Corruption Ledger

Italy has dealt a surprise blow to its banks and sent shock waves across the sector in Europe by setting a one-off 40 percent tax on profits reaped from higher interest rates, after reprimanding lenders for failing to reward deposits. Sharply higher official interest rates have yielded record profits for banks, as the cost of loans has soared while lenders…

Canadian news industry groups have asked the country’s antitrust regulator to investigate Meta Platforms’ decision to block news on its platforms in the country, accusing the Facebook parent of abusing its dominant position. Meta started blocking news on its Facebook and Instagram platforms for all users in Canada last week in response to a law requiring internet giants to pay…

Syria permitted the UN and its agencies concerned to use Bab Assalama and al-Rae’ crossing points to deliver humanitarian aid to people in need for three extra months to end on November 13th. “The decision comes in light of Syria’s keenness on boosting stability, improving the humanitarian and livelihood situation of the Syrians and facilitating the delivery of aid to people in need,” Syria’s permanent representative to the UN, Bassam Sabbagh said Tuesday. On July 13th, Syria allowed the UN agencies to use Bab al-Hawa crossing point to deliver humanitarian aid. – End of content –

Students rights are limited on school grounds. But they don’t cease to exist. And what they do off-campus is subject to even fewer limitations. These are long-held facts backed by years of court precedent, the most famous of which is the Supreme Court’s 1969 Tinker decision. This is the baseline for school-student interactions when it comes to constitutional rights, as…

The grey, two-storey home with white trim toppled and slid, crashing into the river below as rushing waters carried off a bobbing chunk of its roof. Next door, a condo building teetered on the edge of the bank, its foundation already having fallen away as erosion undercut it. The destruction came at the weekend as a glacial dam burst in…

The Air Force has detected unsafe levels of a likely carcinogen at underground launch control centers at a Montana nuclear missile base where a striking number of men and women have reported cancer diagnoses. A new cleanup effort has been ordered. The discovery “is the first from an extensive sampling of active U.S. intercontinental ballistic missile bases to address specific cancer…

Occupied Jerusalem, SANA- Dozens of Palestinians were injured Tuesday at dawn, as the Israeli occupation forces stormed Askar camp, east of Nablus city in the West Bank. ‘The occupation forces raided the camp, opened fire on the Palestinians and threw toxic gas bombs at them, causing the injury of six, in addition to 185 suffocation cases, Wafa News Agency said….

SINGAPORE – Cryptocurrency firm Blockchain.com has been granted a licence in its South-east Asian headquarters of Singapore that will allow it to expand its services to global institutional and accredited investors. The company was granted a major payment institution licence from the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) on Aug 1. This comes less than a year after Blockchain.com, a pioneer…

China Tuesday renewed calls for the Philippines to remove an aging ship from a reef which Manila uses to press its stake in the Spratly Islands in defiance of Beijing’s claim to nearly the entire South China Sea. The move comes after the Philippines at the weekend accused the China Coast Guard of firing water cannon against boats on a…

Following are details of the cases against former Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan, who was arrested on Saturday after a court sentenced him to three years in prison for illegally selling state gifts. Khan has denied wrongdoing. An Islamabad court issued the arrest warrant after convicting the cricket star-turned-politician, who remains the leading opposition figure despite his removal. Police moved…

Some observers who have long watched and carefully documented US government involvement in major social media platforms as well as Wikipedia itself have commented, “the CIA Is running Wikipedia, Wow, what a shocker. Sanger asserted during Greenwald’s show, “We do have evidence that, as early as 2008, that CIA and FBI computers were used to edit Wikipedia,” before posing: “Do…

As information started to leak out from the… everywhere about NSO Group’s secondhand contribution to surveillance abuses all over the world, the world (except for the worst of NSO’s customers) began taking action. Even the government that facilitated many of NSO’s sales to human rights violators decided it might be time to toss a few restrictions on the Israel-based malware…

Fernando Perez Algaba had been staying in Argentina for a week before his alleged murder. Fernando Perez Algaba, the cryptocurrency influencer from Argentina who had been missing for more than a week, was found dead on Wednesday. Police found Mr Algaba’s remains inside a suitcase near a stream in Argentinian capital Buenos Aires, according to New York Post. The grisly case…

Legendary national security journalist Seymour Hersh has published a report this week alleging US intelligence helped the Ukrainians blow up the Kerch Bridge (or also, Crimean Bridge), which happened earlier this month and corresponded to President Putin refusing to renew the Black Sea Grain Initiative deal. What’s more is that Hersh’s sources described that the US assisted in the initial,…

The passing of a bill this week by the Israeli parliament, or Knesset, restricting the Supreme Court’s powers has garnered domestic opposition and even international calls for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his far-right government to reconsider. The push for the bill, months in the making, has brought out thousands of Israelis to the streets, with the country’s opposition rallying…

Intellexa (AKA Intellexa Anonymi Etaireia), an alliance of digital intelligence firms in Greece run by an ex-Israeli intel officer, and Cytrox AD (AKA Sytrox), which produces their Predator spyware, added to U.S. ‘entity list’ which already includes Israel’s NSO and Candiru. Late last year, Citizen Lab uncovered the hacking of an Egyptian dissident’s phone. The affected device was host to two forms…