Trouble...

New Jersey's senior senator, Bob Menendez, is facing a dozen counts of bribery, conspiracy, and fraud charges in a corruption probe involving one of his close friends.

Prosecutors at the Justice Department accuse Menendez of accepting lavish gifts in exchange for using his political influence to help friend and Florida eye doctor Salomon Melgen.
But Menendez denies the charges, claiming he was only doing what he would do for any constituent.

The indictment outlines the alleged scheme: Melgen flew Menendez around on his private jet, paid for luxury trips to Paris and the Dominican Republic, and donated hundreds of thousands of dollars in political contributions that benefited Menendez.

In exchange, the government claims, Menendez intervened on Melgen's behalf to sort out a shipping contract, secure immigrant visas for Melgen's girlfriends, and settle a multimillion-dollar Medicare billing dispute involving Melgen's ophthalmology practice.

Is not what he did, it's what he took.  Just a thought.

Split...

In a bold step toward an uncertain future, the Kurdish people living in northern Iraq are heading to the polls today to cast their ballots in a referendum for independence.

Every one of Kurdistan’s neighbors, plus some of the world’s leading nations including the United States and the United Kingdom, have condemned the referendum. Even bitter rivals Saudi Arabia and Iran are in agreement over this one.

It’s a regionwide referendum in the northern Iraqi Kurdistan region to gauge national support for an independence movement from Iraq. The vote is nonbinding.

United States and United Kingdom were the two powers that cause the disintegration of  Iraq. The latest is a new outcome of the Iraq War. More problems to come.

Best Job...

Web...

Image is not related.

Former Rep. Anthony Weiner was sentenced to 21 months in prison for sexting with a 15-year-old girl in a case that rocked Hillary Clinton's campaign for the White House in the closing days of the race and may have cost her the presidency.

The FBI was investigating Weiner's contact with the high school student when it came across emails on his laptop between Abedin and Clinton, prompting then-FBI Director James Comey to announce in late October 2016 that he was reopening the probe of Clinton's use of a private computer server.

Another...

 

British police have arrested a 20-year-old man in Wales in connection to the recent bomb attack on the London subway.   The suspect is being questioned under the Terrorism Act.

He was arrested in Cardiff, 150 miles west of London. Police say an address there is being searched.

Police last week charged 18-year-old with planting the bomb at Parsons Green station on Sept. 15. The bomb partially exploded, injuring 30 people.

Police say three suspects remain in police custody including the last man arrested.   

Knees...

"Tonight, I'm taking a knee for America. But not just one knee, I'm taking both knees," Wonder, 67, said onstage Saturday. "Both knees in prayer for our planet, our future, our leaders of the world and our globe."     Explain it the way you see it yourself.

Short...

Citron Research's Andrew Left, who gained notoriety for successful bets against companies such as Valeant Pharmaceuticals.

He called Ubiquiti Networks a "fraud" during a televised interview Monday.  "The word 'fraud' I use very judiciously," the short-seller said in an exclusive interview on CNBC's "Halftime Report."

Left said it will be interesting to see what happens next month when Robert Pera has an option to buy the rest of the Grizzlies NBA team, which will require more due diligence on his company by the league.

"The more sunlight you put on a fraud, the more chance it has of being exposed," Left said.Shares of Ubiquiti plunged 10 percent after the short seller released his bearish report on the company Monday morning.
The company makes wireless networking products.  

Target...

 

The moving target is the wrong item to focus on. All politicians know that. The goal is to reduce the inflated cost of healthcare and medications' outrages pricing. If that happen, then it is easy to have more people insured.  Just a thought.

Environment....

The U.S. will still meet environmental goals from the Paris climate agreement with or without the help of the Trump administration, former Vice President Al Gore said.

Administration officials in recent days have indicated that the White House instead will seek a deal with less stringent requirements but remain within the pact.

Either way, Gore said the global effort is on the right track. Gore spoke at the United Nations Private Sector Forum.

"But whether that happens or not, U.S. states and cities and businesses and industries are moving forward," Gore said. "The projections now indicate that the United States will meet the commitments made at Paris whether it is affirmed by the federal government or not."

He pointed out the ferocity of hurricanes Harvey and Irma, noting the rarity of storms with such intensity.

When mother earth instructs you to live somewhere else, Do it.

Bombshell...

A sharp rise in the number of sexual assaults reported in Bavaria Germany, this year and many of the accused offenders are foreigners.

It is rare that a cabinet meeting in the Bavarian chancellery makes headlines across Germany. And when the state's interior minister, Joachim Herrmann, presented Bavaria's latest crime statistics on September 12, they seemed quite positive: fewer break-ins, less theft.

But then came the bombshell. The number of rapes reported in the first half of 2017, had increased by some 50 percent. Herrmann reported that 685 cases had been filed since the beginning of the year and that 126 of those involved foreign attackers.

That particular statistic represents a rise of 90 percent over the same period last year, with 60 more cases having been registered in 2017.

Those are shocking numbers indeed, but criminologists are not entirely willing to accept them as reliable. "The numbers are astonishing," said Ralf Kölbel, a criminal justice expert at Munich's Ludwig Maximilian University.