Tag: Michael

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Politics

Michael Enzi, Former Senator From Wyoming, Dies at 77

Michael Enzi, Former Senator From Wyoming, Dies at 77

According to Mr. Enzi, Mr. Simpson encouraged him to run for mayor of Gillette, the city to which he had moved only a few years earlier.

“On the way home from that Cody meeting while my wife was driving, I told her what Senator Simpson had said, and that I was thinking maybe I should run for mayor,” Mr. Enzi said in his retirement speech. “It must have come as quite a shock, because she ended up swerving into the barrow pit and then coming back up onto the road.”

At the time, Mr. Enzi said, Gillette was a place where recent discoveries of oil, gas and coal were drawing more and more people — and putting a strain on municipal services. The city, he said, was in need of three things that would become a recurring theme in Mr. Enzi’s political career: budgets, agendas and planning.

“Not the most exciting topics,” he said in his retirement speech.

Mr. Enzi was elected mayor in 1974 and served two four-year terms, during which time he also traveled to and from Washington as a member of the Coal Advisory Committee for the U.S. Department of Interior and served as the president of the Wyoming Association of Municipalities.

He soon set his sights on state politics, joining the Wyoming House of Representatives in 1987, and the Wyoming State Senate in 1991. He was first elected to the United States Senate in 1996. He led the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions from 2005 to 2007, and was the chairman of the Senate Budget Committee from 2015 to 2021.

In 2009, Mr. Enzi was a member of what came to be known as the Gang of Six, a group of Senate Finance Committee members — three Democrats and three Republicans — who held lengthy negotiations on a health care overhaul. The talks dragged on, and Republicans ultimately backed away from those compromise efforts amid protests from their constituents. The Affordable Care Act would pass in 2010, without support from Republicans in Congress. Mr. Enzi had sought to repeal the legislation.

In 2017, Mr. Enzi was one of 22 senators who signed a letter asking President Donald J. Trump to withdraw from the Paris climate agreement.

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Politics

Trump lawyer Michael Cohen strikes to sue U.S. over jail return and ebook

Former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen asks judge to suspend home confinement

Michael Cohen leaves the Manhattan Attorney’s Office in New York City on March 19, 2021.

Michael M. Santiago | Getty Images

Michael Cohen, the former personal lawyer and fixer of ex-President Donald Trump, has sued the US government for $ 20 million for being illegally jailed last year in retaliation for planning a book about Trump.

Cohen has filed a lawsuit against the US Prison Bureau, accusing the government of false arrest, false detention and unlawful detention.

Cohen, 54, says he suffered “emotional pain and suffering, mental agony and the loss of freedom” when he was sent back to federal prison just weeks after his early leave in July 2020 on concerns about his risk from Covid-19 has been.

Cohen’s attorneys are preparing a second lawsuit alleging that then Attorney General William Barr and BOP Director Michael Carvajal violated his freedom of expression in the First Amendment by putting him back in prison.

The filing comes almost a year after a Manhattan federal judge ordering Cohen’s release after more than two weeks ruled that Barr and Carvajal’s purpose in sending Cohen back to prison was “retaliation in response that Cohen intended to exercise his First Amendment ”. Rights to publish a book critical of the presidency and to discuss the book on social media. “

The government has six months to respond to Cohen’s lawsuit. If she doesn’t respond, he could file a lawsuit against the government and other defendants.

The Bureau of Prisons did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Cohen declined to comment on the case.

His attorney Jeffrey Levine said in a statement: “Mr. Cohen was the personal attorney for the President of the United States, and if he could be thrown in jail for writing a critical book about the President, the President’s imagination didn’t take far to go. ” before we realize that such unacceptable and unconstitutional behavior could be directed against any of us. “

“This is not an exaggeration and it is not acceptable,” said Levine.

Levine told CNBC that Cohen was looking for documents under the Freedom of Information Act that “lead to retaliation” but “nothing significant” was provided by the government.

“The filing [of a claim] … is the beginning of our search for the truth, “Levine said in an email.” That is the Justice Department’s gun violence by former President and his accomplice AG William Barr, and responsibility for their actions. “

Cohen, who served Trump faithfully for years, pleaded guilty to several federal crimes in 2018.

These included campaign funding violations related to hush money payments to women who claimed to have sex with Trump, lying to Congress about plans to build a Trump Tower in Moscow, and financial crime.

Cohen also became a harsh critic of Trump and cooperated with several investigations against the then president.

On Thursday, the Trump Organization and its CFO Allen Weisselberg were indicted in the Manhattan Supreme Court over a tax evasion scheme on the compensation of executives, including Weisselberg. Cohen assisted the Manhattan District Attorney’s investigation into the charges.

Cohen went to jail in early 2019 after being sentenced to three years in prison. In spring 2020, however, he was given leave of absence because he feared that he was particularly at risk from the corona virus due to previous illnesses.

Shortly after his release, Cohen and his attorney were called to Manhattan on July 9 for a meeting with federal probation officers to discuss the terms of his home detention, which he was serving in lieu of his sentence.

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Cohen was taken into custody that day and returned to Otisville, New York Jail, after resisting on condition that he would not publish a book about Trump or anyone else while serving the remainder of his sentence in domestic custody.

“I’ve never seen a clause like this in 21 years as a judge and convicting people,” Judge Alvin Hellerstein said during a hearing where Cohen’s lawyers demanded his release. “How can I draw conclusions other than retaliation?”

Last year the BOP said: “Any claim that the decision to send Michael Cohen to prison was in retaliation is obviously wrong.”

“While it is not uncommon for BOP to limit inmates’ contact with the media in some way, Mr. Cohen’s refusal to accept these terms here played no part in the decision to take him into custody, nor did his intention to publish a book . “

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World News

Michael Burry of ‘The Huge Brief’ reveals a $530 million guess towards Tesla

Michael Burry of ‘The Big Short’ reveals a $530 million bet against Tesla

Michael Burry attends the New York premiere of “The Big Short” on November 23, 2015 at the Ziegfeld Theater in New York City.

Jim Spellman | WireImage | Getty Images

Famed investor Michael Burry announced a short position on Tesla worth more than half a billion in a filing for approval on Monday.

Burry, one of the first investors to benefit from the subprime mortgage crisis, has long puts on 800,100 Tesla shares, or $ 534 million, by the end of the first quarter, according to filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission.

Investors benefit from puts when the underlying security falls in price. As of March 31, Burry had 8,001 put contracts of unknown value, exercise price, or expiry as per filing.

Tesla’s shares fell more than 4% on Monday, increasing losses to more than 20% since the start of the month.

Burry, whose company is Scion Asset Management, made fame for betting against mortgage securities prior to the 2008 crisis. Burry was featured in Michael Lewis’ book “The Big Short” and the subsequent Oscar winner of the same name.

Tesla had a tumultuous year in 2021, when sales in China fell in April and parts became scarce, hampering production in both the US and China.

Burry previously mentioned in a tweet he later deleted that Tesla’s reliance on regulatory credit to generate profits is a red flag.

As automakers grow their own battery electric vehicles, allegedly fewer have to purchase environmental credits from Tesla than they did to comply with environmental regulations.

Alongside his “Big Short”, Burry recently killed from a long GameStop position when the Reddit favorite made Wall Street history with its massive short squeeze.

In the first quarter of 2021, Tesla reported $ 518 million in revenue from regulatory loans, which the company generally receives from Elon Musk from government programs to support renewable energy. These were sold to other automakers, particularly FCA (now Stellantis), when they needed credit to offset their own carbon footprint.

In the fourth quarter of 2020, Tesla’s net income of $ 270 million was made possible by the sale of regulatory loans of $ 401 million to other automakers.

Tesla has historically raised around $ 1.6 billion in regulatory energy loans, mostly zero-emission vehicle loans. This has helped Tesla report more than four consecutive quarters of profitability and qualify Elon Musk’s automaker for inclusion in the S&P 500 index.

Tesla is currently delaying the production and shipping of its updated versions of its high-end sedan and SUV, the Model S and X. It is also delaying commercial production of its custom “4680” battery cells for use in future vehicles, including the Cybertruck and Tesla Semi.

Meanwhile, Elon Musk’s electric vehicle company is under regulatory scrutiny in China and the United States as high-profile vehicle accidents result in negative publicity and investigations by vehicle safety authorities in both countries.

Many believe CEO Elon Musk’s tweets about Bitcoin and Dogecoin also contributed to the volatility of Tesla stock. Musk has tens of millions of followers on Twitter.

A proponent of cryptocurrency in general, Musk announced last week that Tesla would indefinitely suspend accepting Bitcoin as a payment for cars, and said he was concerned about the “rapidly increasing use of fossil fuels in Bitcoin mining and mining.” for transactions “. Tesla announced earlier this year that it had purchased $ 1.5 billion worth of Bitcoin.

Tesla shares are down nearly 20% in 2021, after rising a whopping 740% in 2020.

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Correction: Michael Burry is long against 800,100 Tesla shares according to a report with the SEC. In an earlier version, the number of put contracts Burry bought was incorrectly stated.

Categories
Business

Michael Jackson’s Property Is Winner in Tax Choose’s Ruling

Michael Jackson’s Estate Is Winner in Tax Judge’s Ruling

After Michael Jackson’s death in 2009 at the age of 50, executors began propping up the once-King of Pop’s fluctuating finances, settling debts, and closing new entertainment and merchandising deals. It didn’t take long for the property to be in strong shape, with debt reduced and revenues running into the millions.

But there was another matter that took more than seven years to process: Jackson’s tax bill with the Internal Revenue Service, where the government and the estate had very different views on what Jackson’s name and likeness were worth when he died.

The IRS thought it was worth $ 161 million. The property put it at just $ 2,105 on the grounds that Jackson’s late-life reputation was in tatters after years of reporting on his eccentric lifestyle and a widespread child molestation lawsuit in which Jackson was acquitted.

On Monday, in a closely watched case that could affect other prominent estates, Judge Mark V. Holmes of the U.S. Treasury Court ruled that Jackson’s name and likeness were worth $ 4.2 million and dismissed many of the IRS’s arguments . The decision will significantly reduce the tax burden on the estate from the government’s initial assessment.

The IRS believed the estate had underpaid its tax liability by nearly $ 500 million and that it could owe additional fines of $ 200 million.

At the height of his career, Jackson was one of the most famous people in the world, with some of the most popular records ever released. And since his death, he’s been one of the world’s highest paid celebrities. Forbes estimated that his estate made $ 48 million in the past year.

But the tax case revolved around the value of Jackson’s public image at the time of his death. His reputation had been badly damaged, and since 1993, Judge Holmes said, Jackson had no endorsements or stores unrelated to a musical tour or album.

However, the judge found that the estate’s estimate of $ 2,105 was simply too low, and that the estate “captured the image and likeness of one of the world’s most famous celebrities – the King of Pop – for the price of a heavily used $ 20 -Prize appreciated. Year old Honda Civic ”(complete with a footnote to a used car price guide).

In a 271-page judgment of literary references to Hemingway and Plutarch, Judge Holmes – known for his clear and sometimes humorous writing style that summarizes dense tax cases – summed up the vicissitudes of Jackson’s life, public reputation, and finances.

“We do not make any special judgment about what Jackson did or should have done,” the judge wrote, “but we have to decide how what he did and is supposed to have done affected the value of what he did left behind. “

Judge Holmes also ruled on the value of two other assets: Jackson’s stake in Sony / ATV Music Publishing, the company that controlled millions of song copyrights – including most of the Beatles’ catalog – and Mijac Music, another catalog, owned by the Jacksons contained own songs as well as others that Jackson had acquired.

The estate had argued that those assets, along with Jackson’s name and likeness, were worth a total of $ 5.3 million. Judge Holmes ruled that their total value was $ 111.5 million. (In 2016, Sony / ATV – now known as Sony Music Publishing – agreed to pay the Jackson estate $ 750 million to purchase its portion of this catalog.)

The Jackson case was closely watched to assess how celebrity real estate can be valued and what tax liabilities it has. Major tax issues ahead of the IRS include those of Prince and Aretha Franklin.

In a statement, John Branca and John McClain, co-executives of the Jackson estate, called the decision “a great, unequivocal victory for Michael Jackson’s children.”

“For nearly 12 years, Michael’s estate has claimed that the government’s valuation of Michael’s fortune on the day of his death was outrageous and unfair, which would have weighed on his heirs with an oppressive tax bill of more than $ 700 million,” said Branca and McClain . “While we disagree with some parts of the decision, we believe this illustrates how unreasonable the IRS assessment has been and provides a path forward to finally resolving this case in a fair and equitable manner.”

The IRS did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Monday evening.

Categories
Politics

Former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen asks decide to droop residence confinement

Former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen asks judge to suspend home confinement

Michael Cohen leaves the Manhattan Attorney’s Office in New York City on March 19, 2021.

Michael M. Santiago | Getty Images

Michael Cohen, former personal attorney for ex-President Donald Trump, on Monday called on a federal judge to suspend his criminal sentence as the judge parses his request to declare satisfied his punishment by job and education loans received in jail.

The request came because Cohen is expected to meet separately for the ninth time later this week with investigators from the Manhattan District Attorney’s office, Cyrus Vance Jr., who are conducting an extensive criminal investigation into Trump and the Trump Organization, a source with the case said CNBC.

Cohen’s motion for a verdict has nothing to do with his collaboration with Vance’s investigation into the most serious criminal prosecution Trump currently faces.

Vance is known to be investigating how the Trump firm recorded hush money payments that Cohen made possible for two women in 2016 and is investigating Cohen’s allegations to Congress that the Trump organization artificially manipulated the valuation of real estate assets for financial gain .

In a letter to US District Judge John Koetl, Cohen wrote that his daily detention in Manhattan continues to be “a day Mr. Cohen is illegally detained”.

Cohen wrote that he wanted Koetl “to order his release pending a decision” as to whether his criminal conviction has already been fulfilled.

He also wrote: “The impetus for this request stems from the known fact that the Bureau of Prisons is walking through these petitions noticeably slowly in order to discuss resolve, particularly on matters such as the one before Your Honor, in which the petitioner is released from custody will be 7 months. “

If Koetl approves this motion, Cohen could freely leave his Upper East Side domicile, at least until the judge finally decides on his legal offer to declare his sentence complete.

Cohen, guilty of tax evasion, illegal campaign contributions and making a false declaration to Congress, was released last spring after serving just over a year of his three-year prison sentence on coronavirus concerns would have.

In his pending petition to Koetl in Manhattan federal court, Cohen argued that his sentence was completed because of classes and assignments he completed in prison, which bought him time under the First Step Act signed by Trump. Cohen argues that its last possible release date is May 29th.

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Cohen told CNBC, “This letter to Judge Koetl and my underlying Habeas Corpus letter seeks judicial intervention to compel the Bureau of Prisons to give me what I am entitled to under the terms of the First Step Act . No more and no less. “”

And Cohen added, “This petition has nothing to do with my ongoing work with the prosecutor [New York state] Attorney General or any other investigation I am involved in. “

New York attorney general Letitia James is conducting a civil investigation into the Trump Organization that, like Vance’s criminal investigation, examines whether the company has misrepresented the value of the same real estate assets at different times, benefiting from lower tax expenses and insurance costs if Ratings were lower than stated for loan purposes.

The federal prosecutor argued that Cohen was not entitled to any time credits he had identified for any work or course he had identified, “largely because Cohen did not have a need to reduce his risk of relapse in any of the areas in which he took courses or work.”

A spokesman for the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York who opposed Cohen’s offer declined to comment on Monday.

In his letter on Monday, Cohen also drew Koetl’s attention to a filing in another case involving a federal inmate in which prosecutors apparently dropped two “misguided and flawed defenses” that they had used in Cohen’s case.

That defense is that Cohen’s claim for a judgment from Koetl is not legally ripe because the First Step Act has not been fully enforced and because he has failed to exhaust the administrative complaints to the US Bureau of Prisons.

Cohen began working with Vance’s probe before going to jail and continued speaking with investigators while he was incarcerated and after his release to detention center.

Cohen last met with top officials in Vance’s office in mid-March.

Categories
Entertainment

40 Years of Michael Mann. 11 Nice Film Moments.

40 Years of Michael Mann. 11 Great Movie Moments.

Forty years ago Michael Mann released his first feature film this weekend, “Thief”, which in retrospect contained several signatures of the director’s work, such as stories that mostly revolve around lonely wolves and told with elaborate cuts, artful images and unexpected musical decisions will. We asked 11 writers to watch a career full of memorable films and choose the scenes that remain with them.

There is a lot of talk in most Michael Mann films: especially men who sometimes talk to women but mostly to other men about their work. The frequency of such conversations makes “Heat” (1995) the epitome of the Michael Mann film. The rightly famous diner scene in this context is the Michael Mann-est six minutes in the entire cinema.

During a frantic, epic cat-and-mouse game, tired and baffled Los Angeles cop Vincent Hanna sits down for coffee with Neil McCauley, the criminal mastermind whose plans he tries to thwart. They are mortal rivals, but only two who grapple with the existential demands of professionalism. They talk about marriage, about work, and while they don’t exactly become friends, there is no real animosity between them. Everyone realizes that the other is good at what they’re doing, maybe even the best. Of course they are: they are Al Pacino and Robert De Niro and they are sharing the screen for the first time. AO SCOTT

Mann has always been adept at extracting threats from the familiar hustle and bustle of public spaces, and the opening recording of this classic genre thriller (2004) is a good example. When Tom Cruise’s character, a relentless killer, slowly emerges from the crowd at a Los Angeles airport and approaches the camera, his deliberate step is deliberately inconsistent with the sea of ​​travelers around him. Silver-haired and expressionless behind pitch-black sunglasses, he glides through the terminal. His light gray, sharply cut suit and blinding white shirt give off a faint sheen. The shark metaphor is unsubtle and yet perfect: in just under 30 seconds of screen time and before we hear him say a word, we know that this man is a predator. JEANNETTE CATSOULIS

Mann is such a distinctive stylist with such a recognizable visual and acoustic aesthetic that it’s easy to overlook how skillfully he stages his actors. To prove it, Pacino’s big scene in “The Insider” is just the ticket. In the late 1990s, after winning an Oscar for his roaring twist on “Scent of a Woman,” audiences expected Pacino to work at full volume and high intensity. Instead, Mann keeps the actor on a low level – until this scene in which Pacino’s “60 Minutes” producer, who is working on an investigation into Big Tobacco, has finally had enough. Mann and Pacino are building the blast we’re waiting for beautifully. The director modulates the escalation like a symphony conductor, while the actor slowly but surely discharges his bosses, only to let his closest collaborator take the wind out of his sails. JASON BAILEY

In “Thief” (1981) is James Caan Frank, an artisanal safecracker in Chicago. He knows that to live outside the law is to live on borrowed time. After showing up late on a date with Jesse (Tuesday Weld), he gets mad at her and at himself and drives her to a diner. The screaming subsides, but the emotional register becomes more startling. Man chooses simple shots of two people in a cubicle who are almost strangers to each other and are suddenly associated with complete openness and vulnerability. “My life is very ordinary,” protests Jesse. Then Frank lays out his past, present and what he hopes will be his ideal and probably ordinary future – with her. Just like that. GLENN KENNY

The 10-minute opening scene of the 2001 biopic Ali, starring Will Smith, a visual storytelling master class, sees the boxer as Louisville Lip, ironically silent, while training with Sonny Liston for his 1964 heavyweight bout. For this kinetic volley, Mann alternates between a rough performance by the Sam Cooke Club, a Malcolm X speech, and the boxer’s meeting with his rival and a trainer (Jamie Foxx). All of this is connected through Ali’s intense training and memories of his childhood at Jim Crow South: the colored part of a bus and Emmett Till’s face on a front page of a newspaper. Mann’s impressive study of Ali’s inwardness perfectly introduces the impressionable man rather than the invincible pop culture icon he would become. ROBERT DANIELS

Mann’s great romance with the cinema began when, in 1936, at the age of 4, he saw the “last of the Mohicans” in a church cellar. For Mann, James Fenimore Cooper’s story was a “war zone love story,” embodied in Daniel Day-Lewis’ Hawkeye, who fights with Madeleine Stowe’s British émigré Cora to protect both his adopted native family and his future. Cerebral stuff, but man communicates the powerful ideas of the 1992 film through eye contact. The first confirmation of the characters’ appeal is a star contest that spans 40 seconds as the music tiptoes into the shadows. While “I’ll find you!” has become the meme, this moment draws on the kid in man who was once that appreciative boy who just knew he liked what he saw. Amy Nicholson

Mann’s 2009 gangster film “Public Enemies” is a 1930 Ford with a brand new engine. His preference for mixing classic melodramatic impulses with new video technology is noticed when John Dillinger (Johnny Depp) and Billie Frechette (Marion Cotillard) get to know each other over dinner. She looks out of place in her glamorous restaurant in her “three-dollar dress” and asks what he does for a living. He says matter-of-factly: “I’m robbing banks.” Depp and Cotillard play the scene with Old Hollywood glamor, but Mann’s digital eye (with cameraman Dante Spinotti) gives the meet-cute a modern electricity. The director captures precise details in her expressions and goes into the frankness of Dillinger’s admission and the magic of Frechette’s impotence. Here you shake up a genre like a good cocktail. Kyle Turner

Cursed by a chaotic production history, “The Keep” (1983) has developed into a trippy, fascinating curiosity. As with most of my favorite man scenes, my favorite in this film is not one of its vaunted set pieces, but a quieter, almost quiet segment. In it, madness takes over a Romanian village after Nazis unknowingly liberated the malevolent entity contained in a centuries-old fortress. A priest drinks his dog’s blood, a white horse wanders the deserted streets, sheets flutter on a clothesline. It’s incredibly quiet. This is man in the field of Werner Herzog, to a Tangerine Dream soundtrack that answers Popol Vuh’s music for “Aguirre, der Zorn Gottes” and “Nosferatu the Vampyre”. ELISABETH VINCENTELLI

There’s a lot to love about “The Last of the Mohicans” (not least as Daniel Day-Lewis pronounces “Kentucky”), but I’ve definitely seen it in full several times just to get through to the end. The last seven minutes of the film, almost completely free of dialogue, must be one of Mann’s greatest sequences. Call it a music video that serves as a finale if you want, but the combination of movement and emotion, human distress and natural size, all held together by one of the best film scores of the nineties makes it undeniable. GILBERT CRUZ

As a reliable trendsetter, Mann has often played with cutting-edge technology, and “Collateral” used novel high-resolution video to capture the cascading properties of light in a Los Angeles nighttime setting. In the finale, Cruise’s visiting killer attempting to kill a prosecutor (Jada Pinkett Smith) in a downtown skyscraper cuts the power supply and pursues her through a law library lit by almost nothing but the sprawling, indifferent cityscape beyond. Tension becomes a matter of sheer light and shadow, as the silhouette of a wandering murderer is difficult to distinguish from dancing architectural reflections in glass. The scene has possibly the most inspired use of mirrors since The Lady From Shanghai. BEN KENIGSBERG

Blurred white dots above the blackness. Maybe stars in space. A golf ball picking machine drives by and its lamps glow alien. It’s night on the driving range where a lonely Jeffrey Wigand (Russell Crowe) relaxes with a bucket of balls. But a slow pan shows another golfer in the distance. The metal noise of his club makes Wigand nervous. A close-up of a golf ball crashing into the net. The floodlights turn off. Long shadows, aquamarines and an opera score. Has our insider been followed or is the scary scene evidence of his paranoia? NATALIA WINKELMAN

Where to Watch: “Thief” is available on HBO Max. Ali, Collateral, The Fortress, Heat, The Insider, The Last of the Mohicans, and Public Enemies can be rented or owned on major platforms.

Categories
Health

Michael Bennett, Small-City Physician Who Pushed for Masks, Dies at 52

Michael Bennett, Small-Town Doctor Who Pushed for Masks, Dies at 52

This obituary is part of a series about people who died from the coronavirus pandemic. Read about others here.

For the past 15 years, Greenfield, Missouri, a town of 1,371 people about 40 miles northwest of Springfield, had only two general practitioners. One of them was Dr. Michael Bennett, who opened his practice, Greenfield Medical Center, in 2005.

A staunch advocate of wearing masks and social distancing during the coronavirus pandemic, although he encountered opposition to his calls from some city residents, he offered his patients free Covid-19 tests with financial support from federal CARES law.

Dr. Bennet took precautions when treating infected patients, but tested positive for the coronavirus in late December. He was soon hospitalized in St. Louis and spent 50 days on a ventilator and an ECMO (extracorporeal membrane oxygenation), a machine that acts as an artificial lung. He died of Covid-19 on March 6, said former wife Teresa Bennett. He was 52 years old.

Pamela Cramer, the county health department administrator, has seen 715 positive tests and 31 deaths since the pandemic began in Dade County, Missouri, where Greenfield is located. “It really hit us, but not as hard as in other areas,” she said on Wednesday.

Nationwide, 452,706 health care workers have tested positive for the coronavirus, and 1,505 died on March 26, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Michael Keith Bennett was born on February 15, 1969 in New London in the northeast of the state. His father Bob was a farmer; His mother, Meredith (Arnold) Bennett, most recently helped run her son’s clinic.

A head injury from a high school car accident changed Dr. Bennett’s career path.

“He got pretty badly injured, and during that stay in the hospital he decided he wanted to be a doctor,” Ms. Bennett said over the phone. “Before that he was a car mechanic.”

After graduating from the University of Missouri at Columbia with a bachelor’s degree in biology, he received his medical degree from the medical school. After completing his stint at Cox Medical Center South in Springfield, he worked at St. John’s Hospital in nearby Willard, Missouri.

In addition to his doctor’s office being closed, Dr. Bennett ran a 500-acre cattle ranch, and he loved fishing and hunting.

“I think one of the reasons his patients loved him is because he was a good old boy,” said Ms. Bennett, who ran her ex-husband’s practice until 2012 when they divorced.

In addition to his parents, he is survived by his son Austin; his daughter Shelby Bennett; his sister Veronica Bennett; his brother Damon; and his girlfriend Haley Hendrixson.

Dr. Bennett worked closely with Ms. Cramer, the district official, and suggested to her last year that the city take on a mask mandate after several Covid-related deaths in nursing homes. But the idea didn’t make any headway.

After Mrs. Cramer learned that Dr. Bennett had tested positive for Covid-19, she tried to keep in touch. In his last text to her from the hospital on January 8th, he wrote: “I’m sticking to it. Stay in touch. “

Categories
Business

Michael Spavor, Canadian Accused of Spying, Stands Trial in China

Michael Spavor, Canadian Accused of Spying, Stands Trial in China

A Chinese court on Friday opened a lawsuit against a Canadian businessman who has been in custody for more than two years on charges of espionage. This case sparked a worldwide outcry and called on the US to intervene.

A court in Dandong, a northeastern Chinese city, tried the Canadian Michael Spavor, who campaigned for cultural travel to North Korea before he was arrested in late 2018, in retaliation for Canada’s decision to arrest a leading Chinese technology executive United States request.

The court said in a concise statement that Mr. Spavor had been tried for espionage and “illegally providing state secrets abroad”. It was said that a verdict would be pronounced at a later date.

As a sign of China’s efforts to control the trial, the authorities banned the public and the news media from participating in the trial. A group of 10 diplomats from eight countries, including Canada and the United States, tried to gain access to the trial in Dandong, a coastal city near China’s border with North Korea, but were turned away. The court said the trial, which lasted about two hours, was held in private because it contained state secrets.

“We are deeply concerned about the lack of transparency in these processes,” said Jim Nickel, a senior official at Canada’s Embassy in Beijing who attempted to participate in the process, in a statement.

Another Canadian, Michael Kovrig, a former diplomat who was also arrested in 2018, is expected to stand trial in Beijing on Monday.

Since their detention, Mr. Spavor and Mr. Kovrig have been at the center of a heated international dispute between China, Canada and the United States.

China, accusing western countries of attempting to thwart its rise as a tech superpower, is urging the US to end a full-blown fraud case against Meng Wanzhou, chief financial officer of Chinese tech giant Huawei. The United States, requesting Ms. Meng’s extradition, has asked China to release Mr. Spavor and Mr. Kovrig.

“The trials of the two Michaels are revenge for Ms. Meng,” said Guy Saint-Jacques, a veteran Canadian ambassador to China who was Mr. Kovrig’s boss when he was first secretary at the Canadian embassy in Beijing. “It’s a message to Canada and the world: ‘Don’t mess with China.'”

The Canadians question was about to come up when senior government officials from Biden met their Chinese counterparts in Anchorage on Thursday. Friends and relatives of Mr Spavor and Mr Kovrig have urged President Biden and Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to take steps to ensure their release.

American officials said Friday that they were “deeply alarmed” by China’s decision to continue the trials of Mr. Spavor and Mr. Kovrig. “We stand side by side with Canada in demanding their immediate release,” a US embassy spokesman in Beijing said in a statement.

Any compromise with Beijing could be elusive as China has shown no signs of withdrawal but has used the persecution of the two men to project an image of strength and demand that the United States withdraw its extradition request for Ms. Meng.

“Beijing makes it clear that the two Michaels with Chinese characteristics will be tried: closed to the public and the media,” said Diana Fu, professor of political science at the University of Toronto. “His actions leave little doubt as to who will be the ultimate decider of the fate of the Canadians – the Chinese Communist Party, not Biden, not Trudeau.”

The detention of the two men has led to tougher measures against China in Canada. According to a recent poll by the Angus Reid Institute, a leading polling company, only 14 percent of Canadians view China positively. A majority see the Chinese government’s liberation of the two Canadians as a prerequisite for re-establishing relations.

“There is a backlash against China in Canada and the process will only exacerbate attitudes,” said Gordon Houlden, director emeritus of the University of Alberta’s China Institute. He added that the case of the two Michaels underscored the limited leverage of a middle power like Canada in the face of an economic and political giant like China.

Legal experts and human rights defenders have denounced China’s treatment of Canadians and accused Chinese officials of using “hostage diplomacy”. The two men, held in separate prisons in northern China, are largely cut off from the world and sometimes forced to go months without diplomatic visits. They had limited access to defense lawyers.

“Like so many cases where Chinese authorities try to silence a critic or settle a bill, these cases have nothing to do with the law,” said Sophie Richardson, China director at Human Rights Watch.

As a self-described consultant, Mr. Spavor ran an organization in Dandong promoting cultural trips to North Korea. There he made high-ranking contacts and once met North Korea’s leader Kim Jong-un. In 2013, Mr. Spavor helped organize a visit to North Korea for Dennis Rodman, the former NBA star.

“Michael is just an ordinary Canadian businessman,” his family said in a pre-trial statement on Friday. “He loved living and working in China and would never have done anything to harm the interests of China or the Chinese people. We stand by Michael and keep his innocence in this difficult situation. “

Claire Fu and Albee Zhang have contributed to the research.

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Politics

Former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen aids DA Vance felony probe

Former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen aids DA Vance criminal probe

Michael Cohen, former attorney for President Donald Trump, testifies before the House Oversight Committee in the Rayburn House Office Building in Washington, DC on Wednesday, February 27, 2019.

Matt McClain | The Washington Post | Getty Images

Senior officials in the Manhattan Attorney’s Office this week asked ex-President Donald Trump’s former personal attorney Michael Cohen to return for his eighth interview with the firm, which is conducting a far-reaching criminal investigation related to the Trump Organization.

One person familiar with the case said that when Cohen was interviewed for the seventh time by officials via videoconference earlier this week, he was asked to be available for a face-to-face interview at DA Cyrus Vance Jr.’s office soon.

Cohen, who is now an avowed enemy of Trump, agreed, the person said.

Cohen declined to speak to CNBC, as did Vance’s spokesman Danny Frost. A Trump Organization spokeswoman did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The interest in speaking to Cohen repeatedly comes because Vance has strengthened its investigative team, recently gained access to Trump’s financial records, and reportedly broadened the scope of his investigation to investigate Trump’s longtime CFO Allen Weisselberg and the Sons of Weisselberg.

One of these sons works for the Trump Organization and runs the company’s Central Park ice rinks. The other works for Ladder Capital Finance, which has borrowed Trump’s company nearly $ 300 million in connection with four buildings in Manhattan. Vance is known to watch the Trump organization rate its buildings.

These developments, as well as Vance’s long-awaited announcement on Friday that he will not seek re-election this fall, have sparked speculation that the prosecutor will attempt to indict Trump or officials at his company in the coming months.

Vance’s investigation originally focused on how the Trump organization recorded hush money payments made or facilitated by Cohen, prior to the 2016 presidential election, to two women, porn star Stormy Daniels and playboy model Karen McDougal.

When Cohen pleaded guilty to financial financing violations and other crimes in 2018, he told a federal judge that he arranged these payments on Trump’s orders to calmly approve the women over their allegations of having sex with Trump hold. The former president denies the women’s claims.

Cohen later testified to Congress that the Trump Organization would inflate and deflate the value of real estate assets to either gain favorable loan and insurance terms or to reduce the amount of taxes owed on them.

These Cohen allegations are now being investigated in both Vance’s investigation and a civil investigation by Attorney General Letitia James.

Vance court records suggest that his investigation is investigating possible “insurance and banking fraud by the Trump organization and its officials” and possible tax crimes.

Vance last month hired Mark Pomerantz, a private practice criminal defense attorney, as a special assistant prosecutor to work solely on the Trump investigation.

Pomerantz’s career included a stint as head of the criminal justice department of the US Attorney’s Office in Manhattan, where he was responsible for securities fraud and organized crime cases.

Pomerantz was one of the investigators who spoke to Cohen about the video call this week, along with Vance and other top officials in the office, NBC News reported.

The DA office also kept the consulting firm FTI to analyze Trump’s financial records.

In February, shortly after Pomerantz was hired, the US Supreme Court rejected Trump’s efforts to prevent Vance from obtaining his tax returns and other financial records from his longtime accountants through a grand jury subpoena.

The investigators received these documents immediately.

Cohen began working with Vance’s investigation in 2018 before being sentenced to three years in prison for his crimes in 2019.

Investigators from the district attorney’s office visited him at federal prison in Otisville, New York.

Cohen was released from prison last May on fear of being particularly vulnerable to Covid-19 due to several health problems.

He was thrown back in jail in July after defying demands from federal probation officers not to publish a book about Trump or anyone else while he was serving the remainder of his sentence.

About two weeks later, Cohen was released again after an outraged federal judge declared that he had been the victim of retaliation by the Bureau of Prisons for failing to meet this condition. Cohen later published his book on Trump called “Disloyal”.

Since then, Cohen has not only moderated the investigation with Vance, but also hosts a podcast, Mea Culpa, whose guests include other Trump critics such as Daniels and Rosie O’Donnell.

Audio Up, which produces the podcast, touted it Friday as “the fastest growing podcast in the world” with “5 million downloads”.

Categories
Politics

Trump lawyer Michael Cohen pushes podcast as felony probe continues

Trump lawyer Michael Cohen pushes podcast as criminal probe continues

Michael Cohen, former personal attorney for President Donald Trump, leaves the U.S. Capitol after testifying before a closed House Intelligence Committee hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington on February 28, 2019.

Joshua Roberts | Reuters

Podcasts make for strange bedfellows.

Michael Cohen, who worked as Donald Trump’s personal attorney and fixer for years, is now allied with people investigating the former president – and uses a podcast to promote both his criticism and fellow critics of Trump.

Cohen’s ironically titled show “Mea Culpa” – a Latin phrase for “through my fault” – premiered last year with Rosie O’Donnell, a longtime Trump target, who made teenage cracks in her personal looks, among other things.

Cohen, 54, recently featured porn actress Stormy Daniels as a guest on his show. In 2016, Cohen paid her $ 130,000 to buy her pre-election silence over her claim that she had sex with Trump once years ago.

“You and I have both gone through hell and back,” Cohen said to Daniels. “I’m sorry for the unnecessary pain I caused you.”

“Our stories will forever be linked to Donald Trump, but also to each other,” Cohen said.

That’s probably an understatement.

Trump denies Daniels’ claim and also denies allegations of an affair with another woman, Playboy model Karen McDougal, who herself received hush money from the Trump-friendly editor of The National Enquirer before the 2016 election.

Trump and his company, the Trump Organization, reimbursed Cohen for the payoff from Daniels.

A Trump spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment on this article.

The discovery of this payment led to a federal criminal investigation into Cohen, a Manhattan resident who pleaded guilty in 2018 to violating the financial rules for organizing the Daniels and McDougal payouts, as well as other financial crimes unrelated to Trump fight.

Cohen, who was sentenced to three years in prison, said Trump directed him to arrange the hush money deals so as not to affect his chances of winning the presidency.

These payments were likely the first issue investigated by the Manhattan District Attorney’s office, Cyrus Vance Jr. It examined how the Trump organization accounted for them.

However, court records suggest that the investigation may now have expanded to include potential banking and insurance fraud, as well as tax crimes.

These areas became a focus after Cohen Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, DN.Y., said during a testimony to Congress in early 2019 that Trump provided insurance companies with excessive real estate values ​​and undervalued assets in an effort to cut his taxes.

“They dump the asset’s value and then file a request with the tax department for a deduction,” Cohen told Ocasio-Cortez.

New York attorney general Letitia James credited Cohen’s testimony for launching her own ongoing civilian investigation into the Trump Organization’s asset valuations.

“I’m ashamed because I know what Mr. Trump is. He’s a racist. He’s a cheater. He’s a cheater,” Cohen said during his testimony. He also called himself a “fool” for working for Trump and believing in him for so long.

Even when he was in jail, Cohen helped Vance’s probe, and he reportedly continued to help after being released from jail last year due to the coronavirus pandemic.

“The concept for creating the podcast came when I was on leave,” Cohen told CNBC in an interview.

“Mea Culpa” promotes its host as a man who “once vowed to take a ball for the president”.

“But that was before the country was brought to its knees by the president’s own lies and personal insanity,” the podcast’s homepage reads.

“Now, locked in his house, his life, reputation and livelihood shattered, Cohen is on a mission to correct the wrongs he committed on behalf of his boss.”

Transport and goods

For someone released from jail less than a year ago, Cohen’s podcast, which now has more than 50 episodes in its archive, has done very well and is at times among the top 10 political podcasts in the US on Apple and other platforms.

“We’re increasing our audience by over 20% week in, week out,” said Cohen.

“Am I surprised?” Cohen replied when asked if it was him. “I’m happy about it. I don’t want to be surprised.”

Rob Ellin, CEO of digital media company LiveXLive, said of Cohen’s podcast, “Traffic is just skyrocketing.

“The competition from podcasts is much tougher than it used to be,” said Ellin. But he added, “I can’t think of anyone who showed up as quickly as him.”

Ellin’s publicly traded company owns PodcastOne, which sells and handles sales for “Mea Culpa,” and another company that does the merchandising for the podcast. Another unaffiliated company, Audio Up, produces “Mea Culpa”.

Cohen’s show this week added a new clothing line for sale that reflects his current take on Trump.

Items include inmate orange jumpsuit that may contain the initials “DJT” – which also happens to be Trump’s initials – or the seal of the President of the United States over the left breast pocket.

Cohen told CNBC the merchandise was inspired by a rift he made about Trump last week after the US Supreme Court ruled against the ex-president to prevent the prosecutor’s office from filing his tax returns and other financial records to receive from his accountants as part of his criminal investigation.

“He should maybe start talking to someone about custom jumpsuit because it doesn’t look good, that’s my prediction,” Cohen told MSNBC’s Katy Tur.

Ellin said Cohen’s criticism of Trump, coupled with the accelerated pace of the DA and New York AG probes, was a justification for his friend and a driver of interest in “Mea Culpa.”

“Michael said a lot of it,” said Ellin.

“A lot of people didn’t believe him before and are starting to believe him.”

Two years before the January 6th invasion of the Capitol by a crowd of Trump supporters seeking to undo the affirmation that day of President Joe Biden’s election, Cohen warned Congress: “Given my experience with Mr. Trump, I’m afraid that if he loses the 2020 election, there will never be a peaceful change of power. “

Trump was indicted by the House of Representatives shortly before he left office on January 20 for instigating the invasion of Congress with false claims of electoral fraud. He was acquitted by the Senate in a lawsuit last month.

Cohen’s podcast discussed the Capitol uprising in an episode that also included an interview with actor and filmmaker Ben Stiller. Another episode was titled “Why Trump Must Be Indicted”.

Friendship and opportunity

Rob Ellin, LiveXLive Media

Source: LiveXLive Media

Ellin has been friends with Cohen since they played tennis together in Long Island High School.

Both Cohen and Ellin describe this period ironically, including playing doubles against opponents that include Patrick McEnroe, brother of tennis legend John McEnroe, and himself a future professional player.

“I think we won 2 points,” Ellin said of the match in which Cohen yelled at him to adjust to McEnroe’s shots.

“Wasn’t that when I smashed the bat?” he asked Cohen while on a call with CNBC.

Cohen and Ellin both remember inventing the phrase “hug it, b —-” to smooth out their sometimes inconsistent arguments on the tennis court.

Ellin’s brother, Douglas Reed Ellin, later used it as one of the signature phrases for the HBO television series “Entourage” which he created.

Despite their four decades of friendship, the connection between Ellin’s company and Cohen’s podcast was the result of chance.

Months after the launch of “Mea Culpa” last summer, the podcast’s distribution platform was moved to PodcastOne. This company, founded by the founder of radio giant Westwood One, Norm Pattiz, has since been taken over by LiveXLive, Ellin’s company.

Cohen said he was on the phone with PodcastOne one day when he was told that Ellin happened to be in the room.

“I said, ‘Put him on the speakerphone with me,'” Cohen said.

Cohen said doing business with Ellin was “incredible”.

“But it brings me back a lot of nostalgia, whichever is the same,” added Cohen.

Ellin also has a warm personal feeling for Cohen, whom he called “a great father and a great husband”.

“I think Michael is humble,” said Ellin. “That was painful.”

But Ellin sees the business opportunity on his friend’s podcast too.

“We now have the opportunity to help Michael,” by attracting more high-profile guests and expanding marketing opportunities, Ellin said. “Who knows? There could be a second podcast.”

Adam Carolla, a radio host and comedian, recently made crossover appearances with Cohen on “Mea Culpa” and his own high-profile podcast, distributed by PodcastOne.

“It was just a great engagement between the two of them,” said Ellin. “Michael did a great job as an initial radio host at staying in the ring with him.”

Ellin credits Cohen for having the moxie to reinvent himself as a podcast host.

“He’s not afraid to take a swing,” said Ellin. “I think he did an exceptional job driving this.”