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Ripple, or XRP, surged 89 percent Thursday to a record high of 89.2 cents and was last trading near 81 cents, giving it a market value of $31.6 billion, according to CoinMarketCap.

Bitcoin was the star of the white-knuckle ride that cryptocurrencies offered in 2017 but lesser-known names, such as Ripple and Ethereum, are seen gaining prominence in 2018. While bitcoin jumped more than 1,200 percent last year, Ripple, created by the founder of bitcoin exchange Mt Gox, surged 35,000 percent in the same period. That means $100 invested in Ripple in January 2017 would have grown to about $35,000 at the start of this year. To be sure, bitcoin is still the biggest cryptocurrency by far - with market value exceeding $250 billion - and is expected to keep that mantle...

A whistleblower organization has initiated a court action to force the Department of Justice to disclose why it spied on congressional staff, setting up a landmark legal battle on an issue that has rankled both Republicans and Democrats.Last fall, several current and former congressional oversight staff were belatedly informed that the Justice Department seized phone and email records in 2017 in an internal investigation, raising concerns about separation of powers between two branches of government.Jason Foster, who is now the founder and chair of Empower Oversight, the group which sued in court this week to unseal the court documents in...

Newly unearthed photos show the Biden family's Chinese business partner meeting with Vladimir Putin. Zang Jianjun was executive director of Chinese oil giant CEFC, which partnered with Joe Biden's brother Jim and son Hunter on a deal that earned the First Family millions of dollars. Text messages obtained by DailyMail.com reveal Zang was in close contact with Chinese President Xi Jinping, and that the Chinese leader gave the green light for his partnership with the Bidens. Zang even traveled to Moscow with Xi and met with Putin while brokering a massive $9.1billion deal to buy a share of the Russian...

Albert Einstein allegedly said, “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” But without validation, he was just a super-smart guy making an educated guess about scientific repeatability and human mental stability. Fortunately, his postulation is moving from “theoretical” to “proven,” via testing provided by the Democrat party. The Dems came up with a surefire battle plan to prevent Donald Trump from returning to the Oval Office. Just prosecute him for something — it didn’t matter what. The Donald would become “damaged goods,” and voter outrage would prevent a return of mean tweets to...

The attorneys representing the corrupt DA in New York, Alvin Bragg, in their case against President Trump, have made a serious error in their case. President Trump’s attorneys must move to dismiss. DA Bragg’s case is in serious trouble. The gang behind the prosecution of President Trump made a serious error that should lead President Trump’s team to move to dismiss. Prosecutors in New York have revealed what the other crime is that Donald Trump was allegedly trying to conceal when he was falsifying business records and they claim it was to unlawfully promote his candidacy. The fatal error is...

We've fought in Afghanistan for 16 years now. Are we making progress? After 9/11, we invaded, overthrew the Taliban, killed Osama Bin Laden and -- stayed. Afghanistan is now America's longest war, ever. President Trump's solution? He'll send several thousand more soldiers. Erik Prince says he has a better idea -- fight terrorists with only 2,000 American Special Operations personnel, plus "a contractor force" of 6,000. Prince is the founder of Blackwater, the private military contractor. The military uses contractors to provide security, deliver mail, rescue soldiers and more. Private contractors often do jobs well, for much less than the...

On this date in 1374, mayor Tile von Damm was beheaded by rebel populares in his home city of Braunschweig (Brunswick). One of northern Europe’s great Hanseatic merchant cities, Braunschweig enjoyed a rich history of civic unrest — the Braunschweiger Schichten. (Literally shift, but also carrying the sense of rebellion.) The Great Rebellion in Braunschweig, by Alfred von Schüssler (mid-19th century). One of its most outstanding installments — the one recalled as the Große Schicht — kicked off on April 17, 1374. (Most of the information about this incident is in German, as are most of the links in this...

A Brooklyn woman who squinted at the 2017 solar eclipse for 10 seconds without proper eye protection is now warning others of the “irreversible eye damage” she suffered — including a blind spot in the middle of her left iris. Bridget Kyeremateng, 29, told The Post on Monday — hours before a solar eclipse was expected to be partially visible in the Big Apple — that she looked up at the spectacle without any eye protection after being unable to secure a pair of protective glasses, thinking “a couple of seconds wouldn’t do anything. “I couldn’t focus on the sun...

The State Department has informed Congress that it plans to shutter its last two consulates in Russia over caps set by Moscow on the number of diplomats that are allowed in the country. In a letter to congressional leaders sent Dec. 10 and obtained by The Hill, the administration said it will permanently close its Vladivostok consulate and temporarily halt work at the consulate in Yekaterinburg. The letter confirming the closures was sent three days before news broke of a major hack of U.S. government agencies that is believed to have been conducted by an elite Russian cyber espionage unit....

When Turkey’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) came to power in 2002, it generated considerable debate between those who saw its success as a potentially liberalizing force and critics who feared it would ultimately bring the end of Turkish democracy. Depending on who you spoke to, the AKP was poised to turn Turkey into either Sweden or Iran; to finally realize Ataturk’s vision of making the country modern and Western or permanently destroy it.Today, a decade and a half later, the future of Turkish democracy certainly looks grim. With President Recep Tayyip Erdogan now leading a heavy-handed campaign to further...

Secretary of State John Kerry said this morning that the Obama administration is "open" to considering the extradition of a Poconos scholar accused by the Turkish regime of being behind Friday's coup attempt.Kerry said on NBC's Meet the Press that the U.S. has asked President Recep Tayyip Erdogan not to become more authoritarian in response to the coup.Hurriyet Daily News reported that Erdogan has detained some 6,000 soldiers, judges and prosecutors in less than 48 hours. They're being charged with “membership of an armed terrorist organization” and “attempting to overthrow the government of the Turkish Republic using force and violence...

Antony Blinken represents neither the beginning nor the end of the info ops run to convince voters the Hunter Biden laptop was Russian disinformation. Revisiting the contemporaneous coverage of the laptop story in light of last week’s revelations about Blinken reveals the scandal extends far beyond the Biden campaign and involves government agents. Last week, news broke that a former top CIA official, Michael Morell, testified as part of a House Judiciary Committee investigation that Blinken, now-secretary of state and then-Biden campaign senior adviser, had contacted Morell to discuss the New York Post’s Hunter Biden laptop story. Blinken and Morell...

The trial in Sweden of Hamid Noury, an agent of the Iranian regime, ended on May 5th. The prosecutor told the court that there was plenty of evidence to show that Hamid Noury committed the crimes he had been charged with and she asked for him to be sentenced to life imprisonment. The verdict is expected later. The court case in Stockholm has been a direct embarrassment to Iran’s executioner president, Ebrahim Raisi, dubbed ‘The Butcher of Tehran’ for his hands-on role in the killing of thousands of political prisoners, including teenagers and even pregnant women, during a notorious massacre...

For the second time in less than a month, senior Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard officers have been killed in a suspected Israeli airstrike in Damascus, Syria. Iran's unofficial Mehr news agency said, "The Revolutionary Guards' Syria intel chief, his deputy, and two other Guards members were martyred in the attack on Syria by Israel." Updated reports say that five IRGC officers, plus some of their Syrian counterparts, were killed in the attack. The icons are already circulating. The intelligence chief, Sadegh Omidzadeh, was a close associate of Brigadier General Sayyed Reza Mousavi, the IRGC commander in Syria, who, along with...

Last week, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) apprehended a would-be "transgender" shooter who wanted to mass murder "transphobes." However, the FBI didn't swiftly nab the gunman until discovering months later that the "indigenous" suspect, a self-described "Nazi dominatrix," was posting racist, antisemitic content on social media vilifying blacks, Jews, and immigrants. The few media outlets that did cover the arrest also opted to focus on the Nazi flag-waving suspect's white nationalist ideology and downplay his "trans"-fueled bloodlust. Both The Oregonian and CourtWatch referred to the "transgender" as an "Oregon woman." Elizabeth Ballesteros West, formerly Francisco Frank Paramo, of Cottage...

Newly emerged video footage shows the spine-tingling moment Utah authorities rescued two little girls who were stuffed inside blue water barrels at the site of a bizarre doomsday cult led by their pedophile dads. Police found the confused girls, just 7 and 4, in December 2017 as they shivered inside 50-gallon barrels on sparse property used by the Knights of the Crystal Blade, bodycam footage obtained by the Explore With Us YouTube channel shows. There was also a loaded gun on the ground next to the pair, photos from the scene in Lund show. “I don’t have pants on!” one...

Rumors are swirling that the recent firings of top Italian spies were related to Obama and a plot to set up candidate and President Trump in a Hillary email scandal. Earlier this month Italian Prime Minister Conte asked for the resignations of four top intelligence officials after his call with President Donald Trump. And now another Internet Sleuth has uncovered some shocking news related to the recent removal of these top Italian intelligence ministers from their positions as top spies in the government. The story begins in January 2017 when Computer World wrote about alleged crimes committed by Italian Giulio...

On Wednesday, Judge Loretta Preska confirmed the release of the initial names from Jeffrey Epstein’s extensive client list, comprising over 150 individuals. Concurrently, a collection of previously sealed documents was made public. Following the release, the Court Listener website experienced a crash due to the overwhelming public interest. ** The Gateway Pundit posted the collection of files released by the New York judge here. However, The Gateway Pundit managed to secure a backup of this crucial information. Three individuals, known in the court documents as Doe 105, Doe 107, and Doe 110, have made appeals. Documents related to Does 105,...

A judge unsealed identities of anonymous "John Does" in Ghislaine Maxwell litigation. Several names were of Jeffrey Epstein victims, not powerful associates. One, a subject of "intense media coverage," was allowed to remain anonymous and pursue an appeal. A judge agreed to make public the names of several "John Does" who tried to keep their identities secret in the long-running litigation between Jeffrey Epstein's associate Ghislaine Maxwell and Virginia Giuffre, an Epstein victim. One of them, however — identified as "John Doe 183" in court filings — will remain anonymous despite being the subject of "intense media coverage" and was...