In 2008, the US government granted Todashev asylum, a protection granted to foreigners with a credible fear for their safety in their homelands ­because of religious, political, or other specific forms of persecution. 

Todashev then obtained a green card in February 2013, making him a legal permanent resident and clearing the way for him to apply for US citizenship in a few years if he ­remained in good standing, said law enforcement officials with direct knowledge of the ­information. 

Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrested ­Todashev’s girlfriend, Tatiana Gruzdeva, May 16 on immigration violations, said a law enforce­ment official. An ICE spokesman confirmed that she is in custody.

Self-Portrait by Tatiana Gruzdeva

Ms. Manukyan, an Armenian who converted to Islam before marrying Mr. Todashev, says she met her late husband in 2010 through a mutual friend in Boston. She says she separated from Mr. Todashev in November but was still in regular contact with him and was partly supporting him through their joint bank account.

According to the father, Ibragim Todashev was studying English at Grozny University when he got a chance to go to the United States in an exchange program in 2008. 

"He loved it there from Day One," the father said. "He would call me and tell me how everybody was into sports, what great sports gyms they had and what wonderful possibilities he had for the mixed fighting and boxing he loved so much. 

"Then when he told me that he loved it in America and wanted to stay," the father said, "I didn't mind." 

He said his son hit it off with Tsarnaev because of their common Chechen heritage. Although Tsarnaev never lived in the restive Russian republic, his family's roots were there and there are indications that Tsarnaev felt a kinship with the Muslim separatists who want the region to break free from Russia. 

"We are a small people who endured so many hardships to survive in our difficult history that it is only natural for us to stick together, especially abroad," said Todashev, 53, who is head of the municipal services department in Grozny.

Ramzan Kadryov and Gerard Depardieu discuss motoring

Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov and his two best friends: his gold pistol and V. Putin

Ramzan Kadyrov

RK and Mike Tyson

Ramzan is a son of former Chechen President Akhmad Kadyrov, who was assassinated in May 2004. In February 2007, Kadyrov replaced Alu Alkhanov as President, shortly after he had turned 30, which is the minimum age for the post. He has the support of current Russian President Vladimir Putin and was awarded the Hero of Russia medal, the highest honorary title of Russia. 

Kadyrov was engaged in violent power struggles; with Chechen government warlords Sulim Yamadayev and Said-Magomed Kakiev for overall military authority, and with Alu Alkhanov for political authority.

RK and Diego Maradona

As Head of Chechnya, Kadyrov has been credited for bringing peace and stability to the region.[citation needed] On the other hand, he has come under heavy criticism from the international press and Russia, due to alleged corruption and human rights violations.

Kadyrov was born in Tsentoroi, RSFSR, USSR. A reckless and impetuous person at school, Ramzan Kadyrov strove to gain the respect of his father Akhmad Kadyrov, a Muslim imam. He claims that he always emulated his father. Ramzan enjoys boxing and once met with former heavyweight boxing champion Mike Tyson.[3] In the early 1990s, as the Soviet Union splintered into fragments, the Chechens launched a bid for independence. The Kadyrovs joined the struggle against the federal forces, with Ramzan driving a car for his father Akhmad, who became the separatist mufti of Chechnya.[citation needed]

The Kadyrov clan defected to the Moscow side at the beginning of the Second Chechen War in 1999. Since then, Ramzan has led his militia with support from Russia's FSB state security service (including service ID cards) becoming the head of the Chechen Presidential Security Service. The militia later became known as the Kadyrovites. 

RK,  J.C. van Damme and Hilary Swank

He was falsely rumoured to have died of a gunshot wound inflicted by his bodyguard on 28 April 2004.[4]

After his father, then President, was assassinated on 9 May 2004, Ramzan was appointed Deputy Prime Minister of the Chechen Republic.

When his sister was detained by the Dagestan police in January 2005, Ramzan and some 150 armed men drove to the Khasavyurt City Police (GOVD) building. According to the city mayor, Kadyrov's men surrounded the GOVD, forcing its duty officers against the wall and assaulted them, after which they left the building with Zulai Kadyrova, "victoriously shooting in the air."[5] 

RK and pet

In August 2005, Ramzan declared that "Europe's largest mosque" would be built in place of the demolished ruins of Grozny's shattered downtown.[6] He also claimed that Chechnya is the "most peaceful place in Russia" and in a few years it would also be "the wealthiest and the most peaceful" place in the world. He said that the war was already over with only 150 "bandits" remaining (as opposed to the official figures of 700 to 2,000 rebel fighters), and that thanks to his father, 7,000 separatists had already defected to the Russian side since 1999. 

When responding to a question on how he is going to "avenge the murder of his father", Ramzan said: 

Kadyrov escorting the Prophet's Golden Bowl to Grozny mosque

I've already killed him, whom I ought to kill. And those, who stay behind him, I will be killing them, to the very last of them, until I am myself killed or jailed. I will be killing [them] for as long as I live... Putin is gorgeous. He thinks more about Chechnya than about any other republic [of the Russian Federation]. When my father was murdered, he [Putin] came and went to the cemetery in person. Putin has stopped the war. Putin should be made president for life. Strong rule is needed. Democracy is all but an American fabrication... Russians never obey their laws. Everyone was stealing, and only Khodorkovsky is in jail.[7][8][9] 

Following a car accident in December 2005, in which Chechnya's prime minister Sergey Abramov was injured, Ramzan functioned as the caretaker prime minister. He immediately proceeded to implement elements of Sharia law, such as declaring a ban on gambling and alcohol production.[10]

RK and Gerard Depardieu

In February 2006, responding to the publication of the Mohammed cartoons, he accused the Danes of "spying" and being "pro-terrorist". He also banned Danish citizens from entering Chechnya, effectively banning activity of the Danish Refugee Council, the largest NGO working in the region. Kadyrov is quoted as saying, "That cartoonist needs to be buried alive." He was eventually pressed to overturn this decision by Moscow, a rare example of federal intervention in Kadyrov's rule in the republic.[11] 

RK and Gerard Depardieu inspect monster truck on Tuesday

On 1 March 2006, Sergey Abramov resigned from the position of prime minister and told Itar-Tass news agency that he did so "on the condition that Ramzan Kadyrov lead the Chechen government." This was followed by a decree of Kadyrov forcing women to wear headscarves; he also rejected a federal appropriation of the republic's budget, demanding more money, and called for all federal forces but the border guards to be withdrawn.

Shortly after taking office, Kadyrov approved a project to erect a presidential palace on a 30-acre (120,000 m2) plot by the Sunzha River in ruined downtown Grozny. The project, which will also include a five-star hotel and recreational facilities, is estimated to cost around 1.5 billion rubles ($54 million USD) to build. ... Reuters quoted him as saying that "liquidating the refugee camps will allow us to uncover spies who are working for foreign intelligence services".[12] 

... In 2006, leaked cables from an American diplomat recounted a lavish wedding attended by Kadyrov in Russia's Caucasus region in which guests threw $100 bills at child dancers, and which had nighttime "water-scooter jaunts on the Caspian Sea", and a report that Ramzan Kadyrov gave the newly married couple a "five-kilo lump of gold".[16] 

RK upbraiding cabinet member

... On 15 February 2007, Putin signed a decree removing Alkhanov and installing Kadyrov as Chechen's acting president.[17] ... Critics allege that Ramzan Kadyrov is actively building his own "vertical of power" in the republic, and encouraging nepotism by placing men of the Beno clan in all the leading and important positions.

After the car-bomb attack on Yunus-bek Yevkurov, president of the neighboring Republic of Ingushetia on 22 June 2009, Kadyrov claimed that the Kremlin had ordered him to fight insurgents there, and during his subsequent visit to the republic on 24 June pledged ruthless vengeance.[21]

In late December 2009, Kadyrov claimed that remaining rebels were getting financed by "The West"; "I officially declare this: those who destroyed the Soviet Union, those who want to destroy the Russian Federation, they stand behind them". He also suggested he did not seek another term as President and that Russia should attack Georgia and Ukraine "It's Russia's private affliction; why should we always suffer if we can eradicate this for good?".[22] 

As reported by the Caucasian Knot, an independent human rights resource, on 5 February 2009, "in the course of his meeting in Grozny with Ramzan Ampukaev, representative of the Chechen Diaspora in Europe, Ramzan Kadyrov invited former militants, now living in Europe, to come back home":

... An assassination attempt on Kadyrov and a parliament member Adam Delimkhanov was averted on 23 October 2009, by the police. Chechen Deputy interior minister Roman Edilov said the police shot dead the driver of a speeding car filled with a 200-litre tanker after firing warning shots shortly before Kadyrov was to arrive at a construction site. The driver of the car was later identified as a militant leader (so-called Urus-Martan emir Beslan Bashtayev).[27][28] Said-Emi Khizriev, who played a role in organizing the attack, was killed by Russian police who tried to arrest him in the Michurin village in Grozny.[29]

RK's Instagram caption: "Dear friends, I will reveal a secret to you, but please don't tell anybody. I have sent my double to work instead of me today. Let's see how he manages!"

Kadyrov has been personally implicated in several instances of torture and murder. A number of Chechens opposed to Kadyrov have been assassinated abroad, and several witnesses (including Artur Kurmakaev and Ruslan Khalidov) report the existence of a 300-name "Murder List".[30] 

... A mutinied commander, Movladi Baisarov, said that Kadyrov "acts like a medieval tyrant. If someone tells the truth about what is going on, it's like signing one's own death warrant. Ramzan is a law unto himself. He can do anything he likes. He can take any woman and do whatever he pleases with her. (...) Ramzan acts with total impunity. I know of many people executed on his express orders and I know exactly where they were buried".[31] On 18 November 2006, Baisarov was killed in an ambush by members of Kadyrov's police on Moscow's Leninsky Prospekt, only a few hundred meters from the Kremlin. 

... On 23 October 2006, a criminal case was registered on the basis of the video tape frames published by the Novaya Gazeta newspaper in Anna Politkovskaya's article. Sergey Sokolov, deputy editor-in-chief of the paper, told the Echo Moskvy Radio that it can be clearly seen in the video as to how "Kadyrov's military forces are beating federal soldiers" with participation of "a man looking like Ramzan Kadyrov".[35] On 7 October 2006, Politkovskaya was found shot dead in an elevator in her apartment in Moscow. 

... The Memorial group investigator stated in its report: "Considering the evidence we have gathered, we have no doubt that most of the crimes which are being committed now in Chechnya are the work of Kadyrov’s men. There is also no doubt in our minds that Kadyrov has personally taken part in beating and torturing people. What they are doing is pure lawlessness. To make matters worse, they also go after people who are innocent, whose names were given by someone being tortured to death. He and his henchmen spread fear and terror in Chechnya. (...) They travel by night as death squads, kidnapping civilians, who are then locked in a torture chamber, raped and murdered".[37]

I don't know what this is

... Ramzan is rumoured to own a private prison in his stronghold of Tsentoroi, his home village south-east of Grozny. Fields around Tsentoroi are allegedly mined and all access routes are blocked by checkpoints. ...

A video leaked out in which armed men, loyal to Kadyrov, displayed the severed head of a Chechen guerrilla (who was killed in July 2006) for public display in the village of Kurchaloi, marking the brutality of his forces. They mounted the head on a pipe, together with blood-stained trousers and put a cigarette on him.  

On 15 July 2009, Natalia Estemirova, a member of Memorial society, who investigated the alleged abuses by government-backed militias in Chechnya, was abducted and shot to death.[48] Memorial's chairman Oleg Orlov accused Kadyrov of being behind the murder,[49] and claimed that Kadyrov had openly threatened her by saying: "Yes, my arms are up to the elbows in blood. And I am not ashamed of that. I have killed and will kill bad people".[50] Kadyrov denied any involvement in the killing and promised to investigate the killing personally. He condemned the killers, and in response to Orlov's accusations, said: "You are not a prosecutor or a judge therefore your claims about my guilt are not ethical, to put it mildly, and are insulting to me. I am sure that you have to think about my rights before declaring for everyone to hear that I am guilty of Estemirova's death."[51] It was later reported that Kadyrov would be suing Memorial for defamation and slander, targeting Orlov personally with his complaint.[51][52]

On 12 March 2006, a Chechen separatist website posted a short video shot on a mobile phone of a party in a sauna involving two alleged prostitutes and several men, including one who looks and sounds exactly like Ramzan Kadyrov, seen dancing with a young, half-naked woman and trying to rip her bra off. ... Andrew Osborn, Moscow reporter for the Independent, reports that "Mr Kadyrov's aides have laughed off the grainy video ... as a 'provocation'.".[53][54] However, one of people close to Kadyrov confirmed that such orgies are conducted on a regular basis[55]

... In 2009, Kadyrov stated his approval of honor killings, based on the belief that women are the property of their husbands.[57]

Since 1996 Kadyrov is married to Medni Musaevna Kadyrova (born 7 September 1978) and they have eight children: ...

Kadyrov is a noted collector of sports cars. He owns a Lamborghini Reventón, one of only 20 made.[59][60] He is also known for his extensive collection of Chechen daggers.[61][62] On 5 October 2011, he celebrated his 35th birthday in a lavish fashion in the presence of several Hollywood stars, including the actor Jean-Claude Van Damme and the actress Hilary Swank as well as British violinist Vanessa-Mae, singer Seal and many others.[63] When asked where the money for the live-televised celebration were coming from, he reportedly laughed and said "Allah gives it to us", before adding: "I don't know, it comes from somewhere".[64]

Chechnya strongman Ramzan Kadyrov, Elizabeth Hurley, and fluffy kitten

Depardieu Defends Chechnya, Says Boston Bombers Were 'Raised American' 

8:37 AM PDT 5/22/2013 by Nick Holdsworth 

MOSCOW -- Gallic actor Gerard Depardieu’s PR-heavy return to Russia – where he is due to shoot a revenge thriller Turquoise set in Chechnya -- has continued on a controversial tone when he spoke out about the Boston bombers.

Depardieu, who arrived in Chechen capital Grozny with co-star British actress Elizabeth Hurley, said the ethnic-Chechen Tsarnaev brothers ... had been raised American and the outrage could not be blamed on Chechnya. 

The actor, who earlier this year took Russian citizenship to avoid planned wealth taxes of 75 percent in France – and is now reported to have signed up for a special 6 percent flat tax rate designed for entrepreneurs, said: “... You Chechens don't carry any responsibility at all.” 

His comments came just hours before the FBI shot and killed a Chechen man who was being questioned in connection with the Boston bombings. ...

Depardieu's remarks Tuesday, at a press conference where he was seen socializing with Kadyrov, came just days after his arrival in Russia when he had compared Russian president Vladimir Putin to staunch anti-Communist Pope Jean Paul II, seemed designed to draw more attention to his movie projects in Russia. 

Turqoise is a French production directed by Philippe Martinez and produced by Arnaud Frilley, which started shooting in Grozny Saturday. 

Depardieu plays an ex-gangster whose son is killed and comes to Russia to avenge him, where he meets up with an old girlfriend, played by Hurley and a Chechen friend. ...

The French actors friendship with Kadyrov – who has been accused of widespread human rights abuses and murder, made for an uncomfortable exchange with members of the international press who flew to Grozny to meet Depardieu. 

Martinez flew into a rage when asked to comment on parallels between the film's revenge theme and alleged revenge killings of Kadyrov's enemies. 

"I am ashamed you are asking that question,” Martinez said according the British newspaper The Independent – which is owned by former Russian KGB officer Alexander Lebedev. “Gerard Depardieu and Elizabeth Hurley are making a movie in Chechnya! And you're asking questions of a political nature! I don't event want to answer.”

Stark overtones in ’11 Waltham killings

By Michael Rezendes and Bob Hohler |  GLOBE STAFF     MAY 24, 2013

... Initially, neighbors of the victims said they were told by police that the killings were probably drug related. But some family members disagreed, as did Zalkind. 

“With a drug killing, people come over and – bang, bang – it’s over,” Zalkind said. “They want to get out of there as fast as they can.” 

... But there is no question about Tsarnaev’s ties to Mess, who had recently moved to Waltham from Cambridge at the urging of Mess’s girlfriend, Hibatalla Eltilib, according to friends and relatives of the victims who spoke with the Globe. Mess and Tsaernaev had grown close as neighbors near Inman Square, sharing a love of fighting, as well as hip-hop music. 

Newly named Middlesex District Attorney Marian Ryan on Thursday said she would have no comment on any aspect of the investigation. But friends and relatives of the victims, in hindsight, said police should have examined the relationship between Eltilib, a native of ­Sudan, and Tsarnaev. 

Although friends knew ­Tsarnaev to be Muslim, they did not consider him to be an ­extremist. 

Eltilib, by contrast, was outspoken about her Islamic beliefs and disdain for many American values, friends said. 

“She and Tam got really close and became friends,’’ said a friend of Mess, Tsarnaev, and Eltilib. “This was closer to ­Brendan’s death. They would share stories of their distaste for American culture. She was extremely aggressive and violent and had this radical way of thinking.’’ 

All the friends and relatives of the victims who spoke with the Globe asked for anonymity due to fear of retribution from a killer who might still be at large. 

Eltilib has since returned to Sudan.

(Reuters) - The father of a Chechen immigrant killed during questioning over his links with one of the Boston Marathon bombings suspects said on Thursday he plans to travel to the United States where he thinks his son was tortured and killed. ...

"I suspect that they tortured my son and that he suffered a painful death," said Abdulbaki Todashev, wiping away tears at the home he shares with one of his wives in the mostly Muslim region of Chechnya in Russia's North Caucasus.

"I will try to go to (the United States) and get to the truth," he said as he received neighbours and acquaintances paying their respects to the dead man, the oldest of 12 children between his father's two wives. 

Todashev had met the Tsarnaevs when he travelled to the United States to improve his English, said his father, who works in the mayor's office in Chechnya's main city of Grozny and is said to be on close terms with regional leader Ramzan Kadyrov.

Ramzan Kadyrov

He said he gave his permission when his son asked to stay in the United States because he said it was safer than Chechnya,

where separatists waged two wars with Russia after the fall of the Soviet Union and militants still fight for an Islamic state.

Todashev travelled to the United States in 2008 on a Russian passport, a federal law enforcement source said, and lived in Boston before moving to Florida, where he was killed. His father said he had a plane ticket to return to Russia on Friday. 

"He shouldn't have left. He lived comfortably and his mother was very worried about him because he was the oldest in the family and she was used to him being a model for the others," said a neighbour, Malika, who refused to give her last name.

The FBI agent who shot Todashev, who practised mixed martial arts, has not been publicly identified but is from the agency's Boston division, the Orlando Sentinel reported. ...

"Chechens have a power in their unity and interest in what happens in their homeland. It unites them. That's the reason my son became an acquaintance of the Tsarnaevs," said Todashev, speaking in the courtyard of his older wife's house.

At the screening I attended, Hollywood's Bright Young Mormons were out in force as the theatre resounded with the lovely laughter of wholesome-looking starlets from the Great Basin. The twenty-something crowd found the small town misadventures and eventual triumph of an ornery high school geek (voted "Most Likely to Find Sasquatch") a cartoonish but redolent delight. This mild, PG-rated film is winning bellylaughs from gentiles under-25 too, so the studio is now rolling it out to 1,200 theatres. 

Personally, I didn't find the movie terribly funny, which made me feel downright wizened to realize that I'm too over-the-hill to get the jokes that are slaying all the Mormon hipsters. 

... One of the less remarked demographic trends is that the makers of "Napoleon Dynamite" represent the future. As coastal sophisticates fail to reproduce themselves, an ever-increasing percentage of young white people come from conservative, religious backgrounds. Mormon Utah has by far the highest birthrate, of course, but in the 2000 election, the 19 states with the highest white fertility all voted for Bush, while nine of the ten states at the bottom of the white birthrate list voted for Gore.

When Hollywood Wants Good, Clean Fun, It Goes to Mormon Country 

Out of nowhere, B.Y.U. — a Mormon university owned and operated by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints — has become a farm team for the country’s top animation studios and effects companies. Unlikely as it sounds, young Mormons are being sucked out of the middle of Utah and into the very centers of American pop-culture manufacturing. 

Praising the program in a speech on campus in 2008, the president of Pixar, Edwin Catmull, noted: “It’s the perception not just of Pixar, but also at the other studios, that something pretty remarkable is happening here.” ... 

The typical B.Y.U. student doesn’t seem like a natural fit for Hollywood. Mormon culture tends to see the entertainment industry as both a reflection of and contributor to our “morally bereft society,” as one alumnus put it. ... 

The B.Y.U. program is designed to be a similar kind of ethical counterweight: it’s trying to unleash values-oriented filmmakers into the industry who can inflect its sensibility.  

At first, I struggled to understand the specifics of that mission. Everyone talked about wanting to make “clean movies” or “movies I wouldn’t be afraid to take my mother to,” but these phrases were shibboleths, loaded and tough to pin down. It wasn’t simply a matter of avoiding sex and violence. (A few times, I heard even “Shrek” described disapprovingly: too many fart jokes, too much cynicism.)

Court Documents Detail a Deadly Family Feud From Brooklyn to Pakistan 

By MOSI SECRET 

She fled her husband and her family, sneaking out of her home in Pakistan to take sanctuary in the American Embassy, which then whisked her to a secret hide-out in the United States. 

The thrilling escape seemed to end the harrowing ordeal of Amina Ajmal, an American citizen who said she had been held captive for years by her own relatives in Pakistan and forced to marry a man there who only wanted an American visa. But then, after law enforcement encouraged her to call her father from her hide-out, the episode took an even darker turn. 

“I will not end this until I find you,” Mohammad Ajmal Choudhry, a Brooklyn taxi driver, told his daughter on the phone in February, according to a transcript of the recorded call. “I will kill their entire family.” 

Four days later, two people in Pakistan were dead. Relatives of the man who had helped her escape, they were gunned down while riding a motorcycle through the streets of Gujrat. 

And now the tale of the Choudhry family, detailed in hundreds of pages of court documents, is a feud of Shakespearean proportions, sprawling across the two continents and the shifting cultures that these immigrants and their American children inhabit. 

Nearly two dozen people, including his other children, came to support Mr. Choudhry at his most recent bail hearing, in April. Despite his prison clothes, he looked every bit the jovial grandfather, plump, balding and waving warmly to the crowd before affirming his innocence. For now, the charges in Federal District Court in Brooklyn are for making threats and visa fraud for filing a visa application for Ms. Ajmal’s new husband without her permission. There is a warrant for Mr. Choudhry’s arrest in Pakistan, accusing him of murder. 

Ms. Ajmal’s ordeal began three years ago, when, at age 19 and having spent her whole life in Brooklyn, she moved to Gujrat, her ancestral city in northeast Pakistan. Her new home was much like the one she left, filled with relatives from several generations who regularly traveled back and forth between the two countries. Some had helped to raise her after her mother died. 

But Ms. Ajmal recently told federal investigators that for three years she was held as a prisoner in her own home. Her confinement was only made worse when her father forced her to marry a local man, Abrar Ahmed Babar, under the threat of death, she said. 

Then, with the help of a distant relative, Shujat Abbas, she fled. 

When she arrived in the United States in January, she called Immigration and Customs Enforcement seeking help. She told officials that her marriage had been arranged so that her husband could obtain legal permanent residency in the United States. Investigators said they later found a visa application for Mr. Babar that had been mailed from Brooklyn, bearing Ms. Ajmal’s signature, even though she was out of the country when it was mailed. 

When Ms. Ajmal called her father in February, he lashed out with pleas and threats, most of them directed toward the family of Mr. Abbas, according to a transcript of the secretly recorded calls that was filed in court. “I will catch each and every person of their family, and will kill them, until I find you,” Mr. Choudhry said. 

That same day Mr. Choudhry e-mailed the American Embassy in Islamabad, saying Mr. Abbas was a drug smuggler who was wanted by the government of Dubai. He wrote that Mr. Abbas was using his relationship with his daughter to try to gain citizenship. 

“He is trying his level best to come to U.S.A. by hook and by crook,” Mr. Choudhry wrote, according to court documents. Mr. Choudhry’s lawyer, Joshua L. Dratel, provided the e-mails to the court in an attempt to show that Mr. Abbas “is not some good Samaritan interested in Amina’s welfare.” 

Mr. Abbas’s father and sister were killed four days later. Mr. Abbas’s mother filed a complaint in Pakistan alleging that the assailants were Ms. Ajmal’s aggrieved husband and her father’s brother, who she said were also responsible for “desecrating the bodies.” She named several other relatives of Mr. Choudhry who she said were involved. 

In a recorded phone call after the murders, Mr. Choudhry repeatedly denied that he ordered the killings, saying that other enemies of Mr. Abbas’s family must be to blame. But he did not back down from his threats.
“Even if I did kill him, isn’t a person supposed to kill that being, when he finds out that his daughter ran away because of him?” he said, according to court papers. “My name is tainted everywhere in newspapers, on TV channels, that I am a man with no honor, my daughters are whores.”
A legal resident since 1990, Mr. Choudhry, 60, was arrested on Feb. 26 outside his home in Brooklyn. Prosecutors charged him with visa fraud and communicating threats and they continue to investigate his involvement in the murders. He faces up to 20 years in prison on the two pending charges.
His lawyer, Mr. Dratel, filed more than a dozen sworn affidavits from people in Pakistan attesting to Mr. Choudhry’s character, providing alibis for the two accused of being the gunmen and presenting alternative theories for how the killings could have happened. He argued that Mr. Choudhry should be released on bail because he was not charged with murder.
As evidence that Ms. Ajmal was never held against her will, he included a photograph of her at her wedding, a lavish affair with more than 1,000 guests, showing her smiling in an ornate gown, with her arms outstretched, admiring her jewelry.

Steve --
Yesterday was a great day for comprehensive immigration reform.
In a major step forward, Democrats and Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee voted 13-5 in support of reform.This bill contains all of the key principles that we’re fighting for, and we need to show our support for it.
Share this graphic on Facebook to thank the Senators who voted for reform:
There are several more steps before the full Senate votes on immigration reform. But this is the most encouraging sign yet.
Share our thank you card online.We’ll be in touch soon with updates on the next steps. Let’s keep up the good work.
Joe Green
Founder and President, FWD.us 

Bipartisan Senate committee negotiates immigration reform. From right to left: a perhaps puzzled but still game John McCain; Lindsey Graham, looking, as always, languidly stunning in leather; the Gang of Eight's idea man, the persuasive Charles "1600 SAT" Schumer, and Marco Rubio, who is more of a Big Picture than a details kind of thinker.

The man, Ibragim Todashev, had been speaking for two hours in his apartment to officials from the Massachusetts State Police and the F.B.I. about Mr. Tsarnaev and the Sept. 11, 2011, murders in Waltham, Mass., when he suddenly grabbed an object and tried to attack the agent, one official said. 

“He exploded and leapt at him,” said the official, who said the F.B.I. agent sustained minor injuries that required stitches. 

A second law enforcement official said the shooting occurred after Mr. Todashev had admitted his role in the killings and had also implicated Mr. Tsarnaev. The official said he had begun writing out a statement when he asked to take a break. 

“They got him to confess to the homicides, and they say, ‘Let’s write it down,’ and he starts writing it down. He goes to get a cigarette or something and then he goes off the deep end,” the second official said. “I don’t know what triggered him, and he goes after the agent.” 

The official said Mr. Todashev had something in his hand, “a knife or a pipe or something.” 

It was not certain who, or how many officers, had fired on Mr. Todashev. Nor was it clear why, with at least three law enforcement officials in the room, deadly force was used on someone without a firearm in his hands. Asked, one law enforcement official said: “If somebody jumps on you and you have a gun, and you don’t do something, the gun will quickly come into play.”

Tomb of one of Waltham Three ritually murdered on 9/11/11

From ABC News:

Todashev was a lawful permanent resident holding a Russian passport, when he arrived in the U.S. in 2008 on a student visa, a senior U.S. official told ABC News. 

Despite a recent assault arrest, his immigration file was devoid of derogatory information, the official said.

Vibrancy, London-style

'We swear by Allah we will never stop fighting you': Terrifying threat of Islamic fanatic after he 'hacked British soldier to death with machete in horrific terror attack on London street'

Man tells camera: 'I apologise that women had to witness this today' 

Soldier attacked with meat cleavers and knives in Woolwich, SE London 

Eyewitness says: 'They were hacking at him, chopping him, cutting him' 

Two suspects waited until police arrived before trying to attack them 

Prime Minister David Cameron described the killing as 'truly shocking' 

Cobra meeting hears there are strong indications it was terrorist incident 

Suspects used 'a number of weapons' in attack, Metropolitan Police say 

Muslim Council: Act will no doubt heighten tensions on British streets

Vibrancy, Stockholm-style

Sweden stunned by third night of rioting

STOCKHOLM - Hundreds of youths set fire to cars and attacked police and rescue services in suburbs of Stockholm Tuesday night in Sweden's worst disorder in years. 

A police station in the Jakobsberg area in the northwest of the city was attacked, two schools were damaged and an arts and crafts center was set ablaze, despite a call for calm from Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt. 

It was the third night of unrest. 

The riots, in one of Europe's richest capitals, have shocked a country that prides itself on a reputation for social justice, and fuelled a debate about how Sweden is coping with both youth unemployment and an influx of immigrants. 

"We've had around 30 cars set on fire last night, fires that we connect to youth gangs and criminals," Kjell Lindgren, spokesman for Stockholm police, said on Wednesday. 

... The riots appear to have been sparked by the police killing of a 69-year-old man wielding a machete in the suburb of Husby this month, which prompted accusations of police brutality. ... 

After decades of practicing the "Swedish model" of generous welfare benefits, Sweden has been reducing the role of the state since the 1990s, spurring the fastest growth in inequality of any advanced OECD economy. 

While average living standards are still among the highest in Europe, governments have failed to substantially reduce long-term youth unemployment and poverty, which have affected immigrant communities worst. 

The left-leaning tabloid Aftonbladet said the riots represented a "gigantic failure" of government policies, which had underpinned the rise of ghettos in the suburbs. 

"We have failed to give many of the people in the suburbs a hope for the future," Anna-Margrethe Livh of the opposition Left Party wrote in the daily Svenska Dagbladet. ... 

Some 15 percent of the population is foreign-born, the highest proportion in the Nordic region. Unemployment among those born outside Sweden stands at 16 percent, compared with 6 percent for native Swedes, according to OECD data. 

Vibrancy, Boston-style

There are what, about 100 Chechens in the U.S.? So, that's a pretty small sample size from which to draw national stereotypes. But, no true Chechen was ever daunted by long odds, and our small number of domestic Chechens are doing their damnedest to spread to America their homeland's stereotype among their Eurasian neighbors for maniacalness. From the Daily Mail:

Friend of Tamerlan Tsarnaev shot dead by FBI after 'pulling a knife as he prepared to sign a confession to 2011 triple homicide'
- Ibragim Todashev, 27, reportedly turned violent during an interview with an FBI agent
- He was being interviewed over his ties to Boston bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev
- Todashev, from Chechnya, was shot dead by the agent just after midnight Wednesday
- He had reportedly confessed to the FBI that he played a role in a brutal triple slaying in the Boston area in 2011
- Todashev had met Tsarnaev while he was living in Boston and last spoke him about a week before the bombing
- He was arrested on May 4 in an unrelated incident after he knocked a man unconscious in a fight over a parking space

Apple CEO Tim Cook swearing to tell Congress only legally-vetted whoppers

Steve Jobs' widow Laurene Powell Jobs is a big pusher of Immigration Reform:

Ms. Powell Jobs has a net worth of about $11.5 billion, according to Bloomberg. Her husband, the Apple co-founder, wasn't a big philanthropist.  ...

It was through her work at College Track that Powell Jobs got on the track to immigration reform. Some of the students in California in the program came into the US at a young age illegally. Now, as high school graduates, they are ineligible for state or federal college assistance. And that has led Powell Jobs to take a more public and active stance on the immigration.

J. Richard Harvey Jr., a professor at Villanova Law School, estimated that Apple’s legal maneuvering had saved the company $7.7 billion in potential American taxes in 2011. ... 

For example, he noted, about two-thirds of Apple’s global pretax income in 2011 was recorded in Ireland, yet only 4 percent of its employees and 1 percent of its customers were located there. 

While Apple has repeatedly insisted it does not engage in “tax gimmicks,” Mr. Harvey was unswayed. 

“Apple does not use tax gimmicks?” he said rhetorically. “I about fell off my chair when I read that.”

A Belgian hedge fund guy paid $17 million for this "Jackson Pollock"

Dealer at Center of Art Scandal Arrested on Tax Charges 

By GRAHAM BOWLEY, WILLIAM K. RASHBAUM and PATRICIA COHEN 

In a case of alleged forgeries that roiled the New York art market and led to a host of civil lawsuits, federal authorities on Tuesday declared a series of works sold as Modernist masterpieces to be fake and charged a little-known Long Island dealer at the center of the scandal with tax fraud. 

Glafira Rosales

Prosecutors charged that the dealer, Glafira Rosales, 56, of Sands Point, N.Y., failed to disclose $12.5 million that she had earned from the sale of the works and had never reported, as required, that she had Spanish bank accounts where she had hidden much of the proceeds. 

“As alleged, Glafira Rosales gave new meaning to the phrase ‘artful dodger’ by avoiding taxes on millions of dollars in income from dealing in fake artworks for fake clients,” Manhattan United States Attorney Preet Bharara said in a statement announcing Ms. Rosales’s arrest. 

... But according to the government’s case, an apparently talented forger — or forgers — confounded the art world for years by turning out realistic-looking works said to be by masters including Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning. 

... Beginning in the mid-1990s, Ms. Rosales sold most of the disputed works through the East 70th Street offices of Knoedler & Company, which was at the time New York’s oldest gallery. The works, all new to the market and many said to be from a collector based in Zurich and Mexico City whom Ms. Rosales initially refused to name, were embraced by Knoedler, which sold them for millions. They became an important source of revenue for the gallery. 

But then several experts called the works fake, and the F.B.I. began an investigation. In 2011, after 165 years in business, Knoedler closed and was later sued by a half-dozen clients who had bought the Rosales works. ... 

In presenting their charges on Tuesday, the authorities outlined the details of an international scheme they said clearly showed Ms. Rosales’s efforts to profit from counterfeiting. 

In all, they say, she sold about 63 works to two prominent art dealers in New York between 1994 and 2008. ...

One of the civil suits claims that between 1996 and 2008, Knoedler earned about $60 million from works that Ms. Rosales provided on consignment or sold outright to the gallery and cleared $40 million in profits. ...

One of the suits, over the authenticity of a $17 million painting attributed to Jackson Pollock, was settled last year in a confidential agreement....

Ms. Rosales was arrested at her home and was presented in Manhattan federal court, the authorities said. She is being held without bail. 

Mandelbrot Set 'do

“The sale of a piece of art for profit is a taxable event and the seller is responsible for paying his or her fair share of tax, even if the art is counterfeit,” Toni Weirauch, a special agent in charge for the Internal Revenue Service said in a statement.

Roubi L' Roubi and Pierre Lagrange: Roubi is wondering: "How soon until Gay Divorce is legal?"

I'm on the mailing list for the annual White Privilege Conference, so I'm always on the verge of getting around to writing about it at length. But I didn't want to make a big deal out of it if it weren't a big deal, and doing the research to determine whether it's a big deal or not sounded depressing.

Dr. Eddie Moore Jr.

WPC drew only 175 attendees at its first session in 1999, on the campus of Cornell College in Mt. Vernon, Iowa, where the conference’s founder, Eddie Moore Jr., had earned a bachelor’s degree in political science in 1989 and was serving as an assistant dean while working on a doctorate in education from the University of Iowa (he received it in 2004). Moore is now director of diversity at the Brooklyn Friends School. A larger-than-life character (he’s at least six-foot-eight and a former college basketball player), Moore physically and psychically dominated the conference. The typical garb for WPC14 attendees ranged from hippie (old folks) to hipster (young ’uns), with common elements of rubber soles on every shoe and green-conscious water bottles dangling from every backpack. The shaven-headed Moore sartorially carved out for himself an impressive hieratic distance from his disheveled audience: meticulously tailored suits complemented with silk shirts, silk ties, and even socks in shimmering springtime colors. A gold elastic-band watch that looked like a Rolex gleamed on his wrist.

Quaker delegation to WPC

Back in 1999 the main focus of the White Privilege Conference had been on race. Recently, though, the categories of victims of white supremacy have grown to include such overwhelmingly white groups as feminists and the “LGBT community”​—​or “LGBTQ community,” “LGBTQQ community,” and “LGBTQQIA community”​—​all acronyms used by White Privilege participants at various times (the two “Q’s” stand for “queer” and “questioning,” the “I” for “intersex,” and the “A” for a conventionally heterosexual “ally” of all of the above). ...

Dr. Eddie Moore Jr.

By this year at SeaTac, the number of White Privilege attendees had swollen to 2,000, a substantial increase over the 1,500 or so at WPC13 last year in Albuquerque, where the theme was “Intersectionality”​—​WPC-speak for two-fer oppression, as in the case of a black female or a gay Latino. 

The bulging crowds at the SeaTac DoubleTree were a fire chief’s acid-reflux nightmare. By row-counting I calculated 1,500 chairs​—​all taken​—​in a ballroom whose wall proclaimed “Maximum Occupancy 505.” The smaller conference rooms that housed some 120 different workshops (a sample: “Talking Back to White Entitlement,” “Follow the White Supremacist Money,” “Engaging White People in the Fight for Racial & Economic Justice”) were typically as packed as mosh pits. ...

Dr. Eddie Moore Jr.

Who were those 2,000 people lounging on the lobby floor as they ate their WPC-supplied vegan-option box lunches or lined up to buy corporate lattes at the in-house Starbucks station? From my conversations with some of them, it seemed that they had one thing in common: Someone else, or something else, usually a public entity or a university or a nonprofit or a church, had paid their way (up to $435 in registration fees alone) for the four days and nights at the Seattle airport. The top representative professions at the conference were: college professor, student, campus diversity officer, and employee of an activist organization whose title typically included the words “equity,” “social justice,” or both.  

Not Dr. Eddie Moore Jr. (possibly Ferris Bueller, Diversity Consultant)

Indeed, one way to look at the conference was as a networking event for a diversity industry that is larger and more elaborate and competitive than one can imagine. The conference program bulged with ads for other White Privilege-style conferences (a Pedagogy of Privilege conference this coming August at the University of Denver, for example) and white-privilege reading material (sample book titles: Deconstructing Privilege; Cultivating Social Justice Teachers; White Women Getting Real About Race). It seemed that nearly everyone in attendance, including many of the college professors, was flogging a book or had a side gig as a “consultant”​—​that is, someone you might want to hire for your own campus or workplace exploration of the ins and outs of white oppression. Eddie Moore himself, when he is not at Brooklyn Friends, runs America & MOORE LLC, and his business card advertises “Diversity Education, Research & Consulting.”

... For example, the fight against the Japanese furnished California with a national epic. After the war, the Golden State filled up with ex-servicemen who had passed through California in 1942-1945 and vowed that if they made it back alive, they were going to raise a family in the sunshine. They brought back from Hawaii not just a comic penchant for Tiki torches, but, more lastingly, for board-riding—first surfing and then skateboarding, laying the foundation for X Games culture. 

If the War in the Pacific gave Americans more of a yen for the sun, the now largely forgotten War in Italy (1943-45) set off a craze for all things Italian—such as dining, movies, and singing—that improved postwar American nightlife.