BAI CUA BMH

1.- Powerball Jackpot phá kỷ lục thế giới, chưa có ai trúng...

Lần xổ kế tiếp vào ngày Thứ Tư, 13/01/2016, dự đoán 1,3 tỷ ..

nhưng có thể còn lớn hơn nửa...

Chúc Quý vị và "tui" may mắn....

2.- Bài viết mới nhất trên "The Daily Beast" - 

Was Putin’s Media Chief Ready to Snitch Before He Dropped Dead? 

của Sr. Correspondent Shane Harris...ngày 10/01/2016.... 

Nói về tên Mikhail Lesin, "xếp sòng" bộ máy tuyên truyền của Vladimir Putin,  

chết bí mật trong một khách sạn tại Washington, D.C... 

trước khi sẳn sàng tiết lộ tin tức cho FBI...

Có thể, để thấy cách hành xử "chuyên nghiệp" của một tay cựu đại tá KGB...

vẫn như những năm xưa..

3.- Sau khi Saudi Arabia thẳng tay xử tử đồng loạt 47 tên mang tội khủng bố , 

trong đó có tên Sheikh Nirm al-Nimr giáo sĩ pháiShiite ...

làm bùng nổ sự hận thù giửa hai hệ phái lớn nhất của Hồi Giáo: Sunni và Shia.

Xin mời Quý Vị xem hai bài viết ngắn:  

Nguồn gốc chia rẽ giữa người Hồi giáo Sunni và Shiite & 

How Do Sunni and Shia Islam Differ?

để biết sự khác biệt giửa hai hệ phái của đạo Hồi..  

Cùng thờ chung một giáo chủ, đọc chung một quyển kinh, họ còn "giết nhau như ngóe".. 

Thế nên không quá kinh ngạc khi thấy bọn ISIS giết người dã man, như cách chúng hành  xử hàng trăm năm trước.,,,

BMHWashington, D.C 

No winner of record Powerball jackpot, 

next draw put at $1.3 billion

Alex DobuzinskisJan 10th 2016 6:44AM

LOS ANGELES, Jan 9 (Reuters) - No one won Saturday's record jackpot of nearly $950 million in the multi-state Powerball lottery, officials said, driving the haul for a winning ticket in the next draw to $1.3 billion, lottery officials said.

Millions of Americans anxiously checked their tickets for the winning combination of six numbers - 32, 16, 19, 57, 34 with a Powerball number of 13.
No Powerball jackpot winner," the Texas Lottery announced on Twitter hours after the numbers were drawn.

"Since nobody won tonight's staggering $947.8 million jackpot, it has rolled to an estimated $1.3 billion for January 13," said a statement from officials in California, one of the 44 states, together with Washington D.C. and two U.S. territories,  that participate in Powerball.

The grand prize for Powerball has climbed steadily for weeks after repeated drawings produced no big winners. This week ticket purchases surged along with the size of the pot, driving the prize beyond the $900 million reported earlier.

Francisco Figueroa, second from right, buys Powerball lottery tickets at the Blue Bird Liquor store in Hawthorne, Calif., on Friday, Jan. 8, 2016. Lottery officials confirmed Friday that Saturday nightâs drawing will be for a record $800 million. The ever-increasing jackpot is a result of strong national sales ever since the jackpot was near $400 million just days ago. (AP Photo/Nick Ut)

The grand prize in Saturday's drawing was worth $558 million for a winner choosing an immediate cash payout instead of annual payments over 29 years, according to lottery officials in California, one of the participating states.

The prize, which rises with every drawing in which the winning series of six numbers is not won, ranked as the largest jackpot for any lottery in North American history. With almost unimaginable riches at stake, many Americans who normally shun lotteries joined the long lines of people buying tickets at retail stores across the country.

Dony Elias, 26, an attendant at Stardust Liquor in Los Angeles, said 300 customers picked up tickets for Powerball on Friday night at his store. Elias admitted to buying a ticket for himself, something he said he had never done before.

And like many other players, he had given some thought to what he would do with the cash - "I would take a trip to the moon."

California normally sees Powerball sales of $1 million a day, but on Saturday morning sales were $2.8 million an hour, said California Lottery spokesman Mike Bond.

Excitement swirled among ticket buyers despite what some statisticians call mind-boggling odds for the Powerball game, one in 292 million.

Jeffrey Miecznikowski, associate professor of biostatistics at the University at Buffalo, said in an email an American is roughly 25 times more likely to become the next president of the United States than to win at Powerball.

Or to put it another way, the odds are equivalent to flipping a coin 28 times and getting heads every time.

"It doesn't sound so bad ... but you would be at it for an eternity," Miecznikowski said.

November was the last time a jackpot winner emerged from Powerball, which is run by the Multi-State Lottery Association.

In the drawing on Wednesday night, the jackpot stood at $500 million and with no winner drawn, the stage was set for Saturday night's drawing just before 11 p.m. Eastern time.

The previous record North American jackpot payout for any lottery game was in March 2012, when $656 million was won in the multi-state Mega Millions draw. (Additional reporting by Phoenix Tso in Los Angeles and Chris Michaud in New York; Editing by Meredith Mazzilli and Clarence Fernandez)

It's very interesting to read this story.

RED LETTER

01.10.16   12:15 AM ET

Shane Harris 

• Verified account

@shaneharris

Sr. Correspondent @thedailybeast || Author, @ Warhttp://amzn.to/1h0SN83  Fellow @NewAmerica; Host@ratlsecurity; Public key http://goo.gl/4IZBWW 

Was Putin’s Media Chief Ready to Snitch Before He Dropped Dead?

The D.C. cops won’t say what killed Mikhail Lesin—or what he was doing in a hotel room there. But all signs point to the former Kremlin propaganda boss cutting a deal with the FBI.

When police found Mikhail Lesin dead in a Washington, DC hotel room, the most interesting question wasn’t the cause of his demise, but what he was doing in the United States in the first place.

The former propaganda chief for Russian president Vladimir Putin, nicknamed “the bulldozer” for his history of rolling over his opposition, Lesin had been under scrutiny by the FBI and the Justice Department for potential money laundering and violation of corruption laws. Lesin was suspected of hiding ill-gotten gains in nearly $30 million worth of luxury real estate in southern California, an astounding set of assets for a man supposedly collecting a civil servant’s salary. He’d also been considered for sanctions that would have prevented him from obtaining a visa to enter the United States.

Sen. Roger Wicker, a Republican from Mississippi who has spent years looking into corruption and human rights abuses in Russia, had asked the Justice Department to investigate Lesin. In December 2014, the department confirmed it had referred Lesin’s case to the Criminal Division and to the FBI. While officials declined to say whether they formally opened an investigation, several close watchers of Lesin’s case told The Daily Beast they thought it was all but certain that he was being pursued by U.S. law enforcement. And if he wasn’t under active criminal investigation, the FBI had enough evidence to consider opening a case, they said. A bureau spokesperson declined to comment on the matter.

So why did Lesin, who was 57, tempt fate by entering the United States this past November? 

The purpose of his visit was never made clear. But he was staying in a mid-range hotel on Washington’s DuPont Circle. While not shabby, it’s doesn’t seem the kind of place that attracts people who buy multi-million dollar estates. It does, though, offer a comparatively low per-night rate, perhaps more in line with U.S. government budgets, and is known to host foreign government officials and visitors on exchange programs. It’s also located a short drive from FBI and Justice Department headquarters.  

These are the broad strokes of Lesin’s case. And in some foreign policy circles in Washington—as well as in Russian media—they have fueled speculation that Lesin was murdered after coming to Washington to cut a deal with the FBI.

Lesin certainly would have had a lot to say about Putin’s inner circle--he worked with, and reportedly owed money to, some of the most powerful men in Russian media and finance. And he would have had a powerful incentive to cooperate with U.S. authorities, namely hanging onto his several mansions in Los Angeles, which potentially could have been seized. At least two of the homes are known to be occupied, respectively, by his daughter and his son, a Hollywood film producer whose star is on the rise.

Adding to the mystery, the precise cause of Lesin’s untimely demise hasn’t been revealed. Almost immediately, the broadcasting outfit RT (Russia Today), widely seen as a Kremlin mouthpiece, reported that Lesin died of a “heart attack,” citing an unnamed “family member.”

But a spokesperson for the Washington, DC police department told The Daily Beast that Lesin’s death is still under investigation. And although a coroner performed an autopsy nearly two months ago, the police aren’t saying how he died. That’s an unusually long time not to publicly state a cause of death.

The conspiracy theories are arguably well-founded, because it wouldn’t be the first time someone who posed a political threat to Putin wound up dead under unusual circumstances, including poisoning. 

Lesin was also being squeezed by the U.S. government. Two years ago he’d been nominated by human rights groups for the so-called Magnitsky list of Russian human rights violators, which would have allowed Washington to deny him a visa and seize his assets in this country. Lesin was not placed on the public list, which consists mainly of mid-level officials not as influential as the former propaganda chief. But U.S. officials maintain a classified annex which reportedly includes more senior Russians, including those closer to Putin. It’s not known whether Magnitsky was on that list, but activists lobbied hard to put him there.

He would have been an ideal candidate. Not only was he one of RT’s founding fathers, credited with conceiving of the network while working for Putin in order to counter what he saw as anti-Russia journalism in the West. (“It’s been a long time since I was scared by the word propaganda,” Lesin said in 2007, according to RT. “We need to promote Russia internationally. Otherwise, we’d just look like roaring bears on the prowl.”)

The Washington, DC police department told The Daily Beast that Lesin’s death is still under investigation. And although a coroner performed an autopsy nearly two months ago, the police aren’t saying how he died. That’s an unusually long time not to publicly state a cause of death.

Lesin was also a longtime Putin crony, and he played a central role in an early project by the Russian strongman to gut the country’s independent television station, NTV, which had aired critical reports about government corruption, the war in Chechnya, and had become a soapbox for prominent Putin critics. While Lesin was serving as the information minister, Russia jailed NTV’s founder and majority shareholder, Vladimir Gusinsky. 

“While he was there, the information minister made an offer: Gusinsky could have his freedom if he agreed to transfer his media holdings to Gazprom, the state-owned energy monopoly,” according to Russian journalist Vladimir Kara-Muzra, who has probed Lesin’s financial and real estate holdings. It was a naked power play that the European Court of Human Rights found was politically motivated and amounted to state-sanctioned blackmail.

Gusinksy didn't end up going along with the deal to hand over the media company. But Gazprom took over NTV anyway--by force--and in 2013 Lesin became the head of Gazprom-Media, an actual state-run media organization. RT, which reported the cause of Lesin’s death before a medical examiner had even seen his body, merely receives funding from the state.

Top of Form

The Gazprom takeover has raised concerns among U.S. investigators that Lesin may have come by a fortune through illegal seizures of private property, and then laundered those proceeds by stashing them in American real estate, according to two sources who have followed Lesin’s finances and asked not to be identified.

Landing Lesin could have led investigators to other, even bigger fish. As Wicker wrote to then-Attorney General Eric Holder in 2014, Lesin “may also have close business ties with individuals subject to U.S. sanctions,” as well as  organizations, including  Bank Rossiya, which is closely linked to Gazprom, and the bank’s owner, Yury Kovalchuk, a billionaire who ranks among Russia’s richest people, is reportedly close to Putin personally, and was sanctioned by the Treasury Department after Russia invaded Crimea.

If Lesin were found to be violating U.S. money laundering laws, it could provide a rare opportunity to snare a senior Putin aide. After Wicker pressed the issue, relying in part on public property records that clearly linked the L.A. mansions to Lesin, the Justice Department considered whether to go after him.

Following the news of his death, the Kremlin issued a statement on behalf of Putin, noting, “The president has a high appreciation for Mikhail Lesin’s massive contribution to the creation of modern Russian mass media.”

But having Lesin as an informant would been a big contribution to U.S. law enforcement and intelligence. And the information that Wicker and his staff, as well as human rights groups and journalists dug up on Lesin may have pushed him closer to the FBI’s arms.

About two weeks after the Justice Department informed Wicker that the allegations against Lesin were referred to the FBI, he resigned as the head of Gazprom-Media, citing unspecified “family reasons.” Kara-Murza, the journalist and Putin critic, who himself fell mysteriously ill last summer, has directly linked the department’s announcement to Lesin’s stepping down and said it showed that the threat of sanctions and prosecution could be used to bring down corrupt Russian officials.

“That’s just one example of how effective this process can be if it’s applied properly, if it’s done against the right people,” Kara-Murza said in remarks at the American Enterprise Institute, a Washington think tank, in October. Kara-Murza declined to discuss Lesin’s case with The Daily Beast, citing the Latin admonition “de mortuis nihil nisi bonum.” Of the dead, [say] nothing, unless good. “And I have nothing good to say about him.”

Meanwhile, Lesin’s children have also kept mum. His son, Anton Lessine (the surnames are spelled differently), didn’t respond to a request for comment, and his daughter couldn’t be reached. Anton has been on a roll in Hollywood, helping financing high-profile movies with A-list talent. He was the executive producer of the Arnold Schwarzenegger action vehicle Sabotage, the Brad Pitt WWII tank pic Fury, 2015’s Bill Murray comedy Rock the Kasbah, and 2016’s transgenerational buddy flick Dirty Grandpa, starring Robert DeNiro and Zac Effron. 

Times are good for the son of the ex-Putin aide, who seems to have come out of nowhere in the famously hard-to-crack world of big budget filmmaking. He recently purchased a mansion in L.A.’s Pacific Palisades for an asking price of nearly $4 million. How exactly the Lesin family came into such good fortune is a question that has piqued the interest of U.S. investigators.

As might another question: Was Lesin in debt, and ready to flee Russia for a new life? After Lesin’s death, The Moscow Times reported that he may have stepped down from Gazprom-Media after losing an internal power struggle. Jobless and with high-level enemies, Lesin also owed “a huge amount of money” to Kovalchuk, the billionaire banker, which he didn’t intended to repay, the news organization reported, citing anonymous sources.

“He also underestimated his rivals,” The Moscow Times wrote. “The heads of three of Russia's major TV channels complained to President Putin that Lesin had begun behaving as if he was their boss, as he had been while press minister.”

The walls were closing in on Lesin--in Washington and in Moscow. Perhaps Lesin’s trip to that DuPont Circle hotel was his first step towards a new life. But if he’d become an enemy of Putin and his friends, even the FBI might not have been able to save him.

**************************

Nguồn gốc chia rẽ giữa người 

Hồi giáo Sunni và Shiite

Cái chết của Nhà tiên tri Mohammed, người sáng lập ra Hồi giáo, khiến cộng đồng người theo tôn giáo này bắt đầu chia thành hai dòng Sunni và Shiite dựa theo cách họ chọn người lãnh đạo mới.

Người Hồi giáo chia thành hai nhánh chính, dòng Sunni và Shiite. Sự chia rẽ này bắt nguồn từ bất đồng liên quan đến việc quyết định ai sẽ là người lãnh đạo cộng đồng người Hồi giáo sau khi Nhà tiên tri Mohammed, người sáng lập ra tôn giáo này, qua đời năm 632, BBC cho biết.

Một số người cho rằng lãnh đạo mới phải được chọn dựa trên nguyên tắc đồng thuận, số khác giữ quan điểm chỉ có hậu duệ của nhà tiên tri mới có thể trở thành caliph, tức người lãnh đạo.

Phần lớn các tín đồ cho rằng vị trí caliph nên dành cho Abu Bakr, tín hữu và là một trong những trợ lý đáng tin cậy của Nhà tiên tri Mohammed. Ông còn là cha của Aisha, vợ nhà tiên tri. Những tín đồ này sau đó trở thành người Hồi giáo dòng Sunni.

Nhóm khác cho rằng Ali, người anh em họ và là con rể của nhà tiên tri, từng được ông xức dầu thánh mới xứng làm caliph. Những người này sau này được gọi là Shia, hay Shiite, rút gọn từ "shiaat Ali", tức "những người theo Ali".

Những người ủng hộ Abu Bakr đã giành chiến thắng khi danh hiệu caliph được trao cho ông. Tuy nhiên, Ali cuối cùng cũng trở thành caliph đời thứ tư sau khi hai người kế nhiệm Abu Bakr bị ám sát. Ali sau đó cũng bị ám sát bằng một thanh kiếm tẩm độc tại nhà thờ ở Kufa, nằm tại Iraq ngày nay. Hai con trai của ông là Hasan và Hussein lần lượt trở thành người lãnh đạo.

Hussein và nhiều họ hàng bị thảm sát ở Karbala, Iraq, năm 680 bởi một đội quân của một caliph dòng Sunni, khiến sự chia rẽ càng thêm sâu sắc. Sự tử vì đạo của Hussein trở thành nguyên lý trung tâm đối với những người tin rằng Ali là người thừa kế nhà tiên tri.

Theo New York Times, người Sunni chiếm hơn 85% trong 1,5 tỷ người Hồi giáo trên thế giới. Họ sinh sống chủ yếu tại các quốc gia Arab và Thổ Nhĩ Kỳ, Ấn Độ, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Malaysia và Indonesia. Người Shiite chiếm phần lớn dân số tại các nước như Iran, Iraq, Bahrain.

Toàn bộ người Hồi giáo trên thế giới hôm nay đều công nhận rằng Allah là Đấng tối cao duy nhất và Mohammed là sứ giả của ngài. Họ tuân theo 5 nghi thức trụ cột của Hồi giáo, trong đó có tháng ăn chay Ramadan và dùng chung kinh thánh Koran.

Người Sunni phụ thuộc rất nhiều vào thực hiện theo các bài giảng của nhà tiên tri trong khi người Shiite tin các thủ lĩnh ayatollah của họ là hiện thân của Đấng tối cao trên mặt đất. Điều này dẫn đến việc người Sunni cáo buộc người Shiite tôn thờ dị giáo. Người Shiite tố chính chủ nghĩa giáo điều Sunni đã làm hình thành các giáo phái cực đoan như dòng Wahhabi, The Economist cho biết.

Arab Saudi và Iran, hai quốc gia do người dòng Sunni và Shiite lãnh đạo tại Trung Đông, thường ở hai phía ngược nhau trong những cuộc xung đột khu vực. Ở Yemen, Houthis, phiến quân dòng Shiite đến từ miền bắc lật đổ chính quyền dòng Sunni khiến liên minh do Arab Saudi dẫn đầu phải can thiệp.

Tại Syria, nơi phần lớn dân số là dòng Sunni, Tổng thống Bashar al-Assad thuộc nhánh Alawite dòng Shiite đang cố gắng giữ chính quyền trong cuộc nội chiến kéo dài gần 5 năm. Tại Iraq, sự bất đồng giữa chính quyền dòng Shiite và cộng đồng người Sunni đã tạo điều kiện cho phiến quân Nhà nước Hồi giáo (IS) giành nhiều thắng lợi.

Tuy nhiên, không phải tất cả người dòng Sunni đều thù ghét dòng Shiite. TheoTestTube News, người Hồi giáo thuộc hai dòng trên cùng sinh sống hòa bình tại một số khu vực như Các tiểu vương quốc Arab Thống nhất (UAE) hay thành phố Dearborn, bang Michigan, Mỹ.

How Do Sunni and Shia Islam Differ?

By JOHN HARNEYJAN. 3, 2016

Saudi Arabia’s execution of the Shiite cleric Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr could escalate tensions in the Muslim world even further. In the Shiite theocracy Iran, the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said on Sunday that Saudi Arabia, which is ruled by a Sunni monarchy, would face “divine vengeance” for the killing of the outspoken cleric, which was part of a mass execution of 47 men. Sheikh Nimr had advocated for greater political rights for Shiites in Saudi Arabia and surrounding countries. Saudi Arabia had accused him of inciting violence against the state.

Here is a primer on the basic differences between Sunni and Shia Islam.

What caused the split?

A schism emerged after the death of the Prophet Muhammad in 632, and disputes arose over who should shepherd the new and rapidly growing faith.

Some believed that a new leader should be chosen by consensus; others thought that only the prophet’s descendants should become caliph. The title passed to a trusted aide, Abu Bakr, though some thought it should have gone to Ali, the prophet’s cousin and son-in-law. Ali eventually did become caliph after Abu Bakr’s two successors were assassinated.

After Ali also was assassinated, with a poison-laced sword at the mosque in Kufa, in what is now Iraq, his sons Hasan and then Hussein claimed the title. But Hussein and many of his relatives were massacred in Karbala, Iraq, in 680. His martyrdom became a central tenet to those who believed that Ali should have succeeded the prophet. (It is mourned every year during the month of Muharram.) The followers became known as Shiites, a contraction of the phrase Shiat Ali, or followers of Ali.

The Sunnis, however, regard the first three caliphs before Ali as rightly guided and themselves as the true adherents to the Sunnah, or the prophet’s tradition. Sunni rulers embarked on sweeping conquests that extended the caliphate into North Africa and Europe. The last caliphate ended with the fall of the Ottoman Empire after World War I.

How do their beliefs differ?

The Sunni and Shiite sects of Islam encompass a wide spectrum of doctrine, opinion and schools of thought. The branches are in agreement on many aspects of Islam, but there are considerable disagreements within each. Both branches include worshipers who run the gamut from secular to fundamentalist. Shiites consider Ali and the leaders who came after him as imams. Most believe in a line of 12 imams, the last of whom, a boy, is believed to have vanished in the ninth century in Iraq after his father was murdered. Shiites known as Twelvers anticipate his return as the Mahdi, or Messiah. Because of the different paths the two sects took, Sunnis emphasize God’s power in the material world, sometimes including the public and political realm, while Shiites value in martyrdom and sacrifice.

Which sect is larger, and where is each concentrated?

More than 85 percent of the world’s 1.5 billion Muslims are Sunni. They live across the Arab world, as well as in countries like Turkey, Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, Malaysia and Indonesia. Iran, Iraq and Bahrain are largely Shiite. The Saudi royal family, which practices an austere and conservative strand of Sunni Islam known as Wahhabism, controls Islam’s holiest shrines, Mecca and Medina. Karbala, Kufa and Najaf in Iraq are revered shrines for the Shiites.

Saudi Arabia and Iran, the dominant Sunni and Shiite powers in the Middle East, often take opposing sides in regional conflicts. In Yemen, Shiite rebels from the north, the Houthis, overthrew a Sunni-dominated government, leading to an invasion by a Saudi-led coalition. In Syria, which has a Sunni majority, the Alawite Shiite sect of President Bashar al-Assad, which has long dominated the government, clings to power amid a bloody civil war. And in Iraq, bitter resentments between the Shiite-led government and Sunni communities have contributed to victories by the Islamic State.