Tag: All Regions

WASHINGTON – The United States imposed sanctions on June 10 targeting individuals and sham charities that it said were prominent financial supporters of Palestinian groups Hamas and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). The individuals and groups targeted were funding Hamas’ military wing under the pretense of doing humanitarian work, in Gaza and internationally, the Treasury Department said. The Treasury said it will continue to seek disruptions to the financial capabilities of Hamas, which still holds hostages…

WASHINGTON – U.S. government agencies tracked foreign nationals’ visits to Elon Musk’s proprieties amid concerns over possible attempts to influence the tech billionaire, The Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday, citing people familiar with the matter. The investigation, which tracked the foreigners in 2022 and 2023, included the Department of Homeland Security and the Justice Department, according to the report. It focused on people visiting the Musk from countries in Eastern Europe and elsewhere, the Journal said. Musk, who runs…

All India Football Federation (AIFF) President Kalyan Chaubey has strongly denied accusations of corruption that have been made against India’s football governing body. Chaubey, who has led the AIFF since 2022, insists that the organisation has followed due process and that if there was any evidence of corruption, then it would have come to notice. “If there was any corruption, then it must have been noticed or red-flagged. These comments have been made by 3-4 people who have either lost…

US President Donald Trump brought many of the same grievances to his second trade war against China, but the economic battleground that has emerged since then is making it harder to avoid a rupture this time around. While tariffs kicked off the dispute, it is the new trade weapons being unsheathed by both sides that have come to define the latest stand-off. And if the damage done so far is any indication, the scars will prove more enduring – no…

Academic publishers are rushing to sign licensing deals with artificial intelligence (AI) companies, carving out a new revenue stream as US research funding cuts dim their outlook. Informa Plc’s Taylor & Francis signed a US$10 million (S$12.8 million) deal with Microsoft Corp. in 2024 to provide the technology giant access to part of its library to train large language models, or LLMs. Bloomsbury Publishing Plc is looking to “monetise academic content through AI deals”, it said in its latest set…

ATHENS – A Greek court has stripped three far-right lawmakers of their seats in parliament on accusations they deceived voters in a June 2023 national vote, the semi-official Athens News Agency and a legal source said on Tuesday. The ruling means parliament will operate with 297 lawmakers instead of 300, while the number of seats needed for an absolute majority drops to 149. The three former lawmakers were elected with the far-right Spartans party in 2023. An election court, however,…

During his visit to the Middle East in May, U.S. President Donald Trump did several things that few would have predicted months or even weeks earlier. One was his surprise meeting with Syria’s new leader, Ahmed al-Shara, and the subsequent lifting of U.S. sanctions on Syria, notwithstanding Shara’s history as a leader of a militant Islamist group. Another was his decision not to include Israel on the itinerary, despite his administration’s ongoing efforts to end the war in Gaza. The…

Five men have pleaded guilty for their roles in laundering more than $36.9 million from victims of an international digital asset investment scam conspiracy that was carried out from scam centers in Cambodia. According to court documents, Joseph Wong, 33, of Alhambra, California; Yicheng Zhang, 39, of China; Jose Somarriba, 55, of Los Angeles; Shengsheng He, 39, of La Puente, California; and Jingliang Su, 44, of China and Turkey, were part of an international criminal network that induced U.S. victims,…

Two Chinese nationals have been charged with smuggling a plant pathogen into the US for research at a University of Michigan laboratory, the Department of Justice (DOJ) announced on 3 June. The couple has also been charged with making false statements and visa fraud. They were arrested in connection with allegations related to secretly transporting the fungus Fusarium graminearum, which federal prosecutors claim is classified in the scientific literature as ‘a potential agroterrorism weapon’, although experts Chemistry World spoke to…

Mr. Türk was responding to an announcement by Marco Rubio, the US Secretary of State, on Thursday, of measures targeting the judges, who are overseeing a 2020 case of alleged war crime committed in Afghanistan by US and Afghan military forces, and the 2024 ICC arrest warrants issued against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant, the former Defence Minister. “I am profoundly disturbed by the decision of the Government of the United States of America to sanction judges…

A former Franklin County sheriff’s deputy pleaded guilty in federal court in Columbus, Ohio, today to depriving an inmate of his civil rights. Matthew Carey, 28, of Grove City, admitted to depriving an individual of their right to be free from a deputy’s deliberate indifference to a substantial risk of serious harm, while acting under color of law. According to court documents, in March 2022, Carey intentionally disclosed a pretrial detainee’s pending charge of rape of a minor to Gmier…

The Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division has opened an investigation into the State of Rhode Island (“Rhode Island”) concerning potential race-based discrimination in state employment practices. The state of Rhode Island mandates state agencies set hiring targets that are effectively race-based employment quotas.[1] These statutorily mandated goals pressure state agencies to engage in discriminatory, and potentially unlawful, hiring practices. The Civil Rights Division’s Employment Litigation Section opened the investigation under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which…

A federal jury convicted the CEO of Power Mobility Doctor Rx, LLC (DMERx) for his role in operating a platform that generated false doctors’ orders to defraud Medicare and other federal health care benefit programs of more than $1 billion. According to court documents and evidence presented at trial, Gary Cox, 79, of Maricopa County, Arizona, and his co-conspirators targeted hundreds of thousands of Medicare beneficiaries who provided their personally identifiable information and agreed to accept medically unnecessary orthotic braces,…

Biden administration policy-makers hated you more than you knew. From the start of the Covid pandemic, I warned that the feds were vilifying anyone who failed to kowtow to the latest commands. In October 2023, I wrote: “Federal bureaucrats heaved together a bunch of letters to contrive an ominous new acronym for the latest peril to domestic tranquility. The result: AGAAVE—’anti-government, anti-authority violent extremism’—which looks like a typo for a sugar substitute. The FBI vastly expanded the supposed AGAAVE peril by…