Author: 5amResearch

The Provincial Prosecutor’s Office of Valencia denounced several months ago the CEO of Gedesco, Antonio Aynat, for a possible environmental crime in the Albufera of Valencia, which has led to the opening of legal proceedings for which the main executive of the financial services company for companies and the self-employed is under investigation.

The Public Prosecutor’s Office decided to denounce Aynat after an intervention by the Environmental Unit of the Local Police of Valencia, which acted after being warned by the management of the natural park in May 2021 of the existence of irregular works in a place of the protected area known as Tancat de L’Alcatí. There is the headquarters of the Valencian Association of Lateen Sailing, which is chaired by the businessman.

The CEO of one of the largest non-banking financial institutions in Spain leased the land in 2014 to a community of irrigators in order to install there a sports and business club dedicated to lateen sailing. It is, according to the complaint, a plot located on undeveloped land, within the Albufera natural park, the Natura 2000 Network and in a cataloged wetland area. Its legal use is exclusively agricultural.

Rioters smashed shop fronts and tried to set fire to police officers in Paris as up to a million people marched across France in May Day protests against President Macron’s reform to the pension age. Young men dressed in black from the anarchist “black block” movement were joined by hardline yellow vest protesters on a rampage at the front of the peaceful union-organised march, which moved through central Paris from the Place de la République to the Place de la Nation. The anarchists broke shop windows and bank frontages and set fire to bins as riot police on motorcycles moved in.

Officers using teargas and batons arrested several dozen violent protesters in the capital and at similar outbreaks on the edges of marches in Lyons, Toulouse and Nantes, which were staged by unions and left-wing parties as a “show of contempt” for Macron’s reform. About 12,000 police had been deployed for the marches after the interior ministry said it expected trouble from two or three thousand black block “wreckers” and violent followers of the yellow vest movement, whose protests inflicted heavy damage in Paris and other cities in 2018 and 2019.

Protesters from the radical climate movements were also active, spraying paint on shop fronts in the Place Vendôme, the central Paris home to jewellery shops, and also on the façade of the Fondation Louis Vuitton, the contemporary art museum financed by LVMH, the luxury brand giant.

Shares in Asia are set to decline after Wall Street fell on renewed concern about the banking sector before a Federal Reserve decision on Wednesday where US policymakers are expected to raise interest rates.

Equity futures in Japan, Australia and Hong Kong all declined, while US contracts edged lower in early Asian trade. The S&P 500 slipped 1.2 per cent on Wednesday, with the financial sector the second-worst performer after energy. 

US regional lenders PacWest Bancorp and Western Alliance Bancorp both slid at least 15 per cent just a day after J.P. Morgan Chase’s acquisition of First Republic Bank seemed to bolster confidence in the sector.

The decline in energy stocks followed a 5.3 per cent drop for the US oil price, the biggest decline since July, in a sign of unease about global growth. The decline stabilised early on Wednesday.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky told the Washington Post in an interview published on Tuesday that the White House did not inform him about a leak of secret US documents that grabbed attention around the world in April.

“I did not receive information from the White House or the Pentagon beforehand,” Mr Zelensky was quoted as saying.

“It is unprofitable for us,” he added. “It is not beneficial to the reputation of the White House, and I believe it is not beneficial to the reputation of the United States.”

The materials posted online offered a partial, month-old snapshot of the war in Ukraine.

Ukraine’s Defence Minister Oleksii Reznikov said on April 12 that the Pentagon document leaks contained a mixture of true and false information about his country’s military, and downplayed its negative impact.

The U.S. is sending Ukraine about $300 million in additional military aid, including an enormous amount of artillery rounds, howitzers, air-to-ground rockets and ammunition as the launch of a spring offensive against Russian forces approaches, U.S. officials said Tuesday.

The new package includes Hydra-70 rockets, which are unguided rockets that are fired from aircraft. It also includes an undisclosed number of rockets for the High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems, or HIMARS, mortars, howitzer rounds, missiles and Carl Gustaf anti—tank rifles. The weapons will all be pulled from Pentagon stocks, so they can go quickly to the front lines. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because the aid has not yet been formally announced.

The latest shipment comes as Ukrainian officials say they are readying a counteroffensive — with Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksiy Reznikov declaring they are in the “home stretch, when we can say: ‘Yes everything is ready.’” Ukrainian officials have said they are stockpiling ammunition to stow it along potentially long supply lines.

Reznikov said Monday that the key things for the assault’s success would be “the availability of weapons; prepared, trained people; our defenders and defenders who know their plan at their level, as well as providing this offensive with all the necessary things — shells, ammunition, fuel, protection, etc.”

NEW YORK – US stocks ended the trading day lower on Tuesday, with regional bank stocks recording another day of plummeting values ahead of an expected rate hike from the Federal Reserve.

The Fed is widely anticipated to raise its benchmark lending rate for a 10th – and possibly final – time on Wednesday as it looks to tackle high inflation through interest rate hikes.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average finished 1.1 per cent lower, at 33,684.46.

The broad-based S&P 500 fell 1.2 per cent to 4,119.60, while the tech-rich Nasdaq Composite Index declined 1.1 per cent to 12,080.51.

Crude oil futures also finished the day down more than five percent on regional banking concerns.

The Air Force is forging ahead with its plan to retire the storied U-2 Dragon Lady spy aircraft in fiscal 2026, as part of a yearslong effort to reshape how the service surveils American adversaries from above.

Air Force leaders have considered retiring the U-2 fleet for nearly two decades, asking Congress in some years to ditch the Cold War-era workhorse or, in others, to retire the RQ-4 Global Hawk drones that were meant to replace it. Now both are on the chopping block.

If Congress approves the divestment and lets the Air Force retire its remaining RQ-4s one year later, the service would finish out the decade without the high-altitude reconnaissance aircraft that peer across borders and track enemy movements.

A retired U.S. Air Force brigadier general was sentenced last week to 12 months and one day in prison for wire fraud and filing a false tax return, the Justice Department announced.

Scott Bethel, 59, worked as a government contractor and advisor to the service following his retirement in 2012, according to the statement. During that time, Bethel launched a business that worked with both the government and his employer, both of which he would reportedly submit invoices to, according to court documents.

LONDON – Apple Inc urged a London tribunal on Tuesday (May 2) to block a US$2 billion (S$2.7 billion) mass lawsuit accusing it of hiding defective batteries in millions of iPhones by “throttling” them with software updates.

The tech giant is facing a lawsuit worth up to 1.6 billion pounds (S$2.6 billion) plus interest, brought by consumer champion Justin Gutmann on behalf of iPhone users in the United Kingdom.

Gutmann’s lawyers argued in court filings that Apple concealed issues with batteries in certain phone models and “surreptitiously” installed a power management tool which limited performance.

Apple said in written arguments that the lawsuit is “baseless” and strongly denies its iPhones’ batteries were defective, apart from in a small number of iPhone 6s models for which it offered free battery replacements.

Senior managers are discussing plans to eliminate about 3,000 jobs from the global workforce by the end of this quarter, according to people with knowledge of the matter.

That would amount to roughly 5 per cent of staff, excluding financial advisers and personnel supporting them within the wealth management division.

The banking and trading group is expected to shoulder many of the reductions, one of the people said.

A spokesman for Morgan Stanley, which employs about 82,000 people, declined to comment.

The cuts come just months after the firm trimmed about 2 per cent of its workforce.

Wall Street’s biggest banks offered few reasons for cheer while reporting first-quarter results after seeing their fees from helping companies with takeovers and raising capital – a proxy for the economy’s health – slump over the past year.

NEW YORK – Vice, the brash digital media disrupter that charmed giants like Disney and Fox into investing before a stunning crash landing, is preparing to file for bankruptcy, according to two people with knowledge of its operations.

The filing could come in the coming weeks, according to three people familiar with the matter who were not authorised to discuss the potential bankruptcy on the record.

The company has been looking for a buyer, and still might find one, to avoid declaring bankruptcy.

More than five companies have expressed interest in acquiring Vice, according to a person briefed on the discussions.

Italy’s right-wing government on Monday rolled back anti-poverty subsidies introduced four years ago that helped some four million people last year, as critics denounced a “provocation” on the international May Day labour holiday.

Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, who leads the country’s most far-right coalition since World War II, said the “citizens’ income” benefits would be replaced by a more limited “inclusion cheque” for qualifying households.

The government says the current subsidies cost too much, at around eight billion euros (S$11 billion) last year, and discourage able-bodied people, especially youths, from looking for jobs.

The new inclusion cheques, set to begin in January 2024, would cost around 5.4 billion euros annually, and be available only to households with minors, seniors 60 or older, and handicapped people.

The Biden administration will continue to allow tens of thousands of Afghans who fled Taliban control more than two years ago to stay and work in the U.S., as congressional efforts have stalled that were meant to permanently resolve their immigration status, according to two people familiar with the plan.

As soon as this summer, eligible refugees will be able to renew temporary work permits and protections from deportation for another two years, according to two administration officials, who spoke to The Associated Press condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to discuss plans that haven’t yet been released. The protections were initially given in 2021, and renewed last year.

The effort is a temporary fix for more than 76,000 Afghans who arrived in the U.S. following the military’s chaotic and deadly withdrawal of U.S. troops, some of the darkest moments of Biden’s presidency. Many of those who arrived in the country have worked with U.S. officials, some for many years, as translators, interpreters and other partners.

Twitter users were forced out of the platform and had trouble logging back in on Monday. 

More than 2,000 outages were reported, according to Downdetector. It is not clear what is causing the outage, and Twitter did not meaningfully respond to a request for comment.

Some users that could not log in via their computers were able to access the site from a mobile phone. The site has been undergoing multiple technical issues in the months since owner Elon Musk laid off thousands of employees. 

Last weekend, Russian authorities moved one step closer towards potentially locking up Oleg Orlov, one of Russia’s most prominent and outspoken human rights defenders. On April 29, the prosecutor’s office formally indicted him on charges of repeatedly “discrediting” the Russian military, for which he faces a maximum three-year prison sentence. Authorities should immediately drop the charges.

Orlov is co-chair of Memorial, a leading Russian rights group. The government shut down Memorial in 2022 as part of the Kremlin’s effort to stifle critics and human rights work. Yet Memorial’s core activists continued their human rights work, some from abroad, and some, like Orlov, from inside the country.

On March 21, criminal investigators in Moscow interrogated Orlov, informing him they had opened a criminal investigation against him for repeated acts of “discrediting” Russian armed forces, based on his single-person anti-war pickets and his social media post containing his trenchant criticism of the war and of the government’ slide toward totalitarianism and fascism.  They released him later that day on his own recognizance.

The Air Force is dangling a new carrot for early career airmen who might be tempted to leave: almost any job they want. Starting June 1, all qualified first-term airmen — those serving under the initial contract they signed to join the military, which lasts four to six years — can apply for a new job in any Air Force career field where more than 10% of the positions are unfilled, the service said in an April 28 release. That…