The Financial Action Task Force applauded Argentina’s efforts to close holes in its money laundering and terrorism financing regulations at its plenary meeting in Paris but kept the country on its list of countries deficient in those areas.

The FATF congratulated Argentina, which Corruption Currents labeled last year as a “Fallen Angel,” for criminalizing terrorist financing and for developing a plan to implement the new law before a review in June.

“Argentina should also continue working to address the range of other important anti-money laundering/combating the financing of terrorism deficiencies that remain,” the FATF said in a statement.

6:09 pm  •  17 February 2012  •  1 note

mar-see-ah:

Via NYTimes.

Now this is Linsanity.

4:01 pm  •  17 February 2012  •  10 notes

Belgium’s Society for Worldwide International Financial Telecommunication, or Swift, is preparing to ban Iranian banks and companies placed under sanctions from using its financial communications and clearing system, it said Friday.

The move will sharply curtail Tehran’s ability to trade, according to a Wall Street Journal report, because nearly all Iran’s biggest state and trade banks are under U.S. and European Union sanctions lists for allegedly supporting Iran’s nuclear program and aiding Middle East-based groups such as Hezbollah, which the U.S. has labeled as a terrorist organization.

The European Union is working on legislation that would ban entities it blacklisted from using Swift’s system.

“Swift stands ready to act and discontinue its services to sanctioned Iranian financial institutions as soon as it has clarity on EU legislation currently being drafted,” it said in a statement.

3:55 pm  •  17 February 2012

Broke a story at 6 p.m. last night; it appeared as a brief on page B6 in today’s WSJ. (Taken with instagram)

2:54 pm  •  17 February 2012  •  9 notes

“

An M.I.T. neuroscientist named Ann Graybiel told me that she and her colleagues began exploring habits more than a decade ago by putting their wired rats into a T-shaped maze with chocolate at one end. The maze was structured so that each animal was positioned behind a barrier that opened after a loud click. The first time a rat was placed in the maze, it would usually wander slowly up and down the center aisle after the barrier slid away, sniffing in corners and scratching at walls. It appeared to smell the chocolate but couldn’t figure out how to find it. There was no discernible pattern in the rat’s meanderings and no indication it was working hard to find the treat.

The probes in the rats’ heads, however, told a different story. While each animal wandered through the maze, its brain was working furiously. Every time a rat sniffed the air or scratched a wall, the neurosensors inside the animal’s head exploded with activity. As the scientists repeated the experiment, again and again, the rats eventually stopped sniffing corners and making wrong turns and began to zip through the maze with more and more speed. And within their brains, something unexpected occurred: as each rat learned how to complete the maze more quickly, its mental activity decreased. As the path became more and more automatic — as it became a habit — the rats started thinking less and less.

”

—

Charles Duhigg, How Companies Learn Your Secrets

This is, like, the secret nut graf in this widely circulated NYT piece about shopping habits. Tell me this doesn’t explain everything about everything.

(via alexbaca)

Bingo.

(via thebrowncoat)

(via thebrowncoat)

12:53 pm  •  17 February 2012  •  77 notes

German President Christian Wulff resigned on Friday, falling to pressure over a scandal that led prosecutors to try to strip him of immunity to pursue a criminal probe.

Wulff’s resignation is the culmination of a drama that began in December, according to a Wall Street Journal report. Over the last two months, allegations surfaced that he routinely took gifts, paid vacations and financial favors from businessmen and political backers, the report said.

11:31 am  •  17 February 2012

source2012:

Meet the bundlers … where you can

A new infographic by the Center for Responsive Politics reflects the latest information about the elite fundraisers collecting millions of dollars for presidential candidates.

On the Democratic side, we know that 444 bundlers have collected at least $72.4 million for President Barack Obama. On the GOP end, we don’t know much. That’s because no Republican candidates have volunteered any information about their bundlers beyond what they have to.

Fore more information on presidential bundlers, visit the OpenSecrets Blog. 

New Tumblr to follow.

11:03 am  •  17 February 2012  •  91 notes

producermatthew:

New York Times correspondent Anthony Shadid’s final tweet.

11:51 pm  •  16 February 2012  •  8 notes

“Anthony died as he lived — determined to bear witness to the transformation sweeping the Middle East and to testify to the suffering of people caught between government oppression and opposition forces. He has spent much of his storied career chronicling the Mideast; his empathy for its citizens’ struggles and his deep understanding of their culture and history set his writing apart. He was their poet and their champion. His work will stand as a testament.”

— Jill Abramson, New York Times executive editor, in her memo to the New York Times newsroom announcing the death of their colleague, Anthony Shadid (via soupsoup)

11:48 pm  •  16 February 2012  •  118 notes

Halliburton Co. said Thursday it’s responding to a subpoena from the Securities and Exchange Commission relating to a probe into its operations in Angola over possible violations of U.S. foreign bribery law.

The  Houston-based company said in a securities filing that it met with the SEC and the Justice Department during the third quarter of 2011 to brief them on an internal investigation and provide them with documents. Halliburton said it is “producing all relevant documents” for its response to an SEC subpoena regarding the Angola matter, which it disclosed in October 2011.

“We understand that one of our employees has also received a subpoena from the SEC regarding this matter,” the filing said.

6:26 pm  •  16 February 2012  •  1 note

thehappyrecap:

Rest in Peace Kid

(via sportsnetny)

6:12 pm  •  16 February 2012  •  93 notes

The Financial Action Task Force’s first update in eight years to the body’s recommendations added tax evasion and smuggling as “predicate offenses” to money laundering, or offenses that should be covered by money laundering laws.

The intergovernmental body, whose findings are used by more than 180 countries, provides recommendations on how countries should fashion their laws and regulatory regimes to prevent money laundering and terrorist financing. Money laundering and the predicate crimes underneath it cost between 2% and 5% of the global gross domestic product, FATF said.

The FATF spent the last two years revisiting the recommendations, which were last updated in 2003, said Rick McDonell, its executive secretary, in an interview.

“We found there was a need to update the standards given current financial practices, along with changes to the criminal environment,” he said.

Among the changes are the inclusion of risk-based due diligence requirements for domestic politically exposed people, known as PEPs. Previous iterations required enhanced due diligence on all foreign PEPs. They may not inherently be money launderers, but FATF Recommendations require PEP assets to go through extra screening due to the access the people have to state resources.

5:06 pm  •  16 February 2012

reuters:

The 193-nation U.N. General Assembly on Thursday overwhelmingly approved a non-binding resolution endorsing an Arab League plan that urges Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to step aside.

The initial count showed that the resolution, which is similar to one Russia and China vetoed in the Security Council on February 4, received 137 votes in favor, 12 against and 17 abstentions, though three delegations said their votes failed to register on the electronic board.

Russia and China were among those that voted against the resolution.

Read more: U.N. assembly adopts resolution condemning Syria

4:51 pm  •  16 February 2012  •  86 notes

“Like bookstores, libraries need to anticipate literary appetites. Unlike bookstores, libraries do not have a financial incentive to feed those appetites immediately. They have to balance civic missions and budget concerns with the imperative to put books in people’s hands. Sometimes, patrons have to wait. While bookstore best-seller lists monitor only what goes out, lists of the library’s most-circulated and most-requested books reveal not only which books readers want right now, but which they’re willing to wait for.”

— In the stacks: How the library keeps track of what New York wants to read (and tries to meet the demand) | Capital New York

1:20 pm  •  16 February 2012  •  75 notes

producermatthew:

A steel beam fell 40 stories at the site of the World Trade Center in New York City on Thursday, crushing a truck on the ground level and injuring at least one construction worker. [Photo: The Gothamist]

11:29 am  •  16 February 2012  •  12 notes