Court ends case against police charged over tasering and pepper spraying ‘vulnerable’ First Nations man

• Experts interviewed by Vedomosti on August 20th report that Europe's economic gap with the United States is widening due to lower labor productivity and structural challenges. • The decline is attributed to a combination of demographic issues, exchange-rate effects, and a heavy dependence on foreign trade.

• India and Bangladesh are facing a critical diplomatic test regarding the management of the Teesta River and the strategic "Chicken's Neck" corridor. • The situation is being exacerbated by climate change, which has increased hydrological uncertainty, alongside rising agricultural demands and intensifying strategic competition.

Watchdog investigating whether Dallas McInerney arranged illegal political donations from schools to lobbying companies controlled by the ReformersThe chief executive of Catholic Schools New South Wales, Dallas McInerney, has been sacked after appearing at a watchdog inquiry into allegations of corruption in the state’s Liberal party.The NSW Independent Commission Against Corruption (Icac) is investigating the allegation that McInerney, who gave evidence to the inquiry this week and last week, arranged and approved illegal political donations from Catholic Schools NSW to lobbying companies controlled by conservative factional group the Reformers, under the guise of consultancy services. Continue reading...

Fawning, deferential, oleaginous – this was the Untruth and Reconciliation Commission as Trump called in to 77 WABC“Our next guest is a ‘racist’, a ‘conman’ and a ‘cheat’ – someone who behaves more like a ‘mobster’ than a president. Please welcome Donald J Trump!”That is how Michael Cohen could have introduced Trump on his New York radio show on Thursday. After all, Cohen used such terms to describe the US president in his testimony to Congress in 2019. But now Trump’s former personal lawyer and self-described fixer had different words: “boss” and “sir”. Just like old times. Continue reading...

The former gang leader was charged with planning the drive-by shooting that killed Tupac Shakur in 1996Jurors on Thursday heard Duane “Keffe D” Davis tell detectives in 2008 that his nephew Orlando “Baby Lane” Anderson fired the shots that killed Tupac Shakur.Davis, who said in the interview that he was also in the car with Anderson, is accused of orchestrating the 1996 killing of the 25-year-old hip-hop superstar in Las Vegas. At the time of the interview, his nephew had been dead for a decade. Continue reading...

Progressive wins bitter fight for seat formerly held by congressman who quit amid sexual misconduct claimsProgressive Aisha Wahab was elected to Congress in a special election on Tuesday following a bitter intra-party battle over the seat formerly held by Eric Swalwell, who resigned in April after facing sexual misconduct allegations. Swalwell has denied the allegations.Wahab, a state senator, was widely considered the frontrunner in the district in California’s East Bay and had the backing of the state Democratic party as well as Our Revolution, labor unions, local officials and the state’s attorney general, Rob Bonta. She won the primary for the special election for the final months of Swalwell’s term by more than 20 points over Hernandez, the president of the board of directors for the Bay Area Rapid Transit (Bart) agency. Continue reading...

Christine Hunsicker, former CEO of CaaStle, gave investors falsified documents that overstated profit and cash reservesA fashion tech founder was sentenced to five years in federal prison for her involvement in a $300m “fraud scheme” spanning from 2019 to 2025, the Manhattan US attorney’s office announced on Thursday. Christine Hunsicker, 49, was also sentenced to three years of supervised release.Hunsicker, the founder and ex-CEO of CaaStle Inc, had pleaded guilty this March to one count of securities fraud in relation to a scheme that “defrauded hundreds of investors”, authorities said. Her attorneys did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Continue reading...

Move may signal attempt to improve relations between military-backed government and ex-leader’s partyThe jailed former Pakistani prime minister Imran Khan has been ⁠transferred to a hospital in Islamabad for medical examination, fulfilling a longstanding demand by supporters who ⁠say his health has deteriorated during more than three years in prison.The move ​followed a supreme court order ‌this week and is ‌seen as a potential first step toward easing tensions between Khan’s party and ‌Pakistan’s powerful military establishment, which have been at odds since his removal from office in 2022. Continue reading...

Exclusive: Rahil Prakash tells the Guardian: ‘I wanted to see if fake polls could penetrate the ecosystem that easily’A 21-year-old recent college graduate was behind an anonymous website that put out widely shared fake election polling in Wisconsin, Nevada and California, the Guardian can reveal.The website, Median Strategies, abruptly shut down and withdrew its polling earlier this week following questions from a reporter from the Los Angeles Times. In an unsigned statement, it described a “short-term social experiment” to examine how fake polling “could enter and spread through the political information ecosystem without independent verification”. Continue reading...

José Mejía Hernandez, 45, who was hospitalized for his injuries, was then transferred to an ICE office and fitted with an ankle monitorA man in Virginia was hospitalized with a brain injury and severe bruising all over his face after he was arrested by US immigration agents, according to his lawyers, who shared photos and medical records with the Guardian.José Mejía Hernandez, 45, was walking to a bus stop in Arlington on the morning of 11 August when two agents got out of an unmarked vehicle and started chasing him, according to one of his lawyers, Margaret Hellerstein. The man recalled being hit by some kind of stun gun, but did not remember what happened after that, only waking up hours later in the hospital, Hellerstein said. Continue reading...

Courier network carried millions of dollars in cash to Lebanon on commercial flights, treasury department saysThe US treasury department announced sanctions on Thursday against 10 people it says formed a courier network that smuggled hundreds of millions of dollars to Hezbollah by carrying cash onboard commercial flights between Iran, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates and Lebanon.The office of foreign assets control (OFAC) said the network allowed Hezbollah, the Iran-backed Lebanese militant group,to obtain foreign currency and dodge sanctions outside the formal banking system. The treasury department linked the operation to a scheme once associated with Behnam Shahriyari, a now-deceased finance official for Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Quds Force. Continue reading...