Category: government corruption

  After years of watching U.S. President Donald Trump flout democratic norms and the rule of law, it is easy to feel a sense of vindication from his indictment in early April by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg for falsifying business records. Few objective observers doubt that the facts support this indictment or one of the many other potential indictments confronting Trump today—including those for mishandling classified documents, pressuring election officials in Georgia, and inciting the January 6 attack on…

Defendants Are New York City Residents Who Allegedly Operated the Police Station in Lower Manhattan and Destroyed Evidence When Confronted by the FBI A complaint was unsealed today in federal court in Brooklyn, New York, charging two defendants in connection with opening and operating an illegal overseas police station, located in lower Manhattan, New York, for a provincial branch of the Ministry of Public Security (MPS) of the People’s Republic of China (PRC). “Harry” Lu Jianwang, 61, of the Bronx,…

UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is under investigation over allegations he failed to disclose shares his wife owns in a child care business that stands to benefit from his government’s budget, a parliamentary watchdog disclosed. Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards Daniel Greenberg opened an inquiry last week for possible violations of the code of conduct that calls on members to be “open and frank” in declaring relevant financial interests, according to an update given to members of Parliament who returned Monday…

So, we’re just handing out top secret security clearance to everyone, I guess. It was clear from the documents posted to Discord (before spreading everywhere), the person behind them would soon be located.

The folded security briefings were obviously smuggled out of secure rooms in someone’s pocket and then photographed carelessly, in one case on top of a hunting magazine. I mean, that narrows it down to people who still buy stuff printed on physical media, a number that shrinks exponentially by the day.

On top of that, the entry level for the leaked info — much of it related to the current invasion of Ukraine by Russia — was Discord, which no one has considered to be the equivalent of Signal or any other secure site for the dissemination of sensitive material.

Various treaties and multi-national proposals to combat cybercrime have been around for years. I’m not exaggerating. These have been floating around for more than a decade. (Do you want to feel old? This cybercrime treaty proposal would be old enough to legally obtain a social media account in the United States if it were still viable.)

The UN has been pushing its own version. But its idea of “crime” seems off-base, especially when it’s dealing with a conglomerate of countries with varying free speech protections. The “Cybercrime Treaty” proposed by the UN focuses on things many would consider ugly, distasteful, abhorrent, or even enraging. But it’s not things most people consider to be the sort of “crimes” a unified world front should be addressing — not when there’s plenty of financially or personally damaging cybercrime being performed on the regular.

Prague, April 12 (CTK) – Accusations were levelled against some other people, including former deputy Marek Snajdr (Civic Democratic Party, ODS), in the Dosimeter corruption case, the servers Seznam Zpravy and Denik N write today, referring to unnamed sources close to the investigation. The new accusations relate to the part of the scandal regarding the General Health Insurance Company (VZP). Snajdr worked as a deputy health minister and a member of VZP board of directors. The servers differ on the…

The boss of one of the UK’s largest business groups has been fired over complaints about his behaviour at work. Tony Danker, who will leave the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) following an investigation over his conduct towards several employees, said he was “shocked” by the sacking. Three other CBI employees have also been suspended pending a probe into other allegations, the group said. It is also liaising with the police who are looking into the claims. Detective Chief Superintendent…

One of the most notorious privacy-breaching tech companies in operation, Clearview AI, has, according to its CEO, scraped 30 billion social media photos, packaged and curated them, and passed them along to the surveillance state authorities to do with what they will (in the dark, with no oversight, naturally, as the Founders warned such authorities would if left unchecked). Clearview’s collaboration with law enforcement reportedly includes handing over information to help identify and prosecute the January 6 “insurrectionists” currently being…

When Member of Parliament Kenny Chiu was contacted by the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) ahead of Canada’s federal election in 2021, he was puzzled. He had never expected to be part of a CSIS investigation, let alone one that required an in-person talk at the height of Canada’s COVID-19 pandemic. “At that time, everything had moved online, so it was quite unexpected that they insisted on a face-to-face sit-down,” Chiu told Al Jazeera. But the topic of the meeting was highly…

On Thursday, April 13 at 19:30 GMT: Colombia topped the list for human rights defenders killed in 2022, according to the latest report from the rights group Front Line Defenders.

Disgraced Theranos CEO Elizabeth Holmes has been rebuffed in her attempt to stay out of federal prison while she appeals her conviction for the fraud she committed while overseeing a blood-testing scam.

Almost 6 in 10 U.S. adults in a new poll report they’re living paycheck-to-paycheck amid an economic landscape fraught with inflation and recession fears.

A CNBC-Momentive survey on financial confidence found that 58 percent of Americans say they’re living paycheck-to-paycheck, and that 70 percent said they feel stressed about their personal finances.

Nearly 80 percent of respondents making less than $50,000 and 74 percent making between $50,000 and $99,999 said they’re stressed about their finances. And even among those making $100,000 or more, 57 percent still said they’re stressed.

Nearly 80 percent of respondents making less than $50,000 say they’re living paycheck-to-paycheck, compared to just 32 percent of those making $100,000 or more.

Calls to break up Big Ag have resurfaced after a large egg producer in the U.S. announced windfall profits. A March 28 press release by Cal-Maine Foods said the Mississippi-based egg producer recorded a total revenue of $997.5 million – a 109 percent increase – for the quarter ending Feb. 25. Cal-Maine Foods’ profit for the same period shot up by 718 percent to $323.2 million.

“Our results are reflective of a dynamic market environment with higher average selling prices and favorable demand,” said Cal-Maine President Sherman Miller. “Elevated market pricing continues, primarily due to the impact of the ongoing epidemic of highly pathogenic avian influenza, which has significantly reduced the nation’s egg-laying capacity.”

“U.S. egg inventories were 29 percent lower in the final week of December 2022 than at the beginning of the year,” said the U.S. Department of Agriculture. It added that more than 43 million egg-laying hens were lost to either the avian flu itself or culling measures to stop the disease since the outbreak began in February 2022. (Related: Government says “bird flu” responsible for rising egg prices.)

When KPMG LLP gave Silicon Valley Bank a clean bill of health just 14 days before the lender went under, the Big Four audit firm pointed to potential losses on loans to its customers as one of its so-called critical audit issues. But the audit opinion didn’t mention what really brought the bank down: its unrealized losses on bonds and its ability to sustain them, given its reliance on potentially volatile deposits.

“The auditors didn’t mention the fire in the basement or the box of dynamite on the second floor, but they did mention the peeling paint on the planter,” says Erik Gordon, a business professor at the University of Michigan.”How could they have overlooked interest rate risk?” The current banking crisis is the first litmus test of the system of critical audit issues, a measure designed to help investors decipher hidden risks and uncertainties in financial statements.

Auditors are required to record any critical audit issues when approving a public company’s books. Regulators define them as matters that have a significant impact on financial statements and involve “especially difficult, subjective or complex” judgments by auditors.

One of the most closely watched US defamation cases in decades is set to begin this week as a Delaware court picks a jury to decide whether Fox News should pay Dominion Voting Systems $1.6bn (£1.3bn) for spreading falsehoods on election rigging.

A critical task for jurors over the five-week trial will be to decide who was responsible for the cable network’s decision to broadcast the claims, despite internal doubts about their veracity. Dominion asserts that Fox’s top brass approved of the coverage, but the network disputes this.

Last week, Delaware Superior Court Judge Eric Davis said he would not block Dominion from calling Rupert Murdoch, chairman of Fox News parent company Fox Corp, to testify in person about his involvement in the coverage, which Judge Davis has ruled was false and defamatory.

“The more complicit the whole organisation is in perpetuating these known falsehoods, the more likely a jury would be to return a big dollar figure,” said Mary-Rose Papandrea, a constitutional law professor.

A senior South Korean security official said on Tuesday that information contained in purportedly leaked US confidential documents that appeared to be based on internal discussions among top South Korean officials is “untrue” and “altered.”

Deputy National Security Adviser Kim Tae-hyo made the remark as he departed for Washington ahead of President Yoon Suk Yeol’s state visit to the U.S. on April 26, stressing that the two countries’ alliance remained strong. Several documents have recently been posted on social media offering a partial, month-old snapshot of the war in Ukraine, including one that gives details of internal discussions among South Korean officials about US pressure on Seoul to help supply weapons to Ukraine.

“The two countries have a same assessment that much of the information disclosed is altered,” Kim told reporters, adding that the report on South Korea is “untrue.” He did not elaborate which part of the document was untrue.