Tag: All Regions

All Britons will be called on to swear allegiance to King Charles III at his coronation, an oath hitherto reserved for British nobility.

It is a move that has upset anti-royalists.

Adidas is being sued by investors who claim the firm knew about Kanye West’s problematic behaviour years before it ended their partnership.

Investors allege Adidas failed to limit financial losses and take precautionary measures to minimise their exposure.

The sportswear giant ended its collaboration with the designer and rapper, who is known as Ye, last year following antisemitic comments.

In response, Adidas said: “We outright reject these unfounded claims.”

It added it “will take all necessary measures to vigorously defend ourselves against them”.

West is not party to the lawsuit. The rapper designed a line of hugely successful trainers under the Yeezy brand for Adidas.

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”.

DUBUQUE, Iowa (AP) — The surging Mississippi River was cresting in Iowa on Saturday as melting snow from Minnesota and Wisconsin continues to push up river levels, the National Weather Service said.

The weather service said the river was cresting between 23 and 24.3 feet (7 and 7.4 meters) in Dubuque, a city on the Mississippi about 200 miles (320 kilometers) east of Des Moines. The river was expected to crest at 21.9 feet (6.7 meters) in Bellevue, Iowa, on Saturday night.

The river is not expected to see many record crests in the next week, but the weather service said Saturday’s levels would come close to 1993 and 2001 records between 23.9 and 25.4 feet (7.3 and 7.7 meters) as the river moves down its 2,300-mile (3,700-kilometer) length before reaching the Gulf of Mexico.

Iran’s President Ebrahim Raisi on Saturday slammed the United States’ presence in the Middle East, as he hosted his counterpart from neighbouring Iraq for wide-ranging talks.

Decades-old arch enemies the United States and Iran have vied for influence in Iraq since the 2003 US-led invasion toppled dictator Saddam Hussein.

Both helped Iraq to defeat the Islamic State group, and the United States still has 2,500 non-combat troops in the country to provide it with advice and training.

About 900 US troops remain in Syria, most in the Kurdish-administered northeast, as part of a US-led coalition battling remnants of IS.

And the US Navy’s Fifth Fleet is based in the Gulf state of Bahrain.

In February, Hong Kong proposed a set of welcoming rules to regulate crypto-related activities. Under the new legal regime, retail investors will be allowed to trade certain digital assets on licensed exchanges, replacing a 2018 framework that restricted trading to only accredited investors.

The city is also paving the way to legalize stablecoins. One startup, which is backed by popular exchange KuCoin and USDC issuer Circle, recently launched an offshore Chinese yuan (CNH)-pegged stablecoin, the first of its kind in Greater China.

To create a favorable environment for web3 businesses, the city is facilitating communication between banks and crypto startups, many of which are scrambling to find alternatives following Silvergate Bank’s meltdown.

These moves are contrasting with Beijing’s heavy-handed crackdown on the crypto industry; they also highlight the degree to which the former British colony enjoys policy exceptions in certain areas, such as finance.

The US central bank has said it failed to act with “sufficient force and urgency” in its oversight of Silicon Valley Bank, which collapsed last month in the country’s biggest bank failure since 2008.

The conclusion is one of the main findings from the Federal Reserve’s investigation of the episode.

It sparked global fears about the state of the banking industry.

The review comes as another US lender, First Republic, remains in trouble.

US regulators are reported to be working on a potential rescue for the struggling firm, which was the 14th largest bank in the US at the end of last year.

The US military is set to deploy nuclear-armed submarines to South Korea in a purported move to show its resolve to protect Seoul against the North Korea.

The US will send an Ohio-class US Navy nuclear-armed ballistic missile submarine (SSBN) to South Korea as part of a so-called Washington Declaration — unveiled Wednesday at the White House during a summit meeting between US President Joe Biden and visiting South Korean counterpart Yoon Suk Yeol — to reassure Seoul and quell talk there of developing homegrown nuclear weapons.

The FBI carried out a search on Thursday morning at the Potomac, Md., home of former FTX executive Ryan Salame, the New York Times reported, citing two people with knowledge of the matter said.

The FBI, Salame and his attorney did not immediately respond to Reuters requests for comment.

Days before FTX filed for bankruptcy and Bankman-Fried stepped down as CEO, Salame informed the Securities Commission of the Bahamas that client assets held at FTX Digital Markets may have been transferred to Alameda, according to a court filing Wednesday by the agency.

He was one of the top political donors in the 2022 election cycle donating more than $23 million to Republican campaigns, according to OpenSecrets.

The Biden administration on Thursday imposed sanctions on the Federal Security Service, Russia’s intelligence agency, for its role in detaining Americans like Evan Gershkovich, The Wall Street Journal reporter who has been accused of espionage.

The administration also announced sanctions on Iran’s intelligence services and four senior Iranian officials, who the administration says have participated in a pattern of holding Americans and other nationals hostage.

An unusually early heatwave in drought-hit Spain is set to peak on Thursday and Friday, with temperatures expected to break April records in the south of the country.

Experts have warned of the high risk of wildfires, and farmers have warned of the catastrophic effect it is having on their crops.

Since Monday, Spain has been enveloped by a mass of warm, dry air from North Africa that has driven up temperatures to “levels normally seen in summer and exceptionally high for this time of year,” said Spain’s state weather agency Aemet.

On April 26, after months awaiting a response, Japan’s Foreign Ministry announced it had received confirmation from Myanmar’s military junta that it misused two Japan-funded civilian vessels to transport soldiers and weapons in Rakhine State in September 2022.

A Japanese Foreign Ministry spokesperson said Japan protested the misuse and the junta “expressed regret over the situation,” saying it will do its “utmost to prevent recurrence.”

Human Rights Watch first revealed the incident in October 2022 after analyzing letters from Myanmar officials that stated that two of three vessels delivered by Japan between 2017 and 2019 had been used to transport more than 100 soldiers and materiel to the town of Buthidaung in Rakhine State, where the military is fighting the Arakan Army, an ethnic armed group. The Japanese government had been requesting information from the junta following that reporting.

Hackers have stolen email addresses, direct messages, and other personal data from users of two dating websites, according to a data breach expert.

Earlier this week, someone alerted Troy Hunt, the founder and maintainer of the data breach alerting website Have I Been Pwned, that hackers had breached two dating websites, CityJerks and TruckerSucker. Hunt told TechCrunch that he analyzed the stolen data and found usernames, email addresses, passwords, profile pictures, sexual orientation, users’ date of birth, their city and state, their IP addresses, and biographies. The stolen passwords are scrambled with a weak algorithm that could potentially be broken and allow hackers to see the actual passwords.”

The U.S. is imposing sanctions on groups in Russia and Iran associated with the wrongful detainment of its citizens, CNN reported on April 27. Former U.S. Marine Paul Whelan and Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich are currently being held in Russia on trumped-up espionage charges. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov attempted to justify Russia detaining the two U.S. citizens while speaking to journalists at the United Nations on April 25, claiming they were detained “when committing a crime.” People familiar with the matter told Bloomberg in mid-April that Russian dictator Vladimir Putin “personally approved” Gershkovich’s arrest on espionage charges. In Iran, Siamak Namazi, Emad Sharghi and Morad Tahbaz are all being held in a prison where where there have been reports of torture, CNN wrote. According to CNN, the sanctions imposed by the U.S. would target Russia’s Federal Security Service and the Intelligence Organization of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Four individuals in Iran would also be targeted by the sanctions. “We are showing that one cannot engage in this sort of awful behavior using human beings as pawns, as bargaining chips, without paying consequences and these are some of the consequences,” a senior U.S. administration official said, as quoted by CNN. However, as CNN pointed out, “questions remain about the real impact of these sanctions because many of the entities hit on Thursday were already sanctioned under different authorities by the U.S.”

It’s been six weeks since the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank threatened to kick off a nationwide bank run. Now, U.S. regulators are due to issue their postmortem reports.

The Federal Reserve plans to release a report Friday on whether there were lapses in its oversight of Silicon Valley Bank that may have contributed to the bank’s failure.

Separately, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. will also report Friday on how the regulator supervised New York-based Signature Bank, which failed days after the Silicon Valley lender.

The sudden implosion of two big regional banks rattled nerves throughout the financial system last month, forcing the federal government to take emergency steps to prevent a nationwide bank run.