Free Republic

China's central bank has acquired a secret stake in Prudential, Britain's second-­largest insurer, as part of Beijing's increasingly active plans to deploy its vast pool of foreign currency reserves in overseas markets, The Sunday Telegraph has learned. The shareholding of about 1 per cent in Prudential is understood to have been bought by the People's Bank of China during the past few weeks, placing it among the British insurer's top 25 institutional investors. People close to Prudential said the stake had been acquired using a nominee account. There is no indication that the investment has been made as the precursor...

A senior al-Qaida operative lived in New Jersey and posed as a student to disguise his surveillance of financial institutions as possible terror targets, officials said Wednesday. The FBI's top agent in New Jersey, Joseph Billy Jr., confirmed that the operative led an al-Qaida mission to survey the physical layout and assess weaknesses of the Prudential Financial Inc. building in downtown Newark. While carrying out this reconnaissance operation - which included surveys of the New York Stock Exchange building on Wall Street and Citigroup's headquarters in midtown Manhattan - the man attended several institutions of higher learning in New Jersey,...

A British al-Qa'eda fanatic who planned to cause "indiscriminate carnage, bloodshed and butchery" on both sides of the Atlantic has been jailed for life. Dhiren Barot, from London, plotted explosions Muslim convert Dhiren Barot was told by a judge at Woolwich Crown Court this afternoon that he must serve at least 40 years before being considered for release. Mr Justice Butterfield told Barot: "This was no noble cause. Your plans were to bring indiscriminate carnage, bloodshed and butchery first in Washington, New York and Newark, and thereafter the UK on a colossal and unprecedented scale." He added: "Your intention was...

For New Jerseyans, it was perhaps the most chilling image evoked since the Twin Towers fell: An al Qaeda operative sitting patiently in a Newark coffee shop, eyeing the exits and entrances at the nearby Prudential tower, studying security shifts and employee traffic, and sketching out a plan to bomb the city's skyline jewel and kill thousands of people. Yesterday, a British national said it was all true. Dhiran Barot, 32, pleaded guilty in London to conspiracy to murder, admitting that he plotted with others in 2000 and 2001 to attack high-profile targets in Great Britain, New York, Washington, D.C.,...

Liberal blogger David R. Mark recently wrote, “Those that call themselves ‘compassionate conservatives’ would never think to touch their fat-cat supporters. It’s much easier to spin the ‘economic benefits’ of helping huge corporations fatten their bottom lines.� Liberal academic Thomas Frank, in his book What’s The Matter With Kansas?, claims that the corporate world “wields the Republican Party as its personal political sidearm.� Both Mark and Frank express a common view that corporations are major funders of the political right, and that when corporations make contributions to nonprofit advocacy groups they give to groups on the right because those groups...

In his first political firestorm since taking office in January, Gov. Jon S. Corzine said Wednesday that he provided $5,000 in bail money to a lobbyist accused of stalking a state assemblyman. "I reacted as a human being responding to someone in need," the multimillionaire Democrat said. "However, in light of my position as governor, I realize this was a mistake." Karen Golding, a government relations manager for insurance giant Prudential Financial, is accused of breaking into the government-issued car of Assemblyman Joseph Cryan, a Democrat, and of writing threatening letters and making threatening calls to Cryan and others. Authorities...

TRENTON, N.J. (AP) — A senior al-Qaida operative lived in New Jersey and posed as a student while conducting surveillance of financial institutions as possible targets for a terror attack, according to a published report. The operative, identified by U.S. officials in Washington as Dhiren Barot, 32, entered the United States on a student visa, The Record of Bergen County reported in Thursday's editions.

Despite claims that the recent terror alert effecting Washington and New York was released for political purposes, new information reveals chilling details of al-Qaeda’s plans to attack financial and political targets in the U.S. On July 24 Pakistani authorities stormed the house of an al-Qaeda leader and captured three laptop computers and 51 data-rich discs. TIME reports that “stored on the computers were 500 photographs of potential targets inside the U.S., minutely detailed analyses of the vulnerabilities to a terrorist attack of several of them and communications among some of the most wanted terrorists in the world.” A top Homeland...

One day after U.S. authorities warned they have extraordinarily detailed information about a planned al-Qaida attack, major financial institutions in New York City, Newark, N.J., and Washington, were under heavy security as they opened for business today. The New York Stock Exchange is one of five financial institutions under heavy security after authorities discovered detailed information about al-Qaida plans. In Washington, law enforcement agencies are maintaining citywide patrols and inspecting vehicles for explosives around the International Monetary Fund, World Bank buildings and on Capitol Hill. In Manhattan, some streets were barricaded, and trucks were banned from bridges and tunnels leading...

Investigators suspect terrorist moles worked at the Citigroup and Prudential buildings to case the skyscrapers as potential targets of car or truck bombs, The Post has learned. And now federal agents want to comb through employee records of the businesses that operate in the buildings to try to identify the moles, law-enforcement sources said yesterday. The feds suspect that the extraordinarily detailed information about the skyscrapers — which was discovered on an al Qaeda computer in Pakistan — was compiled by accomplices who had time to study Citigroup's 59-story building at Lexington Avenue and 53rd Street and Prudential's building in...

Police searched trucks, blocked streets and posted machine-gun toting officers outside financial landmarks Monday, a day after the government's chilling warning that terrorists might target the buildings with bombs. Thousands of employees at some of the largest financial institutions in the country stood in line to get to work, patiently showing identification tags. "You realize that's the world you live in, and you deal with it," said Kenneth Polcari, a trader at the New York Stock Exchange, one of five buildings the government says al-Qaida operatives have studied. Recent intelligence - including photos, drawings and written documents - indicates terrorists...

WASHINGTON (AP) - The federal government warned Sunday of possible terrorist attacks against "iconic" financial institutions in New York City, Washington and Newark, N.J., saying a confluence of intelligence over the weekend pointed to a car or truck bomb. Specifically, the government named these buildings as potential targets: _The Citicorp building and the New York Stock Exchange in New York City. _The International Monetary Fund and the World Bank buildings in Washington. _The Prudential building in Newark. "The preferred means of attack would be car or truck bombs," Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge said in a briefing with journalists. That...

Companies Rated on Their GLBT Policies Tuesday, August 26, 2003 Twenty-one companies received a perfect score from the Human Rights Campaign for their treatment of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender employees and consumers, almost doubling the number of companies with the same distinction last year. "What we see this year is improvement in every category measured, from written nondiscrimination policies to domestic partner health insurance benefits and beyond. Corporate America continues to be a leader in the quest for GLBT civil rights," says HRC Education Director Kim I. Mills, who oversees HRC WorkNet, the organization's workplace project. "The bottom...

Gary Atkinson, a South Carolina businessman and Del Bruno, a Connecticut cop, have had a common problem. When their insurance companies found out that they were involved with guns, they had their insurance coverage canceled. Del Bruno sought a homeowners policy for his new condo. Just after taking out his policy with Prudential, they wanted a list of his guns and their serial numbers upon learning that he owned firearms. For whatever reason, they decided that the Mossberg 500 was a no-no, and they cancelled his policy. Prudential was of the opinion that Bruno's shotgun was not a sporting weapon,...