billed last year.

At the same time, sales of American coal to Ukraine have more than doubled. The US shipped 865,000 tons of coal to Ukraine in the first quarter of the year against 355,100 tons bought during the first quarter of 2016.

At the same time, the price for US coal to Norway dropped around 10 percent from $140 to $125 per short ton.

Comment: Trump should be proud.

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Star of David

Former Israel security chief calls for more military action in Syria


Sputnik
Tue, 18 Jul 2017 14:30 UTC
Israel flag
© CC BY 2.0 / momo / Israel National Flag
One day after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu voiced his opposition to the Russia-US brokered ceasefire in parts of Syria, the nation's former National Security Council chief called for Israel to examine military options that would keep Iran and Hezbollah from setting up permanent bases in the country.

"We will not let the Iranians and Hezbollah be the forces that will win the very brutal war in Syria" Yaakov Amidror said Monday, lest they then shift their attention to Israel from camps within the war-torn country just over Israel's border.

The Israeli Defense Forces then might have to "intervene and destroy every attempt to build [permanent Iranian] infrastructure in Syria," he warned, the Jerusalem Post reports.

"At the end of the day it is our responsibility, not the responsibility of the Americans, or the Russians, to guarantee ourselves," Amidror said. "We will take all measures that are needed for that."
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Blackbox

'Game of Thrones': Can Washington prevent the death of the Gulf States?


Moon Of Alabama
Mon, 17 Jul 2017 14:18 UTC
gulf cooperation council
U.S. Secretary of State Tillerson is angry that Saudi Arabia and the UAE rejected his efforts to calm down their spat with Qatar. His revenge, and a threat of more serious measures, comes in the form of a WaPo "leak" - UAE orchestrated hacking of Qatari government sites, sparking regional upheaval, according to U.S. intelligence officials:
The United Arab Emirates orchestrated the hacking of Qatari government news and social media sites in order to post incendiary false quotes attributed to Qatar's emir, Sheikh Tamim Bin Hamad al-Thani, in late May that sparked the ongoing upheaval between Qatar and its neighbors, according to U.S. intelligence officials.

Officials became aware last week that newly analyzed information gathered by U.S. intelligence agencies confirmed that on May 23, senior members of the UAE government discussed the plan and its implementation. The officials said it remains unclear whether the UAE carried out the hacks itself or contracted to have them done.
That the UAE and/or the Saudis were involved in the hack was pretty clear from the get go. They were the only ones who had a clear motive. Qatar already had specific evidence for the source of the hacking. Congressional anti-Russian sources ignored that and accused, as usual, Russia and Putin.

Tillerson's real message is not the hacking accusation. The hacks themselves are not relevant to the spat and to Tillerson's efforts to defuse it. The "leak" sets the UAE and Saudi leadership on notice that the U.S. has sources and methods to learn of their government's innermost discussions. The real threat to them is that other dirt could be released from the same source.
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Better Earth

5 ways Russia and China are deepening their cooperation and building a multi-polar world

Adam Garrie
The Duran
Tue, 18 Jul 2017 13:41 UTC
China and Russia's increased cooperation in matters pertaining to commerce and trade, monetary exchange, military cooperation and media integration, continue to shape Eurasia, East Asia and the wider world.
Putin and Xi
Russia and China continue to forge ever closer bonds across many fields of interaction.

Here are some important recent developments that underlie what has become the world's most important multifaceted bilateral partnership.

1. Gold

During Chinese President Xi Jingping's recent visit to Moscow where he brought with him scores of representatives from the business and government sector, Russia and China agreed to increase bilateral trade in local currency.

There were also discussions about the need to rely on gold rather than the US Dollar as a major trading currency.

This week, Russia's largest bank, the government-owned Sberbank began trading on the Shanghai Gold Exchange.
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Attention

Russia tells Israel to 'live with it' on the new Syrian ceasefire

Adam Garrie
The Duran
Tue, 18 Jul 2017 13:43 UTC
Konstantin Kosachev
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and the Chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Federation Council, Konstantin Kosachev have both made their feelings known. Both agree that Israel has no real argument to make against the ceasefire and accompanying de-escalation zones.

Russian foreign policy makers have slammed Israel's latest statements condemning the recently agreed ceasefire in south-western Syria between Russia, the United States and Jordan.

During his press conference with French President Emmanuel Macron, Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu expressed his opposition to the ceasefire under the guise that it would embolden Iran and its allies, even though Iran is not a party to the south-eastern ceasefire, it is instead a party to the de-escalation zones established with Russia and Turkey via the Astana Memorandum of May 2017.
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Wall Street

Germany made over €1bn since 2009 out of Greek debt crisis


RT
Tue, 18 Jul 2017 13:38 UTC
European Central Bank (ECB) headquarters
© Ralph Orlowski / Reuters
Since the beginning of Greece's crisis in 2009 Germany's Finance Ministry has cashed in to the tune of €1.3 billion as a result of its loans to Athens and its debt buying programs reports Euractiv.

Eurozone members initially agreed to hand any interest back to the Greek central bank as a point of EU solidarity. However, when the second bailout program started in 2015, the pay-back operation was halted. The interest was not mentioned in the German federal budget that year, and therefore the interest was never paid back to Athens.

Since then Berlin has refused to restart the pay-back program despite Athens' efforts to satisfy the demands of its creditors.

According to German daily Suddeutsche Zeitung, Germany's development bank KfW has received €393 million in interest payments on a loan of €15.2 billion it made to Athens in 2010.
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Display

South Carolina voter registration system hit with 150k hacking attempts on Election Day 2016 - report


RT
Tue, 18 Jul 2017 13:21 UTC
computer hacker
© Global Look Press
On Election Day 2016, South Carolina's voter registration system was the target of nearly 150,000 hacking attempts, according to a recently released state study.

The South Carolina State Election Commission (SEC) found that 149,832 hacking attempts occurred on November 8, 2016, according to an April document the SEC submitted to the state's House Legislative Oversight Committee, the Wall Street Journal reported Monday.

The report did not provide any evidence that there were any successful breaches into the system, but did find that the hacking attempts were likely carried out by automated bots.
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Snakes in Suits

Trump says Iran sticking to nuclear deal terms, but not to the 'spirit' of it


RT
Tue, 18 Jul 2017 12:20 UTC
U.S. Secretary of State Kerry meets Iranian Foreign Minister Zarif in Vienna
© Kevin Lamarque / ReutersU.S. Secretary of State Kerry meets Iranian Foreign Minister Zarif in Vienna.
The White House has admitted Tehran is in compliance with the terms of the landmark 2015 nuclear agreement - which President Trump called the "worst deal ever" - but claimed Iran is still undermining the intent of the accord and poses a threat to the region.

The decision to certify that Iran is adhering to the nuclear deal came on Monday evening after extensive discussions with President Donald Trump's national security team and the State Department, US media reported.

The certification of Iran's compliance must be pitched to Congress every 90 days. This is the second time the Trump administration has acknowledged Iran's compliance, and the president reportedly told his aides he does not intend to renew the certification indefinitely, according to the New York Times.

"I think you all know that the president has made very clear that he thought this was a bad deal - a bad deal for the United States," White House spokesman Sean Spicer told a press briefing. He chose not to elaborate on the issue until the State Department's full statement regarding the Iran deal.

Spicer explained Trump recertified the deal "because he had the luxury of having an entire team here, both from State [Department], DOD, [National Security Council], to review it."
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