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OCTOBER 17, 2009 Rajaratnam Surfaced in U.S. Terrorism Probe By EVAN PEREZ and MATTHEW ROSENBERG WASHINGTON—The hedge-fund billionaire charged as part of a vast insider-trading case surfaced in an earlier, separate probe into U.S. fundraising by a Sri Lankan terrorist group, people familiar with the probe said. As part of that investigation, federal agents said they uncovered documents showing that Raj Rajaratnam, founder of the Galleon Group, was among several wealthy Sri Lankans in the U.S. whose donations to a Maryland-based charity made their way to the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, according to people familiar with the probe. Raj...

If you're considering going to Wall Street, you should really know what you're getting into. Yes, you will get paid better than average people all over the world. Yes, you will get to learn new things constantly, and yes, you will be involved in important transactions (well, hopefully) and meet interesting clients. However, there is a downside, and it's generally all in your head. A Wall Street veteran, who will remain anonymous, gave us a laundry list of ways working on the Street can actually ruin your life. Wall Streeters have to deal with a distorted sense of money, questions...

The Senate did something this past weekend it hasn't done in four years: passed a budget. The law requires the Senate to pass a budget, but Congress often ignores its own laws. For most of Barack Obama's presidency, a series of continuing resolutions kept the money -- your money -- flowing. Now the Senate wants to add a trillion dollars of new taxes, even more than President Obama seeks. Despite our growing debt, the Senate wants to fund things like the Senate barbershop, which loses a third of a million dollars every year. It's like they live in a...

Wall-Street Craziness Is Back Wolf Richter, Testosterone PitMarch 29, 2013 The craziness on Wall Street, the reckless for-the-moment-only behavior that led to the Financial Crisis, is back. This time it’s Citigroup that is once again concocting “synthetic” securities, like those that had wreaked havoc five years ago. And once again, it’s using them to shuffle off risks through the filters of Wall Street to people who might never know. What bubbled to the surface is that Citigroup is selling synthetic securities that yield 13% to 15% annually—synthetic because they’re based on credit derivatives. Apparently, Citi has a bunch of shipping...

Screen grab.Noted hedge fund manager Stan Druckenmiller, 59, on Friday warned that the U.S. economy is headed for a “storm” that could prove to be far worse than the financial meltdown of 2008.But first, if you’re not familiar with his name, here’s what you need to know: He’s one of the most respected and successful hedge fund managers in the past 30 years.Obviously, you don’t achieve that type of success (or notoriety) on Wall Street by running your mouth. That being said, if Druckenmiller, a former partner of billionaire liberal philanthropist George Soros, is predicting serious economic trouble for the...

Does anybody remember what the heck the subject matter is ????? I think it's about ILLEGAL immigrants inhabiting our country and taking us for all we're worth

MONROE, Wash. – In a move that could be right out of a Hollywood movie, a brazen crook apparently used a Craigslist ad to hire a dozen unsuspecting decoys to help him make his getaway following a robbery outside a bank on Tuesday. He then made his escape in an inner tube on the Skykomish River. The robbery happened about 11 a.m. on an armored truck guard at a Bank of America branch. "He was wearing a dust mask, a particle mask. At first I thought it might be a surgical mask. I still didn't think anything was wrong, just...

LOUISVILLE, Ky. - Female National Guard soldiers who posed nude for pictures before deploying Iraq will face "nonjudicial, administrative measures," the Army said. The women were not suspended and were "busy supporting the war effort," Maj. Jay Adams, chief of public affairs for the 13th Sustainment Command (Expeditionary), told The Courier-Journal of Louisville on Tuesday. Adams said the investigation was conducted by commanders in Iraq and that he was barred from releasing more information about the sanctions by the federal Privacy Act. Administrative sanctions can include measures such as docking soldiers' pay or confining them to barracks. The allegations were...

A recent “Freedom of Information” request has revealed that nearly 10,000 documents still exist that the 9/11 Commission were told were destroyed, and this may not fare very well for Barney Frank. According to Scott Malone of NavySeals.com and Christopher Law from the Public Education Center, these documents show that the CIA knew that several of the hijackers on 9/11 who were in the country were associated with Al-Qaeda. But authorities were powerless to deport them because of an amendment to an immigration law that Frank had authored.

This morning the New York Sun has a new report on the so-called "Saddam Tapes." The article, entitled "Furor Erupts Over Recordings of Saddam," reports that two former CIA directors, James Woolsey and John Deutch, have resigned from something called the Intelligence Summit, run by a former federal prosecutor named John Loftus. The Intelligence Summit is scheduled to release the Saddam tapes tomorrow. Loftus has been a moving force behind the appearance of the tapes; last week, the Sun reported that the House Intelligence Committee was studying the tapes, which "were provided to [the] committee by a former federal prosecutor,...

NEW YORK, May 11 /PRNewswire/ -- PLAYGIRL, the leader in adult entertainment for women since 1973, has taken the brand in a new direction. Certain that women's interest in adult entertainment is growing steadily, PLAYGIRL has entered new consumer venues and partnered with established industry leaders to introduce the brand to a wider, more contemporary audience beyond the traditional newsstand. "PLAYGIRL is a valuable commodity so we thought strategically about how to develop each venture," said Mark Graff, President of Trans Digital Media LLC, PLAYGIRL'S parent company and founder of Spice Channel. "To sustain our reputation as a favorite among...

Can you help discover water on Mars? Finding water on different regions on Mars has implications for understanding its complex geologic history, the possible existence of past life and the sustenance of potential future astronauts. Many space missions have taken photographs of the surface of the red planet, and some of them might show a subtle clue pointing to water on Mars that has been missed. By close inspection of images, following curiosity, applying scientific principles, applying knowledge about features on the Martian surface, and applying principles of planetary geology, such clues might be brought to light. In the...

FORT PIERCE, Fla. (AP) - The van in a rollover crash that killed seven Mexican migrant workers and injured another 12 appeared overcrowded and the driver did not have the appropriate license, authorities said Friday. A day after the crash ejected all 19 occupants and scattered bodies across Interstate 95, Florida Highway Patrol officials were trying to identify the victims, most of whom had no official identification.

British researchers believe that they have made a groundbreaking scientific discovery after apparently managing to "create" energy from hydrogen atoms. In results independently verified at Bristol University, a team from Gardner Watts - an environmental technology company based in Dedham, Essex - show a "thermal energy cell" which appears to produce hundreds of times more energy than that put into it. If the findings are correct and can be reproduced on a commercial scale, the thermal energy cell could become a feature of every home, heating water for a fraction of the cost and cutting fuel bills by at least...

SEPARATED AT BIRTH Peter Boyle (Everybody Loves Raymond) and Jack Welch (Everybody Hates a Jerk) Director Baz Luhrman ("Moulin Rouge") and Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz (Assistant director "Gulf War II") Kevin Bacon and Martina Navratilova Bob Hope and Kelsey Grammer Cosmo Kramer (Michael Richards) and Ralph Nader (The reason for President Bush) Some Jihad guy and some guy dressed like Liza Minnelli