Prosecutors and European regulators are close to arresting individual traders and charging them with colluding to manipulate global benchmark interest rates, according to people familiar with a sweeping investigation into the rigging scandal. - Federal prosecutors in Washington, D.C., have recently contacted lawyers representing some of the suspects to notify them that criminal charges and arrests could be imminent, said two of those sources, who asked not to be identified because the investigation is ongoing. [...] The prospect of charges and arrests means prosecutors are getting a fuller picture of how traders at major banks allegedly sought to influence the London Interbank Offered Rate, or Libor, and other global rates that underpin hundreds of trillions of dollars in assets. The criminal charges would come alongside efforts by regulators to five major banks, and could show that the alleged activity was not rampant at the lenders.

Paul Craig Roberts: The Libor Scandal In Full Perspective
Paul Craig Roberts: The Real Libor Scandal ~ Paul Craig Roberts and Nomi Prins
Ellen Brown: Titanic Banks Hit LIBOR Iceberg: Will Lawsuits Sink the Ship?

Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi is turning more and more to the CIA for making his government’s critical decisions as the foundation of his regime crumbles, a political analyst says.

In an article published on Tuesday, independent journalist Thomas C. Mountain said that the isolation surrounding Meles Zenawi grows almost by the day as he faces “more insurgencies, an ongoing economic crisis and calls for regime change from the religious community”.

“Hated in his ethnic homeland of Tigray, once his power base, and hated by the Amhara elite, the ethnic minority who previously ruled Ethiopia, Meles has ceded de facto control of his ministries to technocrats from the CIA and US State Department,” Mountain said. “Zenawi knows all to well how quickly he can become expendable when it comes to the interests of Pax Americana and has made sure that the Ethiopian army has been purged of any and all who might replace him.”

However, Mountain added that despite CIA's grave power inside Ethiopia the end of the Zenawi regime grows closer and with it there will be no longer “a regional power and policeman on the beat for the imperial interests of the USA”. “So far $ 7 billion a year in western aid has kept Meles Zenawi and his army, the largest, best equipped in Africa, in power and able to do Pax Americana's dirty work in the Horn of Africa.

It was one of the biggest secrets of the post-9/11 era: soon after the attacks, President Bush gave the CIA permission to create a top secret assassination unit to find and kill Al Qaeda operatives. The program was kept from Congress for seven years. And when Leon Panetta told legislators about it in 2009, he revealed that the CIA had hired the private security firm Blackwater to help run it. "The move was historic," says Evan Wright, the two-time National Magazine Award-winning journalist who wrote Generation Kill. "It seems to have marked the first time the U.S. government outsourced a covert assassination service to private enterprise."

A Fijian man who served in the British Army for 13 years is fighting to stay in the UK after being told he must leave the country by 9 August. - Isimeli Baleiwai served in Afghanistan and Iraq, before leaving the Army in June. He is married to a UK national. But disciplinary action for a 2010 fight with a colleague means he is considered to have a criminal record. The Border Agency said applications for settlement by ex-forces personnel were considered the same way as all others. The 32-year-old applied for British citizenship in March 2012 because he planned to leave the Army. He left voluntarily on 15 June after 13 years' service.

Super rich hiding up to $32 trillion offshore, which amounts to roughly the US and Japanese GDP combined. Up to $280bn is lost in tax revenues. Some of the world's biggest banks are involved: HSBC, Citigroup, Bank of America, UBS, Credit Suisse. - Rich individuals and their families have as much as $32 trillion of hidden financial assets in offshore tax havens, representing up to $280bn in lost income tax revenues, according to research published on Sunday. The study estimating the extent of global private financial wealth held in offshore accounts - excluding non-financial assets such as real estate, gold, yachts and racehorses - puts the sum at between $21 and $32 trillion. This amounts to roughly the US and Japanese GDP combined. Roughly 10 million people worldwide have offshore accounts, with 100,000 people owning half of those secreted assets. Much of this activity [...] [is] illegal.