(Reuters) – Bitcoin rose 5.1% to $28,211 at 20:49 GMT on Tuesday, adding $1,369 to its previous close.
Bitcoin, the world’s biggest and best-known cryptocurrency, is up 71% from the year’s low of $16,496 on Jan. 1.
Ether, the coin linked to the ethereum blockchain network, rose 2.98% to $1,788.6 on Tuesday, adding $51.8 to its previous close.
(Reporting by Nilutpal Timsina in Bengaluru; Editing by Chris Reese)
By John Kruzel
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday agreed to hear a bid by President Joe Biden’s administration to shield the federal government from lawsuits over errors related to credit reports in a case involving a dispute between a Pennsylvania man and the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
The justices took up the USDA’s appeal of a lower court’s ruling that a legal doctrine called sovereign immunity does not shield the U.S. government from liability in lawsuits concerning credit reporting inaccuracies. The administration is seeking to block Reginald Kirtz’s lawsuit against a USDA agency brought under the Fair Credit Reporting Act, a 1970 law passed by Congress to ensure fair and accurate credit reporting.
Kirtz sued two public lenders, including a USDA agency called the Rural Housing Service that furnishes loans to help lower income Americans get housing in rural parts of the country, as well as a Pennsylvania-based lender that provided him a student loan. He sought unspecified money damages.
The Biden administration argued that Kirtz’s suit should be dismissed under sovereign immunity, which generally shields the U.S. government from liability except in instances in which it has been waived by law. At issue is whether Congress waived sovereign immunity when it passed the Fair Credit Reporting Act.
Kirtz has said that his loans were repaid in full, but that the lenders continued to wrongly report that his accounts were past due even after he complained about the discrepancies. These false reports were then passed along to the credit reporting agency TransUnion and damaged Kirtz’s creditworthiness, according to court filings.
A federal judge in Pennsylvania in 2021 granted the Biden administration’s request to dismiss the case, ruling that the Fair Credit Reporting Act “does not contain such an unambiguous waiver of sovereign immunity.” But the Philadelphia-based 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals last year reversed that decision, prompting the administration’s appeal to the Supreme Court.
The USDA in court papers told the justices that allowing the 3rd Circuit’s interpretation of the law to stand “could expose the United States to substantial liability” over its lending and credit reporting practices. The administration also urged the court to take up the dispute in order to resolve a split among federal courts of appeals over whether the Fair Credit Reporting Act waived the U.S. government’s sovereign immunity.
The court is due to hear arguments in the case in its next term, which begins in October.
(Reporting by John Kruzel; Editing by Will Dunham)
KYIV (Reuters) -Russia on Tuesday struck military and infrastructure targets in Ukraine’s capital Kyiv and across other parts of the country, including western areas far from the front lines, Ukrainian officials said.
President Volodymyr Zelenskiy praised Ukraine’s air defences for downing more than 30 drones and defiantly said that Ukraine’s forces were destroying Russian forces in the two main theatres of the conflict, the east and south.
His commander of land forces and the deputy defence minister reported successes with a counteroffensive in both areas.
Russia’s Defence Ministry said that Russian forces hit and destroyed eight ammunition warehouses across Ukraine in the prior 24 hours and repelled Ukrainian attacks in three areas.
It said Ukrainian forces had tried to attack the Russian-held eastern city of Donetsk and the southern Zaporizhzhia region, but had been repelled.
Zelenskiy’s office said drones attacked the Kyiv region in several waves over more than four hours.
Also on Tuesday, Ukrainian forces struck the Russian-controlled town of Nova Kakhovka in the southern Kherson region with drones, killing a women and wounding four civilians, local Russian-appointed authorities said.
FOCUS ON COUNTER-OFFENSIVE
The Russian attacks took place as attention has been focused on Ukrainian actions against Russia’s defensive positions in the south and east – the initial stages of a counteroffensive seeking to push President Vladimir Putin’s troops back from territory seized since the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
Kyiv says it has recaptured 113 square km (44 square miles) of land and eight settlements from Russian forces. But the latest strikes showed that Russia was capable of waging war beyond the front lines.
In his nightly video address, Zelenskiy said Ukrainian forces “in the south and east are actively destroying the enemy, physically cleansing Ukraine.
“A defence against terror means destroying terrorists. And it is a guarantee that the state of evil will never have the opportunity to bring evil to Ukraine.”
General Oleksander Syrskyi, Ukraine’s commander of land forces, said on Telegram that his troops were making progress on the flanks of the shattered eastern city of Bakhmut, which fell to Russian mercenaries last month after months of fighting.
Ukrainian troops, he said, were repelling increasingly intense Russian attacks near Kupiansk in the northeast.
Deputy Defence Minister Hanna Maliar said Ukrainian forces in the south were “gradually, in small steps, but very confidently, making advances. We could even use the allegory that we are carving up every metre of land from the enemy.”
Maliar said Russian forces had mined vast areas, including towns. Ukraine’s military intelligence chief, Kyrylo Budanov, accused Russia of “mining” the pond used to cool reactors at the Russian-controlled Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant.
Zelenskiy’s office said several commercial and administrative buildings and some private houses were damaged in the Russian drone attacks on the Kyiv area. There was no mention of any casualties in the overnight air strikes.
A “critically important facility” was struck in Lviv, far from the front lines and around 70 km (43 miles) from the border with Poland, regional governor Maksym Kozytskiy said, without giving details.
The air force said Ukrainian air defences had been in action, mostly in the Kyiv region, where more than two dozen Iranian-made Shahed drones were destroyed.
The Energy Ministry said debris from falling drones damaged power lines in the Kyiv region and also in the Mykolaiv region in the south, cutting electricity for hundreds of residents.
The air force said Russia had also targeted infrastructure in the southeastern city of Zaporizhzhia with Iskander and S-300 missiles. Ukraine’s military said Russia had fired seven missiles at Zaporizhzhia.
Reuters could not independently verify the reports.
RUSSIAN MINISTER: UKRAINE WANTS TO HIT CRIMEA
Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu said Moscow had information that Ukraine was planning to strike Russian-controlled Crimea with longer-range U.S. and British missiles and warned Russia would retaliate if that happened.
Russia annexed the Crimean Peninsula on the Black Sea from Ukraine in 2014, but considers it to be outside the scope of its “special military operation” in eastern and southern Ukraine.
“The use of these missiles outside the zone of our special military operation would mean that the United States and Britain would be fully dragged into the conflict and would entail immediate strikes on decision-making centres in Ukraine,” Shoigu told a meeting of military officials.
Shoigu also said Ukrainian armed forces had carried out 263 attacks on Russian forces’ positions since June 4, referring to what Moscow regards as the start of Ukraine’s counteroffensive. But it had “not accomplished its goals”, he said.
Ukraine says it has recaptured eight villages.
(Reporting by Olena Harmash in Kyiv and Lidia Kelly in Melbourne; Editing by Timothy Heritage, Angus MacSwan, Mark Heinrich, Ron Popeski and Cynthia Osterman)
By David Brunnstrom, Yew Lun Tian and Martin Quin Pollard
WASHINGTON/BEIJING (Reuters) – The first trip to China by a U.S. secretary of state in five years may have eased tensions that many saw escalating to dangerous levels, but the lack of progress on core issues means the relief will likely only be temporary.
The limited achievements of Antony Blinken’s two days of talks in Beijing were underscored on Tuesday when Washington again called for Beijing to reopen military communication channels and Blinken signaled concern about reports that China plans a military training facility in Cuba, an island 100 miles (160 km) south of the U.S. state of Florida.
At one of the most significant U.S.-China exchanges since U.S. President Joe Biden took office, Blinken and Xi met on Monday. The two sides appeared entrenched over issues from Taiwan to trade – including U.S. actions toward China’s chip industry – plus human rights and Russia’s war against Ukraine.
China and the U.S. did commit to keep talking, with further high-level visits expected in coming months, including possible trips to China by Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo and a visit to Washington by Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang.
Those exchanges could clear the way for meetings between U.S. President Joe Biden and China’s President Xi Jinping at the September G20 meeting in India and the November APEC summit in San Francisco.
Both Xi and Biden said progress had been made with Blinken’s visit, but few observers are optimistic that even higher-level interactions will alter the course of the U.S.-China relationship, or calm fears that the two could one day find themselves in conflict over the Chinese-claimed island of Taiwan.
“The fundamentals of the U.S.-China relationship remain as bad as they’ve been in decades,” said Benjamin Herscovitch, a research fellow at the Australian National University.
“No amount of high-level discussion is likely to overcome the deepening distrust on both sides of the Pacific,” he said, adding that the prospects for bilateral ties was likely to get gloomier ahead of the 2024 U.S. presidential campaign during which the debate about China policy was likely to feature prominently.
A SEAT AT THE TABLE?
Blinken’s hosts did not appear eager to convey warmth toward the United States.
In the meeting between Xi and Blinken, China’s president sat at the head of the table with the America’s top diplomat off to the side, a departure from precedent that sparked speculation in Chinese social media and among China watchers of a possible snub.
Previous U.S. secretaries of state visiting Beijing, going back at least two decades and including Donald Trump’s secretary of state Mike Pompeo, have sat side-by-side with the president, in cream white armchairs, or on opposite sides of the table.
Just days earlier, Xi had welcomed another American, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, and sat side-by-side with him, calling him an “old friend.”
Jacob Stokes, a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security argued against taking too negative a view of the meetings, saying that simply by meeting Blinken, Xi signaled that China is invested in improving relations with the U.S.
“Beijing clearly seeks to engage, even when they say otherwise publicly,” said Stokes. “If Xi wanted to tank the process, he would have skipped the meeting with Blinken.”
China has reasons to push for better relations.
The world’s second biggest economy is struggling with flagging consumer demand, raising the pressure to seek improved trade ties with major western economies, and China leaders see a need to reassure its neighbors that it can manage the contentious U.S. relationship.
John Delury, professor of Chinese studies at South Korea’s Yonsei University, said Xi’s meeting with Blinken appeared to be message to the world “to want to appear to be committed to a good relationship with the United States.”
“I think there’s an awareness of that’s what the world wants, that’s what the region wants. Obviously, the big question is, how long does this stick?”Yang Tao, director-general for North American and Oceanian affairs at the Chinese foreign ministry, was blunt in portraying Blinken’s trip – which the U.S. diplomat originally had planned to make in February but postponed after a suspected Chinese spy balloon flew over the United States – as a victory for China.
Yang said it was made possible after the U.S. side repeatedly said it wanted to look forward and turn the page of tense relations aggravated by the balloon incident and Taiwanese leader Tsai Ing-wen’s transit in the United States in April.
“The U.S. obviously blinked first in this round of strategic confrontation,” he said in a commentary posted on Tuesday on the official WeChat account of the Chinese embassy in France.
(Reporting by David Brunnstrom, Yew Lun Tian and Martin Quin Pollard; Additional reporting by Humeyra Pamuk; Editing by Don Durfee and Alistair Bell)
By Caroline Valetkevitch
NEW YORK (Reuters) – Global stock indexes fell and the dollar index inched up on Tuesday as investors weighed the U.S. interest rate outlook ahead of Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell’s congressional testimony.
U.S. Treasury yields eased.
Adding to uncertainty over the rate outook, a report showed groundbreaking on U.S. single-family homebuilding projects surged in May by the most in more than three decades and permits for future construction also rose.
After lifting rates by 5 percentage points since March 2022, the Fed this month took a breather to assess the effects of its actions. Rate hikes could resume next month, however, with inflation still too high.
Powell’s testimony before the U.S. House of Representatives’ Financial Affairs Committee is due Wednesday.
“If Mr. Powell remains adamant that the central bank is not done raising interest rates to crush inflation, that could help the dollar stabilize after the big declines we saw last week,” said Joe Manimbo, senior market analyst at Convera.
Against a basket of six major currencies, the dollar was up 0.06% on the day.
The Australian dollar fell after its latest central bank meeting minutes showed that keeping interest rates unchanged had been under consideration.
Investors also were digesting China’s move to cut its benchmark loan prime rates (LPR) for the first time in 10 months on Tuesday. Among Beijing’s moves to stimulate the country’s slowing recovery, the People’s Bank of China lowered the medium-term lending facility rate on Thursday.
Energy led declines among the major S&P 500 sectors, with oil prices falling on a mixed demand outlook from China.
On Wall Street, the Dow fell 245.25 points, or 0.72%, to 34,053.87; the S&P 500 lost 20.88 points, or 0.47%, at 4,388.71; and the Nasdaq Composite dropped 22.28 points, or 0.16%, to 13,667.29.
U.S. markets were closed for a public holiday on Monday.
The pan-European STOXX 600 index lost 0.59% and MSCI’s gauge of stocks across the globe shed 0.55%.
U.S. Treasury yields fell, in line with declines in Europe, as investors priced in expectations that the Fed may be near the end of its rate-hiking cycle. The yield on 10-year Treasury notes was down 4.4 (bps) at 3.724%.
Brent futures for August delivery fell 19 cents to settle at $75.90 a barrel, while U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude for July delivery fell $1.28 to $70.50.
Spot gold dropped 0.7% to $1,936.06 an ounce.
(Reporting by Caroline Valetkevitch; additional reporting by Saqib Iqbal Ahmed in New York, Joice Alves in London, Selena Li in Hong Kong and Anisha Sircar in Bengaluru; editing by Susan Fenton, Jason Neely and Richard Chang)
By Kanishka Singh
(Reuters) – At least one person died and about two dozen people were injured overnight after a tornado hit central Mississippi, health authorities said.
The tornado struck the town of Louin, about 70 miles east of Jackson, late on Sunday, the National Weather Service said, adding that multiple tornadoes could have hit the area. Authorities planned a damage assessment on Monday before releasing more details.
A spokeswoman for South Central Regional Medical Center in Laurel said one person died while Jasper County officials said about two dozen people were injured.
The spokeswoman said most of the injured were in stable condition or had been discharged from emergency. The injury toll was expected to rise.
Local media footage from Louin showed damage including destroyed fields and homes.
About 400,000 customers across the U.S. South were without power on Monday morning, outage tracking website Poweroutage.us showed, including about 45,000 in Mississippi.
A dangerous heat wave had recently helped spawn deadly tornadoes in Texas and Florida and threatened to bring more extreme weather to the U.S. South over the long Juneteenth weekend.
At least four people were killed in twisters that touched down on Thursday in the panhandles of Texas and Florida, where flooding also forced almost 150 people out of their homes, officials said.
Over 25 million people, most in Louisiana, Texas and Mississippi, were under an excessive heat warning.
(Reporting by Kanishka Singh in Washington; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama)
By Josh Ye, David Kirton and Chen Lin
HONG KONG/SHENZHEN, China (Reuters) – Psst! Where can a Chinese buyer purchase top-end Nvidia AI chips in the wake of U.S. sanctions?
Visiting the famed Huaqiangbei electronics area in the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen is a good bet – in particular, the SEG Plaza skyscraper whose first 10 floors are crammed with shops selling everything from camera parts to drones. The chips are not advertised but asking discreetly works.
They don’t come cheap. Two vendors there, who spoke with Reuters in person on condition of anonymity, said they could provide small numbers of A100 artificial intelligence chips made by the U.S. chip designer, pricing them at $20,000 a piece – double the usual price.
While buying or selling high-end U.S. chips is not illegal in China, U.S. export restrictions have created a de facto underground market with vendors keen not to draw scrutiny from either U.S. or Chinese authorities.
President Joe Biden’s administration in September ordered Nvidia to stop exporting its two most advanced chips – the A100 and the recently developed H100 – to mainland China and Hong Kong, part of efforts to stymie Chinese AI and supercomputing development amid intensifying political and trade tensions. That was then followed up with an array of semiconductor-related export controls.
But, as AI booms across the globe after the runaway success of OpenAI’s ChatGPT, demand for high-end chips has rocketed, particularly for Nvidia’s microprocessors which are widely regarded as the best at handling machine-learning tasks.
“We are talking with two vendors now to get some,” said Ivan Lau, co-founder of Hong Kong’s Pantheon Lab who is trying to purchase 2-4 new A100 cards to run the startup’s latest AI models.
Those vendors, who bought the chips outside the U.S., were quoting HK$150,000 ($19,150) per card, he said, adding: “They told us straight up that there will be no warranty or support.”
Reuters spoke with 10 vendors in Hong Kong and mainland China who described being able to easily procure small numbers of A100s. Their information highlighted both intense demand in China for the chips and the relative ease with which Washington’s sanctions can be circumvented for small-batch transactions.
Reuters was not able to estimate overall volumes of Nvidia A100 and H100 chips flowing into China or learn to what extent the transactions taking place go towards satisfying demand.
Buyers are typically app developers, startups, researchers or gamers, the vendors said, declining to be identified because the imports contravene U.S. trade restrictions. One vendor said buyers also included Chinese local authorities.
Nvidia said in a statement to Reuters it did not allow exports of the A100 or H100 to China, instead providing reduced-capability substitutes that comply with U.S. law.
“If we receive information that a customer is breaching their agreement with us and exporting restricted products in violation of the law, we would take immediate and appropriate action,” the statement said.
A U.S. Department of Commerce spokesperson said in a statement to Reuters that export control measures have had a “substantial impact” on China’s availability of high-end chips.
The statement also said reports of parties seeking to obtain these chips through illicit means were “not a surprise”, adding that “allegations of violations are investigated”.
China’s State Council Information Office and China’s industry ministry did not respond to requests for comment.
Nvidia said in September that $400 million in sales during its third quarter could be lost if Chinese firms decided not to buy alternative Nvidia products.
Its new China-tailored slower variants – the A800 and H800 – developed to cushion that impact are now being bought by large Chinese tech firms such as Tencent Holdings and Alibaba, which have deep pockets to purchase huge quantities.
OFFERINGS ONLINE
The Chinese vendors said they procured the chips primarily in two ways: snatching up excess stock that finds its way to the market after Nvidia ships large quantities to big U.S. firms, or importing through companies locally incorporated in places such as India, Taiwan and Singapore.
This means the quantities they can secure are small, far from what’s needed to build a sophisticated AI large language model from scratch.
A model similar to OpenAI’s GPT would require more than 30,000 Nvidia A100 cards, according to research firm TrendForce. But a handful can run complex machine-learning tasks and enhance existing AI models.
According to an electronics procurement website that listed some 40 sellers of A100s, most were located in the Huaqiangbei electronics area. But listings for A100s could also be found on Alibaba’s Taobao e-commerce site, on Xiaohongshu which is similar to Instagram, as well as on Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok.
Alibaba, Xiaohongshu and Douyin-owner ByteDance did not respond to requests for comment.
Some of the vendors cautioned that fraud had become common with refurbished chips being passed off as A100s.
Nvidia’s more advanced H100 chips, only on the market since March, appear much harder to come by.
Vinci Chow, a lecturer in economics at the Chinese University of Hong Kong whose department has procured four A100 cards from local vendors for research purposes, said he had been told some packs of eight H100 chips were available for purchase.But only one of the 10 vendors Reuters spoke with said they could procure H100s.
The U.S. is likely not too bothered about small transactions of the chips, said Charlie Chai, a Shanghai-based analyst at 86Research.
“Only if/when China poses a greater threat following significant catch-ups will we see more strict enforcement,” he said.
He added the premiums currently commanded by Chinese vendors for A100 and H100 chips could collapse in the future as many of the Chinese AI startups that were driving purchases would eventually withdraw from the market.
($1 = 7.8307 Hong Kong dollars)
(Reporting by Josh Ye in Hong Kong, David Kirton in Shenzhen and Chen Lin in Singapore; Additional reporting by Fanny Potkin in Singapore and David Shepardson in Washington; Editing by Brenda Goh and Edwina Gibbs)
TRENTON – In a significant development critical to the future of New Jersey, the Senate has approved a bill sponsored by Senator Andrew Zwicker and Senator Bob Smith, recognizing Central Jersey as an official tourism region. This legislation, which also has an identical version in the General Assembly, aims to stimulate economic growth and vitality in the region.
“After centuries of debates about the existence of Central Jersey, we are finally putting it on the map,” remarked Senator Zwicker (D-Middlesex/Mercer/Somerset/Hunterdon). “It is high time that we officially designate Central Jersey as the center of tourism, innovation, and history that it truly is. This bill will promote travel to our charming river towns and canal villages, picturesque walking sites, harvest festivals, breweries, and an abundance of Revolutionary War sites found nowhere else. Central Jersey offers some of the most captivating experiences for travelers and vacationers in New Jersey.”
Senator Smith (D-Middlesex/Somerset) emphasized the unique cultural and historical significance of Central Jersey in the state. He stated, “Central Jersey showcases a rich blend of historical, agricultural, artistic, and eco-tourism experiences that rival any other part of the country. We must make every effort to promote Central Jersey as both a journey and a destination—an often-hidden gem that deserves to shine.”
“In short,” added Zwicker, “Central Jersey does exist, and we invite everyone to come and visit.”
The bill, S-3206, will take effect 90 days after it is enacted. It received a favorable vote of 36-1, securing its release from the Senate.
MILAN (Reuters) – Italy’s Brembo is to move its legal headquarters to the Netherlands and strengthen its loyalty share scheme in a move aimed at increasing M&A opportunities, the premium brake maker said on Tuesday.
The announcement follows similar moves by other major Italian companies, including Ferrari, Exor, Mediaset and Campari, to establish in the Netherlands to enjoy the benefits of the country’s favourable loyalty share legislation.
The new loyalty share scheme will ensure “a more solid shareholder base and higher flexibility in pursuing growth opportunities through acquisitions that can be made through the issue of new shares,” the Italian group said in statement.
Brembo’s tax residence will remain in Italy while its shares will continue to be listed in Milan, the group said.
Shareholders will vote on the proposals at an extraordinary meeting called on July 27, Brembo said, adding that the move was expected to be completed by the end of this year.
Brembo’s Executive Chairman Matteo Tiraboschi said the relocation would not impact the company’s business and structure.
“Brembo intends to continue to grow and remain a competitive key player in the global automotive market that is currently undergoing a great transformation,” he said.
“This relocation allows us to adopt a more flexible share capital structure that is more consistent with the company’s future development strategy”.
The company is being advised by Citigroup.
Brembo, which is controlled by the Bombassei family with a stake around 70%, already approved in 2019 a loyalty share scheme under Italian law which allowed its top shareholder to tighten its grip on the company as it assessed M&A options which might potentially dilute its holding below 50%.
Brembo also owns a 6% stake in Italian tyremaker Pirelli and has a shareholders’ agreement with fellow investor Camfin, the vehicle of Pirelli’s CEO Marco Tronchetti Porvera, in what analysts see as an initial step to potentially build an alternative and stable group of Italian shareholders for the company.
(Reporting by Giulio Piovaccari and Francesca Landini; editing by Keith Weir and Conor Humphries)
Peter Roff on June 20, 2023
As long as Hunter Biden had not been convicted of anything, the chances were pretty good he’d be able to run the clock out past the end of his father’s time in the White House. Now that he’s decided to plead guilty, that calculus changes.
The conventional wisdom going forward will focus no doubt on how Hunter Biden’s plea of guilty to two tax misdemeanors and a felony gun possession charge in exchange for no jail time will accrue to his benefit as well as the president’s. The common consensus will be something on the order of it providing the opportunity for a fresh start for the president’s son and a chance for Joe Biden, as he pursues another term in the White House, to distance himself from potentially damaging allegations that he profited personally from his son’s business activities.
Few things could be further from the truth. The “nothing left to see, please keep moving” argument won’t wash. The plea deal makes it more, rather than less likely the American public will be willing to move on from the credible allegations that have been raised suggesting members of the Biden family — including the president — took bribes from foreign business officials, intervened in official U.S. government investigations and are guilty of misconduct on a level never before uncovered inside the executive branch.
Biden’s allies in the political arena may also try to make that case, but face tough sledding if they do. Republican Kentucky Rep. Jamie Comer, the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability chairman, made that clear in a statement he issued shortly after Hunter Biden’s plea deal was announced.
“Hunter Biden is getting away with a slap on the wrist when growing evidence uncovered by the House Oversight Committee reveals the Bidens engaged in a pattern of corruption, influence peddling, and possibly bribery. These charges against Hunter Biden and sweetheart plea deal have no impact on the Oversight Committee’s investigation,” he said.
Nor should it. The American public understands the trade-offs involved in, for example, sending Al Capone to jail for evading payments on his income tax only because there was no way to prove he was responsible for the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre. What was before the nation then and now are quite different.
Courtesy of Hunter Biden’s laptop and the courageous media establishments that were willing to report what was on it, the public knows evidence exists that supports the influence-peddling allegations that have dogged Hunter, his father, and other members of the Biden inner circle since the 2020 presidential campaign.
Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton called the deal “a thumb in the eye” to the idea of equal justice under the law.
Contrasting Hunter Biden’s plea deal with the ongoing efforts by the Justice Department to prosecute former President Donald J. Trump, Fitton identified the primary beneficiary of the agreement as President Joe Biden.
“For far too long,” Fitton said, “Biden has avoided any serious investigation of his involvement in Hunter’s corrupt foreign business dealings. The plea deal, which doesn’t address the strong evidence of Biden family racketeering, is a sham.”
Indeed, rather than putting an end to the conversation about corruption in the White House, Hunter Biden’s plea agreement is likely to give it more steam. The adage about smoke and fire seems to apply, whether it comes from a burning building or a crack pipe.
A former UPI senior political writer and U.S. News and World Report columnist, Peter Roff is a senior fellow at several public policy organizations including the Trans-Atlantic Leadership Network. Contact him at RoffColumns AT gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter and TruthSocial @TheRoffDraft.
The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller News Foundation.
All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact [email protected].
Harold Hutchison on June 20, 2023
CNN host Dana Bash claimed “there is no evidence” that “two tiers” of justice exist Tuesday following Hunter Biden’s deal with the DOJ to avoid jail time on federal gun and tax charges, which many Republicans and legal experts criticized as a “sweetheart” deal.
“Those who feel the need to or the desire to defend Donald Trump are making the same arguments that they are making against Hunter Biden, which is allegations that the DOJ is — that there are two tiers of justice, and that is one for Democrats, the other is Republicans. We can’t say this enough: there is no evidence to prove it at all,” Bash said.
The Justice Department announced Tuesday that Biden would plead guilty to two misdemeanor tax charges, while a felony charge of lying on the form filled out when purchasing a firearm would be addressed via a pre-trial diversion program. Former President Donald Trump entered a plea of “not guilty” to all counts during his arraignment last week, after Special Counsel Jack Smith secured a grand jury indictment on 37 counts, including violations of the Espionage Act.
WATCH:
Bash turned her attention to Republicans in Congress who ripped the announcement of the plea deal, which legal experts also denounced as a “joke.”
“We need to also point out that the U.S. Attorney in Delaware is a Trump-appointee intentionally kept by Joe Biden to try to take away the appearance of any political influence by the Biden White House, but that doesn’t stop the politics of this, particularly when you are talking about a conservative media ecosystem through which many of these Republicans on Capitol Hill, who Manu is talking about and getting statements from, are going right out into the ecosystem,” Bash added. “It is about fund-raising, and it is about raw meat to the base.”
All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact [email protected].
John Hugh DeMastri on June 20, 2023
A fire at an e-bike shop in New York City killed four people near midnight Tuesday morning, the most recent in a rash of deadly explosions and blazes linked to lithium-ion batteries in the city, according to the New York City Fire Department (FDNY) Tuesday.
The blaze — which started at HQ E-Bike Repair, the ground floor of a six-story building — spread to the apartments above, leaving an additional two individuals in critical condition and one firefighter with minor injuries, according to FDNY in a series of statements published on Twitter. FDNY Fire Commissioner Laura Kavanagh said it was “very clear” that the fire was linked to lithium-ion batteries, as she stood in front of what appeared to be dozens of burned scooters and e-bikes, and warned New Yorkers that such devices could be very dangerous and typically exploded in such a way that rendered escape impossible, as opposed to slowly catching on fire.
“We would like to really emphasize today something we have been saying over and over: While there is tremendous and important regulation that we have conducted with the city council and the mayor’s office, it’s also very, very important we get the word out how incredibly dangerous this is,” Kavanagh said. “This exact scenario where there is an e-bike store on the first floor and residences above, and the volume of fire created by these lithium-ion batteries is incredibly deadly.”
There have been 108 lithium-ion battery fires in the city this year to date, which have injured 66 people and killed 13, FDNY told the Daily Caller News Foundation. The numbers are up significantly across the board compared to the same time last year, when 98 fires had injured 40 and killed two.
Kavanagh continued, noting that the department had “written violations” and “conducted enforcement” at the Chinatown e-bike shop in the past. The shop had been fined $1,600 after it was cited in an August inspection for multiple safety violations in connection with unsafe battery charging, number of batteries and the store-wide electrical system, according to the AP.
A recent inspection found that while no batteries were being charged at the store, it was in violation of storing too many batteries, Chief Fire Marshall Dan Flynn told local outlet ABC7 New York. A man, who identified himself as the owner but refused to provide anything other than his last name, Liu, told the AP that he left no batteries charging overnight when he left.
“A friend of mine came in and yelled ‘there’s a fire next door,’” said neighbor Belal Alayah, who saw the blaze, accordingto local news station ABC7. “I step out, I see the flames so hot it’s going through the metal gate. I knew it was the bike store, so I called the fire department, but the fire kept getting bigger and bigger and it took them awhile to stop the fire.”
Kavanagh praised the work of firefighters and emergency medical responders, who she said “quickly” recovered six people with critical injuries, although four later passed away. She warned that the “sheer volume” of lithium-ion battery fires made it “near impossible” to get out in time.
Deputy Assistant Chief John Sarrocco told ABC7 that crews arrived in “just about four minutes.”
FDNY issued a warning to New Yorkers on Twitter, advising citizens to keep devices with lithium-ion batteries away from exits or windows, avoid using batteries that lacked “approved safety certifications,” avoid charging batteries overnight or when they are not present and to not use damaged or after-market batteries.
“We KNOW micro-mobility devices are in your homes,” the agency said. “Stop what you’re doing and do a quick safety check.”
HQ E-Bike Repair did not immediately respond to a Daily Caller News Foundation request for comment.
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Jake Smith on June 20, 2023
Following a meeting between Chinese President Xi Jinping and U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, the Kremlin said on Tuesday it’s confident in its ties with China and remains unconcerned about U.S. attempts to influence Chinese policy toward Russia, according to Reuters.
Blinken requested during the visit that Beijing be wary that Chinese firms could be providing Russia with technology that could aid a military operation in war efforts against Ukraine, according to Reuters. Following Blinken’s visit, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that Russia is not worried about the U.S. creating problems for Moscow.
“Our strategic partnership relationship with China make us confident that [Beijing’s] development of relations with other countries will never be aimed against our country,” Peskov said, according to Reuters.
“Welcome to China”
Chinese President Xi Jinping shakes hands with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, as the pair meet in Beijing https://t.co/bHR1zwQU0w pic.twitter.com/SbmgZdiRu1
— Bloomberg TV (@BloombergTV) June 19, 2023
Russia – currently sanctioned by the U.S. and Europe – has turned to Beijing markets for its energy exports, as well as strengthened a relationship that could present a challenge to Western powers, according to Reuters. As of now, Beijing has maintained an “impartial position” on the war in Ukraine.
Blinken said his Beijing visit was “candid and constructive,” Reuters reported, but also confirmed that China shut down a request to reestablish military-to-military communications with the U.S. – a key goal for the visit.
All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact [email protected].
Harold Hutchison on June 20, 2023
Former FBI General Counsel Andrew Weissmann, who was a top prosecutor on the Mueller probe, said Tuesday that the plea deal Hunter Biden received was “very fair,” despite the lack of jail time.
The Justice Department announced Tuesday that Biden would plead guilty to two misdemeanor tax charges, while a felony charge of lying on the form filled out when purchasing a firearm would be addressed via a pre-trial diversion program.
WATCH:
“He is going to plead guilty to doing this willfully. So you know, one difference between him and other people like the former president is he is actually pleading guilty, and you do get a benefit, if you plead guilty,” Weissmann told MSNBC host Andrea Mitchell. “Lots of people have talked about, to take the Trump situation, that if he were pleading guilty, he might very well have been treated like David Petraeus and other people who are — who — who just generally are treated better if you plead guilty in our legal system.”
Former President Donald Trump entered a plea of “not guilty” to all counts during his arraignment June 13, after Special Counsel Jack Smith secured a grand jury indictment on 37 counts, including violations of the Espionage Act, that was unsealed June 9.
“It is a Trump holdover who made the decision, who did the investigation, the Tax Division has to sign off on this. So that should give people some comfort that this is not some sweetheart deal, but this is pretty standard,” Weissmann said. “My own experience is that first time tax defenses like this are generally treated pretty leniently, as well as the … felony count, which is a pre-trial diversion. There’s substantial issues that that statute may be unconstitutional. So I think that all in all, this seems like a very fair resolution.”
Weissmann previously criticized Robert Mueller, who served as special counsel during the probe into claims Trump colluded with Russia, for not pursuing Trump aggressively.
All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact [email protected].
Philip Lenczycki on June 20, 2023
A private eye was convicted of acting as an illegal Chinese government agent by a federal grand jury in Brooklyn, the Department of Justice (DOJ) announced Tuesday.
Michael McMahon, 55, a retired New York Police Department sergeant turned private eye, was found guilty of conspiracy to commit interstate stalking and interstate stalking and faces up to 20 years in prison, according to the DOJ press release. Between approximately 2016 and 2019, McMahon “knowingly acted at the direction” of the Chinese government to surveil, harass, stalk and coerce individuals in the U.S. to return to China, the DOJ said.
“It is particularly troubling that defendant Michael McMahon, a former sergeant in the New York City Police Department, engaged in surveillance, harassment and stalking on behalf of a foreign power for money,” United States Attorney Breon Peace said, according to the press release. “We will remain steadfast in exposing and undermining efforts by the Chinese government to reach across our border and perpetrate transnational repression schemes targeting victims in the United States in violation of our laws.”
The federal grand jury also convicted Zhu Yong, 66, and Zheng Congying, 27, of conspiracy to commit interstate stalking and interstate stalking, the press release states.
Around 2015, Interpol issued a “red notice” for two individuals wanted on corruption-related charges by the Chinese government, according to the DOJ.
In service to the Chinese government, Zhu hired McMahon, who used law enforcement and government databases to obtain information on an individual, his wife and daughter, the DOJ said. McMahon then reported the information he obtained from these databases back to Zhu and several others, including Chinese law enforcement, according to the DOJ.
McMahon also surveilled the home of the target’s relative in New Jersey and reported his findings to Zhu and Chinese officials, according to the DOJ press release. In 2017, McMahon emailed himself a Chinese state-run media article concerning Interpol’s hunt for Chinese fugitives, which contained photographs of the individuals he’d been hired to investigate, the DOJ press release states.
At the same time, Zheng also stalked the same target and left a threatening note at their residence, according to the DOJ.
The DOJ said that the stalking activities were a part of Operation Fox Hunt, a Ministry of Public Security initiative that uses “unsanctioned, unilateral and illegal practices, including coercion, extortion and intimidation” to “forcibly repatriate” alleged Chinese criminals living overseas, according to a 2020 DOJ complaint.
However, McMahon’s wife, actress Martha Byrne, told the Daily Caller News Foundation by phone that her husband will appeal the verdict.
“What happened in that courtroom was a travesty.” Byrne told the DCNF. “My husband committed no crime. We will appeal, and the facts will disturb every citizen of this country.”
“Because [the FBI] failed to do their job, they zeroed-in on an innocent man, my husband, to create a story for the jury,” said Byrne.
“They knew since 2017 my husband had been targeted by Chinese agents and failed to warn him and our family,” Byrne said. “If this is how we treat our heroes in this country, people who sacrifice their lives for the betterment of others, our country is really in desperate shape for help.”
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Reagan Reese on June 20, 2023
A keynote speaker at a national library conference told attendees that explicit content in schools and libraries could be “really valuable” to students and other patrons, according to a video recording of the June 8 conference reviewed by the Daily Caller News Foundation.
During the Library 2.0’s “Banned Books and Censorship” conference, University of Kentucky Associate Professor Dr. Shannon M. Oltmann spoke on [censored]ographic content within public schools, noting that books, content and pictures that are “explicit” or make someone “uncomfortable” don’t always fall under the definition of [censored]ography, according to a video recording of the June 8 conference. Oltmann advised attendees not to get caught up in the definition of [censored]ography, saying that the debate over what falls under the definition is misleading.
“Pornography does not equate to something that makes you uncomfortable, I just want to make that very explicit,” Oltmann said. “There are things that make us uncomfortable, there are things that could be explicit, those may or not be defined as [censored]ography. I think chasing after what is [censored]ography and should [censored]ography be on ‘such and such’ library shelves, I think that is a complete red-herring.”
“I don’t want people to get caught up in definitions of [censored]ography definitions, especially definitions that say anything explicit or detailed should not be allowed,” Oltmann said. “Sometimes those things are really valuable to students or other patrons.”
Another speaker, Emily Knox, an associate professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, addressed two books, “Gender Queer,” a book that contains cartoon images of masturbation and oral sex, and “All Boys Aren’t Blue,” a memoir about the experience of a black queer boy growing up that depicts graphic sexually explicit encounters, which have been challenged within school districts because of their [censored]ographic nature. Knox claimed that the books are not [censored]ographic, though they have “surprising,” but not “particularly sexy pictures.”
WATCH:
Parents across the country are pushing to have sexually explicit books removed from schools; a Virginia town board voted to partially freeze funding to a local public library after parents protested the presence of sexually explicit books available in the kid’s section. In California, parents compiled a database of books that feature [censored]ographic scenes and are available in school libraries.
“For these events, none of the speakers are compensated, and the opening keynote panel host chooses his or her own panel members,” a Library 2.0 spokesperson told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “So those particular remarks, or any remarks in that context, do not represent the position of the conference organizers, as we’ve never taken a position on any issue. And while we might personally agree or disagree with specific sentiments that are expressed in forum discussions or conference sessions, we’ve never censored or deleted any content–although we obviously would if it were slanderous or illegal.”
Oltmann said at the conference that she didn’t think there were school districts with [censored]ographic content on their shelves.
“Obviously there are things that are illegal that should not be in libraries,” Oltmann stated. “One thing that is not illegal is [censored]ography, but I cannot imagine a school library that has [censored]ography on their shelves. I cannot imagine most public libraries or academic libraries or any libraries that have [censored]ography on their shelves.”
Oltmann and Knox did not immediately respond to the DCNF’s request for comment.
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Kate Anderson on June 20, 2023
Four Israeli civilians were killed Tuesday after two Palestinians opened fire outside of a settlement in the West Bank, according to The New York Times.
Three Israelis were killed at a restaurant and the fourth outside of a gas station about 25 miles outside of Jerusalem, according to the Times. Several others were injured and one of the attackers was shot and killed by an Israeli man, while the other was pursued by the Israeli military before being shot inside of his vehicle after he tried to escape.
Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu released a statement on the attack, according to the Times.
“Our forces are now working on the ground in order to settle accounts with the murderers,” Netanyahu said. “In recent months, we have already proven that we do settle accounts with all of the murderers, without exception. Those who have attacked us are either in the grave or in prison, and so it will be here.”
Three of the victims were identified as Harel Masood, 21, Elisha Anteman, 18, and Ofer Fayerman, 60, according to The Times of Israel.
PM Netanyahu: “I would like to remind all those who seek to harm us: All options are open. We will continue to fight terrorism with full force and we will defeat it.”
— Prime Minister of Israel (@IsraeliPM) June 20, 2023
Four Israelis were taken to the hospital following the shooting, with one in serious condition, two in moderate condition and one in good condition, according to the Times of Israel. A lockdown order was put in place following the shooting as the military searched for the second suspect, before being lifted after the area was cleared.
The attack comes just days after the Israeli military was forced to send out helicopter gunships to the West Bank after a roadside bomb was detonated by a military vehicle. The exchange left four Palestinians dead and seven Israeli soldiers wounded.
All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact [email protected].
Kate Anderson on June 20, 2023
Warning: This review contains spoilers for the film “Sound of Freedom.”
Timothy Ballard, the founder of Operation Underground Railroad, an anti-human trafficking organization, has made it his mission to rescue children from sexual slavery in countries all over the world because “God’s children are not for sale,” according to the new film “Sound of Freedom.”
“Sound of Freedom,” produced by Angle Studios and written and directed by Alejandro Monteverde, is based on the true story of Ballard’s journey from catching pedophiles as a government agent to going on his own to rescue children that are often never found, even after the perpetrators are caught. Ballard is played by actor Jim Caviezel (“The Passion of the Christ,” “Frequency,” “Deja Vu”), who has called the the role the most important important part he’s had since playing Jesus in Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of the Christ.”
Ballard spent his early days working for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), bringing down U.S. human traffickers before going home to his family every night trying to scrub the images of thousands of children being brutally victimized from his brain. At the beginning of the film, a co-worker says he doesn’t know if he can do the job anymore and Ballard replies that at the end of the day they have to be satisfied with just getting the bad guy because they can’t save everyone, but that quickly changes after he stumbles on a little boy named Miguel.
Caviezel’s performance provides a profoundly thoughtful, and oftentimes painful, look into the life of someone working to dismantle the world’s fastest-growing criminal enterprise. When Ballard is asked why he would go off the reservation, risking his career and retirement, to fulfill an obsessive drive to save children outside of DHS’ jurisdiction, Caviezel’s quiet but desperate delivery pulls at one’s conscience: “This job tears you to pieces [and] this is my one chance to put some of those pieces back together.”
The true stars of the movie, however, are the brother and sister duo, Miguel and Rocío, played by Lucás Ávila and Cristal Aparico, whose sincerity and heartbreaking innocence will bring the audience to tears on more than one occasion. In the film, both children are taken from their single father in Honduras under the guise of a talent audition before being placed on a ship to Mexico, where they are later separated and sold.
The moment is juxtaposed with haunting, real footage of children being snatched while they play soccer, from their mother’s arms, or as they leave school. Multiple times onlookers can be seen watching, yet, doing nothing to stop the attack as the victims kick and fight to escape.
Miguel is rescued months later by DHS agents at the Mexico-U.S. border as part of an undercover assignment, but his sister is nowhere to be found. After reuniting the boy with his father, Miguel gives Ballard a necklace that belonged to Rocío, pleading with him to find her.
Seven-year-old Miguel and eleven-year-old Rocío give a face to the horrors children who are sold into sexual slavery experience, and as Ballard argues in the film, one day it might not be just a child from a faraway country but our own that are subjected to this evil. The film is rated PG-13 and does not show any graphic depictions of assault but several scenes follow the moments leading up to the abuse as Rocío is branded by her traffickers to keep her from running away and Miguel is threatened with his sister’s life if he does not obey the men who bought him.
Other notable performances come from José Zúñiga (“Twilight,” “Madam Secretary,” “American Crime Story”) as Roberto, the children’s father, and Bill Camp (“12 Years A Slave,” “The Queen’s Gambit,” “Joker”) as Batman. Camp’s character, a former mafia boss in Columbia, gives a sickening account of the moment his previous lifestyle finally caught up to him, before agreeing to help Ballard in a sting operation that saves 54 children from a sex hotel.
The third act of the movie is a gripping retelling of Ballard’s efforts to infiltrate the criminal gang that Rocío was sold to. Posing as a United Nations medical worker, Ballard goes into the gang’s territory, and nearly witnesses a rape before getting into a fight with Rocío’s captor and finally fleeing with the little girl under the cover of darkness with a hail of gunfire following them.
The film is set to be released in select theaters on July 4, 2023, and Angel Studios is currently offering a pay-it-forward program, where viewers can pay for someone else to watch the movie who might not otherwise be able to.
All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact [email protected].
By Andrew Goudsward
(Reuters) -David Weiss, the top federal prosecutor in Delaware, wrapped up the most closely watched investigation of his career on Tuesday when U.S. President Joe Biden’s son Hunter agreed to plead guilty to misdemeanor tax crimes.
Weiss, 67, who was appointed to his post by Republican then-President Donald Trump, agreed to stay on the job into the Biden administration to complete a long-running probe into Hunter Biden’s finances.
Hunter Biden, 53, agreed to plead guilty to two misdemeanor charges of willfully failing to pay income taxes and reached an agreement on a gun-related offense that could allow him to avoid a conviction, according to court filings.
Weiss, who was described by former colleagues as an independent-minded career prosecutor, was tasked with spearheading a highly sensitive investigation into the Democratic president’s son, who has come under intense scrutiny from Republican lawmakers.
“I don’t think he’s thinking about the politics at all,” said Thomas Ostrander, who worked with Weiss at law firm Duane Morris. “He’s simply thinking about doing his job and doing what’s appropriate under the circumstances.”
Congressional Republicans criticized the plea deal on Tuesday. Representative James Comer, who is leading investigations into Hunter Biden on the House of Representatives Oversight Committee, called it a “slap on the wrist.”
U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland has previously vowed not to interfere in the criminal investigation and answered Republican criticism by emphasizing Weiss’ role leading the probe.
Weiss was nominated to be U.S. attorney in Delaware by Trump in 2018 with the support of Delaware’s two Democratic U.S. senators. He previously served as the top deputy in the office and was interim U.S. attorney during the early years of the 2009-2017 Obama administration.
Lawmakers credited Weiss with prosecuting corruption, money laundering, drug offenses and helping secure federal funding to combat illegal drug trafficking in Delaware.
Weiss, as the top U.S. prosecutor in the Biden family’s home state, supervised the investigation from its start in 2018, focusing initially on potential violations of tax and money laundering laws in Hunter Biden’s foreign business dealings, particularly in China, Reuters has reported.
The probe was not the first time Weiss worked on issues that sparked political intrigue. As a lawyer in private practice, Weiss’ firm represented the family of Anne Marie Fahey, a secretary of Delaware’s then-governor who went missing in 1996.
Weiss pressed federal authorities to get involved in the investigation, Ostrander said, a move that helped lead to the murder conviction of Delaware’s former deputy attorney general.
Weiss also oversaw the prosecution of Christopher Tigani, a beer distributor who solicited donations for Joe Biden’s unsuccessful 2008 presidential campaign and was later convicted of campaign finance violations, Politico reported.
Weiss’ office suffered a setback in a high-profile corporate case in 2021 when a federal appeals court overturned the convictions of four former Wilmington Trust executives accused of hiding troubled loans in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis.
Prosecutors later agreed to drop all charges.
(Reporting by Andrew GoudswardEditing by David Bario and Jonathan Oatis)
ROME (Reuters) – Italy’s participation in China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) has produced few benefits, Rome’s Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani said on Tuesday, as his country faces a decision on whether to pull out of the deal.
Italy in 2019 became the first and so far only G7 nation to have joined the hugely ambitious BRI scheme, which envisions rebuilding the old Silk Road to connect China with Asia, Europe and beyond with large infrastructure spending.
“We have not had many benefits from the (new) Silk Road, this is technically proven”, Tajani told RAI public television, adding his government was “reflecting” on whether staying in the scheme was in the national interest.
Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s right-wing administration has until the end of the year to make a call. In an interview last month, she said good relations with Beijing were possible even if her country exits.
Tajani, speaking days after the Rome government intervened to limit Chinese influence on tyremaker Pirelli, reiterated that Rome has “no hostility” towards China and wants to have “good relations”.
Ex-premier Giuseppe Conte, who took Italy in the BRI in 2019, hoped it would lift Rome’s underperforming economy, but it has not had a significant impact. Exports to China totalled 16.4 billion euros ($18.1 billion) last year from 13 billion euros in 2019.
By contrast, Chinese exports to Italy rose to 57.5 billion from 31.7 billion over the same period, according to Italian data.
(Reporting by Alvise Armellini, editing by Cynthia Osterman)
TRENTON, NJ – Coming off the heels of a ban on Menthol cigarettes on Juneteenth, New Jersey lawmakers are looking to ban something else.
A bill sponsored by Senator Vin Gopal and Senate President Nicholas Scutari was introduced by the Senate, aiming to prohibit the cruel confinement of breeding pigs and calves raised for veal. The proposed legislation seeks to prevent the animals from being confined in a way that restricts their movement excessively and denies them adequate space.
According to Senator Gopal (D-Gopal), “The practice of confining mother pigs and calves raised for veal, which is prevalent in factory farms, is a barbaric form of animal abuse that should not be tolerated. While the majority of our hog farmers do not engage in this method of confinement, it is crucial for New Jersey to join other states and countries in banning this uncivilized practice once and for all.”
In factory farm settings, it is common for a mother pig to spend her entire pregnancy and nursing periods confined in a metal cage known as a gestation crate or sow stall. These crates provide pigs with an area barely larger than their bodies, measuring about seven feet by two feet. Shortly before giving birth, sows are transferred to farrowing crates, where they can lie down while their piglets nurse.
“Pigs are well-known for their intelligence, sociability, and strong maternal instincts. Placing breeding pigs in gestation crates that severely restrict their movements prior to giving birth is an exceptionally cruel act that our society should no longer tolerate,” expressed Senator Scutari (D-Union/Middlesex/Somerset). “Ultimately, this is a matter of morality and whether New Jersey is finally willing to do what is right.”
The bill specifically aims to prevent farm owners or operators from knowingly confining a breeding pig or veal calf in the following ways:
The State Board of Agriculture and Department of Agriculture would establish penalties for violations of the provisions outlined in the bill.
With a vote of 35-1, the bill, S-1298, was successfully released by the Senate.
By Laura Matthews
NEW YORK (Reuters) – Foreign-exchange investors are moving more of their over-the-counter (OTC) derivatives trades to lookalike products on exchanges to avoid higher costs due to recent global regulations, helping inject transparency into a multitrillion-dollar market that is largely hidden from the public eye.
The growing interest in clearing trades through an exchange comes as regulations capture more users of these contracts, bolstering the need to shift away from bilateral trading and manage rising compliance cost.
“There is more transparency, lower margin requirement overall (in trading listed products), which is a benefit for asset managers and hedge funds in leveraging their positions,” said Ben Feuer, head of FX trading and head of sales trading at Societe Generale in New York.
The gradual behavioral change in FX derivatives trading is being caused by increasing margin and collateral costs, said Joe Midmore, chief commercial officer at OpenGamma, a derivatives analytics firm.
Effective September 2022, buy-side firms with uncleared OTC derivatives totaling at least $8 billion are subject to the regulations – set by the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision and the International Organization of Securities Commissions – and have to ensure there is enough margin to cover the risk of a default by a counterparty to the transaction.
OTC derivatives are privately negotiated contracts while cleared derivatives, though bilaterally negotiated, are booked with a clearinghouse such as a listed exchange. The new margin rules exempt cleared trades.
Higher interest rates make posting margin more expensive.
“Lots of exchange salespeople have been going out to investors for a long time saying ‘look at how much more efficient trading in listed futures is,’ but it didn’t matter until now when interest rates are 5% instead of zero,” said Michael Riddle, CEO at Eris Innovations which partners with the CME Group and other exchanges to develop futures and options products.
The shift is most acute for buy-side firms that have to post margin for the first time, said Paul Houston, head of FX markets at CME Group.
“They will also incur the operational, legal and custody costs of setting up margin facilities as well as the capital costs of posting margin,” Houston said.
CME’s listed FX futures and options market now trades an average daily volume of $85 billion versus $76 billion in 2021, indicating more investors are using exchange-traded derivatives to replace OTC trades where possible.
That is still a fraction of the $7.5 trillion that trades daily in the FX markets, the vast majority of which happens OTC.
British clearing house LCH’s ForexClear also had a record May for FX options, surpassing $200 billion in notional value, meaning the total value of a derivatives trade, for the first time.
“For the buy-side, FX clearing materially lowers counterparty risk, enables portfolio optimization and provides operational benefits,” said James Pearson, head of ForexClear.
GROWING ACCEPTANCE
Some 60 firms started trading FX futures and options at the CME Group for the first time this year, more than two-thirds of which are buy-side clients, according to CME data. Last year, 300 firms were trading new instruments for the first time.
An estimated 775 firms came under the scope of the new rules last September, according to ISDA.
Some clients of Record Financial Group, a specialist currency and asset manager, were exploring listed alternatives while others were adjusting their risk management programs to “stay within or under the regulatory threshold,” said the firm’s head of sales, Tom Arnold.
Joe Spiro, director of product management at Hazeltree, said as a firm’s exposure grows more may have to adhere to the new rules, widening the appeal for trading on exchanges.
Investors can also now transact on a relationship basis as they do in the OTC space and access clearing.
For instance, some 274,000 contracts in privately negotiated blocks and exchange-for-related-positions (EFRPs), products that allow users to trade on a disclosed, relationship basis against their liquidity providers and access clearing, were traded on CME on March 8, up 23% from the previous record in December.
Client clearing of nondeliverable forwards at ForexClear for January to May reached $261 billion, 58% higher than the corresponding period in 2022.
Not all see the need to shift even with higher costs and not all derivative products have a cleared alternative, which limits broader adoption.
Exchange-traded futures contracts have a fixed settlement date relative to OTC forwards, making them unattractive to some investors, said Peter Vassallo, a portfolio manager for the currencies team at BNP Paribas Asset Management.
There are also concerns that pushing more trades to the clearinghouse will consolidate risk rather than reduce it.
“There is inherently risk involved in lots of people transacting derivatives with each other,” said Riddle. “And there is no model that removes all that risk, it only changes where it is, but can mitigate it.”
(Reporting by Laura Matthews in New York; Additional reporting by Shankar Ramakrishnan in New York; Editing by Megan Davies and Matthew Lewis)
By Ludwig Burger
FRANKFURT (Reuters) -Sanofi said on Tuesday that the International Chamber of Commerce rejected rival drugmaker Boehringer Ingelheim’s (BI) claims to be indemnified by Sanofi in cancer lawsuits linked to heartburn drug Zantac in the United States.
Shares in France’s Sanofi, which added that the decision cannot be appealed, gained 2.4% shortly after the 0700 GMT market open, reaching a three-week high.
Germany’s family-owned Boehringer said it had taken note of the arbitral tribunal’s decision and would not comment further.
Thousands of U.S. lawsuits claiming Zantac causes cancer have been disputed by drugmakers that have sold either the branded or generic version of the drug since it was initially approved in 1983. It went on to become one of the first medicines to top $1 billion in sales.
Sanofi and Boehringer had sought arbitration to determine whether liability in lawsuits was transferred to the French group after it acquired the marketing rights from Boehringer in a 2017 deal.
Originally marketed by a forerunner of GSK, the medicine has been sold at different times by companies including Pfizer, Boehringer and Sanofi as well as several generic drugmakers.
Sanofi reiterated that it regarded its defence of the underlying litigation as very strong.
“There is no reliable scientific evidence that Zantac causes the alleged injuries in the cases brought against GSK, Pfizer, BI, Sanofi, and others in the U.S. litigation,” the company said.
(Reporting by Ludwig Burger; Editing by Kirsten Donovan and Emma Rumney)
By David Shepardson
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Transportation Security Administration (TSA) said Tuesday it had screened 2.785 million airline passengers on June 16, the highest number since before the COVID-19 pandemic.
The TSA said it had screened approximately 10.6 million people from Friday through Monday, the Juneteenth holiday, giving an average of 2.67 million people per day.
Airlines reported few cancellations over the holiday period and the TSA said last Friday was the fourth-highest single-day for screenings ever and the highest since November 2019.
The post-COVID 19 rebound looks set to continue, with industry group Airlines for America estimating a record 256.8 million passengers will fly in the June-August quarter, up 1% over the 254.6 million passengers in the same period in 2019.
Carriers, which have already cut about 10% of scheduled flights this spring to address performance issues, are often operating larger planes as they have trimmed flights to smooth operations, especially in congested New York airspace.
Carriers, which had a rough 2022 with high cancellations at various points, have had a much improved 2023 through April, according to the FAA.
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) agreed in March to requests by Delta Air Lines and United Airlines to temporarily return up to 10% of slots and flight timings at congested New York area airports John F. Kennedy International, LaGuardia, Newark and Washington National, citing air traffic controller shortages for flights from May 15 to Sept. 15.
The carriers agreed to cuts on the condition they not be backfilled. Airlines can lose slots at congested airports if they do not use them at least 80% of the time.
The FAA said staffing at the New York Terminal Radar Approach Control remains below targets. Last summer, air traffic control staffing was a factor in delays of 41,498 flights from New York airports, the FAA reported in March.
(Reporting by David Shepardson; Editing by Mark Porter and Alexander Smith)
By Karen Freifeld
(Reuters) – Donald Trump’s bid to oust the judge overseeing the criminal case against him over a hush-money payment to a [censored] star should be rejected, the Manhattan District Attorney’s office said in a filing on Tuesday.
Trump has a “history of baselessly accusing state and federal judges around the country of bias,” prosecutors wrote in opposing Trump’s motion for New York state Justice Juan Merchan to remove himself from the case.
A lawyer for Trump declined to comment.
The former Republican president has said Merchan is conflicted because his daughter has worked for Democrats and stands to benefit financially from a conviction in the case.
He has also said Merchan pushed former Trump Organization CFO Allen Weisselberg to cooperate with prosecutors, which he alleged showed the judge’s bias, during the criminal tax fraud case against the company.
Trump has pleaded not guilty to 34 criminal counts of falsifying business records tied to a payment to [censored] star Stormy Daniels before the 2016 presidential election.
Prosecutors said the payment was meant to buy her silence about a sexual encounter she claims she had with Trump. Trump has denied the encounter.
In opposing Merchan’s recusal, prosecutors cited a Reuters report of a recent Advisory Committee on Judicial Ethics opinion that mirrored the facts of the case, without identifying the judge.
The opinion said a judge’s impartiality “cannot reasonably questioned based on the business and/or political activities of the judge’s first-degree relative,” when there was no sign the case would affect the relative or the business.
Trump also questioned $35 in political donations made by Merchan, including $15 to a group that supported Democrat Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election.
Prosecutors said the modest amount did not warrant recusal, and that adopting Trump’s arguments would effectively let Trump hand-pick a judge by excluding judges appointed by Democrats.
They also said “at no point” did Merchan “induce” Weisselberg to cooperate against Trump.
Finally, prosecutors said, Trump’s history of attacking courts and judges, “makes clear that this motion is based on tactics, not ethics.”
(Reporting by Karen Freifeld; Editing by Cynthia Osterman)