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5 women accuse Donald Trump of groping, sexual harassment

[email protected] (Agencies)
October 13, 2016

New York, Oct 13: Donald Trump is in the eye of a storm after at least five women accused him of sexual assault and harassment, threatening the Republican presidential nominee's already fragile campaign, less than a month before the election day.trump

The latest accusations against 70-year-old Trump come just days after a 2005 video surfaced of him in which he is talking in lewd and sexually explicit terms about women and bragging about groping them and getting away with it because he was a "star".

The New York Times reported two women's detailed accounts of Trump groping them. There was a similar account from another woman in the Palm Beach Post. Former Apprentice contestant Jennifer Murphy and People magazine writer Natasha Stoynoff also levelled similar allegations against him.

Jessica Leeds, 74, said Trump had groped her when the two were seated next to each other on a flight more than three decades ago.

Rachel Crooks, who worked for a firm based in Trump Tower in 2005, found herself in a lift with Trump and tried to introduce herself by shaking his hand. The Apprentice star kissed Crooks, then 22, "directly on the mouth", she told the New York Times.

Mindy McGillivray, 36, told the Palm Beach Post that she was groped by Trump during a party at his Florida property Mar-a-Lago 13 years ago, while Murphy told Grazia that Trump had kissed her on the lips at the end of a 2005 job interview.

In a lengthy account published late last night, Stoynoff recalled travelling to Mar-a-Lago to interview Trump and his wife Melania, in 2005. Trump, she claimed, had cornered her in private and "within seconds, he was pushing me against the wall, and forcing his tongue down my throat".

The women came forward to tell their stories after Sunday's presidential debate in which Trump denied having ever sexually assaulted women.

The Trump campaign condemned Stoynoff's story as "fabricated" and the New York Times piece as "fiction" and "a completely false, coordinated character assassination".

Trump's lawyers threatened to sue the New York Times. The Trump campaign distributed a letter sent to the Times' executive editor, Dean Baquet, demanding a retraction and saying the article is "reckless, defamatory and libel per se."

Trump's attorney said failure to retract the piece and remove it from the newspaper's website would leave him "no option but to pursue all available actions and remedies".

When asked to comment on the accusations, Trump told a Times reporter that she was a "disgusting human being".

Jennifer Palmieri, communications director for the Clinton campaign, said: "This disturbing story sadly fits everything we know about the way Donald Trump has treated women. These reports suggest that he lied on the debate stage and that the disgusting behavior he bragged about in the tape is more than just words."

Earlier, BuzzFeed News reported that four contestants in the 1997 Miss Teen USA beauty pageant said Trump walked into the dressing room while the participants, some as young as 15, were changing.

The new controversy comes just a day after Trump's campaign said it was planning to ramp up its attacks on Bill Clinton as a way to attack Hillary.

The Trump campaign is facing a lot of pressure after a stream of Republican leaders withdrew their support from the party's nominee following the emergence of the 2005 tape.

Trump has since gone on the offensive against senior Republican figures including House Speaker Paul Ryan and Senator John McCain.

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News Network
April 20,2020

Washington, Apr 20: The US wants to send a team of experts to China to investigate coronavirus, President Donald Trump has said, a day after he warned Beijing of "consequences" if it was knowingly responsible for the spread of COVID-19 which has killed more than 165,000 people globally, including over 41,000 in America.

Describing the coronavirus as a plague, Trump, during his White House news conference on Sunday, said that he is not happy with China where the pandemic emerged in December last year in the central Chinese city of Wuhan.

“We spoke to them (Chinese) a long time ago about going in. We want to go in. We want to see what's going on. And we weren't exactly invited, I can tell you that,” the President told reporters.

“I was very happy with the (trade) deal (with China), very happy with everything and then we found out about the plague and since we found out about that I'm not happy,” he said.

The US has launched an investigation into whether the deadly virus "escaped" from the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

He has repeatedly expressed disappointment over China's handling of the coronavirus disease, alleged non-transparency and initial non-cooperation from Beijing with Washington on dealing with the crisis.

“Based on an investigation, we are going to find out,” Trump told reporters.

A day earlier, he warned China that it should face consequences if it was "knowingly responsible" for the spread of the novel coronavirus, upping the ante on Beijing over its handling of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“If they (China) were knowingly responsible… then there should be consequences. You're talking about, you know, potentially lives like nobody's seen since 1917,” Trump said on Saturday.

The opposition Democratic Party said that Trump has falsely claimed he acted early by restricting travel from China when it was little too late and he continued to downplay the virus throughout February.

The number of COVID-19 deaths in the US crossed 41,000 and the total infections were more than 764,000 so far.

New York, the epicentre of the deadly COVID-19 in the US, has 2,42,000 cases and over 17,600 fatalities so far. It has registered a 50-percent decline in new cases over an eight-day period.

The novel virus, which emerged in China in December last year, has killed over 160,000 and infected more than 2.3 million people worldwide.

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Agencies
July 28,2020

Kuala Lumpur, Jul 28: Malaysia's ex-leader Najib Razak was found guilty Tuesday in his first trial over the multi-billion-dollar 1MDB scandal, two years after the fraud contributed to the downfall of his long-ruling government.

The former prime minister could now face decades in jail after being convicted on all charges in the case related to the looting of sovereign wealth fund 1Malaysia Development Berhad.

Billions of dollars were stolen from the investment vehicle and spent on everything from high-end real estate to pricey art, while investment bank Goldman Sachs also became embroiled in the scandal.

Anger at the looting played a large part in the shock loss of Najib's long-ruling coalition in elections in 2018, and he was arrested and hit with dozens of charges following his defeat.

The verdict was a test of Malaysia's rule of law. It comes about five months after Najib's scandal-plagued party returned to power as part of a coalition, development observers had feared could affect the outcome of the case.

About 16 months after it began, the Kuala Lumpur High Court delivered the verdict in Najib's first trial, which centred on the transfer of 42 million ringgit ($9.9 million) from a former 1MDB unit, SRC International, into his accounts.

Najib had vehemently denied wrongdoing.

But Judge Mohamad Nazlan Mohamad Ghazali took apart all the arguments put forward by his defence, and found him guilty on the seven charges he faced.

"In conclusion, after considering all the evidence in this trial, I find the prosecution has successfully proven the case," the judge told the court.

The charges were one of abuse of power, three of criminal breach of trust and three of money-laundering.

The counts of abuse of power and criminal breach of trust are punishable by up to 20 years in jail each, while the money-laundering charges are punishable by up to 15 years each.

Sentencing was not handed down straight away. The 67-year-old will likely appeal and he may not be sent to jail immediately. If his conviction is upheld, he will also be barred from political office for several years.

Najib had insisted he was ignorant of the transactions.

The defence team portrayed Najib as a victim and instead sought to paint financier Low Taek Jho, a key figure in the scandal who has been charged in the US and Malaysia, as the mastermind.

Low, whose whereabouts are unknown, maintains his innocence.

Prosecutors insisted Najib was in control of the 1MDB unit, SRC International.

The return of Najib's party to power as part of a coalition in March followed the collapse of Mahathir Mohamad's reformist administration.

Since then, 1MDB-linked charges were unexpectedly dropped against the ex-leader's stepson Riza Aziz, a producer of Hollywood movie "The Wolf of Wall Street", in exchange for him agreeing to return assets to Malaysia.

Prosecutors also dropped dozens of charges against Najib ally Musa Aman, the former leader of Sabah state.

The amounts involved in Najib's first case are small compared to those in his second and most significant trial, which centres on allegations he illicitly obtained more than $500 million.

Malaysia had charged Goldman Sachs and some current and former staff, claiming large amounts were stolen when the bank arranged bond issues for 1MDB.

But the two sides agreed to a $3.9 billion settlement last week in exchange for charges being dropped.

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Agencies
February 4,2020

The Seattle City Council, one of the most powerful city councils in the U.S., on Monday unanimously passed a resolution condemning India’s recently-enacted Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) and the National Register of Citizens (NRC).

Reaffirming Seattle as a welcoming city and expressing solidarity with the city’s South Asian community regardless of religion and caste, the resolution “resolves that the Seattle City Council opposes the National Register of Citizens and the Citizenship Amendment Act in India, and finds these policies to be discriminatory to Muslims, oppressed castes, women, indigenous, and LGBT people“.

Introduced by Indian American City Council member Kshama Sawant, the resolution urges the Parliament of India to uphold the Indian Constitution by repealing the CAA, and to stop the National Register of Citizens, and take steps towards helping refugees by ratifying various UN treaties on refugees.

“Seattle City’s decision to condemn CAA should be a message to all who wish to undermine pluralism and religious freedom. They cannot peddle in hate and bigotry, and expect to have international acceptability at the same time,” said Ahsan Khan, president of Indian American Muslim Council.

Thenmozhi Soundararajan of Equality Labs, which organised the community in support of the resolution, welcomed its passage. “We are proud of the Seattle City Council for standing on the right side of history today. Seattle is leading the moral consensus in the global outcry against the CAA, she said.

Soundararajan said that thousands of organizers across the country have called, e-mailed, and visited Seattle City Council members to amplify this resolution, and it sets an example to cities across the United States.

“At a time when members of the Indian ruling party sided Trump, the Muslim ban, and his war on immigrants as justification for targeting hundreds of millions of Indian minorities, Americans have a unique responsibility to stand up and speak about this human rights crisis. We are glad that Seattle is leading the way on this,” she said.

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