Supreme Court won’t halt turnover of Trump’s tax records

Agencies
February 23, 2021

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Washington, Feb 23: In a significant defeat for former President Donald Trump, the US Supreme Court has declined to step in to halt the turnover of his tax records to a New York state prosecutor.

The court's action on Monday is the apparent culmination of a lengthy legal battle that had already reached the high court once before.

Trump's tax records are not supposed to become public as part of prosecutors' criminal investigation, but the high court's action is a blow to Trump because he has long fought on so many fronts to keep his tax records shielded from view. The ongoing investigation that the records are part of could also become an issue for Trump in his life after the presidency.

In a statement, the Trump blasted prosecutors and said the Supreme Court never should have let this fishing expedition' happen, but they did. The Republican claimed the investigation is politically motivated by Democrats in a totally Democrat location, New York City and State. And he said he would fight on and that We will win!

The Supreme Court waited months to act in the case. The last of the written briefs in the case was filed on October 19. But a court that includes three Trump appointees waited through the election, Trump's challenge to his defeat and a month after Trump left office before issuing its order.

The court offered no explanation for the delay, and the legal issue before the justices did not involve whether Trump was due any special deference because he was president.

The court's order is a win for Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr, who has been seeking Trump's tax records since 2019 as part of an investigation.

Vance, a Democrat, had subpoenaed the records from the Mazars accounting firm that has long done work for Trump and his businesses. Mazars has said it would comply with the subpoena, but Trump sued to block the records' release.

Vance's office had said it would be free to enforce the subpoena and obtain the records in the event the Supreme Court declined to step in and halt the records' turnover, but it was unclear when that might happen. In a three-word statement on Monday, Vance said only: The work continues.

The court's action on Monday wasn't the only defeat for Trump, the court also declined to get involved in a handful of cases related to the 2020 election.

The records Vance has been after are more than eight years of Trump's personal and corporate tax records. Vance has disclosed little about what prompted him to seek them. In one court filing last year, however, prosecutors said they were justified in demanding the records because of public reports of possibly extensive and protracted criminal conduct at the Trump Organisation.

Part of the probe involves payments to two women porn actress Stormy Daniels and model Karen McDougal to keep them quiet during the 2016 presidential campaign about alleged extramarital affairs with Trump. Trump has denied the affairs.

In July, the justices in a 7-2 ruling rejected Trump's argument that the president is immune from investigation while he holds office or that a prosecutor must show a greater need than normal to obtain the tax records.

Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, whom Trump nominated to the high court, joined that decision. It was issued before Trump's third nominee, Justice Amy Coney Barrett, replaced the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the court.

As part of its July decision, the high court returned the Vance case and a similar case involving records sought by Congress to lower courts. And the court prevented the records from being turned over while the cases proceeded.

Since the high court's ruling, in the Vance case, Trump's attorneys made additional arguments that his tax records should not be turned over, but they lost again in federal court in New York and on appeal. It was those rulings that Trump had sought to put on hold.

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News Network
November 12,2024

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The UN humanitarian coordinator for Lebanon has warned that the “picture of life in Lebanon remains grim,” highlighting an "alarming" level of human suffering and significant humanitarian consequences due to the ongoing Israeli carnage.

Imran Riza, the UN Deputy Special Coordinator and Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator for Lebanon (UNSCOL), provided a stark overview of the Arab country's dire circumstances in a statement released on Monday.

“The current picture of life in Lebanon remains grim. Yesterday, airstrikes reportedly killed 23 people, including seven children, in the village of Aalmat in Mount Lebanon,” Riza said on X.

An airstrike in the city of Tyre on the same day resulted in the tragic deaths of five siblings from a single family, all of whom had special needs, according to his statement.

He added that in the last week, Israeli airstrikes have killed at least 241 individuals and left 642 others injured in Lebanon, as reported by the Ministry of Health.

“In the past month, more than 185,000 people have fled their homes in their search for safety within the country, bringing the total to over 870,000 people internally displaced,” Riza said

The UN official highlighted that numerous individuals, including the elderly and those with health issues, are staying behind while witnessing the ruins of their ancestral homes.

He urged for the swift safeguarding of civilian people and infrastructure, emphasizing the necessity to uphold international humanitarian law and end the ongoing violence.

Lebanon’s National News Agency reported that Israeli forces bombed a house in the town of Maydoun in Bekaa on Monday night, killing three people and destroying the house.

Earlier, Israel bombed the northern town of Ain Yaaqoub, killing at least 14 people.

The killings came as Israeli military continued to pound Lebanon, bombing shops selling electrical appliances in the southern city of Tyre and carrying out air raids on the towns of Shamshtar in eastern Baalbek and Roumine in southern Nabatieh.

Lebanon’s Ministry of Health said Israeli attacks killed at least 54 people across the country on Monday.

Israel’s merciless attacks continue despite calls from the UN Security Council for an immediate ceasefire and directives from the International Court of Justice urging measures to prevent genocide and alleviate the dire humanitarian situation in Gaza and Lebanon.

In Lebanon, at least 3,243 people have been killed and 14,134 others wounded in Israeli attacks since the war on Gaza began on October 7, 2023.

The Lebanese resistance movement Hezbollah opened a support front for Palestinians in Gaza only a day after the Israeli regime unleashed its genocidal war on the besieged territory.

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News Network
November 17,2024

Mangaluru: District-in-Charge Minister and Minister for Health and Family Welfare, Dinesh Gundu Rao, announced that a day-care chemotherapy centre will soon be established at District Wenlock Hospital. Speaking to mediapersons after reviewing the activities at Wenlock and Government Lady Goschen Hospital, he shared the government’s plans to enhance healthcare services in the region.

Key Initiatives Announced

•    Day-Care Chemotherapy Centre:

  • Ten beds will be reserved for cancer patients.
  • The government will collaborate with Yenepoya Hospital to provide chemotherapy treatments.
  • All required facilities for the centre are already in place, awaiting inauguration by the Chief Minister.

•    Wenlock Hospital Facelift:

  • Critical Care Block: To be built at a cost of ₹24 crore.
  • Integrated Public Health (IPH) Lab: Planned with a budget of ₹1 crore.
  • New OPD Block: As per a 2017 agreement, KMC Hospital will take up construction. Discussions with KMC management are underway.

•    Additional Requirements:

  • A new mortuary and post-mortem building.
  • Paramedical college building.
  • Modern kitchen.
  • Bridge connecting two buildings within the hospital.

•    Total facelift cost: ₹6 crore to ₹10 crore, utilizing funds from the Department of Health and Family Welfare and CSR contributions.

•    Timeline:
By December or January, priority works will be finalized. The superintendents of Wenlock and Lady Goschen Hospitals are scheduled to visit Bengaluru next week to discuss these projects.

•    MRI Fee Allegations:
The minister assured that allegations of patients being charged for MRI scans at Wenlock Hospital will be resolved at the earliest.
These measures aim to improve healthcare accessibility and infrastructure, positioning Wenlock Hospital as a state-of-the-art facility in the region.

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News Network
November 10,2024

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The media office in the Gaza Strip, where the Israeli regime has been waging a genocidal war since last October, says as many as 188 Palestinian journalists have been killed since the onset of the brutal military onslaught.

The office provided the figure on Saturday, naming four journalists as the most recent victims of the onslaught.

It identified the foursome as Zahraa Mohammad Abu Sukheil, Ahmad Mohammad Abu Sukheil, Mustafa Khadr Bahar, and Abdel Rahman Khadr Bahar.

The office said it “strongly condemns the targeting, killing, and assassination of Palestinian journalists by the Israeli occupation and holds it fully responsible for committing this heinous crime.”

“We call on the international community, international organizations, and those involved in journalistic work worldwide to take action against the occupation, pursue it in international courts for its ongoing crimes, and pressure it to halt the genocide and the targeted killings of Palestinian journalists,” it said.

Earlier in the day, the office said the Israeli regime had bombed the tents sheltering journalists and displaced persons at the al-Aqsa Martyrs' Hospital in the city of Deir al-Balah in central Gaza for the ninth consecutive time.

The atrocity that claimed the lives of two people and injured 26 others came as part of “the genocidal crimes committed by the Israeli occupation army against hospitals, civilians, and displaced persons,” it said.

The media office held the regime and the United States, its biggest ally, as well as other countries aiding the genocide fully responsible for such systematic crimes.

At least 43,552 Palestinians, mostly women and children, have been killed and 102,765 others wounded since the launch of the war that followed a retaliatory operation by Gaza’s resistance groups.

The fatalities include 44 people, who were killed across the coastal sliver, in the most recent phase of the military onslaught.

As many as 24 of the victims were killed in the northern part of the territory, where the regime has markedly intensified its deadly attacks for weeks.

They included an eight-year-old child and a five-year-old one, who lost their lives after Israeli warplanes targeted a group of minors filling up jerry cans with water alongside their mother at the Jabalia Refugee camp.

Gaza’s heath ministry, meanwhile, said a number of victims remained under the rubble and in the streets following Israeli airstrikes, saying ambulances and civil defense teams could not reach them due to the sheer extent of the destruction caused by the raids and obstruction caused by the regime.

Also on Saturday, the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) report, a United Nations-backed assessment, warned that famine was looming in northern Gaza amid escalated Israeli aggression and the regime’s near-total siege of the targeted areas.

The alert from the Famine Review Committee warned of "an imminent and substantial likelihood of famine occurring, due to the rapidly deteriorating situation in the Gaza Strip."

On October 17, the body projected that the number of people in Gaza facing "catastrophic" food insecurity between November and April 2025 would reach 345,000, or 16 percent of the population.

The IPC report classified that figure as Phase 5 -- a situation when "starvation, death, destitution, and extremely critical acute malnutrition levels are evident."

The Israeli military, however, questioned the report's credibility.

"To date, all assessments by the IPC have proven incorrect and inconsistent with the situation on the ground," the army said in a statement, denouncing "partial, biased data and superficial sources with vested interests."

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