Author Archives: Denise Simon

Confirmed Cases of Zika Virus in America

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InquisitR: Zika virus has been confirmed in Hawaii by United States health officials on January 16, 2016. The first case of the mosquito-borne virus in a birth on U.S. soil came with a newborn baby suffering from brain damage at a hospital in Oahu.

According to Reuters, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention spokesman Tom Skinner cautioned against assuming that the Zika virus was circulating around Hawaii. He stressed, however, that the imported disease could make the jump to local transmission.

“But I think it’s important for us to understand that there are going to be imported cases of Zika to the United States and we won’t be surprised if we start to see some local transmission of the virus.”

The Zika virus, which is spread by mosquitoes, has been found in nearly two dozen Latin American countries. The virus is suspected of causing birth defects. Health officials are concerned it could spread to the US and Canada.

CNN: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention urged pregnant women to postpone travel to Bolivia, Brazil, Cape Verde, Colombia, Ecuador, El Salvador, French Guiana, Guadeloupe, Guatemala, Guyana, Haiti, Honduras, Martinique, Mexico, Panama, Paraguay, Saint Martin, Suriname, Samoa, Venezuela and Puerto Rico. The CDC also recommended that women who have recently traveled to these places during their pregnancy be screened and monitored for the virus.

That’s because the virus has been linked to an uptick in babies born with a neurological condition called microcephaly, which can cause abnormally small heads and serious, sometimes deadly, developmental delays.

The WHO attributed the virus’ rapid spread to the fact that people in the Americas lack immunity because they haven’t been exposed to it before.

***

USAToday: A Minnesota woman has tested positive for the Zika virus after traveling to Central America, state health officials announced Wednesday.

About a dozen Americans in a handful of states have been diagnosed with Zika after visiting outbreak zones, but there is no evidence the virus, which is linked to an outbreak of birth defects in Brazil, is spreading in the USA. The virus doesn’t spread from person to person, like the flu. It’s spread by mosquitoes, like malaria and West Nile Virus.

The mosquito species that is known to spread Zika, the Aedes, doesn’t live in Minnesota, making it unlikely the disease will spread in that state.

The new case was diagnosed in a woman in her 60s from Anoka County, Minn., according to the Minnesota Department of Health. Her symptoms began Jan. 1, after she returned from Honduras. She was not hospitalized and is expected to make a full recovery, health officials said.

About 80% of people infected with Zika virus have no symptoms at all, according to the World Health Organization. Those who do become ill tend to have mild symptoms, including a low fever, rash, joint pain, headache and pink eye.

Berlin: 680 Forcing Return of 7th Century Islamic Society

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It is a terrifying condition in Berlin, where the refugee matter is becoming an unspeakable condition threatening all of Europe. What is happening there is a forecast of what can be a condition in the United States. Is Congress doing enough when most legislators are too politically correct to even had a legitimate debate.

Berlin grapples with Islamists, ISIS vets amid refugee wave

 

FNC: BERLIN –  Hundreds of potentially violent Islamic radicals, including at least 50 who have traveled to and from the Islamic State where they took up arms for ISIS, now live in Berlin, a top German law enforcement official told FoxNews.com Wednesday.

Investigators have identified 680 hardcore Islamists in the German capital, nearly half of whom are “geared toward violence,” said a spokeswoman for the Berlin office of the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, Germany’s equivalent of the FBI. While the ISIS veterans are most worrisome, all pose a serious threat, she said.

“We consider the ideology of the 680 to not be compatible with our freedom and that can be dangerous.”

– German law enforcement spokeswoman

“We consider the ideology of the 680 to not be compatible with our freedom and that can be dangerous,” Isabelle Kalbitzer told FoxNews.com, adding that the 50 estimated to have returned from Islamic State pose the most immediate threat.

The number of radical Islamists in Berlin has nearly doubled from the 350 identified in Berlin just five years ago. And at that time, fewer than 100 were considered violent. In recent years, as ISIS has risen, much of the Middle East has become engulfed in war and millions of refugees have poured into Europe, Berlin has become a magnet for terrorists, say experts.

According to a report in the newspaper Berliner Morgenpost, Berlin Integration Minister Dilek Kolat said Berlin is “stronghold of the Salafism,” referring to a virulent and violent strain of Sunni Islam that gave rise to groups such as Al Qaeda and ISIS.  Bernd Palenda, head of the Berlin intelligence agency, concurred, telling the paper Berlin is “a hot spot for Salafists.”

Throughout Germany, federal law enforcement estimates there are 7,000 active Salafists animated by the goal of a return to 7th-century Islamic society. They openly advocate stripping women of their rights and an austere way of life governed by a harsh form of Islamic Sharia law. They can be seen in Berlin handing out copies of the Koran and propaganda materials.

Now, the entrenched radicals have a new audience in the growing pool of Muslim migrants and refugees that have flocked to Berlin from the Middle East and northern Africa, she said. Nearly 50,000 refugees have landed in Berlin, most from Muslim-majority countries such as Syria, Afghanistan, Egypt and Iraq.

Recruiting by violent Islamists occurs in Berlin’s mosques and even in front of the city’s main refugee registration center.  In addition, the Muslim Brotherhood, designated a terrorist organization by the UK as well as Egypt, has a recruitment presence at the Lageso refugee center in the heart of Berlin, said Kalbitzer said.

“There are meeting places where the Salafists are recruiting,” she added said. “It continues to happen in different circles.”

The poisonous message of firebrand imams can be heard on Fridays in the city’s mosques, where attendance is swollen by the influx of refugees. Last month, a cleric named Sheikh Hassan Shahrour delivered a sermon in which he praised child murderer and Hezbollah fighter Samir Kuntar. In a 1979 attack in Israel, Kuntar bludgeoned four-year-old Israeli girl Einat Haran, whose father and two other Israelis were also killed.

Kuntar was released by Israel in a 2008 prisoner exchange, and promptly went to fight in Syria, where Israel reportedly killed him in an airstrike in December.

“You should give him a big round of applause,” said Shahrour. The audience responded with clapping.

 Largest mosque in Berlin

In 2014, the radical Danish Imam Sheikh Abu Bilal Ismail  called for the extermination of Jews at a Berlin mosque. He said it was necessary to “destroy the Zionist Jews…,” and to “count them and kill them to the very last one. Don’t spare a single one of them….”

According to a 16-page court verdict obtained by FoxNews.com , he was convicted and fined the equivalent of $1,400 for incitement to hatred.

Another Secret Deal for Iran via Obama, Missile Technology

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It is apparent we don’t know enough with regard to who is in this country, why they are here and how they are being used and exploited as bargaining tools by the White House and John Kerry advancing Iran’s position in the world. John Kerry and the State Department have given into every request and thrown in so much more to sweeten the pot, but to what end is the big question.

IranWatch: Arrested on June 8, 2010, in connection with an indictment filed on June 2, 2010, in the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland, charging Modanlo, along with Iranian citizens Hamid Malmirian, Reza Heidari, Mohammad Modares, Abdol Reza Mehrdad, and Sirous Naseri, with conspiring, between January 2000 and November 2007, to supply Iran with satellite technology and hardware in violation of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA); convicted, on June 10, 2013, of conspiracy to defraud the United States, violating the Iran Trade Embargo, and money-laundering; the remaining defendants in the case have not been arrested (as of June 2013).

Allegedly attended meetings with Iranian officials that facilitated contact with POLYOT, a Russian government-owned aerospace enterprise, which led to the launch of an Iranian satellite on October 27, 2005; allegedly chairman and managing member of New York Satellite Industries, LLC, which allegedly received $10 million from a front company, Prospect Telecom, as consideration for facilitating the agreement between Iran and POLYOT, as well as for providing telecommunications services as part of that agreement; New York Satellite Industries allegedly used Modanlo’s home address as its business address; allegedly served as chairman and president of Final Analysis, Inc., and was president of its subsidiary, Final Analysis Communication Services; reportedly was refused entry into Russia for attempting to acquire technical documentation on satellites and missiles to be transferred to Iran in violation of Russian export controls.

An Iranian-born naturalized U.S. citizen and a mechanical engineer; 52 years old (as of June 2013).

Potomac Man Sentenced To 8 Years In Prison For Conspiring To Illegally Provide Satellite Services To Iran

Exclusive: White House dropped $10 million claim in Iran prisoner deal

Reuters: Nader Modanlo was facing five more years in federal prison when he got an extraordinary offer: U.S. President Barack Obama was ready to commute his sentence as part of this month’s historic and then still-secret prisoner swap with Iran. He said no.

To sweeten the deal, the U.S. administration then dropped a claim against the Iran-born aerospace engineer for $10 million that a Maryland jury found he had taken as an illegal payment from Iran, according to interviews with Modanlo, lawyers involved and U.S. officials with knowledge of the matter.

The surrender of the U.S. claim, which has not previously been reported, could add to scrutiny of how the Obama administration clinched a prisoner deal that has drawn criticism from Republican presidential candidates and lawmakers.

A Washington-based spokesman for the Justice Department declined to comment on discussions over the $10 million, which the jury found that Modanlo was paid to help Iran launch its first satellite in 2005. Modanlo says the money was a loan from a Swiss company for a telecoms deal.

In the prisoner swap, five Americans held in Iran were released at the same time as seven Iranians charged or imprisoned in the United States were granted pardons or had their sentences commuted. The deal accompanied the Jan. 16 implementation of a landmark agreement that curbs Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for sanctions relief.

Even after receiving the improved offer on Friday, Jan. 15, Modanlo said he didn’t budge at first. He wanted a chance to clear his name in court, he says.

“I was mostly disappointed that I have to give up my right to appeal,” Modanlo, 55, told Reuters in one of his first interviews since being released.

“If they believe in their justice system why would they deprive me of it? Let them prove me wrong.”

As part of their clemency agreements, all of the Iranians had to renounce any claims against the U.S. government. All but one had been accused of violating the economic sanctions the United States has enforced against Iran for decades.

Modanlo’s reluctance to accept Obama’s offer became an eleventh-hour complication to an otherwise carefully staged deal with Iran that had been negotiated in secret for months by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and his Iranian counterpart.

He only agreed to accept the clemency offer on Saturday, Jan. 16 as the clock ticked toward what U.S. officials said was the final deadline, according to Modanlo and U.S. officials.

He was freed the next day from a federal prison near Richmond, Virginia. The release marked an abrupt conclusion to his case after a sprawling, decade-long investigation into Modanlo’s role in brokering Iran’s access to space technology. U.S. federal agents had pursued evidence from the suburbs of Washington to Switzerland and Russia.

Modanlo was serving the longest sentence of any of the seven Iranians and had the most extensive, established connections to Iran’s government.

He was also the only one known to have initially declined Obama’s offer, according to interviews with lawyers for the men.

An official at Iran’s interests section in Washington, Iran’s de facto embassy, testified in Modanlo’s defense at his 2013 trial. The same Iranian representative, Fariborz Jahansoozan, was instrumental in brokering the prisoner exchange in recent months, lawyers for those involved have said.

“This story is done and over with,” Jahansoozan said when reached by Reuters, declining to discuss the case in detail. “Please let it go and move forward.”

After two years in prison, Modanlo says he is finding that hard. “I know this cloud is going to be over my head forever,” he said.

 

AMERICAN DREAM SOURED

Modanlo grew up in northern Iran, the son of a wealthy landowner. As a child, he remembers watching the Apollo 11 mission in 1969 that put American astronauts on the moon and being inspired to become a space engineer.

Decades later, after moving to the United States and becoming a U.S. citizen, Modanlo had become a space entrepreneur with a company valued at $500 million.

He helped launch an American satellite from a Russian rocket in 1995. His company, Final Analysis, focused on the emerging field of low-orbit satellites for data services.

But a series of missteps drove the company into bankruptcy in 2001, and Modanlo was sued by a former partner, who accused him of selling missile technology to Iran.

Modanlo says U.S. authorities used the missile claim to win assistance from Switzerland in obtaining evidence against him. Raids at Modanlo’s Maryland home and office seized a truck load of documents and 120 computer hard drives but no supporting evidence for that claim, he said.

“They knew this was false. They knew I had no missile technology,” he said.

The ensuing investigation uncovered documents prosecutors say showed Modanlo brokered a deal between Iran and Russia to launch the satellite in exchange for a $10 million fee. A Maryland jury convicted him of sanctions violations after a six-week trial. He was sentenced to eight years in prison.

In an appeal, Modanlo’s lawyers argued that private communications between the trial judge and prosecutors had excluded evidence that could have changed the outcome.

Robert King, one of the judges who heard Modanlo’s appeal, admonished prosecutors for that practice in an October hearing.

U.S. Attorney Rod Rosenstein said the evidence against Modanlo had been disclosed in court and proved “beyond any reasonable doubt that Mr. Modanlo secretly helped Iran launch a satellite for $10 million.”

Modanlo said he felt certain the appeal would go his way. Then his lawyer told him that he would have to give up that appeal and be stuck with the $10 million forfeiture claim if he took the clemency offer.

“I waive my right to bring a claim against you, but your claim continues for God knows how many years against me?” Modanlo said. “After back and forth a number of times they agreed to take the $10 million off the table.”

After calls from his attorneys and Iranian representatives failed to convince Modanlo to take the clemency, it was a pleading and tearful call from his sister in Iran that finally made him relent, he said.

“If it was for me, I would never have taken the deal,” he said.

Holocaust Remembrance Day

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As survivors of the Holocaust dwindle, 71 years later, memorials are taking place across Europe.

FNC: Commemoration of the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, the camp in Poland where 1.1 million Jews were murdered, is always a somber event, but on the 71st anniversary current events have cast a new and dark shadow. Waves of refugees from countries where hatred of Jews is taught and practiced have flooded Germany, prompting some of the nation’s 100,000-strong community to fear for their future. More on the story is here.

Eichmann refused to admit any guilt during last minute pleas.

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In 1962:

Berlin mulls uses for Goebbels’ abandoned love nest

Wandlitz (Germany) (AFP) – History weighs heavily on the German property market, no more so than at a sprawling lakeside villa that once served as a love nest for Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels.

 

Berlin has been trying to sell the — in theory — prime slab of real estate north of the German capital for 15 years.

But rather than a gem that the cash-strapped city, which is scrambling to pay for a record refugee influx, can liquidate, Berlin has admitted it sees the asset as little more than a millstone around its neck.

Berlin Immobilienmanagement GmbH (BIM), the city’s wholly owned real estate agency, has in effect given up on the sale and expressed concerns it could fall into “the wrong hands”.

“I am really afraid that this could become a shrine for Nazis and I don’t think we should take that risk,” the executive director of the BIM, Birgit Moehring, said.

Instead, it hopes to lease the property, whose idyllic setting is nestled in a wood and perched on the small Bogen lake.

The squat, sprawling house was used by the top Nazi as “country retreat” perfect for trysts with a revolving cast of budding actresses and paramours.

“It was refuge from the busy city” 40 kilometres (25 miles) to the south, BIM spokesman Christian Breitkreutz told AFP.

Berlin itself bought the land complete with a small cabin in 1936 for Goebbels, Hitler’s nefariously skilled spin doctor, in honour of his 39th birthday.

Goebbels was taken with its secluded setting and subsequently had a much larger villa built on the site bankrolled by UFA, the movie production house he ran with an iron fist.

The luxury facilities included a private cinema and spacious living quarters overlooking the lake.

 

View of the villa built for Nazi propaganda chief Joseph …

View of the villa built for Nazi propaganda chief Joseph Goebbels between 1936-39, near the Bogensee …

– Attacked by damp cold –

Today, the original generous picture windows, rich wood panelling and marble fixtures can still be seen, said Roberto Mueller, who has worked as a guard at the site since 1984.

But the house, ravaged by moisture and biting cold in the isolated and abandoned site, has begun to rapidly crumble.

The city had repeatedly tried to sell the house in recent years and a last attempt, via a public tender, came up dry in December, Moehring said, confirming that BIM had finally given up.

Goebbels and his wife Magda committed suicide in Hitler’s bunker as Berlin was overrun by Soviet Army troops in May 1945, after she murdered their six children.

 

Entrance to the main building of the Communist Free …

Entrance to the main building of the Communist Free German Youth (FDJ-Freie Deutsche Jugend) school  …

Dealing with the Goebbels villa has been all the more complicated because it is on the same slice of land as another vestige of the country’s tumultuous past.

In the post-war years, East Germany built a vast complex on the land in the Stalinist style of the early 1950s to house a training centre for the FDJ, the communist party’s youth indoctrination organisation.

The regime also used it to put up visiting party cadres from “brother states” such as Vietnam, Cuba and Angola.

At the time, the neighbouring Goebbels villa was converted into a supermarket for FDJ students and a children’s nursery, Mueller said.

In total, the four main post-war buildings cover some 1,400 square metres (15,000 square feet) of bedrooms, conference halls, reception and banquet space.

 

Villa built for Nazi propaganda chief Joseph Goebbels …

Villa built for Nazi propaganda chief Joseph Goebbels between 1936-39, seen near the Bogensee lake n …

Day by day, they are falling apart.

– Phantom village –

“At present there is no heating, no running water, there is serious damage to the facades, the roofs are falling apart and inside there is a lot to do too,” Moehring admits, saying renovation costs would be “considerable”.

Currently the only viable use for the phantom village has been as a unique, evocative film set, most recently for the adaptation of the international wartime bestseller “Alone in Berlin” starring Emma Thompson and Brendan Gleeson.

“What would really appeal to us would be if someone arrived with an intelligent concept to use this place which is so steeped in history,” Moehring said, suggesting a continuing education campus or a hotel as other possible options.

She said BIM had been in touch with potential investors. But a major stumbling block remains the fact that the Goebbels villa is a listed building.

Because that prevents any major change to the structure, Moehring would like to see it stripped of its protected status.

“I am someone who absolutely defends the importance in this city of always being able to feel the presence of history,” she said.

“But you also have to ask the question whether it is sensible to maintain certain buildings under the protection a historic monument grants.”

If it were lifted, Moehring said the best thing might be the most radical measure: razing it to the ground.

Germany has often been confronted with questions over how to deal with the toxic legacy of sites linked to its bitter 20th century history.

Hitler’s own “Eagle’s Nest” mountain-top lodge now has a restaurant, a cafe and shops selling books with titles such as “Hitler’s Mountain” that draws thousands of tourists each year.

Many of Germany’s ministries pitched up in the Nazis’ former official buildings when the government moved to Berlin from Bonn in 1999.

And the hangars of the former airport Tempelhof, a prime example of the Nazis’ architectural gigantism, and the erstwhile headquarters of communist East Germany’s feared Stasi secret police are both being used to house tens of thousands of asylum seekers.

Another Blackberry Lost, Cheryl Mills Worried

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Clinton Chief Of Staff Lost Her Personal Blackberry, Which Contained Classified Emails

 Ross/DailyCaller: While working as Hillary Clinton’s chief of staff at the State Department, Cheryl Mills lost her personal Blackberry, on which she sent emails that the State Department has determined contain classified information. Records obtained by The Daily Caller through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit show Mills revealed that she lost her Blackberry in a March 20, 2010 email she sent to Bryan Pagliano, the State Department IT staffer who managed Clinton’s private email server.
“Somewhere b/w my house and the plane to nyc yesterday my personal bb got misplaced; no on [sic] is answering it thought [sic] I have called,” Mills wrote from her personal email account to the address Pagliano used when he worked on Hillary Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign.
Other State Department records indicate that Mills’ personal Blackberry appears to have been synced with her Gmail account. Many of the emails she sent from the personal account include footers which show they were sent from a Blackberry powered by AT&T.

Some of the emails Mills sent and received on the account contain information that the State Department has retroactively determined to have classified information.

In one such email, from Dec. 24, 2009, Clinton forwarded Mills a message she had received from Johnnie Carson, then the Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, who provided details from a conversation he had with French foreign minister Bernard Kouchner about a situation in Guinea.

“Pls review so we can discuss,” Clinton wrote to Mills and Jake Sullivan, her foreign policy aide.

In a Jan. 14, 2014 email, Rajiv Shah, who was in charge of U.S. Agency for International Development, emailed Clinton and Mills about Haiti. The email is heavily redacted because it contains now-classified information. The State Department has retroactively classified more than 1,300 emails housed on Clinton’s private server, though Clinton and the State Department maintain that the information was not considered classified when it was originated.

It is unclear if Mills recovered her Blackberry after first losing it. Her attorney did not return a request for comment. It is also unclear what other sensitive, government-related information Mills sent on her Blackberry and personal email account to other federal officials.

Blackberry usage by Clinton and her inner circle has been a growing area of focus in the ongoing scandal involving the Democratic presidential candidate’s use of a personal email account and a private server.

The Daily Caller reported earlier this month that in Aug. 2011, a top State Department official offered to provide Clinton with a government-issued Blackberry equipped with a state.gov email account after her personal Blackberry went on the blink. But Clinton aide Huma Abedin rejected the offer, claiming that the idea “doesn’t make a lot of sense.”

And on Monday, Fox News reported a video from 2013 in which Wendy Sherman, who served as Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs under Clinton, admitted that Clinton and other State Department officials frequently used their Blackberries to send information that “would never be on an unclassified system.”

Clinton used only a personal Blackberry throughout her tenure at the State Department. Mills and Abedin used both personal and government-issued Blackberries.

There is some evidence that the State Department was concerned with the use of personal Blackberries separate and apart from the risk posed by losing them.

“I cannot stress too strongly… that any unclassified BlackBerry is highly vulnerable in any setting to remotely and covertly monitoring conversations, retrieving emails, and exploring calendars,” wrote Eric Boswell, then the head of State’s Bureau of Diplomatic Security, in a March 2009 memo.

Boswell also warned that the bureau had intelligence concerning “vulnerability” to Clinton’s Blackberry during her Feb. 9, 2009 trip to China. He also issued a warning about using Blackberries on “Mahogany Row,” the floor that houses the offices of top State Department officials at headquarters in Foggy Bottom.

In Feb. 2014, well before the Clinton email scandal broke, State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki spoke to the issue using personal digital assistants (PDA) — such as Blackberries — that were not government issued.

“Classified processing and classified conversation on a personal digital assisted device is prohibited,” she told reporters.

 

Cheryl Mills Loses Personal Blackberry