Month: April 2019

A Republican Congressman has been charged with insider trading for telling his son the results of a drug trial so they could sell stock in a pharmaceutical company.

Chris Collins, one of President Donald Trump’s earliest allies, surrendered to FBI agents at his lawyers’ office in Manhattan, New York on Wednesday.

Prosecutors claim the Congressman "mislead the public" as they charged him with securities fraud, wire fraud and making false statements.

Mr Collins, who represents New York in Congress, is accused of selling his stock in Innate Immunotherapeutics Limited – an  Australian pharmaceutical company – before the results of one of its failed drug tests became public.

The Sydney-based company is developing drugs designed to treat multiple sclerosis, a degenerative disease which attacks the nervous system.

Mr Collins sits on Innate Immunotherapeutics’ board of directors and was one of its largest shareholders.

The 68-year-old was attending an event at the White House in June 2017 when he received an email from the company’s chief executive that a test for an experimental drug had failed, prosecutors said.

Just 15 minutes later, Mr Collins called his son Cameron who sold their shares in the company, avoiding a loss of around $750,000, the indictment against the politician states.

Mr Collins was the first member of Congress to endorse Mr Trump, vocalising his support for the Republican candidate in February 2016, and has enjoyed close links with the White House since his election.

The lawmaker, a regular on US cable news, has been known to boast of the surprise phone calls he receives from the president and has served as a go-between for the White House and Congress.

Mr Collins’ lawyers, Jonathan Barr and Jonathan New, said on Wednesday they would "mount a vigorous defense to clear his good name” in court.

“It is notable that even the government does not allege that Congressman Collins traded a single share,” they said in a statement.

Prosecutors have stated that Innate Immunotherapeutics’ chief executive, Simon Wilkinson, sent an email revealing that a key drug test had failed to its board of directors at 6.55 p.m. on June 22, 2017.

Mr Collins allegedly responded to Mr Wilkinson 15 minutes later, saying: “Wow. Makes no sense. How are these results even possible???”

The Congressman’s phone records show that he immediately called his son six times before he picked up and they had a brief conversation.

Prosecutors claim Mr Collins told his son about the failed drug test during their call. Before 8am the following morning Cameron had placed an online order to sell more than 16,500 of his family’s shares in the company.

The 25-year-old later placed dozens more orders to sell the stock and passed the information on to his fiancee, and her father Stephen Zarsky, who is also charged by prosecutors.

When the company’s drug results became public on June 27, its stock dropped by 92 per cent.

In total, the three men avoided losses of $780,000.

Prosecutors from the Department of Justice have also claimed Mr Collins attempted to hide his tracks, directing one of his aides to issue a statement denying he had personally sold any shares.

In a June 28 statement, the aide said Mr Collins’ son had only sold any shares after a pause on trading had been lifted, claiming the move caused him “substantial financial loss”.

In their charge sheet, prosecutors said the statement was “written in a manner designed to mislead the public”.

Two Chinese academics have proposed a controversial idea to encourage childbirth as their country faces an ageing population: Make people childless people or parents of just one child pay into a "maternity fund".

The suggestion sparked a furious social media debate in a country whose people faced drastic family planning policies under the Communist Party, which enforced a one-child policy for decades.

The world’s most populous country is now seeking to rejuvenate its greying population as concerns mount that an ageing and shrinking workforce could slow down its economy, while gender imbalances could lead to social problems.

Beijing loosened the rules in 2016, allowing people to have two children, but childbirths have not increased as much as forecast and there has been speculation the government will further ease restrictions.

The two academics made their suggestion in Tuesday’s edition of the state-run Xinhua Daily, calling for those below the age of 40 and with fewer than two children should contribute annually to a fund that would offset childbirth costs for others.

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"When the family has a second child or more, they can apply for relief from the fund as compensation for the income loss the woman and her family sustains during the maternity period," wrote Nanjing University economics professors Liu Zhibiao and Zhang Ye.

Amongst several other suggestions, including an expansion of childcare options, the authors proposed that those with fewer than two children could withdraw their money at retirement.

The suggestion sparked outrage and mockery on Weibo, China’s Twitter-like social media platform.

One user quipped: "If the government wants to encourage childbirth, why not make artificial inseminations to make us have quintuplets, or authorise polygamy?"

State broadcaster CCTV has also hit back in a scathing online commentary calling the suggestion "unfounded, unreasonable, and inconsistent".

"It is contrary to common sense and exposes the lack of professionalism of researchers."

China is also slowly emerging from the shadow of the one-child policy, introduced in the late 1970s to cap population growth.

Those with multiple children were heavily fined, and some women were forced to undergo abortions.

But couples have been in no rush to grow their families since the policy was loosened, with 17.9 million babies born in 2016, just 1.3 million more than in the previous year and half of what was expected, according to the National Bureau of Statistics.

Births in 2017 slipped to 17.23 million, well below the official forecast of over 20 million.

A film of a man hitting a woman in the face in central Paris after she told him to “shut up" for harassing her in the street has shocked France and prompted an investigation.

Social media posts of Marie Laguerre on her ordeal have prompted outrage and a pledge by France’s gender equality minister to start imposing on-the-spot fines for street harassment this autumn. 

The 22-year old student was walking home in Paris’ 19th arrondissement last week when she was accosted by a young man at the terrace of a bar in broad daylight.

Marlène Schiappa, France’s gender equality minister, called the assault an attack on the "freedom of women" as she backed plans to introduce on the spot fines for harassment including wolf-whistling.

Describing her deal on social media, Ms Laguerre wrote in English: “I walked past a man who sexually/verbally harassed me."

“He wasn’t the first one and I can’t accept being humiliated like that, so I replied ‘shut up’,” she wrote.

“He then threw an ashtray at me, before rushing back to punch me, in the middle of the street, in front of dozens of people.”

She later told Le Parisien that he had insulted her repeatedly, wagged his tongue and made sexually suggestive "groans".

The bar’s CCTV caught the incident on camera. It shows a woman in red walking past the bar before being pursued by a man in black who violently hits her face and walks off.  Several bystanders at the terrace then immediately stand up and try and intervene, preventing the man from approaching Ms Laguerre. He then walks off, and she too walks out of view.

Describing his behaviour as “unacceptable”, Ms Laguerre wrote: “It happens everyday, everywhere and I don’t know a single woman who doesn’t have a similar story. I am sick of feeling unsafe waking in the street. Things need to change, and they need to change now.”

She ended the outburst with the hashtag Metoo, launched in the wake of the Harvey Weinstein sex scandal in Hollywood last year.

The Youtube film of the attack has been viewed 8000,000 times and her comments on Facebook and Twitter have prompted hundreds of messages of support.

Speaking to Le Parisien, she said she was suffering from a “damaged cheek bone and eyebrow”.

"I knew he was coming to hit me, it was clear from his gestures, it was clear from the exchange of words and his intentions," she said in a filmed interview.

She added: "He rushed towards me. I looked at him straight in the eyes. And I took the blow with the utmost pride just to show him that if he thought he could put me back in my place, it hadn’t worked."

She filed a legal complaint against persons unknown and on Monday the Paris prosecutor launched an investigation into “sexual harassment and violence with a weapon (an ashtray)”.

She said she was amazed at the scale of online reaction and felt "lucky" that her ordeal had been caught on film as it sent a powerful message about a pervasive problem. "I don’t know a single female friend who hasn’t been harassed or sexually assaulted. It’s got to stop," she said.

Ms Laguerre praised bystanders for intervening and bar management for handing over the film of the incident. They did not try and apprehend the man but prevented him from approaching her a second time before he marched off.

Asked for a reaction, Marlène Schiappa, France’s gender equality minister, said: “The stakes are serious: they are about the freedom of women to move move about freely in public.”

She said that while the law “already sanctions this type of attack”, a new bill due to be passed this week slapping fines of up to €750 (£670) on anyone caught wolf-whistling or harassing a woman, or man, in the street would help stamp out a sense of impunity.

“The real novelty is that the law will be able to act earlier to avoid an escalation of violence,” she told Le Parisien.

On-the-spot fines of €90, or higher, if the person is a repeat offender, will start being enforced this autumn, she promised. With these, she insisted “we are lowering the tolerance level. We are saying there is no fatalism”.

Some, however, have questioned how police will manage to enforce the law in practice.

Fines depend on the person having committed a blatantly “sexist act”, defined as “any act linked to the sex of a person with the aim of violating their dignity or create an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating and offensive environment”.

Last week, French senators amended the bill on sexual violence and street harassment to add a ban on upskirting, inspired by Britain’s proposed law against taking photos under womens’ skirts or dresses without their permission, and similar legislation in Canada and Belgium.

They chose to make “filming improper images” a criminal offence punishable by a maximum of two years in prison and a fine of nearly £27,000. 

Ivanka Trump has said the separation of migrant families was a “low point” from her time in the White House in rare public criticism of her father’s administration. 

Ms Trump also appeared to question his rhetoric on the media, saying that journalists were not “the enemy of the people” – a phrase Donald Trump, the US president, has used repeatedly. 

The comments, which were made in an interview with political website Axios, come at a time when Ms Trump and her husband Jared Kushner are attempting to defend their impact in the White House. 

Both have senior adviser roles to the president and had been seen as a counter-balance to his nationalist instincts but have been criticised for not speaking out enough. 

Earlier this year the separation of parents from their children when they were caught illegally crossing into America triggered heavy criticism of the Trump administration. 

The number of separations soared after Jeff Sessions, the US attorney general, announced a “zero tolerance” policy. Mr Trump eventually signed an executive order ending family separations. 

Asked if she agreed with White House colleagues who saw the episode had been a low point, Ms Trump said: “That was a low point for me as well.

“I feel very strongly about that and I am very vehemently against family separation and the separation of parents and children so I would agree with that sentiment. I think immigration is incredibly complex as a topic. Illegal immigration is incredibly complicated."

She went on: “I am the daughter of an immigrant, my mother grew up in communist Czech Republic, but we are a country of laws.

"She came to this country legally and we have to be very careful about incentivising behavior that puts children at risk of being trafficked, at risk of entering this country with coyotes or making an incredibly dangerous journey alone.

"These are not easy issues, these are incredibly difficult issues and like the rest of the country, I experienced them in a very emotional way."

Her comments and the tone of the delivery is a marked contrast to Mr Trump’s rhetoric. He recently tweeted that illegal migrants “pour into and infect our country”. 

Ms Trump also struck a different tone to her father on the media, who Mr Trump has ridiculed as “fake news” and dubbed “the enemy of the people” – a phrase that has drawn criticism from some leading Republicans. 

Ms Trump said: “I’ve certainly received my fair share of reporting on me personally that I know not to be fully accurate. 

“So I have some sensitivity around why people have concerns and gripe, especially when they feel targeted. But no I do not feel that the media is the enemy of the people."

Ms Trump and her husband Mr Kushner, aged 36 and 37, are two of the most influential advisers in the White House, having played central roles in Mr Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign. 

They have outlasted internal critics in the White House power struggle, most notably Steven Bannon, the former White House chief strategist who dismissively dubbed them ‘Javanka’. 

In recent months they have focussed on specific projects – Ms Trump pushing to expand child tax credit and paid family leave, Mr Kushner pursuing prison reform and a plan for peace in the Middle East. 

Ms Trump recently closed her business and the pair’s children are reportedly at school in Washington – both taken as signs that they are committing long-term to the White House. 

Mr Trump later played down their differences in opinion, tweeting: 

Israel will build hundreds of new settlement homes in response to the killing of an Israeli father by a Palestinian teenager in the occupied West Bank, Israel’s defence minister said. 

 A 17-year-old Palestinian crept into the settlement of Adam on Thursday night and stabbed  Yotam Ovadia, 31, to death. He wounded two other Israelis before being shot dead. 

Mr Ovadia was a father to two young children and was reportedly on his way home to cook a meal for his wife when he was killed.

Avigdor Lieberman, Israel’s defence minister, said the government would respond by approving 400 new homes in the settlement.

"The best answer to terrorism is the expansion of settlements,” Mr Lieberman said. 

Israel’s government often responds to attacks against settlements by promising to expand the settlements even further. Britain and most of the international community believes the settlements are illegal.  

Mr Ovadia’s killer was identified in Palestinian media as Mohammed Youssef, from the Palestinian village of Kauber.

The Israeli military raided the village on Friday morning and questioned several members of Youssef’s family. 

The army will demolish the family’s house as part of a widely-criticised Israeli policy of destroying the homes of Palestinian attackers to try to deter future assaults. 

A crowd of around 150 people resisted the military’s incursion into the village with rocks and fire bombs, the military said.   

The two other Israeli men wounded in the stabbing attack in Adam are expected to survive their injuries. 

Jason Greenblatt, Donald Trump’s peace envoy, denounced the killing as “another barbaric attack” and asked when Palestinian leaders would condemn the stabbing. 

Israeli ministers also blamed the Palestinian Authority for the violence, saying it was fueled by the Palestinian policy of making payments to the families of attackers.  

The Palestinian Authority is yet to condemn the attack. It defends the policy of payments as part of a justified resistance to Israeli occupation. 

Hamas praised the attack as a "heroic action".

The killing of Mr Ovadia and the army raid on Koubar came amid heightened tensions across the Holy Land. 

Palestinians clashed with Israeli police outside the al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem on Friday.

Video showed young men shooting fireworks towards police while officers responded with stun grenades.

Largescale Palestinian protests are also expected at the Gaza border on Friday, after a week of on-off fighting between Israel and Hamas. 

Six Hamas fighters have been killed since last Friday, while one Israeli soldier was killed and another was wounded.