FLASHBACK: WHAT DO YOU WANT ON YOUR TOMBSTONE?

CC™ Perspective - By Yahaya Balogun

"We must always find a way to get into GOOD TROUBLE; speak against all evils, and do the right thing at all times!" - John Robert Lewis (February 21, 1940 – July 17, 2020). 

John Lewis believed in the courage of his convictions. He followed his mind and he conquered his fear and left a great legacy worthy of emulation. - Yahaya Balogun. 

"It's time to prod our minds and look at ourselves in the mirror; ask ourselves the questions: are we going to be part of the problems, or are we going to be part of the solutions? History will judge our decision, action, and inaction" - Yahaya Balogun.

In 1963, John Lewis was, at age 23, the youngest person set to speak at the March on Washington. John Lewis gave a resounding speech of his life during the protest for civil rights in the United States of America. John Lewis was a man of peace, and a conscience of the US Congress and the world. Historically, no one has under any circumstances, stop an idea whose time has come. There's always a reward for every action or inaction. John Lewis was arrested more than 40 times during the civil rights movement in the US. He was brutalized, jailed, and dehumanized. But John Lewis remained steadfast, and never get discouraged. The historic movement he participated in paved the way for the recognition of the dignity of African-Americans.

It seems time has come to systematically put an end to racial profiling and systemic racism in the United States of America. Thanks to the modern well-informed, articulate, and decent American millennials. The American millennials are morally reading American history in congenial ways to turn surreptitious hate to love in the United States. John Lewis was a moral fiber and a quintessential fine man. John Lewis was an epitome of moral values and principles. Values are principles, standards, or qualities by which we live our lives; our values shape the person we become, and our actions to our neighbors and humanity reflect those values. This is the definition of John Lewis in the conscience of his contemporaries in the US Congress.

John Lewis was a liberated man. A liberated man is free, fair-minded, fearless, and humanistic. A liberated mind is not concerned by the noises emanating from the cyborg market, or enemies' territory! A liberated soul is mindful of his association and carefully chooses his friends and acquaintances. He is conscious and informed of what he does to other people. All his actions are from the repository of good ideas for man's humanity to man. A liberated man is a complete man with mindfulness, emulative values, consistency, and love.

The mind of a good man is concerned about how to enlivening and stimulating the souls of his neighbors and adversaries alike for their success and happiness altogether. A man with a purposeful mind is focused and anticipatory about the results of the good he has invested in himself and other people. The ROI-return on investment of the good a good man has done to fellow human beings is the undiluted joy in his heart. The integrity of man is known when his character comes to fore. He keeps true and never gets ashamed of doing what's right or best for him and humanity. The value of a liberated man defines him and shapes the kind of person he becomes in life and after that. A liberated mind has zero-tolerance for pretense, hatred, idiocy, and other negative nuances of life. He pays close attention to discern the evil-minds around. He is not perfect, but his fallibility makes him reasonable and humble when he realizes his mistakes or wrongdoings.

A man with a liberated mind fights fearlessly with no opportunistic expectations and grandstanding. His encumbrance (burden) is his deafening silence in the face of oppression and tyranny. A complete man shares his beliefs, virtues, integrity, principles, and missions with unblemished vigor and robustness for the common good of all. A whole man doesn't mind the short-term consequences or rewards for his act of goodwill, but he's fixated on the imports of his deeds to benefit him and humanity.

On the other hand, a warped mind is a reservoir for uncanny men to deposit resentment, vices, hatred, and manipulations. One of the most significant damages unnatural man has done to society has been his refusal or nonchalant attitude to discover his value through mindfulness. Uncanny man is very narcissistic, jealous, opportunistic, mindless, and resentful of others. He is always in penchant rivalry or competition with others rather than with himself!

Every man has roommates (negative and positive minds). A resentful man listens continuously to his roommate's negative voice (i.e., the blistering spirit of hate and resentment). The sound of roommates is mutually complementary if they agree with each other. Uncanny man has no compliment or encouraging disposition towards the other man making progress. He is always striving for the unwinnable war of envy, and needless struggle with his midget mind to falsely outpace himself.

The completeness of a man is embedded or assembled in his subconscious mind. When a man rediscovers himself, he is liberated from the existential invasion of his mind by the selfish figures of the affluence, bad friends, and influential people around him. He is immune to antisocial behavior and societal vices. A liberated man is ensconced in constant self-evaluation and rediscovery. Through self-discovery, a liberated mind becomes a renewed man and predisposes to self-consciousness. A liberated man only believes in what will be engraved in his tomb after he kicks the bucket-greed, hedonism, resentment, extremism, opportunism, jealousy, bigotry, and hatred, not in his personage or lexicon. He always enjoys constant happiness, and the inner tranquility and peace flowing ceaselessly from the (subconscious) base of his mind.

Collectively, the common humanity that is in all of us should rise now. People must be morally engaged to join other people of goodwill to fight corruption, diseases, unhealthy competitions, hatreds, terrorism, religious and ethnic bigotry, jealousy, and deliberate divisiveness in our society. To bring peace to our environment is better than engaging in the negative nuances that can bring war, hatred, and disorderliness for our mutual destruction.

Generally, life is not fair and just, but it's beautiful to an only, thoughtful, and mindful mind. What divinely unites humanity (Love) is more than those defeatist nuances (racism, bigotry, hate, war, jealousy, false-religiosity, resentment, etc.) that divide the world. Your existential legacy should be your responsibility now before you expire. What man needs now is to rediscover himself through mindfulness; do self-talk; reinvest in moral armament to bring inner peace to himself, peace to his neighbors, and peace to the world.

John Lewis came; he saw, but he has left humanity an existential assignment of grace and decency. Our performance in the assessment will determine what people and posterity are going to jot down on our catacombs when we expire or kick the bucket.

May John Lewis's gentle and wonderful soul rest in perfect peace.

From gas to solar, bringing meaningful change to Nigeria’s energy systems

CC™ Energy News

Turner Jackson - MIT Energy Initiative

Growing up, Awele Uwagwu’s view of energy was deeply influenced by the oil and gas industry. He was born and raised in Port Harcourt, a city on the southern coast of Nigeria, and his hometown shaped his initial interest in understanding the role of energy in our lives.

“I basically grew up in a city colored by oil and gas,” says Uwagwu. “Many of the jobs in that area are in the oil sector, and I saw a lot of large companies coming in and creating new buildings and infrastructure. That very much tailored my interest in the energy sector. I kept thinking: What is all of this stuff going on, and what are all these big machines that I see every day? The more sinister side of it was: Why is the water bad? Why is the air bad? And, what can I do about it?”

Uwagwu has shaped much of his educational and professional journey around answering that question: “What can I do about it?” He is now a senior at MIT, majoring in chemical engineering with a minor in energy studies.

After attending high school in Nigeria’s capital city, Abuja, Uwagwu decided to pursue a degree in chemical engineering and briefly attended the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2016. Unfortunately, the impacts of a global crash in oil prices made the situation difficult back in Nigeria, so he returned home and found employment at an oil services company working on a water purification process.

It was during this time that he decided to apply to MIT. “I wanted to go to a really great place,” he says, “and I wanted to take my chances.” After only a few months of working at his new job, he was accepted to MIT.

“At this point in my life I had a much clearer picture of what I wanted to do. I knew I wanted to be in the energy sector and make some sort of impact. But I didn’t quite know how I was going to do that,” he says.

With this in mind, Uwagwu met with Rachel Shulman, the undergraduate academic coordinator at the MIT Energy Initiative, to learn about the different ways that MIT is engaged in energy. He eventually decided to become an energy studies minor and concentrate in energy engineering studies through the 10-ENG: Energy program in the Department of Chemical Engineering. Additionally, he participated in the Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program (UROP) in the lab of William H. Green, the Hoyt C. Hottel Professor in Chemical Engineering, focusing on understanding the different reaction pathways for the production of soot from the combustion of carbon.

After this engaging experience, he reconnected with Shulman to get involved with another UROP, this time with a strong focus in renewable energy. She pointed him toward Ian Mathews — a postdoc in the Photovoltaic Research Laboratory and founder of Sensai Analytics — to discuss ways he could make a beneficial impact on the energy industry in Nigeria. This conversation led to a second UROP, under the supervision of Mathews. In that project, Uwagwu worked to figure out how cost-effective solar energy would be in Nigeria compared to petrol-powered generators, which are commonly used to supplement the unreliable national grid.

“The idea we had is that these generators are really, really bad for the environment, whereas solar is cheap and better for the environment,” Uwagwu says. “But we needed to know if solar is actually affordable.” After setting up a software model and connecting with Leke Oyefeso, a friend back home, to get data on generators, they concluded that solar was cost-comparable and often cheaper than the generators.

Armed with this information and another completed UROP, Uwagwu thought, “What happens next?” Quickly an idea started forming, so he and Oyefeso went to Venture Mentoring Services at MIT to figure out how to leverage this knowledge to start a company that could deliver a unique and much-needed product to the Nigerian market.

They ran through many different potential business plans and ideas, eventually deciding on creating software to design solar systems that are tailored to Nigeria’s specific needs and context. Having come up with the initial idea, they “chatted with people on the solar scene back home to see if this is even useful or if they even need this.”

Through these discussions and market research, it became increasingly clear to them what sort of novel and pivotal product they could offer to help accelerate Nigeria’s burgeoning solar sector, and their initial idea took on a new shape: solar design software coupled with an online marketplace that connects solar providers to funding sources and energy consumers. In recognition of his unique venture, Uwagwu received a prestigious Legatum Fellowship, a program that offers entrepreneurial MIT students strong mentoring and networking opportunities, educational experiences, and substantial financial support.

Since its founding in the summer of 2020, their startup, Idagba, has been hard at work getting its product ready for market. Starting a company in the midst of Covid-19 has created a set of unique challenges for Uwagwu and his team, especially as they operate on a whole other continent from their target market.

“We wanted to travel to Lagos last summer but were unable to do so,” he says. “We can’t make the software without talking to the people and businesses who are going to use it, so there are a lot of Zoom and phone calls going on.”

In spite of these challenges, Idagba is well on its path to commercialization. “Currently we are developing our minimum viable product,” comments Uwagwu. “The software is going to be very affordable, so there’s very little barrier for entry. We really want to help create this market for solar.”

In some ways, Idagba is drawing lessons from the success of Mo Ibrahim and his mobile phone company, Celtel. In the late 1990s, Celtel was able to quickly and drastically lower the overall price of cell phones across many countries in Africa, allowing for the widespread adoption of mobile communication at a much faster pace than had been anticipated. To Uwagwu, this same idea can be replicated for solar markets. “We want to reduce the financial and technical barriers to entry for solar like he did for telecom.”

This won’t be easy, but Uwagwu is up to the task. He sees his company taking off in three phases. The first is getting the design software online. After that has been accomplished — by mid-2021 — comes the hard part: getting customers and solar businesses connected and using the program. Once they have an existing user base and proven cash flow, the ultimate goal of the company is to create and facilitate an ecosystem of people wanting to push solar energy forward. This will make Idagba, as Uwagwu puts it, “the hub of solar energy in Nigeria.” Idagba has a long way to go before reaching that point, but Uwagwu is confident that the building blocks are in place to ensure its success.

After graduating in June, Uwagwu will be taking up a full-time position at the prestigious consulting firm Bain and Company, where he plans to gain even more experience and connections to help grow his company. This opportunity will provide him with the knowledge and expertise to come back to Idagba and, as he says, “commit my life to this.”

“This idea may seem ambitious and slightly nonsensical right now,” says Uwagwu, “but this venture has the potential to significantly push Nigeria away from unsustainable fossil fuel consumption to a much cleaner path.”

MIT News

Super Eagles of Nigeria: The Symbol of Excellence and Nigerian (Black) Exceptionalism

CC™ VideoSpective

In April 1994, the Super Eagles of Nigeria were ranked 5th in the FIFA World ranking, the highest FIFA ranking position ever achieved by an African football team to this day.

HISTORYVILLE

Italian mafia chased me out of Milan - Taribo West

Taribo West

CC™ SportsWire

Former Super Eagles defender Taribo West says he was sent packing from Italian giants AC Milan by The Mafia. Taribo joined the Rossoneri from city rivals Inter Milan in December 1999 and made just four appearances before he was sent on loan to Derby County, then in the English Premier League.

In  an interview with ScoreNigeria, Taribo said Italian mafia could not accept the fact that an African defender would play ahead of their Italian club legends Allesandro Costacurta, Paolo Maldini and Franco Baresi. 

"The Mafia would do anything in their powers to make sure I was done with at Milan," Taribo said. "They cooked a vicious story in the press that I was injured in the desperate bid to send me out of Milan.

"The doctors were bribed to say I was injured, but it was a lie. They did that because they felt it was unthinkable for an African player to take the place of those three aging defenders.

"Liverpool came with an offer, but at the end of the day, I had to settle for Derby County."

Taribo had a successful playing career at both international and club levels, notably winning gold as a member of Nigeria's inaugural "Dream Team" that shocked the football world at the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta. 

Taribo also represented Nigeria at the 1998 and 2002 FIFA World Cup™. 

Flashback Sunday: Gaddafi as buffer to a "Black Europe"....

Gaddafi (f-r)and friends at the G8 L'Aquila Summit in 2009

Editor-in-Chief

Muammar Gadhafi recently expressed his "surprise" at not getting outside support in his "fight against terrorists" (referring to the current Libyan insurgency against his regime). Adding to the bizarre, he also opined that he (Gaddafi) was the buffer to a "Black Europe".

Gaddafi had famously asked the European Union (EU) to pay him at least €5bn (£4bn; $6.3bn) a year, to stop illegal African immigration and thus prevent a "Black Europe". 

In his typically off-color style, Gaddafi goes on to state:

"We don't know... what will be the reaction of the white and Christian Europeans faced with this influx of starving and ignorant Africans"

He recently asserted again, in addition to his deluded rants that he is "fighting against terrorists (talk of the pot calling the kettle black), that if his current genocide against his own people were not allowed to continue, he would open the floodgates of Europe to “Blacks from Sub-Saharan Africa".

Gaddafi made it quite clear in an interview with France 24 television channel that "millions of Blacks could come to the Mediterranean to cross to France and Italy, and Libya plays a role in preventing this".

One sure wonders what the African leaders, who sat at the same table with this lunatic, now think of him, in light of his obvious lack of regard for them and their people.

Gaddafi is a savvy politician. Sure he is mad (that has never been in question), but he does understand the sensibilities of the likes of Silvio Berlusconi and Nicolas Sarkozy, amongst other European and western leaders.

He has dined with them and knowing fully well, what their worst fears are, he is using that capital and leverage to crush the rebellion from the east of Libya.

No one should therefore be surprised that the powers at NATO and the United States continue to stand pat while the butcher of Tripoli continues with air raids and helicopter gunships on civilians and children.

After all, the only thing worse than that, would be a "Black Europe", something Berlusconi, Sarkozy, Merkel (who famously stated that "multiculturalism has utterly failed") and Cameron just can't stomach.

The rest of the world is watching....

Epstein’s accusers call her his protector and procurer — Ghislaine Maxwell now prosecutors’ target?

L-R - Jeffrey Epstein, Donald Trump and Alex Acosta

By Mark Fisher - Washington Post 

Ghislaine Maxwell was, according to her accusers, Jeffrey Epstein’s protector and procurer, his girlfriend and his madam. She was, by all accounts, a soul mate and a mirror image. 

He grew up in Brooklyn with no money to speak of and never finished college. She is Paris-born, Oxford-educated, a jet-setter who partied with princes and billionaires. 

Together, Epstein and Maxwell allegedly built what prosecutors, police and a growing number of women described as a sex-trafficking operation that crisscrossed the nation to provide Epstein with three young girls a day. 

The death of Epstein, the convicted sex offender who authorities said hanged himself in a federal detention center cell in New York, leaves those who seek to hold someone responsible for the alleged abuse of dozens of girls with one prime target: Maxwell.

The U.S. attorney in New York, Geoff Berman, assured the “brave young women who have already come forward and ... the many others who have yet to do so” that “our investigation of the conduct charged in the indictment — which included a conspiracy count — remains ongoing.”

According to many of the women who have spoken about what Epstein allegedly did to them, Maxwell was the financier’s chief co-conspirator.

Maxwell, 57, has not been charged and has denied any wrongdoing. According to people familiar with the investigation, authorities have had trouble locating Maxwell, who is believed to be living abroad. Her five-story Manhattan townhouse was sold in 2016 for $15 million by a company that used the address of Epstein’s New York office.

Her lawyers told a judge in 2017 that she was in London, but had no fixed address. Lawyers representing Epstein’s alleged victims said they wouldn’t expect Maxwell to return to the United States anytime soon for fear of being arrested.

Martina Vandenberg, founder and president of the non-profit Human Trafficking Legal Center, said she was “thrilled” to hear the prosecutors’ announcement that the investigation would continue, saying it would encourage more alleged victims to come forward.

For someone who stood by Epstein through the most sordid allegations, Maxwell was also a factor in his downfall: It was through a 2015 defamation lawsuit filed against Maxwell by one of Epstein’s alleged victims, Virginia Roberts Giuffre, that thousands of pages of documents containing detailed accounts of Epstein’s alleged abuses became public last week.

But Maxwell herself had long since slipped away. Although associates of Epstein said Maxwell never completely broke off relations with Epstein, she became far less of a presence at his various properties in recent years.

Maxwell was a focus of the Epstein investigation from the start, according to the Palm Beach police officials who began the probe. The girls they interviewed repeatedly described Maxwell as the co-ordinator of Epstein’s sex-trafficking operation. But detectives were never able to interview Maxwell.

Attorneys for Maxwell did not return calls seeking comment. Throughout the years since Epstein was first accused of sexual abuse, Maxwell has insisted that she did nothing wrong and knew of no illegal acts. In a deposition she gave in Giuffre’s defamation suit in 2016, Maxwell said that “Virginia is an absolute liar and everything she has said is a lie. Therefore, based on those lies I cannot speculate on what anybody else did or didn’t do ... everything she said is false.” The suit was settled out of court in 2017.

But a growing number of women have said that Maxwell was the prime organizer of Epstein’s three-times daily “massages,” and that she acted as recruiter and paymaster for the girls who came to Epstein’s Palm Beach mansion.

Giuffre said Maxwell recruited her in 2000, when she was 16 or 17 and working at President Trump’s Palm Beach club, Mar-a-Lago.

As Giuffre recalled it in her lawsuit, Maxwell told her, “I know somebody. We can train you. We can get you educated. You know, we can help you along the way if you pass the interview. If the guy likes you, then, you know, it will work out for you. You’ll travel. You’ll make good money.”

But at her first meeting with Epstein, Giuffre said in a deposition, Maxwell “instructed me to take off my clothes and to give oral sex to Jeffrey Epstein.”

In an interview with the Miami Herald, Giuffre said, “The training started immediately. It was everything down to how to give a blow job, how to be quiet, be subservient, give Jeffrey what he wants. A lot of this training came from Ghislaine herself, and being a woman, it kind of surprises you that a woman could actually let stuff like that happen. But not only let it happen but to groom you into doing it.”

Giuffre also said that Maxwell ordered her to have sex with Britain’s Prince Andrew, New Mexico’s former Democratic governor Bill Richardson and former Senate Majority Leader George J. Mitchell, D-Maine.

“My whole life revolved around just pleasing these men and keeping Ghislaine and Jeffrey happy,” Giuffre said in the deposition. “Their whole entire lives revolved around sex.”

Spokesmen for Richardson and Mitchell vigorously denied Giuffre’s allegations and said they never had any contact with her. A spokesperson for Buckingham Palace said, “Any suggestion of impropriety with underage minors is categorically untrue.”

Asked in a deposition about Maxwell’s role in procuring girls for him, Epstein said only, “Fifth,” referring to his Fifth Amendment protection against self-incrimination.

Johanna Sjoberg, a student at Palm Beach Atlantic University when she said Maxwell hired her as an assistant, said in a 2015 deposition that was released Friday that it was Maxwell’s job to ensure that three girls a day were made available to Epstein for his sexual pleasure.

“He needed to have three orgasms a day,” Sjoberg said. “It was biological, like eating.”

In another document released Friday, Rinaldo Rizzo, the houseman for one of Epstein’s closest friends testified that a 15-year-old Swedish girl tearfully told him that Maxwell and Epstein had threatened her with physical harm and confiscated her passport to assure that she stayed on Epstein’s private island in the Caribbean.

Yet another woman has claimed that Maxwell not only recruited girls for Epstein, but took part in the sexual abuse of girls. Maria Farmer said in an affidavit earlier this year that she met Maxwell and Epstein at an art show when she was a graduate student in Manhattan in 1995. The next summer, Farmer said, both Maxwell and Epstein sexually assaulted her at the Ohio estate of Leslie Wexner, the billionaire founder of The Limited stores and Epstein’s only publicly known financial client. Farmer also said that Maxwell took part in the sexual abuse of her 15-year-old sister on a massage table at Epstein’s Zorro Ranch in New Mexico.

Through her years with Epstein, Maxwell maintained a very public life at the pinnacle of society. She was a friend of John Kennedy Jr. in New York in the 1990s and a guest at Chelsea Clinton’s wedding in 2010. She had a long relationship with an Italian count. She attended fashion shows and top-dollar benefit balls in New York and London and went to the Vanity Fair party at the Oscars, where she was photographed in 2014 with Elon Musk, the tech entrepreneur.

In 2000, she obtained her townhouse on Manhattan’s East 65th Street; it was purchased for her for $5 million (U.S.) by an anonymous corporation located at the same address as Epstein’s finance office.

Maxwell served on boards of charities and founded a non-profit organization that sought to conserve the world’s oceans. The organization announced last month that it was ceasing operations.

Describing herself as “unemployed,” Maxwell donated the maximum permissible, $2,300, to Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign in 2007.

In a profile of Epstein in Vanity Fair in 2003, he said that Maxwell was not a paid employee but rather his “best friend.”

But after Epstein’s conviction on sexual abuse charges in 2008, Maxwell appeared to distance herself from her friend.

Maxwell grew up in a 53-room mansion on 14 acres near Oxford. Her father was Robert Maxwell, a British member of Parliament and book and newspaper publisher who was regularly on the front pages until he died mysteriously in 1991 aboard the Lady Ghislaine, a yacht he had named for his youngest daughter. 

 The official ruling was that his death was an accident, but some British press coverage speculated that Maxwell, under pressure because of his enormous debts, killed himself. Ghislaine never believed that and subscribed to the notion that her father was murdered.

In life, the father — born Jan Hoch, a Czech Jewish refugee before he transformed himself into a London publisher — carried himself like a man of extreme wealth. When he died, he was found to owe money to more than 40 banks, to the tune of more than $4 billion.

Soon after her father’s death, Ghislaine Maxwell moved to New York. She had a trust fund from her father, which provided her with about $100,000 a year, according to British news reports. But there was no fortune to rely on; she worked in Manhattan selling real estate.

Then, less than a year after her father died, she met Epstein. Maxwell was Epstein’s guide to a heady world of celebrity, wealth, power and royalty. She introduced him to Bill Clinton and to Prince Andrew, who became a frequent visitor to Epstein’s properties. Maxwell and Epstein flew around the world on his private jet and invited top scientists and business leaders to dinners.

Friends said that although their romantic relationship lasted only a few years, she continued to work with or for him long afterward. In court documents, former employees at the Epstein mansion in Palm Beach described Maxwell as the house manager, the person who oversaw the staff, handled finances and served as social coordinator, often doing the glad-handing while the more reserved Epstein stayed in the background at parties and dinners.

In 1993, an ad in Yoga Journal offered a “full time position” for an “Iyengar Yoga Instructor” to “teach a private individual.” “The job includes fantastic perks such as extensive travel,” the ad said, and it advised interested parties to call “Miss Maxwell” at a phone number that was Epstein’s office number.

In a deposition in 2016, Maxwell agreed that her work at the Epstein houses “included hiring many people, ... all sorts of people.” She said that “a very small part of my job was from time to time to find adult professional massage therapists for Jeffrey. As far as I’m concerned, everyone who came to his house was an adult professional person.”

Jeffrey Epstein saga: Bill Clinton visited Africa multiple times with the billionaire investor and serial pedophile. The can may just be opening.....

DAVIDICKE.COM

CC™ Newsreel

Former President Bill Clinton denied knowing anything about the “terrible crimes” allegedly committed by billionaire financier Jeffrey Epstein.

In a statement released Monday, Clinton said he took four trips with Epstein in 2002 and 2003: one to Europe, one to Asia and two to Africa.

All were in connection with the Clinton Foundation, his family’s charitable organization, he said, and the two were accompanied by foundation employees and the U.S. Secret Service.

Clinton also said he met Epstein at his Harlem office in 2002 and later went to the financier’s apartment with a staff member and security detail.

Clinton also said he has not spoken to Epstein in “well over a decade” and “has never been to Little St. James Island, Epstein’s ranch in New Mexico or his residence in Florida.”

The complete statement appears below: 

"In 2002 and 2003, President Clinton took a total of four trips on Jeffrey Epstein’s airplane: one to Europe, one to Asia, and two to Africa, which included stops in connection with the work of the Clinton Foundation."

However, Clinton’s statement is contradicted by the actual flight manifests, which show the former president may have taken as many as 26 flights on Epstein’s plane between 2001 and 2003, The Daily Beast noted.

Epstein has previously been tied to Clinton and President Trump. Flight logs from Epstein’s private jet published by Gawker in 2015 put Clinton on the plane more than a dozen times. 

Epstein is accused of paying dozens of girls as young as 14 to engage in sex acts with him in his homes in New York and Florida from 2002 and 2005.

Authorities allege he “conspired with others” to sexually abuse and exploit the girls, and paid his victims to recruit others, court documents say.

Although Epstein pleaded guilty in 2008 to prostitution charges and registered as a sex offender in Florida as part of a sweetheart plea deal with U.S. attorneys in Miami, he received very little jail time and was allowed work release.

In November, the Miami Herald published a three-part exposé identifying 80 women who said they were abused by Epstein. The investigations also revealed the accused’s relationships with high-profile people, including Bill Clinton and Donald Trump.

The Miami Herald had reported that Clinton often flew in Epstein’s private plane and visited Little St. James Island but also said there was no evidence connecting the former president or Trump to Epstein’s crimes.


Source: The Hill. HuffPost

China’s central bank rules all crypto transactions are illegal

CC™ Financial News

China's central bank has declared all financial transactions involving cryptocurrencies illegal, sounding the death knell for the digital trade in China after a crackdown on the volatile currencies.

The global values of cryptocurrencies including Bitcoin have massively fluctuated over the past year partly due to Chinese regulations, which have sought to prevent speculation and money laundering.

"Virtual currency-related business activities are illegal financial activities," the People's Bank of China (PBOC) said in an online statement Friday, adding that offenders would be "investigated for criminal liability in accordance with the law."

The notice bans all related financial activities involving cryptocurrencies, such as trading crypto, selling tokens, transactions involving virtual currency derivatives and "illegal fundraising".

Bitcoin, which had already been falling before the announcement, sank by as much as 8.9 percent to $41,019 in European afternoon trading before recovering slightly later in the day.

The central bank said that in recent years trading of Bitcoin and other virtual currencies had become "widespread, disrupting economic and financial order, giving rise to money laundering, illegal fund-raising, fraud, pyramid schemes and other illegal and criminal activities."

This was "seriously endangering the safety of people's assets," the PBOC said.

While crypto creation and trading have been illegal in China since 2019, further crackdowns this year by Beijing warned banks to halt related transactions and closed much of the country's vast network of bitcoin miners.

Friday's statement by the central bank sent the strongest yet signal that China is closed to crypto.

Control

Bitcoin, the world's largest digital currency, and other cryptos cannot be traced by a country's central bank, making them difficult to regulate.

Analysts say China fears the proliferation of illicit investments and fundraising from cryptocurrency in the world's second-biggest economy, which also has strict rules around the outflow of capital.

The crypto crackdown also opens the gates for China to introduce its own digital currency, already in the pipeline, allowing the central government to monitor transactions.

In June, Chinese officials said more than 1,000 people had been arrested for using the profits from crime to buy cryptocurrencies.

Several key Chinese provinces have banned the operation of cryptocurrency mines since the start of this year, with one region accounting for eight percent of the computing power needed to run the global blockchain—a set of online ledgers to record bitcoin transactions.

Bitcoin values tumbled in May on the back of a warning by Beijing to investors against speculative trading in cryptocurrencies.

"China's ban on all cryptocurrency trading activity will have some short-term impact on currency valuation, but long-term implications are likely to be muted," said Ganesh Viswanath Natraj, Assistant Professor of Finance at Warwick Business School.

"This ban will result in the migration of crypto investment opportunities to other hubs in Asia, such as Singapore's launch of the DBS digital currency exchange earlier this month," he added.

NIGERIA - PROJECTS BEING INSTITUTED BY THE TINUBU GOVERNMENT FOR ECONOMIC GROWTH AND DEVELOPMENT

CC™ VideoSpective

Is the business card dead?

Meishi/business cards - vital part of Japanese culture

Industries may change and brand names may come and go, but one tradition in the business world has remained largely unchanged for hundreds of years.
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The exchange of cards between two people who are meeting for the first time is a ritual that goes back as far as business itself.

For most of us, the handing over of contact details is an important moment - a clear signal that a connection has been made.

But as our lives turn increasingly digital, technology is attempting to provide a range of futuristic alternatives to the old-fashioned card.

Ever since the arrival of electronic communication, people have been exploring new ways to share information with each other- from swapping email addresses to trading mobile phone numbers and, increasingly, connecting through an online social network.

A range of services have appeared to take advantage of this trend, including Bump Technologies, a two-year-old startup based in California's Silicon Valley. Its application, which users download to their phones, lets people trade contact details simply by tapping their handsets together.

It is an approach that has a number of advantages over the traditional paper card, says Bump's Sadie Bascom - particularly since nobody goes anywhere without their mobile these days.

"It's easy, always on your phone, and you never have to remember to grab a stack of physical cards or worry about them running out."

It also gives users the chance to add directly to somebody's address book - skipping the need to enter those details by hand or saving people the chore of rifling through piles of cards to find the details they are looking for.

"People's dependence on their mobile devices to help them manage their lives is increasing," she adds. "Why take a few minutes to type someone into our phone when you can bump and save their info in a matter of seconds?

Going digital has other advantages, too. Traders can include information that might be hard to fit on to a traditional business card, such as a portfolio or even a CV.

And for those who feel comfortable with the idea, forging a connection on Facebook or Twitter can prove a useful way to add personality to an otherwise sterile working relationship.

Given the explosive growth of the social websites over the past few years, some see this trend as a potential goldmine.

Investors including Sequoia - the venture capital group famous for backing Google, Oracle and PayPal - have pumped almost $20m into Bump, for example, in the hope that it can become a mainstream hit.

Meanwhile LinkedIn, the world's biggest business-centric social network, recently announced its plan to float on the stock market.

Analysts estimate that the launch will value the company, which lets people trade business contact information over the web, at around $175m.

While the trend to go completely digital might be growing, however, there is still a roaring trade in traditional cards. But even those are now getting a number of hi-tech overhauls.

Lower manufacturing costs mean that it is easier and cheaper than ever to make customised cards - leading some who want to stand out from the crowd to opt for innovative designs and materials such as aluminium and plastic that were previously too expensive to use.

London-based service Moo.com, meanwhile, has taken advantage of technology in a different way. Advanced digital printing techniques mean that Moo customers can use their own photographs to create a stack of hundreds of cards which each carry different, personalised images.

As a result the company, which now has customers worldwide and an office in the US, has built a strong following among creative professionals and technology-led businesses.

Richard Moross, Moo's founder and chief executive, says that this is because a physical card "conveys the card holder's personality through design".

"It's way more than just contact info," he says. "The more prevalent digital becomes, the more meaningful interacting is in the real world - analogue still rules at conferences and events. Using a digital business card can be a bit like talking on your phone at the dinner table."

Indeed, in some cultures, the role of the physical calling card is still hugely important.

While Americans might casually flip out a card from their wallet, for example, Japanese executives will carefully present their cards with both hands as a sign of respect.

But what is clear in almost every case, however, is that the advances in online networking mean the lines between professional and personal are becoming increasingly blurred.

The more information we share online through services like Facebook, Twitter and blogs, the bigger the idea of swapping contact details becomes - regardless of whether it's done physically or virtually.

"We have since seen a shift in the demographic as Bump gained popularity," says Sadie Bascom. "The majority of bumps now actually occur after 5pm, and our most used features are the photo sharing and messaging tools."

Source: BBC Business/Technology News