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Obama intel chief violating Iran sanctions? Board member of Chinese government-owned company in deal with Tehran Charles "Chas" Freeman JERUSALEM – President Obama's nominee for a top intelligence post sits on the board of a major oil company owned by the Chinese government that is in the midst of a multibillion dollar deal with Iran which may violate U.S. sanctions, WND has learned. The oil company is widely seen as conducting business deals meant to expand China's influence worldwide. One of its recent attempts to purchase a large U.S. oil firm drew bipartisan congressional opposition amid fears the deal would...

We're way past "normal" times, but in any world that remotely resembles "normal", Bobulinski came with enough credibility, facts and receipts to bury Joe Biden's Presidential campaign six feet below the surface of the Earth. Dates, times, names, texts, emails, . . . The most explosive part to me was the revelation that Hunter Biden was acting as Ye Jianming's personal lawyer even as Ye, as chairman of the Chinese CCP-linked energy company "CEFC", was negotiating the purchase of a 14% state in Russia's state-owned energy company. If that's not somehow treasonous, I don't know what would be. But there's...

Hunter Biden's emails reveal his close relationship with the Chinese-American secretary who worked for him when he went into business with the man he called the 'spy chief of China.' The mysterious young assistant wrote the president's son flirty messages, sent him opposition research for Joe's White House run and encouraged him to draw funds from the company's accounts when the joint venture collapsed and even ended up with Hunter's military dog tags. In 2017 Hunter went into business with Patrick Ho, secretary general of Chinese oil giant CEFC.

A federal judge on Monday dismissed lawsuits by the cities of San Francisco and Oakland alleging that five of the world's largest oil companies should pay to protect the cities' residents from the impacts of climate change. U.S. District Judge William Alsup granted a motion by the companies -- BP PLC, Royal Dutch Shell PLC, Exxon Mobil Corp., ConocoPhillips and Chevron Corp. -- to dismiss the suits, ruling that while global warming was a real threat, it must be fixed "by our political branches." "The benefits of fossil fuels are worldwide," he wrote. "The problem deserves a solution on a...

Diplomacy: After a weekend of cavorting in Colombia, the White House was caught flat-footed by Argentina's takeover of a big oil company whose loss will hike gas prices, harm Spain and slam U.S. investors. Lucky us. Never was a response to a global outrage more mealy-mouthed than the one from the U.S. after Argentina's President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, standing under a portrait of Evita Peron, announced a brazen grab for YPF, the Argentine oil company that's 57% owned by Spain's Repsol. Markets fell, world leaders denounced the violation of contracts and economically battered Spain rallied European Union support. But...

Nothing shows off the worst of Congress like a highway bill. And this year's scramble for cash is worse than ever because the 18.4¢ a gallon gasoline tax will raise $70 billion less than the $263 billion Congress wants to spend over the next five years. Let the mayhem ensue. The Senate has passed a two-year $109 billion bill sponsored by Barbara Boxer of California that bails out the highway trust fund with general revenues, including some $12 billion for such nonessentials as the National Endowment for the Oceans and the Land and Water Conservation Fund. The bill requires little...

Note: The following text is a quote: April 16, 2010 ICE agents seize $8 million helicopter planned for illegal shipment to Iran ARLINGTON, Texas - Special agents with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) on Thursday seized a Bell helicopter with an estimated value of $8 million that was destined for shipment to Iran in violation of trade sanctions. Federal agents had first grounded the helicopter in its Arlington, Texas, hangar in December. The aircraft is owned by the Italian company Tiber Aviation. U.S. Federal District Judge John McBryde, Northern District of Texas, Fort Worth Division, signed the civil arrest...

Progress and development afoot in Northwest Indiana Poised for recovery By Times Staff | Posted: Sunday, February 14, 2010 12:05 am From industry to education to tourism, economic recovery from the Great Recession is evident in communities across Lake and Porter counties. The $3.8 billion expansion of the BP Whiting Refinery is symbolic of Northwest Indiana's economy. The region has suffered high unemployment and a rash of home foreclosures just like the rest of the United States. Yet its bedrock industries have remained intact and poised for growth. "The silver lining is that, despite the downturn in the economy, you...

Piracy is common off Nigeria and often linked to militants Pirates have seized a ship owned by a French company off the Nigerian coast, taking nine crew members hostage. The company - Bourbon - said the captain had assured them that all crew members were unharmed. Bourbon - which provides specialist boats for the oil and gas industry - said it was working to free the crew. The hostages are from Nigeria, Ghana, Cameroon and Indonesia. Piracy is common in Nigerian waters, often linked to militants targeting oil companies. Militants attack vessels and strip them of valuables, taking hostages for...

BAGHDAD - A parliamentary committee is working on a pair of oil-related draft bills, one to re-establish the state-run oil company and another to fight oil smuggling, a senior lawmaker said Saturday. Abdul-Hadi al-Hassani, deputy chairman of the committee on oil, gas and natural resources, said legislation to re-establish the Iraqi National Oil Co., was likely to be presented to parliament on Tuesday. The measure is part of a package which also includes legislation to regulate the country's oil sector, reorganize the Oil Ministry and distribute revenues among Sunni, Shiite and Kurdish regions. Al-Hassani said he was uncertain when the...

WASHINGTON and TORONTO — Canadian Maurice Strong agreed to step aside Wednesday as a special envoy for the United Nations, but vowed to clear his name after being linked to Tongsun Park, a Korean lobbyist charged in connection with the Iraq oil-for-food scandal. At the same time, new details emerged about a Calgary oil company in which Mr. Strong and his son, Fred, were major investors during the 1990s together with Mr. Park -- whom the younger Mr. Strong described as "a spooky guy." Shareholders in Cordex Petroleums Inc. also included CSL Group Inc., the holding company owned by Prime...

UNITED NATIONS (AP) - Iraq called Friday for a widening of the investigation of the U.N. oil-for-food program and demanded the immediate return of money in the U.N. account that paid for administration of the humanitarian relief effort. Iraq's U.N. Ambassador Samir Sumaidaie also reiterated the government's demand that the United Nations stop using oil-for-food money to pay for the independent investigation into the program led by former U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker. "It is outrageous that Iraqi funds were mismanaged and then we have to pay for finding out about the mismanagement," he told a news conference a...

Since midsummer, the Senate Intelligence Committee has been attempting to solve the biggest mystery of the Iraq war: the disparity between the Bush Administration’s prewar assessment of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction and what has actually been discovered. The committee is concentrating on the last ten years’ worth of reports by the C.I.A. Preliminary findings, one intelligence official told me, are disquieting. “The intelligence community made all kinds of errors and handled things sloppily,” he said. The problems range from a lack of quality control to different agencies’ reporting contradictory assessments at the same time. One finding, the official went...

To look at the soft-focus propaganda pictures of Venezuela's Castroite Chavez government, you'd think Venezuela's state oil company was not about producing oil, but rather rehabilitating life's down-and-outers. The Venezuela Information Office's Web site shows smiling, supposedly contented beneficiaries of the bountiful, beneficent state oil company, which is somehow turning singers into systems engineers, and you're supposed to feel good. But that's not what's going on for workers inside the huge Venezuelan state oil company. The remnants of the once-mighty PdVSA are battling the Chavez government in a contract dispute over three miserable dollars a day in wages. Inflation from...

WASHINGTON (AP) — Back when federal lawmakers legally could be paid for speaking to outside groups, John Kerry collected more than $120,000 in fees from interests as diverse as big oil, tobacco, the liquor lobby and unions, records show. Between 1985 and 1990, Kerry's first five years in the Senate from Massachusetts, he pocketed annual amounts slightly under the limits for speaking fees set by Congress. Unlike many colleagues, he donated a speaking fee to charity only once, according to annual financial disclosure reports reviewed by The Associated Press. One of the companies to pay Kerry $1,000 for a speech...

Politics first: the Kremlin tightens its control By Carola Hoyos and Arkady Ostrovsky Published: August 5 2004 04:00 | Last updated: August 5 2004 04:00 On July 22, the day that Yukos, the oil company, warned of its imminent bankruptcy and its main production subsidiary was seized by bailiffs, Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, held a meeting with James Mulva, the chief executive of ConocoPhillips, and Vagit Alekperov, the Soviet-era oil boss who now heads Lukoil, Russia's flagship oil company. The president had some good news for Mr Mulva: the government had just signed a decree to sell its 7.6...

<p>PARIS (Reuters) - French oil company TotalFinaElf does not expect to be frozen out of oil contracts in Iraq despite France's tough opposition to the U.S.-led war, the firm's chief of exploration and production said Tuesday.</p> <p>In an interview with the newspaper Le Figaro, Christophe de Margerie dismissed rumors Total was on a "black list" of firms that will be denied lucrative contracts in post-war Iraq, although he stressed the firm remains vigilant.</p>