MicroWave

joined 2 years ago
 

Federal prosecutors have arraigned four people in New Jersey, with a fifth at large in Colombia

Four people were arraigned on Saturday in New Jersey for allegedly posing as immigration attorneys and officials to scam immigrants, the justice department said.

Federal prosecutors in Brooklyn, New York, who announced the arrests on Friday, said the group pretended to run a law firm, and staged fake court proceedings, in an elaborate scheme to defraud people seeking legal help for their immigration cases.

According to prosecutors, who charged five people in total, the accused made more than $100,000, with “tens of thousands” of it laundered to other co-conspirators in Colombia.

 

The nation is struggling to control the spread of the wildly contagious virus as vaccination rates continue to fall.

The U.S. has officially logged 982 measles cases in 2026, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Friday. It’s more than four times the number of cases as this time last year, when a large outbreak was just beginning in West Texas.

Twenty-six states have reported cases so far this year. Large outbreaks continue to grow in Utah, Arizona and, most notably, South Carolina, where the virus has been spreading since the fall. As of Friday, the state had reported nearly 800 cases since January, bringing the outbreak’s total to 973.

It’s the largest single measles outbreak the U.S. has seen in a generation.

 

Trump is already promising new tariffs, clouding the outlook for business owners after the high court's decision.

The Supreme Court’s decision to strike down many of Donald Trump’s tariffs came as a relief to many small-business owners struggling under the weight of higher prices. But uncertainty still reigns as the administration pushes ahead with other kinds of tariffs and companies figure out if they will get refunds.

“The administration framed these tariffs as strength,” Richard Trent, the executive director of Main Street Alliance, an organization which represents more than 30,000 U.S. small businesses, said in a statement to NBC News. “What our members experienced was chaos. Rates jumping overnight. No phase in. No planning horizon.”

 

Donald Trump said Saturday that he wants a global tariff of 15%, up from 10% he had announced a day earlier after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down many of the far-reaching taxes on imports that he had imposed over the last year.

Trump’s announcement on social media was the latest sign that despite the court’s check on his powers, the Republican president still intends to ratchet up tariffs in an unpredictable way. Tariffs have been his favorite tool for rewriting the rules of global commerce and applying international pressure.

The court’s decision on Friday struck down tariffs that Trump had imposed on nearly every country using an emergency powers law. Trump now said he will use a different, albeit more limited, legal authority.

 

Recent incidents involving Anderson Cooper and Stephen Colbert suggest things are not well at the network after the acquisition financed by Trump supporter Larry Ellison

 

Experts say new labeling could deceive consumers as dangerous substances still allowed under new rules

In a further retreat from its pledge to ban artificial dyes from food, Donald Trump’s Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced that it would loosen labeling requirements to allow companies to state “no artificial colors”, even though products may contain some dangerous substances such as titanium dioxide.

The FDA in early February announced it would allow food makers to claim “no artificial colors” as long as the dyes are not petroleum-based, but health experts say even some naturally based additives present health risks, and the labeling would deceive consumers.

The move comes after the agency in 2025 began pressuring companies to phase out petroleum-based dyes, but stopped short of putting in place a ban. Removing toxins from food is a cornerstone of the Robert F Kennedy-led Maha movement. Kennedy is the secretary of the US Department of Health and Human Services, which holds the FDA, and he quickly zeroed in on dye upon taking office last year.

 

Children as young as 13 are ‘trapped’ in a state with no access to abortion, lawyers and advocates say

Donald Trump’s administration is concentrating all pregnant children being held in federal immigration enforcement custody into one group shelter in south Texas, a state where abortion is outlawed with no exceptions for survivors of rape or incest.

Since last summer, more than a dozen pregnant minors, some as young as 13 years old, have been moved to a facility in San Benito along the U.S.-Mexico border, according to a joint investigation by The Texas Newsroom and The California Newsroom, citing sources within the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) within the Department of Health and Human Services.

The agency is responsible for children who entered the United States without a parent or legal guardian or who were separated from their families by immigration authorities.

 

Supreme Court ruled on Friday that Trump’s sweeping global tariffs, ushered in under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, were unlawfully imposed

On Friday, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Trump’s sweeping global tariffs, ushered in under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, were unlawfully imposed. Trump had used the act to charge huge levies on countries, including 50% on India, which was later reduced, and 34% on China.

By Friday night, the president posted on Truth Social that he signed an executive order enabling him to bypass Congress and impose a 10% tax on imports from around the world. “It is my Great Honor to have just signed, from the Oval Office, a Global 10% Tariff on all Countries, which will be effective almost immediately,” Trump wrote.

Less than 24 hours later, Trump said he was bumping up the tariffs to 15% “based on a thorough, detailed, and complete review of the ridiculous, poorly written, and extraordinarily anti-American decision on Tariffs issued yesterday.”

 

State-linked hackers are increasingly targeting critical sectors with no signs of stopping.

NATO countries’ restrained response to hybrid attacks is at odds with public opinion, new polling shows: Broad swaths of the public in key allied countries say actions such as cyberattacks on hospitals should be considered acts of war.

The POLITICO Poll, conducted in the United States, Canada, France, Germany and the United Kingdom, showed a majority of people agreed that a cyberattack that shuts down hospitals or power grids constitutes an act of war. Canadians felt the strongest about the issue, with 73 percent agreeing.

Respondents from all five countries also rallied behind the idea that sabotaging undersea cables or energy pipelines — which has occurred more frequently in recent years — should be considered be an act of war.

 

In a Texas town at the edge of the Rio Grande and a tall metal border wall, rumors swirled that federal immigration officials wanted to purchase three hulking warehouses to transform into a detention center.

As local officials scrambled to find out what was happening, a deed was filed showing DHS had already inked a $122.8 million deal for the 826,000-square-foot (76,738-square-meter) warehouses in Socorro, a bedroom community of 40,000 people outside El Paso.

“Nobody from the federal government bothered to pick up the phone or even send us any type of correspondence letting us know what’s about to take place,” said Rudy Cruz Jr., the mayor of the predominantly Hispanic town of low-slung ranch homes and trailer parks, where orchards and irrigation ditches share the landscape with strip malls, truck stops, recycling plants and distribution warehouses.

Socorro is among at least 20 communities with large warehouses across the U.S. that have become stealth targets for Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s $45-billion expansion of detention centers.

 

The Supreme Court on Friday struck down Donald Trump’s biggest and boldest tariffs. But the justices left a $133 billion question unanswered: What’s going to happen to the money the government has already collected in import taxes now declared unlawful?

Companies have been lining up for refunds. But the way forward could prove chaotic.

When the smoke clears, trade lawyers say, importers are likely to get money back — eventually. “It’s going to be a bumpy ride for awhile,” said trade lawyer Joyce Adetutu, a partner at the Vinson & Elkins law firm.

 

Files show accuser in 2011 provided extensive account of abuse as questions mount over why action was not taken

The Department of Justice’s release of millions of Jeffrey Epstein files has not only prompted questions about his crimes – but renewed attention on authorities’ failure to stop him after an accuser reported him in 1996.

This new cache of Epstein files has provided more insight into authorities’ familiarity with allegations against him in the years that followed, including time between his sweetheart plea deal in 2008 and federal arrest nearly six years ago.

While it’s known that accuser Virginia Giuffre’s attorneys met with federal prosecutors in 2016 about Epstein to no avail, recently disclosed files indicate that detailed information was provided to federal authorities years before that sit-down. This included allegations against Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor; documents indicate that he appeared on the FBI’s radar about 15 years ago.

[–] MicroWave@lemmy.world 8 points 2 weeks ago

Thanks! Appreciate the recognition.

[–] MicroWave@lemmy.world 13 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Thanks officer

[–] MicroWave@lemmy.world 11 points 6 months ago (2 children)

Thanks, that’s nice to hear from a fellow longtimer.

[–] MicroWave@lemmy.world 27 points 6 months ago (4 children)
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