HOUSTON (Reuters) – U.S. securities regulators on Friday accused Texas billionaire Allen Stanford, his college roommate and three of their companies of carrying out a “massive Ponzi scheme” over at least a decade and misappropriating at least $1.6 billion of investors’ money.
Meanwhile, a Houston judge ruled on Friday that Laura Pendergest-Holt, the only person arrested in the $8 billion Allen Stanford fraud investigation, could walk free after she posted a $300,000 bond.
In an amended complaint filed in a federal court in Dallas, the Securities and Exchange Commission increased its civil charges against Stanford to include a Ponzi scheme where early investors are paid with the money of new clients.
Along with his former Baylor University roommate James Davis, the 58-year-old golf, cricket and polo promoter “misappropriated billions of dollars of investor funds and falsified” financial statements issued by Antigua-based Stanford International Bank, the SEC charged. …
In the trees beside the building, silver beaked and turquoise tanagers.
In shrubs and on rocks behind the building, one green female and five shiny blue male swallow tanagers. Even for at least one person with decades of birdwatching experience in Suriname, this encounter with this beautiful species is a first.
For the past forty years Noam Chomsky’s writings on politics and language have established him as a preeminent public intellectual and as one of the most original and wide-ranging political and social critics of our time. Among the seminal figures in linguistic theory over the past century, since the 1960s Chomsky has also secured a place as perhaps the leading dissident voice in the United States.
Noam Chomsky is Institute Professor emeritus of linguistics at MIT and the author of numerous books including Chomsky vs. Foucault: A Debate on Human Nature, On Language, Objectivity and Liberal Scholarship, and Towards a New Cold War (all published by The New Press). He lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
This event took place on April 22, 2008 at the Google Cambridge office, as a part of the Authors@Google series.
Also about United States linguist and critic of society, Noam Chomsky: here.
This video is called Suriname an exciting part of the Amazon.
After yesterday, today, we are going to the Kayser mountains. This is an uninhabited region in the deep south west of Suriname. Decades ago, there has been biological research there. However, the findings of this research have got lost. In February 2007, there was some research on Dendrobates frogs there. No ornithological literature known.
The Surinamese biologist with our group, Marchal Lingaard, has been there once, for a short time. He found that capybaras (see also here) live there. Two mating anacondas, arguably the biggest snakes alive in the world today, have been seen.
So, basically, most things that we will be able to find out about animals and plants there will be new.
On our way to the airport: a smooth-billed ani on a wire.
This is a video about Suriname, seen from the air. We flew from Paramaribo’s domestic flights airport to the Kayser mountains airstrip.
The airstrip was originally made by the Dutch colonial government in 1960. We will sleep in the buildings, built there for aerial cartography then.
The airfield and its immediate surroundings are grass and marshland, up to the Zuidrivier (Southern river). Quite some moriche palms. A bit further, there is rainforest. The airfield is 280 meter above sea level. Some of the mountains around it are over 700 meter.
A black vulture. Green garden lizards rushing across rocks. Next to the buildings, a yellow-rumped cacique hanging nests colony in a tree.
Report on the British High Court ruling (21 August 2008) that MI5 colluded in the illegal detention, torture and rendition of British resident Binyam Mohamed, currently detained in Guantanamo Bay.
David Miliband and Jacqui Smith have both refused to appear before Parliament’s human rights committee to answer questions about allegations of British collusion in the torture of British citizens and residents detained during counter-terrorism operations in Pakistan.
In a move that dismayed members of the Joint Committee on Human Rights (JCHR), a joint letter from the foreign secretary and home secretary is also said to have failed to answer any of the eight questions that the committee asked about legal provisions offering MI5 officers immunity in the UK for crimes committed overseas. The JCHR is now asking Jonathan Evans, the director-general of MI5, to appear before it to be questioned about the agency’s policy and the conduct of his officers.
MPs and peers on the committee are also expected to demand again that Miliband and Smith answer their questions, while its chairman, Andrew Dismore, says the ministers’ refusal may trigger demands for an independent inquiry into the allegations.
Nieuw-Nickerie is the only town in Suriname where the house sparrow was introduced succesfully from Europe; though there a few reports of this species from Paramaribo as well.
Today, east from Nieuw-Nickerie. To Bigi Pan, in motor boats which need to be hauled across a muddy watershed.
Then, a limpkin on a bank. This bird looks a bit, in size and in body shape, like a heron; but it is more related to rails. It eats apple snails, like the snail kite. However, the kite catches the snails flying above the water; while the limpkin gets them, wading in the water. They suffer from hunting in Suriname.
Orange-winged parrots. A rufescent tiger-heron under a bush on the bank of the canal leading to the open water of Bigi Pan.
A striated heron.
A black-collared hawk. A white-necked heron. Quite some ospreys, sitting on dead trees and flying around.
Iraq hero Johnson Beharry attacks government over troops’ care
Victoria Cross winner hits out at ‘disgrace’ of veterans not getting treatment they need
Saturday 28 February 2009
The army’s most decorated serving war hero today claimed the government was failing to care for soldiers with mental trauma caused by combat in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Lance Corporal Johnson Beharry, who was awarded the Victoria Cross for saving the lives of comrades during two ambushes in Iraq, said it was “disgraceful” that some veterans were not getting the treatment they needed.
Beharry also said military charities were being used to patch up holes in soldiers’ care.
“These are people who have served this country. Why can’t they get treatment? I don’t think the government is doing enough for soldiers,” he said.
“Those who are still serving get some form of help for combat stress but even those who are serving don’t get enough support.” …
Speaking of his own stress following his return from Iraq, the 29-year-old said: “It brings me back into the killing zone, to the explosion. When you hear a bang in Iraq you know it is going to be followed by something and back home you feel the same. You go tense, waiting. I go into that defence mode.
“I am learning to live with it. Everyone experiences combat stress differently. But we are all linked; we all suffer the same problem in different ways.”
Britain: A former SAS commander in Afghanistan said today the Government had “blood on its hands” over the “unnecessary deaths” of four soldiers killed when their Snatch Land Rover hit a roadside bomb: here.
THE government’s human rights watchdog said on Sunday that it will take on Defence Secretary John Hutton and the Ministry of Defence in a test case to extend human rights laws to soldiers on the battlefield: here.
Young ex-military personnel ‘more prone to suicide’: here.
THE government faced calls yesterday to accept and take action over evidence of “strong” casual links between treatments to which British troops were exposed during the 1990-91 Gulf war and ill-health that they later suffered: here.
USA: More Soldiers Commit Suicide than are Killed in Combat: here.
Reporter working on story critical of VA has his equipment confiscated: here.
In trees along the banks, and wading in ricefields: cattle egrets; great egrets; snowy egrets.
An osprey flying.
A two-toed sloth in a treetop. It is moving. See for sloth photos and videos: here.
Another black-collared hawk.
Then, we pass a breeding colony of hundreds of black-crowned night herons (a species which breeds also in zoos of the Netherlands, and of Washington, D.C., and of Lincoln Park in Chicago the USA). Both the blue-greyish adults and the striped brownish juveniles fly around; a beautiful spectacle.
A turkey vulture. A yellow-headed caracara. A great black hawk.
All the time it keeps raining, but it is so beautiful here that we forget to pay attention to it.
A savanna hawk.
Six wood storks sitting in a treetop. Wood storks in Florida: here. Everglades National Park Helps Nesting Endangered Wood Storks: here. In Arkansas: here.
Six smooth-billed anis in another tree.
A long-winged harrier.
A little blue heron; a snowy egret; a black-crowned night heron; and a cattle egret, all on the same tree.
[Comedian] Mark [Thomas] sets up a balloon service to fly over the Menwith Hill US Spy listening post in Britain. Menwith Hill was formerly used during the Cold War by the US to spy on the Russians. It’s now used to spy on me and you, over 100,000 phone calls are monitored Europe wide at any one time.
Civil servants attacked for using anti-terror laws to spy on public
• Watchdog threatened to tell PM about abuses
• Officers posed as anglers to investigate fish plot
Controversial surveillance powers employed to fight terrorism and combat crime have been misused by civil servants in undercover “spying” operations that breach official guidelines, the Guardian has learned.
Documents obtained under Freedom of Information show some government departments and agencies have used these powers incorrectly or without proper controls. They also show the official government watchdog set up to monitor the use of such clandestine techniques criticised the departments for their behaviour.
The watchdog twice threatened to inform Gordon Brown about the serious abuses of powers under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA).
Meet the new Britain: just like the old one where green protesters are spied on: here.
We reach the small Native American village Tapuripa. A boat from the bank goes along the ship, and news is exchanged. Marchal Lingaard, Surinamese biologist with our group, is of American Indian (and Scandinavian) ancestry.
Then comes a lot of rainfall, making it very difficult to use binoculars outside the ship’s steering house. And inside the steering house you have to look through wet windows. Officially, this should be the “little dry season” in Suriname. But it rains often. And often for a long time, while it used to be for short bursts, our captain says. He thinks that climate change is affecting Suriname.
When the rain stops for a short time, a plumbeous kite sitting in a bald treetop.
12:05: Wagner’s sac-winged bats crossing the river.
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