FBI translator flees to Syria, marries ISIS terrorist she was assigned to investigate – Know what happened next

A Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) translator traveled to Syria three years ago and married a key Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS) operative she had been tasked to investigate, a media report claimed on Tuesday.

The CNN report said that Daniela Greene married Denis Cuspert, a German rapper turned ISIS pitchman, in 2014.

Cuspert went by the rap name Deso Dogg in Germany; in Syria, he was known as Abu Talha al-Almani.

Cuspert was involved in recruiting violent jihadists online. This had put him on the radar of counter-terrorism authorities on two continents, CNN reported.

Also, Cuspert had hailed Osama bin Laden in a song, threatened former president Barack Obama with a throat-cutting gesture and appeared in propaganda videos, including one in which he was holding a freshly severed human head.

According to court documents seen on Tuesday, Greene, who had a "top secret" security clearance, told her colleagues at the Detroit office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation that she was heading to Germany to see her parents for a few weeks in June 2014. 

Instead, the 38-year-old woman translator flew to Turkey and snuck across the border to meet up and marry an IS fighter. 

It was not clear how Cuspert wooed her. Court testimony suggested they may have communicated privately via a Skype account he used that Greene did not report to her FBI colleagues. Greene, who was born in Czechoslovakia and married a US soldier, began work at the FBI in 2011, with no problems until her mysterious disappearance in June 2014.

Within weeks of marrying Cuspert, Greene seemed to realize she had made a terrible mistake. She fled back to the US, where she was immediately arrested and agreed to cooperate with authorities.

She pleaded guilty to making false statements involving international terrorism and was sentenced to two years in federal prison. She was released last summer.

"Greene's saga, which has never been publicised, exposes an embarrassing breach of national security at the FBI - an agency that has made its mission rooting out ISIS sympathisers across the country," the channel said.

It also raises questions about whether Greene received favourable treatment from Justice Department prosecutors who charged her with a relatively minor offence, it added.

"It's a stunning embarrassment for the FBI, no doubt about it," said John Kirby, a former State Department official.

Fluent in German, Greene went to work for the FBI as a contract linguist in 2011.

She was assigned to the bureau's Detroit office in January 2014 when she was put to work "in an investigative capacity" on the case of a German terrorist referred to in court records only as "Individual A" identified as Cuspert.

As part of the FBI's investigation into "Individual A," Greene identified several online accounts and phone numbers used by the terrorist, according to the court file. Among them were two Skype accounts. She maintained "sole access" to a third Skype account, the records state.

It was in April 2014, during Greene's work on the investigation, that Cuspert appeared in a video declaring his allegiance to ISIS and its leader Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi.

On June 11, 2014, Greene filled out a Report of Foreign Travel form -- a document FBI employees and contractors with national security clearances are required to complete when traveling abroad.

Greene, who was still married to her American husband at the time, characterized her travel on the form as "Vacation/Personal," court records show.

"Want to see my family," she wrote. Specifically, Greene said, she was going to see her parents in Munich, Germany.

She boarded an international flight on June 23, 2014, and flew on a one-way ticket to Istanbul, Turkey. From there she travelled to Gaziantep city, close to the Syrian border.

She contacted "Individual A," the documents state, and with the assistance of a third party arranged by him, crossed the border into Syria. Immediately after her arrival in Syria she married Cuspert, on June 27, 2014, according to court documents recently unsealed. But within days Greene, now 38, began to seek a way out. 

"I really made a mess of things this time," she told a friend in a July 2014 e-mail from IS territory.

"I don`t know how long I will last here, but it doesn`t matter, it`s all a little too late," she said in a subsequent e-mail. In another, she said she recognized she could be imprisoned for years if she returned. 

On August 1, 2014, five weeks after she left for Syria, federal authorities secretly issued a warrant for her arrest.

After about a month in Syria, Greene somehow was able to leave the war-torn country and returned to the United States. She was arrested on August 8, 2014.

Ultimately she pleaded guilty to one charge of "making false statements involving international terrorism," based on what she originally told the FBI about her travel plans. She received a relatively light 24 month prison sentence, and was released last year. 

US blacks living longer, but health gaps persist: CDC study

African-Americans are generally living longer than in 2000, but health disparities mean they are still more likely to die at a younger age on average than whites, a federal study showed on Tuesday.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) study of data from 1999 to 2015 shows that younger black people in their 20s, 30s and 40s are living with, or dying from, diseases that are typically seen in older people.

"The disparity in deaths between the white and black populations is closing. Even so, critical disparities remain," Leandris Liburd, associate director of CDC`s Office of Minority Health and Health Equity, said in a conference call.

The death rate, which is usually calculated as deaths per 1,000 people per year, fell 25 percent for African-Americans during the 17-year period, mostly for those aged 65 and older, the CDC said.

In 2014, life expectancy was 75.6 years for blacks and 79 years for whites, which was an increase since 2000 of 3.8 years for blacks and 1.7 years for whites, the CDC said.

However, the study also said "blacks have the highest death rate and shorter survival rate for all cancers combined compared with whites in the United States."

In addition, death rates from heart disease, cancer, diabetes mellitus and homicide have been increasing at earlier ages among blacks than among whites, the CDC study said.

"Blacks were more likely to be obese, to have no leisure time physical activity and less likely to have a normal body weight in all age groups compared with whites," according to the study.

Timothy Cunningham, a CDC epidemiologist and the study`s lead author, said on the conference call: "Across all age groups, homicide among blacks has two-and-a-half times the death rate as HIV and three-and-a-half times the death rate as suicide."

The death rate for homicide among blacks has remained unchanged from 1999 to 2015, the study showed.

Deaths from HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, among blacks aged 18 to 49 dropped 80 percent over the period of the study. But blacks in the United States still remain seven to nine times more likely to die from HIV than whites, the study said.

The CDC based its report on data from the US Census Bureau, the National Vital Statistics System and its own Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System.

UK PM May plays up "bloody difficult woman" image after Juncker dinner reports

British Prime Minister Theresa May played up her credentials as a "bloody difficult woman" on Tuesday in response to reports of a fractious dinner with European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker last week.

After the meeting at her Downing Street residence, European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker was reported to have said he was "10 times more skeptical than I was before" about the possibility of sealing a deal on EU divorce terms for Britain and a new trading relationship.

May, who took over as Conservative Party leader and prime minister shortly after the Brexit vote last year, is calling on voters to back her at a June 8 election in order to strengthen her hand in upcoming negotiations.

Asked during an interview with the BBC whether, given the noises coming out of Brussels, she thought her approach to Brexit was realistic, May said: "What we`ve seen recently is that at times these negotiations are going to be tough."

"During the Conservative Party leadership campaign I was described by one of my colleagues as a bloody difficult woman. And I said at the time the next person to find that out will be Jean-Claude Juncker," she said.

May dismissed the account that was given to the Frankfurter Allgemeine newspaper of the meeting as "Brussels gossip".

"I don`t recall the account that has been given of the meeting that took place," she said.

The newspaper report also said May had proposed to Juncker that Britain and the EU could agree a deal on the future of EU nationals in Britain and Britons in the EU at a June summit but that he had made it clear there were too many legal complexities to resolve the issue so quickly.

Asked by the BBC whether reaching an agreement in June was feasible, May said: "I`ve always said that there are complexities to this issue and lots of details that will need to be agreed.

"What people want to know is to have some reassurance about their future. I believe we can give that at an early stage. I`ve got the will to do this," she added.

Equihen Plage: The Village of Inverted Boat Houses

Equihen Plage, on the coast of northern France by the English Channel, is a small seaside village with a population of about 3,000. Up until the beginning of the 20th century, Equihen Plage was a fishing village with a dry harbor—the kind where fishing boats were launched into the sea by sliding them on logs. Today, the village is famous for its many inverted boat houses—locally known as “quilles en l'air”—that serve as unique holiday accommodation for travellers.

In the old days, it wasn’t uncommon to find old boats— both upright and inverted—along the coast where they were dragged high and dry upon the shore to be used for habitation. In Charles Dickens' classic novel David Copperfield, Peggotty’s brother lived in such an old boathouse in Yarmouth (although not inverted as popular illustration suggests).

In Equihen Plage too, old boats unworthy for the sea were dragged up to high ground and turned upside down. The hull, which now became the roof, was covered in tar to ensure that it was watertight. A door cut out on the sides provided entry, while windows let in air and light. Even then, the interior was dark and stuffy.

The entire length of the boat served as a single room. Space for cooking and sleeping were shared.

During the Second World War, nearly all the boathouses got destroyed, but their legacy lingered on.

In the 1990s, about sixty years after their disappearance, the village decided to revive the ancient heritage and erected a couple of upturned boat houses and fitted them with modern facilities to entice tourists. They can be now rented with prices starting from about three hundred Euros.

Cassini's Grand Finale – NASA probe poised to dive between Saturn and its rings for second time

It's a kind of mixed feelings for the team behind the Cassini mission as the spacecraft readies for its second dive through the narrow gap between the Saturn and its rings on Tuesday.

On Tuesday, May 2, at 3.38 p.m. EDT  NASA's Cassini will shoot the narrow gap between Saturn and its rings for the second time in its Grand Finale.

While Cassini engineers are delighted about the approach, ring scientists are puzzled that the region appears to be relatively dust-free. This assessment is based on data Cassini collected during its first dive through the region on April 26.

Cassini made its first dive through the region on April 26 and discovered that the region appears to be relatively dust-free.

During its orbit, in advance of the crossing, Cassini's cameras have been looking closely at the rings.

As with the first Grand Finale dive, Cassini would be out of contact during closest approach to Saturn, and was scheduled to transmit data from this dive on May 3, the US space agency said in a statement.

With this information in hand, the Cassini team would now move forward with its preferred plan of science observations.

"The region between the rings and Saturn is 'the big empty,' apparently," said Cassini Project Manager Earl Maize of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.

"Cassini will stay the course, while the scientists work on the mystery of why the dust level is much lower than expected," Maize said.

A dustier environment in the gap might have meant the spacecraft's saucer-shaped main antenna would be needed as a shield during most future dives through the ring plane.

This would have forced changes to how and when Cassini's instruments would be able to make observations.

Cassini engineers were delighted that the "plan B" option may no longer be needed.

Following its last close flyby of the large moon Titan on April 21, Cassini began what mission planners are calling its "Grand Finale".

During this final chapter, Cassini loops Saturn approximately once per week, making a total of 22 dives between the rings and the planet.

There are now 21 dives remaining. Four of them pass through the innermost fringes of Saturn's rings, necessitating that the antenna be used as a shield on those orbits.

The spacecraft is on a trajectory that would eventually plunge it into Saturn's atmosphere - and end Cassini's mission - on September 15.

Cassini is a joint endeavour of NASA, the European Space Agency (ESA), and the Italian space agency (ASI).

Launched in 1997, Cassini arrived at Saturn in 2004. The spacecraft will collect rich and valuable information far beyond the mission’s original plan, including measuring Saturn’s gravitational and magnetic fields, determining ring mass, sampling the atmosphere and ionosphere, and making the last views of Enceladus.

Owner of pizza shop says new Seattle minimum wage law is forcing her to close

It may be one of the first casualties of Seattle’s new minimum wage law. The owner of Z Pizza says she’s being forced to close her doors, because she can’t afford the higher labor costs.

Devin Jeran was happy to get a raise, when Seattle’s minimum wage went up to $11 an hour at the beginning of the month.

“I definitely recognize that having more money is important,” he says, “especially in a city as expensive as this one.”

Unfortunately, he’ll only enjoy that bigger paycheck for a few more months. In August, his boss is shutting down Z Pizza and putting him and his 11 co-workers out of work.

“Fortunately she keeps us in the loop, she didn't just tell us last minute.”

Ritu Shah Burnham doesn’t want to go out of business, but says she can’t afford the city’s mandated wage hikes.

“I’ve let one person go since April 1, I’ve cut hours since April 1, I’ve taken them myself because I don't pay myself,” she says. “I’ve also raised my prices a little bit, there's no other way to do it.”

Small businesses in the city have up to six more years to phase in the new $15 an hour minimum wage. But Shah Burnham says even though she only has one store with 12 employees, she’s considered part of the Z Pizza franchise -- a large business. So she has to give raises within the next two years.

“I know that I would have stayed here if I had 7 years, just like everyone else, if I had an even playing field,” she says. “The discrimination I’m feeling right now against my small business makes me not want to stay and do anything in Seattle.”

We reached out to 15 Now Seattle, the organization that pushed for the higher minimum wage. Director Jess Spear hadn’t heard about Z Pizza’s decision to close. So she wouldn’t comment specifically on that, only saying: “Restaurants open and close all the time, for various reasons.”

Jeran wonders about all the rallies that were supposed to be about making life better for people like him.

“If that's the truth, I don't think that's very apparent. People like me are finding themselves in a tougher situation than ever.”

Shah Burnham is concerned about where her employees will end up when she does close.

“I absolutely am terrified for them. I have no idea where they're going to find jobs, because if I’m cutting hours, I imagine everyone is across the board.”

We asked Seattle’s mayor and City Council members if they had anything to say about this closure or the other business owners who might be struggling to adapt to this new wage law. But we have not heard back from them yet.

Puerto Rico to File Largest Public Sector Bankruptcy in History

Puerto Rico is set to file the largest public sector bankruptcy in history after vulture capitalist hedge funds that bought big pieces of the island’s $73 billion in defaulted debt for pennies-on the-dollar refused to take $24 billion haircut.

The U.S. territory made its last-ditch offer to try to avoid a May 1 bankruptcy filing, but failed to negotiate a financial restructuring that would force creditors to take a 23 percent loss on their general obligation bonds and a 42 percent loss on their Cofina sales-tax-backed debt, according to EMMA, the Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board website.

Puerto Rico’s bond defaults last summer caused the Obama administration to team-up with a bipartisan majority in Congress to pass “The Puerto Rico Oversight, Management and Economic Stability Act” (PROMESA), which turned over the island’s finances to a federally appointed committee and created a “Title III” bankruptcy process.

Breitbart News reported that the big motivation for taking over America’s worst welfare den was the fear of up to a million Puerto Ricans migrating to the mainland” if hedge fund “vulture capitalist” investors, who bought up the island’s bonds debt at about 30 cents on the dollar, were able to use lawsuits to shake down the U.S. government for a bailout by jeopardizing the island’s ability to pay for schools, police officers and health care.

PROMESA gave the control board defacto authority to sell government assets, consolidate agencies, and fire government workers to restructure the island’s balance sheet. It also put a retroactive stay on bondholder lawsuits to grab assets liens.

One key reason Puerto Rico’s economy has imploded was that the Popular Democratic Party-controlled legislature made Spanish the official language in 1991 for all schools and government use. Partly as a result, 86 percent of the island does not speak English in the home and almost a third of the residents are on welfare. Poor language skills have prevented the reaction of call centers and other U.S. service businesses to Puerto Rico.

Puerto Rico Catholic Archbishop Roberto Gonzáleziocese and Reverend Heriberto Martínez, the head of the Puerto Rico Bible Society, issued a joint statement this week: “If the oversight board and Governor do not act by April 28th, we fear that Puerto Rico could be held hostage by predatory actors and ‘vulture’ funds.”

But negotiating a settlement with the vultures became much more difficult after August, when an new audit of the union controlled Puerto Rico Employees’ Retirement System and two smaller public pension plans revealed that there are only about $1.8 billion in assets to pay $45 billion in pension liabilities.

With about 1 in 10 Puerto Ricans either government public employees, retirees, or beneficiaries, the audit revealed that Democrat Governor Alejandro Garcia Padilla spiked the island’s cash contribution to Puerto Rico’s pension plans from $400 million in 2015 to $747.3 million las July, rather than paying the defaulted bonds.

According to Jubilee USA’s executive director Eric LeCompte, who advises 650 local faith communities and worked on the Title III legislation, the Puerto Rico oversight board met in New York on April 28 to consider authorizing a Title III filing to prevent creditor lawsuits from liening the island’s assets and tax streams. He commented, “Puerto Rico’s time is almost up and it is the responsibility of the oversight board to now authorize the bankruptcy process.”

Prior to Puerto Rico, the largest public sector bankruptcies were: $19 billon on July 18, 2013 by the City of Detroit, Michigan; $4.2 on November 9, 2011 by Jefferson County, Alabama; and $2.6 billion on December 6, 1994 by Orange County, California.