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She kept paying Imran Awan in an advisory role until July, when he was arrested attempting to board a plane to Pakistan at Dulles International Airport. He allegedly wired money to his family before he tried to make the trip.
Although documented evidence of Awan’s activities exist, he and his wife, Alvi, have only been charged with bank fraud. To date, the couple have been arraigned and are co-defendants in the bank fraud case.
Following discussion, Rep. Gohmert spoke to TheDC and was shocked to learn that Awan would do House IT work months at a time while in Pakistan.
“I did not realize that we had someone who would live in Pakistan and get paid the maximum that any House employee could get paid and he was doing his information technology work his computer work for the House of Representatives from Pakistan. This is just mind boggling,” he said.
However, Gohmert noted that now with Awan’s wife testifying against him in court, more information about the case is likely to come out.
During the discussion, Rep. Perry noted that federal law enforcement appeared to have less concern over Awan’s potential crimes as opposed to smaller violations committed by his own constituents.
San Antonio firefighters responded to a structure fire Friday evening, Jan. 19, 2019, to offices at a business complex. No injuries were reported.
A suspected electrical short resulted in a fire at a commercial business office building on the Northwest Side late Friday according to the San Antonio Fire Department.
Firefighters responded about 11 p.m. to the 8200 block of Interstate 10 West to a fire they say started within the walls and quickly spread to the attic. The building is home to Red Mccombs Business Office.
According to Joe Arrington, SAFD spokesman, the fire was "very stubborn," and initially proved difficult for firefighters to gain access to. Though officials report the fire was extinguished in about 45 minutes.
Firefighters on the scene say the office was closed at the time of the fire and no injuries were reported.
An SAFD spokesman said official cause and damage estimates remain under investigation.
Every American has the God-given right to lose money in the financial markets, and one of the fastest ways to do it is trading futures contracts.
Whether it's oil, Treasury bonds, foreign currencies or stock indexes, if you're speculating on asset price movements with futures contracts, you can lose a lot of money very quickly.
"Don't come into the market slinging futures contracts," said Anthony Crudele, head of online future trader community Beacon Trader. "It's just not smart.
"People have to educate themselves before they start using them," he added.
Crudele is an unabashed fan of futures contracts as a means of hedging existing risks and speculating on future price movements of a wide range of assets.
While futures markets are and always will be dominated by large banks, corporations and institutions — most of them looking to hedge risk exposures in the most liquid markets in the world — interest in futures among the retail investor community is also growing.
"The professionals will always trade in these markets, but I see a resurgence of interest among small retail investors, as well," Crudele said.
The two most popular markets for small investors are the S&P 500 E-mini contract, based on the S&P 500 Index, and the crude oil contract, both of which are hosted by the CME Group, the largest derivatives and futures exchange in the world.
"We've seen tremendous growth in our equity index and energy products during the past few years," said Mark Omens, executive director and head of retail sales at the CME Group. "It's been driven by ongoing volatility in crude oil markets, as well broader economic and geopolitical uncertainty.
"More and more individual investors are turning to futures to help manage that uncertainty and volatility," he added.
The growing demand from retail investors is, in part, being spurred by the increasingly sophisticated educational and trading resources now available to them. The big online brokerages, such as Schwab, TD Ameritrade and E*Trade, have all invested in derivatives platforms that include futures trading, and new firms like Quantcha and Quantopian are enabling small investors to write their own trading algorithms.
"There's been an explosion in the number of advanced automated trading tools available to retail investors," said Will Acworth, senior vice president of data and research at the Futures Industry Association.
That doesn't mean that you should use them and dive into the futures markets. Futures contracts are highly leveraged and typically require a margin of between 5 percent and 10 percent up front to open a position. The market is settled on a daily basis, meaning if the market moves against an investor, they will have to top up their margins to maintain the position. The losses can accumulate quickly.
"Futures are probably better for more sophisticated investors," said Kevin Fischer, an options trader with Interactive Brokers, one of the largest derivatives brokerages in the country. "We get calls all the time from people with open positions asking for information they should have known before taking the position."
The key difference between options and futures contracts is that the first grants the buyer the right to buy or sell an asset for a specified period of time, while the second creates an obligation to buy or sell the asset at a future date. With options, buyers' downside risk is limited to the premium paid for the option. If the market moves against them, they can either sell their option in the market for a loss or ultimately let it expire without exercising it.
With futures, however, the potential downside risk is much greater. If an investor agrees to buy oil for delivery in three months at a price of $50, they could lose the entire value of the contract in the unlikely event of oil becoming worthless. If that investor put up a 10 percent margin on the contract, he or she would have to increase the margin amount on a daily basis when the market moves against them while they receive credit to their account when the market moves in their favor.
For investors looking to actively trade in asset markets on a 24-hour basis, futures markets offer the most liquid and diverse platform for doing so. "The futures market is the easiest place to come, open an account and trade your ideas on a global basis," said Crudele of Beacon Trader.
If an investor's objective is simply to hedge a portfolio of stocks, however, options may be the simpler and better solution. For one thing, you can trade them through your regular securities account, as opposed to finding a futures commission merchant (FCM) to handle any trading in futures contracts.
"I think the option is the better hedge," said Fischer at Interactive Brokers. In markets with low volatility, option premiums shrink, reducing the cost to hedge an existing portfolio. In more volatile markets, optionality becomes much more expensive and valuable. In the futures market, investors simply pay the commission on the transaction.
Either way, investors have to beware with futures.
The market regulator, the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission, maintains a database on FCMs and brokers at smartcheck.cftc.gov that lets investors check the backgrounds of firms and individuals, as well as the latest fraud schemes in the market.
Fischer also suggests that novices take advantage of all the educational material at exchanges such as the CME Group (at myfuturesinstitute.com), and practice paper-trading in the markets to get a feel for trading before committing actual money.
"There are good ways and bad ways to use all financial products," Fischer said. "It's about educating yourself and understanding the pros and cons of them."
The Republicans brought us Grenada to save our students. It was sorta, er, well, justa a war or was it an invasion? Then they brought us Panama. Guess it was sorta an invasion too, now wasn't it, to keep our streets safe from--oh yeah, from "drugs." Now they brought us the "Bad Man Saddam Hussein Show," justa war, er no, this was a real live war, a real "Just War" to keep the people of Kuwait in the hands of those freedom-loving sheiks. This one is over but don't count on another sideshow right away. You can just bet a box of red, white and blues plus a couple of boxes of yellows that the rest of the nations (all of 'em) are keeping a low profile and smiling our way 24 hours a day and saying to themselves, "Who is that 'kinder, gentler bunch of crazies' going to bomb next?"
As the Senate prepares to vote on two funding proposals Thursday, what are their expectations for making progress to end the government shutdown? Judy Woodruff speaks to Sen. Mike Rounds, R-S.D., for his take on how we got to this point, what Democrats and Republicans should do next and why the president's request for additional miles of border barrier is "not unreasonable."
Back now to the U.S. government shutdown.
Our first of two views comes from Republican Senator Mike Rounds of South Dakota.
I spoke with him a short time ago and started by asking if he sees any glimmer of hope for a compromise.
The good news is that we have actually got two proposals that will make the two sides actually recognize the differences. That's the first step. There's more work to be done.
And I don't think anything comes solidly through until one of a couple of things happen. Either, number one, the president and the speaker recognize how critical this is, both give a little, and they start to find a way forward.
The president, making his first move, came off of dead center. Speaker Pelosi will have to do that at some point. Once that occurs, then I think cooler heads will start to prevail, and we can start finding something in the middle where both sides can save some face and we can get government back to work again.
You said the president has moved of dead center, but isn't he still insisting on money for a physical wall along the border?
Well, he's talking about a barrier. We do have about, last time I checked, 654 miles of either pedestrian or vehicle barriers right now.
He's asking for an additional 244 miles of either pedestrian or vehicle barriers. He has not specified what they have to be made of. He's indicating he will take concrete, steel. It doesn't have to be concrete, could be steel, but some sort of a barrier.
Not unreasonable. He's not the first president. There would be four other presidents before him that have also felt that way and have done that, including President Obama. But he's also recognizing within this proposal that there's other things that need to be done.
And we agree. He's got to do some things for the ports of entry. Critically, we need additional intelligence-gathering along that line and so forth.
Well, Senator, as you know, I'm sure, Democrats say their point is that, if the president is able to do this, to shut down the government and then be rewarded with what he wants, then their concern is that he will be able to try that again and again, that if he's rewarded and can shut down the government and be rewarded for it every time, that that's a bad precedent to set.
I understand their point of view.
But the reality is, he is the president of the United States, and he's made it clear that this is something that he has wanted from day one. And he feels that it's a slight to him when the speaker says you will get nothing.
And so I think somewhere in the middle, there's got to be a way out of this thing, and I don't think it's simply saying, we're not going to give the president anything, you know, because we disagree. I think it's a matter of, we have divided government.
I think the president has to come off what he originally asked for, and I think the speaker has to come off of where she was at. The other side is that we continue to start adding to it and making the bigger deal and starting to address some of the major issues in front of us, something similar to what we did in February of last year, where we actually created funding for a $25 billion proposal over 10 years, fully authorized and appropriated.
But it also addressed the issue of the DACA kids and it started to address the challenges of chain migration as well. That may be an alternative as well.
Well, the Senate will have a chance to vote on a proposal the president likes. If that doesn't pass, we know there's a separate proposal. The Democrats are saying, just give us two weeks, let's spend two weeks, get the government back open, during which time we can go at this and try to come up with a solution.
Would you be willing to support that?
At this point, I think the sides have drawn a line in the sand. Each of them will say no to the other proposal.
I will support the president's point of view for this one. I think my Democrat colleagues will support the speaker's point of view. Once that has occurred, and neither one comes forward with another votes to move forward, then I think the leaders can come together and say, OK, where are we going to go with this thing and how are going to we get cooler heads to prevail and what do we have to start adding into this to get something done?
There are attempts, I know, by senators on both sides of the aisle to come together outside of the leadership. Do you see any potential progress there?
But the fact of the matter is that none of us come to Washington to be in the middle of this mess. I think all of us came here to try to make things better. I think most of us admire the founding fathers and the way they handled it. They were principled individuals who still respected one another.
And our country was based on one of the greatest arrangements ever made. Big states and little states got together. And these principled individuals that fought in the Revolutionary War came together and said, I may represent a big or I may represent a little state, but if we're going to have a Constitution here that's actually going to stand the test of time, we're going to have to indulge other side, as they said, which we now call compromise.
And they created the House and the Senate. If founding fathers, as principled as they were, could come to an understanding that has lasted this long, the least we can do is find some ground in the middle here to where we can past this impasse that is really self-imposed.
Senator Mike Rounds, South Dakota, thank you very much.
Worcester passed away at home on Wednesday, December 23, 2009. Mary was born in Worcester on October 14, 1955, a daughter of the late Edward L. and Beverly F. (Gaylord) Chatfield. Upon their death, Mary was cared for by her paternal grandmother Mary A. Smith and paternal Aunt Helen L. Boykin. She graduated from Doherty High School and has lived here all of her life.
Mary is preceded in death by Mary A. Smith and Helen L. Boykin who raised her as a daughter, and a cousin Wayne L. Boykin. Mary is survived by her cherished sisters, Eva Diane Dickerson of Moreno Valley, CA and Beverly F. Brown of Toledo, OH; cousins, Danette M. Williams whom she considered a sister, Steven A. Shakir , Lee R. Boykin, Juanita E. Boykin, Joseph M. Boykin and Blake W. Waller all of Worcester, Michele L. Boykin of Richmond, VA , Michael A. Boykin of Tijuana, MEX; nieces and nephews and extended family.
Miss Chatfield more affectionately known as "Principal Mary" provided the Worcester Public School system with twenty-seven years of dedicated services as an Instructional Assistant, at Elm Park Community School. Miss Chatfield lovingly, humorously, and firmly encouraged, guided and counseled students to strive for success, no matter what challenges they may face. She was an integral part of Elm Park School community as she coordinated the Big Brother, Big Sister Program, organized many celebrations to recognize the efforts to those children who met with success academically and behaviorally and provided staff and students with an environment that was relaxed and most importantly, organized. Although Miss Chatfield bore no children, she was the mother to tens of thousands over her career at Elm Park Community School. She will be remembered fondly and missed dearly.
She was a member of Mt. Olive Pentecostal Church, the Big Brothers, Big Sisters and Nokomis Temple #36 in Worcester. Laurie cherished helping and working with children. Mary also worked as a customer service agent for Charter Communications for 16 years.
Friends and relatives are invited to visit with the family Tuesday, December 29th from 5:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. at Mt. Olive Pentecostal Church, 60 Highland Street, Worcester, MA. A funeral service will be held Wednesday, December 30th at 11:00a.m. in the church. Burial will be in Worcester County Memorial Park in Paxton. The Mercadante Funeral Home & Chapel, 370 Plantation Street, Worcester, is honored to assist the family with arrangements.
Joined on December 31st 2007, last online on 17 January 2019.
Saw your post on G.E 64. It was great wasn't it!
Good job on that batch of banners.
gonna do some more, slowly but surely.
A new "Lunar" or "Grandia" possible?
Favorite game composers of all time?
Favourite Games: Super Mario Bros. 3, Chrono Trigger, Xenogears, Final Fantasy VI, Resident Evil 4, Secret of Mana, The Legend of Zelda: LTTP, Final Fantasy VII, Castlevania SOTN, Super Mario Kart, Zombies Ate My Neighbors, Terranigma, Policenauts, Dragon Quest VIII, Metal Gear Solid, Goldeneye, Super Mario World, Parasite Eve.
Favourite Music: The Smashing Pumpkins, The Beatles, Pink Floyd, Zwan, David Bowie, The Clash, Blue Öyster Cult, The Doors, King Crimson, Pixies, The Kinks, T.Rex, Robert Johnson, Weezer, The Velvet Underground, Frank Zappa, Charley Patton, Bob Dylan, Neil Young, The Jimi Hendrix Experience, The Band, Miles Davis, Nirvana, Simon & Garfunkel, Tortoise, Dead Kennedys.
Favourite Films: Pulp Fiction, The Empire Strikes Back, A Clockwork Orange, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Vertigo, Lawrence of Arabia, Blade Runner, Chinatown, Jaws, Memento, The Fountain, The Big Lebowski, Full Metal Jacket, Pan's Labyrinth, Eyes Wide Shut, Star Wars, Fargo, Reservoir Dogs, Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind, Hot Fuzz.
Favourite Books: 1984, Sphere, The Hero With A Thousand Faces, The Penultimate Truth, The Sigma Protocol, Prey, The Man in the High Castle, The Gunslinger, Animal Farm, Catch 22, Death on the Nile, Watership Down, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Needful Things, The Mysterious Island, The Pinball Effect, Cosmos.
DENNIS the Menace, Gnasher, Minnie the Minx, Lord Snooty and the Bash Street Kids will be popping into York gallery According To McGee as part of a celebration of the Beano's 80th anniversary from May 19.
Pop Art artist Horace Panter, who happens to be bass player for ska legends The Specials too, has been commissioned by the DC Thomson comic to create new depictions of some of its most popular characters.
The Tower Street gallery will be the first stop outside London's Fleet Street launch event to exhibit the works in a coup for husband and wife curators Greg and Ails McGee.
"I’ve been working with According To McGee for a number of years now and I'm delighted to be bringing the Beano’s 80th Birthday Collection of new paintings and prints to exhibit there," says Howard "It will be hot on the heels from its launch at Beano HQ in London, where it has been a palpable hit."
Panter's depictions remain true to the spirit of the much-loved originals while giving them a new boost of Pop Art energy via his paint brush. Dennis and Gnasher now dive into an Los Angeles swimming pool, as an homage to David Hockney's Californian swimming-pool works, and Minnie the Minx becomes an Andy Warhol starlet icon.
Lord Snooty is a tip of the top hat to Roy Lichtenstein, complete with Ben Day dots and speech bubble, while the Bash Street Kids bristle with mischief in a world of Jeff Koons and Damien Hirst high art.
Greg McGee believes Panter is the perfect choice for the new series. "He's a Pop artist at the top of his game. He has a controlled, vibrant style that lends itself to iconic characters," he says. "His defining role in ska-punk as bassist in The Specials is pertinent too. The Beano has been a punkish disruptive force in British visual culture since before Johnny Rotten was born. I can't think of a more appropriate artist than Horace Panter to bring the Beano's favourite troublemakers to a modern audience."
The collection consists of large-scale originals, with Billy Whizz the largest at 1m x 2m, plus fine art prints, all signed by Panter, who will attend the midday launch on May 19, when he will sign vintage Beano annuals for customers too.
Greg is pleased that the event is gathering a groundswell of attention. "We've had clients messaging us directly though Twitter and Instagram, especially after Horace's appearance on BBC Breakfast. We've made pre-exhibition sales and the guest list is filling up. Anyone interested in coming might want to book by contacting us through our website or on social media.
"The exhibition will be open everyday of the week, for three weeks, but the launch event is a very small window of opportunity to meet the man himself: a leading Pop artist in the UK, with a luminous exhibition of Britain's favourite comic-strip characters. It's punk, Pop and painting in one art gallery. We can't wait, and we're proud that it's a coup for York as a city and the very modern, creative energy it now harnesses."
Ails McGee is equally thrilled at securing the northern premiere. "This is an achievement that reflects well on everything we've been trying to celebrate here in York," she says. "York doesn't have to worry about tourism – it's the second biggest recipient of visitors in the UK – but what's great is that with the flourishing of micro-breweries, festivals and new galleries, the contemporary energy is providing as much of a reason to come visit York as does the heritage.
"We feel that this exhibition can play a major part in that. The Beano, like York, is part of our country's heritage. Having Horace Panter reinvent the characters anew through the filter of Pop Art is a pleasing reflection on what many creative people here have been doing here for some time. Horace Panter & The Beano's 80th Birthday Collection is the perfect exhibition for York and indeed art collectors everywhere. These are old favourites, remixed."
Horace Panter & The Beano's 80th Birthday Collection runs from May 19 to June 9. Contact info@accordingtomcgee.com for invitations to the 12 noon launch. According To McGee, Tower Street, York is open Monday to Saturday, 11am to 5pm, and Sundays, 1pm to 4pm.
Memory Scanner will scan the whole database memory built into your device (RAM and ROM) looking for a given text string or binary data inside all records and resources. You can search for all kinds of data: find system entries, find application data, find your personal data. You may search and view the results in two modes: find text, find binary data.
AOL Moviephone has been bumped from a series of cinema chains – by the chains’ own new ticket service.
Ads for upstart ticketing service Fandango are replacing those for Moviephone, which was bought by AOL in 1998, in five theater chains.
Regal, Carmike Cinemas, Cinemark Theatres, Edwards Cinemas and Century Theatres announced yesterday they will work exclusively with Fandango for online and over the phone ticketing needs.
Fandango also has non-exclusive ticketing deals with General Cinema Theaters and Loews Cineplex Entertainment, which become exclusive next January. The above chains own 50 percent of Fandango and represent 40 percent of the market.
Fandango stickers have been appearing on the glass doors of Loews Cinemas, such as the one at EWalk at East 42nd Street, in the last two months. Customers can buy tickets online or by using the Tell Me voice portal. They collect the ducats from machines in the lobby with their credit cards.
As the ticketing war heated up last year, both services introduced voice recognition software.
Both sites can list movie times, but agreements are needed for selling tickets.
Fandango interacts with the theater’s inventory computer system in real time, whereas Moviephone is more of a broker, buying up blocks of tickets which can sell out.