https://www.theblaze.com/news/rand-paul-wins-a-big-settlement-in-case-against-neighbor-who-assaulted-him
Thursday, January 31, 2019
Iran
A woman walks her dog past a satirical drawing of the Statue of Liberty on the wall of the former U.S. Embassy in Tehran. (Vahid Salemi / Associated Press)
Hands in his pockets on a cool, windy Tehran night, Behnam Hedayat was engaged in a seemingly benign activity, something tens of millions of people do every day: walking a dog.
In this case it was his terrier Shika, who he says is “as dear as my child.”
But under a ban announced this week by hard-line authorities, walking a dog in public or transporting it by car could put the authorities on Hedayat’s tail.
“The police have many other things to deal with like muggers, burglars and car robbers,” he said. “If the police hassle my dog, I will resist and fight for my dog with the police.”
Despite their rising popularity among Iranians, the pet seen in the West as man’s best friend is perceived by religious hard-liners here as an example of corrupt Western culture.
Owning a dog should be forbidden, they say, because Islamic teachings say that dogs are “najes” or “untouchable” because they are dirty.
In announcing the public prohibition, Tehran Police Chief Hossein Rahimi claimed Tuesday that dogs cause fear and anxiety in public spaces.
“Police have received permission from the judiciary branch to crack down on people walking dogs in Tehran,” Rahimi told the Young Journalists Club news site, a mouthpiece for Iran’s political establishment. “Carrying dogs in cars is also banned and if a dog is seen inside the car, police will confront the owner of the dog.”
Nezakat Alouloj was walking her small terrier in a park west of Tehran shortly after learning of the ban and was among those who reacted with fury about the possibility of becoming an outlaw for escorting a pooch in public.
“He is toilet trained and is my soulmate,” Alouloj said of her tiny companion.
The 60-year-old former Turkish-language radio host predicted that authorities won’t succeed in enforcing a ban because dog ownership is becoming increasingly popular in the capital of the Islamic Republic.
“More pet dogs are being adopted by families,” she said. “Authorities will soon forget the ban.”
Homa Arderoudi, 65, owns a German shepherd named Sita. She also criticized the announcement and said that authorities should be adapting themselves to the changing tastes and lifestyles of Iranians.
Arderoudi plans to ignore authorities because her dog is more than a pet. It’s her one and only companion.
“I have two grown-up sons, one in asylum in Sweden and one seeking asylum and now based In Istanbul. I have nobody except my dog,” she said. “The government has lot of more important problems to deal with.”
Shafagh Divanpour, 33, walks three dogs at a park in Tehran on a recent evening. The professional dog walker has lost business since Iranian authorities announced a ban on dogs in public spaces. (Ramin Mostaghim)
Several weeks before the ban was announced, Shafagh Divanpour gripped the leash of three dogs — Charlie, Rouko and Bonti — as they bolted ahead.
The two cocker spaniels and cavalier mix were a surprising sight for people who caught a glimpse of them walking in the park.
Stunned pedestrians stopped Divanpour to ask him what he was doing with three dogs. The 33-year-old took advantage of his newfound popularity to encourage onlookers to pet the pooches.
“Please be responsible parents,” he told them. “If you cannot afford to be long-term friends with your dog, don’t adopt. Dogs are sensitive and faithful, and if you abandon them they suffer.”
Financially strapped and unemployed, Divanpour is one of a growing number of young professionals turning toward a new industry in Tehran that’s raising eyebrows: dog walking.
For Tehran’s professional dog walkers, the gig represents both a passion and a source of income.
The unemployment rate among university graduates in Iran is more than 35%, according to Iran’s Labor and Welfare Ministry. But Divanpour said that on the days he works 12 hours, he earns nearly $100.
Still, fears of a crackdown already are affecting dog walkers such as Divanpour. Some dog owners, worried about police seizing their beloved canines, are canceling service.
“My dog walking assignment has been reduced to half since the announcement was made,” Divanpour said Wednesday.
Divanpour became a dog walker after he saw an ad on Petchi, a website dedicated to connecting dog owners with trained dog walkers.
Dog ownership has been a contentious topic in the decades after Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution. Since then, Iranian authorities have confiscated dogs and lawmakers have threatened to punish with 74 lashes those owners who walk their dog in public.
Yet to the dismay of conservatives, Iranians from the middle and upper class have been increasingly embracing dogs as loyal companions in recent years. For instance, in 2017, animal activists called for legislation to punish animal cruelty.
According to Petchi, there are around 1.2 million pet dogs across Iran and about 350,000 of them are in Tehran.
Divanpour remains hopeful that the cultural shift toward owning a dog will prevail.
“I believe this issue will be forgotten,” he said. “Dog owners must be brave and assert their own rights and their animals’ rights.”
Times staff writer Etehad reported from Los Angeles and special correspondent Mostaghim from Tehran.
Communist are so rigid they cannot acknowledge reality.
WASHINGTON - Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., will unveil a plan Thursday to dramatically expand the federal estate tax on the wealthy, including a new 77 percent rate on billionaires' estates, as leading Democratic politicians push new taxes on the richest Americans to combat inequality.
Sanders's bill, the "For the 99.8% Act," would tax the estates of the 0.2 percent of Americans who inherit more than $3.5 million, while the rest of the country "would not see their taxes go up by one penny under this plan," according to aides to the Vermont senator, who is considering a 2020 presidential bid.
Three top Republican senators this week released a plan to outright abolish the estate tax, which the GOP already significantly weakened with their 2017 tax law to only apply to those passing on more than $11 million (or $22 million for couples). Sanders's plan would restore the 77 percent top estate tax rate that was in place in the U.S. from 1941 to 1976, tax estates worth more than $3.5 million, and create several new estate tax brackets, including a 55 percent rate on estates worth more than $50 million."It is literally beyond belief that the Republican leadership wants to provide hundreds of billions of dollars in tax breaks to the top 0.2 percent of our population. . . . This is not only insane, it tells us the degree to which the billionaire class controls the Republican Party," said Sanders, who introduced the plan with the support of Thomas Piketty, a well-known French economist on wealth consolidation. "Our bill does what the American people want us to be doing and that is to demand that the very wealthiest families in this country start paying their fair share of taxes."
The plan would raise $2.2 trillion from 588 billionaires, but over an unknown period of time because it would take effect only once they die, according to Sanders's staff. Over the next decade, the tax would raise $315 billion, policy aides said.
The senator's push comes the week after Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., who has already announced her bid for the White House, released an "Ultra Millionaire" tax that would levy a 2 percent annual tax on those with more than $50 million, as well as a 3 percent annual tax on those with more than $1 billion. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., also recently floated a 70 percent marginal tax rate on those making more than $10 million.
Sanders supports both of those ideas, and in 2017 pitched a wealth tax on those with assets over $21 million as part of a suite of financing options for his "Medicare-for-all" health-care plan, according to aides for the senator. As a candidate in the 2016 presidential campaign, Sanders also called for a surcharge on estates worth more than $1 billion, a top marginal rate over 60 percent, and a tax on certain Wall Street transactions.
Conservative opposition to increasing the estate tax is likely to be intense, as Republicans have characterized the provision as a "death tax" that unfairly punishes Americans, including farmers, for wealth accrued over the work of a lifetime.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., with Sens. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, and John Thune, R-S.D., released legislation to permanently repeal the federal estate tax, with Thune arguing that it "threatens families' agricultural legacies and makes it difficult and costly to pass these businesses down to future generations."
But significantly higher taxes on the rich have been increasingly embraced by Democrats with national aspirations amid a raft of polling suggesting that the public supports such measures, said Celinda Lake, a Democratic pollster.
"A lot of the conventional wisdom says, 'Stay away from tax increases,' but it's actually quite popular," Lake said.
Part of what's changing is that fewer Americans now fear that they will be targeted by taxes designed to hit the ultrawealthy, Lake said. "Even in the last six months, you're seeing a shift," she said.
Estate taxes on large fortunes could be part of that swing. They once brought in revenue that accounted for more than 5 percent of the federal budget, but have been whittled down since then over time and now account for less than 1 percent of federal revenue, according to the Joint Committee on Taxation.
Before the 2017 GOP tax law, an individual could pass on as much as $5.45 million without paying the estate tax, which would then take a cut of up to 40 percent from wealth above that threshold. The law doubled that minimum, exempting all estates worth less than $11.2 million. A couple can now pass on $20 million, tax-free.
In 2018, after the GOP tax law, only 5,000 taxpayers were expected to file estate tax returns, according to projections by the American College of Trust and Estate Counsel, an organization of estate attorneys, based on Internal Revenue Service data. About 1,700 families are expected to actually pay the tax annually, said Howard Gleckman, a tax expert with the Tax Policy Center, a nonpartisan think tank.
Sanders's plan would reverse the decades-long decline in estate taxes. It would levy a 45 percent estate tax on those with $3.5 million to $10 million; a 50 percent tax on those with $10 million to $50 million; a 55 percent tax on those with $50 million to $1 billion; and a 77 percent tax on those with more than $1 billion.
The legislation also aims to crack down on loopholes that allow fortunes to be passed down with lower taxes, including by preventing wealthy families from avoiding certain taxes through annuity trusts. To prevent the new tax from hitting farmers, the Sanders plan would also allow farmers to reduce the value of their farms by $3 million - up from $1.1 million under current law.
The law would dramatically affect how much taxes the wealthiest Americans pay when they die. Under current law, Jeff Bezos would pay $52 billion in estate tax upon his death, while Bill Gates would pay $38 billion, according to estimates by Sanders's staff, based on Forbes's wealth data. The GOP proposal would take both of their payments down to $0, while Sanders's would raise them to $101 billion and $74 billion, respectively, according to the estimates by Sanders's staff.
(Bezos, the CEO of Amazon, owns The Washington Post.)
The federal estate tax was initially enacted in 1916, under President Woodrow Wilson. It applied to families with more than $50,000, or more than $1 million in today's dollars.
Sanders's aides said the tax is designed to help reverse the skyrocketing share of the national wealth controlled by the richest Americans. As of 2017, the top 1 percent owned about 40 percent of the country's wealth, higher than any share since 1962, according to economist Edward N. Wolff.
"One century ago, the U.S. invented steeply progressive estate and income taxes in order to maintain the egalitarian and democratic legacy of the country. Today's U.S. is becoming even more unequal than pre-World War I Europe," said Piketty, the French economist, in a statement. "The way out is stronger investment in skills, higher paying jobs and a more progressive tax system. Sen. Sanders' estate tax bill, including a 77 percent tax rate on estate values above $1 billion, is an important step in this direction
Maryland loses No. 1 spot for millionaires; DC is No. 2.
WASHINGTON — For the first time since 2010, Maryland does not rank as the top state for millionaires per capita. Maryland, which fell to No. 4, was replaced on this year’s list by New Jersey.
When compared with states, the District now ranks No. 2 for millionaires.
Phoenix Marketing International’s annual Phoenix Wealth and Affluent Monitor survey found that U.S. millionaire households have risen to 7.7 million. Over the past 12 months, the number of households in the U.S. with over $1 million in assets has increased by 534,000.
In the past 10 years since the financial crash in 2008, the number of millionaire households in the U.S. has increased by more than 2 million.
Millionaire households are defined as those with at least $1 million in investable assets, and does not include the value of real estate.
D.C. also had the highest growth of millionaires per capita last year, rising from 6.57 percent in 2017 to 8.94 percent in 2018. D.C. jumped nine spots on the 2018 list compared with 2017.
“What is interesting about this year’s data is the sharp rise in millionaires within D.C. Rising nine places in the rankings is impressive, which may be attributed to a number of factors, including increased property prices and movement of skilled workers to the area,” said David Thompson, managing director of the Phoenix affluent practice.
In New Jersey, Phoenix Marketing counts 293,992 households with investable assets of $1 million or more. That’s a ratio of millionaires to total households of 8.95 percent.
In the District, 28.325 households are millionaire households, or 8.94 percent.
Connecticut ranks No. 3, just ahead of Maryland.
In Maryland, 200,074 households are millionaire households, for a ratio to total households of 8.85 percent.
Virginia ranks No. 10 on the list, with 248,958 millionaire households, or 7.66 percent.
Massachusetts, Hawaii, New Hampshire, California and Alaska round out the top 10.
For the second time in six months, an Apple engineer is accused of stealing intellectual property in order to benefit a China-based competitor
For the second time in six months, an Apple engineer is accused of stealing intellectual property in order to benefit a China-based competitor
By Michael Bott
Published Jan 29, 2019 at 5:24 PM | Updated at 11:33 PM PST on Jan 29, 2019
Special Report: Inside the UAE’s secret hacking team of U.S. mercenaries
Special Report: Inside the UAE’s secret hacking team of U.S. mercenaries
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Two weeks after leaving her position as an intelligence analyst for the U.S. National Security Agency in 2014, Lori Stroud was in the Middle East working as a hacker for an Arab monarchy.
She had joined Project Raven, a clandestine team that included more than a dozen former U.S. intelligence operatives recruited to help the United Arab Emirates engage in surveillance of other governments, militants and human rights activists critical of the monarchy.
Stroud and her team, working from a converted mansion in Abu Dhabi known internally as “the Villa,” would use methods learned from a decade in the U.S intelligence community to help the UAE hack into the phones and computers of its enemies.
Stroud had been recruited by a Maryland cyber security contractor to help the Emiratis launch hacking operations, and for three years, she thrived in the job. But in 2016, the Emiratis moved Project Raven to a UAE cyber security firm named DarkMatter. Before long, Stroud and other Americans involved in the effort say they saw the mission cross a red line: targeting fellow Americans for surveillance.
“I am working for a foreign intelligence agency who is targeting U.S. persons,” she told Reuters. “I am officially the bad kind of spy.”
The story of Project Raven reveals how former U.S. government hackers have employed state-of-the-art cyber-espionage tools on behalf of a foreign intelligence service that spies on human rights activists, journalists and political rivals.
Interviews with nine former Raven operatives, along with a review of thousands of pages of project documents and emails, show that surveillance techniques taught by the NSA were central to the UAE’s efforts to monitor opponents. The sources interviewed by Reuters were not Emirati citizens.
The operatives utilized an arsenal of cyber tools, including a cutting-edge espionage platform known as Karma, in which Raven operatives say they hacked into the iPhones of hundreds of activists, political leaders and suspected terrorists. Details of the Karma hack were described in a separate Reuters article today.
An NSA spokesman declined to comment on Raven. An Apple spokeswoman declined to comment. A spokeswoman for UAE’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs declined to comment. The UAE’s Embassy in Washington and a spokesman for its National Media Council did not respond to requests for comment.
The UAE has said it faces a real threat from violent extremist groups and that it is cooperating with the United States on counter-terrorism efforts. Former Raven operatives say the project helped NESA break up an ISIS network within the Emirates. When an ISIS-inspired militant stabbed to death a teacher in Abu Dhabi in 2014, the operatives say, Raven spearheaded the UAE effort to assess if other attacks were imminent.
Various reports have highlighted the ongoing cyber arms race in the Middle East, as the Emirates and other nations attempt to sweep up hacking weapons and personnel faster than their rivals. The Reuters investigation is the first to reveal the existence of Project Raven, providing a rare inside account of state hacking operations usually shrouded in secrecy and denials.
The Raven story also provides new insight into the role former American cyberspies play in foreign hacking operations. Within the U.S. intelligence community, leaving to work as an operative for another country is seen by some as a betrayal. “There’s a moral obligation if you’re a former intelligence officer from becoming effectively a mercenary for a foreign government,” said Bob Anderson, who served as executive assistant director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation until 2015.
While this activity raises ethical dilemmas, U.S. national security lawyers say the laws guiding what American intelligence contractors can do abroad are murky. Though it’s illegal to share classified information, there is no specific law that bars contractors from sharing more general spycraft knowhow, such as how to bait a target with a virus-laden email.
The rules, however, are clear on hacking U.S. networks or stealing the communications of Americans. “It would be very illegal,” said Rhea Siers, former NSA deputy assistant director for policy.
The hacking of Americans was a tightly held secret even within Raven, with those operations led by Emiratis instead. Stroud’s account of the targeting of Americans was confirmed by four other former operatives and in emails reviewed by Reuters.
The FBI is now investigating whether Raven’s American staff leaked classified U.S. surveillance techniques and if they illegally targeted American computer networks, according to former Raven employees interviewed by federal law enforcement agents. Stroud said she is cooperating with that investigation. No charges have been filed and it is possible none will emerge from the inquiry. An FBI spokeswoman declined to comment.
HATE HOAX: Jussie Smollett Refuses to Turn Over Phone to Investigators – Was Filmed in Lobby After ‘Attack” Appearing Normal
HATE HOAX: Jussie Smollett Refuses to Turn Over Phone to Investigators – Was Filmed in Lobby After ‘Attack” Appearing Normal
January 31, 2019 489 Comments
What a complete shock!
The Jussie Smollett ‘assault’ story continues to disintegrate before our eyes.
And, once again, the American media took the bait and ran with the unsubstantiated and ludicrous allegations by a vocal Trump-hating leftist.
The Jussie Smollett ‘assault’ story continues to disintegrate before our eyes.
And, once again, the American media took the bait and ran with the unsubstantiated and ludicrous allegations by a vocal Trump-hating leftist.
Actor Jussie Smollett arrived in Chicago on Monday night. He was out to get fast food at 2 a.m. when he was allegedly attacked by two Trump supporters in MAGA hats who recognized him in the freezing cold, beat him, poured bleach on him and put a noose around his neck.
Smollett’s story keeps changing.
Now the manager says he overheard the assault.
Now the manager says he overheard the assault.
Police have video of Jussie in a Subway around the time.
Now this…