- The
eurozone is a fiscally troubled place right now. Greece is a financial black
hole, several other nations are teetering close to the brink and Portugal is
green-lighting new laws that will clear the way for rich people to move there.
Technically Portugal's government has merely approved
new procedures it hopes will remove legal obstacles that have halted granting
residence permits to wealthy investors from outside the European Union, which
is a nice way of saying we need cash. The so-called Golden Visa program was
launched three years ago to help the country out of a debt crisis and in many
respects, it has been a rousing success…in helping China get a foothold in
western Europe. So far, this international charity program has brought
investments totaling more than 1 billion euros ($1.4 billion), with most of the
permits awarded to Chinese, but there have been hiccups. There was that pesky police investigation into
suspected corruption and money-laundering involving officials overseeing the
program, which prompted the government to tighten controls and implement a new law covering the program which came into
effect July 1. Like any good national government, Portugal’s regime failed to
set required administrative procedures, leaving the Foreigners' Service unable
to issue permits. If that isn't bureaucratic ineptitude at its finest, nothing
is. Those rules have now been established and all that is left is final
approval by Portugal's president. Given how much of a clusterf*ck this entire
process has been so far, even that might not be a sure thing at this point………..
- Completed
stadium? Who needs a completed stadium to host major international sporting
events? Japan may get there eventually, but for right now its plans to build an
actual venue for the 2020 Olympic Games in Tokyo
are troubled at best. Japanese officials have scrapped the design of the
Olympic stadium because of soaring costs and will open bidding for a new plan.
That’s not only concerning for the Olympics, but it also t leaves the 2019
Rugby World Cup without a main venue. "We have decided to go back to the
start on the Tokyo Olympics-Paralympics stadium plan, and start over from
zero," Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said. "The cost has ballooned just
too much." This should in no way increase the heat on the government,
which has been under mounting criticism as the estimated cost of the new
National Stadium rose to $2 billion, nearly twice as much as the initial
estimate. Abe said he received the support of other officials before
instructing the sports and Olympics ministers to immediately prepare a process
to choose a new stadium plan. "I have been listening to the voices of the
people and the athletes for about a month now, thinking about the possibility
of a review," Abe said. The response from the Tokyo 2020 organizing
committee wasn’t exactly enthusiastic and the committee noted that "we
would like to ensure that the construction of the stadium is completed in time
for the 2020 Olympic and Paralympic Games." All of this is not exactly
what the International Olympic Committee had in mind with its "Olympic
Agenda 2020" reform program, which seeks to make the games less expensive
and ensure long-term use of venues. Granted, the IOC talking about keeping
costs down is a bit like Snoop Dogg talking about smoking a bit less chron in
that you know the words are hollow and it will never happen, but the thought it
nice………
- New
York City police have received a lot of heat for unfair policies and actions
targeting certain ethnic groups and minorities, but it’s good to know that they
can show a bit of leniency when it’s totally not needed. Enter 19 New York Police Department employees — one lieutenant,
eight sergeants, nine officers and one detective — who worked at the 40th
Precinct in the Bronx and face charges of misreporting crimes during a
four-month period last year. Officials in the nation's largest police
department said they uncovered dozens of instances of crimes misreported and
wrongly downgraded by officers thanks to an anonymous tip to internal affairs.
Those 19 employees now face departmental charges and possible punishments
ranging from a loss of vacation days to possible dismissal from the department
if they are found guilty. Commissioner William Bratton took over the
35,000-officer department last year and has locked in on ensuring that crime
complaints are accurately reported. "The purposeful misrepresentation of
crime data is rare but nevertheless unacceptable, and it will be dealt with
accordingly," Bratton said. The investigation was carried out by the
department's Quality Assurance Division and a risk management bureau tasked
with weeding out problem officers. It uncovered 55 instances in 1,558
complaints of crimes downgraded or misreported within the precinct, with the
offending officers accused of downgrading or misreporting low-level crimes such
as petit larceny, not killings, rapes or shootings. The NYPD's deputy
commissioner for legal matters, Lawrence Byrne, explained why accurate crime
numbers are critical. "We need the public to trust those numbers, and we
make resource assignments of officers, how they spend that time, in large part
based on those numbers," Byrne said. Wonder how many of those
downgraded offenders were questionably stopped and frisked by NYPD officers…………
- China,
you’ve been saved. You were about to be subjected to a pair of shows by one of
the most hack-tacular musical outfits in the game, but your government has
crushed Adam Levine and his pals like protestors under the treads of a tank
rolling through Tiananmen Square. See, Maroon 5 were
scheduled to perform in Beijing and Shanghai in September as part of an Asian
tour. These glorified man-banders with instruments would have tormented Chinese
ears with their special brand of musical awful, consisting of Levine’s falsetto
crap on lead vocals, all the musical edge of Dora the Explorer and the lyrical
sophistication of a sledgehammer to the eardrums. Instead, those shows
were scrapped earlier this week and while no official explanation has been
given, word on the street is that Maroon 5 have been banned from China after
showing support for the Dalai Lama. Keyboardist
Jesse Carmichael wished the Dalai Lama a happy 80th birthday earlier this month
and linked to a photograph on Instagram, but both posts have since been taken
down. He also reportedly attended a party celebrating the Buddhist leader's
birthday in the United States and because China views the peaceful religious
leader as an anti-establishment rebel looking to topple its Communist regime
and plunge the world into a fiery hell of evil and disaster, that’s enough to
earn a spot on the Asian power’s refused entry list. This marks one of the
first times in recorded history where China’s government has actually acted in
the best interests of its people and hit the mark………
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