No business can operate without bankers — not even the bribery business.
British financial giant HSBC and American bailout kingpin Citibank processed transactions, managed money and vouched for Unaoil, a once-obscure firm that is now at the center of a massive international corruption scandal. Police raided Unaoil’s Monaco offices and interviewed its executives on Thursday, a day after The Huffington Post and Fairfax Media first exposed the company’s practices. Law enforcement agencies in at least four nations are involved in a wide-ranging probe of the company and its partners.
Big Banks Aided Firm At Center Of International Bribery Scandal
Big discovery about Vikings just came from space
A "high-tech Indiana Jones" may have just done what no one else has been able to for 55 years: find a second Viking settlement in North America, the Washington Post reports. "Typically in archaeology, you only ever get to write a footnote in the history books, but what we seem to have at Point Rosee may be the beginning of an entirely new chapter," archaeologist Sara Parcak tells the BBC.
Parcak used images taken by satellites 400 miles above the Earth to find what appeared to be evidence that Vikings made it hundreds of miles further into North America than previously known. Parcak has used the same technique to find 17 pyramids, 1,000 tombs, and 3,000 forgotten settlements. But this newest discovery could change everything we know about Vikings in North America.
Trump campaign shrinks Lewandowski's role
In public, Donald Trump is standing behind embattled campaign manager Corey Lewandowski as he faces battery charges for grabbing a reporter. But behind the scenes, Lewandowski's role in the campaign is shrinking.
In early March, Lewandowski ceded authority over many hiring decisions to a lower-ranking staffer. In recent days, the campaign’s press office has been overruling his decisions about issuing credentials for campaign events. Going forward, Trump’s just-named convention manager, Paul Manafort, is expected to take a leading role not just in the selection of delegates, but in the remaining primaries themselves, according to three people on or close to the campaign.
Abortion without the clinic on offer with revolutionary new US program
A groundbreaking new experiment is launching in four states that could make abortion dramatically more accessible by allowing women to obtain abortion-inducing drugs through the mail.
The program, which will be run as a pilot study out of four clinics in New York, Hawaii, Oregon and Washington state, is a first in the US – and one that its architects urgently hope to expand as the country’s abortion clinics close down at historic rates.
U.S. Oil Industry Giant Paid Millions To A Company At The Center Of Huge Corruption Scandal
The American engineering and construction firm KBR hired Unaoil — an obscure Monaco-based company now involved in a massive international bribery scandal — to help it win oil and gas contracts in Kazakhstan. KBR, which until 2007 was part of the oilfield services giant Halliburton, paid Unaoil millions of dollars from 2004 until at least 2009, according to thousands of internal documents obtained by The Huffington Post and Fairfax Media.
Halliburton and KBR have been in trouble for bribery in the past. After a years-long federal investigation, KBR pleaded guilty in 2009 to multiple criminal counts of violating U.S. foreign corruption laws by bribing Nigerian officials. KBR agreed to pay $402 million as part of a settlement. Halliburton and KBR also paid $177 million to settle SEC civil charges related to the same conduct. Three years later, Albert “Jack” Stanley, KBR’s former CEO, was sentenced to 30 months in federal prison for his role in the scandal. As part of the deal with the Justice Department, KBR agreed to waive many of its legal rights if it was caught violating bribery laws again.
Supreme Court split over teachers' dues delivers win for unions
The Supreme Court split 4-4 Tuesday on a challenge brought by public school teachers who objected to paying union dues, delivering a big win for the unions – in the first major case where the late Justice Antonin Scalia’s vote would have proved decisive.
The California teachers in the case had challenged a state law requiring non-union workers to pay “fair share” fees into the public-employee unions to cover collective bargaining costs.
Drug company hikes price for end-of-life drug Seconal
The 80-year-old drug Seconal, a once widely used sleeping pill now often prescribed as an end-of-life treatment, has doubled in price as laws go into effect in several states this year permitting terminally ill patients to take their own lives.
Valeant Pharmaceuticals, which is among companies being investigated by Congress for price gouging, doubled the price of Seconal last year from $1,500 to $3,000 after acquiring the rights to it.
Millions at risk from man-made earthquakes; fracking primary cause
California isn't the USA's only earthquake hot-zone anymore.
7 million people in the central and eastern U.S. live where damaging man-made earthquakes are likely to occur, according to a first-of-its-kind report released Monday by federal scientists from the U.S. Geological Survey.
Oklahoma, Kansas, Texas, Colorado, New Mexico and Arkansas are the most at-risk states from man-made quakes, according to the report.
Georgia's Gov. Deal to veto 'religious liberties' bill
Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal said Monday he would veto a controversial bill allowing faith-based organizations to deny services to gay people.
The Republican governor, who until 1995 was a Democrat, said HB 757 or the so-called "religious freedom" bill, opposed by gay rights advocates and businesses, "doesn't reflect the character of our state or the character of its people."
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