Category: Ledger of Lies

A former Virginia Department of Corrections employee donated hundreds of execution documents, including these photographs, to the Library of Virginia more than a decade ago. NPR is now exclusively publishing a selection of the documents. Library of Virginia, Chiara Eisner and Monika Evstatieva/NPR Library of Virginia, Chiara Eisner and Monika Evstatieva/NPR   In January, NPR aired excerpts from four tapes recorded behind the scenes during Virginia executions. It was only the second time in history that audio from inside an…

Construction workers build along State Road 836 in 2018 in Miami. HB 1191 would compel the Florida Transportation Department to study using phosphogypsum in paving projects. Roads in Florida could soon include phosphogypsum — a radioactive waste material from the fertilizer industry — under a bill lawmakers have sent to Gov. Ron DeSantis. Conservation groups are urging DeSantis to veto the bill, saying phosphogypsum would hurt water quality and put road construction crews at a higher risk of cancer. Here’s…

WASHINGTON – A Federal Reserve report warned that banks’ concerns about slower growth could lead them to make fewer loans, accelerating an economic downturn, and highlighted commercial real estate as an area of heightened risk that will draw more scrutiny from bank examiners.

The US central bank’s financial stability report released on Monday is the first since four regional lenders collapsed. The episodes prompted weeks of wild trading in bank stocks and forced regulators to take a series of extraordinary steps that included backstopping all depositors at Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank.

WASHINGTON (AP) — China was the biggest global jailer of journalists last year with more than 100 behind bars, according to a press freedom group, as President Xi Jinping’s government tightened control over society. Xi’s government also was one of the biggest exporters of propaganda content, according to Reporters without Boarders. China ranked second to last on the group’s annual index of press freedom, behind only neighbor North Korea. The ruling Communist Party has tightened already strict controls on media…

NEW YORK – US authorities are investigating the work Goldman Sachs did for Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) in the weeks before it failed, including its advice that the smaller lender sell a large portfolio of securities at a loss, according to a regulatory filing by Goldman on Thursday.

Goldman said it was “cooperating with and providing information to various governmental bodies in connection with their investigations and inquiries” into SVB, which collapsed suddenly March 10, touching off a crisis of confidence that has led to the failure of two more regional lenders, and a panic in the stock market over the fate of others.

The investigations include “the firm’s business with SVB in or around March 2023, when SVB engaged the firm to assist with a proposed capital raise and SVB sold the firm a portfolio of securities,” Goldman’s filing to the Securities and Exchange Commission said.

NEW YORK (AP) — Fox News is opposing a renewed effort by three news organizations to unseal documents related to its recently settled defamation lawsuit, saying it would do nothing but “gratify private spite or promote public scandal.” The Associated Press, The New York Times and National Public Radio asked a Delaware judge earlier this week to reveal mostly private text messages and conversations between Fox employees shortly after the 2020 presidential election that were uncovered during the Dominion Voting…

Ukraine — Russia attacked several Ukrainian cities with explosive drones overnight, though Ukraine said Thursday that it had managed to shoot most of them down. Russia called the attack payback for what it claims was an alleged attempt by Ukraine to attack the Kremlin in Moscow using drones on Wednesday.

The Kremlin claimed the attack was an attempt by Ukraine to assassinate President Vladimir Putin and, on Thursday morning, Russia’s government accused the U.S. of planning it.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy denied any Ukrainian role in an attack on the Kremlin, insisting that his country’s forces were acting only to defend Ukraine’s sovereign territory — though there has been evidence over the last week that they’re also stepping up attacks, using drones, on Russian infrastructure, both in occupied territory and across the border inside Russia.

The Financial Conduct Authority has said it will change its approach to whistleblowers after a survey revealed widespread dissatisfaction among those who alert the regulator to wrongdoing.

The organisation acknowledged problems including whistleblowers not “feeling heard”; a lack of dialogue with them, which prompts doubts about the chances of a proper investigation; and frustration over a shortage of updates, sometimes interpreted as delay and inaction.

The majority of those who raised concerns with the regulator said they were “extremely or somewhat dissatisfied” with how they had been listened to and how issues had been explored, while most were dissatisfied with the outcome of their reports, an FCA study found.

When asked to rate overall satisfaction with the authority’s handling of their whistleblowing report, 15 of the 21 respondents said they were “extremely or somewhat dissatisfied”. Only two expressed any satisfaction.

The regulator said it was “disappointed” with the findings. “Whistleblowers are key in our efforts and we greatly value their contribution,” it said.

It pledged to make reforms, including improving the use of whistleblowers’ information, better communication over what has been done with their reports and engagement with the government over a review of whistleblowing legislation.

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) — Two 10-year-olds are among 300 children who worked at McDonald’s restaurants illegally, a Labor Department investigation of franchisees in Kentucky found.

Agency investigators found the 10-year-olds received little or no pay at a McDonald’s in Louisville, the Labor Department said. The franchisee for the Louisville store was among three McDonald’s franchisees fined $212,000 in total by the department.

Louisville’s Bauer Food LLC, which operates 10 McDonald’s locations, employed 24 minors under the age of 16 to work more hours than legally permitted, the agency said. Among those were two 10-year-old children. The agency said the children sometimes worked as late as 2 a.m., but were not paid.

“Below the minimum age for employment, they prepared and distributed food orders, cleaned the store, worked at the drive-thru window and operated a register,” the Labor Department said Tuesday, adding that one child also was allowed to operate a deep fryer, which is prohibited task for workers under 16.

A report in the Wall Street Journal, published on the newspaper’s front page Monday morning, links important figures in the US business and political elite to financier and sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, who died in a federal prison in Manhattan in 2019 under circumstances that strongly suggest he was murdered to keep him quiet.

The Journal reporters wrote that they had gained access to Epstein’s private diary and other documents, “which include thousands of pages of emails and schedules from 2013 to 2017, [that] haven’t been previously reported.” The diary listed meetings with dozens of individuals, though it supplied little information about the content or subject of the meetings. The bulk of these engagements were at Epstein’s palatial townhouse in Manhattan.

Among those prominently mentioned in the Journal report were two high-level officials of Democratic administrations: William Burns, currently CIA director, formerly deputy secretary of state in the Obama administration; and Kathryn Ruemmler, currently general counsel for Goldman Sachs investment bank, who was White House counsel in the Obama administration.

A new law that seeks to give Canadian artists a leg up online has left many influencers and tech giants alike seeing red.

They took out subway ads, they posted TikToks, but in the end, the score was Silicon Valley-0, Ottawa-1.

After many twists and turns, and over two-and-a-half years of review, the Canadian government has passed a new law that makes tech giants like YouTube and TikTok support Canadian cultural content.

The law, dubbed Bill C-11, gives the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) broad authority to regulate these platforms, much like they already do with radio and television.

The government says it is necessary to stop streaming giants from getting a free ride, and to promote local artists.

Although it’s still unclear what those final regulations will look like, the law has raised the ire of everyone from TikTokers to esteemed author Margaret Atwood.

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.

Taipei, April 29 (CNA) The United States should engage with other democracies around the world to help Taiwan fend off threats from China, former U.S. national security adviser and outspoken China hawk John Bolton told a pro-Taiwan independence event in Taipei on Saturday.

“The U.S. response to help Taiwan against the Chinese threat has to be fully global,” Bolton said at the Global Taiwan National Affairs Symposium hosted by the World Taiwanese Congress, suggesting the establishment of “new structures of deterrence” against China.

Taiwan is “the center of gravity of the Chinese threat” to the world, said Bolton, who served as national security adviser under President Donald Trump from April 2018 to September 2019 and U.S. ambassador to the United Nations from 2005 to 2006.

US President Joe Biden on Saturday, in a possible preview of a 2024 presidential campaign theme, attacked news outlets he said used “lies told for profit and power” to stir up hatred in the United States, as he coupled his remarks with pointed jokes about Fox News.

Speaking at the annual White House Correspondents’ Association dinner, Mr Biden referred to “truth buried by lies,” in an apparent reference to false conspiracy theories that his 2020 election win was the result of a massive voter fraud.

“Lies told for profit and power… lies of conspiracy and malice repeated over and over again designed to generate a cycle of anger and hate and even violence,” Mr Biden said.

That cycle, Mr Biden added, has emboldened local jurisdictions to ban books, and “the rule of law and our rights and freedoms to be stripped away”.

Zeroing in on what he characterised as “an extreme press,” Mr Biden at the same time joked that if he called Fox News “honest, fair and truthful, then I can be sued for defamation”.

The U.S. government has sounded the alarm about a critical software vulnerability found in genomics giant Illumina’s DNA sequencing devices, which hackers can exploit to modify or steal patients’ sensitive medical data.

In separate advisories released on Thursday, U.S. cybersecurity agency CISA and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration warned that the security flaw — tracked as CVE-2023-1968 with the maximum vulnerability severity rating of 10 out of 10 — allows hackers to remotely access an affected device over the internet without needing a password. If exploited, the bug could allow hackers to compromise devices to produce incorrect or altered results, or none at all.

Fox News host Tucker Carlson’s sudden departure from the cable network is being greeted as good news by Republicans who support U.S. intervention in the war in Ukraine.

Carlson was one of the most prominent critics of U.S. involvement to defend Kyiv against Moscow’s invasion.

“It’s a bad day for Vladimir Putin,” a Senate Republican aide said. “This takes one of the biggest critics of Ukraine war in Republican and conservative circles off the table.”

The aide noted that some GOP senators were also uncomfortable with what they viewed as Carlson’s over-the-top rhetoric opposing vaccine mandates, which divided conservatives during the pandemic.