Author: 4am Research

  ASIC has launched court proceedings against two business lending specialists, Green County Pty Ltd and Max Funding Pty Ltd, alleging they issued personal loans without being licensed and without undertaking proper inquiries. ASIC has alleged Green County and Max Funding did not make reasonable inquiries about the purpose of loans, which led to Green County providing personal loans to certain borrowers, even though neither entity was licensed to provide these personal loans or act as an intermediary. This resulted…

The United States government has requested and obtained a warrant to seize a Russian aircraft valued at $25m, according to a statement released on Wednesday.

The US-made plane, a Boeing 737-7JU, is accused of travelling from a foreign country to Russia, in violation of US law and sanctions implemented after Moscow’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine.

The plane was last in the US in 2014, according to the statement from the US Attorney’s Office for New York’s Eastern District. But the US alleges the plane has flown in and out of Russia “at least seven times, in violation of federal law”.

U.S. officials have unveiled the latest round of sanctions on Iran over its government’s violence toward women and girls amid the anti-regime protests happening around the country. In a news release, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the Treasury Department has implemented sanctions on multiple Iranian officials, company presidents, security leaders and companies for their role in the crackdown on protests in the country. Many of those protests have been against laws requiring women in Iran to wear head coverings….

The United States today announced the unsealing of a warrant for the seizure of a Boeing 737-7JU aircraft owned by PJSC Rosneft Oil Company (Rosneft), a Russian integrated energy company headquartered in Moscow, Russia, headed by Igor Ivanovich Sechin. According to court documents, in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, in February 2022, the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Bureau of Industry and Security issued sanctions against Russia. The sanctions impose export controls and license requirements to protect U.S. national security and foreign policy interests. The Russia sanctions expanded prohibitions on the export, reexport or in-country transfer of, among other things, U.S.-manufactured aircraft to or within Russia without a valid license or license exception for aircraft owned or controlled, or under charter or lease, by Russia and/or Russian nationals. In this case, these sanctions bar a plane that was built or manufactured in the United States from entering Russia without a valid license. 

Lynda Bennett, 65, of Maggie Valley, North Carolina, was a primary candidate for North Carolina’s 11th Congressional District in 2020. In late December 2019, Bennett borrowed $25,000 from a family member, representing that she needed the money for personal expenses because she had to spend a large amount of her own money on her campaign. The day after depositing the loaned money into a personal account, Bennett then caused $80,000, including the $25,000 in loaned funds, to be transferred to the bank account of Lynda Bennett for Congress (LBC), her authorized federal campaign committee. Under the FECA, Bennett was required to report a loan from a third-party individual as a campaign contribution. Bennett knowingly and willfully violated the FECA by reporting through LBC that the full $80,000 was a loan to her campaign using her own personal funds, rather than disclosing that $25,000 of that amount was a loan from another individual.

A military veteran accused of telling an undercover FBI agent about a plan to “wipe out” the nation’s Jewish population was convicted on Tuesday of storming the U.S. Capitol to stop Congress from certifying President Joe Biden’s 2020 electoral victory. A federal judge heard trial testimony without a jury before convicting Virginia resident Hatchet Speed, a former Navy reservist who was assigned to an agency that operates spy satellites. U.S. District Judge Trevor McFadden is scheduled to sentence Speed on May 8 for his role in a mob’s attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. McFadden convicted Speed of all five charges.

  LONDON — Britain’s Ministry of Defence must rapidly grow local industrial capacity in order speed rebuilding weapon stockpiles, the parliamentary Defence Committee says in a report to be published Mar 7. The committee said at the current rate of progress it will take 10 years to replace weapon stocks gifted to Ukraine and rebuild British weapon numbers to an acceptable level. Defense industrial capacity in Britain has atrophied over the decades since the end of the Cold War and…

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Central East Correctional Centre in Kawartha Lakes, Ontario, February 10, 2021. 
© 2021 Kawartha 411

A coroner’s inquest into the 2015 death of Abdurahman Hassan, a refugee from Somalia, has brought to light shocking details about Canada’s immigration detention system and abusive conditions in provincial jails. In response, 40 organizations have renewed their call on the federal government to stop incarcerating people in provincial jails for administrative immigration purposes.  The letter was also endorsed by former cabinet ministers Lloyd Axworthy and Allan Rock.

#WelcometoCanada

Our #WelcomeToCanada campaign is going coast to coast. The federal government has contracts with provinces across Canada that allow for immigration detainees to be held in provincial jails. Call on the federal government of Canada to cancel these contracts!

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Abdurahman lived in Canada for two decades before he was placed in immigration detention pending his deportation. He was stripped of his legal status because of several run-ins with the law. Abdurahman had several mental health conditions. After completing his criminal jail sentence, he was incarcerated in immigration detention for three years in a maximum-security provincial jail in Ontario. He was repeatedly subjected to prolonged segregation, in one instance spending 95 consecutive days in isolation.

On top of these punitive and inhumane conditions, Abdurahman’s prolonged detention was unnecessary and arbitrary. His deportation could not be carried out because Somalia was too dangerous for Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) officers to escort him. There is no legal limit to the duration of immigration detention in Canada, so Abdurahman never knew if or when he would be released.

At the inquest, correctional staff who knew Abdurahman testified that jail was not the right place for him. He could not access the treatment and support he required, and they feared for his safety. Nevertheless, nearly eight years after Abdurahman’s death, CBSA continues to detain people with mental health conditions in provincial jails so they can “access specialized care.”

The inquest counsel recalled the testimony of a correctional officer, one of the last people to spend time with Abdurahman at the hospital. The officer testified they spent the day talking about old times. He helped bathe and feed Abdurahman. “It was a good day,” he said.

Such humane treatment should be the norm. “It should be our goal as a society to ensure that all people, including immigration detainees like Mr. Hassan, be treated with this degree of dignity and care,” the inquest counsel concluded in his closing submissions. “The question is whether there is a will to make that happen.” 

The inquest jury made 53 recommendations to prevent similar deaths in the future. Their first is that the federal government should stop using provincial jails for immigration detention in Ontario. Four provinces have already committed to ending this practice, although CBSA insists negotiations are ongoing. It’s time for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government to finally stand up to CBSA and stop this rights-violating practice across Canada.

The FTC sued Raging Bull and its owners in December 2020 as part of Operation Income Illusion, a nationwide law enforcement effort targeting deceptive income claims. The FTC charged that the company used bogus earnings claims to trick people into paying for investment strategies and recommendations, and then trapped them into hard-to-cancel subscription plans with costly fees. The FTC’s complaint noted that consumers who purchased the site’s services lost millions of dollars in their investments.

In March 2022, Raging Bull and its owners agreed to a settlement with the FTC that required them to pay $2.425 million, end their earnings deception, get affirmative approval from consumers for subscription sign ups, and provide them with a simple method to cancel recurring charges.

The U.S. Department of Justice, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts have entered into a consent decree with the City of Gloucester, Massachusetts, to resolve violations of the Clean Water Act regarding the city’s water pollution control facility that discharges undertreated effluent into Massachusetts Bay.

Undertreated sewage from the city’s existing water treatment facility results in a variety of harmful discharges into Massachusetts Bay, including disease causing organisms and toxic pollutants.

The United States and California filed the suit alleging that HVI Cat Canyon, which previously owned and operated multiple oil and gas production facilities in Santa Barbara County, California, was liable for:

12 oil spills into waters of the United States in violation of the Clean Water Act;
17 oil spills into waters of the state in violation of state law;
Reimbursement of the federal and state governments’ costs of cleaning up the oil spills;
Natural resource damages under state law for harm to fish, plant, bird, or animal life and habitat; and
Numerous violations of federal Oil Pollution Prevention Regulations identified in 16 EPA inspections across 11 facilities.

Royal Park Investments (RPI), the so-called “bad bank” of the former Fortis, has filed a billion-dollar claim against rating agency S&P. De Tijd writes this and appears from media reports in the Cayman Islands, the place where the lawsuit was filed.

The application’s ban among officials in the EU and US sparks a debate about whether Facebook, which extracts more user data, should face the same restrictions This week, the European Commission banned officials from using TikTok on their work devices. “This measure aims to protect the Commission against cybersecurity threats and actions which may be exploited for cyber-attacks against the corporate environment of the Commission,” the Commission said in a memo. The EU is following in the footsteps of the…

Speaking at a press conference on Thursday, Blinken revealed that he and Lavrov “spoke briefly” on the sidelines of a meeting of G20 foreign ministers in India. Among other things, the American official said he had “raised the wrongful detention of Paul Whelan,” a former US Marine currently serving a 16-year prison term in Russia for espionage. “The United States has put forward a serious proposal. Moscow should accept it,” Blinken added. Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova denied those claims on Friday, saying she had asked Lavrov about the exchange with Blinken. The top Russian diplomat told her that his American counterpart had not brought up Whelan’s case, with Zakharova describing Blinken’s statement as “lies” and an example of “astounding” behavior by the US government.

TikTok said Wednesday that every account held by a user under the age of 18 will have a default 60-minute daily screen time limit in the coming weeks. The changes arrive during a period in which there are growing concerns among different governments about the app’s security. Families have struggled with limiting the amount of time their children spend on the Chinese-owned video sharing app. Cormac Keenan, head of trust and safety at TikTok said in a blog post Wednesday…