Dr. Adrian Siegel, the treasurer of the World Chess Federation (known by the French acronym FIDE) has submitted a letter to the body's executive board and other executives informing it that their bank, UBS, is closing the Federation's bank account. Since 2015 the President of FIDE, Kirsan Ilymzhinov, has been listed on the Office of Foreign Accounts Control sanctions list of the U.S. Treasury for financial support of Syria. According to Dr. Siegel, "...after more than two years of Kirsan Ilyumzhinow's [sic] presence on the sanction list... UBS has announced that they will immediately close our accounts."
Over the past two years there were reports of Mr. Ilymzhinov resigning from the presidency in favor of his vice-president, only to attempt to regain executive control, and dissension on the Executive Board of FIDE over the matter. Allegations of corruption have plagued Mr. Ilymzhinov for some years, but he has been re-elected twice over chess Grandmasters Garry Kasparov and Anatoly Karpov in separate elections. In 2010 he proposed building a chess center at the World Trade Center attack site.
The BBC reports that representatives of Mr. Ilymzhinov have denied the allegations as outrageous and false.
Story at chessbase.com by Macauley Peterson.
Checkmate, baby?
(Score: 2, Offtopic) by realDonaldTrump on Thursday February 15 2018, @10:40AM (2 children)
Love the very sexy logo, and the story about it. Maybe I'm the only one who read it?
When I picked Mike Pence, I said to my art guy, make a sexy logo for us. But very BORING people whined and whined, they said it was too sexy. I wanted to get my message out. Sexy was part of my message, but there is so much more. Everybody was talking about the sex, I wanted to talk about Making America Great Again in so many other ways. So I changed the logo. And the rest is history!!
(Score: 0, Offtopic) by realDonaldTrump on Thursday February 15 2018, @11:57AM
VERY STUPID AND UNFAIR moderators don't read the stories!!!
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Thursday February 15 2018, @02:52PM
0. Design logo
1. Get vulture capital funding
2. Order T-shirts
3. Design and order packaging, boxes, etc.
4. Develop product feature list
5. Hire underpaid dweebs to write the code
6. Profit
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by gawdonblue on Thursday February 15 2018, @10:51AM (5 children)
Is that a bad thing?
(Score: 2) by Unixnut on Thursday February 15 2018, @11:33AM (4 children)
> Is that a bad thing?
Depends if you are trying to overthrow the legitimate government or support it I guess.
(Score: 2) by KiloByte on Thursday February 15 2018, @12:50PM (3 children)
There is none in Syria. Hint: 99.7% votes in support despite the majority of population being (violently!) against him doesn't sound legitimate to me.
But then, his main backer not only doesn't make a pretense of elections being fair but intentionally fingers our noses. 99.89% vote with 99.7% turnout in Chechnya is the equivalent of US South voting for Lincoln had he lived to 1868. You see, Litvinienko could get knifed during a robbery or suffer a car accident, instead of a 100%-sure-it's-me-but-try-to-prove-that signature.
Ceterum censeo systemd esse delendam.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by qzm on Thursday February 15 2018, @11:16PM
Good to see you have taken the effort to travel to the country, meet them people in the street, and gauge their feelings about their leaders.
Quite a commitment, after all you must have learn their language and customs also to understand their situation.
And it must have taken quite some time to talk to enough to gain a 99.7% figure for a whole country.
Thankfully you would not be stupid enough to take your numbers from the media of a country working actively to overthrow their government..
(Score: 1, Troll) by shortscreen on Thursday February 15 2018, @11:19PM
The majority of the population isn't violenty against the government, they are against their country being a warzone and would like the foreign jihadis (including US invaders) to GTFO.
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Thursday February 15 2018, @11:25PM
You're making the point that al-Assad is not a legitimate ruler because he is an autocrat who suppresses dissent, which is true, but the real reason the US and their allies are trying to over throw him is not because he rules by fear, but because he is a loyal ally of Russia.
The US cares not a jot for the people of Syria, if they could replace al-Assad with Attila the Hun they would in a heartbeat, as long as Mr. Hun stayed loyal to his CIA handlers.
You should do a little reading about Vietnam (for instance) especially Ngo Dinh Diem and Ngô Đình Nhu, a couple of absolute killers the CIA kept in power for something like 9 years.
You could also check out how many people the CIA's favourite Chilean Augusto Pinochet murdered in his 17 years of rule.
I'm sure you could find many other examples of US funded but extremely unpopular governments, so don't pretend the Syrian Civil War has anything to do with "freeing" the Syrian people.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 15 2018, @11:03AM (7 children)
But why.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Thursday February 15 2018, @11:21AM (6 children)
Attention whoring for a game that has been made utterly obsolete by computers. Kind of like the "controversial and trendy" logo.
Or is chess reaaaally going to bring humans together in harmony? Perhaps to destroy the computers, AI, and bots.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 15 2018, @11:31AM
World chess has been run by organized crime since 1978.
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Thursday February 15 2018, @01:45PM (1 child)
> a game that has been made utterly obsolete by computers
The game of chess isn't obsolete. Unlike checkers it still is not solved. But we may be obsolete. Computers may soon be better than us at pretty much everything. Better at every game including sports, and better drivers, assembly line workers, housekeepers, investors, accountants, explorers, surgeons, and even, perhaps, better at science.
With our tools and our cooperative nature, we've made all other large animals obsolete. None can even think of competing with us. When have you ever heard of a pride of lions or a pack of wolves actually taking land from people, running the people out? Maybe that sometimes happened in the Stone Age, but even then we had the tools and organization to win. Now the only land they have is the land we let them have. Even the oceans are not safe from us, thanks to nets and ocean going fishing boats.
But now, it's our turn to be inferior. Before much longer, maybe everyone will have to become cyborgs to stay competitive. Today, we carry smart phones on our persons. Tomorrow, perhaps the smart phones will be surgically implanted in our bodies.
And yet we still hold footraces despite that for our size we are possibly the slowest runners in the world, easily beaten by cats and dogs who weigh 1/10th the human average. Swimming meets are even sillier, really, because swimming is a whole lot faster with a simple pair of fins, yet we race without them.
(Score: 2) by dry on Friday February 16 2018, @03:08AM
Actually Humans are one of the best runners, perhaps not that good at a sprint but a person can run a horse to death, little well a cat or even a dog. We evolved to run down deer, antelope and such and then club them to death when they're too tired to do anything in response.
(Score: 2) by qzm on Thursday February 15 2018, @11:45PM (2 children)
Tell me, what game (rather than sport) do you think has NOT been made utterly obsolete by computers?
And what do you think obsolete means in this context? There is some reason people cannot keep enjoying the game? really?
(Score: 2) by takyon on Friday February 16 2018, @12:19AM
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tricorder_X_Prize [wikipedia.org]
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by takyon on Friday February 16 2018, @12:24AM
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solved_game [wikipedia.org]
There are some unsolved games out there, but they will fall eventually. Sports is another matter (it will be made obsolete the way we know it by biotechnology and medicine instead of computers or robots).
Chess is obsolete in the way we know it. There is a new game of chess: cheating using the computer. Eventually, players will start to have brain implants making anti-cheating infeasible or impractical.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 15 2018, @11:06AM (1 child)
Or "Check baby, mate"?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 15 2018, @03:17PM
All Your Pawn Are Belong To Us.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 15 2018, @03:03PM
They could open an account in a remaining sovereign nation, like Russia.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by OrugTor on Thursday February 15 2018, @04:37PM (1 child)
A Swiss bank refuses to support a customer with alleged ties to a nation out of favor with other nations. How times have changed. Great to see a Swiss bank making good on their promises of better transparency theater.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 15 2018, @05:16PM
s/other nations/the USA/
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 15 2018, @07:27PM
They decided to hold a women's tournament in a country that requires women to cover up. Highly ranked chess players are refusing to attend. One will be losing some sort of fancy best-in-the-world title by not attending.
If you want to hold a tournament for women: Canada, USA, New Zealand, Australia, Ireland, Poland, Iceland, Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia, Japan, South Korea, Singapore, Thailand, Norway, Switzerland, Taiwan
Heck, the same goes for men. They might want to bring wives, girlfriends, daughters, mothers, sisters, etc.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 15 2018, @08:10PM (1 child)
I don't care enough to read the details, but each article like this or the one's about https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Choke_Point [wikipedia.org] makes me value them more, despite not holding any.
(Score: 2) by realDonaldTrump on Thursday February 15 2018, @08:30PM
Our great financial industry is the backbone of our economy. My predecessor did a number on it in many, many ways. Operation Choke Point, Dodd-Frank, the CFPB -- so many DISASTERS. I promised the American people I'd take the shackles off of Wall Street. And I'm fixing it very quickly!!!!