Trump hush money sentencing delayed due to immunity decision

Former President Donald Trump’s sentencing in his hush money case has been postponed until Sept. 18. (AP/File)

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Updated 02 July 2024

Reuters

July 02, 2024 22:31

Trump hush money sentencing delayed due to immunity decision

The sentencing had previously been set for July 11
Trump faces an uphill battle getting the hush money conviction overturned

Updated 02 July 2024

Reuters

July 02, 2024 22:31

NEW YORK/WASHINGTON: A New York judge on Tuesday delayed Donald Trump’s sentencing for his conviction on criminal charges stemming from hush money paid to a porn star until Sept. 18, after the former US president asked for a chance to argue he should have been immune from prosecution.
The sentencing had previously been set for July 11, just days before the Republican National Convention begins in Milwaukee on July 15. The new timeline means Trump will likely have been nominated by his party to challenge Democratic President Joe Biden by the time he is sentenced. Justice Juan Merchan will now decide Trump’s punishment, including whether to jail him, in the thick of the general election campaign ahead of the Nov. 5 election.
Trump faces an uphill battle getting the hush money conviction overturned, since much of the conduct at issue in the case predated his time in office. Trump’s lawyers on Monday asked Merchan to allow them to argue his conviction in New York state court in Manhattan should be overturned due to the US Supreme Court’s ruling on July 1 that presidents are entitled to immunity from criminal prosecution for official acts. Prosecutors with Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office said earlier on Tuesday that Trump’s argument was “without merit,” but agreed to delay the sentencing to give Trump the chance to make his case. In a written ruling, Merchan said he would rule on Trump’s request by Sept. 6, with sentencing to follow less than two weeks later should the judge decide to uphold the conviction. Trump’s lawyers must submit their arguments by July 10, and prosecutors face a July 24 deadline to respond. A Manhattan jury on May 30 found Trump guilty of falsifying business records to cover up his former lawyer Michael Cohen’s $130,000 payment to adult film actress Stormy Daniels to stay quiet about an alleged 2006 sexual encounter until after the 2016 election, in which Trump defeated Democrat Hillary Clinton.
Prosecutors said the payment was part of an illicit scheme to influence the election. Trump denies having had sex with Daniels and has vowed to appeal the conviction after his sentencing.

’A PURELY PERSONAL ITEM’
In their letter to Merchan, defense lawyers argued that prosecutors had presented evidence involving Trump’s official acts as president, including social media posts he made and conversations he had while in the White House.
Under the Supreme Court’s ruling, prosecutors cannot use evidence related to official actions to help prove criminal cases involving unofficial actions.
“This official-acts evidence should never have been put before the jury,” lawyers Todd Blanche and Emil Bove wrote. Last year, Trump made a similar argument as part of an unsuccessful push to move the hush money case to federal court. In denying Trump’s request in July 2023, US District Judge Alvin Hellerstein wrote that the payment to Daniels “was a purely personal item.”
“Hush money paid to an adult film star is not related to a president’s official acts,” Hellerstein wrote.
Trump’s lawyers appealed Hellerstein’s decision, but later abandoned the effort.

Topics: former President Donald Trump Hush money US New York

Thousands flee as Typhoon Usagi hits north of Philippines

Updated 14 November 2024

AFP

November 14, 2024 07:36

Thousands flee as Typhoon Usagi hits north of Philippines

The national weather agency had initially raised its highest storm alert, but downgraded to its second-highest as Usagi made landfall
More than 5,000 Cagayan residents were still in shelters following the previous storms

Updated 14 November 2024

AFP

November 14, 2024 07:36

MANILA: Typhoon Usagi slammed into the Philippines’ already disaster-ravaged north on Thursday, as authorities rushed to evacuate thousands of people from coastal areas.
Usagi made landfall in the town of Baggao in Cagayan province at 0530 GMT with winds of 175 kilometers an hour, the national weather service said — the fifth storm to strike the country in just three weeks.
The brutal wave of weather disasters has already killed 159 people and prompted the United Nations to request $32.9 million in aid for the worst-affected regions.
The national weather agency had initially raised its highest storm alert, but downgraded to its second-highest as Usagi made landfall.
It said the winds could cause “considerable damage to structures of light materials,” moderate damage even to structures otherwise considered “low-risk,” and uproot large trees within the next 12 hours.
“Intense to torrential rain” and potentially “life-threatening” coastal waves of up to three meters (nine feet) were also forecast over two days.
President Ferdinand Marcos, visiting storm-affected areas to dole out emergency cash assistance, urged residents to comply with evacuation orders.
“We know that it is difficult to leave your homes and possessions, but sheltering could save lives,” he told residents of Mindoro island south of the capital Manila, according to an official transcript of his speech.
“While we cannot prevent typhoons from hitting the country, we can take steps to reduce their impact,” he said, calling for better infrastructure to cope with worsening storm effects he blamed on climate change.
In Cagayan, officials worked in driving rain Thursday to evacuate residents along the coasts and on the banks of already swollen rivers.
“Yesterday it was preemptive evacuations. Now we’re doing forced evacuations,” local disaster official Edward Gaspar said by phone hours before landfall, adding 1,404 residents were sheltering at a municipal gym.
“There are many more evacuees in nearby villages but we haven’t had time to visit and count them,” he added.
Cagayan’s civil defense chief Rueli Rapsing said he expected local governments to take 40,000 people to shelters, roughly the same number that were preemptively evacuated ahead of Typhoon Yinxing, which struck Cagayan’s north coast earlier this month.
More than 5,000 Cagayan residents were still in shelters following the previous storms because the Cagayan river, the country’s largest, remained swollen from heavy rain that fell in several provinces upstream.
“We expect this situation to persist over the next few days” as Usagi brings more rain, Rapsing said.
After Usagi, Tropical Storm Man-yi is also forecast to strike the Philippines’ population heartland around Manila this weekend.
A high-pressure area in southern Japan will cause the storm to follow a more southerly track than Usagi, the weather service said.
“Typhoons are overlapping. As soon as communities attempt to recover from the shock, the next tropical storm is already hitting them again,” UN Philippines Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator Gustavo Gonzalez said.
“In this context, the response capacity gets exhausted and budgets depleted.”
A UN assessment of the past month’s weather disasters said 207,000 houses had been damaged or destroyed, and nearly 700,000 people were seeking temporary shelter.
Many families were without even essentials like sleeping mats, hygiene kits, and cooking supplies, and had limited access to safe drinking water, it said.
The storms destroyed thousands of hectares of farmland and persistent flooding is likely to delay replanting efforts and worsen food supply problems, the report added.
About 20 big storms and typhoons hit the archipelago nation or its surrounding waters each year, killing scores of people and keeping millions in enduring poverty.
A recent study showed that storms in the Asia-Pacific region are increasingly forming closer to coastlines, intensifying more rapidly and lasting longer over land due to climate change.

Topics: weather Philippines

Corruption overshadows Ukraine’s multi-billion reconstruction progam

Updated 14 November 2024

AFP

November 14, 2024 06:43

Corruption overshadows Ukraine’s multi-billion reconstruction progam

Transparency International ranked Ukraine 104 out of 180 countries in its ‘corruption perceptions index,’ up from 144 in 2013

Updated 14 November 2024

AFP

November 14, 2024 06:43

KYIV: When Bart Gruyaert agreed to help rebuild destroyed apartment blocks outside Kyiv, he hoped to be one cog in Ukraine’s vast reconstruction program, repairing just some of the damage wrought by Russia’s invasion.
But when the French company he works for, Neo-Eco, applied for building permits in the town of Gostomel, the local military administration asked the company to transfer the funds for the multimillion-dollar project to its bank account, under the pretense that it would run the project directly.
Officials told Gruyaert, “it’s better if you transfer the money you received to our account,” he recalled.
“But it doesn’t work like that,” he said.
The company refused, and progress on the initiative, which had secured €20 million in private funding, immediately slowed.
It marked the latest example of the endemic corruption that has plagued Ukraine since it became independent after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991.
After Neo-Eco’s refusal on the bank transfer, the local administration started dragging things out, adding new requirements to the contract and trying to incentivize the company to “give envelopes” to the right people, Gruyaert alleged.
The company reluctantly decided to abandon the project in September 2023, saying it was “impossible” to work under such conditions.
Following the saga, Ukrainian investigators said they had uncovered a system of “embezzlement” in the Gostomel military administration and accused its head Sergiy Borysiuk of appropriating around 21 million hryvnia ($470,000) meant for the reconstruction of houses and apartments.
In June 2023, after the allegations surfaced, Borysiuk was dismissed by President Volodymyr Zelensky.
He had pre-empted his removal with a press conference several days earlier in which he said he had done “everything possible” to ensure reconstruction efforts.
“It seems to me that you are looking for the enemy in the wrong place,” he said.
The case is far from isolated.
Even though Ukraine has stepped up its anti-graft measures over the past decade to advance its ambition of joining the European Union, corruption scandals are still rife.
Transparency International ranked Ukraine 104 out of 180 countries in its “corruption perceptions index,” up from 144 in 2013.
For some officials, Russia’s invasion has provided new opportunities for personal enrichment.
Several high-profile cases of alleged embezzlement of reconstruction funds, as well as the arrest of officials for selling army exemption certificates, have emerged throughout the war.
While a potential embarrassment for Ukraine, which relies on billions of dollars in Western financial support, Transparency International Ukraine’s director Andriy Borovyk said attention to the cases showed the problem was not being “forgotten.”
And authorities also tout the uncovering of such schemes as a sign of “effective” enforcement.
Just 10 years ago, “who could have thought that senior officials could be accused of crimes?” said Viktor Pavlushchyk, head of the National Agency on Corruption Prevention.
“Now we have some very good examples,” he said.
Around 500 corruption cases have been opened this year and 60 convictions secured, according to the National Anti-Corruption Bureau.
But there are lingering fears the persistent problem will hamper Ukraine’s massive reconstruction agenda, deterring international partners from putting up funds.
The total cost of reconstructing Ukraine stands is estimated at $486 billion, according to a joint study by the World Bank, UN, EU and Ukrainian government.
Gruyaert has not been deterred by his experience in Gostomel, which was occupied by Russian forces in the first weeks of the February 2022 invasion.
Ukraine is “making a lot of progress” on corruption, Gruyaert said, adding that Neo-Eco has had to learn how to “zigzag between the various obstacles.”
The company is still working on several other projects and encourages other foreign investors to get involved.
But, bruised by the Gostomel experience, it now prioritizes working with cities where it has confidence it will not be asked for kickbacks.
Most concede that much remains to be done in Ukraine’s anti-corruption fight, especially when it comes to reconstruction.
It is still common for local officials to have stakes in construction companies through their relatives, several figures said.
Ukraine is trying to weed out such conflicts of interest and make the whole process more transparent.
Last year, the country launched a platform listing all open projects.
Called “DREAM,” the aim is to enable investors, journalists and Ukrainians to track the progress of construction projects, said its head Viktor Nestulia.
A commitment to such openness will be key to reassuring foreign investors, said Mustafa Nayyem, an activist and journalist who headed the reconstruction agency until earlier this year.
“The war is not an excuse not to fight corruption,” he said.
Corruption, “is not in Ukrainian DNA, it’s simply a question of will.”

Topics: Russia-Ukraine Conflict Ukraine

BRICS offered Turkiye partner country status, Turkish trade minister says

Updated 14 November 2024

Reuters

November 14, 2024 06:09

BRICS offered Turkiye partner country status, Turkish trade minister says

Turkish officials have repeatedly said potential membership of BRICS would not affect Turkiye’s responsibilities to the Western military alliance

Updated 14 November 2024

Reuters

November 14, 2024 06:09

ANKARA: Turkiye was offered partner country status by the BRICS group of nations, Trade Minister Omer Bolat said, as Ankara continues what it calls its efforts to balance its Eastern and Western ties.
Turkiye, a NATO member, has in recent months voiced interest in joining the BRICS group of emerging economies, comprising Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, Ethiopia, Iran, Egypt, and the United Arab Emirates.
Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan attended a BRICS leaders’ summit hosted by Russian President Vladimir Putin in Kazan last month, after Ankara said it had taken formal steps to become a member of the group.
“As for Turkiye’s status regarding (BRICS) membership, they offered Turkiye the status of partner membership,” Bolat said in an interview with private broadcaster TVNet on Wednesday.
“This (status) is the transition process in the organizational structure of BRICS,” he said.
Ankara sees the BRICS group as an opportunity to further economic cooperation with member states, rather than an alternative to its Western ties and NATO membership, Erdogan has said.
Turkish officials have repeatedly said potential membership of BRICS would not affect Turkiye’s responsibilities to the Western military alliance.
Aside from full membership, BRICS members introduced a “partner country” category in Kazan, according to the declaration issued by BRICS on Oct. 23.
Bolat did not say whether Ankara had accepted the proposal.
An official in Erdogan’s ruling AK Party told Reuters this month that while the proposal had been discussed in Kazan, partner country status would fall short of Turkiye’s demands for membership.

Topics: Turkiye BRICS

1 million migrants in the US rely on temporary protections that Trump could target

Updated 14 November 2024

November 14, 2024 05:04

1 million migrants in the US rely on temporary protections that Trump could target

People from 17 countries, including Haiti, Afghanistan, Sudan and recently Lebanon, are currently receiving such relief
But President-elect Donald Trump promised mass deportations and suggested he would scale back the use of Temporary Protected Status

Updated 14 November 2024

November 14, 2024 05:04

NEW YORK: Maribel Hidalgo fled her native Venezuela a year ago with a 1-year-old son, trudging for days through Panama’s Darien Gap, then riding the rails across Mexico to the United States.
They were living in the US when the Biden administration announced Venezuelans would be offered Temporary Protected Status, which allows people already in the United States to stay and work legally if their homelands are deemed unsafe. People from 17 countries, including Haiti, Afghanistan, Sudan and recently Lebanon, are currently receiving such relief.
But President-elect Donald Trump and his running mate, JD Vance, have promised mass deportations and suggested they would scale back the use of TPS that covers more than 1 million immigrants. They have highlighted unfounded claims that Haitians who live and work legally in Springfield, Ohio, as TPS holders were eating their neighbors’ pets. Trump also amplified disputed claims made by the mayor of Aurora, Colorado, about Venezuelan gangs taking over an apartment complex.
“What Donald Trump has proposed doing is we’re going to stop doing mass parole,” Vance said at an Arizona rally in October, mentioning a separate immigration status called humanitarian parole that is also at risk. “We’re going to stop doing mass grants of Temporary Protected Status.”
Hidalgo wept as she discussed her plight with a reporter as her son, now 2, slept in a stroller outside the New York migrant hotel where they live. At least 7.7 million people have fled political violence and economic turmoil in Venezuela in one of the biggest displacements worldwide.
“My only hope was TPS,” Hidalgo said. “My worry, for example, is that after everything I suffered with my son so that I could make it to this country, that they send me back again.”
Venezuelans along with Haitians and Salvadorans are the largest group of TPS beneficiaries and have the most at stake.
Haiti’s international airport shut down this week after gangs opened fire at a commercial flight landing in Port-Au-Prince while a new interim prime minister was sworn in. The Federal Aviation Administration barred US airlines from landing there for 30 days.
“It’s creating a lot of anxiety,” said Vania André, editor-in-chief for The Haitian Times, an online newspaper covering the Haitian diaspora. “Sending thousands of people back to Haiti is not an option. The country is not equipped to handle the widespread gang violence already and cannot absorb all those people.”
Designations by the Homeland Security secretary offer relief for up to 18 months but are extended in many cases. The designation for El Salvador ends in March. Designations for Sudan, Ukraine, and Venezuela end in April. Others expire later.
Federal regulations say a designation can be terminated before it expires, but that has never happened, and it requires 60 days’ notice.
TPS is similar to the lesser-known Deferred Enforcement Departure Program that Trump used to reward Venezuelan exile supporters as his first presidency was ending, shielding 145,000 from deportation for 18 months.
Attorney Ahilan T. Arulanantham, who successfully challenged Trump’s earlier efforts to allow TPS designations for several countries to expire, doesn’t doubt the president-elect will try again.
“It’s possible that some people in his administration will recognize that stripping employment authorization for more than a million people, many of whom have lived in this country for decades, is not good policy” and economically disastrous, said Arulanantham, who teaches at the University of California, Los Angeles School of Law, and helps direct its Center for Immigration Law and Policy. “But nothing in Trump’s history suggests that they would care about such considerations.”
Courts blocked designations from expiring for Haiti, Sudan, Nicaragua and El Salvador until well into President Joe Biden’s term. Homeland Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas then renewed them.
Arulanantham said he “absolutely” could see another legal challenge, depending on what the Trump administration does.
Congress established TPS in 1990, when civil war was raging in El Salvador. Members were alarmed to learn some Salvadorans were tortured and executed after being deported from the US Other designations protected people during wars in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kuwait, from genocidal violence in Rwanda, and after volcanic eruptions in Montserrat, a British territory in the Caribbean, in 1995 and 1997.
A designation is not a pathway to US permanent residence or citizenship, but applicants can try to change their status through other immigration processes.
Advocates are pressing the White House for a new TPS designation for Nicaraguans before Biden leaves office. Less than 3,000 are still covered by the temporary protections issued in 1998 after Hurricane Mitch battered the country. People who fled much later under oppression from President Daniel Ortega’s government don’t enjoy the same protection from deportation.
“It’s a moral obligation” for the Biden administration, said Maria Bilbao, of the American Friends Service Committee.
Elena, a 46-year-old Nicaraguan who has lived in the United States illegally for 25 years, hopes Biden moves quickly.
“He should do it now,” said Elena, who lives Florida and insisted only her first name be used because she fears deportation. “Not in January. Not in December. Now.”

Topics: Trump Returns Donald Trump US

India’s toxic smog cuts off visibility in several areas

Updated 14 November 2024

Reuters

November 14, 2024 05:04

India’s toxic smog cuts off visibility in several areas

Delhi pollution ranked in the ‘severe’ category for the second day in a row
Pollution in New Delhi is likely to stay in the ‘severe’ category on Friday as well

Updated 14 November 2024

Reuters

November 14, 2024 05:04

NEW DELHI: Toxic smog blanketed northern India on Thursday, becoming too thick to see through in several places, as high levels of pollution combined with humidity, low wind speed, and a drop in temperature, officials said.
The city of Lahore in neighboring Pakistan ranked as the world’s most polluted in winter’s annual scourge across the region, worsened by dust, emissions, and smoke from fires burnt illegally in India’s farming states of Punjab and Haryana.
However, operations at New Delhi’s international airport were not affected by the smog, which weather officials expect to scatter during the day as breezes pick up.
Visibility remained at 300 m (980 ft), the airport operator, Delhi International Airport Limited (DIAL) said, while some airlines warned flights could be affected.
“Winter fog may impact flights” with Delhi, the city of Amritsar in Punjab, where authorities said visibility was zero, and the temple city of Varanasi in Uttar Pradesh, IndiGo said in a message on X.
New Delhi’s international airport diverted some flights on Wednesday.
The minimum temperature in Delhi fell to 16.1°Celsius (61°F) on Thursday from 17°C the previous day, weather officials said.
Its pollution ranked in the ‘severe’ category for the second day in a row, with a score of 430 on an index of air quality maintained by the top pollution panel that rates a score of zero to 50 as ‘good’.
Pollution in New Delhi is likely to stay in the ‘severe’ category on Friday as well, the earth sciences ministry said, worsening to ‘very poor’ later, or an index score in the range of 300 to 400.
The number of farm fires to clear fields of paddy stubble in preparation for the planting of wheat in north India has risen steadily this week to almost 2,300 on Wednesday from 1,200 on Monday, the ministry’s website showed.
In Pakistan, Lahore, the capital of the eastern province of Punjab, was rated the world’s most polluted city on Thursday, in live rankings kept by Swiss group IQAir. Authorities there have also battled hazardous air this month.
The province has already shut schools, halted some building work, banned most outdoor activity, and ordered early closures of some businesses in efforts to combat the problem.

Topics: Pollution environment India

Trump hush money sentencing delayed due to immunity decision

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Trump hush money sentencing delayed due to immunity decision

Trump hush money sentencing delayed due to immunity decision

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