Category: Corruption

According to court documents, Jo Ann Macrina, 66, of Daytona Beach, Florida, served as the Commissioner of Atlanta’s Department of Watershed Management from 2011 through May 2016. During Macrina’s tenure, the City of Atlanta awarded millions of dollars in contracts to an architectural, design, and construction management and services firm based in Atlanta. Macrina took multiple steps to steer lucrative contracts toward the firm’s joint venture. Those actions included casting aside prior final scores ranking potential vendors where the joint venture ranked near the bottom, replacing two evaluators who previously represented the Department of Watershed Management with herself and Macrina’s employee, and scoring the joint venture higher than all other evaluators during a reevaluation.

In exchange for providing the firm’s executive vice president with access to confidential information and preferential treatment on City of Atlanta projects, Macrina was offered a job and accepted things of value. For instance, Macrina accepted $10,000 in cash, a diamond ring, a room at a luxury hotel in Dubai, and landscaping work at her home from the firm’s executive vice president either directly or through another employee of the firm. Shortly after Macrina’s employment with the City of Atlanta ended, she began working for the firm. Between June 2016 and September 2016, the firm and its executive vice president paid Macrina $30,000 in four separate payments.

Packers Sanitation Services Inc. (PSSI), based in Kieler, Wisconsin, has paid 1.5 million U.S. dollars in civil money penalties after a DOL investigation found that the company “employed at least 102 children — from 13 to 17 years of age — in hazardous occupations and had them working overnight shifts at 13 meat processing facilities in eight states,” a statement read.

Children were working with hazardous chemicals and cleaning meat processing equipment including back saws, brisket saws, and head splitters, according to the investigation, which began in August 2022.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency ordered Norfolk Southern on Tuesday to pay for the cleanup of the East Palestine, Ohio train wreck and chemical release as federal regulators took charge of long-term recovery efforts and promised worried residents they wouldn’t be forgotten.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken spoke to CBS television on Sunday of information that China was “considering providing lethal support” to Russia. When asked what he meant by that, Blinken replied, “Weapons, primarily weapons.”

Below-normal rainfall is expected over the next three months in parts of Somalia, Kenya and Ethiopia.

“If Mr. Schultz believes that a multibillion-dollar corporation like Starbucks can break federal labor law with impunity, he is mistaken,” Sanders said.

A nationwide injunction restrains the company from dismissing labor organizers and could help reinstate ousted workers more quickly. A federal judge in Michigan issued an injunction on Friday banning Starbucks from firing U.S. workers because they seek to form a union or engage in other collective activities. The move is the first nationwide judicial mandate related to the labor campaign…

KPMG has settled a £1.3bn lawsuit brought by Carillion’s liquidators, who claimed the auditor was negligent and missed serious red flags in the outsourcing firm’s accounts ahead of its disastrous collapse in 2018. The lawsuit – which related to audits of Carillion accounts between 2014 and 2016 – had been launched by Britain’s official receiver, which is attempting to recoup…

SAO PAULO, Feb 17 (Reuters) – Germany’s Bayer has been ordered by Brazil’s Supreme Court to return to Brazilian soybean farmers the royalties they were charged for a GMO soybean seed, the Mato Grosso farmer lobby Aprosoja-MT said in a statement on Friday. The Feb. 13 ruling by Supreme Court Justice Nunes Marques relates to a GMO technology commercially known…

Home security provider Vivint Smart Home Inc owes rival CPI Security Systems Inc $189.7 million for tricking its customers into moving to Vivint’s service, a North Carolina jury decided Friday. The federal jury in Charlotte found Vivint sales representatives unlawfully deceived CPI customers into signing contracts with Vivint by falsely claiming that Vivint had bought the company. The jury said…

Former Defence Minister Linda Reynolds has broken her two-year silence, saying she has “a very different story” to tell about the Brittany Higgins rape scandal. The former Liberal cabinet minister was Ms Higgins’ boss when the political staffer alleges she was raped in Parliament House in 2019. In a four-hour interview with The Weekend Australian, Senator Reynolds claimed to be…

Critics questioned the timing of the searches, which came after BBC aired show critical of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

  A Brisbane-based digital lender has been slapped with two infringement notices by ASIC for its false and misleading repayment estimate calculator. The corporate watchdog took action against Jaracanda Finance, which offered loans up to $15,000, typically for 12 to 36 months, because it was concerned that the credit licensee’s repayment estimate calculator: used an annual percentage rate that was…

The crackdown on opponents of President Saied has sparked international criticism and fears of a return to autocracy.

Saturday’s move by North Korea comes ahead of upcoming US-South Korea joint drills in Washington next week.