News of the World

[kyonides]

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. Announces 2024 Presidential Bid

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., best known for his positions on environmental law and vaccine safety, filed the paperwork to run in the 2024 race for president of the United States on April 5.

He filed as a Democrat, according to a Federal Election Commission (FEC) filing.

“America is enduring an apocalyptic tribal polarization more toxic and dangerous than any time since the Civil War,” Kennedy told The Epoch Times exclusively following the filing of the paperwork.

“And while Democrats battle Republicans, elites are strip-mining our middle class, poisoning our children, and commoditizing our landscapes.

“I will focus my campaign, not on the issues that divide us but the values we have in common.”

Kennedy is the second candidate to declare a run for the Democratic nomination, joining Marianne Williamson.

Kennedy’s father, the late Sen. Robert Kennedy (D-N.Y.), was assassinated when running for the presidency in 1968. His uncle, President John F. Kennedy, was assassinated in Texas in 1963.

Kennedy signaled earlier in March that he planned to run.

Conflict With China a ‘Last Resort’ but Possible With Public Support

Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas) said that, although military conflict between the United States and China is not something he desires, if Beijing were to attack Taiwan, that option would be “on the table” for Congress.

“Conflict is always a last resort,” McCaul noted from Taipei in a Friday interview with Fox News.

But, he added, “If communist China invaded Taiwan, it would certainly be on the table and something that would be discussed by Congress and with the American people.”

As chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, McCaul led a bipartisan delegation of lawmakers to Taiwan on Thursday in a show of support for the island nation amid its escalating tensions with China.
...
Given Washington’s decision not to send troops to Ukraine, some Taiwanese citizens told Fox News that they were skeptical they would receive such support in the event of an attack.

McCaul, however, stressed that the two situations were vastly different.

“Taiwan is in a very different position from Ukraine,” he said. “Number one, they’re not battle tested or ready. They are not prepared for war.”

But Ukraine, the congressman noted, has had the support of NATO to bolster its defenses.

North Korea Tests Underwater Drone to Assess Its ‘Fatal Attack Ability’

North Korea has claimed it tested a new type of nuclear-capable underwater drone this week to assess the weapon’s “fatal attack ability.”

State-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said on Saturday that a “Haeil-2” drone was deployed off the coast of South Hamgyong province on April 4 and reached the target in the waters off Ryongdae Port on April 7.

KCNA said the drone cruised 1,000 kilometers (621 miles) of simulated underwater distance in the East Sea of Korea for 71 hours and six minutes before its test warhead was detonated underwater.

“The test perfectly proved the reliability of the underwater strategic weapon system and its fatal attacks ability,” KCNA claimed.

The drone test came just weeks after North Korea claimed to have tested an underwater attack drone named “Haeil” from March 21 to 23, which the regime said was capable of generating a “super-scale radioactive tsunami.”

Former Theranos Executive Headed to Prison After Losing Appeal

Former Theranos executive Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani will be heading to prison later this month after an appeals court rejected his bid to remain free while he contests his conviction for carrying out a blood-testing hoax with his former boss and lover, Elizabeth Holmes.

After the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals issued a decision refusing Balwani’s request, U.S District Judge Edward Davila on Friday ordered him to start his nearly 13-year prison sentence on April 20.

One of Balwani’s lawyers had filed a motion late Thursday seeking nearly two weeks to give Balwani time to make travel arrangements and make other preparations for a trip that will send him to a federal prison in Southern California.

The April 20 reporting date means Balwani will be heading to prison a week before Holmes, Theranos’ founder and CEO, is scheduled to begin a more than 11-year prison sentence after being convicted on four counts of fraud and conspiracy last year.

Holmes, 39, appeared before Davila last month along with her lawyers in an effort to persuade the judge to allow her to remain free while she pursues her own appeal. Davila hasn’t ruled on Holmes’ request yet.
...
Although they had separate trials, Holmes and Balwani were accused of essentially the same crimes centered on a ruse touting Theranos’ blood-testing system as a revolutionary breakthrough in health care. The claims helped the company become a Silicon Valley sensation that raised nearly $1 billion from investors.

But its technology never came close to working like Holmes and Balwani boasted, resulting in Theranos’ scandalous collapse and a criminal case that shined a bright light on Silicon Valley greed and hubris.

Undercover Officers’ Data Leak Sparks Legal Battle in Los Angeles

A legal battle has erupted in Los Angeles over the release of sensitive information of undercover police officers to a local watchdog group, with multiple claims being filed this week.

On April 5, a day after nearly 400 officers filed legal claims against the City of Los Angeles and the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) regarding the issue, the city sued a Los Angeles reporter and the Stop LAPD Spying Coalition for publishing sensitive information that was released by the city last month from a 2021 public records request.

The coalition published the sensitive information, which includes officers’ email, ethnicity, gender, division, rank, and year they were hired, last month on its newly-established “Watch the Watchers” police surveillance website. Contained in the data dump was also information about undercover officers.
...
McNicholas said there have been several suspensions of current undercover cases due to the data leak.

“The real threat here is not Watch the Watchers, the real threat is somebody that is computer savvy that’s already pulled off all that information,” he said. “It’s already been downloaded tens of thousands of times.”
...
Shakeer Rahman, the attorney defending the Stop LAPD Spying Coalition against the city, told The Epoch Times in a statement that the information released are “public records that the city itself made public.”

“That means the public has every right to publish them. This lawsuit is an effort to intimidate LAPD’s critics and expand the term ‘undercover’ to mean every single police officer,” he said.
...
The LAPD mistakenly released the names and photos in September of every undercover officer—excluding “650” officers, which are officers off the books who do clandestine investigations of other officers—to journalist Ben Camacho from Knock LA, a nonprofit newsroom sprouted from the progressive advocacy organization Ground Game LA.
...
Camacho then passed on the information to the police surveillance group, according to McNicholas, which then posted the photos and information of the officers to its website the weekend of March 17.

Appeals Court Upholds DOJ’s Novel Use
of Obstruction Law Against Jan. 6 Defendants

A divided three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia on April 7 upheld the U.S. Department of Justice’s novel use of a felony evidence-tampering statute against Jan. 6 criminal-case defendants.

The appeals judges issued a broad interpretation of the crime of “obstruction” that is almost certain to be appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Judge Florence Pan, appointed by President Joe Biden, and Judge Justin R. Walker, appointed by President Donald Trump, voted to reverse the 2022 rulings by U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols dismissing obstruction charges against three Jan. 6 defendants.

Pan and Walker adopted the broad reading of the obstruction statute advanced by the DOJ.

Judge Gregory Katsas, a Trump appointee, dissented. Katsas warned that the interpretation advanced by the majority would, for example, expose protesters standing outside a judge’s home to 20 years in federal prison.

Brushing aside the statute’s history stemming from evidence tampering in the Enron scandal, the majority said the law applies to any effort to obstruct an “official proceeding,” including the ceremonial tallying of Electoral College votes by the U.S. Congress.

UK Police Charge 12-Year-Old With Murder in Car Crash Death

British police charged a 12-year-old boy with murder on Friday after a car plowed into a woman on a city street in northern England.

The woman was found dead Wednesday night at the scene of the crash in Sheffield, South Yorkshire police said. Relatives identified her as 60-year-old Marcia Grant and said she was “a warm, loving and dedicated wife, mother, grandmother, sister, and friend and a pillar of her community.”

The boy was found shortly afterward and arrested, police said.

The suspect can’t be named for legal reasons because of his age. He is due to appear at Sheffield Youth Court on Saturday to face a charge of murder.

In England, children 10 and over can be charged and convicted of crimes. Any sentences are served in secure youth centers rather than adult prisons.

Samsung Cuts Chip Production After Profit Plummets

Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. said on Friday it is implementing a “meaningful” cut in its chip production after profits plunged, and after smaller companies also announced cuts in chip production.

According to a Samsung press release published Friday, the largest memory chipmaker had a profit of 600 billion Korean won ($455 million) for its first quarter of 2023. In the first quarter of 2022, it had a profit of 14 trillion won ($10.6 billion), and in the fourth quarter of 2022, it had a profit of 4 trillion won. This was the biggest decline in profits for the company in 14 years.

Investors speculated the move by the industry leader would support chip prices that had fallen by about 70 percent over the last nine months.

Smartphone and personal computer makers had stocked up on chips during the pandemic when demand for consumer devices surged, but they are now running down inventories as shoppers cut back on purchases amid rising inflation.

Samsung said memory demand had dropped sharply because of a weak global economy and customers slowing purchases as they focused on using up their stocks.