by KS
UNITED STATES: Trump Said What?!
In the latest baffling moment post-2020 election, the President of the United States has done something truly bizarre, and perhaps illegal.
Over the past weekend, several media outlets released audio of a phone call between President Trump and Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger. During the conversation, Trump said, “All I want to do is this. I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have. Because we won the state.” In response, Raffensperger informed Trump that his data was wrong, and that the election results were indeed accurate.
While some members of the Republican party felt nothing in particular of the call, other people, mainly Democrats have felt that it was nothing short of illegal. Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez even called for Articles of Impeachment to be brought against the President. The last times Democrats tired that however, it failed to garner a conviction in the U.S. Senate.
EUROPE: UK Enters Lockdown
On Jan. 4, United Kingdom Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced a national lockdown and instructed people to stay at home to control the virus, protect the NHS and save lives.
The decision follows a rapid rise in infections, hospital admissions and case rates across the country, and our hospitals are now under more pressure than they have been at any other point throughout the pandemic.
This drastic jump in cases has been attributed to the new variant of COVID-19, which our scientists have now confirmed is between 50 and 70 per cent more transmissible.
As of Jan. 4, there were 26,626 COVID patients in hospital in England, an increase of over 30% in one week, and the April 2020 hospital admissions peak has now been surpassed by 40%. Four UK Chief Medical Officers have advised that the COVID threat level should move from level four to level five, indicating that if action is not taken NHS capacity may be overwhelmed within 21 days.
The case rate in England up to Dec. 29 was 478.5 per 100k, three times higher than on Dec. 1 when the case rate was 151.3. On Jan. 3, 454 deaths were reported, with 4,228 over the last 7 days – a 24% increase on the previous 7 days.
The Prime Minister praised everyone’s collective efforts to get this virus under control, emphasizing the great national effort to fight COVID. Despite this, the pressure on our NHS, rapidly rising infection rates and hospital admissions due to the new variant mean that another national lockdown is sadly necessary.
From now until sometime in February, people will only be allowed to leave their homes for the following reasons:
· Shop for basic necessities, for themselves or a vulnerable person.
· Go to work, or provide voluntary or charitable services, if one cannot reasonably do so from home.
· Exercise with household members (or support bubble) or one other person, this should be limited to once per day, and people should not travel outside their local area.
· Meet a support bubble or childcare bubble where necessary, but only if are legally permitted to form one.
· Seek medical assistance or avoid injury, illness or risk of harm (including domestic abuse).
· Attend education or childcare – for those eligible.
All primary schools, secondary schools and colleges will move to remote learning, except for the children of key workers and vulnerable children. While children are still very unlikely to be severely affected by COVID-19, the government recognizes that schools must be included in the restrictions in order to have the best chance of getting the virus under control as schools can act as vectors of transmission, causing the virus to spread between households when rates are high.
Early years settings such as nurseries, alternative provision and special schools will remain open and vulnerable children and children of critical workers can continue to use registered childcare, childminders and other childcare activities.
The government is also advising the clinically extremely vulnerable to begin shielding again, and letters will be sent to individuals with advice on what this means for them.
All non-essential retail, hospitality and personal care services must close, or remain closed. Restaurants can continue delivery, takeaway or click-and-collect of food and non-alcoholic drinks, but venues will no longer be able to serve takeaway or click-and-collect alcohol.
Essential shops and garden centers can remain open. Entertainment venues and animal attractions such as zoos must close, but the outdoor areas of venues such as heritage homes and botanical gardens can remain open, to be used for exercise. Playgrounds may also remain open. Places of worship can also remain open, but people may only visit with those in their household.
Indoor and outdoor sports facilities including sports courts, gyms, golf courses, swimming pools, and riding arenas must also close. Elite sport and disabled sport can continue, as can PE lessons for those children attending school. .
ARGENTINA: Groundbreaking Abortion Law
At the end of 2020, Argentina passes “a groundbreaking law” that legalizes abortions up to 14 weeks of pregnancy, in a move that independent UN rights experts called, “a crucial step in eliminating discrimination against women and girls.”
“This law is a historic step in Argentina’s fulfilment of its international human rights obligations and becomes a model for the whole region and beyond,” said the experts, after Argentina’s Upper House, or Senate, adopted yesterday the bill that had already been passed by the lower house, known as the Chamber of Deputies.
Until now, the mostly Catholic country permitted abortions only in cases of rape or when the woman’s health was at risk, although, the experts pointed out, in practice they were often not available even on those grounds.
“We welcome this law that should make abortion safer”, they said. “Criminalizing abortion had done little to stop termination of pregnancies, but simply drove women to illegal, unsafe abortions, and many women died as a result.”
The existing law also discriminated against women and girls living in poverty who could not afford to travel abroad or pay for a safe procedure. Moreover, it contributed to forced continuation of pregnancy, even in cases where the pregnancy resulted from rape.
Women and girls have rights to equality, physical and mental integrity and privacy, which require that they must enjoy the right to make autonomous decisions about their pregnancies, said the experts.
And according to World Health Organization (WHO) statistics, countries in which women have access to information, contraception and the right to terminate pregnancies have the lowest rate of actual terminations.
Against the backdrop of several unsuccessful attempts to get the law through Argentina’s Congress in recent years, the experts applauded “the extraordinary mobilization of all activists in the country who contributed to the adoption of this law.”
At the same time, they cautioned that “much remains to be done to ensure women’s and girls’ rights to equality and highest standard of sexual and reproductive health.”
“It’s now important that the law be applied in the whole country and not be usurped by a political agenda or religious dogma,” the experts underscored.
News media reported that after a marathon debate that lasted through the night, the vote that yielded the decision was held at 4:00 am – registering 38 in favor, 29 against and one abstention.
MIDDLE EAST: Iranian Assets Get Seized
On Jan. 5, the United States Justice Department announced that it has collected $7 million of Iranian funds that will be allocated to provide compensation to American victims of international state-sponsored terrorism.
The funds are the United States’ share of a civil forfeiture investigation that is part of the government’s pursuit of a complex international conspiracy which spanned the globe. The conspiracy’s purpose was to violate the United States imposed international economic sanctions regime on Iran and included several Iranian nationals and others, who fraudulently transferred approximately $1 billion worth of Iranian-owned funds to accounts around the world.
Beginning in 2011 and continuing up to 2014, the conspirators, including three Iranian nationals and, allegedly, one U.S. citizen, defrauded South Korean banks by submitting false documents purporting to show that Iranian companies were doing legitimate business with Korean companies. Based on these false documents, the conspirators succeeded in unlawfully transferring approximately $1 billion worth of Iranian-owned funds out of South Korea and into the world’s financial markets.
The American who is an alleged conspirator, Kenneth Zong, was indicted in December 2016 in the District of Alaska, for 47 counts of violating the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) and the Iranian Transaction and Sanctions Regulations (ITSR), providing unlawful services to the Government of Iran, conspiracy to commit money laundering, and money laundering. Kenneth Zong remains in South Korea, where he recently completed serving a sentence of longer than five years for violating Korean law as part of the same scheme.
The conspirators transferred the Iranian-owned funds to accounts worldwide, including to Anchorage, Alaska. In 2018, a federal judge sentenced Mitchell Zong (i.e. Kenneth Zong’s son) to two and a half years imprisonment for his role in laundering approximately $968,000 of Iranian-derived funds, knowing the funds came from his father’s illegal transactions with Iranian nationals. In a separate forfeiture civil action, Mitchell Zong and other members of his family were ordered to forfeit to the United States approximately $10 million in assets, which were purchased with funds traceable to Kenneth Zong’s 2011 illegal IEEPA activity in Seoul, South Korea.
In addition to the prosecutions of Kenneth Zong and Mitchell Zong, the U.S. Attorney’s Office filed a forfeiture complaint seeking to seize money held in a sovereign wealth fund in the United Arab Emirates. These funds, which are also traceable to the scheme, were part of a down-payment made by the Iranian co-conspirators for the purchase of a Sheraton Hotel in Tbilisi, Georgia in 2011 and 2012. The agreement announced resolves that forfeiture case with a proposed order that $7 million be forfeited to the United States. The forfeiture case, Civil No. 3:20-cv-00126-JMK, was filed and remains pending in the U.S. District Court for the District of Alaska.
The $7 million will be allocated to the U.S. Victims of State Sponsored Terrorism Fund, which Congress established to provide compensation to certain individuals who were injured in acts of international state-sponsored terrorism, including victims of the 1979 U.S. embassy hostage situation in Iran, among others.
The Justice Department commended the FBI and IRS-CI for the successful investigation.
The forfeiture case and the case against Mitchell and Kenneth Zong were litigated by Assistant U.S. Attorneys Steven Skrocki and Jonas Walker. Former Deputy Chief Woo S. Lee and Senior Trial Attorney Michael Olmsted of the Criminal Division’s Money Laundering and Asset Recovery Section handled the prosecution. The Justice Department’s Office of International Affairs provided valuable assistance in this matter.
An indictment is merely an allegation. A defendant is presumed innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt in a court of law.
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