Alia Brahimi, an expert on mercenaries at the Atlantic Council, said there may now be efforts to “nationalise” the Wagner Group, and that the close existing cooperation In Libya and sub-Saharan Africa between Wagner Group contractors on the ground and the Kremlin would make such a process much easier.
“On the other hand, it will be a test of loyalties for Wagner employees as these are mainly the old guard who weren’t recruited out of prisons and in fact enjoy an esprit de corps – and the commercial stakes in Africa are quite high,” Brahimi said.
The Office of Inspector General of the Small Business Administration has released a "landscape of fraud" report highlighting why 17% of PPP and other loans appear bogus.
At the time, government officials said the potential economic emergency posed by the pandemic shutdowns of 2020 necessitated a quick loans — despite the likelihood of fraud.
"There is something to that argument, especially when it's applied to the very early weeks of the program," says Sam Kruger, an assistant professor of finance at the University of Texas who has studied pandemic fraud. But he says the data analysis behind this new report shows the government did have the ability to tighten up the system.
I wonder who keeps insisting on deregulating the system. That turned out to be a bad move.
If this happens, will it be a mass exodus to Linux/Mac? Or will people just live with it? The fact that the Steam Deck has shown great promise in playing games on Linux has made me reconsider Windows yet again.
In an internal “state of the business” Microsoft presentation from June 2022, Microsoft discuses building on “Windows 365 to enable a full Windows operating system streamed from the cloud to any device.”
The 106-page report, entitled “Planned in Plain Sight,” highlighted and added to evidence already uncovered by the now-defunct House Jan. 6 committee, news reporting and other congressional work to provide the most comprehensive picture to date of a cascading set of security and intelligence failures that culminated in the deadliest assault on the Capitol in centuries.
Aides said Senate staff obtained thousands of additional documents from federal law enforcement agencies, including the Justice Department, before drafting the report. It includes multiple calls for armed violence, calls to occupy federal buildings including the Capitol and some of the clearest threats the F.B.I. received but did little about — including a warning that the far-right group the Proud Boys was planning to kill people in Washington.
CNN has exclusively obtained the audio recording of the 2021 meeting in Bedminster, New Jersey, where President Donald Trump discusses holding secret documents he did not declassify.
Trump’s statements on the audio recording, saying “these are the papers” and referring to something he calls “highly confidential” and seems to be showing others in the room, could undercut the former president’s claims in an interview last week with Fox News’ Bret Baier that he did not have any documents with him.
Trump is only ever honest with people he's trying to impress. He only views those documents as a way to gain clout. We know from experience that he lies to literally everyone else, even if it means being openly inconsistent.
Macquarie University cyber security experts have invented a multi-lingual chatbot designed to keep scammers on long fake calls to waste their time and ultimately reduce the huge number of people who lose money to global criminals every day.
Named Apate, after the Greek goddess of deception, the system will 'scam the scammers," using convincing voice clones to conduct conversations with real scammers.
White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre became flustered on Friday after she was pummeled with questions about the most recent scandal involving President Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden. The questions from nearly a half-dozen reporters stemmed from newly released testimony by two Internal Revenue Service...
Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.), the sponsor of the resolution, and other conservatives tried to advance a similar censure measure last week, but 20 Republicans — objecting to language that could have resulted in a $16 million fine for Schiff, unless he resigned from Congress — joined most Democrats to sink it before it came...
Republicans stand fully committed to violating the 9th commandment, all the while claiming to be Christians. Truly a pack of wolves in sheeps clothing, just as Jesus warned us about.
"For Marvel, whose whole empire is built on the work of artists to do this is disgusting and I for one shan’t be watching," tweeted Marvel comic artist Christian Ward, who worked on Black Bolt.
I shan't understand why that particular word choice.
LittleKuriboh quipped, "Look, if skrulls were as easy to detect as AI art is, the secret invasion would've lasted until suppertime on day zero."
I don't always get his humour, but this one is pretty on point for me.
In this picture, these particles arise from a field that permeates space-time. The cosmological constant is set by the field's mass and because this field fluctuates, the masses of the particles it gives birth to also fluctuate. The cosmological constant still varies with time, but in this model that variation is due to changing particle mass over time, not the expansion of the universe.
#OpenAPI specification has become the official documentation 📖 in the Open Build Service! #OBS! Read this blog posts about the release and about the newly documented endpoints: https://openbuildservice.org/2023/06/12/api-docs-continuation/
"The reason why Xi Jinping got very upset, in terms of when I shot that balloon down with two box cars full of spy equipment in it, was he didn't know it was there," Mr Biden said at the event on Tuesday.
In the years after the undisclosed trip to Alaska, Republican megadonor Paul Singer’s hedge fund has repeatedly had business before the Supreme Court. Alito has never recused himself.
Argentina’s president labeled Singer and his fellow investors “vultures” attempting extortion; Singer complained the country was scapegoating him.
In 2014, the Supreme Court finally agreed to hear a case on the matter. It centered on an important issue: how much protection Argentina could claim as a sovereign nation against the hedge fund’s legal maneuvers in U.S. courts. The U.S. government filed a brief on Argentina’s side, warning that the case raised “extraordinarily sensitive foreign policy concerns.”
The case featured an unusual intervention by the Judicial Crisis Network, a group affiliated with Leo known for spending millions on judicial confirmation fights. The group filed a brief supporting Singer, which appears to be the only Supreme Court friend-of-the-court brief in the organization’s history.
The court ruled in Singer’s favor 7-1 with Alito joining the majority. The justice did not recuse himself from the case or from any of the other petitions involving Singer.
Wagner mercenaries will not be withdrawn from Africa, says Russia (www.theguardian.com)
Sergei Lavrov moves to reassure sub-Saharan allies after recent armed mutiny led by Yevgeny Prigozhin
NPR: Over $200 billion in pandemic business loans appear to be fraudulent, a watchdog says (www.npr.org)
The Office of Inspector General of the Small Business Administration has released a "landscape of fraud" report highlighting why 17% of PPP and other loans appear bogus.
Blender 3.6 Released With Intel Arc Graphics Ray-Tracing, AMD HIP RT On Windows (www.phoronix.com)
Blender 3.6 is out today... with Raytracing....
Microsoft wants to move Windows fully to the cloud (www.theverge.com)
If this happens, will it be a mass exodus to Linux/Mac? Or will people just live with it? The fact that the Steam Deck has shown great promise in playing games on Linux has made me reconsider Windows yet again.
Senate Report Details Jan. 6 Intelligence and Law Enforcement Failures (www.nytimes.com)
Archived Link
Exclusive: CNN obtains the tape of Trump's 2021 conversation about classified documents | CNN Politics (www.cnn.com)
CNN has exclusively obtained the audio recording of the 2021 meeting in Bedminster, New Jersey, where President Donald Trump discusses holding secret documents he did not declassify.
Scamming the scammers: Using multi-lingual chatbots as fake victims to disrupt the business model of scam callers (techxplore.com)
Macquarie University cyber security experts have invented a multi-lingual chatbot designed to keep scammers on long fake calls to waste their time and ultimately reduce the huge number of people who lose money to global criminals every day.
Newsmax Staffers Hit With Subpoenas in 2020 Election Defamation Suit (www.rollingstone.com)
Court filings rife with internal communications exposed Fox News’ post-election misinformation push. Newsmax could be next
Watch: KJP Melts Down as Reporters Team Up to Demand Answers on Hunter Biden Scandal - Newzasa (newzasa.com)
White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre became flustered on Friday after she was pummeled with questions about the most recent scandal involving President Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden. The questions from nearly a half-dozen reporters stemmed from newly released testimony by two Internal Revenue Service...
House GOP votes to censure Schiff over role in Trump investigations (www.politico.com)
Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.), the sponsor of the resolution, and other conservatives tried to advance a similar censure measure last week, but 20 Republicans — objecting to language that could have resulted in a $16 million fine for Schiff, unless he resigned from Congress — joined most Democrats to sink it before it came...
AI-generated Secret Invasion intro angers Marvel artists and fans alike (arstechnica.com)
Reddit says it’s ‘not acceptable’ for communities to go NSFW in protest (www.theverge.com)
The expansion of the universe could be a mirage, new theoretical study suggests (68k.news)
The expansion of the universe could be a mirage, a potentially controversial new study suggests....
OpenAPI specification has become the official documentation in the Open Build Service (fosstodon.org)
#OpenAPI specification has become the official documentation 📖 in the Open Build Service! #OBS! Read this blog posts about the release and about the newly documented endpoints: https://openbuildservice.org/2023/06/12/api-docs-continuation/
US-China tensions: Biden calls Xi a dictator a day after Beijing talks (www.bbc.co.uk)
The US leader makes the remark just after talks aimed at easing tensions between the countries.
Justice Samuel Alito Took Luxury Fishing Vacation With GOP Billionaire Who Later Had Cases Before the Court (www.propublica.org)
In the years after the undisclosed trip to Alaska, Republican megadonor Paul Singer’s hedge fund has repeatedly had business before the Supreme Court. Alito has never recused himself.
Deleted
Deleted
Large Hadron Collider may be closing in on the universe's missing antimatter (www.space.com)
Those shifty quarks are at it again....