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Intercepted conversations between representatives of the Iranian and Argentine governments point to a long pattern of secret negotiations to reach a deal in which Argentina would receive oil in exchange for shielding Iranian officials from charges that they orchestrated the bombing of a Jewish community center in 1994. The transcripts were made public by an Argentine judge on Tuesday night, as part of a 289-page criminal complaint written by Alberto Nisman, the special prosecutor investigating the attack. Mr. Nisman was found dead in his luxury apartment on Sunday, the night before he was to present his findings to Congress. In...

Israel Hits Pay Dirt with Strike on Iran & HezbollahPosted By Ari Lieberman On January 22, 2015 @ 12:44 am In Daily Mailer,FrontPage | 4 Comments Gen. Mohammad Ali Allahdadi As Congress gets set to impose new sanctions on Iran and the mysterious death of Alberto Nisman, Argentina’s indefatigable prosecutor, once again sheds the unwanted spotlight on the Islamic Republic’s overseas terror activities, the mullahs have been hit with yet more bad news. On January 18, Israeli helicopters fired missiles at a convoy of military vehicles traveling on the Syrian side of the Golan Heights with devastating effect.The missile strike...

Death of a ProsecutorPosted By Kenneth R. Timmerman On January 21, 2015 @ 12:35 am In Daily Mailer,FrontPage | 2 Comments Alberto Nisman, the Argentinean prosecutor who indicted top Iranian regime officials for the July 1994 AMIA Jewish Center bombing in Buenos Aires, was found dead by gunshot in his apartment on Sunday night, in what initially was called a suicide.Nisman was scheduled to address members of parliament the next day to reveal new information about alleged efforts by Argentinean President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner and her foreign minister, Hector Timerman, to cover up the responsibility of the Iranian regime...

The government says Nisman's allegations and his death were linked to a power struggle at Argentina's intelligence agency and agents who had recently been fired. One of those fired in a December shake-up was Antonio Stiusso, a senior spy who had helped Nisman with his investigation of the 1994 bombing that killed 85. The government has said Stiusso misled Nisman. Citing sources close to the investigation into Nisman's death, Argentine news agency DyN said that Stiusso had been called to testify at 11 a.m. (1400 GMT) in Buenos Aires. The lead investigator into the case, Viviana Fein, called upon him...

PUNTA BRITO, Nicaragua — One of the largest engineering projects in history would start here, on this desolate and pristine crescent of dark-sand Pacific beach. From in front of the hammock-swinging shrimpers on the porches of their tin-and-wood shanties, the trench would run east in sinuous curves up through the mangroves and banana fields until it reaches the shores of Central America’s largest freshwater lake, then cut across the Caribbean highlands and through indigenous territory, ending its journey 172 miles away on the beaches of the Atlantic. They call it the Grand Inter-Oceanic Canal: an audacious $50 billion plan by an...

A few weeks ago, Puerto Rican Governor Alejandro Garcia Padilla made a surprise announcement that soon he would submit legislation that would give undocumented immigrants and other non-citizens the right to vote in island-wide elections. The move has been commended by immigrants’ rights groups, but is viewed by many on the island as a cheap move by an unpopular governor to try and fix the next election. It’s also left many people on the island asking: can the governor legally do it? The answer, it turns out, seems to be “yes.” Federal law doesn’t stop states or cities from allowing...

A request by US Republican Senator Marco Rubio to create an “independent” committee to investigate the death of Argentine AMIA special prosecutor Alberto Nisman has been described by Cabinet Chief Jorge Capitanich as an “imperialist” approach to “sovereign” countries' affairs. “The Republic of Argentina is an autonomous, sovereign and independent country. (Marco) Rubio with his imperialist vision fails to recognize the United Nations charter since the intromission in the affairs of other states constitutes an interference of an imperialist vision,” the head of ministers said this morning during his daily message to the press at the government house. Rubio, he...

SAN JOSÉ, Costa Rica—Cuban President Raúl Castro demanded Wednesday that the U.S. return the base at Guantanamo Bay, lift the half-century trade embargo on Cuba and compensate his country for damages before the two nations re-establish normal relations. Mr. Castro told a summit of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States that Cuba and the U.S. are working toward full diplomatic relations but “if these problems aren’t resolved, this diplomatic rapprochement wouldn’t make any sense.” Mr. Castro and U.S. President Barack Obama announced on Dec. 17 that they would move toward renewing full diplomatic relations by reopening embassies in...

More than 25 years after the Berlin Wall’s fall, Russian lawmakers are mulling a proposal to condemn West Germany’s 1990 “annexation” of East Germany as Moscow’s answer to Western denunciation of its seizure of Crimea. Sergei Naryshkin, speaker of Russian parliament’s lower house, on Wednesday ordered legislators to consider an appeal from a Communist Party deputy to denounce the reunification of Germany as an illegal land grab of East Germany by its western neighbor. The collapse of Socialist rule in East Germany—officially known as the German Democratic Republic (GDR)—heralded the end of the Cold War, and was met with jubilation...

Executives at a Bermudan firm funneling money to U.S. environmentalists run investment funds with Russian tycoons. A shadowy Bermudan company that has funneled tens of millions of dollars to anti-fracking environmentalist groups in the United States is run by executives with deep ties to Russian oil interests and offshore money laundering schemes involving members of President Vladimir Putin’s inner circle. One of those executives, Nicholas Hoskins, is a director at a hedge fund management firm that has invested heavily in Russian oil and gas. He is also senior counsel at the Bermudan law firm Wakefield Quin and the vice president...

Survivor: Worlds Apart is the 30th season of Survivor. It begins Wednesday, February 25, 2015 on CBS at 8/7c with a special 90 minute episode. References: Official Survivor site at CBSWikipedia article There will be three teams of six players each, divided by social status: blue collar, white collar, and no collar. More. It will be held in San Juan del Sur, Nicaragua, the same location as Survivor: Nicaragua, Survivor: Redemption Island and last season's Survivor: San Juan del Sur — Blood vs. Water. The players range in age from 52 to 22. Nine are from California, with seven from...

Oil fell as much as 5 percent on Tuesday after the International Monetary Fund cut its 2015 global economic forecast and key producer Iran hinted prices could drop to $25 a barrel without supportive OPEC action.

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- A heated exchanged between President Barack Obama and Sen. Robert Menendez (D-New Jersey) broke out Thursday over whether the U.S. should reimpose sanctions on Iran amid ongoing negotiations over the country's nuclear program, according to two senators who were in the room. Menendez, the leading Democrat pushing for additional sanctions against Iran, forcefully pressed Obama on the need for additional sanctions during a meeting in which Obama urged Menendez and other senators to drop their efforts to pass sanctions legislation. Additional sanctions, Obama argued, could torpedo ongoing negotiations over Iran's nuclear program. The unusually sharp exchange, between...

The larger-than-life Russian leader has held power — with one title or another — for 15 years, and is set to reign for at least a decade more. Yet Putin remains inscrutable. With only a smattering of biographical details released to the public and his sometimes puzzling public appearances, scholars — and even many world leaders — still struggle to understand the man at the helm of the Kremlin. To glean a clearer picture, FRONTLINE took a closer look at some of the most identifiable aspects of Putin’s public persona. --------------------------------------------------------- Putin’s Way, FRONTLINE’s investigation into the accusations of criminality...

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro met Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Salman in Riyadh on Sunday as part of a diplomatic tour of OPEC members to discuss falling oil prices, which have hit its economy hard. The Saudi side in the meeting included Oil Minister Ali al-Naimi and several princes including Deputy Crown Prince Muqrin, intelligence chief Prince Khaled bin Bandar and three sons of King Abdullah, who is in hospital, state media reported. No details of the meeting were given by the official Saudi Press Agency and there was no indication that the world's biggest oil exporter was any closer to...

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush appears poised for a presidential run and is currently leading the polls among potential Republican candidates for 2016, but the comments he made in 1994 during his first run for Florida’s highest office may come back to haunt him.The Associated Press reports that Bush described himself then as a “head-banging conservative” and used fiery rhetoric — such as claiming he would do “probably nothing” for African-Americans if he became governor — in his ultimately unsuccessful bid. Bush made that statement in response to a question on what he would for African-Americans if elected to office.“It’s time...

From the first day of 2011, Mitt Romney was the favorite to win the 2012 Republican presidential primary campaign. No one else was even close. The 2016 outlook could not be more different. Offered the choice to bet on one single candidate to win the nomination versus the rest of the field, the choice would have to be "the field." For the first time in years, there is no one next in line. And without a former vice president or powerhouse former candidate looking likely to run, Republicans are shaping up to spend the next year and a half fighting...

Falling world oil prices will hurt countries across the Middle East unless Saudi Arabia, the world’s biggest crude exporter, takes action to reverse the slump, Iran’s deputy foreign minister told Reuters. Hossein Amir Abdollahian described Saudi Arabia’s inaction in the face of a six-month slide in oil prices as a strategic mistake and said he still hoped the kingdom, Tehran’s main rival in the Gulf, would respond. Oil prices closed on Wednesday at a 5½ year low, registering their second-biggest ever annual decline after OPEC oil exporters, led by Saudi Arabia, chose to maintain oil output despite a global glut...

Now that President Barack Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry have launched their new friendship initiative with Cuba, progressives are thinking more optimistically about what else might be possible in the remainder of the president’s term. After all, since the November 2014 elections, Obama has moved sharply left on immigration, climate change, and net neutrality. So why shouldn’t the Left hope for more? What might be next on the Obama agenda? Breitbart News has obtained one such to-do list: 10. Marijuana to be completely decriminalized under the ever-expanding doctrine of “prosecutorial discretion.” In the meantime, the administration will push...

All three rating agencies are expected to downgrade Russia's debt to junk soon and bailouts to Russian banks are on the rise, but how likely is default? The Financial Times reports ... Russia trebled the size of its bailout of troubled lender Trust Bank to Rbs99bn ($1.9bn) on Friday, laying bare the growing financial fallout from its currency crisis and the slump in the price of oil, its main export. The rapidly rising cost makes the rescue of Trust bank, which foundered as the rouble collapsed early last week, the second-largest seen in Russia. It has now consumed a tenth...