Trump unable to get $464m bond in New York fraud case, his lawyers say
Donald Trump cannot find a private company to guarantee the $464m (£365m) he has been ordered to pay in a New York civil fraud case.
The former president must either pay the full amount in cash or secure a bond in order to continue his appeal.
Mr Trump said that securing a bond of that size was “practically impossible”.
He faces the prospect of some of his real estate assets being liquidated unless he pays up.
For a fee, a bonding company would guarantee the full amount to the New York court.
They would then have to pay it if Mr Trump loses his appeal and cannot do so himself.
In his statement, Mr Trump said that the bond he was asked to pay would be “impossible for any company, including one as successful as mine”.
“The bonding companies have never heard of such a bond, of this size, before,” he said.
Mr Trump’s team spent “countless hours negotiating with one of the largest insurance companies in the world”, his lawyers wrote in a court filing.
But they concluded that “very few bonding companies will consider a bond of anything approaching that magnitude”.
The lawyers said they had approached 30 companies without success.
Mr Trump’s two eldest sons must also pay millions of dollars in the case.
Along with ordering Mr Trump to pay the penalty, New York Judge Arthur Engoron banned him from running any businesses in the state for three years after he found the former president falsely inflated assets to secure better loan deals.
A judge paused Mr Trump’s business ban last month, but denied his bid to provide a smaller bond amount, $100m, to cover the fine.
In the latest filing, the former president’s lawyers included an affidavit from a president of a private insurance firm, who said that “simply put, a bond of this size is rarely, if ever, seen”.
“In the unusual circumstance that a bond of this size is issued, it is provided to the largest public companies in the world, not to individuals or privately held businesses,” the lawyers also said.
Mr Trump’s unprecedented legal situation makes it difficult to predict next steps, said former federal prosecutor Diana Florence, who also said that penalties on this scale are usually levied against large companies.
His legal team has been playing a delay game as he appeals the verdict, she said, but now “he might be out of rope”.
“He’s facing the very real possibility that the AG will begin to liquidate [his assets], and he’s really dependent on whether a court is willing to give him more time,” Ms Florence said.
New York’s attorney general has vowed to seize Mr Trump’s assets if he does not pay the fraud judgement.
Interest on the penalty is accruing by at least $112,000 per day until he pays.
Mr Trump’s lawyers said bond companies would not accept “hard assets such as real estate as collateral” for the bond, but only cash or “cash equivalents”, such as investments that can be quickly liquidated.
According to a Forbes estimate, Mr Trump is worth about $2.6bn. He testified last year that he had $400m in liquid assets.
The $464m judgement is not his only expense. He was ordered to pay $83m in January after losing a defamation case to E Jean Carroll, a woman he was found to have sexually abused. He has already posted a bond in that case.
Mr Trump had another legal setback on Monday in one of four criminal cases he faces.
A New York judge denied the former president’s bid to block two key witness testimonies in the case where he is accused of falsifying business records to hide a hush money payment.
Judge Juan Merchan said Michael Cohen, Mr Trump’s former lawyer, and Stormy Daniels, an adult film star, may give evidence in the trial, which could begin as soon as April.
Google opens New York headquarters in repurposed 1930s railway terminal
Google is set to open its New York headquarters in a repurposed 1930s railway terminus near Hudson Square on Monday — and the tech giant says the project was designed with nature in mind.
The 12-story St. John’s Terminal building, located at the nexus of Hudson River Park, the West Village, SoHo and Tribeca, is being billed as a “workplace designed for teams,” but it’s also providing a new home for local flora and fauna.
With 1.5 acres of street-level vegetation, rail bed gardens and terraces that are 95% made up of plants native to New York State, the habitat created by the project has attracted more than 40 bird species, “including birds fueling up for a trans-Atlantic migratory flight,” wrote Google’s president for Americas and Global Business, Sean Downey, in an open letter on Wednesday.
The main entrance exposes part of the original rail lines, using them as part of a floating planter that reveals part of the building’s history.
The main entrance exposes part of the original rail lines, using them as part of a floating planter that reveals part of the building’s history. Mark Wickens/Courtesy Google
“It’s actually re-knitting the ecosystem, from the insects to the birds,” said Rick Cook, a founding partner at CookFox Architects, one of the design firms behind the project, in an introductory video published by Google.
Once at the end of the railway now forming New York’s High Line, St. John’s Terminal served as a freight facility and office space. The renovation retained the original rail beds, turning them into planters that hang above the building’s main entrance, and incorporated wood reclaimed from the Coney Island boardwalk after Hurricane Sandy. Google said that the decision to repurpose an old building, rather than constructing its new headquarters from scratch, saved 78,400 metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions (equivalent to taking around 17,000 cars off the road for a year). The tech giant also claimed it had prevented 77% of its construction waste from ending up in landfills.
The complex is one of several Google offices built in renovated structures, including a converted flour mill in Dublin, a former aircraft hangar in LA’s Playa Vista neighborhood and Pier 57, once a New York City shipping terminal. The tech firm also owns the nearby Chelsea Market, purchased for $2.4 billion in 2018 after it had been converted into a retail and office development.
Google began leasing the St. John’s Terminal site in 2019, and bought it outright in 2022 for $2.1 billion. The building serves as a headquarters for Google’s Global Business Organization, which includes the firm’s sales and partnership teams.
The renovation project was commissioned in 2018, before the Covid-19 pandemic, but its final design was later adapted to offer more flexible work arrangements. Google, like many large corporations in America, is trying to entice workers back to the office, and the new campus — whose interiors were designed by international architecture studio Gensler — is being heralded by the tech giant as a place to connect and innovate.
“If you’re going to make that commute in, it should be because you can work with people that have passion, that have ideas, that you can sit next to and come up with something that you couldn’t do just on your own, and that’s really the vision of this space,” said Downey in a video introducing the new campus.
The building can accommodate around 3,000 workers and is organized into 60 “neighborhoods” for teams of around 20 to 50 people. There are no assigned desks but instead workers can use flexible seating areas or shared spaces including lounges, cafes, terraces and micro-kitchens.
“Creativity wants to move around, so we’ve created as much common spaces as we have neighborhood space, if not more, for people to meet, to work, to collaborate,” said Jennifer Kelly, a vice president of workplace experience, in the same video. “Some feel like a library, some feel like a coffee shop, so people have options to use spaces that they feel most comfortable in.”
There are currently more than 14,000 Google employees in New York, up from 7,000 when the company announced the St. John’s Terminal project in 2018, despite sweeping layoffs across several divisions earlier in this year. Google’s parent company, Alphabet, also slashed around 12,000 jobs — then around 6% of its workforce — at the beginning of 2023.
Gambia votes to reverse landmark ban on female genital mutilation
The Gambia has taken steps towards lifting a ban on female circumcision, a move that could make it the first country in the world to reverse legal protections against the practice for millions of women and girls.
Politicians in the West African nation’s parliament voted 42 to four on Monday to advance the controversial bill, which would repeal a landmark 2015 ban on female genital mutilation (FGM) that made the practice punishable by up to three years in prison
Almameh Gibba, the legislator who introduced the bill, argued that the ban violated citizens’ rights to “practice their culture and religion” in the overwhelmingly Muslim country. “The bill seeks to uphold religious loyalty and safeguard cultural norms and values,” he said.
But activists and rights organisations say the proposed legislation reverses years of progress and risks damaging the country’s human rights record.
Jaha Marie Dukureh, of Safe Hands for Girls, an NGO seeking to end FGM, told Al Jazeera that the practice was “child abuse”. She, herself, underwent the practice and watched her sister bleed to death following the procedure.
“The people who applaud FGM in this country, a lot of them are men. These are men who don’t have the same lived experiences that we do, and women who have been through this practice continue to tell them every single day what their suffering is, what their pain is,” she said.
The debate over repealing the ban, imposed by former Gambian President Yahya Jammeh, who ruled the country with an iron fist for 22 years before being toppled in 2016, has divided the nation.
The debate flared up in August, when three women were fined for carrying out FGM on eight infant girls, becoming the first people convicted under the law.
The bill will now be sent to a parliamentary committee for further scrutiny before a third reading, a process that is expected to take three months. The committee can make amendments to the measure.
Health risks
UNICEF, the UN agency for children, defines FGM as “the partial or total removal of the female external genitalia or other injury to the female genital organs for non-medical reasons”.
Seventy-six percent of Gambian females aged between 15 and 49 have undergone FGM, according to a 2021 report by UNICEF.
It can lead to serious health problems, including infections, bleeding, infertility and complications in childbirth, and impairs sexual pleasure.
“Girls’ bodies are their own. FGM robs them of autonomy over their bodies and causes irreversible harm,” said the UN’s The Gambia office on X ahead of the debate.
#FGM is a harmful practice that violates women and girls’ #HumanRights.
We remain committed to supporting🇬🇲efforts in upholding & protecting the rights and dignity of all citizens, including #Women and #Girls.
Read the UN statement on the proposed Women’s Amendment Bill ⤵ pic.twitter.com/JNNMYjKCVJ
— UN The Gambia (@UNGambia) February 23, 2024
The number of women and girls who have undergone FGM worldwide has increased to 230 million from 200 million eight years ago, UNICEF reported this month.
It said the largest share of those women and girls were found in African countries, with more than 144 million cases, followed by more than 80 million in Asia and the number surpassing six million in the Middle East.
Rights groups believe that The Gambia’s move will set a dangerous precedent for women’s rights.
“There’s the inherent risk that this is just the first step and it could lead to the rollback of other rights such as the law on child marriage … and not just in The Gambia but in the region as a whole,” said Divya Srinivasan, from women’s rights NGO Equality Now.
Criminalisation was a crucial step in the fight against female circumcision, Equality Now said, but noted that more than half of the 92 countries where FGM is practised have laws banning it.
Commercial Bank of Ethiopia glitch lets customers withdraw millions
Ethiopia’s biggest commercial bank is scrambling to recoup large sums of money withdrawn by customers after a “systems glitch”.
The customers discovered early on Saturday that they could take out more cash than they had in their accounts at the Commercial Bank of Ethiopia (CBE).
More than $40m (£31m) was withdrawn or transferred to other banks, local media reported.
It took several hours for the institution to freeze transactions.
Much of the money was withdrawn from state-owned CBE by students, bank president Abe Sano told journalists on Monday.
News of the glitch spread across universities largely via messaging apps and phone calls.
Long lines formed at campus ATMs, with a student in western Ethiopia telling BBC Amharic people were withdrawing money until police officers arrived on campus to stop them.
The student, who attends Jimma University Institute of Technology, said he “did not believe it was true” when his friends told him at around 01:00 local time (22:00 GMT) that it was possible to withdraw large amounts from ATMs, or transfer the money using the bank’s app.
Another student, at Dilla University in southern Ethiopia, said a number of his peers retrieved money from CBE between midnight and 02:00 local time.
More than 38 million people hold accounts at CBE, which was established 82 years ago.
Ethiopia’s central bank, which serves as the financial sector’s governing body, released a statement on Sunday saying “a glitch” had occurred during “maintenance and inspection activities”.
The statement, however, focused on the interrupted service that occurred after CBE froze all transactions. It did not mention the money withdrawn by customers.
Mr Sano did not say exactly how much money was withdrawn during Saturday’s incident, but said the loss incurred was small when compared to the bank’s total assets.
He stated that CBE was not hit by a cyber-attack and that customers should not be worried as their personal accounts were intact.
At least three universities have released statements advising students to return any money not belonging to them that they may have taken from CBE.
Anyone returning money will not be charged with a criminal offence, Mr Sano said.
But it’s not clear how successful the bank’s attempts to recoup their money has been so far.
The student from Jimma University said on Monday he had not heard of anyone giving the money back, but said he had seen police vehicles on campus.
An official at Dilla University said bank employees were on campus collecting money that some students were returning voluntarily.
Indonesia fishing village flooded with tide of rubbish after heavy rains
An Indonesian fishing village has been inundated with tonnes of rubbish after recent heavy rains resulted in stronger tides.
Teluk, in the Indonesian province of Banten on the western edge of Java island, has one of the country’s dirtiest beaches. But the arrival of tonnes of rubbish on the shore has shocked residents.
Solikah, an Indonesian housewife living in the fishing village of Teluk, was in tears as she pointed to piles of trash strewn on a beach close to her home of 40 years.
An elderly man carrying baskets walks through rubbish on a beach in Teluk fishing village, Indonesia
“You can’t predict the weather,” the 58-year-old told Reuters.
Fikri Jufri, who works with the community cleaning beaches in Teluk, said the rain had led to the pile-up of rubbish.
“Every year, the rain and wind carries trash from the sea to the shore,” he said, adding mountains of plastic waste have for years made their way to the sea through rivers, but the tides bring them back ashore.
Biscuit and toothbrush cases, instant noodle packages or even sandals are regularly strewn on the beach, where villagers live on the shore.
Images from Teluk on 15 March showed piles of rubbish containing a hat, plastic bags and a plastic spoon inundating the beach. One photo showed a chicken with a rubber band in its mouth walking among the detritus.
Indonesia is one of the world’s biggest contributors of plastic waste that ends up in the sea.
In a sample of 280 Indonesian cities and districts, 33 million tons of waste was produced in 2022, 36% of which did not end up in landfill. Most of the country’s food and plastic waste landfills are overcrowded.
In many areas, local youth have launched efforts to clear up the rubbish; in Indonesia’s third largest city, Bandung, in West Java a group of five young men amassed 9 million followers on TikTok and Instagram for cleaning up their homes rivers and beaches after flooding in 2022.
A video of a group of young environmentalists raking up tons of trash in Teluk in 2023 went viral on social media app TikTok.
Despite the waste, the biggest complaint of local fishers is how the weather unpredictability affects their livelihood.
Jayadi, 33, said high tides during the rains have prevented him from going fishing, lamenting that income will be hit just as his family prepares to celebrate the Islamic Eid al-Fitr festival next month.
“Many villagers will cry because they cannot buy rice if the weather continues like this,” he said. “Last year around this time the sea was calmer, so we could find fish, squids.”
Indonesia is expecting a milder dry season this year, its meteorological agency said, starting later than usual in May and June for Java.
World’s largest solar manufacturer to cut one-third of workforce
The world’s largest solar manufacturer has slashed nearly a third of its workforce after a cost-cutting drive that included telling staff to only print in black and white fell short and as a chill ripples through the renewable energy sector.
China’s Longi is to cut as much as 30% of its workforce, in an acceleration of cost reductions that began late last year, Bloomberg reported.
It is unclear exactly how many jobs will be lost at the company, which employed 80,000 at its peak last year, as an internal function allowing employees to see the total number of staff has reportedly been disabled.
The renewables industry is facing significant headwinds in the fallout from Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in early 2022. Moscow’s reduction in gas supplies into continental Europe left governments scrambling to beef up domestic power generation, accelerating a shift towards renewables.
However, the resulting higher energy bills pushed up inflation rates, adding costs to renewables supply chains already under pressure from the surge in demand. Meanwhile, oil and gas companies have retrenched from green projects in favour of traditional high-margin fossil fuel projects.
As a result, renewables companies have been pausing projects and cutting jobs in an attempt to rebalance their portfolios. The solar industry has a history of boom-and-bust cycles, dictated typically by government policies.
China is the centre of the world’s solar supply manufacturing industries and a proliferation of new factories dedicated to the technology has created fierce competition.
Longi manufacturers wafers – a component used in solar panels. The company, based in Xi’an in central China, has been forced to suspend investment plans while also cutting prices.
Before the job cuts, the company previously tried to reduce costs through a series of smaller measures. These included cancelling free afternoon tea, cutting business trip budgets and informing staff that they must only print in black and white unless they received permission, Bloomberg reported. Longi’s Shanghai office has reportedly stopped offering free coffee.
NSW police reject watchdog’s calls for updated training and protocols on use of force
New South Wales police have rejected calls from the state’s police watchdog for updated training and protocols for officers on the use of force, especially when handcuffing children, after a scathing report handed down last year.
In its Operation Mantus report, the NSW law enforcement conduct commission (Lecc) said the way police were trained should be changed and ongoing education provided to officers.
Among its 19 recommendations, the commission said there was the need for “ongoing assessment as to whether it is appropriate to leave the person handcuffed after the arrest”.
The police rejected the recommendation, along with another three, saying that when any police power is used the “involved officer must justify the use of that power”.
“It is the position of the NSWPF that the police handbook and use of force manual provide clear and sufficient guidance about the use of police powers, and the considerations a NSWPF officer is required to make before and during the use of a police power,” police said.
The police force also rejected the recommendation to review its policies and procedures governing the need for police to “obtain prompt medical attention for people who have sustained injuries following the use of force by police officers”.
In its response, the force said all injuries were already “assessed as one of the first steps when they enter custody”.
“The NSWPF asserts that sufficient guidance is already provided regarding this requirement,” police said.
The commission began Operation Mantus after a 14-year-old boy was arrested in September 2022 when plainclothes officers targeted a community in Northern NSW to identify and, if necessary, arrest young offenders.
The teenager was injured during his arrest and taken to hospital. He had claimed he was “bashed” by police, but the commission found his injuries occurred as a result of him falling while being pursued, and then being forced to the ground during his arrest.
The officers were not wearing body-worn cameras when they arrested the boy and the Lecc also said “a question remains” about whether the arrest was lawful.
The boy spoke with the Aboriginal Legal Service from the police station, was advised about his right to silence, and told his lawyer he wished to exercise this right, the report said.
His lawyer told the NSW police custody manager of these instructions verbally and via email. But the teenager was still interviewed by two officers later that morning, the report said.
In its report, the Lecc made 19 recommendations after finding police had a “systemic problem” of interviewing young people in custody in a way that compromised their right to silence.
The police response comes as the state parliament considers the Minns government’s contentious new laws that would make it harder for teenage offenders to get bail. The government expects its legislation to pass later this week.
Police use of force in NSW has attracted considerable scrutiny over the past year following a string of high-profile cases. The Lecc has released several other reports criticising the force’s treatment of Aboriginal people.
Canada refuses to apologize over British children abuse scandal
The Canadian government has refused the latest request for an apology to British children abused in the country.
Campaigners for youngsters shipped to Canada in the 19th and 20th centuries have petitioned the country’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to apologise for their mistreatment.
His government has declined – a decision campaigners have said “compounds the historical injustice”.
About 115,000 youngsters, so-called British Home Children, were sent to Canada from the UK between 1869 and 1948.
They were typically used as cheap labour on farms or as domestic servants and many were subject to mistreatment and abuse.
The UK and Australia have issued formal apologies for their roles in the transport of British children into punishing circumstances overseas and petitioners asked Canada to do the same.
In responding, the Canadian government said: “It is generally agreed that [the children’s] living and working conditions were poorly supervised in Canada, leaving the children vulnerable to abuse and prejudice.”
However, the response contained no apology which has infuriated petition organisers.
Lori Oschefski, of British Home Children Canada, told Sky News: “By rejecting an apology, the government not only overlooks the enduring trauma suffered by these individuals and the intergenerational trauma passed down to their some four million descendants, but also fails to demonstrate a commitment to rectifying historical wrongs.
“For a nation to move forward, it is imperative to confront and learn from its historical missteps, and the current refusal to apologise for the mistreatment of the British Home Children reflects a disheartening lack of progress in this critical aspect of Canada’s historical consciousness and compounds the historical injustice, perpetuating a narrative of neglect and indifference towards the victims of this reprehensible chapter in Canadian history.”
In its response to the petition, the Canadian government highlighted its initiatives to recognise the experience of Home Children, including the adoption in 2017 by its House of Commons of an apology to the British Home Children and their descendants.
Campaigners point out that it falls short of the formal apology they want, of the sort made by the UK and Australia.
