© Adrees Latif / ReutersThe Texas Department of Criminal Justice men's prison in Rosharon, Texas.
Thousands of books are considered prohibited reading for inmates doing time in Texas prisons. The list of banned and permissible material, however, has raised some eyebrows.
The Texas prison system has banned more than 10,000 selections from the shelves of their on-site libraries, yet it is sometimes difficult to find the logic behind the decision-making process.
For example, Alice Walker's '
The Color Purple,' which was awarded the 1983 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, will not be found in Texas prisons. Yet inmates may cuddle up at night with a copy of Adolf Hitler's '
Mein Kampf,' the notoriously anti-Semitic tract that Hitler began writing, ironically, while behind bars.
'
The Color Purple' is forbidden because it describes a rape scene.
Other selections with completely innocuous titles - including '
Hello Kitty,' '
Harry Potter Film Wizardry' and '
The Amazing Spider Man' - are prohibited not because of their content, but because they may contain pop-up sections or multilayer pages with which it may be possible to conceal contraband.
Comment: After Ulyukayev's arrest, Russian markets saw a boost for the ruble and Russian stocks (coinciding with the Trump-Putin call as well as a slight recovery in oil prices).
Russian officials commented on the scandal: The head of the upper house's International Relations Committee, Aleksey Pushkov, pointed out that bribery is becoming "Russian roulette" in Russian business and politics. As it should be, and thanks to Putin's anti-corruption push for the last several years. State Duma MP and former Chief Prosecutor of Crimea Natalya Poklonskaya wrote on Facebook: At the same time, these officials cautioned against hasty conclusions, adding that that's the courts' job.
A court has ordered Ulyukayev to be placed under house arrest, and Putin has dismissed him from his position. He was questioned today for five hours, but has not pled guilty and has refused to provide testimony. His lawyers say he was framed. If found guilty, he faces a maximum penalty of a fine 80-100x what he took as a bribe, and will lose the right to serve in government for up to 15 years. Either that, or a slightly smaller fine and 8-15 years in jail.
See article: Russian economy minister caught taking $2mn bribe from oil giant Rosneft