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The acquisition hopes to combine Take-Two’s industry clout with Zynga’s massive mobile gaming following.

Eight men said they were abused by paedophile Barry Bennell while he was a Manchester City scout.

Ukraine warns Europe it may have to siphon off Russian gas
The Duran: Episode 1188

Ukraine may have to siphon off Russian gas from transit pipelines – former Naftogaz chief

Ukraine may have to siphon off Russian gas from transit pipelines – former Naftogaz chief

KIEV, January 4. /TASS/. Under the pessimistic scenario Ukraine may face gas import problems during this heating season and will have to siphon off Russian gas from the transit pipeline, the former head of the Naftogaz company, Andrey Kobolev, has said.

France erupts in protest against Macron’s “pi** off” mandates
***News Topic 687***

Denmark’s defense intelligence chief has been behind bars for a month on charges of leaking state secrets

The head of Denmark’s foreign intelligence agency, Lars Findsen, was arrested last month as part of a case linked to a leak of “highly classified” information, reports have revealed.

Findsen, the head of the Danish Defense Intelligence Service (DDIS), has been charged with leaking top-secret information that could damage the nation’s security or relations with foreign powers, according to the Danish TV2 channel, citing unnamed sources.

He was reportedly arrested and brought into custody on December 9, but this remained undisclosed until Monday, when the Copenhagen City Court pulled back the curtain on the little-known case. Authorities are still treating the probe with the utmost secrecy and very few details have been released to the public. 

On the day of the arrest, the Danish Security and Intelligence Service (PET) issued a short press release saying that four “current and former members” of both the DDIS and PET were arrested and searches of various addresses were carried out.

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All four were charged with leaking “highly classified information from PET and DDIS,” the statement said, adding that the arrests were the result of a long-running investigation into the leaks conducted by both intelligence services. 

Leaking information from the intelligence services can result in up to 12 years in prison, the media said. It’s not yet clear if the secret data was leaked to a foreign power, the media, or someone else. 

One of the four suspects was released eight days after his arrest, while the other three remained behind bars. 

Findsen was relieved of his duties by Defense Minister Trine Bramsen along with two other defense intelligence officials back in August 2020 over another scandal. 

At the time, the DDIS was accused of unjustifiably spying on Danish citizens as well as withholding vital information that prevented effective law compliance monitoring of its activities by the Danish authorities.

A boy in South London has been detained in an anti-terror probe

A 15-year-old boy has been arrested at a South London address over links to “extreme right-wing” terrorism.

The teen has been released on bail until February as he is not considered an immediate threat to the public. London police told the BBC that the Met’s Counter Terrorism Command arrested the 15-year-old in South London on Friday morning.

The property was duly searched by the arresting officers while the boy was brought to a police station. The Met police said the teenager was detained on suspicion of taking part in the preparation of terrorist acts linked to “extreme right-wing ideology.” A further probe will be conducted, a spokesperson for the police said. 

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The boy has since been released on bail until a date in February. The Met said the teenager is not believed to be an imminent threat to the British public.

The spokesperson urged people to continue coming forward in providing tip-offs for the police. “Every year thousands of reports from the public help the police keep communities safe from terrorism,” she noted.

A record number of British teenagers were arrested in the year up to September 2021, according to Home Office statistics. In the 12-month period, 25 arrests were made, the majority being linked to right-wing ideology. Under-18s accounted for 13% of all terror-related arrests.

An investigation has shed light on how journalists were vetted and threatened by a customs agent supposedly looking into forced labor, but actually seeking leaks related to President Trump and his alleged collusion with Russia.

“It was almost 10pm on a Thursday night, and Ali Watkins was walking around the capital following instructions texted by a stranger. One message instructed her to walk through an abandoned parking lot near Washington, DC’s Dupont Circle, and then wait at a laundromat. Then came a final cryptic instruction: She was to enter an unmarked door on Connecticut Avenue leading to a hidden bar.

“The Sheppard, an upscale speakeasy, was so dimly lit it was sometimes hard to see the menu, let alone a stranger at the bar. But amid the red velvet upholstery, Watkins, then a reporter at Politico, almost immediately spotted the man she was supposed to meet: He was wearing a corduroy blazer and jeans and had a distinctive gap between his teeth.

“‘I won’t tell you my name, but I work for the US government,’ he said, according to her account later provided to government investigators.”

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Thus began a long story recently published on Yahoo about a spy operation on members of the press that took place during the time of the Trump administration, which eventually ensnared members of Congress, in an effort to sniff out governmental leaks related to the former president’s alleged collusion with Russia. This, of course, was a claim reported as fact repeatedly by the media, but ultimately never established in the Mueller Investigation report.

Watkins’ meeting was part of a rogue dragnet operation that expanded to involve more than one government agency and ultimately pried into the workings and personal lives of as many as 20 journalists, some of whom had dug up stories on the administration’s failings.

These revelations emerged just before a similar story in which the White House ensnared two members of Congress and several staffers, who claim to have been wrongfully targeted. Details make it appear the rogue spy operation may have fed into that as well, and a number of US news organizations are now demanding answers.

Watkins, a rising star who had gone from Huffington Post to Buzzfeed to Politico during the investigation, agreed to the meeting at the pub, hoping to chat with a member of government who would be a potential source of information.

It turned out the man was more interested in gaining information about her than in providing any. Later, Watkins would say of the meeting that she “was deeply troubled at the lengths CBP [Customs and Border Protection] and DHS [Department of Homeland Security] personnel apparently went to try and identify journalistic sources and dig into my personal life. It was chilling.”

Watkins noted the man seemed to know an awful lot about her, including details of her travels and companionship. Their four-hour meeting changed both of their lives. Her married boyfriend, James Wolfe – who worked on Capitol Hill – was sentenced to two months in prison for lying to the FBI about his relationships with reporters, though Watkins denied Wolfe had ever shared any information with her during their involvement.

As for the mysterious man at the bar? Articles that came out later said Jeffrey Rambo was a rogue actor at DHS during the Trump administration who had taken it upon himself to pursue leaks for glory. Rambo worked in the Customs and Border Protection [CBP] division where lax rules routinely allowed agents to use secret databases to gain information without warrants.

Rambo maintains he operated within the law, and told Yahoo, “​​I’m being accused of blackmailing a journalist and trying to sign her up as an FBI informant… because of misinformation reported by the news media.”

He was, he claims, assigned to investigate illegal forced labor and came across Watkins when he was looking for journalists who reported on labor abuses. Rambo says he was merely vetting her as a potential reliable source of info. He hoped she could connect him to other journalists or people inside government with knowledge of illegal forced labor.

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“There is no specific guidance on how to vet someone,” Rambo later told investigators. “In terms of policy and procedure… there’s no policy and procedure on vetting.”

Rambo is an example of a government agent pulling a dragnet through government databases, looking at the private lives, including the romantic relationships, of US citizens under no suspicion of criminal activity to see what he could unearth.

Hugh Handeyside, an attorney at the American Civil Liberties National Security Project, warned Yahoo, “When agencies give their employees access to this ocean of information, especially without training or rigorous oversight, the potential for abuse goes through the roof.”

But Rambo does not agree that any abuse occurred: “When a name comes across your desk, you run it through every system you have access to. All of the things that led up to my interest in Ali Watkins were standard practice of… what we did and probably what’s still done to this day.”

Everything is connected from the top down

Rambo’s division prided itself in “out-of-the-box” thinking. His supervisor, Dan White, intentionally created a loose atmosphere, calling his team “WOLF,” an acronym for “Way Out in Left Field.” As he described it, “We are pushing the limits and so there is no norm… no guidelines. We are the ones making the guideline.”

CBP’s investigation into labor abuses came directly from the secretary of Homeland Security above White, because the CBD believed China was mining cobalt in the Democratic Republic of the Congo using forced labor. US customs was looking for unfair practices to assist Trump’s trade war with China, and Rambo was tasked with leading an operation to investigate that particular situation.

The plan was to use information he gathered to sanction companies under the Tariff Act of 1930. He was given a free hand but was told to vet everyone he used as a source (which is how he came to vet Watkins). Among those he vetted was Martha Mendoza, a Pulitzer Prize-winning Associated Press reporter who specifically covered forced labor, yet it was Watkins who snagged his undivided attention because of her writing on purported Russian spying operations, a topic of great interest to the Trump administration (and Congress) at that time.

AP responded, “We are deeply concerned about this apparent abuse of power. This appears to be an example of journalists being targeted for simply doing their jobs, which is a violation of the First Amendment.”

Explaining his interest in Watkins, Rambo told Yahoo that she “was, for lack of a better word, the hot-topic reporter at the time.” While that may be true, she had never covered Rambo’s assigned area of interest. The question that ensnared his operation later was whether Rambo was really just “vetting” Watkins, or whether he was seeking an opportunity to help the Trump administration find leaks?

Rambo explained to investigators later on that he focused on Watkins only because he wanted to identify journalists who could help him publish stories that would allow him to “overstate” US enforcement capabilities, believing these would cause shippers to alter their routes, showing the government which ones were involved in illegal activities. If true, this went well beyond his mission mandate of finding sources for intel on illegal labor.

The Senate Finance Committee, which oversees CBP, was in the dark on its work on forced labor and, so, unaware of how Rambo’s research had morphed into tracking down leaks for the Trump administration.

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Keith Chu, spokesman for Senator Ron Wyden, chair of the Senate Finance Committee, was stunned that Customs would ever have any involvement in pursuing leak investigations.

“I can tell you at minimum that is an overexuberant interpretation,” he said. “CBP does not conduct psychological ops or misinformation campaigns. CBP is not a member of the intelligence community. CBP does not have the authorities to do those kinds of things.”

Rambo believed otherwise. “Vet the reporters you use,” he said his boss had told him. “‘Vet them through our systems.’ I vet them no different than I vet a terrorist. When you say vet someone, you vet them. There’s no parameters on what that means.”

Connecting the dots

What happened next went beyond any sense of parameters as he conducted his own “vetting” without warrants, using government databases to identify Watkins’ family members. And something caught his attention in that process; she was flying to Cuba with the head of security for the Senate Intelligence Committee, who turned out to be her boyfriend, Wolfe. Rambo now had a theory that he was supplying Watkins with access to information from the Senate committee in exchange for a relationship.

That’s when Rambo reached out to Watkins – using a codename so that she couldn’t readily identify him with the CBP – for their meeting.

Just beforehand, he notified an old contact at the FBI to let them know he’d be meeting with someone who might be of interest. (Would that be as a confidential informant on illegal labor, or as a source for connections to leaks between the Trump administration and the FBI-connected independent Mueller Investigation or the related Senate investigation?)

During the meeting, Watkins came to believe this stranger knew far too much about her as he was asking questions around the things he did know.

His seemingly endless questions eventually came around to Wolfe, and whether or not he was her boyfriend and whether or not he had ever leaked confidential information to her. She admitted the relationship, but denied the leaking. Rambo, then, began to imply threats against her, indicating he could make information about her married boyfriend public.

“Are you trying to blackmail me?” Watkins asked him. She felt “spooked.” Was he coercing her to admit her boyfriend was leaking confidential information?

After their meeting, Rambo emailed his FBI contact to explain he had a person of possible interest who was in an “improper relationship” with a member of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. All of this was based on information gathered initially without warrants and then leveraged later to squeeze out other information in their conversation.

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Watkins became as interested in investigating Rambo as he was in investigating her. She went to the pub the next day and got a copy of the receipt for his credit-card purchase, from which she discovered his true name and connected that to CBP.

When Rambo was ready to hand over all the information he had gathered to the FBI, his supervisor at the CBP, White, decided to expand the investigation into Watkins to see if she might have more sources connected within the FBI. This expansion of the investigation also targeted journalists connected to Watkins to find leaks. The expanded op gathered information on another 15 to 20 reporters.

To facilitate this, the CBP used a system that sweeps up all the phone contacts and email contents from messaging apps (even encrypted ones) and social media as people pass through the border. They were able to use information collected from Watkins’ phone – again without any warrant.

This was done based on nothing more than Rambo’s theory that Wolfe may have been leaking classified information to Watkins. They also tracked her past travels via her geotagged Facebook check-ins, which revealed info about her mother and brother and their whereabouts. All of the information was eventually forwarded to the FBI, along with a promise from Rambo that he would get any additional information on Watkins that was requested.

Handeyside, the ACLU attorney, called the database that made all this possible because of loose guidelines “a due process disaster.”

Widening the net

As one contact led to another, the “vetting” of Watkins appears to have mushroomed into “vetting” members of Congress based on a similar story that became public immediately after this one in which the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, where Wolfe was head of security, became the target.

With each step, the connection to the original “forced-labor” investigation and “vetting of resources” for that purpose became ever more tenuous until finally AP reported, “The Justice Department under former President Donald Trump seized data from the accounts of at least two members of the House Intelligence Committee in 2018 as part of an aggressive crackdown on leaks related to the Russia investigation…

“The records of at least 12 people connected to the intelligence panel were eventually shared, including Chairman Adam Schiff, who was then the top Democrat on the committee… The records of aides, former aides and family members were also seized…

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“Opening such an investigation into members of Congress is extraordinarily rare. The Trump administration’s attempt to secretly gain access to data of individual members of Congress and others connected to the panel came as the president was fuming publicly and privately over investigations – in Congress and by then-special counsel Robert Mueller – into his campaign’s ties to Russia… As the investigations swirled around him, he demanded loyalty from a Justice Department he often regarded as his personal law firm.”

One of the congressional members whose information was spied on, Eric Swalwell, commented, “I believe they were targeted punitively and not for any reason in law.”

Renegade Rambo

And Rambo? He didn’t know throughout all of his maneuvering with the FBI that his cover had been blown until the Washington Post published an article outing him over his meetings with Watkins. Suddenly, he was captured in his own dragnet to become the target of a criminal investigation. He was placed on administrative leave, pending investigation by the DHS Office of the Investigator General.

After two years, the IG’s office found grounds for potential criminal charges against Rambo. White, his supervisor, was also referred for possible charges of conspiracy and lying. Ironically, the latter charge was the same thing that sent Wolfe to prison. Mark Lytle of the US Attorney’s office, however, refused to prosecute due to “lack of CBP policies and procedures concerning Rambo’s duties.”

Rambo has returned to work as a Border Patrol agent, but clearly feels hard done by, telling Yahoo, “They never would have had a case pertaining to Ali Watkins or James Wolfe or any other people that may or may not be involved in this matter if that information wasn’t provided to them by me,” he said.

Could it ever happen again? There are many who might argue that it’s inevitable. As Handeyside, the ACLU attorney, pointed out, the lack of procedure is alarming. “We’re in a very dangerous place if having no rules means officers can’t break any rules,” he said.

Tennis icon wrongfully treated as criminal & terrorist, Serbian envoy says

The legal battle over Serbian tennis superstar Novak Djokovic’s Australian visa has sparked “understandable” anger and frustration among fans all around the world, a Serbian diplomat has told RT.

An Australian federal court overruled the cancellation of the athlete’s visa on Monday, saying that officials did not give him enough time to respond to allegations that he broke the country’s strict entry rules. The judge ordered Djokovic’s immediate release from an immigration detention center.

“I hope that Australian authorities respect the decision of their court. [Respecting] a court decision is an attribute of the rule of law,” Slavoljub Tsaric, charge d’affaires at the Serbian Embassy in Moscow, told RT.

Djokovic unwillingly became “a victim of political games,” the diplomat said.

Novak Djokovic is not a criminal, a terrorist, or an illegal migrant, but was treated that way by Australian authorities, which causes understandable indignation of his fans and citizens [not just] of Serbia, but all other the world.

Melbourne police used pepper spray on Monday to disperse a crowd of Djokovic fans, some wrapped in Serbian flags, outside an office belonging to his legal team.

The athlete was set to play at the Australian Open, but was detained last week while trying to enter the country under a medical exemption for vaccination against Covid.

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Djokovic told border officials that he had not been vaccinated, but had recovered from the virus last month and produced a negative test on December 22, The Telegraph reported, citing court documents. Officials nevertheless revoked his visa, stating that the tennis player had broken the rules.

Tsaric expressed hope that Djokovic would play in the tournament. His participation remains in limbo, however, as Immigration Minister Alex Hawke said after Monday’s ruling that he may still revoke the athlete’s visa.

Indian police arrested a 25-year-old suspect behind the app for the ‘selling’ of Muslim women

Police in India have arrested a man alleged to have created an app that published doctored photos of more than 80 Muslim women who were listed for “auction” online last year. The app, called ‘Sulli Deals’, had sparked outrage.

Delhi Police nabbed Aumkareshwar Thakur, 25, from his home in Indore, a major city in the west-central state of Madhya Pradesh, over the weekend. The arrest came six months after police registered complaints against Sulli Deals’ then-unknown creators.

Thakur’s arrest comes days after a copycat app named ‘Bulli Bai’ uploaded photos of more than 100 Muslim women earlier this month. Following wide public outcry, four people, including Neeraj Bishnoi – the app’s 21-year-old alleged creator – have been arrested over the past week.

In July 2021, Sulli Deals gained national prominence after posting, as “deals of the day,” pictures sourced without consent from the profiles of prominent Muslim women, including activists, artists, and journalists critical of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government.

Both apps, which had been hosted on Microsoft-owned web platform GitHub, have been taken down. While there was no actual sale involved in either incident, several media outlets have reported that the intent was to degrade and humiliate Muslim women. The terms, ‘Sulli’ and ‘Bulli’, are reportedly slang terms used to derogatorily refer to Muslim women.

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Amid the furor over the Bulli Bai app, one of the women who had filed a police complaint against Sulli Deals in July criticized the Delhi Police for its alleged inaction in that case. But the force’s cybercrimes unit told media outlets on Sunday that Bishnoi’s interrogation had led them to Thakur.

Delhi Police Deputy Commissioner (Cyber Cell) K.P.S. Malhotra told The Indian Express that Thakur had “confessed to his crime” during interrogation and admitted to joining a “trad group on Twitter … [with the idea] to defame and troll Muslim women.”

An anonymous police source told the paper that these ‘trad’, or ‘traditional’, groups are “conservative” with “members [who] seem to have oppressive views – [ranging] from the caste system to women empowerment.”

While Malhotra said the police were “analyzing his gadgets to recover code/ images related to the app,” Thakur’s brother told the paper he had “no motive to indulge in such activity” and claimed he is “being falsely accused by those who have already been arrested.”

The head of Iran’s elite arms force pledged to inflict more damage against America for assassinating Qassem Soleimani

Major General Hossein Salami, the commander of Iran’s powerful Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC), said Tehran’s revenge for the US killing of his fellow military leader Qassem Soleimani was not over.

“We have taken part of the harsh revenge, and another part of it still remains. Everybody is definitely aware of this. The US officials must bear in mind that it is impossible to take an act of aggression on a nation and evade reciprocal revenge,” Major General Salami said, as quoted by Iranian media.

In 2020, the Al Asad Airbase was bombarded by over a dozen Iranian missiles. Iranian officials stated that the drones involved in the assassination of Soleimani were launched from the facility. US troops stationed at the base received an early warning about the imminent attack and took cover in shelters, but dozens reportedly suffered brain damage from powerful explosions outside.

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During the speech in Tehran, Salami called the missile strikes a “harsh slap in the face” of the US government. He said Iran was uniting Muslims across the region in opposition to the US, and pledged continued Iranian support to friendly forces, like the Lebanese militant movement Hamas.

The remarks were made on the same day as the US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan warned Iran and its “proxy militias” against attacking American troops and officials in the Middle East. He said despite political disagreements, Republican and Democratic administrations were “united in our resolve against threats and provocations” and “in the defense of our people.”

The White House statement came in response to Iran’s Saturday identification of 51 Trump-era officials, including Pentagon top brass, as being responsible for the assassination of Soleimani. The individuals were subjected to Iranian sanctions, as they were accused of participating in a “terrorist act against Soleimani and his companions.”

The ceremony attended by Salami commemorated the deaths of several top IRGC officials, including its then-commander Ahmad Kazemi, in an air crash in 2006. The incumbent Iranian leader of the force didn’t specifically mention Sullivan’s statement on Iran’s sanctions.