It’s likely that some clubgoers at Mokai Lounge in South Beach thought they were hallucinating when a horse entered the bar on Thursday. However, the incident was all too real.

Footage posted online shows a woman in a black bikini on the horse in the extremely crowded nightclub. The horse suddenly falls the ground before bucking and throwing the woman off. People can be heard screaming when the incident happens. The screams eventually turn to cheers, which appear to be directed at the horse.

The video was posted by Miami Beach activist Michael DeFilippi, who encouraged people to share the “shocking footage.” He said the incident constitutes animal abuse, and that the club “should be stripped of their license to operate.”

Facebook user Leeza Marie Juelle helped spread the video.

“Last night I noticed a bunch of pictures & videos posted of a horse in a Miami nightclub and it made my stomach sick,” she wrote, sharing the footage. “This is inhumane and deserves serious attention ASAP.”

DeFilippi and Juelle weren’t the only ones left angry by the incident. A Change.org petition calls for action to be taken against the club has so far been signed by almost 700 people.

“The question remains as to WHY a horse was let into the doors of Mokai in the first place, but the answer remains the same, ACTION MUST BE TAKEN for letting this happen,” the petition says.

Others expressed their anger in the comments section of DeFilippi’s video. Facebook user Castiana Johnson called the move “beyond irresponsible,” adding that the incident shows “clear animal abuse and cruelty.” She noted that the distressed horse would have likely been put down – through no fault of its own – if it had kicked someone and injured them.

Another Facebook user, by the name of Ceci Be, wrote that “owners and all those present at that moment are responsible for animal cruelty. Unacceptable!”

Meanwhile, Miami Beach Police tweeted that it has been “made aware” of the incident. “We are very concerned over the allegations. As such, we have launched a joint investigation with [City of Miami Beach] Code Enforcement,” the police wrote.

“We’re looking at it from a city perspective in terms of licensing,” Miami Beach Police Officer Ernesto Rodriguez said, according to local news outlet WSVN-TV.  “We’re looking at it from a police perspective in terms of animal cruelty. Whatever it is that we can find to charge appropriately is what’ll happen in this investigation.”

As weird as the incident is, it’s not the first time that a horse has been an attraction at a US nightclub. In May 1977, Bianca Jagger, the ex-wife of Rolling Stones lead singer Mick Jagger, rode a horse inside Studio 54 in New York City.

In 2015, she defended her action in a letter to the Financial Times.

“I made the foolish decision to get on it for a few minutes…no doubt you will agree with me that it is one thing to, on the spur of the moment, to get on a horse in a nightclub, but it is quite another to ride in on one…I hope you can understand the difference between ‘coming in’ on a horse and getting on one,” Jagger wrote.

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On Friday, Martin Shkreli was sentenced to seven years in prison. What, if anything, does Shkreli’s downfall tell us about modern America? 

Shkreli’s early life exemplified the rags-to-riches American success story. He was born in Brooklyn, New York, in April 1983, to parents who immigrated from Albania and worked as janitors in New York apartment buildings. Shkreli attended New York’s Hunter College High School, a public school for intellectually gifted young people, and in 2005 received a bachelor’s degree in business administration from Baruch College.

But soon thereafter, Shkreli turned toward shady deals. He started his own hedge fund, betting that the stock prices of certain biotech companies would drop. Then he used financial chat rooms on the Internet to savage the companies he bet against, causing their prices to drop and his bets to pay off.

In 2015, Shkreli founded and became CEO Turing Pharmaceuticals. Under his direction Turing spent $55 million for the U.S. rights to sell a drug called Daraprim. Developed in 1953, Daraprim is the only approved treatment for toxoplasmosis, a rare parasitic disease that can cause birth defects in unborn babies, and lead to seizures, blindness, and death in cancer patients and people with AIDS. Daraprim is on the World Health Organization’s list of Essential Medicines.

Months after he bought the drug, Schkreli raised its price by over 5,000 percent, from $13.50 a pill to $750.00.

Shkreli was roundly criticized, but he was defiant: “No one wants to say it, no one’s proud of it, but this is a capitalist society, a capitalist system and capitalist rules.” He said he wished he had raised the price even higher, and would buy another essential drug and raise its price, too.

In February 2016, Shkreli was called before a congressional committee to justify his price increase on Daraprim. He refused to answer any questions, pleading the Fifth Amendment. After the hearing Shkreli tweeted, “Hard to accept that these imbeciles represent the people in our government.”

Shkreli was subsequently arrested in connection with an unrelated scheme to defraud his former hedge fund investors. In anticipation of his criminal trial, Shkreli boasted to the New Yorker magazine, “I think they’ll return a not-guilty verdict in two hours. There are going to be jurors who will be fans of mine. I walk down the streets of New York and people shake my hand. They say, ‘I want to be just like you.’”

During his trial, Shkreli strolled into a room filled with reporters and made light of a particular witness, for which the trial judge rebuked him. On his Facebook page he mocked the prosecutors, and told news outlets they were a “junior varsity” team.

He retaliated against journalists who criticized him by purchasing internet domains associated with their names and ridiculing them on the sites. “I wouldn’t call these people ‘journalists,’” he wrote in an email to Business Insider. He said on Facebook that if he were acquitted he’d be able to have sex with a female journalist he often posted about online.

After his conviction, Shkreli called the case “a witch hunt of epic proportions, and maybe they found one or two broomsticks.” As she imposed sentence last Friday, the judge cited Shkrili’s “egregious multitude of lies,” noting also that he “repeatedly minimized” his conduct.

Shkreli’s story is tragic and pathetic, but I ask you: How different is Martin Shkreli from other figures who dominate American life today, even at the highest rungs?

Shkreli will do whatever it takes to win, regardless of the consequences for anyone else. He believes that the norms other people live by don’t apply to him. His attitude toward the law is that anything he wants to do is okay unless it is clearly illegal – and even if illegal, it’s okay if he can get away with it.

He’s contemptuous of anyone who gets in his way – whether judges, prosecutors, members of Congress, or journalists. He remains unapologetic for what he did. He is utterly shameless.

Sound familiar? The Shkreli personality disorder can be found on Wall Street, in the executive suites of some of America’s largest corporations, in Hollywood, in Silicon Valley, in some of our most prestigious universities, and in Washington. If you look hard enough, you might even find it in Trump’s White House. 

Face it: America has a Shkreli problem.

Martin Shkleri will spend the next seven years of his life in prison. What will happen to the other unbridled narcissists now in positions of power in America, who also blatantly defy the common good?

EU President Donald Tusk issued a bold statement to Britain’s Prime Minister Theresa May, saying that if talks about the UK’s withdrawal from the bloc are to go ahead, she must find “realistic” proposals to avoid a hard border between Northern Ireland and the south. Speaking alongside Irish PM Leo Varadkar, Tusk said talks would be a case of “Ireland first.”

“We know today that the UK government rejects a customs and regulatory border down the Irish Sea, the EU single market, and the customs union,” Tusk said. “While we must respect this position, we also expect the UK to propose a specific and realistic solution to avoid a hard border.

“As long as the UK doesn’t present such a solution, it is very difficult to imagine substantive progress in Brexit negotiations. If in London someone assumes that the negotiations will deal with other issues first before the Irish issue, my response would be: Ireland first,” the EU leader said, according to The Independent.

The comments come as EU chiefs were compared to gangsters who are “throwing threats of violence around” to get what they want on Brexit. During a speech to the British Chamber of Commerce, Arlene Foster, the leader of Northern Ireland’s Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), attacked the EU’s hardening stance on both trade and the Irish border.

Criticizing the European Commission’s “bad faith” on the border issue, Foster hit out at the view of Brussels leaders that not accepting proposals for keeping the border open would encourage a return of terrorism – which, she said, was tantamount to a threat.
Foster told the conference of business leaders in London: “I do object, in the strongest terms, to people who have limited experience of the Troubles in Northern Ireland throwing threats of violence around as some kind of bargaining chip in the negotiating process. To do so is an insult to the people of Northern Ireland, who have worked so hard to bring peace to our country.

“I can remember the evening when the IRA shot my father [and], in a bloodstained state, he crawled into our kitchen. I remember the day the IRA bombed my school bus, severely injuring the girl sitting beside me. When I talk about the border in a Brexit scenario, I don’t speak about some far away land, I speak about home.”

Meanwhile, Liam Fox, the UK’s international trade secretary, compared the bloc to “gangsters,” as he rejected its notion that British trade would be worse-off post-Brexit. He told the BBC: “The idea of punishing Britain is not the language of a club, it’s the language of a gang. We need to begin this argument by putting politics aside and do what is in the economic interests of the people we represent.”

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In a series of tweets Friday, Musk outlined an updated version of his underground hyperloop plan by the Boring Company. It is so named not because its plans will send you to sleep, but rather because it bores holes and tunnels into the earth.

Musk certainly talks the talk and not without reason. The inventor has delivered on his previous promise of launching rockets into space and safely landing them back on earth, cutting the cost of such endeavors drastically.

READ MORE: SpaceX posts stunning footage of Falcon Heavy on Florida launchpad

Initially, the Boring Co’s plans involved sending personal vehicles underground on various parking space-shaped lifts. Like the one below.

Badawi was jailed in 2012 for writing about freedom of speech. He was sentenced to 10 years in prison and 1,000 lashes, of which he has so far endured 50 – which nearly killed him.

Since Badawi’s imprisonment, a new king of Saudi Arabia has risen to power – and with him, a new crown prince. Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) is preparing to leave the UK today after a whirlwind three-day tour that saw him meeting Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson, dining with royals and chatting with Prime Minister Theresa May at 10 Downing Street.

According to advertising experts, Saudi Arabia has spent upward of $1 million on a pro-Saudi advertising blitz across the UK capital – and it is hard to miss, complete with larger-than-life billboards on major arterial roads, advertising in newspapers and vehicle-mounted billboards as well as social media sundries. The campaign, designed to promote a prince “bringing change to Saudi Arabia” and “opening Saudi Arabia to the world,” does not seem to have worked. According to surveys, one in three Britons said they didn’t want the prince to come.

The associated social media campaign celebrating MBS has also been a flop. Hashtags #WelcomeSaudiCrownPrince and #ANewSaudiArabia were drowned out by activists flooding the digital landscape with their own hashtags to mark MBS’ trip: #SaudiPrinceNotWelcome, #DeathPenalty, and most succinctly #Yemen.

The crown prince considers himself a social reformer on the grounds that Saudi Arabia’s women can now join the army, drive, and visit the cinema. The prince has claimed the credit for recent corruption battles, jailing even his relatives until misappropriated funds could be recouped. He’s also been tasked with taking the Saudi economy away from its reliance on oil, and leading the Arab country towards a more diverse economic future.

But in the shadow of 50-foot high billboards emblazoned with the prince’s face there are numerous youngsters facing the death penalty for peacefully protesting. And then there is Raif Badawi. Jailed before the prince and his father came into power, Badawi’s wife Ensaf Haidar is publicly urging the prince to pardon her husband.

Through the MailOnline, Haidar is now urging the Crown Prince to live up to his ‘moderate’ reputation and promises of reform in Saudi Arabia, calling on him to grant Badawi a royal pardon while he is in the UK.

“I really hope that Saudi Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman will forgive Raif and deport him to Canada directly so that we can say that Saudi Arabia is serious in its call for a return to moderate Islam,” she said. “Most of what sent Raif to prison more than six years ago is now the new state project.”

Haidar fled to Canada with the couple’s three children in 2013. She said there should be no reason for MBS not to pardon her husband as everything he wrote about is what MBS is now – at least publicly – promoting as The New Saudi Arabia.

But the question remains – is bin Salman really as much a reformer as he claims? Since his elevation to crown prince, MBS has executed more prisoners than ever before.
According to the British human rights campaign group Reprieve, 133 executions have taken place since he became crown prince in June 2017, compared with 67 in the preceding eight months.

Founder of the Arabia Foundation Ali Shihabi said that those executed were drug ringleaders. He said no one had been executed on political charges… but that claim does not stand up to scrutiny.
In January 2016, 47 people were executed in one day. Several of these were juveniles. One, Ali Al-Ribh, was convicted of taking part in protests calling for political reform when he was only 17 years old.

At Prime Minister’s Questions on the day of MBS’ arrival, Scottish National Party MP Stewart McDonald challenged PM Theresa May to stand in the House of Commons and declare that jailed blogger Raif Badawi “is no criminal and should be set free.” The PM would not guarantee she would raise Badawi’s case with the Saudi prince during his trip.

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Just 55 Marines have been punished for their involvement in a ‘Marines United’ Facebook group, which boasted 30,000 serving and retired members of the military before being shut down. The scandal extended to all branches of the military and involved some 131,000 photos of women, some explicit and taken without their permission, spread across 168 social media sites via Google Drive.

Undeterred, the group’s administrators and 400 dedicated members have since moved to smaller photo-sharing websites and forums where they can leer at their comrades. Two weeks ago photos once again emerged on a new Facebook group called “Blame Marines United (Non-Butthurt Edition),” reports Vice News.

This latest exploitation was in the form of a Dropbox folder called “Hoes Hoin,” which contained 267 explicit images of women who work in various branches of the military. The folder was discovered by Marine Erin Kirk Cuomo, who founded #NotInMyMarines in response to the wrongdoing and who successfully got the new Facebook page shut down on Tuesday.

READ MORE: Bill aims to outlaw future military photo scandals as NCIS works to identify Marines United

All the photos feature women working in the military, the vast majority are identifiable. Some are selfies, while others were clearly taken by someone else and show women completely naked and/or performing sex acts. Some are collages, featuring women in their military uniform accompanied by a nude photo of the same woman, according to Vice.  

Disturbingly, not all of the photos are from the now-defunct Marines United Facebook page. Some are labeled ‘legacy,’ suggesting that they had been shared previously; others appear to be new.

READ MORE: Marines United nude photos move to dark web amid ongoing military scandal – report

The Defence Department said it “continues to monitor and assess the social media landscape”, via Pentagon spokesperson Maj. Carla Gleason, who spoke to Vice News. “However, as social media platforms continue to expand, the challenge remains in becoming aware of and identifying victims of cyberbullying and cyber harassment, as well as identifying those individuals committing the offenses.” A Dropbox spokesperson told the Washington Examiner that the “link has been taken down and banned so it cannot be recirculated on Dropbox.”

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Mail Online has been heavily criticized by the Independent Press Standards Organisation (Ipso) after its reporting on the situation at Oxford Circus on 24 November. Multiple people reported gunshots were fired in and around the tube station, and the world’s press hurriedly attempted to gather information.

But shoddy reporting by Mail Online, in a bid to be first with the scoop, claimed a lorry had ploughed into pedestrians. The headline said “BREAKING NEWS: ‘Gunshots fired’ as armed police surround Oxford Circus tube station and shoppers flee ‘after lorry ploughs into pedestrians.’”

In fact, the reporters had picked up a tweet from a week before of blood on the pavement of Oxford Street, where a window cleaner had reportedly fallen from a ladder. The date was displayed on the picture. RT UK reporters, along with many others, checked the tweet and duly disregarded it.

But the website of the Daily Mail newspaper, which has the largest readership in the UK, went with it anyway. Journalists complained to the website and the headline was removed, but the damage was already done. Ipso received about 30 complaints that Mail Online had breached the editors’ code by publishing “inaccurate, misleading or distorted” information.

The feared “terrorist” incident turned out to be a false alarm. In its ruling, Ipso said: “The media plays an important role in informing the public of emerging developments. However, even in such circumstances, a publication must still demonstrate that it has taken appropriate care over the accuracy of the information it publishes. Where the timestamp of the tweet made it clear this was not a contemporaneous account, the publication had failed to take care over the accuracy of the article and the information published in the tweet.”

A committee decided a standalone correction and apology, which was also tweeted by the publication’s Twitter account, was fair and no further action will be taken. The complaints also said the article had been retweeted many times, although it was later amended and the tweet deleted. Mail Online said the detail was removed from the article after seven minutes and the tweet was deleted 11 minutes after it was published.

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Featuring gore-filled clips from popular titles such as Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2; Wolfenstein; Dead by Daylight; Sniper Elite; and Fallout 4, the video montage was reportedly shown during a White House roundtable discussion attended by representatives from the video game industry, lawmakers, and video game critics.

According to the Washington Post, after playing the video for the roundtable attendees, President Trump asked the group: “This is violent, isn’t it?”

WARNING: GRAPHIC SCENES

The compilation includes controversial gameplay from Modern Warfare 2, in which the player, taking on the role of an undercover CIA agent, participates in a mass shooting at a Moscow airport. The disturbing sequence was the subject of intense controversy in Russia. Modern Warfare’s developer, Activision, ultimately decided to remove the level entirely from the Russian version of the game. However, the game once again made headlines in Russia a year after its release, following a suicide bomb attack that killed 37 and left some 180 injured at Moscow’s Domodedovo International Airport in 2011. In the wake of the attack, media critic Danny Schechter said that the controversial game showed how “entertainment mirrors reality and reality mirrors entertainment.”

The video compilation and subsequent roundtable discussion were billed as part of the Trump administration’s response to the recent mass shooting at a high school in Parkland, Florida, which left 17 students and staff dead. Trump pointed the finger at violent video games shortly after the tragedy, remarking: “I’m hearing more and more people say the level of violence on video games is really shaping young people’s thoughts.”

Published as unlisted on the White House’s official YouTube channel on Thursday, the video quickly went viral – although perhaps for the wrong reasons. The video currently has fewer than 2,000 “likes,” compared with 58,000 “dislikes.”

“The only violence I see here is to the like/dislike bar,” observed a cheeky YouTube commenter, while another claimed that “This is completely biased, and anyone who has researched the topic for even five minutes knows that video games do not cause violence.”

Trump’s apparent belief that violent video games have a corrupting influence on America’s youth was not well received by representatives from the gaming industry who attended the meeting. In a statement issued to the press following the roundtable the Electronic Software Association, a trade group that represents game publishers, said that while they appreciated Trump’s “receptive and comprehensive approach to this discussion,” they found the president’s arguments unconvincing. The statement pointed to “numerous scientific studies establishing that there is no connection between video games and violence.”

The organization has a page on its website which specifically addresses concerns about violence in video games. “Violent crime, particularly among the young, has decreased dramatically since the early 1990s,” the ESA’s website reads. “During the same period of time, video games have steadily increased in popularity and use, exactly the opposite of what one would expect if there were a causal link.”

The argument is not watertight, as other studies have suggested that there is in fact a link between violence in video games and antisocial behavior. In 2012, Researchers from Ohio State University found that “people who played a violent video game for three consecutive days showed increases in aggressive behavior and hostile expectations each day they played.”

There are also some real world examples of the potential harm caused by violent video games. Norwegian mass murderer Anders Breivik and Sandy Hook gunman Adam Lanza were both known to be avid players of Call of Duty. Breivik, who recently claimed that the “outdated” Playstation 2 in his prison cell is a violation of his human rights, previously discussed how he “trained” for his attack that killed 77 people in July 2011 by playing the game.

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Hundreds of doctors in Quebec, Canada are asking the Ministry of Health to cancel a proposed pay raise it wants to give them, imploring the government to instead redirect the funds to other healthcare workers and patient care in the province.

“We, Quebec doctors who believe in a strong public system, oppose the recent salary increases negotiated by our medical federations,” wrote Médecins Québécois Pour le Régime Public (MQRP), in a letter signed by nearly 800 physicians. “We, Quebec doctors, are asking that the salary increases granted to physicians be canceled and that the resources of the system be better distributed for the good of healthcare workers.”

“If you ask physicians in the street, most will tell you that they would rather have more support and have a good working environment and have other professionals to refer their patients to, rather than having more money.” —Isabelle Leblanc, MQRPQuebec’s healthcare system, administered by the province’s Ministry of Health, has suffered “drastic cuts” recently, note the doctors, which they say should be reversed with the funds the government plans to use for raises.

The province’s 20,000 doctors make an average of $198,000 to $314,000, and the government has proposed annual raises of 1.4 to 1.8 percent, costing Quebec about $1.2 billion over the next five years.

“These increases are all the more shocking because our nurses, clerks, and other professionals face very difficult working conditions, while our patients live with the lack of access to required services because of the drastic cuts in recent years,” wrote the MQRP.

The funding cuts are the result of austerity measures taken by the province’s health minister, Gaetan Barrette. In February, nurses staged a sit-in at a hospital in the Montreal suburb of Terrebonne to denounce overwork, echoing the concerns of Emilie Ricard, a young nurse who posted a photo of herself in tears and looking exhausted after working a night shift in which she alone cared for more than 70 patients. Nurses’ unions say funding cuts have reduced the number of full-time positions available.

The cuts also appear to have caused the quality of patient care to suffer. Quebec’s health and welfare commissioner found in 2016 that the province had the longest emergency room wait times in the West, with 35 percent of patients waiting five hours or more for care.

“If you ask physicians in the street, most will tell you that they would rather have more support and have a good working environment and have other professionals to refer their patients to, rather than having more money,” Isabelle Leblanc, the president of MQRP, told the Guardian.

In 2017, 412 arrests were made in the UK, but a mere 110 of those led to actual terrorism charges. The shocking statistics come as Ahmed Hassan faces trial over September’s Parsons Green attack. On Wednesday, prosecutors told the court said that Hassan had told Home Office officials, 20 months before the Parsons Green attack, that he had been “trained to kill.”

The new data raises the question: are our anti-terrorism police as effective as they should be? An assessment made by David Anderson QC found that three of the six terrorists involved in the Manchester Arena attacks were on already the security services’ radar. Manchester suicide bomber Salman Abedi had twice been a “subject of interest” in MI5 investigations in the years before the May 2017 attack. Those investigations were later closed, and interest in Abedi downgraded.

In a statement released to the media, the Metropolitan Police detailed why there has been a spike in terrorism arrests. “There has been a 58 percent increase in the number of arrests for terrorism-related offences in the year ending December 2017 compared with the previous year (from 261 to 412 arrests),” the statement reads.

“In the year to December 2017, 12 arrests were made in connection with the terrorist attack on Westminster Bridge and Westminster Palace (22 March), 23 arrests were made in connection with the terrorist attack in Manchester (22 May 2017), 21 arrests in connection with the London Bridge attack (3 June 2017), 1 arrest in connection with the Finsbury Park Mosque attack (19 June 2017) and 7 arrests in connection with the Parsons Green attack (15 September 2017).”

Police said 2017 saw the highest number of arrests in a single year since data collection began in 2001. The numbers also include a record 61 women, who make up 15 percent of total arrests. There was also a record number of people of white ethnic appearance, and 66 percent who considered themselves to be British or dual citizens.

Security Minister Ben Wallace said the figures, released Thursday, were “testament to the breadth of work undertaken by the police, Security Service and wider judicial system in identifying and stopping terrorism in our communities and bringing those responsible to justice.”

“The police and Security Service have been clear about the scale of the threat we face,” he added. “We will continue to work with them and other agencies to ensure we have a broad response to all forms of terrorism both now and in the future.” 

Labour’s Shadow Home Secretary Diane Abbott says the increase in arrests reflects the rise in terrorist incidents that took place last year.

“But the threat has not gone away and the Tories’ cuts to police numbers undermine police forces’ ability to respond. Both the security services and counter-terrorism police are clear that community policing is in the frontline in the fight against terrorism, yet community policing has borne the brunt of Government police cuts.”

Criminal defense lawyer Tasnime Akunjee said that “it is expected that the arrest rate will go up given the response to attacks in Manchester and London.” She also suggested that the police need to rethink their strategy when tackling suspected terrorists.
“[T]he arrest rate rising and charge falling suggests the level of competence displayed by counter-terrorism authorities has gone down proportionately,” she told the Middle Eastern Eye. “It’s disappointing that government agencies that are concerned with security focus on the arrest rate going up when a large number of those people are entirely innocent.”

While the vast majority of those in custody for terror offences held Islamist extremist views – 86 percent of them – a further 9 percent held extreme right-wing beliefs. Another 5 percent held beliefs relating to other ideologies.

According the Home Office report “the proportion of prisoners holding far-right ideologies has increased steadily over the past three years.” This statistic is unsurprising – far-right groups such as Britain First, designed to combat ‘foreigners and terrorists’ have been prevalent in the media in the last few years. Britain First have even made headlines as recently as this week, with party leaders Paul Golding and Jayda Fransen sentenced to jail for hate and racial abuse crimes.

Last month Britain’s most senior counter-terror police officer, Mark Rowley, revealed attack plots by four extreme right-wing groups were foiled in 2017. Ten Islamist-linked plots have also been stopped since the Westminster attack in March 2017.

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Shkreli, 34, was sentenced by US District Judge Kiyo Matsumoto in a Brooklyn federal court on Friday. He was convicted last year of three counts of security fraud after misleading investors in two failed hedge funds. During the trial, his defense team had argued that many of his investors made hefty profits anyway.

Shkreli became notorious in 2015, after acquiring the rights to the antiparasitic medication Daraprim and raised its price by more than 5,000 percent. The drug was being used to treat AIDS patients. The price hike earned him the moniker “the most hated man in America.”

The current case was not related to this, Judge Matsumoto reiterated before passing sentence on Friday.

“This case is not about pharmaceutical pricing or Mr Shkreli’s controversial statements or actions, nor his scientific aptitude,” she said.

In his remarks before the sentencing, Shkreli cried and pleaded for mercy.

“I want the people who came here today to support me to understand one thing, the only person to blame for me being here today is me,” he said. “I took down Martin Shkreli.”

“There is so much more I want to do, and I will do it, the right way,” Shkreli said. At one point the judge had to pass him a box of tissues as he choked through the tears.

The contrition appears to have paid off. The prosecutors had sought a sentence of 15 years and federal sentencing guidelines meant he could have got a decade or more.  The seriousness of his crimes meant Shkreli deserved a long sentence, argued Assistant US Attorney Jacquelyn Kasulis.

However, the 84-month sentence, including time served so far, is still significantly longer than the 12-18 months that Shkreli’s lawyers argued for.

“There are times when I want to hug him and hold him and comfort him and there are times when I want to punch him in the face,” Shkreli’s lawyer Benjamin Brafman said.

Furthermore, Judge Matsumoto ruled in February that, for the purposes of sentencing, Shkreli was liable for nearly $10.5 million in losses incurred by his investors. In addition to time behind bars, Shkreli was ordered to forfeit nearly $7.4 million to the federal government, as well as personal assets, including a Picasso painting and his one-of-a-kind Wu-Tang Clan album, which he purchased for $2 million at a 2015 auction.

Infamous for his impish online behavior, Shkreli had been in jail since his bail was revoked in September 2017, after he made an offer on Twitter of $5,000 to anyone who could grab a strand of hair from Hillary Clinton.

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Some 812 of the 2,293 specimens died at the Sea Life center in Great Yarmouth between 2015 and 2016, Freedom of Information (FOI) figures obtained by the BBC reveal. A similar proportion died at the Scarborough Sea Life center, although an “error” was later blamed for inflating that figure by around a third.

The Marine Conservation Society (MCS) is now considering withdrawing its sponsorship deal with Sea Life, which has marine centers across the country. It branded the deaths “particularly concerning.”

Biologist and TV presenter Dr Ben Garrod, an ambassador for the MCS, said he was “shocked.” He stated: “You wouldn’t go into a hospital and expect a one-in-three chance of dying. You wouldn’t expect that in a zoo. I don’t think it is acceptable.”

Merlin Entertainments, the parent company of Sea Life, responded to the figures by saying it did everything it could to minimize the deaths. It attributed the staggering figures to the “naturally high mortality of jellyfish.” It added that some losses may have been caused by a “technically complex” water problem.

There are 12 Sea Life centers in Britain. The Great Yarmouth and Hunstanton in Norfolk, as well as London, Manchester, Scarborough, Weymouth, Birmingham and Blackpool responded to the FOI request by the BBC. Brighton failed to comply. Overall, 4,500 creatures of various species died at eight Sea Life centers in England in a single year from 2015 to 2016.

The species that died included 13 sharks and rays, and two undulate rays, which are endangered and appear on the “red” list set out by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. The mortality rate of sharks and rays at Great Yarmouth stood at 21 percent – double the standard 10 percent.

The revelations have prompted the Captive Animals’ Protection to call for an investigation into the welfare of animals at Sea Life. A spokesman said: “Sea Life places the very highest priority on the welfare of the animals at its sites, which are supported by experienced animal-care teams, marine biologists and world-renowned veterinary consultants. Sea Life has a strong track record in animal husbandry and complies with all the laws and regulations under the Zoo Licensing Act.”

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Assange made the quip on Twitter Friday, responding to a two-week-old anti-Russian post by the former Attorney General Eric Holder.

Holder, who headed the Department of Justice from 2009 to 2015, put forth the usual set of allegations against Moscow, claiming Russia would interfere with the upcoming US midterm elections.

Apparently addressing President Donald Trump, Holder demanded new sanctions against Moscow, which were “overwhelmingly approved by even this dysfunctional congress.”

“Are you simply unfit, without the necessary nerve or do they have something on you? We were attacked!” Holder wrote on February 20.

“Attacked? By what? The truth?” Julian Assange replied on Friday, adding that ultimately the US case against him, which followed WikiLeaks’ release of US classified documents in 2010, was to blame.

Barack Obama was president and Holder was attorney general at the time. Their efforts to prosecute WikiLeaks and Assange personally over the publication of US diplomatic cables and military documents about Iraq and Afghanistan resulted in Assange seeking asylum at the embassy of Ecuador in the UK.

Over the six years in London, Assange said, he’s had “nothing to do but work” round the clock – which resulted in WikiLeaks revealing more secrets of the US establishment. In the summer of 2016, WikiLeaks published internal Democratic Party emails, followed by a month-long drip of emails from the private account of Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman John Podesta, in the month prior to the presidential election.

Podesta, Clinton, and much of the Obama-era US establishment, however, has called WikiLeaks a “cutout” for Russian intelligence and blames Moscow for the alleged “hack” of the emails. No solid evidence to back up the claim has been produced. Assange has rejected those claims.

“Next time, not that there will be one, try following the constitution you swore to uphold,” the WikiLeaks co-founder advised the former AG in a subsequent Tweet.

He posted a link to a 2014 article describing his call for Holder to drop the case against WikiLeaks altogether. The DOJ ignored the request and the case remains open, while Assange continues to live in his embassy exile.

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Much has been made of the investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller into whether Donald Trump’s presidential campaign colluded with Russian operatives or the Russian government to win the November 2016 election. While there is yet to emerge solid evidence that attempted Russian meddling actually impacted the election’s outcome, in recent days Mueller’s probe may have turned in a far more damning direction: how Trump’s family members may have used the president’s political power to obtain business advantages, and specifically how Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner may be deeply implicated.

Several recent reports offer strong suggestions of corruption. First, The Washington Post reported Feb. 27 that officials from four other countries—namely the United Arab Emirates, China, Mexico and Israel—apparently discussed ways to exploit Kushner’s business needs in order for their countries to obtain favorable U.S. policies. A day later The New York Times revealed that Kushner Companies last year received more than $500 million in loans from Apollo Global Management and Citigroup after Kushner met with those companies’ representatives at the White House. On March 1, Think Progress reported that Apollo “benefited from three rule changes [under Trump] relaxing pipeline safety regulations.” The next day, March 2, according to The Intercept, Kushner Companies reportedly approached the government of Qatar for loans and, after being rebuffed, President Trump backed a Saudi Arabian blockade of Qatar, bizarrely accusing the latter country of financing terrorism networks.

On the domestic front, Trump family members seem to be using government to fill their coffers by extracting loans for their businesses in exchange for favors. Even the appearance of impropriety and quid pro quo between the Trump family and the companies that lend it money ought to outright disqualify all those involved from policymaking and rule changes.

On the foreign policy front, the optics are even worse. If there is any link between Qatar’s refusal to grant Kushner Companies a loan and the Trump administration’s actions against that country, we can only conclude that American foreign policy is being wielded as a tool to punish those who might harm the Trump family’s business interests. Indeed, NBC reported four unnamed sources revealed that “Qatari government officials visiting the U.S. in late January and early February considered turning over to Mueller what they believe is evidence of efforts by their country’s Persian Gulf neighbors in coordination with Kushner to hurt their country,” but that ultimately, “The Qatari officials decided against cooperating with Mueller for now out of fear it would further strain the country’s relations with the White House.”

Upon accepting a position as the president’s adviser, Kushner ought to have completely divested himself from his extensive domestic and international business dealings, but he has chosen not to do so. Instead he retains more than $700 million worth of real estate holdings and related businesses. Within this context it should come as no surprise that Kushner’s security clearance was downgraded, given how easily he could be approached in efforts to trade American favors in exchange for loans or business deals.

Right from the start, Kushner and the Trump family’s businesses were considered problematic in terms of whether the Trumps would put their personal financial empires before the country’s interests. Just the appearance of the various situations Kushner has been caught in are deeply suspicious and can be traced back to the 2016 election, when he obtained a massive $285 million loan for his company’s property from Deutsche Bank. At that time the bank was engaged in a legal battle with the U.S. government over charges of mortgage fraud, which should have negated any dealings with the family member of a presidential candidate. Additionally, well into his tenure as the president’s adviser, Kushner’s sister, Nicole Kushner Meyer, was caught in China touting her brother’s new political role while trying to lure Chinese investors for her family company’s New Jersey housing development.

The politically inexperienced Kushner has also been put in charge of U.S. policy on a peace deal between Israelis and Palestinians. Yet earlier this year The New York Times revealed that just before his first diplomatic mission to Israel last year, Kushner’s company received a $30 million infusion of cash from a major Israeli insurance company, Menora Mivtachim. How could Kushner possibly present himself as an impartial broker when he has investors in one of the two entities he is seeking to reconcile? If countries like Israel and China are attempting to exploit Kushner’s position, it is because Kushner has essentially given them every indication that he would like them to do so. The scope of the Trump family’s brazen financial dealings and the strong indications that they might be using the nation’s foreign policy to enrich themselves is unprecedented.

Much of what has been revealed about Kushner’s vulnerabilities are emerging through detailed, publicly available investigative news reports. Mueller’s team need only confirm the veracity of the reports to determine if Kushner’s presence in the White House gives the appearance of a serious conflict of interest. In any other time and with any other presidency, the mere whiff of personal financial gain through government positions would have been enough to generate demands for resignations and public apologies. But as we find out every day in this new reality under Trump, there seems to be no depth to which our national standards can fall in order to maintain this president’s power.

Last November, when Mueller indicted former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort, I wrote that the content of the indictments revealed a far more important aspect of the Trump presidency than possible collusion with Russia: how the people Trump has surrounded himself with are—like him—apparently interested in personal enrichment and greed more than anything else and appear willing to bend government rules toward that end.

As questions swirl about whether Mueller will now indict the president’s son-in-law, there are also reports that Trump is frustrated and “now views [Kushner] as a liability because of his legal entanglements, the investigations of the Kushner family’s real estate company and the publicity over having his security clearance downgraded.” But in what is the president’s habit of flip-flopping, he has alternatively expressed both support of and opposition to his son-in-law’s presence in the White House.

Meanwhile on the political front there is a deafening silence from lawmakers, especially Republicans, on the appearance of Kushner’s many conflicts of interest. If there had been even the tiniest fraction of such dealings during Barack Obama’s presidency, conservatives would have been howling louder than anyone else about impeachment or resignation. Even in the very unlikely event that it turns out Kushner’s business relations were kept scrupulously separate from his government-related work, the damage to his reputation as a U.S. government representative is done. Kushner and the entire Trump dynasty should be required to answer the question: What do they love more—their country or their money?

They cannot have it both ways.

Female clerks who worked with politicians told BBC’s Newsnight that an entrenched “culture of fear” is rife within Westminster. Journalists for the show conducted dozens of interviews and reviewed internal parliamentary human resources documents to back up claims made by the women.

Female MPs have now lashed out at the men accused of bullying. Green Party co-leader Caroline Lucas said more needs to be done to address the “club of privilege” attitude in Westminster. Labour MP Jess Phillips has already met with clerks and other staffers to discuss the issue.

It is claimed that Speaker of the House John Bercow’s private secretary Kate Emms suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) as a result of the abuse she suffered at the hands of Bercow. Emms worked as his private secretary from May 2010 to February 2011, and it was within that time that witnesses said they saw him undermine and shout at her. Emms left her post after this was reported to authorities.

Abuse claims were quick to circle back to the Westminster sex scandal that rocked parliament late last year. One woman, who has now left the House, talked about sexual harassment by an unnamed individual. “My career at the House of Commons didn’t end when I was sexually harassed,” she said. “My career ended when I complained.”

Meanwhile, clerks who worked with Wrekin Tory MP Mark Pritchard claimed he was “particularly nasty to those he felt were below him,” and was “known for having a dreadful temper.” Allegedly, the MP also swore at an official. “You haven’t got a f***ing clue what you’re talking about,” he reportedly told her.

Pritchard hit back at the claims made against him. “I understand, over the past several years, the House authorities have addressed numerous complaints about MPs, but they have also informed me they have no record of any complaints against me, and if they had, I would have been notified,” he said.

Labour MP Paul Farrelly had a formal complaint made against him in 2012 in relation to his treatment of clerk Emily Commander. The inquiry into the complaint concluded there had been “an abuse of power or position, unfair treatment and undermining a competent worker by constant criticism.” It also came to the conclusion that “the conduct was offensive and insulting.”

The House of Commons has refuted the claims made against Bercow, Pritchard and Farrelly. A spokesman said it was a “responsible and supportive employer” and did not tolerate “bullying or harassment of any kind.”

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Hysteria about Russia’s alleged ability to manipulate social media, news cycles and even $2-billion presidential elections serves as a “general weapon of mass suppression” which “enables a war on alternative media and narratives outside of the establishment, particularly on social media,” Blumenthal said in an interview with the Real News Network.

READ MORE: Congressmen call for ‘foreign agent’ tag for Al Jazeera as it ‘digs into pro-Israel lobby’

Asked about recent calls by members of Congress for Al Jazeera to register as a foreign agent for its “anti-American” and “anti-Semitic” programming, Blumenthal pointed out that Russiagate has created a climate of politicized paranoia in which it is now acceptable to stigmatize and even silence voices that challenge the establishment line.

“That was the whole point of Russiagate,” Blumenthal said.

Marvelling at the mainstream media’s near-unanimous praise for shady projects such as PropOrNot and Hamilton 68, Blumenthal said that 2017 saw the reintroduction of the blacklist, in which self-appointed Russian disinformation ‘watchdogs’ have already identified dozens of alternative media outlets as “Kremlin disinformation vehicles” without providing evidence or even criteria for making such claims.

Ultimately, Russiagate is about silencing inconvenient viewpoints – regardless of whether they have anything to do with Russia, Blumenthal argued.

“There is an attempt at suppressing everything that’s outside the establishment narrative,” Blumenthal said.

“These are just the open platforms that the establishment, whether it’s the Jeb Bush establishment or the Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama establishment, seek to destroy because it did so much damage to them in 2016, and they can’t allow that to happen again,” he said, noting that RT and Al Jazeera are among the few large media organizations which allow him to speak critically about Israel and its treatment of the Palestinians.

“That’s why they’re putting pressure on Silicon Valley. That’s why the blacklist has come back. And that’s how Russiagate connects to Palestine because anyone in Palestine Solidarity depends on alternative media for oxygen,” Blumenthal added.

On Wednesday, a group of congressmen called for Al Jazeera to be designated a “foreign agent” for its “anti-American and anti-Semitic broadcasts.” The bipartisan letter, addressed to Attorney General Jeff Sessions, coincided with an announcement that the Qatar-funded broadcaster was releasing a film on Israeli lobbying in the US.

Some 400 entities and individuals are currently registered as “foreign agents” under the 1938 Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA). Until recently, this list contained only a handful of foreign media outlets operating in the US. Threatened with asset freezes and arrests, a company servicing RT America was forced to register under the law in November.

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Those pesky activists were waiting outside Downing Street, angry over Saudi Arabia’s continued war against neighboring Yemen. Prime Minister Theresa May insists she raised concerns with the Crown Prince about the humanitarian disaster in Yemen.

She got that awkward conversation out the way before talks continued about the sale of 48 Typhoon fighter jets, which are really helpful for anyone involved in an ongoing war with a neighbor, like Yemen.

So, ICYMI took the chance to explore why the Saudi leader in waiting, a liberal reformer some have unironically called him, can always be sure of the warmest of welcomes in Britain.

For more, follow #ICYMI on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube. 

“The deal with North Korea is very much in the making and will be, if completed, a very good one for the World,” Trump tweeted on Friday evening, adding that the time and the place of the planned meeting is still to be determined.

Trump agreed to hold discussions with North Korea, provisionally expected sometime in May, after a South Korean delegation, which met with Kim on Monday, delivered his personal invitation for talks to the US president.

However, before any agreement can be reached between the adversaries or sanctions can be lifted, Washington will require Pyongyang to take “concrete and verifiable steps” towards denuclearization of the peninsula. “This meeting won’t take place without concrete actions that match the promises that have been made by North Korea,” White House press secretary Sarah Sanders said Friday.

Announcing the monumental breakthrough in the Korean stalemate at the White House on Thursday, South Korean National Security Adviser Chung Eui-yong noted that Kim Jong-un is “committed to denuclearization,” and has “pledged” to refrain from any further nuclear or missile tests until talks with Trump take place. Surprisingly, according to the official, Kim also showed understanding towards the US-South Korean drills, which have greatly contributed to the ongoing tensions in the region.

While the North seems to be keen to engage in diplomacy, the US has yet to offer any concessions or promises. “The United States has made zero concessions, but North Korea has made some promises,” Sanders noted. “For the first time in a long time, the United States is actually having conversations from a position of strength, not a position of weakness like the one that North Korea finds itself in.”

“I think that the President is getting exactly what he wants. He is getting the opportunity to have the North Koreans actually denuclearize,” Sanders added.

The Korean peninsula has been divided since 1953, after an uneasy armistice suspended the bloody, three-year conflict between the Communist North and the US-allied South. In a historic move toward national reconciliation, last month North and South Korean athletes competed together at the Winter Olympics in PyeongChang.

READ MORE: N. Korea’s Kim regaled South’s delegates with wine & self-deprecating jokes

For months, the Trump administration has applied “maximum pressure” on North Korea to tackle the country’s ballistic missile and nuclear program. Amid the unprecedented level of sanctions which the US has unilaterally imposed, Washington has also continued to maintain military pressure on Pyongyang, sending in armadas to Korean waters and conducting flyovers near Korean airspace. The administration also made clear that, if diplomacy fails, it is ready to pursue a military option to force N. Korea to denuclearize.

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