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Chinese and Russian leaders Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin will attend the G20 summit in Bali in November, Indonesian President Joko Widodo told Bloomberg News on Thursday.
“Xi Jinping will come. President Putin has also told me he will come,” Jokowi, as he is popularly known, told the news agency.
The Chinese foreign ministry did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment. Indonesia presidential palace officials did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Indonesia is chairing the Group of 20 major economies and has faced pressure from Western countries to withdraw its invitation to Putin over his country’s invasion on Ukraine, which his government calls a “special military operation.”
Jokowi has sought to position himself as mediator between the warring countries, and has traveled to meet both Ukraine’s and Russia’s presidents. This week, Jokowi said both countries have accepted Indonesia as a “bridge of peace.”
Leaders of major countries, including US President Joe Biden, are set to meet in Indonesia’s resort island of Bali in November. Indonesia has also invited Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky.
A federal judge in Texas on Thursday ruled that President Joe Biden’s plan to cancel hundreds of billions of dollars in student loan debt was unlawful and must be vacated, delivering a victory to conservative opponents of the program.
US District Judge Mark Pittman, an appointee of former Republican President Donald Trump in Fort Worth, ruled in a lawsuit backed by the Job Creators Network Foundation on behalf of two borrowers.
The debt relief plan had already been temporarily blocked by the St. Louis-based 8th US Circuit Court of Appeals while it considers a request by six Republican-led states to enjoin it while they appealed the dismissal of their own lawsuit.
Biden’s plan has been the subject of several lawsuits by conservative state attorneys general and legal groups, though plaintiffs before Thursday had struggled to convince courts they were harmed by it in such a way that they have standing to sue.
Pittman in a 26-page ruling wrote that the HEROES Act — a law that provides loan assistance to military personnel and that was relied upon by the Biden administration to enact the relief plan — did not authorize the $400 billion student loan forgiveness program.
“The Program is thus an unconstitutional exercise of Congress’s legislative power and must be vacated,” Pittman wrote.
The White House and representatives for the plaintiffs did not respond immediately to requests for comment.
The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office in September calculated the debt forgiveness would eliminate about $430 billion of the $1.6 trillion in outstanding student debt and that over 40 million people were eligible to benefit.
The plan, announced in August, calls for forgiving up to $10,000 in student loan debt for borrowers making less than $125,000 per year, or $250,000 for married couples. Borrowers who received Pell Grants to benefit lower-income college students will have up to $20,000 of their debt canceled.
NEW YORK: Former President Donald Trump was aware of allegedly illegal tax practices at his namesake real estate company, a senior executive indicated in testimony on Thursday during the Trump Organization’s criminal trial on charges of tax fraud.
Jeffrey McConney, the company’s controller, was asked by a prosecutor in Manhattan whether former chief financial officer Allen Weisselberg told him he and Trump had discussed reducing Weisselberg’s salary, which would be taxed, to offset rent payments that the Trump Organization made on the CFO’s Manhattan apartment.
McConney at first said he did not remember, but after being shown his grand jury testimony on the matter said: “That’s what Allen told me, yes.”
The Trump Organization was charged by the Manhattan district attorney’s office in 2021 with unlawfully awarding executive perks over 15 years without telling tax authorities and falsely reporting bonuses as non-employee compensation.
The company, which operates hotels, golf courses and other real estate around the world, could face $1.6 million in fines if convicted. Trump has not been charged, but has denied wrongdoing and said he was targeted because of politics.
McConney was given immunity from prosecution in exchange for his testimony before the grand jury that indicted the Trump Organization, which still employs him.
The case is one of several legal matters Trump faces as he weighs another presidential run in 2024.
Prosecutors consider McConney a reluctant witness, and had sought unsuccessfully that he be declared a hostile witness so they could question him more aggressively.
The trial had been on hold since Oct. 31 because McConney, who had been testifying, contracted COVID-19.
Weisselberg has pleaded guilty and is expected to testify for the prosecution. He is on paid leave from Trump’s company.
In Thursday’s testimony, McConney acknowledged putting Weisselberg’s Long Island address on the CFO’s tax forms for years, though he knew Weisselberg also had a Manhattan apartment and paid no New York City income tax between 2005 and 2012.
McConney said he also prepared tax returns for other employees who falsely stated they did not maintain living quarters in the city.
Despite having been a tax preparer for 40 years, McConney said he was “not a tax expert” when asked whether people with New York City apartments must pay city tax.
Asked whether he helped people evade tax, McConney said, “Evade is a very strong word. … I tried to help them in any way I could.”
McConney also said some executives were treated as independent contractors when bonuses were paid, enabling the company to avoid paying taxes and the employees to avoid having taxes withheld. He said the practice dated from the 1980s.
“We figured that was in lieu of a management fee,” McConney said.
McConney said a former general counsel, Jason Greenblatt, received bonuses as non-employee compensation until 2011 when the company’s accountant told McConney to stop. McConney also identified Trump’s initials on a memo concerning the reduction of Trump Organization executive Matthew Calamari’s salary by $72,000, reflecting rent for his apartment.
A lawyer for Calamari did not immediately respond to a request for comment, and Greenblatt could not be reached for comment.
McConney said various practices that prosecutors consider questionable did not stop until around 2017, after Trump had become US president.
Asked by prosecutor Joshua Steinglass whether the timing was a coincidence, as McConney had testified last week, McConney said: “No one told me specifically this change was because Mr. Trump became President Trump.”
On cross-examination, Susan Necheles, a lawyer for the Trump Organization, sought to downplay McConney’s role at the company.
“Do you consider your position to be a managerial position?” she asked.
“No,” McConney responded. Last week, he testified that he supervised at least 10 people.
The trial is scheduled to resume on Monday.
While Democrats were celebrating a stronger-than-expected midterm performance across much of the US this week, New York was emerging as a notable exception where losses and lackluster results prompted a round of soul-searching and finger-pointing inside the party.
Republicans flipped four congressional seats, including one held by Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney, who ran the House Democrats’ campaign arm. Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul, who took over last year when former Gov. Andrew Cuomo resigned, won her race against Republican Lee Zeldin by single digits. It was the closest governor’s race in the state since 1994 when incumbent Democrat Mario Cuomo lost to Republican George Pataki.
There were signs of Republican inroads even in the US Senate race. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, who is broadly popular in New York and makes a point of visiting each of the state’s 62 counties every year, faced his closest reelection since 1998. While he’s won typically won reelection by at least 30 points, Schumer’s win over Republican Joe Pinion was less than half that Tuesday.
“We did worse than Democrats nationally,” said Mark Levine, the Manhattan borough president and a Democrat. “I don’t think you can blame Joe Biden for what happened in New York State.”
Both Democrats and Republicans pointed to a confluence of issues behind the results: Lackluster campaigning and a slow response from Democrats to the way Republicans harnessed fears about violent crime. A redistricting plan was supposed to help Democrats, but backfired. The GOP also made some notable inroads in suburbs and diverse urban neighborhoods.
Democrats were braced for setbacks elsewhere this week, particularly in Florida, a onetime swing state that has become more reliably Republican. But the New York challenges were especially disappointing because they happened in a state where Democrats have twice as many registered voters as Republicans.
“It’s one thing for the Florida Democratic party to be an absolute neutered disgrace. It’s another thing to have deep problems in the Democratic Party in a state like New York,” Democratic strategist Jon Reinish said.
The first warning sign for Democrats came in the spring with the state’s redistricting process, which Reinish called “a complete disaster from beginning to end.”
The state’s new political maps drawn by the Democratically-controlled Legislature would have given Democrats an advantage in 4 of 26 House races, but were thrown out by a court. The court sided with Republicans who said the maps were unconstitutionally gerrymandered and hired an expert to draw a more competitive map.
Republicans who hold 8 of 27 House seats this year are on track to have at least 10 of New York’s 26 House seats starting in 2023. Two other tight races are too early to call, but the GOP’s victories included the trophy ousting Maloney.
Zeldin, a Long Island congressman, was initially expected to face long odds against beating Hochul. His alliance with former President Donald Trump and vote as a member of the House against certifying the 2020 election results were expected to be too toxic in New York, which had not elected a Republican governor in 20 years.
But the congressman came close to succeeding, prompting a frustrated, late-stage scramble from Democrats.
While Republicans are disappointed they didn’t win the governor’s race, the New York GOP is the most energized it’s been in decades, said Chapin Fay, a former Zeldin adviser who ran a political action committee this year working to build Republican inroads with Hispanics, Asian-Americans, Eastern Europeans, Jews and African Americans in New York City.
“New York is more purple than anyone would have suspected,” Fay said.
Zeldin tapped into fears about crime and campaigned aggressively with frequent appearances in liberal New York City to spotlight shootings, stabbings and incidents of subway violence.
Hochul, who is the first woman to serve as New York governor, had focused her campaign on defending abortion rights and portraying Zeldin as too extreme. But when polls showed him closing in on her in the final weeks, the governor began speaking more frequently about public safety.
New York crime rates are not near the gritty highs of decades past, but they have increased since the pandemic. A string of high-profile violent incidents, including some shootings and fatal shoves onto the tracks of New York City subways, have heightened the fears.
“I don’t think we should parrot Republican demagoguery on this but we have to tell a compelling story about what we’re doing to make the city and the state safer,” Levine said. “We pretty much entirely ceded the issue to the other side and they ended up being able to define the terms.”
Jay Jacobs, the chair of the New York State Democratic Party, defended the party’s campaigning and said many critics were sitting on the sidelines.
He said the party was hurt by the redistricting result and said the original, Democrat-drawn maps were “a well-intentioned effort that was an overreach.”
Jacobs said the party was damaged in the minds of independent voters by efforts to portray it as beholden to its most progressive members, along with a tough political environment.
“We are a blue state,” he said, “that had a particularly unique set of challenges in this election, which happened to come in a very tough political year for the incumbent party.”
HARTFORD, Connecticut: Infowars host Alex Jones and his company were ordered by a judge Thursday to pay an extra $473 million for promoting false conspiracy theories about the Sandy Hook school massacre, bringing the total judgment against him in a lawsuit filed by the victims’ families to a staggering $1.44 billion.
Connecticut Judge Barbara Bellis imposed the punitive damages on the Infowars host and Free Speech Systems. Jones repeatedly told his millions of followers the massacre that killed 20 first graders and six educators was staged by “crisis actors” to enact more gun control.
“The record clearly supports the plaintiffs’ argument that the defendants’ conduct was intentional and malicious, and certain to cause harm by virtue of their infrastructure, ability to spread content, and massive audience including the infowarriors,” the judge wrote in a 45-page ruling.
Christopher Mattei, a lawyer for the Sandy Hook families, said he hopes the award sends a message to conspiracy theorists who profit from lies.
“The Court recognized the ‘intentional, malicious … and heinous’ conduct of Mr. Jones and his business entities,” Mattei said in a statement.
On his show Thursday, Jones called the award “ridiculous” and a “joke” and said he has little money to pay the damages.
“Well, of course I’m laughing at it,” he said. “It’d be like if you sent me a bill for a billion dollars in the mail. Oh man, we got you. It’s all for psychological effect. It’s all the Wizard of Oz … when they know full well the bankruptcy going on and all the rest of it, that it’ll show what I’ve got and that’s it, and I have almost nothing.”
Eight victims’ relatives and the FBI agent testified during a monthlong trial about being threatened and harassed for years by people who deny the shooting happened. Strangers showed up at some of their homes and confronted some of them in public. People hurled abusive comments at them on social media and in emails. Some received death and rape threats.
Six jurors ordered Jones to pay $965 million to compensate the 15 plaintiffs for defamation, infliction of emotional distress and violations of Connecticut’s Unfair Trade Practices Act.
Jones, who lives and works in Austin, Texas, has bashed the trial as unfair and an assault on free speech rights. He says he will appeal the verdicts. He also has said he doesn’t have the money to pay such huge verdicts, because he has less than $2 million to his name — which contradicted testimony at a similar trial in Texas. Free Speech Systems, meanwhile, is seeking bankruptcy protection.
Jones said Thursday that he has only a “couple hundred thousand dollars” in his savings account.
Jones’ lawyer, Norm Pattis, wrote in a text message to the The Associated Press, “To paraphrase Karl Marx, the verdict was tragedy, this latest ruling is farce. It makes our work on appeal that much easier.”
Bellis found Jones and Infowars’ parent company liable for damages without a trial last year, as a consequence for what she called his repeated failures to turn over many financial documents and other records to the plaintiffs. After the unusual “default” ruling, the jury was tasked only with deciding on the amount of compensatory damages and whether punitive damages were warranted.
Jones says that he turned over thousands of documents and that the default ruling deprived him of his right to present a defense against the lawsuit.
The punitive damages include about $323 million for the plaintiffs’ attorney fees and costs and $150 million for violations of the Unfair Trade Practices Act.
In Connecticut, punitive damages for defamation and infliction of emotional distress are generally limited to plaintiffs’ legal fees. The Sandy Hook plaintiffs’ lawyers are to get one-third of the $965 million in compensatory damages under a retainer agreement.
But there is no cap on punitive damages for violations of the Unfair Trade Practices Act. The plaintiffs had not asked for a specific amount of punitive damages, but under one hypothetical calculation they said such damages could be around $2.75 trillion under the law.
In a similar trial in Texas in August, Jones was ordered to pay nearly $50 million to the parents of another child killed in the Sandy Hook shooting for calling the massacre a hoax. A forensic economist testified during that trial that Jones and Free Speech Systems have a combined net worth as high as $270 million.
Jones hawks nutritional supplements, survival gear and other products on his show, which airs on the Infowars website and dozens of radio stations. Evidence at the Connecticut trial showed his sales spiked around a time he talked about the Sandy Hook shooting, leading the plaintiffs’ lawyers to say he was profiting off the tragedy.
In documents recently filed in Free Speech Systems’ bankruptcy case in Texas, a budget for the company for Oct. 29 to Nov. 25 estimated product sales would total $2.5 million, while operating expenses would be about $740,000. Jones’ salary was listed at $20,000 every two weeks.
On Wednesday, Bellis, the Connecticut judge, ordered Jones to not move any of his assets out of the country, as the families seek to attach his holdings to secure money for the damages. Jones, meanwhile, has asked the judge to order a new trial or at least reduce the compensatory damages to a “nominal” amount.
A third and final trial over Jones’ hoax claims is expected to begin around the end of the year in Texas. As in Connecticut, Jones was found liable for damages without trials in both Texas cases because he failed to turned over many records to the plaintiffs.
WASHINGTON: US President Joe Biden said on Wednesday he intends to run for reelection and would likely make a final decision by early next year, after declaring the results of Tuesday’s midterm elections good for democracy.
White House officials expressed a sense of vindication that Biden’s fellow Democrats did better than expected.
Biden, who turns 80 this month, has faced questions on whether he will seek a second term. A Biden adviser said preparatory discussions for a 2024 campaign were underway.
“Our intention is to run again, that’s been our intention,” Biden told reporters at the White House, his wife Jill sitting nearby. “This is ultimately a family decision.”
Biden said his family wanted him to run and he did not feel rushed to make a final decision. He said he would do so unrelated to any announcement from his 2020 rival, Republican former President Donald Trump, who is expected to run as well.
Biden has spent his first two years in office warning against threats to democracy after Trump’s supporters stormed the US Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, and did not accept Biden’s legitimate victory. He underscored those arguments in the final days of the midterm elections.
When asked how other world leaders should view this moment for America, with Trump potentially running again, Biden said the answer was to make sure Trump never returned to power.
“We just have to demonstrate that he will not take power if he does run, making sure he — under legitimate efforts of our Constitution — does not become the next president again,” Biden said.
Trump has criticized Biden’s policies sharply and has said he will make an announcement about his plans next week.
About a potential competition between Trump and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis for the Republican nomination, Biden said it would be “fun watching them take on each other.”
He acknowledged that the results showed Americans were frustrated, however. Inflation was a big topic for voters.
Biden focused his campaign pitch largely on preventing threats to US democracy, securing abortion rights and extolling his economic policies.
Republicans are expected to try to undo some of those policies and prevent him from achieving further goals.
Biden said he was prepared to work with Republicans.