At least 45 people were injured in unprecedented late-night violence at a Hong Kong railway station on Sunday, as a rampaging mob of men in white T-shirts attacked black-clad protesters and passengers indiscriminately. No police officer was in sight as dozens of men, who witnesses suggested were triad gangsters, stormed into Yuen Long MTR station at around midnight by forcing open closed entrances. They hurled objects at protesters and travellers alike, and assaulted members of the public, including journalists. Some people protected themselves with umbrellas, while others tried to fight back by hurling helmets at them. By the time riot police arrived, local residents were furious and accused them of deliberately letting the assailants run wild.
In the ongoing U.S.-China trade war, the treatment of Chinese tech giants such as Huawei and the plight of U.S. soybean farmers headlines the news. But the impact of a recent court ruling in Washington could open an expansive new front: China’s banks, and the thousands of businesses that depend on them.
On March 18, a federal court in Washington ordered Chinese financial giant Shanghai Pudong Development (SPD) Bank and two other Chinese banks to comply with a subpoena issued under the USA Patriot Act, and hand over to U.S. authorities bank records of a Hong Kong company linked to violations of U.S. sanctions on North Korea.
On June 25, the court found the banks in contempt for refusing to comply. The contempt order empowers the U.S. treasury secretary and the attorney general to terminate SPD Bank’s U.S. correspondent accounts. That step, pursuant to Section 319 of the Patriot Act, would end SPD Bank’s ability to conduct U.S. dollar-denominated transactions. In a global financial system still dominated by the almighty U.S. dollar, that sanction is known as a financial “death penalty.”
This wouldn’t be the first time the United States has used its financial dominance against a rival. Iran was cut off from the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT), the international transfer system, as part of U.S. sanctions. But this time, the fallout will not be limited to SPD Bank or the financial sector. The ruling has given the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump a powerful new weapon for its all-tools approach to China policy—leveraging all available authorities, including law enforcement, regulatory, and diplomatic means, to advance U.S. national-security and foreign-policy interests.
Snopes leaps to defend Clinton from evil Q people.
Kek
On Saturday night, billionaire financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein was arrested on charges that he recruited dozens of underage girls into a sex-trafficking ring in Florida and New York between 2002 and 2005. The details of his indictment became public on Monday morning when federal prosecutors unsealed the sex-trafficking charges against him. Though Epstein is the only person named, many powerful people with ties to the 66-year-old are likely feeling a little nervous about the consequences of the billionaire’s arrest — including Ghislaine Maxwell, a confidante of Epstein’s who has been connected to him for more than two decades and is alleged to have played a critical role in recruiting and grooming underage girls into his sex-trafficking ring. Though Maxwell is a key figure in the Epstein case, she has not yet been arrested and has repeatedly denied accusations against her. As the details of Epstein’s alleged crimes become clearer, however, we’re likely to hear her name come up again and again.
Here’s everything we know about the alleged madam so far.
She’s a 57-year-old British socialite.
Maxwell is the daughter of publisher Robert Maxwell — in short, she comes from money. Per the Wall Street Journal, she grew up and attended university in England, then moved to the United States in 1991 after her father fell to his death from his yacht, the Lady Ghislaine. (Epstein reportedly uses a yacht with the same name to transport women from St. Thomas in the Caribbean to his own private island, which locals have nicknamed “Pedophile Island.”) Exactly how Maxwell and Epstein met is unclear, but the two reportedly dated for a short period of time around 1992, then remained close friends after breaking up. Per a 2002 New York Magazine profile of Epstein, Maxwell — who has been linked to Epstein for more than two decades — “lent a little pizzazz to the lower-profile Epstein.” The story continues:
The Oxford-educated Maxwell, described by many as a man-eater (she flies her own helicopter and was recently seen dining with [Bill] Clinton at Nello’s on Madison Avenue), lives in her own townhouse a few blocks away. Epstein is frequently seen around town with a bevy of comely young women but there has been no boldfaced name to replace Maxwell. “You may read about Jeffrey in the social columns, but there is much more to him than that,” says Jeffrey T. Leeds of the private equity firm Leeds Weld & Co.
(Additionally, in 2017, a woman named Sarah Ransome alleged in a lawsuit that Maxwell and Epstein had threatened to physically hurt her or ruin her career were she to refuse to have sex with the pair’s clients. Ransome withdrew the suit in December 2018 for reasons that were not made public.)
Sanford L. Bohrer, the Miami Herald’s attorney, has urged the New York appeals court to prioritize unsealing the approximate 2,000 pages of documents related to the 2015 defamation case, as the allegations against Maxwell are “an issue of critical public concern.” And speaking of the potential consequences of Epstein’s indictment, David Boies, the lawyer representing Giuffre, told the Herald, “The one person most likely in jeopardy is Maxwell because the records that are going to be unsealed have so much evidence against her.”
On July 2 of this year, though, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit ordered that some of the aforementioned sealed documents be unsealed. But, predictably, Maxwell would prefer that the 2,000-some documents remain sealed. On July 11, a conference was scheduled to determine whether all the documents should be unsealed, but the day before, U.S. District Judge Loretta Preska postponed the conference to July 25, per Maxwell’s request. (According to Bloomberg, one of Maxwell’s lawyers told Preska that to have the news conference on July 11 would be “premature,” as the case has not yet been officially returned to her court.)
https://www.thecut.com/2019/07/all-we-know-about-the-new-case-against