https://www.google.com/am .. akamai-rum=off





Colin Huang, the founder of Chinese e-commerce platform Pinduoduo Inc, has lost more wealth this year than anyone else in the world

Huang's fortune has dropped by more than $27 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, after the company's stock plunged as China cracked down on its internet giants

That's the biggest decline among the 500 members of the index, much larger even than the roughly $16 billion lost by China Evergrande Group Chairman Hui Ka Yan, whose real estate empire is struggling under a pile of debt


It's the starkest example of how the tide has turned for China's billionaire class as President Xi Jinping calls for "common prosperity" and reins in the country's private-sector companies. Shares of Pinduoduo, or PDD, have fallen more this year than either Alibaba Group Holding Ltd or Tencent Holdings Ltd


PDD is "more vulnerable to the crackdown compared to those peers with mature and profitable models" like Alibaba and Tencent, said Kenny Ng, a securities strategist at Everbright Sun Hung Kai Co in Hong Kong. "That's the main reason for the stock performance lagging behind other tech companies."

A representative for PDD didn't respond to requests for comment


Pinduoduo's American depositary receipts have dropped 44% this year, compared with a 33% decline for Alibaba's ADRs. Tencent's shares have slid 20% this year in Hong Kong.

Huang, who owns 28% of PDD, founded the company in 2015 and quickly built it into an e-commerce giant by pioneering community buying. PDD's annual active users climbed to 788 million in December, exceeding the 779 million users at Alibaba's online marketplaces


The company's market value reached a peak of $178 billion before falling to about $125 billion. It reported its first quarterly net profit as a public company last month.

Huang, who's now worth about $35 billion, quit his role as chief executive officer last year and stepped down as chairman in March

CHINA has claimed Japan is "preparing for war" as it stages its first major military exercised for nearly 30 years.

The defence drills stoked already rising tensions between the neighbours as a dispute over a chain of strategic islands threatens to escalate into open conflict.







 https://www.the-sun.com/n .. nkaku-islands/

Study:
 https://www.sciencedaily. .. 0913135729.htm

 https://sputniknews.com/2 .. 089175244.html

Supreme court justices do not rule according to personal views and are not politicians, the hardline conservative justice Clarence Thomas said on Thursday evening.

“I think the media makes it sound as though you are just always going right to your personal preference,” Thomas said, at Notre Dame University in Indiana.

“So if they think you are anti-abortion or something personally, they think that’s the way you always will come out. They think you’re for this or for that. They think you become like a politician.

“That’s a problem. You’re going to jeopardise any faith in the legal institutions.”

Earlier this month, Thomas was one of five conservatives who in an emergency “shadow docket” decision let stand an extreme anti-abortion law from Texas.

Supporters of abortion rights fear the move previews a formal overturning of Roe v Wade, the 1973 ruling which guarantees the right, through a case from Mississippi.

We’ve gotten to the point where we’re really good at finding something that separates us,” Thomas said.

He also said: “It’s not about winning and losing at the court.”

Thomas is only the latest justice to insist members of a court on which liberals are outnumbered 6-3 do not rule according to political beliefs.

Last week, the conservative Amy Coney Barrett said “judicial philosophies are not the same as political parties” and claimed the court was “not comprised of a bunch of partisan hacks”.

She was speaking at a Kentucky centre named for Mitch McConnell, the Republican Senate leader who defied convention to block Barack ObamaÂ’s third pick to the court, oversaw two picks by Donald Trump including the hugely controversial Brett Kavanaugh, then ripped up his own precedent to rush BarrettÂ’s confirmation in place of a liberal lion, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, shortly before the last election.

McConnell looked on as Barrett spoke. The irony did not go unnoticed.

At 83, the liberal justice Stephen Breyer is the oldest member of the court, a target of calls to retire from progressives who see a narrowing window for his replacement by a Democratic White House and Senate.

Breyer has said he does not intend to die on the court, as Ginsburg did, but has not indicated when he might step down.

He has also written a book, The Authority of the Court and the Peril of Politics. Last weekend he told Fox News Sunday: “I’m there for everybody. I’m not just there for the Democrats. I’m not just there for the Republicans. And I’m not just there because a president was a Democrat who appointed me.”

Joe Biden has promised to put a Black woman on the court. In Peril, a new book out next week, the Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Robert Costa detail how that promise, a political act in itself, was the result of an endorsement from the South Carolina congressman James Clyburn which did much to propel Biden through the Democratic primary and into the Oval Office.

Thomas, the only African American on the court, has been a consistent presence on the hard right since his highly contentious confirmation in 1991, when he was accused of s*xual harassment by a former colleague. At Notre Dame, protesters shouted “I still believe Anita Hill” before being removed.

Thomas said he “almost never” changed his mind as a result of oral arguments. Infamous for rarely speaking during such proceedings, in 2016 he made headlines by breaking a 10-year silence to ask questions in defence of gun rights.

 https://www.theguardian.c .. tices-politics

In their everyday lives, they served as young Miami-Dade cops who patrolled the countyÂ’s streets in their police cruisers.

It would only take a single sting operation produced by undercover drug agents to bring down the buddy cops, who had a thing for the hit police action-movie franchise, “Bad Boys.”

Next week, Roderick Flowers and Keith Edwards will be headed to federal prison for one year and three months. When they get out, both have to serve two years of house arrest and then face probation for another five years. As part of their probation, both were also ordered by U.S. District Judge Paul Huck to serve up to 1,000 hours of community service a year.

It may not seem like a lot of time behind bars for pleading guilty to protecting a cocaine load from one end of the county to the other. But their law enforcement careers are finished, along with their social media impersonations of Bad Boys actors Will Smith and Martin Lawrence, who played fictional Miami detectives in the movie series.

If there’s a silver lining, this is it: “He’s very satisfied with his sentence because it gives him the opportunity to continue with his life,” said Flowers’ defense attorney, David Weinstein.

The same could be said for Edwards.

Both Flowers, 31, and Edwards, 29, avoided potential sentences of three to five years because while they abused the public trust, they accepted responsibility after they got caught. Also, the load of cocaine — which was fake but made to look real in the sting operation — was a relatively small amount, weighing between half a kilo and two kilos. Each police officer was only paid $5,000 for providing protection for the shipment. The single illicit transaction was entirely orchestrated by undercover Drug Enforcement Administration agents and their confidential sources.

Last November, both Miami-Dade cops were arrested on charges of agreeing to play escorts in a cocaine-trafficking operation set up by undercover DEA agents. Also charged: a Miami money-laundering suspect named Manuel Carlos Hernandez — who boasted Flowers was on his payroll, according to court documents.

According to a criminal complaint affidavit, the case was made with help from a confidential source posing as a Mexican cartel member who arranged international money-laundering deals with Hernandez and brought in the two cops to help transport a shipment of “white girls” — code word for packages of cocaine — from Homestead to Aventura.

“Welcome to the Sinaloa cartel,” the source told the officers, who laughed and drove away after the transport operation on Sept. 16, 2020, according to the affidavit.

 https://news.yahoo.com/dr .. trk=fb&tsrc=fb

10,000 migrants being held under bridge in Texas

About 10,000 migrants are packed under a bridge in Del Rio, Texas, waiting to be taken into U.S. custody, officials said on Thursday.

Customs and Border Protection is sending extra manpower to deal with the crush of migrants in the Del Rio Sector, the agency said in a statement to ABC News.

The Border Patrol is increasing its manpower in the Del Rio Sector and coordinating efforts within DHS and other relevant federal, state and local partners to immediately address the current level of migrant encounters and to facilitate a safe, humane and orderly process," CBP said in a statement. "To prevent injuries from heat-related illness, the shaded area underneath Del Rio International Bridge is serving as a temporary staging site while migrants wait to be taken into USBP custody."

"Drinking water, towels, and portable toilets have been delivered for migrants to use while they await to be transported to a facility," CBP added.

The overwhelming majority of people held under the bridge at the Del Rio Sector are from Haiti, a source briefed on the situation told ABC News.

Del Rio Mayor Bruno Lozano said he had asked federal authorities to help quell the situation.

"Good evening from Del Río, TX. 10,503 (as of 6:45pm, September 16, 2021) migrants under the Del Río International Bridge. This morning we started at 8,200. President Biden, have you been briefed on the ongoing crisis yet," Lozano tweeted on Thursday.

Republicans have swiftly criticized the situation and blamed President Joe Biden.

Republican Sen. Ted Cruz filmed a video from under the bridge, posted on Twitter, saying, "This is a crisis that is unfolding. It's a man-made crisis.

"Local officials pleading with the Administration for help along the border," former President Donald Trump's acting Secretary of Homeland Security Chad Wolf tweeted. "This is absolutely insane."

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott criticized the Biden administration Thursday, saying it reversed its decision to close ports of entry after a massive influx of migrants arrived at the Texas border.

"Six hours after U.S. Customs and Border Protection requested help from Texas to close ports of entry and secure the border, the Biden Administration has now flip-flopped to a different strategy that abandons border security and instead makes it easier for people to cross illegally and for cartels to exploit the border," he said in a statement. "The Biden Administration is in complete disarray and is handling the border crisis as badly as the evacuation from Afghanistan. I have directed the Texas Department of Public Safety and the Texas National Guard to maintain their presence at and around ports of entry to deter crossings."

CBP apprehended just over 208,000 people at the southern border in August, down about 4,000 from July, according to federal data. CBP made just 50,014 apprehensions at the southern border in August 2020, when Trump was in office.

 https://abcnews.go.com/US .. ry?id=80070865

One of the sad constants of American political debate is that, anytime the tax rate on the rich is to be either raised or lowered, Republicans will repeat a certain statistic. To wit, “The Stat” is that the highest-earning one percent of taxpayers pay 40 percent of all income taxes. Conservatives consider this fact a dispositive justification either against any proposal to increase taxes on the rich, or in favor of any plan to reduce it. Over just the past day, I have seen it circulating — here, here, here, everywhere.

It is a figure that has been repeated a million times on Fox News diatribes and in College Republican lectures sponsored by aging billionaires. It is one of the handful of debate-enders, like “Ronald Reagan defeated communism” or “gun controls don’t stop crime,” that any good Republican apparatchik has at his fingertips.

The Stat is literally true. But it is deeply misleading — so misleading, in fact, that it routinely fools even the people who are citing it into thinking it indicates something other than what it actually means.

The first problem with The Stat is that it makes no reference to the proportion of income the rich earn. The juxtaposition between one percent and 40 percent is meant to convey the idea that a small number of people are carrying a gigantic and disproportionate burden, but the figure lacks any context when it omits how much money they earn in the first place.

Indeed, it turns the fact that rich people account for a massive share of the income pool into a reason to see them as mistreated. One common move for polemicists brandishing this figure is to note that the share of taxes paid by the rich is “up sharply” over the past couple decades — which it is, on account of rich people claiming a larger share of the national income. The logic implied by The Stat is that the bigger the proportion of income earned by the richest one percent, the more imperative it is to reduce their tax rates, so that they don’t pay too high a share of the tax burden.


Second, and worse still, The Stat ignores the fact that income taxes are just one component of the federal tax system, and federal taxes are just one component of the total tax system. The federal tax system is far more progressive than state and local taxes, which rely heavily on regressive burdens like sales taxes. (ItÂ’s harder to impose progressives taxes at the state or local level, since rich people moving to a different town or state is relatively easy, while leaving the country is more burdensome.)

What’s more, even within the federal tax system, income taxes are just one, relatively progressive, component. For most workers, the biggest tax they pay isn’t income tax but payroll tax, the line marked “FICA” on your pay stub, which finances Social Security and most of Medicare. That tax is regressive and only applies to the first $137,000 of income.

The trick of describing only the share of income taxes paid by the richest one percent is to make people think it means all taxes. Even professional movement conservatives make this mistake. HereÂ’s Jay Nordlinger:


Another right-wing column published the other day makes the same error, first using the “income tax” qualifier, then slipping out of it to a*sert, falsely, “the top 1% paid more in taxes in 2018 than the bottom 90%” — an extremely common error by conservatives.


Republican politicians, including George W. Bush, have made the same error. The Stat is technically limited to income taxes for a reason — it’s describing a narrow category of taxation that is especially progressive. But it only works because it makes the listener believe it describes all taxes. The trick works so well it fools the people repeating the stat.

The actual truth about the American tax system is that it is slightly progressive. The richest one percent earn about 21 percent of the income and pay 24 percent of the taxes:


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THE NATIONAL INTEREST 7:00 A.M.
No, the Richest One Percent DonÂ’t Pay 40 Percent of the Taxes.
By Jonathan Chait

Photo: GraphicaArtis/Getty Images
One of the sad constants of American political debate is that, anytime the tax rate on the rich is to be either raised or lowered, Republicans will repeat a certain statistic. To wit, “The Stat” is that the highest-earning one percent of taxpayers pay 40 percent of all income taxes. Conservatives consider this fact a dispositive justification either against any proposal to increase taxes on the rich, or in favor of any plan to reduce it. Over just the past day, I have seen it circulating — here, here, here, everywhere.

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It is a figure that has been repeated a million times on Fox News diatribes and in College Republican lectures sponsored by aging billionaires. It is one of the handful of debate-enders, like “Ronald Reagan defeated communism” or “gun controls don’t stop crime,” that any good Republican apparatchik has at his fingertips.

The Stat is literally true. But it is deeply misleading — so misleading, in fact, that it routinely fools even the people who are citing it into thinking it indicates something other than what it actually means.

The first problem with The Stat is that it makes no reference to the proportion of income the rich earn. The juxtaposition between one percent and 40 percent is meant to convey the idea that a small number of people are carrying a gigantic and disproportionate burden, but the figure lacks any context when it omits how much money they earn in the first place.

Indeed, it turns the fact that rich people account for a massive share of the income pool into a reason to see them as mistreated. One common move for polemicists brandishing this figure is to note that the share of taxes paid by the rich is “up sharply” over the past couple decades — which it is, on account of rich people claiming a larger share of the national income. The logic implied by The Stat is that the bigger the proportion of income earned by the richest one percent, the more imperative it is to reduce their tax rates, so that they don’t pay too high a share of the tax burden.

Second, and worse still, The Stat ignores the fact that income taxes are just one component of the federal tax system, and federal taxes are just one component of the total tax system. The federal tax system is far more progressive than state and local taxes, which rely heavily on regressive burdens like sales taxes. (ItÂ’s harder to impose progressives taxes at the state or local level, since rich people moving to a different town or state is relatively easy, while leaving the country is more burdensome.)

What’s more, even within the federal tax system, income taxes are just one, relatively progressive, component. For most workers, the biggest tax they pay isn’t income tax but payroll tax, the line marked “FICA” on your pay stub, which finances Social Security and most of Medicare. That tax is regressive and only applies to the first $137,000 of income.

The trick of describing only the share of income taxes paid by the richest one percent is to make people think it means all taxes. Even professional movement conservatives make this mistake. HereÂ’s Jay Nordlinger:


Another right-wing column published the other day makes the same error, first using the “income tax” qualifier, then slipping out of it to a*sert, falsely, “the top 1% paid more in taxes in 2018 than the bottom 90%” — an extremely common error by conservatives.

Republican politicians, including George W. Bush, have made the same error. The Stat is technically limited to income taxes for a reason — it’s describing a narrow category of taxation that is especially progressive. But it only works because it makes the listener believe it describes all taxes. The trick works so well it fools the people repeating the stat.

The actual truth about the American tax system is that it is slightly progressive. The richest one percent earn about 21 percent of the income and pay 24 percent of the taxes:


Nordlinger helpfully summarizes the conservative notion that the rich are taxed to the limit and cannot pay any more. Of course, we have plenty of recent experience with taxing rich people at higher levels. Restoring the Clinton-era top tax rate of 39.6 percent obviously did not stop the rapid growth seen under Clinton. The Trump tax cuts for business owners and heirs to large fortunes were supposed to encourage more business investment but clearly failed to do so. There are gaping loopholes in the tax code for the wealthy that allow massive fortunes to escape any taxation at all.

A great deal of evidence supports the notion that the tax system could increase the burden on the very rich with little or no economic drag. That idea also happens to be extremely popular. Because it is popular, conservatives feel special urgency to insist it cannot be done. But it can.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Excerpts from OP:
Even this article fails to look at the big picture. By far wage earners pay more taxes than people earning revenues off investments and interest. And by far the 1% earns more than wage earners through non wage income. That's why Zuckerberg gets a $1 salary, because income taxes are way worse than capital gains. The measurement of top 1% is for wage earners, and by this measure Zuckerberg is the bottom 1% along with the poorest of the country.

Edit: This comment is specifically addressing wage earners in terms of the top and bottom percents. Don't confuse wage earners with earners of all incomes.

The Words of Lincoln

On Labor and Capital

Abraham Lincoln

[A message to the U.S. Congress, 3 December 1861.
Reprinted from Land and Freedom, September-0ctober 1937]

"It is not needed, nor fitting here, that a general argument should be made in favor of popular institutions; but there is one point, with its connections, not so hackneyed as most others to which I ask a brief attention. It is the effect to place capital on an equal footing with, if not above, labor, in the structure of government.

It is a*sumed that labor is available only in connection with capital; that nobody labors unless somebody else, owning capital, somehow by the use of it induces him to labor. This a*sumed, it is next considered whether it is best that capital shall hire laborers, and thus induce them to work by their own consent, or buy them, and drive them to it without their consent. Having proceeded thus far, it is naturally concluded that all laborers are either hired laborers or what we call slaves. And further, it is a*sumed that whoever is once a hired laborer is fixed in that condition for life.

Now, there is no such relation between capital and labor as a*sumed, nor is there any such thing as a free man being fixed for life in the condition of a hired laborer. Both these a*sumptions are false, and all inferences from them are groundless.

Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration. Capital has its rights, which are as worthy of protection as any other rights."

Also::
 John Adams's grandson Charles Francis Adams - who was the U.S. Ambassador to the UK during Lincoln's Presidency - relayed a letter from Marx to Lincoln and Lincoln's reply back to Marx, too.

Source:  https://nymag.com/intelli .. the-taxes.html

A judge in Loudoun County interrupted the testimony of the alleged victim in a felony domestic violence trial last week to question her drug use, sentencing her to 10 days in jail for contempt of court after she said she had smoked marijuana earlier in the day.

She was then “physically removed from the witness stand by multiple deputies,” according to a brief filed by the commonwealth’s attorney’s office, which supports the woman’s motion to vacate the contempt charge lodged by Circuit Court Judge James P. Fisher.

The woman, who prosecutors say did not appear intoxicated, served two days in jail before she was released on $1,000 bond, according to court records. Meanwhile, the case against her alleged abuser, who was facing his third domestic violence charge, ended with Fisher declaring a mistrial.

“In the middle of a difficult (cross examination), she was detained, interrogated, arrested and removed from the courtroom,” wrote a*sistant Commonwealth’s Attorney Elena Ventura, who argued the woman was “not treated with the respect, sensitivity or dignity required by law.”

Marijuana is now legal in Virginia and prosecutors wrote in their brief that their witness was just anxious and nervous during the approximately hour and a half of testimony she provided. They said Fisher’s inquiry followed “intense and a*sertive (defense) questioning focused on drug-addiction and infidelity.”

Prosecutors also wrote that Fisher refused to hear from detectives who had interacted with her before the trial, who they said would have testified her “behaviors were consistent with all prior interactions and that she exhibited no signs of intoxication prior to her testimony.”

But the biggest issue, the commonwealth’s attorneys office said, was that Fisher’s actions “may create a chilling effect surrounding victim willingness to testify in cases of domestic violence, an area of law already replete with victims recanting and/or refusing to cooperate, due to the extensive trauma domestic violence victims experience through the cycle of power and control, especially in cases where victims have mental health concerns, as … in the case at bar.”

Fisher, the former commonwealthÂ’s attorney of Fauquier County and onetime chair of the countyÂ’s Republican committee, was appointed by the General a*sembly to an eight-year term in 2019. Efforts to reach his office were unsuccessful and judges in Virginia rarely comment on proceedings.

It is not the first time Fisher has jailed someone in his courtroom for contempt — a step that legal observers say is unusual in Virginia.

Fisher had divorce lawyer Rachel Virk jailed overnight in January 2020 after finding her in contempt of court during a hearing in which she pressed him to clarify a ruling. The Virginia Court of Appeals dismissed her appeal of the charge on a technicality, finding that because the order jailing her was signed by the clerk of court rather than the judge, there was no jurisdiction to contest it. Virk has since filed a lawsuit against the clerk of court and sheriff, which is still pending.

Under Virginia’s summary contempt statute, a judge can immediately fine someone up to $250 and jail them for a maximum of 10 days for misbehavior, violence, threats of violence or “vile, contemptuous, or insulting language” in court.

In last weekÂ’s domestic abuse trial, the witnessÂ’ lawyers say her actions did not meet that standard. The Mercury is not identifying her because she is an alleged domestic violence victim and has not given permission to use her name.

“She did not admit to doing any illegal activity nor did she admit to being under the influence in the courtroom,” said Thomas K. Plofchan, Jr., an attorney with Westlake Legal Group, which is representing the woman with Ryan Campbell at King Campbell Poretz Mitchell. “There was no slurring of her words, nothing that indicated that she had taken some sort of intoxicant that affected her speech or muscular movement.”

Plofchan also questioned the timeline, noting it was an afternoon trial and there was no inquiry as to when in the morning she had used marijuana and how much she had taken.

Both parties also took issue with the way Fisher questioned the witness, noting she was never advised of her constitutional and Miranda rights and that the “independent investigation” he conducted by asking her about her drug use is barred by judicial canon.

A hearing on the motion to vacate the contempt charge is scheduled for next week.

The case has not gone unnoticed by lawmakers from the region, who called FisherÂ’s decision to jail a domestic abuse victim troubling.

“Just in general when dealing with domestic violence victims, there’s a history of not treating the victim with respect and dignity and we’re supposed to be protecting them first,” said Sen. Jennifer Boysko, a Democrat who represents parts of Loudoun.

Sen. Scott Surovell, D-Fairfax, an attorney, questioned whether the witness would have been treated the same way if she had said she had a beer that morning instead.

“When we passed the marijuana legalization statute, one of the things we tried to do was ensure marijuana would be treated the same as alcohol,” he said. “I think it’s important going forward that everybody remember that marijuana possession and consumption is now legal.”

The case has also garnered attention from marijuana reform advocates, who called the case emblematic of the stigmatization cannabis users continue to face.

“In 2020, Virginia ended the practice of jailing individuals for using cannabis, and in 2021 made such use explicitly legal for those age 21 and older,” said Jenn Michelle Pedini, executive director of Virginia NORML, the state chapter of the National Organization to Reform Marijuana Laws. “Yet, these changes in code do not facilitate an immediate end to the stigmatization faced by those who choose to consume cannabis, many of whom will continue to be singled out for discrimination by those still wedded to longstanding stereotypes.”




 https://www.virginiamercu .. urt-testimony/

 https://www.thedailybeast .. -news-airwaves


In late July, Mike Lindell, the MyPillow CEO whoÂ’s made a new name for himself as one of Donald TrumpÂ’s most diehard political supporters and 2020 election deadenders, irately announced he was yanking his companyÂ’s pillow ads from the Fox News airwaves.

The immediate source of tension between the MAGA pillow magnate and the pro-Trump cable-news giant—a relationship that for years has been financially fruitful for both, and led to Lindell’s seeming omnipresicence on the Fox universe—was the network’s refusal to run a TV ad mentioning Lindell’s then-upcoming “cyber symposium” featuring baseless 2020 election “fraud” conspiracy theories.


It was the latest salvo in a media mini-saga of bruised feelings, constant accusations of censorship and election-hacking, and political extremes, with the quarrel between Lindell and Fox serving as a microcosm of the ravingly anti-democratic state of U.S. conservatism in the long shadow of a Trump presidency.

By August, however, according to Lindell and Fox, the pillow mogul began trying to rekindle the advertising bond with Fox, following the speedy MyPillow withdrawal


But the overture towards a Fox-Lindell detente only went so far, with Fox rejecting his new ads multiple times, including as recently as this past Monday and Wednesday

 https://sputniknews.com/2 .. 089166690.html

International Monetary FundÂ’s executive board is reviewing a report prepared for the World Bank that found that IMF chief Kristalina Georgieva in her previous senior role at the World Bank pressured staff to change data to favor China, the IMF said on Friday.

Georgieva has said she disagrees "fundamentally with the findings and interpretations" here of the independent report, prepared by the law firm WilmerHale at the request of the World Bank's ethics committee and issued on Thursday.

The report found that Georgieva and other World Bank officials applied "undue pressure" on staff here to boost China's ranking in the bank's "Doing Business 2018" report on nations' business regulations.

The IMF review was launched after Georgieva briefed the board on the issue on Thursday.

“The IMF board is currently reviewing this matter,” IMF spokesperson Gerry Rice told Reuters.

“As part of the regular procedure in such matters, the ethics committee will report to the board,” Rice said, but gave no time table.

Georgieva addressed the issue at the start of a previously scheduled town hall-style meeting with IMF staff on Friday, according to three people who participated in the virtual event and a fourth who was briefed on her remarks.

‘NOT TRUE’

She said she highly values data and analysis and does not pressure staff to change data as the report found, according to a transcript provided to Reuters.

“Let me put it very simply to you. Not true. Neither in this case, nor before or after, I have put pressure on staff to manipulate data,” Georgieva told IMF staff, according to the transcript.

The Washington-based multilateral lender was seeking ChinaÂ’s support for a big capital increase at the time. Georgieva at the time served as the World BankÂ’s chief executive.

Georgieva has led the IMF and its roughly 2,500 staff since 2019. She has helped lead the global response to the COVID-19 pandemic while securing support of a $650 billion expansion of IMF emergency reserves.

Some of the IMFÂ’s 190 member countries, which fund its lending and other projects aimed at alleviating poverty and bolstering global financial stability, said they are reviewing the ethics report as well.

The U.S. Treasury Department, which manages the dominant U.S. shareholdings in the IMF and the World Bank, said it is analyzing the report’s “serious findings.”

“It’s a serious subject. The independent report is not a judgment and the IMF’s ethics committee and board must study the report, listen to the managing director and present its conclusions,” a French finance ministry source said.

“It’s on this basis that France will be able to fully evaluate the situation,” the source added.

Britain is committed to the good governance of the World Bank Group and is considering the investigationÂ’s findings, a government spokesperson said.

Officials from Japan, another key donor to both institutions, are talking to counterparts in other countries about the findings, a government source with knowledge of the matter told Reuters.

The World Bank said on Thursday it would cancel the “Doing Business” report series, which has run since 2003, dismaying investors who rely on it to help them a*sess country risk.

The news and any fallout is likely to dominate the IMF and World Bank annual meetings, which occur concurrently in Washington the second week of October.

 https://www.reuters.com/a .. -idUSKBN2GD1DT

The United States will arm Australia with nuclear submarine technology as part of a new defence partnership, known as AUKUS — an acronym of the three countries’ names — announced on Wednesday.

Biden said the work to enable Australia to build nuclear-powered submarines would ensure that they had "the most modern capabilities we need to maneuver and defend against rapidly evolving threats



 https://www.firstpost.com .. y-9969671.html

 https://www.kcur.org/news .. rivate-prisons

Earlier this month, Rosalia, a dancer in Las Vegas, decided to hop on a trend popular on StripperTok showing off how much she makes in a few busy days. In the video, captioned, “What a weekend looks like as a Vegas stripper,” Rosalia shows off her earnings with Bia’s “Whole Lotta Money” in the background, displaying the grand total on a whiteboard: $33,700 in three days. “I just happened to have a really good night on the third night,” she tells Rolling Stone. “So it went viral,” racking up more than 48 million views.
Then Rosalia noticed people commenting on her page saying they were going to report her to the IRS, or worse, that they were going to rob her. That’s when she saw her video had been reposted by Ethan Keiser, a babyfaced, moderately balding TikTok creator with more than 840,000 followers. In the video, Keiser includes a screengrab from the IRS “Whistleblower Office,” telling his followers that anyone can report someone and earn 30 percent of their money if they are not paying taxes. “It’s business, baby,” he concludes.

Over the past few weeks, Keiser has pivoted from “dark humor” sketches and trollish social hacks to encouraging his followers to report women on StripperTok to the IRS, apparently based on the (demonstrably false) a*sumption that exotic dancers do not pay taxes. He has even posted a detailed guide for how to “snitch,” encouraging his followers to go to Instagram and search stripper-related hashtags to “find someone flexing cash.” In the video, he claims to earn $60,000 a month from “snitching” on exotic dancers to the IRS, though, when reached for comment, he did not provide evidence to Rolling Stone supporting this claim.
Keiser, whose LinkedIn says he is a software engineer at Cisco, is also a founder and CEO of an app called StudyTree, and has participated in the TechCrunch Disrupt Hackathon in this capacity. Now, however, he appears to be actively cultivating a following among aggrieved men on TikTok. After a female TikToker posted a video about him with the caption “worst date ever with a TikToker,” documenting how he brought his own pool cue to a first date and asked her to buy him a drink before leaving, he posted a rebuttal: “Boys, it is no simp September, I don’t care what you look like, how good-looking you are, if you’re gonna compete with me, I’m gonna win,” he said, urging men to “like and follow if you’re not a simp.”

 https://www.tiktok.com/fo .. 51407134149894

After being called out by the Instagram account @TheDancersResource, Keiser claims the videos about snitching on strippers are intended as a “joke for educational purposes,” with the subtext being that they are intended to discourage women from showing off their cash online. But they have had a proven negative impact on the women featured in his TikToks.
Last June, Ashley DiMeo, a Tristate-area exotic dancer and popular TikTok creator, posted a video in which she put piles of cash into a drawer, with the caption, “How many days of work does it take to fill a drawer.”
“A lot of people are interested in dancers’ lives,” DiMeo tells Rolling Stone of her TikTok account. “And I’m open about my job so I don’t mind letting people know about strippers and breaking down stereotypes and stuff.” (It’s worth noting that dancers and OnlyFans creators showing off how much they make on TikTok is somewhat controversial, with some claiming that it glamorizes or misrepresents the industry, but the trend is an undeniably popular one.)

After that video went viral, racking up 77 million views, she was horrified to find that Keiser had stitched it, encouraging his followers to report her to the IRS for not paying taxes on her income. DiMeo responded by posting a video showing her tax forms, prompting Keiser to delete his video, she says. But TikTok removed her rebuttal video on the grounds that it was depicting “regulated goods and illegal activity.” (TikTok did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Rolling Stone regarding Keiser’s page or why it had removed DiMeo’s video and not his content.)
DiMeo is doubtful that Keiser is actually reporting strippers on TikTok to the IRS, or even that his followers are capable of doing so without knowing their legal names or personal information. But she says his videos constitute a clear invitation to harass women on the platform. “He’s making it worse for us. We get so much hate and he creates so much more hate,” she says. “Even if he’s not getting money from us, it’s not right what he’s doing.”
According to its website, the IRS does offer between 15 and 30 percent of the proceeds collected via its Whistleblower Program, provided the accused makes more than $200,000 a year. Those who submit to the program are required to fill out a detailed form including “copies of books and records, ledger sheets, receipts, bank records, contracts, emails, and the location of a*sets” supporting the claim of alleged tax noncompliance.
The IRS did not immediately respond to Rolling Stone‘s request for comment regarding clarity on its Whistleblower Program or whether it would even be possible for Keiser or anyone else to earn $60,000 a month reporting people to the IRS. But a spokesperson did direct Rolling Stone to the IRS website, which specifies that a claim will not be processed if it is submitted under an alias or anonymously or if it is “found to have no merit [or lacks] sufficient specific and credible information.”
In a statement to Rolling Stone, Keiser reiterated that his videos are intended to raise awareness of internet safety issues. “Workers should be aware that there is a form anyone can fill out to report tax evasion. My message is clear, keep pre-taxed money private.” He denied explicitly targeting or mentioning strippers or exotic dancers in his videos, saying, “some industries are known for exclusively hiring 1099 workers, there [sic] my videos was targeting them. My videos nor I condone harassment of anyone.” (It is false that Keiser does not explicitly mention dancers in his videos, as his “how I make $60k a month snitching” video specifically directs viewers to stripper-related hashtags on Instagram.) Keiser did not respond to repeated questions as to whether he was actually reporting women to the IRS or earning $60,000 a month as a result.

Additionally, Keiser also seems to be sharing information with his follower on how to doxx the women. In an Instagram Live that was screen-recorded by the meme page @Officialcamgirlmemes, Keiser appeared to be encouraging his followers to resort to unethical means to procure personal information about dancers. “Social engineering and mental manipulation can be used on the average person very easily to get whatever information you want out of them. Let’s say for example I can’t get in contact with them, you can get in contact with their parents, say, ‘Hey, your daughter’s so-and-so, we’re calling from the HR department, she listed you as an emergency contact, we’re just calling to make sure your information is correct. Bro, it’s the easiest thing in the world.” He later says, “There is a plentiful number of things that are illegal in life that no one cares about. If you got information of someone and you reported them, no one knows that you broke the — no one cares. Who cares?” (When asked whether he has impersonated an HR department to procure dancers’ personal details, Keiser says @Officialcamgirlmemes’ clip was “taken out of context”: “never did I say I have actually done this,” he says.)
Keiser is far from the first man to weaponize the IRS Whistleblower Program against s*x workers. In 2018, a campaign known as the Thot Audit started circulating among men’s rights groups on Twitter and Reddit, which specifically targeted online s*x workers. Due to the detailed requirements the IRS has in place to report tax evasion, the campaign was largely ineffective, as Christopher Kirk, a tax attorney, previously told Rolling Stone. “The Service wants actionable information about significant tax issues, not guesses, and the program is not a forum for people with an ax to grind,” he said.
Yet that campaign, as well as Keiser’s targeted action against strippers, continues to fuel stigma against an already-marginalized community that is already subject to a great deal of harassment on social media. “It’s not a joke,” says DiMeo. “I don’t know if he’s just doing this for clout, but even if he is, he has all his followers coming for dancers and making them feel uncomfortable.”

For his part, Keiser appears to be doubling down. He posted the full legal name and location of the poster behind an Instagram account warning dancers about him, and threatened to pursue legal action against the poster. After another Instagram account, the Dancers’ Locker Room, posted about his TikTok page, Keiser added a screengrab of his post to his Instagram Stories, adding the caption, “Lmao every stripper will fear me.”

 https://www.rollingstone. .. encer-1227045/

 https://thehill.com/homen .. ding-tax-hikes

KEY POINTS
-Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell has ordered a review of ethics rules for the central bank after an outcry over officials owning individual securities.
-CNBC found Powell owned municipal bonds of the same type bought by the Fed during the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020.
-Two regional Fed presidents likewise owned a*sets of the same type the Fed was buying as the coronavirus threatened the U.S. economyÂ’s health.
-The central bank’s code of conduct says officials “should be careful to avoid any dealings or other conduct that might convey even an appearance of conflict between their personal interests, the interests of the system, and the public interest.”




Amid an outcry about Federal Reserve officials owning and trading individual securities, an in-depth look by CNBC at officialsÂ’ financial disclosures found three who last year held a*sets of the same type the Fed itself was buying, including Chairman Jerome Powell.

None of these holdings or transactions appeared to violate the FedÂ’s code of conduct. But they raise further questions about the FedÂ’s conflict of interest policies and the oversight of central bank officials.

Powell held between $1.25 million and $2.5 million of municipal bonds in family trusts over which he is said to have no control. They were just a small portion of his total reported a*sets. While the bonds were purchased before 2019, they were held while the Fed last year bought $21.3 billion in munis, including one from the state of Illinois purchased by his family trust in 2016.
Boston Fed President Eric Rosengren held between $151,000 and $800,000 worth of real estate investment trusts that owned mortgage-backed securities. He made as many as 37 separate trades in the four REITS while the Fed purchased almost $700 billion in MBS.
Richmond Fed President Thomas Barkin held $1.35 million to $3 million in individual corporate bonds purchased before 2020. They include bonds of Pepsi, Home Depot and Eli Lilly. The Fed last year opened a corporate bond-buying facility and purchased $46.5 billion of corporate bonds.
Among those questions: Should the Fed have banned officials from holding, buying and selling the same a*sets the Fed itself was buying last year when it dramatically widened the types of a*sets it would purchase in response to the pandemic?

The Fed’s own code of conduct says officials “should be careful to avoid any dealings or other conduct that might convey even an appearance of conflict between their personal interests, the interests of the system, and the public interest.”

In response to CNBC questions asked in the process of our research, a Fed spokesperson released a statement Thursday saying Powell ordered a review last week of the Fed’s ethics rules surrounding “permissible financial holdings and activities by senior Fed officials.”

A Fed spokesperson told CNBC that Powell had no say over the central bankÂ’s individual municipal bond purchases and no say over the investments in his familyÂ’s trusts. A Fed ethics officer determined that the holdings did not violate government rules.

Barkin declined to comment.

Rosengren has announced he would sell his individual positions and stop trading while he is president. Dallas Fed President Robert Kaplan, who actively traded millions of dollars of individual stocks, also said he would no longer trade and would sell his individual positions. But he said his trade did not violate Fed ethics rules.

A spokesman for Rosengren told CNBC that he “made sure his personal saving and investment transactions complied with what was permissible under Fed ethics rules.”

But Dennis Kelleher, CEO of the nonprofit Better Markets, said if some of these Fed actions are not against the rules, the rules need to change.

“To think that such trading is acceptable because it is supposedly allowed by Fed’s current policies only highlights that the Fed’s policies are woefully deficient,” Kelleher told CNBC.

While trading by Rosengren and Kaplan was not conducted during the so-called blackout period, when Fed officials are not allowed to talk publicly about monetary policy or trade, Kelleher said during a crisis like last year, “the whole year should be considered a blackout period” because Fed officials are constantly talking and crafting policy in response to fast-moving events.

 https://www.cnbc.com/2021 .. conflicts.html

remains only under EUA for the immunocompromised. next they will consider ages 65+ only. their decision is not binding but it's rare for the FDA to contradict their advisory committees. well damn, wonder what the next dipsh*t talking point will be.

Philadelphia cops are looking for the k*ller of a Queens man who was beaten to death in front of his father at the famous PatÂ’s Steaks restaurant.

Isidro Cortez, 28, his father and a friend stopped at PatÂ’s early Thursday morning after they attended a professional soccer game in Chester, Pa., said Philadelphia police.

Cortez, his dad and their friend got into an argument with four men wearing yellow soccer jerseys with “Club America” written across them, said cops. Club America is a Mexico City soccer team that played in at Subaru Park in Chester on Wednesday night.

The group of four attacked Cortez, punching, kicking and hitting him with the metal lid of a trash can, said police.

The group also a*saulted CortezÂ’s father, who cops did not name but said was 64 years old. The group also attacked CortezÂ’s friend, a 28-year-old man who also was not named.

Police were called at 1:56 a.m. on Thursday. Medics declared Cortez dead at the scene at 2:07 a.m., cops said.

CortezÂ’s father and friend were taken to a local hospital and reported in stable condition, said police.

Police described the four suspects as “light complexion males” in their 20s. They reported no arrests in the case late Thursday night.







 https://www.nydailynews.c .. izq-story.html