WAUKESHA, Wisconsin: Donald Trump returned briefly to the campaign trail Wednesday and called the judge presiding over his hush money trial “crooked” a day after he was held in contempt of court and threatened with jail time for violating a gag order.
Trump’s remarks at events in the battleground states of Wisconsin and Michigan were being closely watched after he received a $9,000 fine for making public statements about people connected to the criminal case. In imposing the fine for posts on Trump’s Truth Social account and campaign website, Judge Juan M. Merchan said that if Trump continued to violate his orders, he would “impose an incarceratory punishment.”
“There is no crime. I have a crooked judge. He’s a totally conflicted judge,” Trump said speaking to supporters at an event in Waukesha, Wisconsin, claiming again that this and other cases against him are led by the White House to undermine his campaign.
The gag order bars him from making public statements about witnesses, jurors and some others connected to his hush money case. Trump is still free to criticize Merchan.
The former president is trying to achieve a balancing act unprecedented in American history by running for a second term as the presumptive Republican nominee while also fighting felony charges in New York. Trump frequently goes after Merchan, prosecutors and potential witnesses at his rallies and on social media, attack lines that play well with his supporters but that have potentially put him in further legal jeopardy.
Trump insists he is merely exercising his free speech rights, but the offending posts from his Truth Social account and campaign website were taken down. Merchan is weighing other alleged gag-order violations and will hear arguments on Thursday.
Trump has often called this case and other criminal cases against him “election interference,” saying they keep him from campaigning for the presidential election in November.
Attendees agreed he is being unfairly prosecuted, contending the trial and gag order were designed to distract him .
“It’s a trial looking for a crime,” said Ray Hanson, of Hartford. Hanson said he expected Trump’s lawyers would “keep him in line” so he doesn’t violate the gag order, as much as he likely wants to talk about the trial.
Manhattan prosecutors have argued Trump and his associates took part in an illegal scheme to influence the 2016 presidential campaign by purchasing and then burying negative stories. He has pleaded not guilty.
Trump’s visits to Wisconsin and Michigan mark his second trip to the swing states in just a month. For the previous rallies, the former president largely focused on immigration, referring to people who are in the US illegally and who are suspected of crimes as “animals.”
Meanwhile, Democrats are hoping to remind voters ahead of these visits about Trump’s position on abortion, which Trump has been openly concerned about being a political liability for him and Republicans.
Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan met on Wednesday with half a dozen women, including a family doctor, and warned that a second Trump term would threaten abortion rights even in her state, which enshrined those rights in its state constitution after the Supreme Court overturned national rights to the procedure.
Whitmer appeared with the women at a bookstore in Flint surrounded by signs that read “Stop Trump’s Attacks on Health Care” and “Stop Trump’s Abortion Ban.” She told reporters not to believe Trump’s contention in a Time Magazine interview that Republicans would never have enough votes in the US Senate to pass a national abortion ban.
“We cannot trust anything that Donald Trump says when it comes to abortion. So no one should take any comfort in the fact that, yes, he wants an abortion ban, but he won’t get it because he doesn’t think we’ll have 60 votes in the Senate. Baloney,” she said. “No one would have imagined we’d be here in this moment.”
Wisconsin and Michigan are among a handful of battleground states expected to decide the 2024 election.
For Trump to win both states, he must do well in suburban areas like the areas outside of Milwaukee and Saginaw, Michigan, where he will hold Wednesday’s events. He underperformed in suburban areas during this year’s primary even as he dominated the Republican field overall.
Trump has repeatedly falsely said that the 2020 election was stolen from him. Trump’s losses in battleground states in 2020 have withstood recounts, audits and reviews by the Justice Department and outside observers.
Trump calls judge ‘crooked’ after facing a warning of jail time if he violates a trial gag order
https://arab.news/jdctd
Trump calls judge ‘crooked’ after facing a warning of jail time if he violates a trial gag order
- The former president is trying to achieve a balancing act unprecedented in American history by running for a second term as the presumptive Republican nominee
EU needs to keep up dialogue with Israel, Dutch foreign minister says on Borrell proposal
- Disagreeing with the EU’s top diplomat who proposed to pause the dialogue with the country
European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell last week proposed that the bloc suspend its political dialogue with Israel, citing possible human rights violations in the war in Gaza, according to four diplomats and a letter seen by Reuters.
Pakistan’s top cleric says use of VPNs is against Islamic laws as the government seeks to ban them
- VPNs are legal in most countries, however they are outlawed or restricted in places where authorities control Internet access
- Million of Pakistanis have been unable to access the X social media platform since February 2023
Raghib Naeemi, the chairman of the Council of Islamic Ideology, which advises the government on religious issues, said that Shariah allows the government to prevent actions that lead to the “spread of evil.” He added that any platform used for posting content that is controversial, blasphemous, or against national integrity “should be stopped immediately.”
Million of Pakistanis have been unable to access the X social media platform since February 2023, when the government blocked it ahead of parliamentary elections, except via VPN — a service that hides online activity from anyone else on the Internet
Authorities say they are seeking to ban the use of VPNs to curb militancy. However, critics say the proposed ban is part of curbs on freedom of expression.
VPNs are legal in most countries, however they are outlawed or restricted in places where authorities control Internet access or carry out online surveillance and censorship.
Among users of VPNs in Pakistan are supporters of the country’s imprisoned former Prime Minister Imran Khan, who have called for a march on Islamabad on Sunday to pressure the government for his release.
Pakistan often suspends mobile phone service during rallies of Khan’s supporters. But Naeemi’s weekend declaration that the use of VPNs is against Shariah has stunned many.
Naeemi’s edict came after the Ministry of Interior wrote a letter to the Ministry of Information and Technology asking for the VPN ban on the grounds that the service is being used by insurgents to propagate their agenda.
It said that “VPNs are increasingly being exploited by terrorists to facilitate violent activities.” The ministry also wants to deny access to “pornographic” and blasphemous content.
Last week, authorities had also asked the Internet users to register VPNs with Pakistan’s media regulator, a move which will allow increased surveillance on the users of Internet.
Pakistan is currently battling militants who have stepped up attacks in recent months.
On Friday, a separatist Baloch Liberation Army group attacked troops in Kalat, a district in Balochistan province, triggering an intense shootout in which seven soldiers and six insurgents were killed, according to police and the military. The BLA claimed the attack in a statement.
Masked men break into UK’s Windsor Castle estate, The Sun reports
King Charles and his wife Camilla were not in the estate at the time of the incident but Prince William and his family were believed to be at Adelaide Cottage, part of the Windsor Castle estate, the Sun reported.
The men used a stolen truck to break through a security gate at night and then scaled a six-foot fence, the paper said.
Local police said officers were called to a report of a burglary on Crown Estate land in Windsor, west of London, just before midnight on Oct. 13.
“Offenders entered a farm building and made off with a black Isuzu pick-up and a red quad bike. They then made off toward the Old Windsor/Datchet area,” Thames Valley Police told the newspaper. “No arrests have been made at this stage and an investigation is ongoing.”
Windsor Castle previously faced a security scare in 2021 when authorities arrested a man with a crossbow in the grounds of the castle who said he had wanted to kill Queen Elizabeth.
Disgraced Singapore oil tycoon sentenced to nearly 18 years for fraud
- Lim Oon Kuin was convicted in May in a case that dented the city-state’s reputation as a top Asian oil trading hub
- His firm was among Asia’s biggest oil trading companies before its sudden and dramatic collapse in 2020
SINGAPORE: The founder of a failed Singapore oil trading company was sentenced Monday to nearly 18 years in jail for cheating banking giant HSBC out of millions of dollars in one of the country’s most serious cases of fraud.
Lim Oon Kuin, 82, better known as O.K. Lim, was convicted in May in a case that dented the city-state’s reputation as a top Asian oil trading hub.
His firm, Hin Leong Trading, was among Asia’s biggest oil trading companies before its sudden and dramatic collapse in 2020.
Sentencing him to 17 and a half years in jail, State Courts judge Toh Han Li said he agreed with the prosecution that the offenses had the potential to undermine confidence in Singapore’s oil trading industry.
The amount involved “stood at the top-tier of cheating cases” in the city-state, a global financial hub, he said.
The judge shaved off a year due to Lim’s age but did not give any sentencing discount on account of his health, saying the Singapore Prison Service has adequate medical facilities.
Lim, however, remained free on bail after his lawyers said they would file an appeal before the High Court.
State prosecutors had sought a 20-year jail term, saying “this is one of the most serious cases of trade financing fraud that has ever been prosecuted in Singapore.”
The defense had argued for seven years imprisonment, playing down the harm caused by Lim’s offenses and citing his age and poor health.
The businessman faced a total of 130 criminal charges involving hundreds of millions of dollars, but prosecutors tried and convicted him on just three – two of cheating HSBC, and a third of encouraging a Hin Leong executive to forge documents.
Prosecutors said he tricked HSBC into disbursing nearly $112 million by telling the bank that his firm had entered into oil sales contracts with two companies.
The transactions were, in fact, “complete fabrications, concocted on the accused’s directions,” prosecutors said, adding that his actions “tarnished Singapore’s hard-earned reputation as Asia’s leading oil trading hub.”
Lim built Hin Leong from a single delivery truck shortly before Singapore became independent in 1965.
It grew into a major supplier of fuel used by ships, and its rise in some ways mirrored Singapore’s growth from a gritty port to an affluent financial hub.
The firm played a key role in helping the city-state become the world’s top ship refueling port, observers say, and it expanded into ship chartering and management with a subsidiary that has a fleet of more than 150 vessels.
But it came crashing down in 2020 when the coronavirus pandemic plunged oil markets into unprecedented turmoil, exposing Hin Leong’s financial troubles, and Lim sought court protection from creditors.
In a bombshell affidavit seen by AFP in 2020, Lim revealed the oil trader had “in truth... not been making profits in the last few years” – despite having officially reported a healthy balance sheet in 2019.
He admitted that the firm he founded after emigrating from China had hidden $800 million in losses over the years, while it also owed almost $4 billion to banks.
Lim took responsibility for ordering the company not to report the losses and confessed it had sold off inventories that were supposed to backstop loans.
Climate talks in Azerbaijan head into their second week, coinciding with G20 in Rio
- Talks in Baku are focused on getting more climate cash for developing countries to transition away from fossil fuels
- Several experts put the sum needed at around $1 trillion
BAKU: United Nations talks on getting money to curb and adapt to climate change resumed Monday with tempered hope that negotiators and ministers can work through disagreements and hammer out a deal after slow progress last week.
That hope comes from the arrival of the climate and environment ministers from around the world this week in Baku, Azerbaijan, for the COP29 talks. They’ll give their teams instructions on ways forward.
“We are in a difficult place,” said Melanie Robinson, economics and finance program director of global climate at the World Resources Institute. “The discussion has not yet moved to the political level — when it does I think ministers will do what they can to make a deal.”
Talks in Baku are focused on getting more climate cash for developing countries to transition away from fossil fuels, adapt to climate change and pay for damages caused by extreme weather. But countries are far apart on how much money that will require. Several experts put the sum needed at around $1 trillion.
“One trillion is going to look like a bargain five, 10 years from now,” said Rachel Cleetus from the Union of Concerned Scientists, citing a multitude of costly recent extreme weather events from flooding in Spain to hurricanes Helene and Milton in the United States. “We’re going to wonder why we didn’t take that and run with it.”
Meanwhile, the world’s biggest decision makers are halfway around the world as another major summit convenes. Brazil is hosting the Group of 20 summit, which runs Nov. 18-19, bringing together many of the world’s largest economies. Climate change — among other major topics like rising global tensions and poverty — will be on the agenda.
Harjeet Singh, global engagement director for the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty Initiative, said G20 nations “cannot turn their backs on the reality of their historical emissions and the responsibility that comes with it.”
“They must commit to trillions in public finance,” he said.
In a written statement on Friday, United Nations Climate Change’s executive secretary Simon Stiell said “the global climate crisis should be order of business Number One” at the G20 meetings.
Stiell noted that progress on stopping more warming should happen both in and out of climate talks, calling the G20’s role “mission-critical.”
