Tag: All Regions

A former Jacksonville company CEO was sentenced yesterday to 32 months in prison for willfully attempting to evade the assessment of his federal income taxes. According to court documents and statements made in court, in 2015 and 2016, Jason Cory, 49, of Jacksonville, was a manager at a New York-based IT services company and from 2017 through 2019, he was the CEO of a different IT services company based in Jacksonville. From 2015 through 2018, Cory used his positions to cause more than $1.5 million to be deposited into the bank accounts of Gambit Matrix LLC, a shell company he controlled. As CEO, Cory caused transfers to Gambit Matrix under the false pretense that they were payments for consulting services that had never been provided.

All countries remain “dangerously unprepared” for the next pandemic, the Red Cross warned on Monday, saying future health crises could also collide with increasingly likely climate-related disasters. Despite three “brutal” years of the COVID-19 pandemic, strong preparedness systems are “severely lacking”, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) said. The world’s largest humanitarian network said building trust, equity and local action networks were vital to get ready for the next crisis. “All countries remain dangerously unprepared…

China’s coast guard drove away Japanese vessels from waters around disputed East China Sea islets on Monday, according to Chinese state media. Disputed East China Sea islets claimed by both China and Japan have long been a sticking point in bilateral relations. China calls the islands Diaoyu while Japan calls them Senkaku. China Marine Police spokesperson Gan Yu said the “Shinsei Maru” and four other Japanese ships illegally entered the territorial waters of the Diaoyu islands before being driven away…

Today, the Justice Department and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced a settlement with Logan Square Aluminum Supply Inc., resolving alleged violations of the federal Lead Renovation, Repair and Painting regulations, known as the RRP rule, at renovation projects Logan Square and its contractors performed in Chicago and Chicago suburbs.

Corruption Ledger does not not endorse or confirm the below content. Media is currently unverified. BREAKING MULTIPLE REPORTS: 🇬🇧UK-🇺🇲US-🇪🇺EU-armed military action targets 🇮🇷Iran humanitarian aid trucks loaded with flour and rice near Iraq-#Syria border as CIA boss arrives in Israel. (Video unverified) pic.twitter.com/tMy6YRB4WI — Afshin Rattansi (@afshinrattansi) January 29, 2023 Details on the #Iran Isfahan attack, which happened around 11:30 p.m. Saturday, remained scarce. A Defense Ministry statement described three drones being launched at the facility, with two of them…

Several senior Ukrainian officials, including front-line governors, lost their jobs Tuesday in a corruption scandal plaguing President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s government as it grapples with the nearly 11-month-old Russian invasion. Ukraine’s biggest government shake-up since the war began came as U.S. officials said Washington was poised to approve supplying Kyiv with M1 Abrams tanks, with international reluctance eroding toward sending tanks to the battlefront against the Russians. Zelenskyy was elected in 2019 on an anti-establishment and anti-corruption platform in a country…

As Joe Biden contemplated his next move in 2017 after decades in government, he considered a familiar path — creating a Washington-based think tank to focus on international affairs and diplomacy. It proved an easy sell and a lucrative one, too. Soft landings in the capital are common for officials with a resume like Biden’s, and the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement was born, with a grand view of the Capitol. The former vice president brought with…

British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak fired the chairman of the governing Conservative Party on Sunday for a “serious breach” of ethics rules in failing to come clean about a tax dispute. Sunak had faced days of pressure to sack Nadhim Zahawi amid allegations he settled a multimillion-dollar unpaid tax bill while he was in charge of the country’s Treasury. The prime minister acted after a standards probe found Zahawi had breached the ministerial code of conduct. It said he had…

North Korea on Sunday criticized for a second day a U.S. decision to send Abrams tanks to Ukraine, calling it an “unethical crime” aimed at perpetuating an unstable international situation. Washington’s allegations that North Korea has provided arms to Russia are a “groundless rumor” to justify its own military aid to Ukraine, Kwon Chung-keun, director of U.S. affairs at North Korea’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said in a statement carried by state news agency KCNA. “The U.S. is working hard…

Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt told reporters Friday that he is baffled over how $12.7 million of his money has gone missing from a local private investment firm that authorities are investigating as part of a massive fraud that began more than a decade ago. Bolt also said he has fired his business manager, adding that it was not an amicable split. When asked if he was “broke,” the retired star athlete laughed. “I’m not broke, but it’s definitely put a…

Canada’s Supreme Court found one mandatory minimum sentence for a firearm offense unconstitutional and upheld two others in a pair of decisions published on Friday. Two of the three cases at issue used hypothetical scenarios that defense counsel argued could render these mandatory minimums unconstitutional because they would constitute cruel and unusual punishment in certain instances. Mandatory minimum sentences have come under fire in Canada from advocates and lawyers who say they take discretion from judges and disproportionately penalize Indigenous…

China and the United States exchanged sharp criticism at a World Trade Organization meeting on Friday, with Beijing calling Washington a “unilateral bully” and the U.S. accusing its rival of illegal retaliatory measures. China’s ambassador to the WTO Li Chenggang spoke at a meeting on trade disputes shortly after the United States lodged an appeal against a series of WTO rulings involving China, Turkey, Norway and Switzerland which found that U.S. metal tariffs breached global rules. “These troubling behaviors of…

Department of Justice U.S. Attorney’s Office Northern District of California FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Friday, January 27, 2023 After two-week trial, federal jury found Miller and his company both guilty of conspiracies involving racketeering, mail and wire fraud, and money laundering, in addition to substantive mail fraud and conspiracy against the United States. SAN FRANCISCO – A federal jury convicted David Jess Miller and his company, Minnesota Independent Cooperative (“MIC”), of a wide array of charges relating to the unlicensed and…

The U.S. took a big step in the development of a national artificial intelligence strategy with the release of the U.S. Department of Commerce National Institute of Standards and Technology’s Artificial Intelligence Risk Management Framework 1.0, Jan. 26.

Required under the National AI Act of 2020, the framework is the product of 15 months of work by NIST scientists who compiled public comments from more than 240 AI stakeholders through multiple listening sessions and workshops, while producing two previous drafts of the document last year. The framework is voluntary but will help organizations deploying AI systems to enhance their trustworthiness and reduce biases, while protecting individuals™ privacy.

Along with the framework document, the NIST also released the AI RMF Playbook, which is expected to be updated every six months as best practices for navigating the framework develop, according to Under Secretary of Commerce for Technology and NIST Director Laurie Locascio.

The Philippine government said Friday it intended to appeal an International Criminal Court decision to reopen an inquiry into Manila’s brutal anti-drug campaign, which left thousands dead. The Hague-based tribunal launched the inquiry in 2019 but suspended it later that year at the request of the government of then Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte, who had launched the crackdown in 2016, with Manila saying it would re-examine cases of alleged abuses. Announcing the probe’s resumption on Thursday, the ICC said its…