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Federal law enforcement authorities have charged nearly 50 past or present Russian diplomats and their spouses in a $1.5 million Medicaid fraud scheme, an unusual twist in what has become a familiar criminal story line in New York. An F.B.I. investigation revealed “the systemic fraudulent submission of falsified applications for Medicaid benefits” by the diplomats and their spouses, according to a criminal complaint unsealed on Thursday in United States District Court in Manhattan. The diplomats and their spouses obtained the benefits for pregnancies, births and first-year-of-life medical needs, generally applying at the same New York hospital, which was not identified,...

Upset at President Barack Obama's policies on Iran and Syria, members of Saudi Arabia's ruling family are threatening a rift with the United States that could take the alliance between Washington and the kingdom to its lowest point in years. Saudi Arabia's intelligence chief is vowing that the kingdom will make a 'major shift' in relations with the United States to protest perceived American inaction over Syria's civil war as well as recent U.S. overtures to Iran, a source close to Saudi policy said on Tuesday. Prince Bandar bin Sultan told European diplomats that the United States had failed to...

September 20, 2013, 12:00 AM Pyongyang Orders Diplomats’ Children Home By Alexander Martin Biography Worried about possible threats to regime stability from North Korean children educated abroad, Pyongyang has ordered its diplomats and state trading company officials stationed overseas to send their children back to the North, an expert on the secretive regime says. Kansai University Prof. Lee Young Hwa said the order was the first of its kind passed under the North’s young leader Kim Jong Un, according to information he received from a North Korean trading official in China. The order, with a deadline set for the end...

Colin Powell denied Thursday that he cheated on his wife of 50 years with a blond Romanian diplomat with whom he shared emails of “a very personal nature.” Powell, 76, was forced to clarify his relationship with Corina Cretu, 46, after a notorious hacker dubbed “Guccifer” posted a link to their emails on his Facebook page. “I’ve loved you too much, too many years. YOU were my greatest love of my life . . . ,” Cretu emailed Powell on Nov. 14, 2011. She also sent him numerous photos of herself, including shots of her in a bikini and in...

HSBC bank has reportedly asked more than 40 diplomatic missions to close their accounts as part of a programme to reduce business risks. The Vatican's ambassadorial office in Britain, the Apostolic Nunciature, is among those said to be affected. The head of the UK's Consular Corps told the Mail on Sunday the decision has created "havoc". The Foreign Office has been in touch with HSBC, stepping in to help diplomats open other bank accounts. HSBC said embassies were subject to the same assessments as its other business customers. They need to satisfy five criteria - international connectivity, economic development, profitability,...

The State Department has acknowledged that five U.S. personnel killed in Afghanistan, including 25-year-old diplomat Anne Smedinghoff, were on foot when they were attacked by a suicide bomber, and not in an armored vehicle, as officials had told bereaved relatives earlier this week. The violent deaths of U.S. diplomatic personnel — and the State Department’s changing account of how they died — harken back to the debacle in Benghazi, Libya, where Islamist extremists killed four Americans in assaults on the U.S. diplomatic compound on Sept. 11. “We are able to clarify at this point that they were

SANAA: A Saudi diplomat was shot dead by unidentified gunmen in the Yemeni capital Sanaa on Wednesday, Saudi-owned Al Arabiya television reported, citing diplomatic sources. The station give no further details. Yemen has been grappling with a number of security problems including the local offshoot of al Qaida.

@mrubin1971Two news stories from recent weeks, if true, should raise a red flag in the United States that Iran is preparing to use Hezbollah to strike at U.S. interests in Latin America, if not in the United States itself.First, this story from the Lebanese news portal Naharnet and sourced in part to Israeli radio. The Naharnet story was taken down shortly after it appeared: Hezbollah is using a training base established by Iran in northern Nicaragua near the border with Honduras, the Israeli radio reported on Thursday [September 6]. “The area is cordoned off and there are around 30 members...

.....(12:54:09 PM) vile_rat: assuming we don't die tonight. We saw one of our 'police' that guard the compound taking pictures....

The American ambassador to Libya and three other US diplomats were killed overnight in an attack on the American consulate in Benghazi by Islamist militants. Chris Stevens, who had completed several missions to Libya since 2007 and was appointed ambassador in March, was killed by a rocket-propelled grenade launched by gunmen from Islamist group, Ansar al Sharia, according to a Reuters report. -snip- The consulate was set on fire in the attack, while video footage of a lifeless Caucasian man thought to be Stevens, later appeared on YouTube.

A UK diplomat has been mugged, leaving him blind in one eye, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) has said. George Fergusson, 56, was assaulted and robbed at about 19:30 BST on Friday while walking in Margravine Cemetery and Park, in Hammersmith, west London. Metropolitan Police officers are appealing for information. Mr Fergusson, who lost a small amount of cash in the mugging, works for the Foreign Office and is due to take up the post of governor of Bermuda. The governor acts as the Queen's official representative in Bermuda. A spokesman for the FCO said Mr Fergusson had had...

From the Danish show Detektor, here's a telling showcase of President Obama's mannerisms when he's wheeling and dealing in the foreign-relations arena. This isn't to say that we don't have good relationships with each of these countries, but... the words "indiscriminate" and "disingenuous" do spring to mind (h/t Ace):

The Jewish Week reports that a speech last week by Stuart Appelbaum, president of the left-wing Jewish Labor Committee, prompted Israel’s deputy consul general to walk out of its gala dinner after Appelbaum criticized Israel in blunt, undiplomatic terms. Though Appelbaum also noted “new expressions of contempt for Israel within the Arab world,” he launched a vitriolic attack on the government of Benjamin Netanyahu: …[S]adly, Israel is cursed with a right-wing coalition government that’s regularly giving credence to it. We all know Benjamin Netanyahu talks a good game about a two-state solution, but, at the very same time, his administration...

President Obama plans to maintain a significant number of employees in the US embassy in Baghdad in order to protect US diplomats who could be targeted after the US military departs from Iraq. The President elaborated further on this issue during a joint press conference with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki on Monday_ "With respect to the embassy, the actual size of our embassy with respect to diplomats..., there are still some special security needs inside of Iraq

MANCHESTER, England (CNS) -- U.S. and British diplomats discussed exerting pressure on Pope Pius XII to be silent about the Nazi deportations of Hungarian Jews, according to newly discovered documentation. The British feared that the wartime pope might make a "radio appeal on behalf of the Jews in Hungary" and that in the course of his broadcast would "also criticize what the Russians are doing in occupied territory." Sir Francis D'Arcy Osborne, the British ambassador to the Vatican, told an American diplomat that "something should be done to prevail upon the pope not to do this as it will have...

As pointed out previously in I Can See Russia, one of Sarah Palin’s roles was that of Commander in Chief of the Alaska National Guard. While she wouldn’t have been charged with making decisions concerning the military, she would have been kept informed of any possible threats to the state. While Border States in the U.S. Southwest have to deal with the invasion of illegal aliens, Alaska has to contend with the ominous threat of Russian “Bear” bombers. Should these military airplanes penetrate our defenses, they could quite possibly disrupt the flow of oil by bombing the Trans-Alaskan Pipeline System...

Pakistan on Saturday said its legal process should be respected after the U.S. embassy called for the immediate release of an American diplomat who was arrested after he killed two Pakistanis this week. The American, identified by Pakistani police as Raymond Davis, told a court on Friday he had acted in self-defense after fleeing what he said was a robbery attempt in the eastern city of Lahore on Thursday. Davis has been remanded in police custody for six days for questioning. "This matter is sub judice in a court of law and the legal process should be respected," a Pakistani...

ISLAMABAD, PAKISTAN - A U.S. official being held in the fatal shooting of two Pakistani men told a court in the eastern city of Lahore on Friday that he had killed them in self-defense. The official, based at the U.S. Consulate in Lahore, said the men had tried to rob him while he waited at a busy intersection in his car. A second consular vehicle that he summoned for help struck and killed a motorcyclist as it sped to the scene, police said. A judge ordered the official held in custody for six days for further questioning. Pakistani officials insisted...

An Iranian former diplomat says Iran is working toward developing a nuclear bomb with the help of scientists from North Korea and other countries worldwide, the Daily Telegraph reported on Wednesday. Mohammed Reza Heydari, formerly of the Iranian embassy in Oslo, Norway, told the British newspaper that he had helped North Korean technicians and military experts enter Iran while he was working for the Iranian foreign ministry office in Tehran's airport. Heydari said the North Korean experts helped Iran develop nuclear bomb capability and increase the range of Iran's ballistic missiles.

Wednesday 1st December, 2010 (IANS) France's top diplomat in Hong Kong was suspended and recalled to Paris after allegedly stealing two expensive bottles of wine, a news report said Wednesday. Marc Fonbaustier, 46, was recalled after he was reportedly caught on security cameras taking bottles of Bordeaux from the elite Hong Kong Country Club, the South China Morning Post reported. Beijing officials sought his removal after security video showed him slipping a bottle of wine into his jacket at the prestigious club in early November, according to the newspaper. An investigation was under way into the theft when Fonbaustier allegedly...