（台灣‧台北）台北地方法院審理前總統陳水扁家4大案及追加起訴，已進入尾聲，全案可能最快在9月就可以作出一審宣判。
台北地方法院審理扁家公務費、龍潭購地、南港展覽館、洗錢案以及特偵組追加起訴陳水扁夫妻被控向前中信金副董事長辜仲諒、前101董事長陳敏薰索賄、圖利案，經過近半年審理後，已經進入尾聲。
台北地院今日（週一，6月29日）傳喚前第一夫人吳淑珍到庭，進入提示證據階段。
法界人士表示，由於提示證據所需程序通常不會很多，應很快就進入言詞辯論，言詞辯論庭一旦結束，合議庭就會訂出宣判日期，陳水扁吳淑珍部部份預計7月底、8月初，應可以完成證據提示及言詞辯論。
據瞭解全案完成言詞辯論後，合議庭會預留一個月時間撰寫判決書，依合議庭3名法官目前手上沒有其他案件狀況研判，陳水扁案的一審宣判結果可能會在9月出爐。
另外陳水扁原先延押日期在7月25日期滿，由於他涉犯重罪，法官可以無限期延押，至於他是否會再遭延押，仍待合議庭作出裁定。
Most of us have trouble remembering little things, like where we left the cell phone or the keys. But there are many individuals like Leonard who cannot remember events that occurred even minutes ago. By 2050 –- given today’s biotechnology and demographic trends –- it’s estimated that more than 100 million people worldwide will have Alzheimer’s disease or other dementias.
The New York Times recently reported on an announcement by Dr. Todd C. Sacktor and André A. Fenton at SUNY Downstate Medical Center, in which the doctors stated that a substance called PKMzeta is responsible for memory-related tasks in the brain. The Times characterized this as an “open door to editing memory.” Studies with rats and mice show that a drug called ZIP interferes with PKMzeta, erasing learned behaviors. Editing memory may also mean enhancing the ability to remember things.
Sacktor found that the PKMzeta molecule was present and activated in cells precisely when connected to a neighboring neuron, “The PKMzeta molecules appeared to herd themselves, like Army Rangers occupying a small peninsula, into precisely the fingerlike connections among brain cells that were strengthened.” The molecules stayed there indefinitely, “like biological sentries,” the stuff of memory associations.
Fenton, who specializes in spatial memory in mice and rats, devised a way to imprint animals with memories for where things are located. He taught them to move around a small chamber to avoid a mild electric shock to their feet. Once rats learn, they do not forget. Placed back in the chamber, they remembered how to avoid the shock.
But when injected with ZIP (a Zeta inhibitory peptide) directly into their brains, they had to start over again and learn how to avoid the electric shock. “When we first saw this happen, I had grad students throwing their hands up in the air, yelling,” Dr. Fenton said. “Well, we needed a lot more than that one study."
Twelve other researchers have now independently confirmed Sacktor and Fenton's findings –- essentially resolving a fundamental question of neuroscience about how memories are stored. A jointly published paper describes how long-term memories are stored as physical traces in the brain using a molecular mechanism of long-term memory storage.
The researchers showed that “unpleasant memories are stored by the persistent action of the enzyme PKMzeta, a form of protein kinase C,” and that “these memories can be rapidly erased by injecting a PKMzeta inhibitor into the brain.” They confirmed that by using ZIP, “unpleasant long-term memories in the hippocampus, a region of the brain critical for storing spatial information, are rapidly erased.”
This raises many questions. If human memory can be erased like a computer's hard drive, what happens to the “overwritten” memories? Is there a biochemical equivalent to disk restoration software? Can the erased memories ever be recovered? How does this affect learned behavior?
If memories can be edited –- erased, enhanced, or supplanted –- what replaces them? Several novels and short stories by SciFi master Philip K. Dick explore this idea. His novelette, We Can Remember It for You Wholesale, loosely adapted as the movie Total Recall, describes a man who has “extra-factual memory” implanted so that he remembers things he supposedly never did, like visit Mars. He ends up deciding to have his implanted Mars memories suppressed and is offered a set of wish-fulfillment false memories in exchange. When he undergoes the memory-implanting procedure a second time, the implant company uncovers a different and older set of suppressed memories revealing that the unbelievable memories they are about to insert are already there and are true.
With the discovery of PKMzeta’s role in storing memories, it’s now easy to imagine a new class of performance-enhancing drugs that remove or replace unpleasant memories or restore hidden memories like the character in Dick’s novelette. For Alzheimer's patients or someone like Leonard in Memento, this might mean the difference between vegetative regress and remembering who, what, or where you are/were.Smart drugs such as Modafinil – the latest in a growing number of pharmaceuticals that include Ritalin and Adderall to enhance cognition and mental performance –- let students study for hours without the jitters that often go hand-in-hand with pots of coffee, Red Bull, or amphetamines. A new class of “smart” memory editing drugs could conceivably eliminate the need to study at all.
Is editing a memory in some sense editing the self? Could I project an alternate identity –- perhaps even multiple identities –- and selectively edit memories to realize that identity or identities as me? This is a concept familiar with socially networked Internet users of services such as Facebook and MySpace, as well as virtual worlds such as World of Warcraft or Second Life. Alts –- alternate identities –- give users the ability to experiment with alternate versions of themselves. Initial studies of patients with Asperger’s syndrome –- people with extreme difficulty in social settings –- show great promise for the use of alts as a way of learning social skills.
The upside of PKMzeta is that it could open the door to new treatments for Asperger’s syndrome, age-related memory decline, trauma such as childhood abuse or war, and the emotional scaring of bad memories in general.
The downside of using ZIP-like drugs to erase memory is spelled out by Nobel Peace Prize winner and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel, “The authors and followers of the heinous ‘Final Solution’ were guilty not only of their unutterable crimes, but also of the will to erase their traces from the memory of others… Indeed they killed their victims two times: first with guns or in the gas chambers, and then by obliterating their memory.”
How easily we forget – or deny. Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad may have dropped language describing the Holocaust as “ambiguous and dubious” from his recent U.N. speech attacking Israel, but he’s previously called for it to be wiped off the face of the Earth and described the Holocaust as a "myth.” Wiesel comments, “This is why I am somewhat hesitant to trust the proposed therapeutic means to use forgetting as a tool for healing. Once forgetting has begun, where and when should it stop?”
The failure of federal prosecutors to bring conspiracy charges against Bernard Madoff, the mega-billion dollar Ponzi scammer who pleaded guilty March 12 to eleven counts of fraud and other crimes in U.S. District Court in Manhattan, is providing cover to those who pulled the strings on Madoff's illegal operation.
WMR spoke to a former close aide to Madoff who related how he handled a number of transactions personally for Madoff. The source said that Madoff was running a special type of "pump and dump" scheme. The source said Madoff would "pump money out of the system and dump it out to another place." When asked what that "other place" was, the source replied, "Israel."
The source believes that no conspiracy charges were brought by the federal government against Madoff because it is the government and not necessarily Madoff that is trying to protect his "network and superiors."
Madoff's Chief Financial Officer was Frank DiPasquale, who is being represented by Marc Mukasey of Bracewell Giuliani. Mukasey's father is former Bush Attorney General Michael Mukasey. The U.S. judge handling the Madoff case, Denny Chin, is, according to informed legal sources in Manhattan, over his head in corruption.
WMR has learned how some of Madoff's international operations were conducted. At 3:30 pm every day Madoff Investment Securities employees would call banks in Grand Cayman, Cayman Islands, and tell them to "roll the accounts." That was insider language for "lend the money."
In some cases, money was moved to the Belize Bank, which was described by a Madoff insider as a "back side" for secretive banking operations in the Cayman Islands and Switzerland.
Madoff would also dispatch messengers to 55 Water Street in New York's financial district to pick up securities bearer bonds that could fit into an "Army duffle bag." Those types of transactions dramatically decreased for Madoff after 9/11.
The weekend following the Fourth of July, Madoff would sponsor a three-day bash for Madoff employees and "special guests" at Montauk on the eastern tip of Long Island. One of Madoff's special guests was Norman F. Levy, a billionaire who Madoff considered as a father figure. After his death, Levy's old firm continued to maintain an office at 885 Third Avenue in Manhattan, the same location as Madoff's firm. A Madoff insider speculated that Madoff may have been using Levy's company as a conduit for his business activities.
The annual Montauk conclave featured a dinner for Madoff's "special guests" on the Saturday evening at the Montauk Yacht Club. Madoff's "special guests" were kept segregated from the regular Madoff employees. The special guests were often found in a special place called the "money fund room."
In addition to Madoff's immediate family members, including his brother Peter, he also tended to surround himself with key individuals who were veteran officers of the U.S. military.
Madoff's London operation was handled out of a one-room small office located at 43 Newell Street. Every time Madoff visited the office, the London staff was extremely nervous. According to a Madoff insider, the Madoff London office was nothing more than a "front" operation. There may have also been some synergy between Madoff's London operations and American International Group (AIG), which reportedly is missing $500 billion from a similar small office pass-through operation in London.
Madoff's number one foreign destination was not England but France, where he maintained a luxurious estate in Provence.
Madoff routinely got his cash from the Bank of New York (BONY) and Chase. One favorite Bernie Madoff term was an "inch of fifties," which equates to $5,000.
The day before Madoff was arrested, he sent a "package" to Citibank's private banking facility at 850 Lexington Avenue. Usually when Madoff Securities sent out a "package," a set of documents in an 8 1/2 x 11 inch envelope authorizing electronic funds transfers, there was always a signed receipt from Citibank. One exception was "packages" personally sent by Madoff to Citibank. On December 10, Madoff sent a "package" to Citibank with no receipt from the private banking service. That evening Madoff attended the company's annual Christmas party, which had always been held on December 17. Madoff was reportedly not acting normal and his wife Ruth was trying to play the gregarious role normally handled by Madoff in previous parties. WMR's inside source believes that Madoff knew then that he was facing arrest the next day.
WMR has also learned that Madoff Securities was for sale in the late 1990s. One of the names mentioned in the potential sale is Ezra Merkin, also under investigation by the federal government's probe of Wall Street. WMR has learned that Madoff almost sold his firm for $1 billion. The potential purchaser, who was not identified, flipped a coin between buying Madoff or Charles Schwab. The purchaser opted for a potential purchase of Schwab.
Madoff often had a tense relationship with his family associates. In the mid-1990s, WMR was told of a particularly nasty exchange between Bernie and his brother Peter. Bernie allegedly told his brother, "When you see your name on the door, you can tell me what to do. Until then you have one percent of the stock so you can keep your fucking mouth shut."
When Peter's son Roger died of cancer at the age of 30, a cancer fund was established in Roger's name. Our source said that the fund for Bernie Madoff's late nephew was also defrauded. The source said, "Bernie would never do that to his nephew," adding, "Bernie was operating a "pump and dump" scheme for a domestic and foreign intelligence agency." Asked to name the domestic agency, the source replied, "CIA." Asked about the foreign agency, the source claimed it was "the Russia-Israeli mob operating with Mossad."
It is also reported that a number of key Madoff employees died suddenly from various causes, including what was described as "fast-acting cancer." The cancer victims included Madoff's 55-year old in-house lawyer and his "mid-fifties" computer software engineer. The woman who created Madoff's over-the-counter stock trading system was struck and killed by a bus while walking to Bloomingdale's in Manhattan.
One long-time Madoff employee told WMR that Bernie Madoff's father, Ralph Madoff, who worked as a New York plumber, once told the employee, "Never, never invest in Wall Street cause it's run by crooks and SOBs." Ralph Madoff told the employee to take his money and "buy books." In Bernie Madoff's case, the apple fell extremely far from the tree.
As a postscript, someone who worked with Madoff told WMR that he does not expect his old boss to live until his sentencing in June. The ex-employee believes that Madoff will not physically survive prison for very long. Given Madoff's extensive and murky intelligence links, there is every reason to believe the ex-employee is making the correct prediction.
More on Madoff operation emerges from insiders – WMR has been informed by former Madoff Investment Securities sources that jailed Ponzi scammer Bernard Madoff's wife Ruth revealed as early as September 2008 that her husband was "under great stress." However, the source also revealed that Mr. Madoff "thrived under great stress."
FBI investigators reportedly asked Madoff employees, after Madoff's arrest on December 11, 2008, whether Madoff had been "acting strange" before the arrest. Employees were also asked to provide the FBI with a psychological profile of Madoff.
A Madoff Investment Securities insider told WMR, "Bernie's mission was to keep the company he created alive with infusions from strangers. They turned out to suffer collateral damage." The source added, "Bernie could not give customers bad news."
Madoff insiders also described how the Ponzi scammer formed his company in 1961. Madoff began his firm with a mere $5,000 in capital.
Madoff was not able to gain a seat on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) because of the prohibitive cost of $250,000. Bypassing the NYSE, Madoff developed over-the-counter (OTC) trades and "back doored" trading into the NYSE. Madoff first used card punch machines in the OTC process, progressed to magnetic tape computers, and then employed newer, state-of-the-art technology.
WMR also learned that the computer systems engineer for Madoff who developed Madoff Investment Securities computerized trading system used proprietary software and, more oddly, proprietary hardware. In 1999, Madoff initiated the development of a top secret new trading system called Primex, which attracted the interest of NASDAQ, where Bernard Madoff served as chairman and his brother Peter had previously served as a board member. The computer engineer died a few years ago in her mid-fifties of what was described by a colleague as a "fast-acting" cancer.
WMR learned that Madoff was somewhat incensed about the high cost of gaining a seat on the NYSE. Actor Rick Jason, who co-starred with Vic Morrow in the TV series "Combat," actually had a seat on the NYSE that was bought for him by Jason's father. That made Madoff all the more determined to bypass the expensive NYSE seat requirement to carry out trades. Jason reportedly shot himself to death on October 16, 2000.
When Madoff was considering selling his firm to an unnamed suitor in the late 1990s, WMR was told by a firm insider that one reason Madoff was hesitant to sell was that even during that time frame he was concerned that if his company's books came under scrutiny from a sale that the company would "crash."
WMR also learned that a close associate of one of Madoff's top corporate officers was involved in trying to obtain a U.S. State Department contract for Halliburton, the firm once headed by former Vice President Dick Cheney. The individual in question reportedly was working with Halliburton's office in Baghdad, Iraq.
A Madoff firm source also revealed to WMR that American International Group's (AIG) London office, which reportedly lost some $500 billion, was engaged in an "economic warfare" scheme against countries of the former Soviet Union. The operations coincided with the funding by George Soros of various campaigns to oust governments in Georgia, Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova, Kyrgyzstan, and even Russia itself.
WMR also learned additional details of events that transpired the day before Madoff was arrested, December 10, 2008. Madoff unusually switched his firm's annual Christmas Party from its normal December 17 date to December 10. Not only was that seen as unusual by Madoff employees but so, too, was the fact that Madoff's two sons, Andrew, who ran a spin-off called Madoff Energy, and Mark, were not present at the party. Earlier in the day, both had reportedly spoken to FBI agents about their father's Ponzi scheme activities.
Supporters of opposition leader Mir Hossein Moussavi protest in the Turkish city of Ankara June 27.
About 5,000 people shuffled in silence down Tehran's Shariati Street to the Ghoba mosque, where two of the opposition candidates in the June 12 election were to appear to honor a slain hero of the 1979 Islamic revolution. Authorities rode motorcycles alongside the marchers, who tried to walk slowly. Police beat their batons on their shields to keep them moving, but some demonstrators told officers that they had the legal right to protest in peace.
Former Prime Minister Mir Hossein Moussavi, the leading opposition candidate in the race, attempted to address the crowd at one point via a mobile phone patched through a public-address system. The resulting sound was largely unintelligible, however.
Another opposition candidate, former parliament speaker Mehdi Karroubi, arrived at the mosque on foot Sunday evening after the crowd had rendered the streets surrounding the mosque impassible.Sunday's gathering officially was in honor of Ayatollah Mohammad Beheshti and 69 others, including several prominent Islamic revolutionaries, who died in a 1981 bombing. Beheshti was chief justice of the 2-year-old Islamic Republic at the time he was killed.
The protest follows two weeks of protests against the official results of the presidential elections, which President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad won. Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, called for an end to street demonstrations Sunday.
"I advise both sides not to provoke the emotions of the youth, not to stage people against one another," he said in a speech on government-funded Press TV. "This integrated nation must not be split and a group must not be incited against one another."
Ahmadinejad won the disputed election by a margin of two-to-one over Moussavi, his nearest rival, according to official results. Moussavi and Karroubi said the results were rigged and have called for the vote to be annulled.
Esmaeil Gherami Moghaddam, a spokesman for Karrubi's party, said Sunday the candidate would pursue a re-vote "through legal channels, until the end."
And another member of the country's Shiite Muslim clerical leadership, Grand Ayatollah Abdol Karim Mousavi Ardebili, told an Iranian newspaper Sunday that the Guardian Council -- the body of judges and religious scholars that oversees elections -- should respond to complaints "within a logical framework."
"Rest assured that words of logic will be accepted by the people, and those who speak illogically will not find acceptance," Ardebili told the Iranian newspaper Tahlil Rooz.
Although authorities allowed Sunday's demonstration -- intended for "the pious" -- they intensified their crackdown over the weekend, reportedly seizing wounded protesters from their hospital beds and arresting local British Embassy staff in Tehran. And Amnesty International said Saturday that government-backed paramilitary forces are preventing doctors from getting names from wounded demonstrators or asking how they were hurt."The Basijis are waiting for them," said Banafsheh Akhlaghi, western regional director of the human rights group.
The clampdown comes ahead of the Guardian Council's Sunday's deadline to file complaints against the results of the disputed election, which has prompted weeks of demonstrations. At least 17 protesters have been killed, according to official statistics, and the actual number may be higher.
Iran has restricted international news agencies -- including CNN -- from reporting inside the Islamic republic. Its intelligence minister, Gholam-Hosein Mohseni Ejei, blamed Western powers for stirring up protests Sunday, saying the British Embassy in Tehran "played a heavy role in the recent disturbances," but describing the effort as one led by the United States.
"The fact that Iran is stable, calm and secure, they're upset with this," Ejei told Iran's Press TV.
British Foreign Secretary David Miliband protested the arrests of embassy workers as "harassment and intimidation of a kind which is quite unacceptable."
"About nine" staffers have been affected, he said, but some have since been released.
"The idea that the British Embassy is somehow behind the demonstrations and protests that have been taking place in Tehran in recent weeks is wholly without foundation," he said.
Last week, Tehran expelled two British diplomats. London responded by booting two Iranians, prompting Iran to recall its ambassador to Britain -- a serious gesture in diplomatic circles -- and threatening to reconsider Anglo-Iranian diplomatic ties.I'm getting so tired of these stories. I mean, what's the point? Americans are perfectly happy to stay home and watch TV while our elected officials rob us blind and we struggle along without needed health care:
June 26 (Bloomberg) -- In June 2008, U.S. Virgin Islands Governor John deJongh Jr. agreed to give London-based Diageo Plc billions of dollars in tax incentives to move its production of Captain Morgan rum from one U.S. island -- Puerto Rico -- to another, namely St. Croix.
DeJongh says he had no idea his deal would help make the world’s largest liquor distiller the most unlikely beneficiary of the emergency Troubled Asset Relief Program approved by Congress just four months later.
Today, as two 56-foot-high (17-meter-high) tanks for holding fermenting molasses will soon rise from the ground on the Caribbean island of St. Croix, the extent to which dozens of nonbank companies benefited from last October’s emergency financial rescue plan is just beginning to come to light.
The hurried legislation adopted by a Congress voting under the threat of sudden global economic collapse led to hidden tax breaks for firms in dozens of industries. They included builders of Nascar auto-racing tracks, restaurant chains such as Burger King Holdings Inc., movie and television producers -- and London’s Diageo.
“It’s kind of like the magician’s sleight of hand,” says former House Ways and Means Committee Chairman William Thomas, a California Republican who ran the committee from 2001 to 2007 and oversaw all tax legislation. “They snuck these things in a bill that was focused on other things.”
[...] The added tax breaks prevented the TARP legislation from being rejected a second time, says Michael Steel, a spokesman for House Minority Leader John Boehner. Twenty-six Republicans, including Tim Murphy of Pennsylvania, John Shadegg of Arizona and Zach Wamp of Tennessee, reversed their earlier no votes.
Each of the tax provisions has a story -- and plenty of defenders.
