New York seizes state's oldest credit union after ex-CEO's embezzlement plea

NEW YORK (Reuters) - New York’s top financial regulator on Friday seized the state’s oldest credit union, Municipal Credit Union, saying it suffered from “unsafe and unsound” conditions after its former chief executive pleaded guilty to embezzlement. The seizure by New York’s Department of Financial Services followed Kam Wong’s guilty plea last Nov. 19 in federal court to embezzling millions of dollars from the Manhattan-based credit union, which he led from 2007 to 2018.

Linda Lacewell, the state’s acting financial services superintendent, said her office appointed the National Credit Union Administration as the credit union’s conservator. She said the regulators will work to ensure that members’ funds are protected and services continue uninterrupted.

Municipal Credit Union said it was founded in 1916 after New York City Mayor John Purroy Mitchel said city employees should be able to save at reasonable rates, and also borrow without paying the high interest rates demanded by loan sharks. According to its 2017 annual report, the credit union had $2.68 billion of assets and served more than 425,000 members.

Prosecutors said Wong submitted sham invoices for dental work, received millions of dollars of payments instead of a long-term disability policy, and spent $3.55 million of his ill-gotten money on New York State Lottery tickets. Wong’s sentencing is set for June 4. He agreed as part of his plea to pay the credit union $9.9 million in restitution.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-new-york-credit-union/new-york-seizes-states-oldest-credit-union-after-ex-ceos-embezzlement-plea-idUSKCN1SN2LQ?il=0

U.S. citizen shot dead in Nicaraguan prison was a Navy veteran, critic of President Ortega

MANAGUA (Reuters) - Eddy Montes, a protestor shot dead in a Nicaragua prison this week, was a naturalized U.S. citizen who served in the Navy, but ultimately returned to the Central American country where he fought for a change in government, his family said. Montes died on Thursday after he and other prisoners tried to snatch a gun from a guard while the International Red Cross was visiting the prison, the Nicaraguan interior ministry said, adding that the guard acted in self-defense. He had been jailed after protesting against Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega in October last year, during protests that have killed at least 300 people. The protests erupted over welfare benefits but spiraled into a broader movement to oust Ortega, who is serving his third term as president. Angered by Montes’ death, opposition groups said on Friday that they would stage new protests over the weekend.

The U.S. State Department condemned his death as a killing at the hands of Nicaraguan riot police and urged the government to thoroughly investigate the incident. It also called for other political prisoners to be released. “The lack of justice for these prisoners and for the hundreds of innocent civilians killed by Ortega’s security and parapolice forces shows the regime’s utter disregard for human life and democratic freedoms,” it said in a statement. The Nicaraguan government prohibited the demonstrations in November last year and have accused the protesters of intending to cause chaos.

Montes had spent much of his childhood and young adult years in the United States, family members say, but returned to Nicaragua in the early 1980s to study medicine. Ortega and his leftist Sandinista party had came to power a year earlier. In 1984, Montes organized a protest after the Sandinista government passed a law to introduce military service. Gloria Montenegro, his wife of 18 years, said his activism had put him on the radar of the government. “With those anti-government protests, he became a target [for the government],” Montenegro said, recalling a time during the Cold War when dissidents were backed by the United States and the Nicaraguan government by the former USSR. “So we fled to Costa Rica and after that to the United States, where he decided to join the U.S. Navy.” Montes was based out of San Diego. Later, he worked in real estate. Montes returned to Nicaragua in 1993 and bought farmland in his native Matagalpa. It was not long until he joined anti-government protests again. “He was always seen as an opponent,” said Yader Valdivia, an attorney who once worked with the Nicaraguan Center for Human Rights and is now in exile in Costa Rica. “When the protests began, he began to help by bringing in food, supplies and medicine to the students.”

Jafet Montes, his daughter, who lives in California, said Ortega should be held responsible. “I blame the government, I blame the president, because he controls everything that happens in that country,” she said.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-nicaragua-prison/u-s-citizen-shot-dead-in-nicaraguan-prison-was-a-navy-veteran-critic-of-president-ortega-idUSKCN1SO028?il=0

Migrant families being flown to San Diego from Texas in U.S. border crisis

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Hundreds of detainees from U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) facilities in Texas and elsewhere are being flown to San Diego for processing beginning on Friday, the agency said. Border officials said they are developing plans to fly potentially thousands of migrant families to other places away from the southern U.S. border with Mexico.

The agency said the number of people apprehended at the border since Oct. 1 was nearly 520,000, the highest in a decade. In the past week, there was an average of 4,500 arrests a day. This is making it difficult to process and release family units within 20 days of their arrival at a detention center, as required by law, the CBP said in a statement.

U.S. President Donald Trump earlier this year declared the immigration influx a national emergency, which allowed him to circumvent Congress to redirect more than $6 billion in funding to start building the border wall that he campaigned on in the 2016 presidential election. His move has been challenged in courts. Three flights a week will arrive in the San Diego area from the Rio Grande Valley carrying approximately 130 people per flight, a CBP official at the San Diego office said. “We’re in the middle of a humanitarian crisis and the numbers in Texas are staggering so the BP is helping out in those sectors to more efficiently process these folks,”said the official, who declined to be identified.

Flights operated by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE) will land at San Diego International Airport and the detainees will be moved to the eight Border Patrol stations in the San Diego sector. “They will be housed properly inside,” the official said. The program has no end date and no unaccompanied children will be on the flight.

The CBP statement said the border officials are also busing people to El Centrol from Yuma and to Laredo from the Rio Grande Valley. It did not say which other cities might receive migrants. Media reports say the agency was considering flights to Detroit, Miami and Buffalo, New York, where the agency has facilities. Trump last month threatened to send migrants to so-called sanctuary cities such as New York and San Francisco, which generally give undocumented immigrants safe harbor by refusing to use their resources to help enforce federal immigration laws that could lead to deportations.

In the past week, border authorities have averaged 4,500 apprehensions a day and facilities aren’t equipped to care for the influx of children, the CBP statement said. Since Dec. 21, ICE has released approximately 180,000 family members into places in the United States. “Whenever possible, the releases have been coordinated with local non-governmental organizations (NGOs). As NGOs have reached their capacities, CBP has released family units at transportation hubs during daylight hours when the weather does not endanger those released,” the statement said.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-immigration-flights/migrant-families-being-flown-to-san-diego-from-texas-in-u-s-border-crisis-idUSKCN1SO005?il=0

Lockheed Martin's Sikorsky wins $1.1 billion U.S. defense contract

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Sikorsky, a unit of Lockheed Martin Corp, has been awarded a $1.1 billion contract for 12 CH-53K King Stallion helicopters, including logistics and other support, the Pentagon said on Friday.

The Lockheed Martin unit said it will build the helicopters at its Connecticut plant and that their deliveries will begin in 2022, according to the contract from the U.S. Navy. The CH-53K, which offers three times the carrying power of its predecessor, made its international debut at the Berlin Air Show in April last year. It is competing with the twin-rotor CH-47 Chinook helicopter built by Boeing for a German military helicopter tender, which is expected to cost Germany around 4 billion euros ($4.46 billion) in the longer term, a big prize for the winning bidder.

Last month, the U.S. Defense Department awarded Lockheed Martin a $1.15 billion contract for services related to the F-35 Lightning II aircraft.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-lockheed-pentagon/lockheed-martins-sikorsky-wins-1-1-billion-u-s-defense-contract-idUSKCN1SN2M9?il=0

Exclusive: U.S. may scale back Huawei trade restrictions to help existing customers

(Reuters) - The U.S. Commerce Department said on Friday it may soon scale back restrictions on Huawei Technologies after this week’s blacklisting would have made it nearly impossible for the Chinese company to service its existing customers. The Commerce Department, which had effectively halted Huawei’s ability to buy American-made parts and components, is considering issuing a temporary general license to “prevent the interruption of existing network operations and equipment,” a spokeswoman said. Potential beneficiaries of the license could, for example, include internet access and mobile phone service providers in thinly populated places such as Wyoming and eastern Oregon that purchased network equipment from Huawei in recent years.

In effect, the Commerce Department would allow Huawei to purchase U.S. goods so it can help existing customers maintain the reliability of networks and equipment, but the Chinese firm still would not be allowed to buy American parts and components to manufacture new products. The potential rule roll back suggests changes to Huawei’s supply chain may have immediate, far-reaching and unintended consequences.

The blacklisting, officially known as placing Huawei on the Commerce Department’s entity list, was one or two efforts by the Trump administration this week allegedly made in an attempt to thwart national security risks. In an executive order, President Donald Trump also effectively barred the use of its equipment in U.S. telecom networks. The United States believes Huawei’s smartphones and network equipment could be used by China to spy on Americans, allegations the company has repeatedly denied. The latest Commerce move comes as China has struck a more aggressive tone in its trade war with the United States, suggesting a resumption of talks between the world’s two largest economies would be meaningless unless Washington changed course. A spokesman for Huawei, the world’s largest telecommunications equipment maker, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Out of $70 billion Huawei spent for buying components in 2018, some $11 billion went to U.S. firms including Qualcomm, Intel Corp and Micron Technology Inc. If the Commerce Department issues the license, U.S. suppliers would still need separate licenses to conduct new business with Huawei, which would be extremely difficult to obtain, the spokeswoman said. The temporary general license would last for 90 days, she said, and would be posted in the Federal Register, just as the rule adding Huawei to the entity list will be published in the government publication on Tuesday. “The goal is to prevent collateral harm on non-Huawei entities that use their equipment,” said Washington lawyer Kevin Wolf, a former Commerce Department official.

The entity listing bans Huawei and 68 affiliates in 26 countries from buying American-made goods and technology without licenses that would likely be denied. The entities list identifies companies believed to be involved in activities contrary to the national security or foreign policy interests of the United States. In a final rule posted on Thursday, the government tied Huawei’s entity listing to a criminal case pending against the company in Brooklyn, New York.

U.S. prosecutors unsealed the indictment in January accusing the company of engaging in bank fraud to obtain embargoed U.S. goods and services in Iran and to move money out of the country via the international banking system. Huawei Chief Executive Officer Meng Wanzhou, daughter of the company’s founder, was arrested in Canada in December in connection with the indictment, a move that has led to a three-way diplomatic crisis involving the U.S., China and Canada. Meng, who was released on bail, remains in Vancouver, and is fighting extradition. She has maintained her innocence, and Huawei has entered a plea of not guilty in New York. Trump injected other considerations into the criminal case after Meng’s arrest when he told Reuters he would intervene if it helped close a trade deal.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-huawei-tech-exclusive/exclusive-u-s-may-scale-back-huawei-trade-restrictions-to-help-existing-customers-idUSKCN1SN2QA?il=0

>>6526180

Wonder what connection, if any to former Senator Joseph Liberman, (I) of Ct ?…interesting.

>>6526238

I agree with what you are saying, the problem here is US citizen's are paying for this rather than the illegal migrants.