news

https://www.businessinsider.com/employers-counter-offers-staff-job-hop-2023-8

In the Aug. 8 filing, Katherine Feinstein made the striking allegation that Michael Klein, Marc Scholvinck and Verett Mims, who control the disputed trust, are committing financial elder abuse against the 90-year-old senator. California’s elder abuse laws cover all state residents age 65 and older.

In the filing, Katherine alleges that the co-trustees didn’t fund a trust her mother is the sole income beneficiary of and that they have not made “required distributions” to the senator since Blum’s death in 2022. Katherine, Feinstein’s daughter from a previous marriage, also alleges that the co-trustees are purposely slow-rolling payments to the senator because they “intend to benefit Richard Blum’s [biological] daughters, who stand to inherit millions of dollars that should go to Senator Feinstein if the Trustees never make the required distributions to her.”

When Michael Protzman, the leader of the QAnon cult that believes former President John F. Kennedy and his son JFK Jr. are still alive, died in June, people hoped the end was near for the group. The family members of those who joined the cult hoped it would disband so that their loved ones would finally return home.

But instead, a new leader has seemingly emerged: a 13-year-old girl known to her followers only as “Tiny Teflon,” the name of the Telegram channel she uses to communicate with her followers. According to multiple live chats on Telegram reviewed by VICE News, Protzman appears to have groomed the girl as his protege, hosting her on his live chats on Telegram, where he had tens of thousands of followers.

Many of Protzman’s followers have permanently broken family relationships, emptied their bank accounts, and destroyed their lives to follow his wild conspiracy theories. And now it seems they are ready to do the same for a child, whose real identity is not known.

Tiny Teflon has created her own channel, conducted live streams with followers, and most worrying of all, has announced her plan to indoctrinate more children into the cult by teaching them how to decode real word events using the movement’s bastardized form of Jewish numerology, gematria.

“I definitely think I’m gonna have more kids involved in this,” Tiny said during a live chat on her channel on August 6. “Maybe they could share more code, because I don’t want to be talking the entire time when I do this show in the future. So I’ll definitely think of having kids share codes and teach what they know too.”

“It’s worrying to see this young girl be put on a pedestal by a bunch of adults after the passing of Protzman,” an open-source researcher who uses the nickname “Karma” to avoid being targeted by the members of Protzman’s cult, which she has tracked closely since its inception, told VICE News.

When alive, Protzman used gematria to convince his followers that he could see into the future and communicate with everyone from former president Donald Trump to JFK Jr. Before becoming a cult leader, Protzman was a demolition expert in Washington state. He first gained attention in November 2021 when he convinced his followers that JFK and JFK Jr. were going to reappear in Dealey Plaza in downtown Dallas. Around a thousand people traveled from across the country to Dallas only to be disappointed by the Kennedys’ failure to appear.

Despite this, many of Protzman’s dedicated followers remained loyal, and followed him across the country for the next 18 months. Many of them destroyed their families and finances in the process. Protzman continued to claim JFK Jr. was alive and continually changed his predictions, at one point claiming Trump was just JFK Jr. in disguise, and finally, shortly before his death, claiming he was in fact the reincarnated JFK Jr.

Protzman died on June 30 in a Rochester hospital as a result of “multiple blunt force injuries” after he “lost control of his dirt bike” according to a report from the Southern Minnesota Regional Medical Examiner’s Office, which was obtained by VICE News.

While Protzman was the leader of the group, he introduced Tiny Teflon in March 2022 by featuring her on a live chat in his Telegram channels. During the chat, and in subsequent appearances, the pair would use gematria to make links between everything from the 2011 movie The Smurfs and the timing of Trump’s appearance in Home Alone 2: Lost in New York to conclude that Q’s predictions about the mass execution of the child-trafficking cabal is about to come true. It’s not known if there was any familial connection between Protzman or Tiny Teflon, or how they knew each other.

As a sign of her growing position within the group, Tiny Teflon was made an administrator of Protzman’s main Telegram channel, though she posted very little over the last 6 months. However, since his death, the teenager has re-emerged as a leading voice in the group.

In late July, she showed up at a Trump rally in Erie, Pennsylvania, where she was photographed with multiple members of the JFK group.

Then she began to post again in the Negative 48 channel. As well as posting her “decodes,” on August 1 she shared a link to her new channel called ABC 123. The channel’s description says it will contain “Tiny Teflon’s Decodes, Research and Much More!” and in all caps, adds: “CHANNEL MONITORED BY ADULT.”

The description doesn’t mention who the adult is, but it is likely her mother, a Protzman devotee who has an account on Telegram as “Teflon Don.” Using this account she has promoted her daughter’s work as well as celebrating her birthday with a message posted in the main Negative 48 channel last year.

During one live chat, Tiny Teflon went into more detail about how she would use her position to recruit more children into the cult.

“I definitely want help out with kids and teaching gematria, it’d be so much fun,” she said. She added that she plans to create a beginners’ guide for children on how to use gematria to decode real world events.

At the end of the chat some of the listeners effusively praised Tiny Teflon: “I think you inspire many, many adults and children. So thank you so much. We appreciate you. Love you so much,” said one.

Another added, “It was a pleasure listening to you and I hope my little girl can start listening to you and go from there.”

One listener responded to Tiny’s plan about including more children by saying: “I think that’s awesome because my daughter will be watching you so I’m sure we’ll be following you.” Seconds later her daughter also spoke on the live chat: “Thank you, you did so good stuff [sic], and I definitely can’t wait to hear more of you,” the girl said.

A listener identified only as “Beverly” said she thought gematria could help children with their reading and math, adding: “Can I just say great job to your parents. I mean, my gosh, I can’t imagine how proud they must be.”

While there are others who are vying to replace Protzman as leader, close watchers of the group view Tiny Telfon’s assertion that she wants to use her position to bring more children into the fold as deeply worrying.

“I believe it’s too early to see where she will fit into the group dynamics right now, it’s definitely something I will be keeping a close eye on,” “Karma,” the open-source researcher, told VICE News. “For a group who have claimed to be all about ‘saving the children’ using a child to push your own beliefs is disgusting and disturbing.”

Oh god, oh fuck
https://www.foxweather.com/weather-news/tracking-tropical-storm-hilary-pacific

After Illinois passed the country’s first law protecting child influencers last week, a feeling of optimism swept over Sarah Adams.

For years, she and other advocates against child exploitation have warned about the dangers of sharing children’s lives on social media for profit. The law would ensure financial compensation for minors, defined as children under 16 years old, who are featured in vlogs, or video blogs.

While Adams is not based in the U.S., she and other activists who spoke with NBC News said they are excited by the news. They believe the legislation marks a precedent that could encourage similar action in states across the country.

“There is a lot of excitement that these conversations are not only being had, but that legislation is being enacted to protect the income that these kids are generating,” said Adams, a 38-year-old mother of two from Vancouver who calls out child exploitation online with her platform of more than 270,000 TikTok followers. “Because we need to be realistic: It’s the children that are generating the income for these families.”...

The Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) on Wednesday said Travis King, the U.S. soldier who crossed the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) into the country last month, has admitted that he "illegally intruded" due to "inhuman maltreatment and racial discrimination within the U.S. Army," state agency KCNA reported.

The report also claimed that King expressed a willingness to seek refuge in the DPRK or in a third country.

The Pentagon on Tuesday said it could not verify the alleged comments made by 23-year-old Private 2nd Class Travis King carried by the KCNA report but that Washington remained focused on his safe return.

"We remain focused on his safe return. The department's priority is to bring Private King home, and that we are working through all available channels to achieve that outcome," a Pentagon spokesperson said.

also

https://bnonews.com/index.php/2023/08/north-korea-says-u-s-soldier-travis-king-wants-to-stay-blames-racism/

It centers providers way too much for my liking but overall a decent article.

Some of my favorite bits:

The shift from paper to electronic processing, which began in the early 2000s and accelerated after the Affordable Care Act went into effect, was intended to increase efficiency and save money. The story of how a cost-saving initiative ended up benefiting private insurers reveals a lot about what ails the U.S. medical system and why Americans pay more for health care than people in other developed countries. In this case, it took less than a decade for a new industry of middlemen, owned by private equity funds and giant conglomerates like UnitedHealth Group, to cash in.

Love the framing of capitalist actors as a disease from which our system ails.

Shteynshlyuger discovered that, when it comes to the issue he cares about, the most powerful decision-maker wasn’t a CMS official. It was the chief lobbyist for a middleman company called Zelis. And that man just happened to be a former CMS staffer who had authored a key federal rule on electronic payments.

Our ghoul's name is Matthew Albright, btw.

For Shteynshlyuger, the intersection of medicine and money has a particular resonance. He was born in the Soviet Union, in what is now Ukraine, and his brother nearly died of pneumonia as an infant because doctors refused to administer an antibiotic. The doctors wanted his family to pay a “bribe,” according to Shteynshlyuger. His grandmother ended up finding a different doctor to pay off and his brother got the medicine. Shtenynshlyuger’s parents emigrated to the U.S. in 1991, when he was an adolescent, and they settled in Brooklyn’s Brighton Beach area.

God damn, imagine having to pay a doctor! For treatment! His brother was almost another victim of communism... Seriously though, as invested in the insurance racket as this guy claims to be, you think he'd have heard of the term "copay" by now, for fucks sake.

Zelis and other payment processors say they offer value in return for their fees: Doctors can sign up to receive reimbursements from hundreds of insurers through a single payment processor, and they can also get services that help match up electronic payments and receipts. Zelis asserted in a statement that its services remove “many of the obstacles that keep providers from efficiently initiating, receiving, and benefitting from electronic payments.” Zelis and other companies insist that it’s easy to opt out of their services, but Shteynshlyuger and other doctors say otherwise.

Doctors can sign up to receive reimbursements from hundreds of insurers through a single payment processor, and they can also get services that help match up electronic payments and receipts.

single payment processor

Can't make this shit up folks! What a cynical flex, I'm truly in awe!

China has stopped releasing youth unemployment figures, which were seen by some as a key indication of the country's slowdown.

The decision is due to changes in the world's second largest economy and its society, a government spokesman said.

In June, China's jobless rate for 16 to 24 year olds in urban areas hit a record high of more than 20%.

The country's central bank also cut the cost of borrowing on Tuesday in an attempt to help boost growth.

Official figures published on Tuesday showed China's overall unemployment rate had risen to 5.3% in July.

At the same time the government said it would temporarily suspend publishing youth joblessness data but gave no timeline for the suspension.

A spokesman for the National Bureau of Statistics said the method of calculating unemployment among young people needed to be reconsidered.

"The economy and society are constantly developing and changing. Statistical work needs continuous improvement", Fu Linghui told a news conference in Beijing.

Mr Fu hinted that the growth in the number of students between 16 and 24 years of age had affected unemployment figures, but China has never counted those in education as unemployed.

China started publishing youth unemployment figures in 2018. However, it does not currently release data on the employment status of young people in rural areas.

The suspension of publishing youth unemployment figures immediately started trending on Chinese social media platform Weibo.

One user said: "Covering your mouth and closing your eyes, can that really solve problems? With flexible employment, slow employment, and independent employment, working for just one hour means you're not unemployed. Don't take the statistics from the Bureau of Statistics seriously."

"As long as I don't announce it, then nobody is unemployed," another post said.

The announcement came as the country's post-pandemic economic recovery is slowing.

In the latest move by authorities to boost growth the People's Bank of China on Tuesday unexpectedly cut key interest rates for the second time in three months.

Last week, China recently reported a sharp fall in exports while the economy slipped into deflation where prices fall.

"There is a real risk of the economy slipping into a recession unless policy support is ramped up soon," Julian Evans-Pritchard of Capital Economics said in a note to investors.

Another issue causing major concerns about China's economy is its crisis-hit property market.

On Monday, China's largest private real estate developer Country Garden warned that it could lose up to $7.6bn (£6bn) for the first six months of the year.

China's real estate industry was rocked when new rules to control the amount major developers could borrow were introduced in 2020.

The following year, Chinese property giant Evergrande defaulted on its massive debts and last month revealed a total loss of 581.9bn yuan ($81.1bn; £62bn) for the last two years.

The American brainpan is not suited for flying complex aircraft.

The separatist Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA) claimed responsibility for the attack on a convoy of Chinese workers near Gawadar.

Security forces in Pakistan have killed two gunmen who attacked a convoy of Chinese workers in the country’s southwestern Balochistan province.

“Two attackers were killed in the operation, which has now concluded,” Gawadar Deputy Superintendent of Police Chakar Baloch told Al Jazeera on Sunday.

Local police official Jawad Tariq said all members of the Chinese convoy and security officials involved in the exchange of fire remained unharmed.

The separatist Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA) claimed responsibility for the attack on vehicles carrying Chinese engineers in the southern coastal city of Gawadar, where China is building a seaport.

“BLA Majeed Brigade today targeted a convoy of Chinese engineers in Gawadar,” the armed group, which is banned in Pakistan, said on social media.

Earlier, the media wing of Pakistan’s military issued a statement saying an operation was launched after the “presence of terrorists in the area was confirmed”.

“Terrorists used small arms and hand grenades,” the military statement said, adding security forces cordoned off the area and carried out a search operation.

China’s state-run newspaper Global Times also confirmed the attack, saying, “the convoy of three SUVs and a van, all bulletproof, carried 23 Chinese personnel”.

Gawadar, a seaport town on Pakistan’s southwestern coast, is undergoing developmental projects carried out with help from Chinese engineers and financed by the Chinese government.

BLA and other Baloch separatist groups have previously carried out and claimed attacks on China-linked development projects in the province.

The area where the attack took place houses the Pak-China Technical Institute, a judicial complex and other government offices.

“There was intense firing for 20 minutes and shopkeepers pulled down shutters after the attack”, a local resident, requesting anonymity, told Al Jazeera by telephone.

The Chinese consulate general in the southern city of Karachi issued a safety warning, according to Global Times.

“The consulate urged people to maintain high vigilance and strictly control large-scale gathering activities due to the severe security situation,” it said.

Balochistan, bordering Iran and Afghanistan, is strategically important because of its rich copper, zinc and natural gas reserves. Cities in the province are a constant target of armed groups.

Much of the violence is seen as a reaction by rebels to China’s investment plans in the region to link its Xinjiang province with the Arabian Sea in Balochistan through a network of roads and rail.

Baloch nationalists initially wanted a share of provincial resources, but later initiated a movement for complete independence.

Venezuela's Supreme Court of Justice (TSJ) ordered the intervention of the Communist Party (PCV) of the South American country, known for its stance against President Nicolás Maduro, it was reported in Caracas.

The Constitutional Chamber of the TSJ appointed an “ad hoc board of directors” to “organize internal democratic processes that guarantee the rights of political participation of the associates”, in a ruling similar to rulings issued in 2020 against the main opposition political parties.

The PCV was an ally of the late President Hugo Chávez (1999-2013), but broke with Maduro due to economic discrepancies.

“We denounce before the Venezuelan people, the communist parties, the workers and the genuinely anti-imperialist forces of the world, that the government of Nicolás Maduro has consummated the assault against the Communist Party of Venezuela through an arbitrary judicial sentence,” PCV leaders wrote on social networks on Saturday.

The PCV opposes the dissolution of wages through inflation and devaluation, making Venezuelans earn less than 5 U.S. dollars, supplemented with state bonds.

The ousted secretary general of the PCV, Óscar Figuera, called those who filed the lawsuit a “mercenary group” and accused them of carrying out “an anti-democratic maneuver”. Last month, more than 300 politicians, intellectuals, trade unionists and activists from several countries signed a petition requesting Maduro to avoid “the judicialization” of the PCV.

In July 2020, the TSJ suspended the board of Voluntad Popular, the party of opposition leaders Leopoldo López and Juan Guaidó, who then called the TSJ a “judicial arm” of the Maduro government. The previous month, the TSJ had taken similar measures against Acción Democrática and Primero Justicia.

PCV twitter post referenced:

https://twitter.com/PCV_Venezuela/status/1690327599405322240

Caracas has denounced that the country will not receive the released funds any time soon as US sanctions impede the transfer.

Caracas, August 12, 2023 (venezuelanalysis.com) – The Venezuelan government has won a legal battle to recover approximately 1.35 billion Euros (some 1.5 billion US dollars) frozen since 2019 by Portugal’s Novo Banco.

On Wednesday, Information Minister Freddy Ñañez published the ruling by the Central Civil Court of Lisbon, dated July 31, ordering the private bank to transfer the funds to accounts held by nine Venezuelan entities, including state oil company PDVSA, joint oil ventures, and the Venezuelan Economic and Social Development Bank (BANDES).

In a communique, the Venezuelan Foreign Ministry celebrated the court’s order to release the retained funds.

“This constitutes a clear victory of the Venezuelan people against the strategy promoted by foreign powers and local politicians to appropriate the country’s resources and cause suffering to the population,” the statement read.

The document stated that the Venezuelan government does not discard taking future legal action against the Portuguese bank “for damages caused to its entities and people.”

For its part, Novo Banco said that the court decision “was expected” and it responded to a petition made by the bank to the Portuguese courts “to clarify existing doubts regarding the legal representation of Venezuelan public entities,” appointed by the Nicolás Maduro government.

The Novo Banco funds were withheld after Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaidó declared himself “Interim President” in January 2019, with support from over 50 countries, including Portugal. Since then, some $6 billion worth of Venezuelan assets have remained blocked in several European countries. However, the US-backed self-proclaimed “interim government” dissolved in December 2022 changing the course of the legal battle.

Speaking on national television on Friday, President Maduro promised his government “will not give up fighting to rescue all the resources that belong to Venezuelans.” He went on to pledge that once the funds held in Novo Banco are obtained “it will go directly to guarantee people’s social rights and to public services."

Novo Banco’s lawyers have not confirmed when they will proceed with the transfer, stating that they were “analyzing the practical effects of the ruling.” The bank added that returning the money to Venezuela would not affect its capital ratios addressing concerns over its financial issues in recent years.

According to Venezuela’s Vice-Minister of Anti-Blockade Policies, William Castillo, the ruling by the Lisbon Court was more of a “political victory” as the Maduro government will not be able to access the funds in the near future.

“This [judicial] decision opens a new stage [but] is not that that money is going to arrive here tomorrow because [...] BANDES is sanctioned and is the owner of the resources,” explained Castillo.

BANDES was founded in 2001 to finance community-led development projects. In May 2019, the entity was sanctioned by the US Treasury Department alongside the Bank of Venezuela and Bicentenario Bank, two of the major state-owned banks in the Caribbean country. Since 2017, Venezuela has been under a wide-reaching US sanctions program.

In September 2021, member of the European Parliament Mick Wallace denounced that Novo Banco was being used by the Portuguese government “as a front” to expropriate Venezuelan funds at a time “when Portugal was clearly not applying US sanctions.”

The Irish politician likewise claimed that at the time it was unclear if the Portuguese bank still had the Venezuelan funds amidst the “odd circumstances” surrounding its ownership, from selling 75 percent of its shares to the US investment fund Lone Star to losing billions of euros and turning to the state for capital injections to stay afloat.

In April 2019, President Maduro requested that the Portuguese government release the frozen funds in order to purchase food and medicines as Venezuela went through shortages under an economic crisis exacerbated by US sanctions. Soon after, BANDES authorities asked Novo Banco to transfer the funds to the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) to pay for vaccines and medicines for infants, stating that a judge greenlighted the procedure for humanitarian reasons but the petitions were left unanswered.

According to the Venezuelan government, Novo Banco also refused to release 4.7 million Euros to the Italian Foundation for Bone Marrow Transplant, causing the death of Venezuelan children and teenagers in need of treatment or surgery.

In a letter sent to Albanese last week, [nine] former attorneys-general contrasted the treatment of Australian journalists who have been lauded for their work exposing alleged war crimes by Australian Defence Force personnel to Assange, who exposed wrongdoing by US forces in Iraq and Afghanistan.

“... the United States is applying extra-territorial reach by charging Assange, who is not a US citizen and did not commit alleged crimes in the US, under its Espionage Act.

“We believe that this sets a very dangerous precedent and has the potential to put at risk anyone, anywhere in the world, who publishes information that the US unilaterally deems to be classified for security reasons.

Due more to the courts than politicians, native forest logging may be nearing an end. Recent court judgements in Victorian Supreme and and Federal courts don’t augur well for the logging industry. Sue Arnold reports.

Legal battles waged by Victorian grassroots conservation organisations have brought the Precautionary Principle (PP) out of the political closet. It is a principle that has long been ignored by governments as it gets in the way of forestry and development projects.

Put simply, the PP means that if logging is likely to cause serious or irreversible harm then it should not happen. Any harvest planning has to take the PP into account. They haven’t to date but the courts are forcing their hand, at least in Victoria, and federally, if not in NSW as yet.

“They’re causing mad confusion over here,” the user said. A Twitter user shared a video of a Cruise vehicle nearly running over a family on a crosswalk over the weekend. In San Francisco’s North Beach neighborhood, as many as 10 Cruise cars blocked a main thoroughfare, stoking anger from locals.

MSNBC just said it's a single 41 count indictment. Previous reporting said it was 10 indictments. That was based on a screengrab that outlets used as rush-to-air unchecked copypasta.

CNN - I alphabetized it...

Here are the names and titles of all 19 people charged in Georgia case

There are 19 people charged in the Georgia case, according to the indictment.

• Donald Trump, former US president

• Kenneth Chesebro, pro-Trump lawyer

• Jeffrey Clark, top Justice Department official

• Robert Cheeley, lawyer who promoted fraud claims

• John Eastman, Trump lawyer

• Jenna Ellis, Trump campaign lawyer

• Harrison Floyd, leader of Black Voices for Trump

• Rudy Giuliani, Trump lawyer

• Scott Hall, tied to Coffee County election system breach

• Misty Hampton, Coffee County elections supervisor

• Trevian Kutti, publicist tied to intimidation of election workers

• Cathy Latham, fake GOP elector tied to Coffee County breach

• Stephen Lee, pastor tied to intimidation of election workers

• Mark Meadows, White House chief of staff

• Sidney Powell, Trump campaign lawyer

• Mike Roman, Trump campaign official

• David Shafer, Georgia GOP chair and fake elector

• Ray Smith, Trump campaign attorney

• Shawn Still, fake GOP elector