Tag: seeks

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Business

N.Y. Seeks Trump Insider’s Data, in Obvious Bid to Achieve Cooperation

N.Y. Seeks Trump Insider’s Records, in Apparent Bid to Gain Cooperation

Manhattan prosecutors investigating former President Donald J. Trump and the Trump Organization have cited the personal banking records of the company’s chief financial officer, questioning gifts he and his family received from Mr. Trump.

Over the past few weeks, prosecutors have trained their focus on the executive Allen H. Weisselberg in what appears to be a determined effort to win his collaboration. Accused of no wrongdoing, Mr Weisselberg has overseen the Trump organization’s finances for decades and could hold the key to a possible criminal case in New York against the former president and his family business.

Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus R. Vance Jr. is investigating, among other things, whether Mr. Trump and the company falsely tampered with property values ​​for credit and tax breaks.

It is unclear whether Mr. Weisselberg would cooperate with the investigation and neither his attorney, Mary E. Mulligan, nor Mr. Vance’s office would comment. However, should a review of his personal finances reveal possible misconduct, prosecutors could use this information to urge Mr. Weisselberg to take them through the inner workings of the company. The 73-year-old accountant began his career with Mr. Trump’s father.

Regardless, prosecutors are demanding a new round of internal documents from the Trump Organization, including ledgers of several of its more than two dozen properties that the company failed to turn over in the past year, according to knowledgeable people. who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive details.

The ledgers provide a line-by-line breakdown of each property’s financial health, including daily earnings, checks, and receipts. Prosecutors could compare this information with the information the company provided to its lenders and local tax authorities to determine if it fraudulently misled them.

Mr. Vance’s office has also cited records from several banks that Mr. Trump or his company had accounts with, including JPMorgan Chase and Capital One, according to people with knowledge of subpoenas issued at the banks.

The previously unreported developments underscore the escalation of the investigation after Mr Vance’s office received Mr Trump’s tax filings and other underlying financial documents in February. You were released on Mr. Trump’s objections after a protracted legal battle that culminated in a ruling by the United States Supreme Court.

The Trump organization declined to comment. In the past, Republican Trump has denied any wrongdoing and described the investigation as a longstanding and politically motivated “fishing expedition”. Mr Vance, a Democrat, recently announced that he was not seeking re-election.

The investigation focused on some of Mr. Trump’s best-known properties: the Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, the Trump Hotels in New York and Chicago, and the Seven Springs Estate in Westchester County. In addition to potential tax and bank fraud, prosecutors are examining statements made by the Trump Organization to insurance companies about the value of various assets.

Prosecutors have cited documents from a company hired by Deutsche Bank, one of the former president’s main lenders, to assess the value of three Trump hotels on Deutsche Bank loans. The company was reviewing the operation of restaurants, bars and gift shops in the hotels, said one respondent.

Last year, prosecutors summoned Deutsche Bank itself and Mr Trump’s other major lender, Ladder Capital, who sold its loans to the Trump Organization years ago. Both banks work together with the prosecutors.

It is unclear whether the prosecution will ultimately bring charges. However, if a case were created against the Trump organization based on the loan records, the company’s lawyers could argue that Deutsche Bank and Ladder Capital are sophisticated financial institutions that have done their own analysis of Mr Trump’s real estate without themselves relying on the company’s internal reviews. The attorneys could also emphasize that it is customary and appropriate in the New York real estate industry to make different valuations of a property depending on the situation – for example, when applying for a loan or when challenging local property taxes – also because there are different methods of calculating Property values.

Your questions about Donald Trump’s taxes answered

Has Donald Trump implemented his taxes?What are investigators looking for?Will the public ever know what’s in Mr. Trump’s taxes?What’s next?

If the prosecutor were to indict Mr Trump – far from certain – the outcome would be the potential criminal case against a former president. For his part, Mr. Trump dismissed the investigation as a politically motivated “fishing expedition” and vowed to “keep fighting”.

External accountants also review the information provided to local tax authorities, which may reduce the likelihood of fraud. Mr Trump has argued that his tax returns were “filed by one of the largest and most prestigious law and accounting firms in the United States”.

In addition to the fraud investigation, Mr. Vance’s office remains focused on his original objective: the role of the Trump Organization in paying hush money during the 2016 presidential campaign to two women who said they did business with Mr. Trump.

Former Mr. Trump personal attorney and fixer Michael D. Cohen paid $ 130,000 to buy the silence of one of the women, Stephanie Clifford, the pornographic film actress who appeared as Stormy Daniels. The Trump Organization later made a refund to Mr. Cohen, and Mr. Vance’s office has verified that the company has properly recorded the $ 130,000 payment.

Mr Cohen, who pleaded guilty to collecting federal campaign funding fees in 2018 for his role in the hush-money system, has long implicated Mr Weisselberg, claiming that he helped develop a reimbursement masking strategy. The federal prosecutor who charged Mr. Cohen did not accuse Mr. Weisselberg of wrongdoing.

Mr Cohen is now cooperating with Mr Vance’s investigation and has met with prosecutors several times, including to review some of Mr Trump’s financial documents. Lanny Davis, an attorney for Mr. Cohen, declined to comment.

The prosecutor also questioned Mr. Weisselberg’s former daughter-in-law, Jennifer Weisselberg, she said. Ms. Weisselberg got involved in a bitter divorce from Mr. Weisselberg’s son Barry, who manages the Trump Wollman Rink in Central Park.

Ms. Weisselberg said in an interview that prosecutors asked her about a number of gifts Mr. Trump and his company gave to the Weisselberg family over the years. These include an apartment in Central Park South for Mrs. Weisselberg and her ex-husband, cars rented for several family members, and private schooling.

Examining the gifts appears to be part of an effort to paint a picture of Mr. Weisselberg’s financial life, as is common when prosecutors seek the cooperation of a potential witness. It is unclear whether prosecutors suspect wrongdoing related to the gifts.

James B. Stewart and Steve Eder contributed to the coverage. Susan C. Beachy contributed to the research.

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Business

AstraZeneca missteps threaten to additional erode belief as firm seeks U.S. approval

AstraZeneca missteps threaten to further erode trust as company seeks U.S. approval

A medical syringe and vial in front of the logo of UK biopharmaceutical company AstraZeneca in this illustrative photo taken on November 18, 2020.

STR | NurPhoto | Getty Images

U.S. health officials released a bizarre statement early Tuesday that AstraZeneca may have based the results of its Covid-19 vaccine study on outdated information.

The company’s fumbling was just the latest “self-inflicted wound” in a series of missteps that threaten to undermine public confidence in his shot, public health and vaccine experts told CNBC.

On Monday, AstraZeneca announced the long-awaited results of its Phase 3 clinical trial of the Covid-19 vaccine it was developing at Oxford University. It is 79% effective in preventing symptomatic diseases and 100% effective against serious illness and hospitalization. According to the company, the analysis was based on 32,449 participants in 88 test centers in the USA, Peru and Chile.

Results questioned

The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases questioned the accuracy of these results early Tuesday when it was informed by the data and safety oversight body overseeing the study that the UK-based company may have information in the results of its U.S. Vaccine studies included that have provided an “incomplete view of efficacy data”.

“We urge the company to work with the DSMB to review efficacy data and ensure that the most accurate and up-to-date efficacy data is released as soon as possible,” said a NIAID statement.

NIAID director Dr. Anthony Fauci said the DSMB, an independent group of experts overseeing clinical trials in the United States, has raised concerns with the agency that the results in AstraZeneca’s press release are more favorable than more recent data from the vaccine study showed, according to STAT News. “I was kind of stunned,” Fauci told STAT, The agency could not be silent.

Unusual statement

The statement by NIAID, which is part of the National Institutes of Health, is highly unusual, health experts said. The last time a US agency statement caused a stir was in September when one of its panels said there was “insufficient data” to show convalescent plasma work against the coronavirus, in line with claims made at the time FDA Commissioner Dr. Stephen Hahn disagreed.

AstraZeneca’s data hiccup is just the latest example in a series of mistakes the company has made that could affect people’s willingness to take the vaccine, which may be approved as early as next month in the U.S., said Isaac Bogoch, an infectious disease expert sat on numerous data and security oversight bodies.

The problems first started in September after the company failed to promptly inform Food and Drug Administration officials that it called off its trial worldwide after a study participant fell ill, according to the New York Times. The company would face other issues later, including criticism, after volunteers were given incorrect vaccine doses in its studies and countries asked if its vaccine was suitable for use in people over 65. Most recently, countries suspended the use of the shot after reports of temporary blood clots in some vaccinated people.

Avoidable defects

“This has been an endless roller coaster ride of what I might call preventable communications mistakes,” Bogoch told CNBC. “You have to be open, you have to be honest, you have to be transparent. That includes both the good and the bad news.”

Bogoch said the missteps were not good for public confidence in the vaccine, adding: “We are already dealing with issues of public confidence in the launch of the vaccine [overall] and one must have public trust to have a successful public health initiative. “

Dr. Leana Wen, professor of public health at George Washington University and former Baltimore health commissioner, said AstraZeneca’s recent hiccups could damage not only public confidence in the company’s vaccine, but confidence in all of its Covid-19 vaccines .

“At this point it is really important that there is full transparency. We need to know what happened. Why does there seem to be this discrepancy in the data?” Said Wen. “I don’t remember seeing public disagreements like this one. And that is again throwing red flags at a time when we can least afford it.”

‘Be assured’

During an interview on CNN Tuesday, Andy Slavitt, President Joe Biden’s senior advisor on the pandemic, tried to reassure Americans about the vaccines. He said, “The public should be confident that nothing will be approved unless the FDA thoroughly analyzes it.” Data.”

When the AstraZeneca vaccine is reviewed by the FDA, the agency will “judge what the data says or what it says and whether or not it is approved. Until then, this is all just stuff that will do it.” happen in the background, “said Slavitt.” We believe this transparency and scientific independence are critical to public trust.

While Americans may not trust the vaccine, the data debacle is unlikely to affect the FDA’s review of the shot once the company submits it for emergency approval, said Lawrence Gostin, a law professor and director of the Collaborating Center on National and International the World Health Organization Global Health Act.

Pivot

“It certainly doesn’t help if the NIH rebukes you shortly before the application for approval,” Gostin said, adding that the number of “self-inflicted wounds” the company had “was astounding.” “AstraZeneca has a good and safe vaccine that I think will help vaccinate America and the world.”

Dr. William Schaffner, an epidemiologist who previously sat on two data security supervisory boards for staphylococcal vaccines, said the eventual FDA approval will be critical not only for the US but for other countries as well, as AstraZeneca’s vaccine is cheaper and easier to sell than its competitors.

“That would resonate around the world and give other health ministries confidence in this vaccine,” said Schaffner.

Correction: This story has been updated to correct the AstraZeneca vaccine dosing regimen. It requires two doses.

Categories
Entertainment

T.I. and Tiny Accused of Sexual Assault; Lawyer Seeks Investigation

T.I. and Tiny Accused of Sexual Assault; Lawyer Seeks Investigation

The night took a turn for the military veteran when TI and Ms. Harris invited her and a few others to join them as they left the club, she said. She believed that they would continue the party elsewhere and remembered that she had willingly joined in.

Instead, they went to a hotel room where, according to the attorney’s letter, the other guests were quickly told to leave, and the woman began to suffer from the effects of everything she had ingested – despite consuming less than two drinks, the letter said. Her friend, whom she had been separated from, never made it into the room; She threw up in the lobby toilet, she said in an interview.

According to the letter, Ms. Harris suggested that the military veteran “freshen up” and took her to the bathroom, where the woman, drunk and overwhelmed, allowed Ms. Harris to undress and bathe her and TI

When they got back to bed, all three were naked and the veteran vomited, the letter said. TI then tried “to put his foot in her vagina.” She said no, said the letter. The woman remembered TI laughing at her because she vomited and he went to get condoms.

“The next thing she remembers,” the letter went on, “was waking up naked on the couch with a towel thrown over her, with a very painful vagina.” A security guard knocked on the door and told her to go, she remembered.

The woman fled. When her friend picked her up, she recounted the rest of her night, they said in separate interviews. At home, the woman made her way to the bathroom and scrubbed her body with soap and Tide with bleach, she said. She was too embarrassed to see a doctor, she said, but later treated herself for an infection.

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World News

Russia Seeks to Divert Youths From Lure of Navalny Protests

Russia Seeks to Divert Youths From Lure of Navalny Protests

The seemingly sisyphic efforts of the Russian authorities to get social networks to remove pro-navalny content, however, have made it clear what is increasingly becoming a major security gap for the Kremlin: the availability of inexpensive, fast, and mostly uncensored internet access in almost all Countries populated corner of the country’s 11 time zones.

The government has tried, and for the most part failed, to contain the internet. For example, last year ended the two-year effort to block the Telegram messaging network, a ban that users could quickly bypass.

On Friday, the Russian telecommunications authority Roskomnadzor announced that YouTube, Instagram and the Russian social network VKontakte had begun canceling “calls for children to participate in illegal mass events” on the orders of the Russian attorney general.

Facebook, which owns Instagram, denied removing content.

“We have received requests from the local regulatory authority to restrict access to certain content that encourages protest,” Facebook said in a statement. “Since this content does not violate our community standards, it stays on our platform.”

The other social networks did not immediately respond to requests for comments.

The biggest problem, the regulator said, was TikTok, the Chinese-owned app that hosts seconds-long viral videos, often musically themed. Videos tagged with the hashtag #Navalny on the network had been viewed more than 800 million times by Friday.

In a clip that was “liked” more than 500,000 times, a young woman teaching pithy English gave tips on how to sound like an American – “I’ll call my lawyer!” – when arrested during the protests.

“The highest level of activity continues on the social network,” Roskomnadzor said in a statement referring to TikTok. “New appeals appear, which in some cases are artificially spread.”

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Business

AMC seeks $550 million as inventory closes at report low

AMC seeks $550 million as stock closes at record low

The world’s largest cinema chain is still around $ 550 million away from its fundraising goal.

On Tuesday, AMC CEO Adam Aron said the company managed to raise just over $ 200 million of the $ 750 million it will need to fund its cash needs by the end of this year.

“We need to raise more but we are working hard and we have a plan and blueprint to get there,” he said. “Only time will tell if we get there or not.”

Aron’s appearance on CNBC’s “Closing Bell” comes on the same day that his company’s stock fell to a 52-week intraday low of $ 1.91 per share and closed at a record low of $ 1.98 per share.

AMC has been crippled by the coronavirus pandemic and its stocks reflect investors’ lack of confidence in the immediate recovery of the cinema industry. The company’s shares fell more than 70% in 2020.

The cinemas had to close in mid-March and spent more than six months closed to the public last year. AMC operates around 400 of its almost 600 theaters with limited seating and shorter opening hours. Theaters in New York City and parts of California will remain closed.

The company is currently trying to renegotiate its rent payments with landlords and is looking to cut, cut and deferred. Should the company not be able to secure additional sources of liquidity, it may have to initiate bankruptcy proceedings.

AMC is not eligible for grants from the Save Our Stages Act of $ 15 billion, which is part of the far larger coronavirus aid package of $ 900 billion, as it is a publicly traded company with locations in more acts as 10 states.

AMC went into the pandemic with nearly $ 5 billion in debt, which it amassed by adding luxury seating to its theaters and buying out rivals like Carmike and Odeon.

The company has already renegotiated its debt to improve its balance sheet and received a $ 100 million investment from Mudrick Capital Management in December.

“We cut out our work for ourselves,” said Aron. “We have to raise more money to get to the other side. Still, we’ve done it four times and that’s our focus.”

Categories
Politics

Justice Dept. Seeks to Pare Again Civil Rights Protections for Minorities

Justice Dept. Seeks to Pare Back Civil Rights Protections for Minorities

The Trump administration has long sought to remove protections for groups at risk of such effects, arguing that the civil rights law passed by Congress only protects against willful acts of discrimination.

The administration had taken legal objections from conservative allies, including the influential Heritage Foundation, and placed the ordinance on a list of anti-discrimination laws advocated by the Obama administration, whose provisions it would revise after President Trump won a second term.

“Federal agencies are full of guidelines that take the multiple impact approach and the Trump administration needs to stamp them out,” wrote Roger Clegg, former president and general counsel of the Center for Equal Opportunity, a conservative think tank, in The National Review Year 2018.

The Trump administration has already signaled its objections to the concept and has taken steps to undermine it.

In 2017, the government closed a complaint from civil rights groups, including the NAACP Legal Protection and Education Fund, on the grounds that Republican Governor Larry Hogan’s cancellation of a major transportation project in Maryland called Red Line violated civil rights Act, because it disproportionately hurts the city’s black residents. The transportation department put the complaint, which opened on the last day of the Obama administration, on hold with no result or explanation.

The ordinance’s fiercest condemnation came in 2018, when the Trump administration essentially accused an Obama-era guidance document addressing the disproportionate disciplinary rates among black children in the U.S. for the mass shooting of a troubled white student in Parkland Fla.

Trump administration officials tried extensively to tie the document to the doctrine of different effects. In the days leading up to the revocation of the document by the Ministries of Education and Justice in December 2018, a federal school safety commission, led by Education Minister Betsy DeVos, published a report recommending that the guidelines be withdrawn because they are “based on different legal theory , but this theory lacks a foundation in applicable law. “It called the reading of the document of the law” at best dubious “.

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World News

China’s Xi Jinping seeks benefit over Biden with ground-breaking EU funding deal

China’s Xi Jinping seeks advantage over Biden with ground-breaking EU investment deal

Chinese negotiators this week surprised their counterparts in the European Union with important market access concessions – after long months of intransigence – that could allow the two parties to reach an agreement on a historic investment deal by the end of the year.

Although EU officials have not yet released the details, a senior EU diplomat said the deal goes beyond anything Beijing has so far offered a foreign partner, both in terms of market access and legal and other guarantees.

EU officials are not naive about the historical timing or political significance of the agreement. It would come shortly after Joe Biden was elected by the Americans in early November, after he pledged to rally allies in Europe and Asia to join forces against the unfair practices of China’s authoritarian capitalist system.

In Brussels, Beijing’s rush to conclude the investment agreement follows the European Commission’s December 2 proposal to President-elect Biden for a “new transatlantic agenda for global change” that seeks nothing less than to bring Europe and the US together USA as a global alliance based on shared values ​​and history.

EU officials I reached out to on Friday said they were torn between the opportunity to get one of the best investment deals with China ever offered and a desire to capitalize on the early days of the Biden administration dramatically improve transatlantic relations. Should the EU make the deal with China, they will likely argue to the Biden team that the concessions they received from Beijing could also apply to future US deals with China.

However, the message from President Xi to President-elect Biden, paraphrasing the 1974 Rolling Stones hit single, is “Time is waiting for no one”.

Xi is unwilling to hit the pause button to give President Biden the time and space to assemble his China team, reach out to allies, and determine his strategy. He will not do this in trade and investment, or in his efforts to address political differences at home. He is moving fast to achieve greater self-sufficiency in the development of key technologies, especially semiconductors. And he will avert any efforts that would hinder his efforts to unite Taiwan with the mainland during his leadership.

It is clear that President Xi sees 2021, the 100th anniversary of the Chinese Communist Party, as perhaps the most important year since he came to power in 2013. He sees the next decade as crucial.

Nothing could have made President Xi’s personal ambitions clearer than the Fifth Plenum of the Central China Committee, which concluded on October 29, just five days before the US elections.

“Judging by the outcome of the plenary session, Xi’s political ambition to remain in power for the next 15 years seems increasingly secure,” said Kevin Rudd, former Australian Prime Minister, in a speech he will give as President of the Asia Society Policy Institute must read. Rudd sees the 2020s as the “make-or-break decade for the future of Chinese and American power”.

President Xi Jinping’s rush to finalize the EU investment deal is just one of many elements of his evolving, preventive approach to the United States in general and President-elect Joe Biden in particular, from trade initiatives around the world to Escalating actions against pro-democracy activists in Hong Kong and real or perceived dissidents at home.

President Xi hopes to persuade the Biden government to cooperatively negotiate similar deals with Beijing. Before the deterioration of relations during the Trump administration, it had been a long-awaited Chinese goal to reach a so-called BIT – or bilateral investment treaty – with the United States, similar to what is being negotiated with the EU.

Less generously, Xi boxed in the Biden administration long before his inauguration on Jan. 20, including his closest democratic allies in investment and trade deals in which Washington is not party. On human rights issues – including the arrest of a Bloomberg journalist this week and the detention of newspaper founder Jimmy Lai and other democracy activists in Hong Kong – it signals that today’s China will resist President-elect Biden’s anticipated efforts to highlight human rights issues.

President Xi not only takes advantage of the longstanding commercial attractions of his country’s nearly 1.4 billion consumers. It also benefits from China’s significant achievement in controlling COVID-19. This, in turn, will allow China to be the only major economy in the world to grow around 1.5-2% this year, with double-digit growth next year.

The news from Brussels follows last month’s announcement that 15 member countries of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations and regional partners – including China but not the United States – have signed the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), one of the largest free trade agreements in history. It is the first time that China has come together with US allies South Korea and Japan in such an agreement.

In addition, President Xi has expressed an interest in joining the comprehensive and progressive agreement on the Trans-Pacific Partnership. The deal was negotiated with the United States during the Obama administration, but President Trump withdrew from the talks long before it was successfully concluded in 2018 as one of his first acts as US President.

Despite his determination to revive relations with allies, President-elect Biden has stated that trade deals will not be a priority. There remains an inadequate constituency for them among Republican or Democratic legislators.

As always, it would be wrong to underestimate China’s challenges, and there are many.

Among them are doubts about the Chinese economic model, particularly as President Xi tightened his control over the private sector, including the recent blockade of ANT’s IPO. China’s return to growth this year has been largely state-driven.

There is growing evidence that President Xi’s most ambitious international effort, the Belt and Road Initiative, is getting into trouble. Chinese officials tacitly rule their ambitions – and they are under pressure to postpone or cancel the debts of the country’s poorer partners.

It is also not clear whether national self-sufficiency efforts will fill the remaining technological gaps, particularly in semiconductors. The Trump administration tightened tensions this week, putting China’s largest chipmaker and drone maker on an export blacklist. US companies had to obtain licenses to sell to them.

Whatever problems President Xi may have, he will emerge more strongly than expected from 2020 when the coronavirus broke out in Wuhan late last year. In the inaugural year of President-elect Biden, President Xi’s actions may be the most spectacular.

Frederick Kempe is a best-selling author, award-winning journalist, and President and CEO of the Atlantic Council, one of the United States’ most influential think tanks on global affairs. He worked for the Wall Street Journal for more than 25 years as a foreign correspondent, assistant editor-in-chief and senior editor for the European edition of the newspaper. His latest book – “Berlin 1961: Kennedy, Khrushchev, and the Most Dangerous Place on Earth” – was a New York Times best seller and has been published in more than a dozen languages. Follow him on Twitter @FredKempe and subscribe here to Inflection Points, his view every Saturday of the top stories and trends of the past week.

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