Controversy began to rage around this drug when President Trump began to speak about HCQ following a series of positive reports from doctors in a number of global locations. Photo Credit: AP
President Donald Trump will sign an executive order on social media censorship amid rapidly intensifying political bias from the Silicon Valley Masters of the Universe.
White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany told reporters aboard Air Force one that the president will shortly sign the executive order, although no further details were given about what it will consist of.
This comes after Trump warned social media companies that continued political bias would lead to action from the administration.
“Republicans feel that Social Media Platforms totally silence conservatives voices,” said the President on Twitter earlier today. “We will strongly regulate, or close them down, before we can ever allow this to happen.
The President also said Twitter was “interfering in the 2020 presidential election,” after the platform “fact checked” his tweets raising widely-held concerns about voter fraud in mail-in ballots.
A report in the Wall Street Journal last week claimed that the White House was preparing executive action on big tech bias in the form of an official panel that will review cases of anti-conservative bias from Silicon Valley companies.
A White House spokesperson appeared to confirm the initiative at the time, telling the Journal “Left-wing bias in the tech world is a concern that definitely needs to be addressed from our vantage point, and at least exposed [so] that Americans have clear eyes about what we’re dealing with.”
Tech companies continue to deny that they deliberately engage in political bias, but the evidence against their statements continues to mount.
In addition to this week’s events, almost every major tech company has been caught in a political bias scandal since the 2016 election, and such cases continue to accumulate. These include Facebook putting mainstream conservatives like Candace Owens and Brigitte Gabriel on a “hate agents review” list, Twitter taking days to remove violent threats against Trump-supporting high school students and refusing to take action against hate speech from New York Times editorial board member Sarah Jeong, and leaked footage of Google executives declaring their intention to make Trump’s populist movement a “blip” in history.
Breitbart News will continue to provide updates on this developing story.
Are you an insider at Google, Reddit, Facebook, Twitter, or any other tech company who wants to confidentially reveal wrongdoing or political bias at your company? Reach out to Allum Bokhari at his secure email address [email protected].
(University of Maryland School of Medicine via AP)
By LAURAN NEERGAARD and HANNAH FINGERHUT (AP)
Only about half of Americans say they would get a COVID-19 vaccine if the scientists working furiously to create one succeed, a number that’s surprisingly low considering the effort going into the global race for a vaccine.
Health experts already worry about the whiplash if vaccine promises like President Donald Trump’s goal of a 300 million-dose stockpile by January fail. Only time and science will tell — and the new poll shows the public is indeed skeptical.
It’s always better to under-promise and over-deliver,” said Dr. William Schaffner, an infectious disease specialist at Vanderbilt University Medical Center.
“The unexpected looms large and that’s why I think for any of these vaccines, we’re going to need a large safety database to provide the reassurance,” he added.
Among Americans who say they wouldn’t get vaccinated, 7 in 10 worry about safety.
“I am not an anti-vaxxer,” said Melanie Dries, 56, of Colorado Springs, Colorado. But, “to get a COVID-19 vaccine within a year or two … causes me to fear that it won’t be widely tested as to side effects.”
Dr. Francis Collins, who directs the National Institutes of Health, insists safety is the top priority. The NIH is creating a master plan for testing the leading COVID-19 vaccine candidates in tens of thousands of people, to prove if they really work and also if they’re safe.
“I would not want people to think that we’re cutting corners because that would be a big mistake. I think this is an effort to try to achieve efficiencies, but not to sacrifice rigor,” Collins told the AP earlier this month.
“Definitely the worst thing that could happen is if we rush through a vaccine that turns out to have significant side effects,” Collins added.
Among those who want a vaccine, the AP-NORC poll found protecting themselves, their family and the community are the top reasons.
“I’m definitely going to get it,” said Brandon Grimes, 35, of Austin, Texas. “As a father who takes care of his family, I think … it’s important for me to get vaccinated as soon as it’s available to better protect my family.”
And about 7 in 10 of those who would get vaccinated say life won’t go back to normal without a vaccine. A site foreman for his family’s construction business, Grimes travels from house to house interacting with different crews, and said some of his coworkers also are looking forward to vaccination to minimize on-the-job risk.
The new coronavirus is most dangerous to older adults and people of any age who have chronic health problems such as diabetes or heart disease. The poll found 67% of people 60 and older say they’d get vaccinated, compared with 40% who are younger.
And death counts suggest black and Hispanic Americans are more vulnerable to COVID-19, because of unequal access to health care and other factors. Yet the poll found just 25% of African Americans and 37% of Hispanics would get a vaccine compared to 56% of whites.
Among people who don’t want a vaccine, about 4 in 10 say they’re concerned about catching COVID-19 from the shot. But most of the leading vaccine candidates don’t contain the coronavirus itself, meaning they can’t cause infection.
And 3 in 10 who don’t want a vaccine don’t fear getting seriously ill from the coronavirus.
Over 5.5 million people worldwide have been confirmed infected by the virus, and more than 340,000 deaths have been recorded, including nearly 100,000 in the U.S., according to a tally kept by Johns Hopkins University. Experts believe the true toll is significantly higher.
And while most people who get COVID-19 have mild cases and recover, doctors still are discovering the coronavirus attacks in far sneakier ways than just causing pneumonia — from blood clots to heart and kidney damage to the latest scare, a life-threatening inflammatory reaction in children.
Whatever the final statistics show about how often it kills, health specialists agree the new coronavirus appears deadlier than the typical flu. Yet the survey suggests a vaccine would be no more popular than the yearly flu shot.
Worldwide, about a dozen COVID-19 vaccine candidates are in early stages of testing or poised to begin. British researchers are opening one of the biggest studies so far, to test an Oxford University-created shot in 10,000 people.
For all the promises of the Trump administration’s “ Operation Warp Speed,” only 20% of Americans expect any vaccine to be available to the public by year’s end, the poll found. Most think sometime next year is more likely.
Political divisions seen over how the country reopens the economy are reflected in desire for a vaccine, too. More than half of Democrats call a vaccine necessary for reopening, compared to about a third of Republicans. While 62% of Democrats would get the vaccine, only 43% of Republicans say the same.
“There’s still a large amount of uncertainty around taking the vaccine,” said Caitlin Oppenheimer, who leads NORC’s public health research. “There is a lot of opportunity to communicate with Americans about the value and the safety of a vaccine.”
Police officers deploy to disperse protesters in the Target parking lot near the Minneapolis 3rd Police Precinct, following a rally for George Floyd on Tuesday, May 26, 2020, in Minneapolis. Four Minneapolis officers involved in the arrest of Floyd, a black man who died in police custody, were fired Tuesday, hours after a bystander's video showed an officer kneeling on the handcuffed man’s neck, even after he pleaded that he could not breathe and stopped moving. (Richard Tsong-Taatarii/Star Tribune via AP)
By AMY FORLITI and COLLEEN LONG (AP)
The mayor of Minneapolis called Wednesday for criminal charges to be filed against the white police officer seen on video kneeling against the neck of a handcuffed black man who complained that he could not breathe and died in police custody.
Based on the video, Mayor Jacob Frey said officer Derek Chauvin should be charged in the death of George Floyd. The footage recorded by a bystander shows Chauvin with his knee on Floyd’s neck for several minutes as Floyd is gasping for breath on the ground with his face against the pavement.
“I’ve wrestled with, more than anything else over the last 36 hours, one fundamental question: Why is the man who killed George Floyd not in jail?” said Frey, who is white.
He later added: “I saw no threat. I saw nothing that would signal that this kind of force was necessary.”
The day after Floyd died, Chauvin and three other officers were fired — an act that did not stem the flood of anger that followed the widely seen video shot on Memorial Day outside a Minneapolis convenience store.
Protesters marched more than 2 miles Tuesday to the police precinct in that part of the city, with some damaging property and skirmishing with officers in riot gear who fired tear gas. A smaller protest was underway Wednesday at the same precinct, and another demonstration was planned for later in the day in the suburban neighborhood where Chauvin was believed to live.
Many activists, citizens and celebrities called for criminal charges before Frey did. But Floyd’s family and the community may have to wait months, if not years, before investigations are complete.
Floyd family attorney Ben Crump, a prominent civil rights lawyer, called for peaceful protests.
“We cannot sink to the level of our oppressors, and we must not endanger others during this pandemic,” he said in a statement. “We will demand and ultimately force lasting change by shining a light on treatment that is horrific and unacceptable and by winning justice.”
Floyd’s death and the recent uproar over the death of Ahmaud Arbery in Georgia have reopened the divide between minority communities and police that grew to a national uproar following the 2014 killings of Eric Garner and Michael Brown, the 2015 killing of Freddie Gray and others.
Speaking to reporters at Cape Canaveral, Florida, President Donald Trump called the arrest in Minneapolis “a very, very sad event” and said his administration was going to “look at it.” The president was in Florida for the scheduled launch of a SpaceX rocket, which was later canceled because of threatening weather.
Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden said the arrest was “part of an ingrained, systemic cycle of injustice that still exists in this country” and “cuts at the very heart of our sacred belief that all Americans are equal in rights.”
It also “sends a very clear message to the black community and black lives that are under threat every single day,” Biden added, saying he was glad the mayor and the police department fired the officers, “but I don’t think that’s enough.”
Police are under pressure as more people record officers’ encounters with the public. Officers feel their jobs are misunderstood, and the unpredictable nature of policing makes it hard to explain tactics to the average person unfamiliar with tense, sometimes life-threatening work, policing experts said.
A 2017 Pew Research Center study found that police think the public does not understand the risks they face. A more recent study from September showed police were considered more trustworthy than Congress, but only 33% of black adults and half of Hispanics say believe officers treat racial and ethnic groups equally.
Shocking videos of black men dying continue to emerge during the pandemic, which is already hitting communities of color harder than white communities. Floyd himself had been laid off from his nightclub security job in the pandemic, a friend told The Associated Press. Police say Floyd matched the description of someone who tried to pay with a counterfeit bill at the convenience store.
It was unclear why Floyd was even arrested in such a physical way for what would have been a low-level crime. Police in most large cities have backed away from certain arrests to guard against further spread of the virus. The officers in the video were not wearing masks.
An autopsy will be performed to determine if the neck compression led to Floyd’s death.
Minneapolis police are conducting an internal investigation, which will center on whether the officers used excessive force through witness accounts, officer accounts and evidence, including prior disciplinary records.
The officers have not been publicly identified, though an attorney confirmed he was representing Chauvin.
News accounts show Chauvin was one of six officers who fired their weapons in the 2006 death of Wayne Reyes, who police said pointed a sawed-off shotgun at officers after stabbing two people. Chauvin also shot and wounded a man in 2008 during a struggle after Chauvin and his partner responded to a reported domestic assault. Police did not immediately respond to a request for Chauvin’s service record.
The Hennepin County Attorney’s Office is also probing the case to determine whether criminal charges are warranted, and will likely focus on the intent of the officers, whether they meant to harm Floyd or whether the use of force was justified. The county attorney’s office didn’t immediately respond to Frey’s statement.
The FBI was investigating whether the officers willfully deprived Floyd of his civil rights.
The video starts with the man on the ground, and does not show what happened in the moments before. Chauvin is kneeling on Floyd’s neck, ignoring his pleas. “Please, please, please, I can’t breathe. Please, man,” said Floyd, his face pressed to the pavement.
Floyd also moans. One of the officers tells him to “relax.” Floyd calls for his mother and says: “My stomach hurts, my neck hurts, everything hurts … I can’t breathe.”
Under Chauvin’s restraint, he slowly becomes motionless. Chauvin does not remove his knee until Floyd is loaded onto a gurney by paramedics.
In calling for charges, Frey contrasted Floyd’s death with others involving police that turned on split-second decisions by officers.
“We are not talking about a split-second decision that was made incorrectly. There’s somewhere around 300 seconds in those five minutes,” Frey said “Every one of which that officer could have turned back, every second of which he could have removed his knee from George Floyd’s neck.”
Excerpt from “A Convenient Death: The Mysterious Demise of Jeffrey Epstein,” by Alana Goodman and Daniel Halper, as pointed out by the NY Post
Ghislaine Maxwell, a constant presence at the ex- president’s side during these trips, was the primary reason Clinton let Epstein ferry him around the world.
“[Bill] and Ghislaine were getting it on,” a source who witnessed the relationship said in an interview. “That’s why he was around Epstein—to be with her.”
The source explained that reporters have been missing the point about the Clinton- Epstein relationship by focusing on Epstein’s sex crimes. “[Clinton’s] stupid but not an idiot,” the source says, dismissing the idea that the ex- president was sexually involved with children.
Clinton’s primary interest in Epstein was the woman he once dated and who allegedly helped procure her ex-boyfriend’s future victims.
“You couldn’t hang out with her without being with him,” the source said of the Epstein-Clinton relationship.
“Clinton just used him like everything else,” the source explains.
In this case, Epstein was being used as an alibi while he hooked up with Maxwell.
This lurid and sure to be shocking book is due out June 6th
Vice President Mike Pence waves as he arrives for a visit to the Mayo Clinic Tuesday, April 28, 2020, in Rochester, Minn., where he toured the facilities supporting COVID-19 research and treatment. (AP Photo/Jim Mone)
Vice President Mike Pence says that the Trump administration is strongly opposed to censorship of conservatives by social media and big tech companies, and that suppression of conservative voices ahead of the November general election will be met with a response from the White House.
“Well, the president has made it very clear that we are not going to tolerate censorship on the internet and social media against conservatives,” Pence told Breitbart in an exclusive interview on May 22. “We’re just not going to tolerate it.”
The vice president didn’t provide details regarding what form the administration’s response might take, but The Wall Street Journal, citing “people familiar with the matter,” reported over the weekend that the White House is considering the creation of a commission that would evaluate claims of anti-conservative bias.
President Donald Trump has repeatedly voiced concern over alleged suppression of conservatives by big tech and social media companies. In a May 16 tweet, the president accused several popular platforms of serving the “radical left” and hinted at a White House-led remedy.
“The Radical Left is in total command & control of Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Google,” Trump wrote in the tweet, adding that the administration is “working to remedy this illegal situation.”
President Donald Trump on Wednesday threatened social media companies with new regulation or even shuttering after Twitter added fact checks to two of his tweets.
The president can’t unilaterally regulate or close the companies, and any effort would likely require action by Congress. His administration shelved a proposed executive order empowering the Federal Communications Commission to regulate technology companies, citing concerns it wouldn’t pass legal muster. But that didn’t stop Trump from angrily issuing strong warnings.
Claiming tech giants “silence conservative voices,” Trump tweeted early Wednesday, “We will strongly regulate, or close them down, before we can ever allow this to happen.” Later he tweeted without elaboration, “Big Action to follow.”
He repeated his unsubstantiated claim — which sparked his latest showdown with Silicon Valley — that expanding mail-in voting “would be a free for all on cheating, forgery and the theft of Ballots.”
There was no immediate reaction from Twitter or other social media companies to the president’s threats.
Trump and his campaign had lashed out Tuesday after Twitter added a warning phrase to two Trump tweets that called mail-in ballots “fraudulent” and predicted that “mail boxes will be robbed,” among other things. Under the tweets, there is now a link reading “Get the facts about mail-in ballots” that guides users to a Twitter “moments” page with fact checks and news stories about Trump’s unsubstantiated claims.
Trump replied on Twitter, accusing the platform of “interfering in the 2020 Presidential Election” and insisting that “as president, I will not allow this to happen.” His 2020 campaign manager, Brad Parscale, said Twitter’s “clear political bias” had led the campaign to pull “all our advertising from Twitter months ago.” Twitter has banned all political advertising since last November.
Trump did not explain his threat Wednesday, and the call to expand regulation appeared to fly in the face of long-held conservative principles on deregulation.
But some Trump allies, who have alleged bias on the part of tech companies, have questioned whether platforms like Twitter and Facebook should continue to enjoy liability protections as “platforms” under federal law — or be treated more like publishers, which can face lawsuits over content.
The protections have been credited with allowing the unfettered growth of the internet for more than two decades, but now some Trump allies are advocating that social media companies face more scrutiny.
“Big tech gets a huge handout from the federal government,” Republican Sen. Josh Hawley told Fox News. “They get this special immunity, this special immunity from suits and from liability that’s worth billions of dollars to them every year. Why are they getting subsidized by federal taxpayers to censor conservatives, to censor people critical of China.”
Meanwhile, Republicans were turning their fire on one of the Twitter executives responsible for adding the fact checks, Yoel Roth, its head of site integrity. They are pointing to tweets he sent in 2016 and 2017 railing against the president and his allies.
“From their bogus ‘fact check’ of @realDonaldTrump to their ‘head of site integrity’ displaying his clear hatred towards Republicans, Twitter’s blatant bias has gone too far,” tweeted Republican National Chairman Chair Ronna McDaniel.
In this March 17, 2020, file photo, people wait in line for help with unemployment benefits at the One-Stop Career Center in Las Vegas. The coronavirus pandemic has been particularly brutal to the tourism-dependent economies of Nevada and Hawaii, lifting the unemployment rate in both states to about one-quarter of the workforce. (AP Photo/John Locher, File)
Bashar Ali Naim used to work in a perfume and accessories store in Baghdad, earning $480 per week on average. About three months ago, the coronavirus outbreak swept into Iraq, and the 28-year-old father of two has been out of work ever since.
“I am suffering a lot without work. I feel like a human with a body but no soul, especially when I look at the kids and wonder: How will I provide for them?” he said.
Naim is not alone: The U.N. labor agency reported Wednesday that more than one in every six young workers globally have stopped working during the pandemic, warning that long-term fallout could lead to a “lock-down generation” if steps aren’t taken to ease the crisis.
The International Labor Organization, in a new look at the impact of the pandemic on jobs, says that work hours equivalent to 305 million full-time jobs have been lost due to the COVID-19 crisis. Many young workers face economic hardship and despair about the future.
ILO Director-General Guy Ryder warned of the “danger” that young workers aged 15 to 28 in particular could face, from inability to get proper training or gain access to jobs that could extend well beyond the pandemic and last far into their working careers.
In a survey, ILO and its partners found that over one in six of such young workers were no longer working during the pandemic, many with their workplaces shuttered or their usual clienteles stuck at home. Young people were already in a precarious position relative to other age categories, with work rates still below those before the 2008 economic crisis even before the pandemic hit.
“They have been basically ejected from their jobs,” Ryder said, referring to those who have stopped working. “There is a danger of long-term exclusion. The scarring of young people who are excluded from the labor market early in their careers is well attested by the literature.”
“So I don’t think it is giving way to hyperbole to talk about the danger of a lock-down generation,” Ryder said, noting the psychological distress that can quickly affect younger workers who worry about the future of their budding work lives.
Naim said he’s living off savings, but expects the money to run out in 6 to 7 months.
“I don’t know what I’ll do after that — the future is a big unknown,” he said. “I’m scared of the coming days. God forbid, if there is a health emergency with the family and I don’t have enough money for it because I don’t have a job, and the government is unable to help.”
ILO says governments can help with measures like increasing state support for unemployed workers, taking steps to guarantee jobs and training, and rolling out testing and tracing measures that boost workplace safety and help workers and consumers get back out more quickly.
The Middle East is just one of the world’s many regions struggling to cope with the COVID-19 outbreak. After first peaking in China, where it began, then Europe, now it’s the Americas that is seen as the main epicenter.
But it’s a global issue.
Sifiso Ditha from Soweto township, south of Johannesburg, had relied on part-time construction jobs to get by while attending a local college. The 25-year-old, who lives with his grandparents, used the money to buy toiletries, food and other essential items.
The pandemic has erased that income.
“The construction sector was closed during the lockdown, so there was absolutely nothing,” Ditha said.
There has been some easing of the lockdown since, but employment remains scarce.
“Many projects are either put on hold or they are not taking anymore people,” Ditha said.
Of those still working, nearly one in four – or 23% – have seen their working hours reduced, the ILO said, pointing to a “triple shock” faced by young workers: Destruction of their work, disruption to their training and education, and obstacles moving in the work force or entering it in the first place.
Of the 178 million young workers employed around the world, more than 40% were in “hard hit sectors when the crisis began,” such as food services and hospitality industries, the ILO said. More than three-fourths are in “informal” jobs, including 94% of young workers in Africa alone.
“We run the risk of creating a situation — in this sort of snapshot of pandemic — which will have lasting effects,” Ryder told a virtual news conference from the ILO headquarters. “A lot of young people are simply going to be left behind in big numbers.
“And the danger is — and again, this is the lesson of past experience — that this initial shock to young people will last a decade or longer than a decade,” Ryder said. “It will affect the trajectory of working people, young working people, throughout their working lives.”
When The Jewish Voice posted the 20 minute preview of Dr. Judy Mikovitz’ documentary “Plandemic” our website literally crashed for 24 hours straight due to huge traffic. At the time we had no idea there was an active censorship campaign worldwide on social media to purge any video footage of the documentary. I read the press release, looked into Mikovitz and decided she is controversial but has credentials, and being that she also had a best selling book “Plague of Corruption”, it would be an interesting tidbit to post. We included the 20 minute preview, which is literally the most censored video on the entire internet, 3 weeks later.
Judging by the traffic this little story and video brought to the site, you can safely say, when something is so harshly banned, it only draws more interest.
It does not really matter what the woman with decades of experience including 20- years at the National Cancer Institute has to say, she is not promoting what for decades was traditionally censored, promoting murder, rape and violence, Nazi propaganda, stuff like that…
The movie is about vaccines and pandemics and her views on Bill Gates and others. Is the 20 minute preview controversial, absolutely- is this material dangerous? Absolutely not.
It’s frightening enough that YouTube and just about every other social media platform, insisted on censoring a 20 minute preview of an unreleased documentary, but we are at a point where actual journalists are advocating for censorship. Journalists basically live by the values of the First Amendment.
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances
The job of the journalist is literally in the 1st Amendment. When I saw an article written by Elizabeth Dwoskin of The Washington Post, I was literally in a state of shock.
In an article reporting on the take-down of the video, The Washington Post’s Silicon Valley Correspondent Elizabeth Dwoskin complained that after the coronavirus documentary Plandemic was censored on social media, some YouTube clips were telling users how to access “banned footage” from the documentary via Google Drive.
The journalist is not upset about the censorship, but upset that crafty YouTube users were helping people view the banned footage. As an American, who went to journalism classes in college, I simply can not wrap my head around a journalist, advocating censorship.
This gets even more incredible. The “journalist” then brags that The Washington Post contacted Google & Google Drive took down a file featuring the trailer for the “Plandemic” documentary. In other words, the Washington Post has a writer working for them that is so vehemently anti-free speech, she contacted Google and now reports are circulating that people’s personal copies of the video are vanishing from their Google Drives !
I still have not seen the entire documentary, and I’m sure it will be banned on NetFlix, Vimeo, YouTube, Yahoo, and everywhere else. The 20 minute preview already is the most banned video ever. I’m sure there are some things in the film which might be incorrect or controversial, but so what? Journalists are not supposed to be in the business of censorship, especially censorship of something as innocuous as a Doctor who is against corona virus vaccines and her views on wearing masks.
I fully support taking down videos from Jihadists, Nazis etc. and sure I can see a writer contacting Google/YouTube over a Jihadist telling his flock to slaughter the infidel on YouTube, but this is out of control.
There is no excuse for an orchestrated censorship campaign, all over a Doctor who shares views about the pandemic and attacks Dr Anthony Fauci. Fauci is a government figure, we are allowed to address our grievances towards elected officials. We are allowed to express our knowledge and scientific theories, ( Dr. Judy Mikovitz has enough credentials to share her views on vaccines and pandemics) It does not matter if her views are in the minority among her peers.
We are entering a terrifying new era , a world where censorship is common and the guardians of free speech- journalists are standing up for… censorship !
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, wearing a face mask in line with public health restrictions due to the coronavirus pandemic, stands inside the court room as his corruption trial opens at the Jerusalem District Court, Sunday, May 24, 2020. He is the country’s first sitting prime minister ever to go on trial, facing charges of fraud, breach of trust, and accepting bribes in a series of corruption cases stemming from ties to wealthy friends. (Ronen Zvulun/ Pool Photo via AP)
Edited by: Fern Sidman
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday launched a tirade against the nation’s justice system as his long-awaited corruption trial got underway, accusing police and prosecutors of conspiring to “depose” him, as was reported by the Associated Press.
Netanyahu’s comments opened what is sure to be a tumultuous period for Israel as he becomes the country’s first sitting prime minister ever to go on trial. Hundreds of protesters calling him the “crime minister” demonstrated outside his official residence, while hundreds of supporters, including leading members of his Likud party, rallied in support of him at the courthouse.
Netanyahu faces charges of fraud, breach of trust and accepting bribes in a series of corruption cases stemming from ties to wealthy friends. He is accused of accepting lavish gifts and offering to grant favors to powerful media moguls in exchange for favorable coverage of him and his family, according to an AP report. He denies the charges, which come after years of scandals swirling around the family.
When he arrived at the courthouse, Netanyahu revived his claims that he is the victim of a deep state-type conspiracy by media, police, prosecutors and judges out to oust him.
“The objective is to depose a strong, right-wing prime minister, and thus remove the nationalist camp from the leadership of the country for many years,” he told reporters in the lobby, as was reported by the AP.
The Knesset building in the Rehavia section of Jerusalem. Photo Credit: Wikipedia
Netanyahu entered the Jerusalem courtroom wearing a blue surgical mask, in line with public health restriction due to the coronavirus pandemic. He stood and talked to his lawyer and attorneys for other defendants, refusing to sit until TV cameras left the room.
As the proceedings began, the lawyers and judges also wore masks, with the three-judge panel sitting behind a glass divider. In a hint of what could lie ahead, his lawyers said they would need two to three months to respond to the arraignment, and said they needed additional funds to add to their defense’s legal team, according to the AP.
Netanyahu sat silently and did not speak during the one-hour session, rising just once, briefly, to confirm he understood the charges. He will not be required to attend future hearings during a case that legal analysts expect to stretch over several years. Throughout the proceedings, the loud chants of his supporters could be heard in the courtroom.
Before the session, Netanyahu said police and prosecutors had conspired to “tailor” a case against him, and said the evidence was “contaminated” and exaggerated. He called for the court proceedings to be broadcast live on TV to ensure “full transparency.”
“While the media continues to deal with nonsense, with these false, trumped up cases, I will continue to lead the state of Israel and deal with issues that really matter to you,” he said, including to resuscitate the economy, and “continue to save the lives of thousands of Israelis ahead of the possibility of a second wave of coronavirus.”
Critics have said that Netanyahu’s arguments have undermined Israel’s court system and risk deeper damage to the country’s democratic institutions.
Netanyahu’s fitness for office was the key issue in three inconclusive elections over the past year. After vowing never to sit with an indicted prime minister, Netanyahu’s challenger, Benny Gantz, agreed in March to form a power-sharing coalition with his rival.
Harvard law professor and constitutional expert Alan Dershowitz said in an interview with Israeli Army Radio Sunday morning, hours before the opening of the trial that “Netanyahu’s trial poses great danger to democracy and the rule of law. This is the first time in the history of any modern country that a man is being prosecuted for trying to gain positive media coverage.” Photo Credit: AP
Harvard law professor and constitutional expert Alan Dershowitz said in an interview with Israeli Army Radio Sunday morning, hours before the opening of the trial that “Netanyahu’s trial poses great danger to democracy and the rule of law. This is the first time in the history of any modern country that a man is being prosecuted for trying to gain positive media coverage.”
When talking about the criticism against Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit, Dershowitz said: “It’s a terrible thing to call the attorney general a criminal; he’s not. He is a decent person with which I disagree. In a democracy there’s a place for criticism against those who make mistakes, but you can’t threaten them or call them criminals.”
Knesset Speaker Yariv Levin (Likud) said that “the day of the opening of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s trial will be remembered as one of the low points of the Israeli legal system.” Photo Credit: Wikipedia
Knesset Speaker Yariv Levin (Likud) said that “the day of the opening of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s trial will be remembered as one of the low points of the Israeli legal system.
“The charges against the prime minister are unprecedented in Western democracies,” Levin wrote. “Their realm, if at all, should have been the ethical and noncriminal sphere, and it’s no wonder that the world’s top jurists have been harshly criticizing it.”
Levin was seemingly referring to the comments of Dershowitz.
“Binyamin Netanyahu won an unprecedented vote in the last election, with the Likud under his leadership receiving the highest number of votes any list has received since the establishment of the state. It was a personal expression of confidence in the prime minister and his leadership, and also a protest in the face of the improper procedure being taken against him,” Levin continued.
Levin also presented Netanyahu as a victim of a hostile law enforcement system: “As one who knows Prime Minister Netanyahu closely, as well as his work and his commitment to the State of Israel and the citizens of Israel, I know that he was done a terrible injustice. I believe that any decent person who examines the cases and the proceedings prior to filing the indictments will immediately conclude that these cases must result in only one way – a collapse.”
Also speaking out on the Netanyahu trial was Rabbi Dov Fischer, an renowned attorney and law professor in Southern California whose scholarly articles have appeared in Israel HaYom, Arutz Sheva, the American Spectator and other prestigious publications. In his article entitled, “On Mandelblit’s Kangaroo Court, Rav Meir Kahane and Israeli Democracy” that appeared on Monday at the Arutz Sheva web site, Rabbi Fischer writes: “It never was Rabbi Meir Kahane and his Kach Party that actually undermined Israeli democracy. It was — and is — Israeli democracy that undermines and threatens Israeli democracy.”
Israel’s Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit reads statement for media in Jerusalem, Thursday, Nov. 21, 2019. Mandelblit charged Netanyahu with fraud, breach of trust and accepting bribes in three different scandals. It is the first time a sitting Israeli prime minister has been charged with a crime. (AP Photo/Ariel Schalit)
He adds: “There is absolutely nothing more devastating to and destructive of Israeli democracy than the sham and kangaroo court now trying Prime Minister Netanyahu on three sets of ridiculous charges.” As such, Rabbi Fischer writes that “the Left is determined to take him (Netanyahu) down. As a result, Netanyahu is on trial — and there is reason to fear that Avichai Mandelblit’s kangaroo court ultimately will convict him — for utter non-crimes. Bibi’s alleged actions were not criminal but political.”
Israel HaYom newspaper is involved in the corruption trial of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Photo Credit: Wikipedia
He concludes by saying, “There is no other way to say it: Democracy by its nature always entails aspects of bribery, fraud, and breach of trust. By accepted convention throughout the democratic world, the exchange of political favors for political support is at the core of how the game is played. Thus, the trial of Prime Minister Netanyahu is a disgrace, a strong-armed effort by the Israeli Left to overthrow a legitimately elected Prime Minister, and the most severe danger to Israeli democracy in the country’s history.”
In an op-ed piece that appeared on Sunday in the Jerusalem Post, Herb Keinon writes, “ And what about that presumption of innocence? Are not demands that Netanyahu leave office even though the law does not compel him to do so evidence that he is not being given the presumption of innocence? Has the coverage of the case in the media been an example of giving him this presumption of innocence? For many of Netanyahu’s opponents, the indictment itself is a presumption of guilt, and he should be treated accordingly.
He adds: “Even Netanyahu’s fierce opponents admit that some of the methods used in this case – from endless leaks to ways in which evidence was extracted from state’s witnesses – were questionable.”
A woman wearing face mask walks past a bank electronic board showing the Hong Kong share index at Hong Kong Stock Exchange Tuesday, May 26, 2020. Asian shares are rising as some regions in Japan resume near-normal business activity, with hopes for economic recovery overshadowing worries over the coronavirus pandemic. (AP Photo/Vincent Yu)
By: Alex Veiga
Stocks surged on Wall Street in morning trading Tuesday, driving the S&P 500 to its highest level in nearly three months, as hopes for economic recovery overshadow worries about the coronavirus pandemic.
The S&P 500 was up 2% to 3,015 points. It’s the first time the benchmark index has been above the 3,000-point mark since March 5, before the widespread business shutdowns aimed at slowing the spread of the outbreak sent the U.S. economy into a sharp skid.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average climbed 667 points, or 2.7%, to 25,141. It’s the first time the Dow is above 25,000 points since March 10. The Nasdaq rose 1.3% and the Russell 2000 index of small companies gained 3.8%. Financials, technology and industrial stocks powered much of the broad gains.
The post-Memorial Day rally followed a strong rise in global markets as more nations push to open their economies. The S&P 500 was coming off a solid week and is on track for a second-straight month of gains. The index remains down 11.2% from its all-time high in February.
Bond yields were broadly higher, in another sign of optimism. The yield on the 10-year Treasury note, a benchmark for interest rates on many consumer loans, rose to 0.70% from 0.66% late Friday.
Oil prices rose. Benchmark U.S. crude oil was up 1.4% to $33.69 a barrel. Brent crude oil, the international standard, was up 0.7% to $36.37 a barrel.
Fears of a crushing recession due to the coronavirus sent the S&P 500 into a skid of more than 30% from its February high. Hopes for a relatively quick rebound and unprecedented moves by the Federal Reserve and Congress to stem the economic pain drove a historic rebound for stocks in April and have bolstered optimism that the market won’t return to the depths seen in March.
Fresh optimism about the development of potential vaccines for COVID-19 have also helped spur stocks higher. Investors are now keenly focused on the process of reopening the U.S. economy, which is likely to continue accelerating as the summer progresses. Concerns remain that the reopening of businesses could lead to another surge in infections, potentially hobbling efforts to get the nation’s battered economy growing again.
Reassuring comments by the head of China’s central bank helped spur buying in global markets Tuesday. France’s CAC 40 climbed 1.7% as the government was due to unveil support for the auto industry. Germany’s DAX gained 1.3% and the FTSE 100 in Britain, which was closed on Monday, rose 1.1%. Asian markets closed higher.
In another confidence-boosting development on Wall Street, the New York Stock Exchange reopened its trading floor Tuesday for the first time since mid-March, when it closed due to the coronavirus outbreak.
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo rang the opening bell at the NYSE, which allowed a limited number of traders back to the floor. It required that traders adhere to social distancing guidelines and wear masks.
“The message of the NYSE reopening is symbolic not only for our community and our country, but it is for the globe,” said Jonathan Corpina, senior managing partner at Meridian Equity Partners and one of the NYSE floor traders. “It’s showing that we are ready to reopen our economy and reopen our country and move things in the right direction.”
Relatives help a SOS Funeral worker, wearing protection equipment amid the new coronavirus outbreak, remove the body of Eldon Cascais from his home in Manaus, Brazil, Saturday, May 9, 2020. According to Cascais’ relatives, he had lung cancer and died at home after suffering from shortness of breath, cough and fatigue for a week. (AP Photo/Felipe Dana)
By: Menelaos Hadjicostis & Elaine Kurtenbach
As Brazil and India struggle with surging coronavirus cases, a top health expert is warning that the world is still in the very middle of the outbreak, dampening hopes for a speedy global economic rebound and renewed international travel.
“Right now, we’re not in the second wave. We’re right in the middle of the first wave globally,” said Dr. Mike Ryan, the World Health Organization’s executive director.
“We’re still very much in a phase where the disease is actually on the way up,” Ryan said, pointing to South America, South Asia and other parts of the world.
India, with a population of over 1.3 billion, saw a record single-day jump in new cases for the seventh straight day. It reported 6,535 new infections Tuesday, raising its total to over 145,000, including close to 4,200 deaths.
The virus has taken hold in some of the country’s poorest, most densely populated areas, underscoring the challenges authorities face in trying to contain a virus for which no vaccine or cure has yet to be developed.
Most of India’s cases are concentrated in the western states of Maharashtra, home to the financial hub of Mumbai, and Gujarat. Infections have also climbed in the east as migrant workers stranded by lockdowns returned to their native villages from India’s largest cities.
Despite this, India allowed domestic flights to resume Monday following a two-month hiatus, but at a fraction of normal traffic levels.
In Brazil, where President Jair Bosonaro has raged against state and local leaders enforcing stay-at-home measures, WHO warned that before reopening the economy, authorities must have enough testing in place to control the spread of the virus.
Brazil has 375,000 coronavirus infections — second only to the 1.6 million cases in the U.S. — and has counted over 23,000 deaths, but many fear Brazil’s true toll is much higher.
Ryan said Brazil’s “intense” transmission rates means it should keep some stay-at-home measures in place, regardless of the damage to the economy.
“You must continue to do everything you can,” he said.
But Sao Paulo Gov. João Doria has ruled out a full lockdown in Brazil’s largest state economy and plans to start loosening restrictions on June 1.
A U.S. travel ban was set to take effect Tuesday for foreigners coming from Brazil.
In Europe, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced that the postponed military parade marking the 75th anniversary of the allied victory in the World War II will take place on June 24. Victory Day has become the most important holiday in Russia, marked every year on May 9 with a show of armed might in Red Square.
Putin said the country has passed the peak of the outbreak.
Russia reported a record one-day spike Tuesday of 174 deaths, bringing the country’s confirmed death toll to over 3,800. Russia’s coronavirus caseload surpassed 360,000 — the third-highest in the world — with almost 9,000 new infections registered.
The country’s comparatively low mortality rate has raised questions among experts. Russian officials vehemently deny manipulating any figures and attribute the low numbers to the effectiveness of the country’s lockdowns.
The question of who can travel where and when remains a dilemma in many places.
Spain’s foreign minister said that European Union members should collectively agree to open borders and determine which non-EU countries are safe for travel.
“We have to start working with our European partners to retake the freedom of movement in European territories,” Arancha González Laya told Cadena SER radio.
In the Williamsburg and Boro Park sections of Brooklyn, crowds of Orthodox Jews and Chassidim gathered to protest the closure of stores on the respective neighborhoods main shopping drags; Wallabout Street and on 13th Avenue. Photo Credit: YWN
Edited by: JV Staff
In the Williamsburg and Boro Park sections of Brooklyn, crowds of Orthodox Jews and Chassidim gathered to protest the closure of stores on the respective neighborhoods main shopping drags; Wallabout Street and on 13th Avenue. In Boro Park the scene turned ugly with people screaming at the Deputies, and passersby encouraging the protesters to hold their ground and not disperse. as was reported by Yeshiva World News.
Naturally, social media exploded with viral videos and many are claiming that the city is targeting the Jewish neighborhoods.
The Jewish news entity also reported that the NYPD were not exclusively targeting Jewish businesses that defied lock down orders.
The coronavirus crisis has forced more than 100,000 small businesses in New York to close permanently, New York Governor Andrew M. Cuomo said on Friday.
“Small businesses are taking a real beating,” he said. “They are 90 percent of New York’s businesses and they’re facing the toughest challengers.”; All but essential businesses have now been closed since New York’s shutdown started on March 22. Millions of former employees are now registered as unemployed, Patch reported
While New York will be launching its own small business relief program, with more than $100 million that it will make available as loans, some proprietors are not waiting for the government to rescue them or totally collapse like thousands have done already.
According to a report on the Yeshiva World News web site, beginning on Sunday morning, around 200 stores opened in Boro Park, Williamsburg, Flatbush, Monsey and the Five Towns. They will use extreme social distancing, some just curbside service, while others will allow one person at a time into their establishments. They are banded together under the name #ReopenNY
Organizers told YWN that Governor Cuomo and NYC Mayor Bill DeBlasio are aware of the movement. The group has lawyers & is well prepared for legal action, including visits by the police.
YWN told readers that they think it is “outrageous for the city to allow Target, Costco and every other major store to be opened, while they are destroying every small business by forcing them to remain closed.” They also confirmed the fact that the sheriff’s department did not specifically target stores in Orthodox Jewish neighborhoods in Brooklyn as they visited other neighborhoods in the city to issue summonses on stores that were open for business and were not considered essential services.
YWN added that, “there are photos of long lines – with zero social distancing – outside businesses in Bushwick and other areas, but apparently, there were no 311 complaints made.”
On Monday May 25th, Governor Andrew Cuomo announced that the families of New York’s public workers who died fighting coronavirus will receive death benefits from the state and local governments. “I feel a grave responsibility to our frontline workers, our essential workers who understood the dangers of this COVID virus, but went to work anyway, because we needed them to,” said Cuomo at a press briefing at Manhattan’s Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum. “Today, we’re saying we honor that service, and we’re going to make sure that every government in the state of New York provides death benefits to those public heroes who died from COVID-19 during this emergency.”
Mayor Bill de Blasio’s office, had joined the effort to grant the essential workers with the benefits last week. His office was quick to take credit for the initiative on social media. “Thank you @NYGovCuomo for endorsing our plan to provide line of duty benefits to city workers lost to COVID-19,” tweeted City Hall press secretary Freddi Goldstein, just minutes after Cuomo’s announcement. “Everyday, but particularly on Memorial Day, it’s so important to stop and remember those we’ve lost, and do all we can to support the families they left behind.”
As reported by the NY Post, since early April, Gov. Cuomo has been working on the lifeline to support the families of police, firefighters, health care and transit workers employed by the government who gave their lives during this pandemic. “The people who showed up,” as Cuomo called them, but were lost will have state and local pension funds paid out to their families, similar to the benefits received by the kin of 9/11 heroes.
The details of the initiative, such as the estimated cost and disbursement timeline, have not yet been announced. Cuomo also said he is calling on the federal government to take it up a notch by approving hazard pay for responders. “It’s a way of saying thank you, we understand what you did, we appreciate what you did,” said Gov. Cuomo. “And it’s a way of showing Americans that when there is a next time — and there is a next time — that we truly appreciate those people who show up and do their duty.”
The day’s briefing also included a solemn Memorial Day service by the governor, complete with a moment of silence for the country’s fallen military heroes. The governor noted that we also mourn the 96 New Yorkers who perished due to the coronavirus in the last 24-hour period. “Ninety-six is still painfully high,” said Cuomo, of the new fatalities which bring NYS’s overall confirmed deaths to 23,488. “But only in the relative absurdity of our situation is that relatively good news. We remember those 96 families today.”
A high-end hotel company Sotherly Hotels received almost $10.4 million from the federal program. Photo Credit: Sotherly Hotels
By Ellen Cans
The federal government launched the Paycheck Protection Program to help small businesses struggling due to the ensuing shutdown caused by the novel coronavirus. Large public companies, however, were given $1.3 billion in loans from that federal program. As reported by the NY Post, of the 424 public firms which admitted to receiving the funds, only 68 of those companies have promised to return the funds, as of early Monday morning. As per regulatory filings compiled by FactSquared, a data-analysis company, a whopping 84 percent or 356 of the companies are planning on keeping the federal funds meant to keep mom-and-pop businesses afloat.
The Trump administration has pledged to clamp down on abuse of the $659 billion PPP program. Officials had given the large companies until the deadline of May 18 to payback the loans without facing further scrutiny. Now, the US Small Business Administration has vowed to take a closer look at all PPP loans that were over $2 million, to confirm that the guidelines were met. The federal government will try to get outstanding loan balances returned from companies that already had the funds they needed for payroll and overhead costs. Officials said, that companies that got less than $2 million will not be scrutinized because they are “generally less likely to have had access to adequate sources of liquidity in the current economic environment”.
Some of the big firms who received and seem to be keeping the loans include: chic restaurant operator ONE Group Hospitality, which received $18.3 million; Hallador Energy, a coal firm which received $10 million; and high-end hotel company Sotherly Hotels, which got almost $10.4 million, according to the FactSquared data.
The first round of the federal Paycheck Protection Program has been called an overall disaster, with the initial $349 billion budget running out after the first two weeks. Large chains including Shake Shack, and Ruth’s Chris Steak House drew ample criticism for getting payouts from the program while small businesses were left empty handed. Those two companies who had received $10 million and $20 million respectively, have already voluntarily returned the funds last month. The SBA rolled out a second round of PPP loans, with an additional $310 billion in funding. On May 19, the SBA said that the second round still has $135.7 billion in funds available for takers. The average size of the loans as of last week was $118,000, even though most of the loans distributed were for $50,000 and less.
Ghislaine Maxwell allegedly went trolling for teenage girls to quench Jeffrey Epstein’s sexual appetite (Screenshot)
By: Rusty Brooks
An interview with Christina Oxenberg, a sister of actress Catherine Oxenberg, in a new documentary for Discovery TV, claims Epstein sent his mistress Maxwell to trailer parks to lure young girls into Epstein’s web of sexual perversion, Daily Mail reported
“Ghislaine says to me, ‘Jeffrey has a sex drive that I cannot keep up with. He has to have three orgasms a day” Oxenberg says in the new Investigation Discovery documentary series “Who Killed Jeffrey Epstein?,” which premiered Monday night.
She says, ‘I cannot keep up with him physically, and I help by bringing in other girls.’ She said it as a boast. She was proud of it,” Oxenberg, a distant cousin of Prince Andrew.
“She says, ‘What I do is I drive into the trailer parks in West Palm Beach, and I look for what I know is Jeffrey’s type, and I bring ’em home.’”
The NY Post paraphrased from the interview: Christina Oxenberg insisted that Maxwell and Epstein were not dating, at least in the 1990s, despite the socialite’s best efforts to pretend they were.
“She would tell me things like, ‘I keep myself thin because Jeffrey likes his girls thin,” Oxenberg said.
“I’d think, ‘But you are not his type,’” she said, adding that Epstein liked stunningly beautiful girls, “nothing like Ghislaine, who is smart but doesn’t have it in the looks department.”
But “these two, they are halves of a whole, and they fit,” Oxenberg said of Maxwell and Epstein.
“They need each other. She has the contacts, and he has the money, and without the contacts, his money is useless, and without his money, her contacts are useless.”
Maxwell has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing regarding Epstein. Her lawyers did not respond to requests for comment from the Mail, The NY Post reported.
Maxwell has been under investigation since December
TJV previously reported: On Friday December 27, the NY Post revealed that Ghislaine Maxwell is under investigation by the FBI for her association with Jeffrey Epstein. Epstein was 66 in August, when he committed suicide in a Manhattan jail, a month after being arrested on federal sex-trafficking charges. Maxwell, a British socialite, has somehow managed to stay out of the limelight since 2016 despite having been long been accused of procuring and grooming women for Epstein and his well-heeled clientele. Now that Epstein will not be going on trial, several other “people who facilitated” the dead pedophile’s alleged long-term sexual abuse of women and child trafficking of girls as young as 14, will be probed. Maxwell is said to be the FBI’s main focus now, as per Reuters. One source said the probe is in its early stages, following leads attained from women who asserted they were victimized by Epstein.
