George Santos.

Alejandra Villa Loarca/Newsday RM via Getty Images

• More people are coming forward and accusing George Santos of pocketing funds meant for pets.
• Andrea Dos Santos, a veterinary technician, said she never received $2,165 meant for a pet shelter.
• “It was excuse after excuse after excuse,” Dos Santos told The New York Times.

More people are coming forward to question whether Rep. George Santos really helped rescue 2,500 animals, or if he just pocketed money raised for pets.

The New York Times spoke to several people who worked with Santos on a charity called Friends of Pets United, which he claims he founded.

The Times’ sources said they think Santos saved far fewer animals than the “2400 dogs and 280 cats” that he claimed in 2020 to have rescued. The sources also said they either never got any money from Santos-run fundraisers or were given a far lower amount of cash than they had been promised.

Andrea Dos Santos, a veterinary technician, told The Times that in 2017, Santos offered to help her raise funds for her farm in New Jersey. Dos Santos said she worked with Santos to sell $50 tickets to a barbecue with live music and drinks. The proceeds from the event, Dos Santos said, were meant to go to building a new shelter for abused pets.

Dos Santos said they raised $2,165. But she never received any money from Santos, who had handled the funds. She told The Times she found it hard to contact Santos after the fundraiser.

“It was excuse after excuse after excuse,” Dos Santos said.

Regina Spadavecchia, who runs a Bronx pet rescue called Adore-a-Bullie Paws and Claws, told The Times that she accepted Santos’ offer to help her raise funds in March 2017. Spadavecchia said Santos held a $5 raffle on Facebook for a dinner cruise and Broadway tickets, appealing for funds for the dozen dogs in Spadavecchia’s care. 

Spadavecchia said Santos sent her only around $400, instead of the thousands of dollars he had promised her.

“If you’re doing fund-raising in my name, and you’re claiming you can make a couple of thousand, and you’re sending me $400, then something’s off,” Ms. Spadavecchia told the Times. “You’re either boasting about stuff you can’t do, or you’re keeping money on the side. I don’t know.”

Meanwhile, Monica Cunha, one of Santos’ acquaintances on Facebook, told The Times that Santos claimed he would take in dogs whose owners could not care for them. But Cunha said Santos rarely posted about the dogs’ adoption process. 

According to The Washington Post, Santos in November 2020 claimed on his campaign website that he “founded and ran a nonprofit 501(c)(3) called Friends of Pets United (FOPU) from 2013 – 2018.”

A December 19 investigation from The Times revealed that Friends of Pets United was not a registered animal rescue organization in New York.

The FBI in January also kicked off an investigation into whether Santos took more than $3,000 from a GoFundMe fundraiser meant for a military veteran’s dog, per Politico.

Santos has denied scamming the veteran, Rich Osthoff, of funds from the GoFundMe page. The congressman tweeted on January 20 that he thought reports that he would let a dog die were “shocking & insane.” 

“My work in animal advocacy was the labor of love & hard work,” Santos wrote.

Santos has admitted to lying about various elements of his past, including going to university, being Jewish, and working at Goldman Sachs and Citigroup. Santos has refused to resign from his congressional seat despite these scandals, saying he will only do so if the people who voted for him in New York demand it.

Representatives for Santos did not immediately respond to Insider’s request for comment.

Trade unions launched a third wave of nationwide strikes on Tuesday against President Emmanuel Macron’s plans to make the French work longer before retirement, as the legislation started its bumpy passage through parliament.

Rail services were cancelled, schools disrupted and refinery deliveries halted as workers across multiple sectors walked out, and unions urged the public again to take to the streets in big numbers.

The government says people must work two years longer – meaning for most until the age of 64 – in order to keep the budget of one of the industrial world’s most generous pension systems in the black.

The French spend the largest number of years in retirement among OECD countries – a deeply cherished benefit that a substantial majority are reluctant to give up, polls show.

Labour Minister Olivier Dussopt dismissed opposition accusations that the government was in denial over the scale of street protests across the country last month, and said change was needed.

“The pension system is loss-making and if we care about the system, we must save it,” the minister told RMC radio.

Philippe Martinez, leader of the hardleft CGT trade union, said Macron was playing “a dangerous game” in pressing ahead with a deeply unpopular reform at a time households are facing high inflation.

TotalEnergies (TTEF.PA) said deliveries of refined oil products from its sites had been suspended due to the strike. Electricity production was down just 3.7 gigawatts (GW) and data from grid operator RTE showed minimal imports in the energy mix.

The government says the reform will allow gross savings of over 17 billion euros ($18 billion) per year by 2030.

Unions and leftwing opponents say the money can be found elsewhere, notably from the wealthy. Conservative opponents, whose support Macron needs for a working majority in the National Assembly, want concessions for those who start working young.

More than a million people marched in cities across France during the first two days of strike action in January, as public pressure intensified against a government that insists it will stand its ground on the reforms main planks.

In parliament, more than 20,000 amendments lie before lawmakers, the vast majority from the leftwing Nupes alliance. However, because the reform has been tacked onto an annual social security bill, the government may send it to the Senate after just two weeks.

In a concession to conservatives, Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne has offered to let some people who start work early also retire early – but Les Republicains (LR) lawmakers are divided over whether the proposed starting age of 20-21 is low enough.

“Someone who starts work earlier, stops working earlier. What’s so difficult to understand @Elisabeth_Borne,” Aurelien Pradie, a lead LR critic of the current proposal, tweeted.

Related Galleries:

---

Source link

The post Russia keeps two warships in Black Sea appeared first on Ukraine Intelligence.

Selected Articles – TNT mynewslinks.com

Did late James Kallstrom of the NY FBI and his protégé Charles McGonigal fix the Election 2016 for Trump for $1.3 ml by orchestrating the Weiner-Abedin laptop – Clinton emails affair?

Gautam Adani’s business empire has been under pressure ever since US short seller Hindenburg Research leveled allegations of alleged market manipulation and fraud at the conglomerate.

Adnan Abidi/Reuters

• Adani Group companies have lost over $110 billion in market value in the past fortnight. 
• That’s after US short seller Hindenburg Research leveled allegations of market manipulation and fraud at the conglomerate.
• These losses eclipse those at other short seller targets like Enron and Wirecard. 

Very few companies have lost a huge chunk of their market capital as swiftly and to such an extent as those belonging to the Adani Group. 

Ten listed companies under the Adani Group — which came under attack by short seller Hindenburg Research — have already shed more than $110 billion as of Friday, per Bloomberg. These losses eclipse the market capital lost by other targets of a short seller’s attack.

Adani Group’s losses were significantly larger and swifter than the bloodshed at Houston-based energy trading giant Enron and German payments company Wirecard, which were also mired in accounting scandals before they collapsed, according to a Bloomberg analysis published on Friday. While Enron has ceased to exist, Wirecard is now insolvent. 

Enron was brought down — in part — by famed short seller Jim Chanos of hedge fund Kynikos Associates. Chanos shorted the firm’s stock after flagging fraudulent accounting practices. Enron lost more than $65 billion between August 2000 and December 2001 when it filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, per Bloomberg’s record.

In Wirecard’s case, it was short seller Fraser Perring, who in a 2016 report, accused the payments firm of money laundering and fraud. Wirecard’s share price collapsed after the company revealed in June 2020 that $2 billion in cash went “missing” from its balance sheet and likely never existed. It filed for insolvency in the same month. Wirecard’s market value was wiped out from 24 billion euros, or $26 billion, in 2018.

Other companies that have lost substantial market value after being targeted by short sellers include electric truck maker Nikola — its market value fell from a high of around $30 billion in 2020 to $1.3 billion now — and Valeant Pharmaceuticals. The latter’s market cap fell from $87 billion in August 2015 to around $2.8 billion now.

Nikola, in particular, was also targeted by Hindenburg Research. The US-based short seller has targeted about 30 firms since 2020, per Bloomberg. These stocks lost about 15% on average the day after being targeted, and were on average 26% lower six months later, according to the news outlet’s calculations.

On its part, the Adani Group has been troubleshooting hard. On January 29, it released a 413-page report defending itself against Hindenburg’s allegation — just three days after saying it was exploring potential legal action against the short seller.

They even sought to restore investor confidence by prepaying $1.1 billion in loans, the conglomerate said in a statement on Monday. It said the move was made “in light of recent market volatility.”

And it seems to be working — most Adani Group-related stocks appeared to be lifted by the news.

The conglomerate’s flagship company, Adani Enterprises surged 20% in under two hours of trade on Tuesday, while those of Adani Ports and Special Economic Zone soared over 9%. Shares of Adani Transmission, Adani Green Energy, and Adani Power were also up. The shares of Adani Total Gas were 5% lower.

Overwhelmed rescuers struggled to save people trapped under the rubble as the death toll from a devastating earthquake in Turkey and Syria approached 5,000 on Tuesday, with despair mounting and the scale of the disaster hampering relief efforts.

In the Turkish city of Antakya near the Syrian border, where 10-storey buildings had crumbled onto the streets, Reuters journalists saw rescue work being conducted on one out of dozens of mounds of rubble.

The temperature was close to freezing as the rain came down and there was no electricity or fuel in the city.

The magnitude 7.8 quake hit Turkey and neighbouring Syria early on Monday, toppling thousands of buildings including many apartment blocks, wrecking hospitals, and leaving thousands of people injured or homeless.

In Turkey, the death toll climbed to 3,381 people, Turkey’s Disaster and Emergency Management Authority (AFAD) said.

The death toll in Syria, already devastated by more than 11 years of war, stands at more than 1,500, according to the Syrian government and a rescue service in the insurgent-held northwest.

Freezing winter weather hampered search efforts through the night. A woman’s voice was heard calling for help under a pile of rubble in the southern Turkish province of Hatay. Nearby, the body of a small child lay lifeless.

Weeping in the rain, a resident who gave his name as Deniz wrung his hands in despair.

“They’re making noises but nobody is coming,” he said. “We’re devastated, we’re devastated. My God … They’re calling out. They’re saying, ‘Save us’ but we can’t save them. How are we going to save them? There has been nobody since the morning.”

Families slept in cars lined up in the streets.

Ayla, standing by a pile of rubble where an eight-storey building once stood, said she had driven to Hatay from Gaziantep on Monday in search of her mother. Five or six rescuers from the Istanbul fire department were working in the ruins – a sandwich of concrete and glass.

“There have been no survivors yet. A street dog came and barked at a certain point for long, I feared it was for my mother. But it was someone else,” she said.

“I turned on the lights of the car to help the rescue team. They took out only two bodies so far, no survivors.”

In Kahramanmaras, north of Antakya, families gathered around fires and wrapped themselves in blankets to stay warm.

“We barely made it out of the house,” said Neset Guler, huddling with his four children. “Our situation is a disaster. We are hungry, we are thirsty. It’s miserable.”

Ankara declared a “level 4 alarm” that calls for international assistance, but not a state-of-emergency that would lead to mass mobilization of the military.

AFAD official Orhan Tatar said 5,775 buildings had been destroyed in the quake, which had been followed by 285 aftershocks, and that 20,426 people had been injured.

The Turkish disaster agency said 13,740 search and rescue personnel were deployed and more than 41,000 tents, 100,000 beds and 300,000 blankets had been sent to the region.

The earthquake, which was followed by aftershocks, was the biggest recorded worldwide by the U.S. Geological Survey since one in the remote South Atlantic in August 2021.

Another earthquake of 5.6 magnitude struck central Turkey on Tuesday, the European Mediterranean Seismological Centre said.

Monday’s quake was the deadliest in Turkey since one of similar magnitude in 1999 that killed more than 17,000. Nearly 16,000 were reported injured in Monday’s quake.

Poor internet connections and damaged roads between some of the worst-hit Turkish cities, homes to millions of people, hindered efforts to assess the impact and plan help.

Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan, preparing for a tough election in May, called the quake a historic disaster and said authorities were doing all they could.

In the Turkish city of Iskenderun, rescuers climbed an enormous pile of debris that was once part of a state hospital’s intensive care unit in search of survivors. Health workers did what they could to tend to the new rush of injured.

“We have a patient who was taken into surgery but we don’t know what happened,” said Tulin, a woman in her 30s, standing outside the hospital, wiping away tears and praying.

In Syria, the effects of the quake were compounded by the destruction of more than 11 years of civil war.

In the rebel-held northwest, the death toll stands at more than 740 people, according to the Syrian civil defence, a rescue service known for digging people from the rubble of government air strikes.

The civil defence said hundreds of families were trapped under the rubble and time was running out to save them.

“Every second means saving lives and we call on all humanitarian organisations to give material aid and respond to this catastrophe urgently,” said Raed al-Saleh, head of the civil defence.

A top U.N. humanitarian official in Syria said fuel shortages and the harsh weather were creating obstacles to its response.

“The infrastructure is damaged, the roads that we used to use for humanitarian work are damaged, we have to be creative in how to get to the people … but we are working hard,” U.N. resident coordinator El-Mostafa Benlamlih told Reuters in an interview via video link from Damascus.

The death toll in Syrian government-held areas rose to 812, the Syrian state news agency SANA reported.

Related Galleries:

Yevgeny Prigozhin’s PR strategy has been taken to a whole new level, speaking to the camera at the end of what he claims was a bombing mission in Bakhmut.

Overwhelmed rescuers struggled to save people trapped under the rubble as the death toll from a devastating earthquake in Turkey and Syria rose past 4,400 on Tuesday, with despair mounting and the scale of the disaster hampering relief efforts.

In the Turkish city of Antakya near the Syrian border, where 10-storey buildings crumbled onto the streets, Reuters journalists saw rescue work being conducted on one out of dozens of mounds of rubble.

The temperature was close to freezing as the rain came down and there was no electricity or fuel in the city.

The magnitude 7.8 quake hit Turkey and neighbouring Syria early on Monday, toppling thousands of buildings including many apartment blocks, wrecking hospitals, and leaving thousands of people injured or homeless.

In Turkey, the death toll climbed to 2,921 people, Turkey’s Disaster and Emergency Management Authority (AFAD) said.

The death toll in Syria, already devastated by more than 11 years of war, stands at more than 1,500, according to the Syrian government and a rescue service in the insurgent-held northwest.

Freezing winter weather hampered search efforts through the night. A woman’s voice was heard calling for help under a pile of rubble in the southern Turkish province of Hatay. Nearby, the body of a small child lay lifeless.

Weeping in the rain, a resident who gave his name as Deniz wrung his hands in despair.

“They’re making noises but nobody is coming,” he said. “We’re devastated, we’re devastated. My God … They’re calling out. They’re saying, ‘Save us’ but we can’t save them. How are we going to save them? There has been nobody since the morning.”

Families slept in cars lined up in the streets.

Ayla, standing by a pile of rubble where an eight-storey building once stood, said she had driven to Hatay from Gaziantep on Monday in search of her mother. Five or six rescuers from the Istanbul fire department were working in the ruins – a sandwich of concrete and glass.

“There have been no survivors yet. A street dog came and barked at a certain point for long, I feared it was for my mother. But it was someone else,” she said.

“I turned on the lights of the car to help the rescue team. They took out only two bodies so far, no survivors.”

In Kahramanmaras, north of Antakya, families gathered around fires and wrapped themselves in blankets to stay warm.

“We barely made it out of the house,” said Neset Guler, huddling with his four children. “Our situation is a disaster. We are hungry, we are thirsty. It’s miserable.”

AFAD said nearly 8,000 people have been rescued from 4,758 buildings destroyed in the tremors a day earlier.

It said 13,740 search and rescue personnel were deployed and more than 41,000 tents, 100,000 beds and 300,000 blankets had been sent to the region. “The delivery of personnel and vehicles continued uninterrupted during the night,” it said.

The earthquake, which was followed by aftershocks, was the biggest recorded worldwide by the U.S. Geological Survey since one in the remote South Atlantic in August 2021.

Another earthquake of 5.6 magnitude struck central Turkey on Tuesday, the European Mediterranean Seismological Centre said.

Monday’s quake was the deadliest in Turkey since one of similar magnitude in 1999 that killed more than 17,000. Nearly 16,000 were reported injured in Monday’s quake.

Poor internet connections and damaged roads between some of the worst-hit Turkish cities, homes to millions of people, hindered efforts to assess the impact and plan help.

Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan, preparing for a tough election in May, called the quake a historic disaster and said authorities were doing all they could.

In the Turkish city of Iskenderun, rescuers climbed an enormous pile of debris that was once part of a state hospital’s intensive care unit in search of survivors. Health workers did what they could to tend to the new rush of injured.

“We have a patient who was taken into surgery but we don’t know what happened,” said Tulin, a woman in her 30s, standing outside the hospital, wiping away tears and praying.

In Syria, the effects of the quake were compounded by the destruction of more than 11 years of civil war.

In the rebel-held northwest, the death toll stands at more than 740 people, according to the Syrian civil defence, a rescue service known for digging people from the rubble of government air strikes.

The civil defence said hundreds of families were trapped under the rubble and time was running out to save them.

A top U.N. humanitarian official in Syria said fuel shortages and the harsh weather were creating obstacles to its response.

“The infrastructure is damaged, the roads that we used to use for humanitarian work are damaged, we have to be creative in how to get to the people … but we are working hard,” U.N. resident coordinator El-Mostafa Benlamlih told Reuters in an interview via video link from Damascus.

The Syrian health ministry said the death toll in government-held areas stood at 764 people.

Related Galleries:

Source link

The post Infrastructure facility damaged as Russian forces shell Mykolaiv region appeared first on Ukraine Intelligence.

Adani group shares surged on Tuesday, a day after it moved to prepay some loans, in a relief rally for the Indian conglomerate that lost more than $113 billion in market value in two weeks since a U.S. short-seller’s critical report was published.

The group, led by billionaire Gautam Adani, said on Monday it is pre-paying $1.11 billion of loans on shares ahead of their maturity in 2024 due to recent market volatility. Separately, JPMorgan said the group companies were still eligible for inclusion in the bank’s bond indexes.

Those two factors were having a positive impact on stocks, said Anita Gandhi, director at Arihant Capital Markets.

“Also aiding the rise is the sharp correction in the group stocks, which have made them attractive,” she said.

Indian bourse National Stock Exchange of India (NSE) revised on Monday the maximum daily permissible limit for price moves for Adani Green Energy Ltd (ADNA.NS) and Adani Transmission Ltd (ADAI.NS) to 5% from 10%, according to data on its website.

The group’s flagship company, Adani Enterprises Ltd (ADEL.NS), jumped 20% on Tuesday morning, while Adani Ports and Special Economic Zone (APSE.NS) gained 8.9%.

Shares of Adani Green Energy (ADNA.NS) rose 2.7%, and Adani Transmission and Adani Wilmar (ADAW.NS) added 5% each. Adani Total Gas Ltd (ADAG.NS), however, fell 5% and Adani Power (ADAN.NS) shed 3%.

Many Adani group companies are reporting quarterly results this week, with Adani Ports and Adani Green set to report later in the day.

Though the stocks were staging a recovery, the cumulative losses of Adani group’s seven listed companies still stand at $105 billion since Hindenburg Research’s report on Jan. 24 that alleged it engaged in stock manipulation and use of tax havens. It also said the group had unsustainable debt.

Adani group has denied the allegations, saying it complies with all laws and has made necessary disclosures over time.

Adani has a total notional value of $7.7 billion in the JPMorgan’s CEMBI and JACI indexes, the bank said in a note on Monday.

Besides CEMBI and JACI, Adani’s dollar bonds remain eligible to be part of JPMorgan’s ESG Global Corporate Index (JESG), an integrated environmental, social, and governance corporate benchmark covering investment grade and high-yield markets.

The Adani crisis spilled over to the streets on Monday, with hundreds of members of India’s main opposition Congress party protesting and pressing for a probe into Hindenburg’s allegations.

Related Galleries: