The alarming assessment was made by the country's top policeman at a Sydney meeting of leading crime-fighting figures from the Five Eyes nations of the US, UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
In United States v. Wessell (S.D. Fla. Case 22-cv-60988), Cl dkt entries here, the Government filed under seal a request for authorization of a John Doe Summons (“JDS”) to Kevin W. Wessell and related entities. The Government had filed similar JDS’s in other jurisdictions for related summonsees. The Government now files a petition to enforce the summons (JDS) issued to Wessell. (See dkt entry 1, dated 5/24/22, here.) The Government also filed a Brief in Support (dkt entry 3, dated 5/24/22, here (15 pages) with supporting documents including an IRS declaration here (124 pages) and certain other exhibits, including a privilege log of 482 pages).
Government Suit to Enforce JDS to Offshore Promoter
Food Packaging Forum: “Food contact materials (FCMs) are used to make food contact articles (FCAs) that come into contact with food and beverages during, for example, processing, storing, packaging, or consumption. The chemicals within these FCMs and FCAs are known as food contact chemicals (FCCs), and they can contaminate food when they migrate from the materials into the food. Some FCCs are known to be hazardous. However, the universe of FCCs that are used to produce many different types of FCMs/FCAs is complex and largely not well mapped, because information on chemical structures, use patterns, and migration potentials of FCCs is often absent or scattered across multiple sources. Therefore, the Food Packaging Forum has developed the Food Contact Chemicals Database (FCCdb) to gather and publicly share available information on FCCs. The FCCdb is a deliverable within the ongoing Food Contact Chemicals and Human Health (FCCH) Project led by the Food Packaging Forum.
The Food Contact Chemicals database (FCCdb) contains an extensive set of intentionally added food contact chemicals (FCCs), with hazard and regulatory information included where available. Its scope is global. The FCCdb compiles information from 67 lists of FCCs from publicly available sources, including regulatory lists and industry inventories. The current version of the database (version 5.0) identifies 12,285 distinct FCCs that are potentially used worldwide in the manufacture of food contact materials and articles (FCMs and FCAs).
Following a review of all substances within the database, authoritative sources of hazard information (such as the Globally Harmonized System) were used to prioritize 608 of these FCCs for further assessment and substitution in FCMs and FCAs.”
- Download Database
- Our new treasurer believes Labor has never received due credit for its economic management, especially during the global financial crisis.
- Fossil fuel projects that qualify for Rishi Sunak’s tax relief ‘could create 899 million tonnes of CO2’ (6 Jun 2022)
- PwC told client it could cut Australian tax by $70m, court documents in privilege fight show (5 Jun 2022)
- A million to pay 60pc income tax within years (5 Jun 2022)
- “Lewis Hamilton avoided taxes on his $20million jet”– How Lewis Hamilton almost landed in trouble because of his private jet (4 Jun 2022)
- Wind farm and nuclear electricity could be exempt from windfall tax (4 Jun 2022)
We need freedom from fearI wrote this yesterday: A vision has to address people’s hopes and their fears. Everyone has both. The balance between them determines the public mood
Read the full article…Recent Payment Outage in Germany Underscores One of the Dangers of a Cashless Economy: System Fragility
As recent events in Germany (and elsewhere) have shown, even strong proponents of a cashless economy have an interest in safeguarding the future of cash, if only for the sake of financial stability.
A couple of weeks ago I highlighted the fact that the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales (of which I am a fellow)
Read the full article…Spy fiction is currently entering a golden era. Or at least that’s what people keep saying. Harry Palmer, the Len Deighton creation first canonised by Michael Caine in 1965, has been reborn in a new ITV dramatisation of The Ipcress File. Slow Horses, an adaptation of Mick Herron’s novel about washed-up M15 agents, will debut on Apple TV on April 1. In a new trailer for the series, we see Gary Oldman as Jackson Lamb, strapping on his best timeworn, hangdog expression: it’s the same one he used for playing George Smiley, the ultimate grey spymaster in Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. Although this time round he’s playing for laughs. Typically outnumbered in the crime genre, by the racy Nordic Noirers and their deviant crime dramas, a generation of writers is now revitalising spy fiction once again. In addition to Herron, writers such as Simon Conway, Joseph Kanon and Charlotte Philby are enjoying the renaissance, as well as getting good reviews. Philby enjoys the lustre of being the granddaughter of the “Third Man”; her upcoming book Edith and Kim traces the relationship between Kim Philby and Edith Tudor-Hart, the woman who introduced him to his Soviet handler in 1934. All these writers have been described, at some point, as the heir of John le Carré, aka David Cornwell, the master of cold war espionage fiction who died in 2020 at the age of 89. Cornwell brought an added frisson to his writing having worked for both the Security Service (MI5) and the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) in the 1950s, at the height of covert operations in the splintered west. His books have inspired a generation of writers, and taught the world the meaning of tradecraft in the postwar age.
Naturally, I’ve never read him. Despite being raised in a le Carré-observant household — I first watched Alec Guinness’s owl-like Smiley with my father when I was five — I haven’t experienced so much as a bronze or silver, let alone a golden age when it comes to engaging with his books. But with the re-emergence of the cold war landscape, now seems as good a time as any to make amends. Novels seem a more palatable diversion at this moment when to flip between the horrors on the news and inane TV dramas such as Bridgerton feels somehow obscene. A dusty old spy book about realpolitik and double-agents has the benefit of being vaguely educational while also delivering a pure escapist thrill. Published in 1963, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold tells the story of the fiftysomething Alec Leamas and an epic triple-crossing that only reveals itself towards the very end of the novel. Graham Greene described le Carré’s third novel as “the best spy story I’ve ever read.” It is so “sophisticated” in its “unspooling”, agrees William Boyd, that for the “sheer aesthetic pleasure of reading,” he has returned to it “three or four times”. JB Priestley said it was “superbly constructed”. John Banville calls it a “masterpiece”. I hope, then, it’s not heresy to say I thought The Spy . . . a snooze. I really, really wanted to adore it. I love grey, cold, drab, depressing things. I love drudgery and misty assignations, and people who are required to speak in code. The word tradecraft sets me a-quiver: but every third paragraph I started nodding off. Were it not for the deeply pleasing pay-off, which definitely was worth it, The Spy . . . read more like a film script with endless pages of dialogue recounting he said/she said stories of the past. The characters were described so sparsely as to be almost indecipherable on the page, and while the omniscient narrative voice was impressive, I was disappointed to discover that despite the cunning of the Circus, the plot hinged on our amoral hero having his conscience pricked by a woman half his age. I was disappointed to discover that despite the cunning of the Circus, the plot hinged on our amoral hero having his conscience pricked by a woman half his age Unsurprisingly, most women in 1950s spy novels are either tragic creatures or soulless tarts: Liz Gold, the novel’s moral conscience, is described as a “fool”, “forlorn” and a “frustrated little girl.” Which may well be a kind of le Carré double bluffing, but I would still find it challenging to get on with a dude who described me as a “tall girl . . . with a long waist.” Then again, spy novels are probably the last refuge for readers seeking sanctuary from us damn feminists, and the sexism is pretty funny stuff. I’m still chuckling at the “pitiful, spindly nakedness” of the “drab” girl who embarrasses the company by performing an “artless and undesiring” striptease for our lads.
The language of the Circus washed across me like a lullaby. I jolted over paragraphs describing secret rendezvous and angry driving, but I did get to the end. A study of ideology and ambition, le Carré’s fiction still plants disturbing seeds of thought. At a point in time when moral rectitude has never seemed so vital, his world is infinitely corruptible, degenerate and managed by a bunch of fools. Yet despite the harsh denouement, The Spy . . . left me feeling cold. The world is still drab, depressing and corruptible. But I’d love a few more shades of grey.In danger of dying a stupid and horrible death
