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Capital amnesty policy paying off as Russian money returns from tax havens


RT
Fri, 27 May 2016 01:53 UTC
bank vault
© Toru Hanai / Reuters
The Kremlin policy of capital amnesty has started to pay off, as recent data from the Central Bank shows more money is returning to Russia from overseas tax havens.

The last two years saw a major inflow to Russia. In 2015, $5.2 billion came from the Bahamas and $1.9 billion from Bermuda, which is a 43 and 9 percent increase, respectively, Vedomosti daily reports, quoting Central Bank data.

Investment from the British Virgin Islands decreased, but that jurisdiction retained second place for direct investment in Russia, the newspaper added.

In December, businessman Gennady Timchenko reportedly restructured the ownership of his Volga Group. He now owns 99.9 percent of the company shares and the firm will pay taxes in Russia. Earlier, the investment company belonged to a Cyprus-based Volga Resources Ltd and Luxembourg's VRN Sarl.

In 2014, another Russian tycoon Alisher Usmanov and his partners restructured assets of the British Virgin Islands-based USM Holdings, transferring the controlling stake of the mining and metals company Metalloinvest and cellphone operator MegaFon to Russian subsidiaries.

The Russian amnesty on capital expires on July 1. Before that date, taxpayers who declare their foreign assets and bank accounts will be exempt from sanctions by the state for non-payment of taxes.

In May, Russia's Federal Tax Service signed an international agreement on the automatic exchange of financial information, which will allow it to obtain data on the financial accounts of taxpayers from more than 80 jurisdictions, including offshore tax havens.
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Heart - Black

Egyptian teenager dies during illegal female genital mutilation surgery

Salma Abdelaziz and Sarah Sirgany
CNN
Wed, 01 Jun 2016 02:08 UTC
female circumcision
© Getty Images
After Mayar Mohamed Mousa's twin sister finished her operation, it was the 17-year-old's turn to go under the knife. But this was not a medical operation to provide treatment -- it was mutilation to remove her clitoris.

A registered doctor administered a full anaesthetic to the teenager in a private hospital in Egypt's coastal Suez province, according to Dr Lotfi Abdel-Samee, the health ministry undersecretary in the province, and then began surgically removing part of her sexual organs.

Mousa did not survive.

She died of complications Sunday caused by female circumcision, Abdel-Samee told CNN. It is a common procedure in the region known as female genital mutilation (FGM). The practice has been illegal in Egypt since 2008 but remains a strong tradition in Egyptian society where families see cutting as a way to "calm" or "purify" young girls.

The initial results of an autopsy performed on the girl cite blood clotting as the possible cause of death, according to Abdel-Samee. El Canal National Hospital, the facility that carried out the banned procedure, was shut down by authorities after Mousa's death and the case is currently under investigation by state prosecutors, Abdel-Samee said.

Comment: See also:

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Meteor

The meteoric rise of Yehuda Glick: From messianic settler activist to messianic Israeli parliamentarian

Dan Cohen and Tamar Aviyah
Mondoweiss
Tue, 31 May 2016 00:00 UTC
Bibi and Glick
Yehuda Glick holds a copy of his guide to ascending the Temple Mount with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu
"Extremist and dangerous forces have taken over Israel and the Likud movement," Moshe Ya'alon remarked at a press conference following his ouster as defense minister.

The focus of attention was on Netanyahu's imminent appointment of Yisrael Beitenu (Israel Our Home) party leader Avigdor Lieberman to the defense ministry, overlooking Ya'alon's replacement in Likud: US-born settler and face of the Temple Movement Yehuda Glick.

The Temple Movement aims to build a third Jewish temple on Haram al-Sharif as part of a vision to replace Israel's ethnocratic parliamentary system with a monarchy based on halacha (Jewish law) throughout Eretz Yisrael (the biblical Land of Israel including Palestine and beyond). While Lieberman's appointment signifies a success for Israel's secular right wing, Glick's entrance to the parliament is a major step forward in the Religious Zionist takeover of Israel.

More than two decades of the peace process have empowered Israel's hardline elements, rendering the Labor Zionist camp irrelevant and struggling to maintain any appeal to the Israeli mainstream. As Israel's old guard has become mostly obsolete, the settler movement has positioned itself as the future, taking over key positions in the government, the military, police and Shin Bet, and winning public support through the Temple Movement. "Religious Zionism is on its way to taking control of the State of Israel," former Shin Bet chief Yuval Diskin warned in 2015.

Comment: See also: Religious zealotry waging and winning a quiet revolution in Israel

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Pistol

8-year-old boy brought loaded gun to his NYC elementary school


RT
Sat, 28 May 2016 02:00 UTC
Child with handgun
© Molhem Barakat / Reuters
It was no laughter matter when an eight-year-old boy brought a loaded gun to his elementary school Friday. Teachers called 911 upon seeing the weapon during an end-of-year celebration. It marked the sixth such case in New York since March.

The boy, whose name has not been reported, raised suspicions when he refused to sit down on his backpack at the "Spirit Day" celebrations outside of Public School 91 in Brooklyn. As one of the teachers lifted the backpack, it seemed too heavy. The teacher then took a look inside and found a gun, wrapped in a smaller plastic bag.

The New York Police Department confiscated the firearm, which it identified as a Taurus handgun loaded with four bullets.
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Airplane

French investigators say detected signals presumed to come from EgyptAir MS804 black boxes


RT
Wed, 01 Jun 2016 00:04 UTC
EgyptAir MS804 black box search
© Alexandre Groyer / Marine Nationale / AFP
A French ship has detected signals deep under the Mediterranean Sea, believed to be from the black boxes of EgyptAir Flight MS804. The plane crashed last month, killing all 66 passengers and crew on board.

Citing a statement from Egypt's investigation committee, the Civil Aviation Ministry said the signals were received from the French vessel 'Laplace.'

France's Bureau d'Enquêtes et d'Analyses (BEA) also confirmed that a signal has been detected from one of the black boxes. The BEA is the French body responsible for the investigation of civil aviation accidents.
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Stop

How Los Angeles teenagers compelled police to back down and remove military-grade weaponry from their high schools

Sarah Lazare
AlterNet
Fri, 27 May 2016 00:00 UTC
Teens protest police
Los Angeles high school students and organizers forced police to remove grenade launchers and M-16s from their arsenals.

A coalition of Los Angeles high school students and grassroots organizers just accomplished the unthinkable. After nearly two years of sit-ins and protests, they forced the police department for the second-largest public school district in the United States to remove grenade launchers, M-16 rifles, a mine-resistant ambush protected (MRAP) vehicle and other military-grade weaponry from its arsenal.

But the coalition did not stop there. Members took over a Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) board meeting in February to call for proof that the arms had been returned to the Department of Defense—a demand they eventually won in the form of an itemized invoice for every weapon sent back to the DoD.

Going further, the coalition successfully pressed board members of the school district to apologize for greenlighting the policing of K-12 students with weapons of war.

"I now understand that especially in the context of the many conflicts between law enforcement and communities of color across the nation, our participation in this program may have created perceptions about the role of our district and our school police that my silence exacerbated," Steve Zimmer, the president of the board of education, wrote in a May 19 letter to the groups Fight for the Soul of the Cities and Labor Community Strategy Center, which played a key role in the campaign. "Please accept my apology for any and all of my actions that contributed to feelings of betrayal and injury and interrupted our important collaborative efforts for equity and justice in all aspects of public education."

Comment: It would take the same or similar efforts by several orders of magnitude to effect any real, lasting and systemic changes like this one in the U.S.; but sadly, the American populace and its leaders appear too far gone in pathology and dissociation for such a change to occur.

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Heart - Black

19yo woman in Pakistan burned alive for turning down marriage proposal


RT
Wed, 01 Jun 2016 15:39 UTC
Pakistan protest
© AFPfile Photo
A 19-year-old Pakistani girl who was beaten, had petrol poured over her and was put on fire for refusing a marriage proposal, succumbed to the wounds in hospital after a day of struggling for life.

Maria Sadaqat, the victim, was taken to Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences (PIMS) reportedly after being tortured by the family of the would-be-groom who asked to marry her but was turned down, local media reported.

Though doctors previously described the woman's condition as stable and improving, on Wednesday she died from sustained injuries.

Sadaqat, a teacher at a private school, was admitted to hospital with 85 percent burns on Tuesday.

She was attacked by at least five people as she returned home from work, the police reported. The woman cried for help, but it took her neighbors a considerable amount of time to respond since her house is located in a remote area. By the time the help came, she had already suffered heavy injuries.

Sadaqat managed to identify two of the attackers, the police said, also adding that one of them worked together with the victim at school.

The police has launched an investigation against the five suspects. Three of them were taken in custody immediately after the incident, while others are currently being sought, Pakistan's SAMAA news channel reported.

The province's chief minister, Shahbaz Sharif, has obliged law enforcement authorities to draw up a preliminary investigation report on the case as soon as possible.
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Arrow Down

Culture of hate: Female MP receives 600 rape threats for launching campaign to end sexist-cyber bullying


RT
Wed, 01 Jun 2016 15:49 UTC
Labor MP Jess Phillips
© Jess Phillips MP / YouTube
Labour MP Jess Phillips received 600 rape threats the night after launching a campaign to end sexist cyber-bullying.

The MP for Birmingham Yardley hit out at Twitter for allowing "mass bullying," adding that she has received around 5,000 generally abusive tweets since beginning the campaign.

Phillips told BBC's Victoria Derbyshire program she would need to hire someone "full time" to block all the abusive messages she receives on social media.

The MP is among a group of leading female politicians, including former Labour leadership candidate Yvette Cooper, who launched Recl@im the internet - a campaign to stop hate speech and abuse online.

Research by think tank Demos found that over 9,000 "aggressively misogynistic" tweets are sent each day worldwide.

Comment:

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TV

Americans consume 10 hours of corporate media 'programming' a day

Michael Synder
Economic Collapse Blog
Thu, 26 May 2016 15:53 UTC
mass media
If you allow someone to pump hours of "programming" into your mind every single day, it is inevitable that it is eventually going to have a major impact on how you view the world. In America today, the average person consumes approximately 10 hours of information, news and entertainment a day, and there are 6 giant media corporations that overwhelmingly dominate that market. In fact, it has been estimated that somewhere around 90 percent of the "programming" that we constantly feed our minds comes from them, and of course they are ultimately controlled by the elite of the world. So is there any hope for our country as long as the vast majority of the population is continually plugging themselves into this enormous "propaganda matrix"?
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Stock Down

Sanction backfire: Finland Valio dairy closes factory due to Russian embargo


RT
Wed, 01 Jun 2016 15:45 UTC
cows
© Andrew Yates / Reuters
One of Finland's biggest dairy companies, Valio, has announced it is shutting down a facility in the city of Tampere due to losses as a result of Moscow's food embargo against the EU.

According to the company, it started redundancy talks with the current 50 staff at the Tampere plant which once employed about 165 people. The dairy was established in 1962 and processed an average of 74 million kilograms of raw milk per year, collected from 490 farms around the facility.

Valio said it has lost significant volume of milk sales over the past three years. In 2015 it moved production of milk from Tampere to other facilities, and more than 70 workers lost their jobs. Tampere then continued to produce special types of milk and a type of soft cheese.

Comment:
bike meme
"Damn Russians!"


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