Tag: Corruption

Two of the Trump Era’s Biggest Grifters Are Angling for a Comeback

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Republican voters in Montana and Oklahoma will soon have an opportunity to send back to Washington two former Trump administration officials who left that town four years ago enmeshed in scandal.

Scott Pruitt is in a tough primary race, set for June 28, to fill the Oklahoma

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In Cyprus, a faraway war forces a city to redefine its Russianness – POLITICO

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LIMASSOL, Cyprus — Sipping coffee at a beachside cafe, Alexey Voloboev scrolled down on a Telegram group chat titled “financial help in Cyprus.”

“This is now the Russian bank of Cyprus,” the Russian businessman laughed. 

The group, which already has some 1,600 members, serves as a black market for swapping rubles and euros — a transaction that’s now increasingly difficult after Moscow sent its troops streaming into Ukraine. Not only has the EU

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Ukraine’s army of activist investigators documents Russian war crimes – POLITICO

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Ivan, 31, spends his days trawling through photos, videos and personal accounts of atrocities: rape, torture, summary executions, illegal weapons, forced disappearances. 

The task is not what Ivan ever saw himself doing. Just a few months ago, he was planning to launch a video-game development studio. 

Looking away, however, is no longer an option in Ukraine — not since Russia blanketed the country with troops, bombs and brutality. Ivan started volunteering for the

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Are Museums in Crisis? | The Nation

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Why do we even have art museums? This was a question that Alexander Dorner began asking in the 1920s. He can’t have been the first to pose such a question, but as director of the Provincial Museum in Hanover, Germany, he was in a position to do something about it. In 1927, he commissioned Russian artist El Lissitzky to upend the conventional style of displaying

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All the French president’s men (and one woman) – POLITICO

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Illustrations by Antony Hare for POLITICO

PARIS — Call them Emmanuel Macron’s praetorian guard.

As the French president prepares to seek reelection in April, he has turned to a select group of close advisers to help him in the battles ahead.

While Macron likes to hold court and seek input from a wide variety of sources, when it comes to strategic decisions, he relies on a small number of longtime loyalists, eschewing professional

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Gladys Berejiklian’s ex-advisers give evidence into corruption allegations against her at ICAC

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Gladys Berejikilan’s former chief of staff has given evidence to a corruption inquiry about the ‘difficult’ conversation he had with her about her secret relationship with disgraced ex-MP Daryl Maguire.

The Independent Commission Against Corruption hearing into former the NSW premier heard from Neil Harley that he spoke with Ms Berejiklian after she was summonsed to give evidence at a different ICAC investigation last year.

‘It was a very difficult conversation for both of us,’ he said, adding that the

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“The Card Counter”, rezensiert: Paul Schraders Furious Vision of American Corruption

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Der Film „First Reformed“ des Autors und Regisseurs Paul Schrader aus dem Jahr 2017 thematisierte den Krieg der USA im Irak als wesentlichen Teil seiner Hintergrundgeschichte: Der Protagonist, ein von Ethan Hawke gespielter Minister, ist der Vater eines dort gefallenen Soldaten. In Schraders neuestem „The Card Counter“ (eröffnet am Freitag) ist der Irakkrieg eine dramatisch in den Vordergrund gerückte Hintergrundgeschichte: Der Protagonist, gespielt von Oscar Isaac, ist ein Veteran des Krieges und zugleich einer seiner Übeltäter und einer der seine

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Elections, lethal grannies and a bear – POLITICO

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BANYA, Bulgaria — Like the storks that glide in on their annual pilgrimage from Africa, we try to spend every summer in my wife’s home village of Banya in southwestern Bulgaria.

Fittingly, it was one of Banya’s storks that saluted us as fellow returnees this year by bombing our car with its well-digested lunch of frogs as we turned into the street where Anna grew up. With their 2-meter wingspans, these ain’t pigeons,

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