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It is the most spectacular trial ever held in Vietnam, befitting one of the greatest bank frauds the world has ever seen. Behind the stately yellow portico of the colonial-era courthouse in Ho Chi Minh City, a 67-year-old property developer stands accused of looting one of Vietnam's largest banks over a period of 11 years. The numbers involved are dizzying. Truong My Lan is charged with taking out $44bn (£35bn) in loans from the Saigon Commercial Bank. Prosecutors say $27bn may never be recovered. The habitually secretive communist authorities have been uncharacteristically forthright about this case, going into minute detail...

On June 11, Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot held a news conference with new Chief of Police David Brown. She was livid. She announced that she had been contacted by the office of Congressman Bobby Rush and presented with videos recorded on a night of rioting following anti-police protests at the end of May over the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis. The videos revealed thirteen policemen in Rush’s office, two dozing, others making coffee and preparing popcorn. Bobby Rush, indignant and upset, spoke as well. He castigated the officers for their having had “unmitigated gall” to make themselves coffee and...

In the ongoing effort to get control of the city’s streets, Mayor Lori Lightfoot staged a news conference last Friday that was meant to make a statement. Standing on a platform in Olive Park, offset by a sapphire Lake Michigan on a topaz-sky day, the Magnificent Mile’s skyscrapers served as backdrop. Aldermen, clergy, federal and state law enforcement officials all stood as socially distanced props. Lightfoot even invited Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx to stand within shouting distance of her new police superintendent, David Brown. Days earlier, Foxx had called out Brown and Lightfoot for “dishonest blame games,” after...

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Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot (D) on Monday scolded a reporter who asked if widespread looting and violence that grabbed national headlines Sunday night was the result of courts and prosecutors "going too easy on looters the last time" it occurred in the Windy City. “It almost sounds as though you’re saying this is — the reason [this is happening] is because the courts and the prosecutors were not doing their job, that they’re going too easy on the looters from the last time around," ABC-7 political reporter Craig Wall asked Chicago Police Superintendent David Brown. “No, no, don’t — do...

...by resolving discrepancies between archeological and radiocarbon methods of dating the eruption, according to new University of Arizona-led research... "It's about tying together a timeline of ancient Egypt, Greece, Turkey and the rest of the Mediterranean at this critical point in the ancient world -- that's what dating Thera can do," said lead author Charlotte Pearson, an assistant professor of dendrochronology at the UA Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research... Archeologists have estimated the eruption as occurring sometime between 1570 and 1500 BC by using human artifacts such as written records from Egypt and pottery retrieved from digs. Other researchers estimated the...

Dallas police Chief David Brown announced his retirement Thursday, bringing an end to a tenure marked by police unions that at one time demanded his resignation and by widespread praise for his response to a July sniper attack that killed five officers. Brown issued a statement saying he will retire Oct. 22 after 33 years with Dallas police.

Few people understand loss better than David Brown, the Dallas police chief who stood before television cameras Friday morning and said, “We are heartbroken.” Even before five police officers were killed Thursday at the site of a Black Lives Matter protest where seven other people were wounded, Brown had become intimate with loss, pummeled by it again and again in his career and personal life. Before this week, violence had already taken from him a former partner, a brother, a son. When Brown was named police chief in 2010, he entered the position with a reputation of being an intense...

David Brown, an urbane New Yorker whose publishing background was the foundation of a producing career in Hollywood, with films like “The Sting,” “Jaws,” and “The Verdict,” and on Broadway, died Monday at home in Manhattan. He was 93.

PRESS RELEASE FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Kenneth Gladney to Tour U.S. Soon to Discuss Individual Rights in New Educational Program, "Project Liberty" St. Louis, Missouri August 11, 2009 -- Kenneth Gladney thanks everyone for their outpouring of support and well wishes. After he recovers from his injuries, Kenneth plans to travel across the country to promote Project Liberty, a new educational program designed to teach America's youth about their fundamental rights under the Constitution. Kenneth inform young people about his experiences on the fateful night of August 6, 2009 at Rep. Russ Carnahan's town hall meeting in South St. Louis and...

The explosives stolen from a West Side storage area were powerful enough to have blown shrapnel more than a half-mile along the highways the thieves drove after stealing the material, a federal agent testified Wednesday. None of the suspects apparently had any training in dealing with explosives, said agent Gary Ainsworth of the BATF. When recovered, he said, the explosives and detonators were packed together— a distinctly bad idea with things that go bang. An air unit helped locate the metal shed where the stolen magazines— steel boxes with wooden interiors made specifically for explosives— were being stored. According to...

Thieves who stole 400 pounds of explosives from a location west of Albuquerque also apparently took a Wells Cargo trailer used to store them and a truck to haul them, according to a papers unsealed in federal court this morning. The advertised $50,000 reward led a confidential informant to a lawyer's office in Durango on Friday with information about the stolen items and the men who took them, an affidavit reveals. But the documents failed to shed any light on how the thieves knew about the explosives or what they planned to do with them. Information from a confidential source...

Nothing more...just posted on the MSNBC website.

Teacher admits guilt in deal for probated molestation sentence BY ELIZABETH LANGTON AVALANCHE-JOURNAL An Amarillo teacher who molested a 16-year-old student pleaded guilty Thursday in exchange for a sentence that could keep a conviction off his record but requires him to register for life as a sex offender. David A. Brown, 45, of Amarillo admitted to fondling a student on five occasions between Dec. 15, 2002, and Jan. 8 during rendezvous away from school property. Until Thursday, Brown had adamantly denied his guilt. He did not testify during the five-day trial. The proceedings were moved to Lubbock because of excessive...

Teacher found guilty of teen molestation BY ELIZABETH LANGTON AVALANCHE-JOURNAL A Lubbock jury deliberated for more than 41/2 hours Wednesday before convicting an Amarillo teacher of molesting a 16-year-old student, a crime prosecutors called a blatant violation of the trust parents place in teachers. David A. Brown, 45, of Amarillo faced five charges of indecency with a child from Randall County. The jury returned guilty verdicts on each charge. Brown showed no reaction as the judge read the verdict just before midnight Wednesday. He hugged his wife and children before leaving the courtroom. The same jurors will decide Brown's punishment....

Defense accuses Amarillo teen of obsessing over, stalking teacher BY DEREK MAY AVALANCHE-JOURNAL An Amarillo girl was so obsessed with a teacher that she stalked him and created stories of secret meetings with sexual contact, a defense attorney said Friday. David A. Brown, 45, of Amarillo is being tried in Lubbock on five charges of indecency with a child from Randall County. The trial was moved because of pretrial publicity in Amarillo. Prosecutors say Brown fondled a 16-year-old Tascosa High School student on six occasions between Dec. 15, 2002, and Jan. 8 during rendezvous away from school property. Two of...