FBI raids offices of Trump's lawyer, seizes documents related to porn actress

Agencies
April 10, 2018

Washington, Apr 10: The FBI today raided the offices of President Donald Trump's private lawyer Michael Cohen and seized several documents, including information related to the USD 1,30,000 payment to a porn film actress who alleges that she had an affair with Trump in 2006.

Reacting sharply to the raid, Trump blasted the Federal Bureau of Investigation, describing the search as a "disgrace" and "an attack on our country."

The FBI raided the offices of Cohen in New York and seized business records, emails and documents related to several topics, including the payment to the adult film actress Stormy Daniels.

Cohen, who has been Trump's confidant for years, had made the USD 130,000 payoff to the actress ahead of the 2016 election, which she claims was meant to keep her quiet about an alleged affair with Trump. The White House has denied her allegations.

The search warrant was very broad in terms of items sought, the CNN said quoting sources. The documents seized included bank records and information related to the actress.

Stephen Ryan, a lawyer for Cohen, said in a statement that the US Attorney's office for the Southern District of New York had executed "a series of search warrants" including at his office, and "seized the privileged communications" between Cohen and his clients.

Ryan's statement called the search "completely inappropriate and unnecessary," and said federal prosecutors had told him it stemmed partially from a referral by the office of special counsel Robert Mueller, who is investigating links between Russia and the Trump campaign.

"The decision by the US attorney's office in New York to conduct their investigation using search warrants is completely inappropriate and unnecessary," Ryan said.

"It resulted in the unnecessary seizure of protected attorney-client communications between a lawyer and his clients," he said.

Strongly denouncing the move as a "witch hunt", Trump, said, "I just heard that they broke into the office of one of my personal attorneys -- a good man. And it's a disgraceful situation. It's a total witch hunt. I've been saying it for a long time. I've wanted to keep it down. We've given, I believe, over a million pages' worth of documents to the Special Counsel."

Trump, addressing reporters at the White House during a meeting with his military leaders, said, "this witch hunt has constantly been going on for over 12 months and actually, much more than that".

"You could say it was right after I won the nomination, it started. And it's a disgrace. It's, frankly, a real disgrace. It's an attack on our country, in a true sense. It's an attack on what we all stand for, he said.

Describing this as a "whole new level of unfairness", Trump said this is now getting "ridiculous".

"They found no collusion whatsoever with Russia. The reason they found it is there was no collusion at all. No collusion. This is the most biased group of people. These people have the biggest conflicts of interest I've ever seen," he said.

He alleged that the opposition Democrats and some from his own Republican party, are not looking at the Hillary Clinton the "horrible things" that she did and all of the crimes that were committed.

"They're not looking at all of the things that happened that everybody is very angry about, I can tell you, from the Republican side, and I think even the independent side. They only keep looking at us, he said.

"They find no collusion, and then they go from there and they say, Well, let's keep going. And they raid an office of a personal attorney early in the morning. I think it's a disgrace. So we'll be talking about it more. But this is the most conflicted group of people I've ever seen," Trump said.

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News Network
June 25,2020

Ottawa, Jun 25: Prime Minister Justin Trudeau took his son out for ice cream on Wednesday in his first family outing since Canada started easing out of its pandemic lockdown.

It was also Saint-Jean-Baptiste Day in Quebec province.

Wearing masks, the Canadian leader and his six-year-old son Hadrien were cheered at Chocolats Favoris in Gatineau, Quebec.

According to a pool report, Trudeau said the shop tapped into a federal emergency wage subsidy and business loan in order to weather the pandemic, and "avoid being frozen out of the frozen treat market."

Hadrien is said to have bounced with excitement, settling on a vanilla cone with a cookie topping while dad bought a vanilla cone dipped in chocolate for himself.

Father and son then headed out to the patio, where they doffed their masks to eat their cones.

Canada's provinces and territories declared states of emergency mid-March, closing schools and non-essential businesses in response to the pandemic.

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News Network
June 16,2020

Beijing, Jun 16: The coronavirus situation in China's capital is "extremely severe", a city official warned Tuesday, as 27 new infections were reported from Beijing where a new cluster has sparked a huge trace-and-test programme.

The COVID-19 resurgence -- believed to have started at the sprawling Xinfadi wholesale food market in the capital -- has sparked alarm as China had largely brought its outbreak under control through mass testing and lockdowns imposed earlier in the year.

The new cases took the number of confirmed infections in Beijing over the past five days to 106, as authorities locked down almost 30 communities in the city and tested tens of thousands of people.

"The epidemic situation in the capital is extremely severe," Beijing city spokesman Xu Hejian warned at a press conference.

The World Health Organization had already expressed concern about the cluster, pointing to Beijing's size and connectivity.

Officials in the capital have said they will test stall owners and managers at all of the city's food markets, restaurants and government canteens.

Beijing's coronavirus testing capacity has been expanded to 90,000 a day, according to China's official news agency Xinhua.

On Tuesday, the capital's transport commission banned taxi- and ride-hailing services from driving out of the city, Xinhua reported, in another move to try and contain the new outbreak.

All indoor sports and entertainment venues in Beijing were ordered to shut on Monday, and some other cities across China warned they would quarantine those arriving from the capital.

The National Health Commission also reported four new domestic infections in Hebei province, which surrounds Beijing, and a case reported in southwestern Sichuan province was linked to the Beijing cluster.

Authorities were also racing to track people from Beijing who had travelled to other parts of China, and those who visited the capital have been encouraged to get tested.

Beijing spokesman Xu said: "High-risk people who have left Beijing must inform local authorities immediately."

Market inspections

Authorities shut down another market on Tuesday -- Tiantaohonglian in the central Xicheng district -- after one employee there was diagnosed with COVID-19, state broadcaster CCTV reported.

Seven residential estates surrounding that market were also locked down.

In total, Beijing officials said Tuesday they have disinfected 276 agricultural markets, closed 11 markets, and disinfected more than 33,000 food and beverage businesses in a bid to stamp out the new cluster.

Officials had warned Sunday that since May 30, 200,000 people had visited the Xinfadi market -- the original site of the new outbreak.

More than 8,000 workers from Xinfadi have been tested and sent to centralised quarantine facilities.

Until this recent outbreak, most of China's cases in recent months were nationals returning home as the pandemic spread to other countries.

China's Center for Disease Control and Prevention said Monday that the virus strain found in the Beijing outbreak was a "major epidemic strain in the European countries".

While the virus was detected on chopping boards used to handle imported salmon at Xinfadi, "it does not clearly or definitely indicate it's from imported seafood", Wu Zunyou, the body's chief epidemiologist, said in an interview with state broadcaster CCTV.

"Ever since new cases suddenly emerged in Beijing, we have tried to figure out the reasons for the outbreak since there were no COVID-19 cases found over the past two months," Wu Zunyou said.

"We came up with several possibilities, and the most likely one is that the carrier of the novel coronavirus comes from outside China or other parts of China and brought it here."

On Tuesday, another eight imported cases were reported.

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Agencies
April 2,2020
Thailand's controversial king has created a category of his own with his idea of self-isolation.
 
According to reports, King Maha Vajiralongkorn, also known as Rama X, has hired out an entire luxury hotel in Germany, where he has been 'self-isolating' with 20 women.
 
The luxury hotel, the Grand Hotel Sonnenbichl, is in the Alpine resort town of Garmisch-Partenkirchen.
 
The 67-year-old king is self-isolating with his entourage that includes a 'harem' of 20 concubines and several servants, reported Bild.
 
However, it is unclear if his four wives are currently living in the same hotel.

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