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[ad_1] Peter Coker Jr., left, is issued search warrants from police at his villa on the southern resort island of Phuket, Thailand, Jan. 11, 2023. Crime Suppression Division, Royal Thai Police | AP NEWARK, N.J. – A former fugitive in the securities fraud case involving a New Jersey deli company once valued at $100 million renounced his U.S. citizenship in 2019, prosecutors revealed Thursday as they asked a judge to deny him bail. Peter Coker Jr. "poses a serious risk of flight, and ... there are no conditions or combination thereof that can assure his appearance at future proceedings," said the letter by the U.S. Attorney's Office to federal Magistrate Judge Edward Kiel. In the same letter, prosecutors said Coker Jr. had "stood to make tens of millions of dollars" from a hoped-for reverse merger of the deli company, which the goal of the "complex, long-term fraud' spanning at least seven years that grossly inflated its stock price. "And t

[ad_1] From catching Covid-19 to getting caught in a blizzard, traveling can be risky business these days. But just how risky often depends on the destination — and how you define the risks. Safest cities: people's perceptions A report published by the U.K.-based insurance company William Russell ranked the "safest cities in the world," according to people's perceptions. On this list, which relied on perceived crime rates on the crowdsourced global database Numbeo, Asia and Europe dominated the rankings of "safest" cities. Taiwan's Taipei scored the highest, while Buenos Aires, Argentina, ranked the lowest (score: 36.7), according to the report. Safest cities: health and politics But the top five places for "health and safety" in Euromonitor International's " Top 100 City Destinations Index 2022 " are different. That ranking, published in December, analyzed "political stability and social safety," which includes

[ad_1] Former U.S. President Donald Trump departs for his second civil trial after E. Jean Carroll accused Trump of raping her decades ago, outside a Trump Tower in the Manhattan borough of New York City, U.S., January 26, 2024.  Eduardo Munoz | Reuters A federal jury on Friday said that Donald Trump must pay E. Jean Carroll $83.3 million in compensatory and punitive damages for defaming her in statements he made as president when the writer said he had raped her in the 1990s. The massive verdict came less than three hours after the nine-member jury began deliberating in U.S. District Court in Manhattan following closing arguments in the trial. Trump was not in court for the verdict's reading at 4:40 p.m. ET. Judge Lewis Kaplan told jurors before their deliberations that they had to accept as facts that Trump "sexually assaulted" Carroll in the mid-1990s and defamed the writer in statements he made as president in 2019. "What remains for you to decide," Kap

[ad_1] Jerusalem CNN  —  Israel’s top court ruled 10-1 on Wednesday that Aryeh Deri, leader of the Shas party and a key ally of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, should not be allowed to serve as a cabinet minister because of a February 2022 conviction for tax fraud. Netanyahu should remove Deri from his post, the court ruling said. Such a move would risk plunging the country into a political crisis. Deri’s Shas party – which won 11 seats in Israel’s 120-seat parliament, the Knesset, in November and is a key component of Netanyahu’s coalition – immediately hit back, calling the court decision “arbitrary and unprecedented.” The Sephardi religious party said the court “today threw away the voices and votes of 400,000 voters of the Shas movement.” “Today the court actually ruled that the elections are meaningless. T

[ad_1] A DNA breakthrough has helped solve a decades-old cold case in Virginia and led to second-degree murder charges being filed against a New York man, police said in a news release .  In November 1994, 37-year-old Robin Lawrence was found stabbed to death inside her home in Springfield, Virginia. While investigating the case, crime scene Det. Mark Garmin collected a piece of forensic evidence that was kept for decades and is "why our killer is in custody three decades later," Fairfax County Police Department Chief Kevin Davis said in a news conference on Monday . Eli Cory, deputy chief of investigations, said during the same news conference that Lawrence was found stabbed multiple times, with her 2-year-old daughter in another room of the home. When detectives began to process the scene, they collected DNA evidence that at the time, did not match any sources in the police's database, but in 2019, the DNA was submitted to a DNA testing company in Virginia. 

[ad_1] Your Hometown Deli in Paulsboro, N.J. Google Earth A former fugitive wanted on criminal stock manipulation charges related to a money-losing New Jersey deli once valued at $100 million has agreed to be extradited from Thailand to the United States, Thai authorities said. Peter Coker Jr., 54, was arrested last week by Thai police in the resort area of Phuket, more than three months after he, his father, Peter Coker Sr., and an associate, James Patten, were indicted in New Jersey federal court. The 12-count complaint alleges financial crimes related to two publicly traded companies, Hometown International , which owned only a modest, now-closed deli in Paulsboro, New Jersey, and E-Waste , a shell company that had no assets. Coker Jr., an American who most recently was known to be living and working as a businessman in Hong Kong, is being held in a Bangkok jail for the next several weeks before his expected extradition, the Associated Press reported Friday. Thai police, in

[ad_1] CNN  —  One of Iran’s best-known actresses , who was arrested after she criticized the execution of a man involved in nationwide protests, was released on bail on Wednesday, state-aligned ISNA said. Taraneh Alidoosti, who starred in the 2016 Oscar-winning film “The Salesman,” had condemned the hanging of Mohsen Shekari, who was killed last month in the first known execution linked to the protests. Shekari was reportedly convicted of “waging war against God” for allegedly stabbing a member of the Basij paramilitary force at a protest in Tehran on September 23. Alidoosti’s lawyer told ISNA that she was released on bail and reformist outlet Shargh Daily published a picture showing her on the street after her release from the notorious Evin prison without the traditional Islamic hijab covering. Another picture on social m

[ad_1] Reuters  —  Taiwanese are rushing to buy patches being worn by their air force pilots that depict a Formosan black bear punching Winnie the Pooh – representing China’s leader Xi Jinping – as a defiant symbol of the island’s resistance to Chinese military exercises. China began three days of military drills around Taiwan on Saturday, a day after the island’s president, Tsai Ing-wen, returned from a brief visit to the United States, where she met US House Speaker Kevin McCarthy despite Beijing’s warnings. Chinese censors have long targeted representations of Winnie the Pooh – created by British author A.A. Milne – over internet memes that compare the fictional bear to China’s leader. Alec Hsu, who designed the patch, has been selling it at his shop since last year, but he saw a spike in orders after Taiwan’s military news agency on Saturday published a photo of the patch

[ad_1] James Trusty, attorney for Donald Trump, appears on "Meet the Press" in Washington, D.C., April 9, 2023. NBCUniversal | Getty Images An attorney who quit the team defending Donald Trump in the criminal classified documents case said Friday he would no longer represent the former president in a separate defamation lawsuit against CNN. The lawyer, Jim Trusty, said in a court filing that his request to withdraw from the $475 million civil suit "is based upon irreconcilable differences" with Trump. "Counsel can no longer effectively and properly represent Plaintiff," Trusty wrote in the filing in U.S. District Court in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Neither Trusty nor lawyers for CNN immediately responded to requests for comment on Trusty's move to withdraw as Trump's counsel. Lindsey Halligan, Trump's remaining attorney in the defamation case, referred CNBC to the former president's spokesman Steven Cheung, who said the defamation su

[ad_1] Rep. George Santos, R-N.Y., leaves a meeting of the House Republican Conference at the Capitol Hill Club on Wednesday, January 25, 2023. Tom Williams | Cq-roll Call, Inc. | Getty Images Embattled Republican Rep. George Santos of New York will not serve on the two House committees to which he was recently assigned until the investigations into his conduct end, his spokeswoman said Tuesday. This is breaking news. Please check back for updates. [ad_2] Source link https://worldnews2023.com/top-stories/rep-george-santos-says-he-wont-serve-on-house-committees-while-investigations-are-ongoing/?feed_id=207984&_unique_id=657f0e8d680ee

[ad_1] A customs officer takes a sample from part of the cocaine seized for the largest single seizure of cocaine in Bavaria to date, which is examined using a test tube. Picture Alliance | Getty Images Cocaine production is at its highest level on record, with demand rebounding post-pandemic and new trafficking hubs emerging, a report from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime found. The U.N.'s Global Report on Cocaine 2023 says new hubs for trafficking in the multibillion dollar industry have emerged in West and Central Africa in the last two years. New improvements and innovations in cultivation of the coca bush and conversion from coca plant to cocaine have also helped production boom — rising by 35% between 2021 and 2022 to record levels. related investing news "The Covid-19 pandemic had a disruptive effect on drug markets. With international travel severely curtailed, producers struggled to get their product to market. Night clubs and bars were shut as offici

[ad_1] FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried faced new fraud charges Thursday, as prosecutors accused him of cheating thousands of investors out of billions of dollars while casting himself as a trustworthy "savior of the cryptocurrency industry" — an image boosted by celebrity-studded Super Bowl advertising and big donations to political figures. Four new charges, including securities fraud and conspiracy fraud counts, were unveiled with the unsealing of the refreshed indictment in Manhattan federal court that was returned a day earlier. In a statement, U.S. Attorney Damian Williams hinted, as he has several times previously, that prosecutors were not finished building their case. "We are hard at work and will remain so until justice is done," he said. A spokesperson for Bankman-Fried declined to comment. FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried pleads not guilty to fraud