Sunday, September 30, 2018
Week's balance: Awaiting gas tariffs, fighting corruption in construction sector, and new tax evasion schemes in exports
Negotiations with the International Monetary Fund on the next bailout tranche are being delayed due to disagreements over the gas price for the population; the Cabinet declared war on corruption in the construction industry; while agrarians continue to increase trade with the EU, which calls into question the allocation of financial assistance to Ukraine because of the existing tax evasion schemes.
La mossa del cavallo - C'era una volta Vigata
La mossa del cavallo - C'era una volta Vigata è un film televisivo italiano prodotto e trasmesso da Rai 1.
È la prima trasposizione televisiva del primo romanzo storico dello scrittore Andrea Camilleri La mossa del cavallo, pubblicato nel 1999. Il film TV è diretto da Gianluca Maria Tavarelli e scritto da Andrea Camilleri insieme a Francesco Bruni e Leonardo Marini.
Macedonians vote in referendum on whether to change country's name
SKOPJE (Reuters) - Macedonia held a referendum on Sunday on whether to change its name to ‘Republic of North Macedonia’, a move that would resolve a decades-old name dispute with Greece which had blocked its membership bids for the European Union and NATO.
International Translation Day
International Translation Day is celebrated every year on 30 September on the feast of St. Jerome, the Bible translator who is considered the patron saint of translators. The celebrations have been promoted by International Federation of Translators (FIT) ever since it was set up in 1953. In 1991 FIT launched the idea of an officially recognised International Translation Day to show solidarity of the worldwide translation community in an effort to promote the translation profession in different countries (not necessarily only in Christian ones). This is an opportunity to display pride in a profession that is becoming increasingly essential in the era of progressing globalisation.
Saturday, September 29, 2018
Turkey: 16-year-old gets 4.5 years in prison for kissing 13-year-old
A court in the southern province of Antalya has handed down a prison sentence of four years and six months to a 16-year-old boy for kissing 13-year-old girl at school.
“The expert report about the high schooler [with the initials] A.K. has emphasized that he had undertaken this action with the impulse of puberty and there was no need about punishment, but the prosecutor and judge did not take this into account. Following the trial process, A.K. has received a punishment on charges of sexual assault,” the lawyer Sevcan Aydın Uzun told daily Hürriyet on Sept 28.
Ryan Zinke: Naval blockade is an option for dealing with Russia
Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke says the U.S. Navy can blockade Russia if needed to keep it from controlling energy supplies in the Middle East as it does in Europe.
"The United States has that ability, with our Navy, to make sure the sea lanes are open, and, if necessary, to blockade ... to make sure that their energy does not go to market," Zinke said on Friday at an industry event in Pittsburgh hosted by the Consumer Energy Alliance.
He was there to explain why hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, and the shale energy boom has given the U.S. an edge over its rivals Russia and Iran, by making the U.S. less dependent on foreign sources of energy.
California governor signs gun control bills into law
(Reuters) - California Governor Jerry Brown signed several gun control bills into law on Friday, including one measure that raises the minimum age for buying rifles and shotguns from 18 to 21.
The new laws come seven months after a gunman opened fire with a semiautomatic assault-style rifle at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, killing 14 students and three adults, the second-deadliest mass shooting at a public school in U.S. history.
Jeremy Hunt interview: ‘Putin would love a no-deal Brexit, anything that destabilises the West’
When Jeremy Hunt took over from Boris Johnson at the Foreign Office this summer, the mandarins managed a smile. “There’s a grown-up in charge again,” one civil servant said as the new foreign secretary walked up the grand staircase. While Mr Johnson is a disruptor intent on causing a stir, Mr Hunt is a diplomat giving speeches around the world in fluent Mandarin and Japanese. His only verbal slip so far has been to call his wife, Lucia Guo, Japanese when she is Chinese, but the conventional conciliator immediately sent her flowers. “I never needed to be forgiven, she’s got a fantastic sense of humour,” he tells us.
Unlike his predecessor Mr Hunt conscientiously “actually reads his red boxes”, says the civil servant. “He got his first at Oxford by doing his homework.” Although he has his detractors after six years as health secretary made him the longest-serving in British history, he is seen as a safe pair of hands when he tours the globe selling Brexit as a late convert who voted Remain. Many party moderates now see him as a better potential leader than the flamboyant, unpredictable Mr Johnson.
The anatomy of Slovak russophilia: How Russia is building a network of influence in Slovakia
In mid-July, the Slovak media reported that a group of parliamentarians and entrepreneurs headed by independent MP Peter Marček was going to visit Crimea on 1-4 August. Moreover, they wanted to travel to the occupied peninsula from Moscow, which is contrary to Ukrainian legislation. Ukrainian Ambassador Yuriy Mushko warned about the consequences of such a trip, stating that the delegates who travel to the Crimea through Russia will most likely be banned from entering Ukraine in the future. He also advised them to avoid making appearances that could be used for propaganda purposes.
Even the head of the Slovak parliament Andrei Danko who, if we track his statements and actions, also has a rather pro-Russian position on many issues, decided to react to the warnings of the Ukrainian ambassador. The speaker and head of the right-wing Slovak National Party, which for some time was a junior partner in a government coalition with ruling party “Direction – Social Democracy”, is quite a frequent guest in Moscow. On a recent visit there, he waxed lyrical about Slavs and Russian icons, emphasising that "We, small peoples, can only turn to the great powers – without their help we are unable to achieve peace".
Babi Yar
Babi Yar is a ravine in the Ukrainian capital Kiev and a site of massacres carried out by German forces and by local Ukrainian collaborators during their campaign against the Soviet Union in World War II. The first, and best documented, of the massacres took place on 29–30 September 1941, killing approximately 33,771 Jews. The decision to kill all the Jews in Kiev was made by the military governor, Major-General Kurt Eberhard, the Police Commander for Army Group South, SS-Obergruppenführer Friedrich Jeckeln, and the Einsatzgruppe C Commander Otto Rasch. Sonderkommando 4a soldiers, along with the aid of the SD and SS Police Battalions backed by the Ukrainian Auxiliary Police carried out the orders.[1]
The massacre was the largest mass-killing under the auspices of the Nazi regime and its collaborators during its campaign against the Soviet Union[2] and has been called "the largest single massacre in the history of the Holocaust" to that particular date,[3] surpassed only by the 1941 Odessa massacre of more than 50,000 Jews in October 1941 (committed by German and Romanian troops) and by Aktion Erntefest of November 1943 in occupied Poland with 42,000–43,000 victims.[4][need quotation to verify]
Victims of other massacres at the site included Soviet prisoners of war, communists, Ukrainian nationalists and Roma.[5][6][7] It is estimated that between 100,000 and 150,000 people were killed at Babi Yar during the German occupation.[8]
Poroshenko: I have no business in Russia
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko has said that his business in Russia is out of question.
"I had business in Russia before the war. But the war changed everything. And now I want everyone to hear that Poroshenko has no business in Russia, it is out of question: neither agrarian, nor confectionery, no other," he said at the opening of the tenth international economic forum "Innovations. Investments. Kharkiv Initiatives!" in Kharkiv.
Poroshenko accused his political opponents in Ukraine of dishonest behavior.
Ukraine investigating Hungarian passports case as high treason
The prosecutor's office in Ukraine's Zakarpattia region jointly with the SBU Security Service of Ukraine is investigating the issue of Hungarian passports to Ukrainian citizens in the town of Berehove as high treason. "This information was included in the register of pretrial investigations and criminal proceedings were launched on deliberately committed actions by citizens of Ukraine to the detriment of the sovereignty, state and information security of the country, which has signs of a criminal offense stipulated in Part 1 of Article 111 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine, i.e. high treason," the press service of the regional prosecutor's office told UNIAN.
Kazakhstan,China to realize 11 new projects worth $1.9B
By Kamila Aliyeva
Kazakhstan’s First Deputy Prime Minister Askar Mamin was on a working visit in Beijing (China), where he held talks with the First Vice Premier of the State Council of the People’s Republic of China, co-chairman of the Kazakhstan-China Cooperation Committee Han Zheng.
During the trip, he also held bilateral meetings with the heads of major investment, financial, industrial, construction, transport and logistics corporations, the website of the Kazakh Prime Minister reported. The meetings focused on the implementation of joint investment projects.
“Thanks to the leaders of the two states - President Nursultan Nazarbayev and Chairman of the People's Republic of China Xi Jinping - Kazakhstan and China have achieved a high level of cooperation across the entire spectrum of bilateral relations,” Mamin said during a meeting with Han Zheng.
Man on wire: An acrobatic act of faith by a Frenchman in New York
Speaking a couple of hours after U.S. President Donald Trump at the 73rd General Assembly of the United Nations on September 25, French President Emmanuel Macron took to the stage with a high ambition: to fire up the world’s faith in multilateralism as a rampart against growing nationalism and protectionism.
Post-Soviet Neo-Eurasianism, the Putin System, and the Contemporary European Extreme Right
Cas Mudde recently observed that “[p]opulist radical right parties are the most studied party family in political science.”[2] While the interest of social researchers for ultra-nationalist political groups and networks – not only parties – in the West has indeed risen markedly during the last quarter of century, this cannot be said, to the same degree, about the East-Central European and especially post-Soviet far right. There exists, to be sure, a certain body of scholarly literature on these objects now too.[3] Yet, many details and circumstances of the emergence and development of relevant extremely right-wing groupings in such countries as Hungary, Slovakia, Poland, Romania as well as especially Serbia and Ukraine still remain to be explored, contextualized, and interpreted.[4] This is in spite of the fact that some of these parties were temporarily included in their countries’ coalition governments.[5]
Friday, September 28, 2018
The return of soviet Crimea: What’s happening with the Ukrainian peninsula’s economy these days?
Whether people want them to be or not, their impressions of regions even within their own countries are often shaped by myths—and Crimea is no exception. Most Ukrainians tended to think of the peninsula—with the exception of Sevastopol—as a beach resort and wine-making region, even during soviet times.
How Dirty Money Disappears Into the Black Hole of Cryptocurrency
A North Korean agent, a stolen-credit-card peddler and the mastermind of an $80 million Ponzi scheme had a common problem. They needed to launder their dirty money.
They found a common solution in ShapeShift AG, an online exchange backed by established American venture-capital firms that lets people anonymously trade bitcoin, which police can track, for other digital currencies that can’t be followed.
Turkey, Germany 'reach consensus to revive cooperation mechanisms'
President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has said Turkey and Germany "reached consensus to revive cooperation mechanisms."
Erdoğan made the comment at a joint news conference with German Chancellor AngelaMerkel on Sept. 28.
Regarding visa liberalization process with the EU, Erdoğan said Turkey plans to fulfill the remaining six criteria “as soon as possible.”
"Turkey is taking on serious responsibilities on regional issues, particularly Syria crisis," Erdoğan said.
SBU investigates case involving Hungarian passports issued to Ukrainian citizens – PGO
Ukraine's SBU Security Service is investigating criminal proceedings on the receipt of Hungarian citizenship by citizens of Ukraine. Obtaining dual citizenship entails deprivation of Ukrainian citizenship, Ukraine's Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko has said.
"The SBU is conducting an investigation, and we are in charge of procedural supervision. Obtaining dual citizenship is strictly forbidden under Ukraine's Constitution. There can be no two interpretations. If there is evidence of dual citizenship, it should be punished," Lutsenko told journalists in Kyiv on Thursday.
He said action will be taken if the SBU establishes "cases involving mayors, governors, ministers, pensioners or servicemen."
Third GRU agent who carried out Skripal reconnaissance mission identified by secret services Save
A third Russian military intelligence officer who carried out a reconnaissance mission before the poisoning of Sergei Skripal has been identified by counter terrorism police and the security services, the Telegraph understands.
The GRU agent is believed to have visited Salisbury to help plan the attack before two of his colleagues brought weapons grade nerve agent into the UK.
It is understood that the man has now been identified by those investigating the planned hit in March, which inadvertently led to the death of local woman Dawn Sturgess.
President of Ukraine and his wife paid tribute to John McCain
During a working visit to the United States, President Petro Poroshenko and his wife Maryna Poroshenko honored memory of American Senator John McCain.
Petro and Maryna Poroshenko visited the burial site of the Senator and put a wreath to his grave.
Senator John McCain was buried in a cemetery on the territory of the Naval Academy of the United States. During the commemoration, taps was performed under the American military tradition.
Commander of the Ukrainian Navy Admiral Ihor Voronchenko left the commemorative medal of the Ukrainian Navy on the grave of the senator as a sign of great respect of Ukrainian soldiers and marines for a prominent American politician and a great friend of Ukraine.
Brett Kavanaugh hearing: anger and clashes ahead of Senate committee vote
Republicans have said the Senate judiciary committee will vote on the supreme court nomination of Brett Kavanaugh, after a full day of extraordinary testimony on Capitol Hill that saw his accuser share her emotional story of sexual assault while he angrily denied the allegation.
The vote will take place on Friday as scheduled, Republican senators said as they left a closed-door meeting just hours after the high-stakes hearing on Thursday. It was still unclear how a handful of key senators would vote.
Asked by reporters if Republicans had enough votes to advance Kavanaugh’s nomination to the full senate, Chuck Grassley, the committee’s Republican chairman, replied: “Depends on what happens tomorrow.”
In a furious and emotional opening statement, Kavanaugh delivered an extraordinary rebuke over the sexual assault allegations against him while defiantly stating: “You’ll never get me to quit.”
U.S. regulator sues Musk for fraud, seeks to remove him from Tesla
NEW YORK/SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission accused Tesla Inc (TSLA.O) Chief Executive Elon Musk on Thursday of fraud and sought to remove him from his role in charge of the electric car company, saying he made a series of “false and misleading” tweets about potentially taking Tesla private last month.
Thursday, September 27, 2018
Lozhkin signed an Agreement with the American Jewish Committee
Yesterday in New York, the President of the Jewish Confederation of Ukraine Boris Lozhkin and the CEO of the American Jewish Committee David Harris signed the Agreement of Association between the two organizations, the Confederation reported.
“We enter into the association in furtherance of our respective institutional goals and a spirit of mutual respect, appreciating the considerable experience, capability and dedication of each party, and the natural synergy of our organizations, interests and activities,” states the Agreement.
The Jewish Confederation of Ukraine was founded in 1999. The Confederation unites independent public, charitable, religious Jewish organizations. The President of the Confederation is Boris Lozhkin.
Senate panel advances Syria sanctions that also target Russia
The Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Wednesday advanced the latest legislative effort to hit Russia with new sanctions — this time, for its support of the government in Syria and its role in what human rights advocates and international officials have identified as mass atrocities akin to war crimes.
The bill would impose sanctions against the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad over “war crimes” and “crimes against humanity” in Syria, including his use of chemical weapons. It would also extend sanctions to individuals and entities supporting Assad’s government and its war effort — a prohibition that by definition includes countries such as Russia and Iran.
Argument preview: Justices to consider enforceability of arbitration agreements for transportation workers
All of this has happened before. All of this will happen again. A business signs contracts with its workers (or its customers, or suppliers, or anybody else for that matter), in which the workers agree that they will resolve any disputes before an arbitrator rather than a court. Employees often do not like arbitration, in part because they worry that the arbitrator will be more favorable to the employer than a court. The lower courts hold the agreements unenforceable (reflecting a longstanding judicial suspicion of a contract premised on the notion that employers prefer to limit judicial scrutiny of their behavior). The Supreme Court grants review and in a closely divided decision holds that the Federal Arbitration Act requires that the disputes be sent to arbitration. It would be easy to predict such a fate for New Prime Inc. v. Oliveira, on the argument calendar for the first Wednesday of the new term.
But I’m not at all sure this case will drop into that particular pigeonhole. The case involves an exception from the FAA for “contracts of employment of seamen, railroad employees, or any other class of workers engaged in foreign or interstate commerce.” These particular workers are long-haul truck drivers. For a variety of reasons, the arrangements between trucking companies (such as petitioner New Prime) and the individuals who drive the trucks carrying the goods consigned to the trucking companies often document the drivers as independent contractors rather than employees.
How Eastern Ukraine Is Adapting and Surviving: The Case of Kharkiv
Eastern Ukraine does not differ much from the rest of the country; it mirrors the overall challenges of rule of law and captured governance. A study of the city and region of Kharkiv demonstrates how adaptation to the country’s post-Maidan political and economic reality has been painful but rapid.
Kharkiv, the name of Ukraine’s second-biggest city and the surrounding region, has a collective population of almost 2.7 million people. Four years ago, it nearly turned into a Russia-backed separatist enclave like neighboring Donetsk and Luhansk. The anti-government Russian Spring protests of 2014 were supported only by a minority of Kharkiv’s citizens—as was the case in these neighboring regions. Nevertheless, pro-Russian views were more prevalent in Kharkiv than almost anywhere else in Ukraine besides the conflict-torn Donbas region. After Russia annexed Crimea in March 2014, a group of aspiring separatists unsuccessfully attempted to establish a Kharkiv People’s Republic, but loyal special security troops from western Ukraine, with the support of the regional elites, prevented them from doing so. Kharkiv lived through a turbulent 2014 and 2015, with shooting incidents and explosions causing casualties on both sides of the political dividing line.
Ukraine’s Presidential Election: Six Things You Should Know
Ukraine is approaching a presidential election in March 2019 followed by a parliamentary election later in October. As the country’s political parties continue to remain focused on personalities not programmes, find out six things you should know about what to expect in the upcoming elections.
#DisinfoReview: The Disinformation Maps Aimed at Tearing Our World Apart
With a quick move, the camera zooms in on the map of Ukraine. One by one, pieces of Ukrainian territory get wolfed down by the EU member states, Hungary, Romania and Poland. "Kyiv's eccentricity has already split the country", the presenter explains intensively.
Since Transcarpathia belonged to Hungary prior to the beginning of the 20th century, Budapest wants to "regain control" of the region. "In the south it's not at all historically Ukrainian either" and "the Poles are keeping an eye on Ukrainian Galicia, Polissia and Volhynia", TV Channel Rossiya 1’s presenter concludes.
Wednesday, September 26, 2018
Ukrainian President met with representatives of American business
During his working visit to the United States, President Petro Poroshenko met with representatives of American business circles already represented in Ukraine or interested in developing business in our country.
The meeting, which took place in New York, was attended by representatives of well-known American and global companies. In particular, the leaders of such companies as Holtec, AT&T, IBM Corporation, Boeing International, XCoal Energy & Resources, Motorola Solutions, GE Transportation, AM General, Bunge Ltd, Cargill, Inc., Coca-cola, Pepsico, Citibank, Greenbrier, as well as representatives of the American-Ukrainian Business Council had a conversation with the President.
During the meeting, the Head of State presented in detail the macroeconomic situation and strategy of Ukraine's economic development on the path to European and Euro-Atlantic integration and informed about the changes that have taken place in our country since his last meeting with American businessmen in 2017.
Joint Statement on Trilateral Meeting of the Trade Ministers of the United States, Japan, and the European Union
Brussels, 26 September 2018
Mr Hiroshige Seko, Minister of Economy, Trade and Industry of Japan, Ambassador Robert E. Lighthizer, United States Trade Representative, and Ms Cecilia Malmström, Commissioner for Trade, met in New York on 25 September 2018.
Statement on Concerns with Non-Market-Oriented Policies and Practices of Third Countries
The Ministers reiterated their concern with and confirmed their shared objective to address non market-oriented policies and practices of third countries that lead to severe overcapacity, create unfair competitive conditions for their workers and businesses, hinder the development and use of innovative technologies, and undermine the proper functioning of international trade, including where existing rules are not effective.
Bellingcat: Skripal Suspect Boshirov Identified as GRU Colonel Anatoliy Chepiga
Bellingcat and its investigative partner The Insider – Russia have established conclusively the identity of one of the suspects in the poisoning of Sergey and Yulia Skripal, and in the homicide of British citizen Dawn Sturgess.
Part 1 and Part 2 of Bellingcat’s investigation into the Skripal poisoning suspects are available for background information. In these previous two parts of the investigation, Bellingcat and the Insider concluded that the two suspects – traveling internationally and appearing on Russian television under the aliases “Ruslan Boshirov” and “Alexander Petrov” – are in fact undercover officers of the Russian Military Intelligence, widely known as GRU.
Tuesday, September 25, 2018
United States will never recognize the illegal annexation of Crimea - meeting between the President of Ukraine and the United States Special Representative for Ukraine
In the framework of the 73rd session of the UN General Assembly, President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko had a meeting with US Special Representative for Ukraine Kurt Volker, during which the Special Representative handed over a symbolic printed copy of the declaration by the US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo dated July 25, 2018, which envisages clear and unequivocal position of the United States regarding the non-recognition of the illegal annexation of the Ukrainian Crimea by the Russian Federation.
"In that declaration, Secretary of State Pompeo said that the United States does not and will not accept Russia’s annexation of Crimea," Kurt Volker said and solemnly presented a copy of the declaration to the President of Ukraine.
Bill Cosby, in cuffs, imprisoned for up to 10 years for sexual assault
NORRISTOWN, Pa. (Reuters) - Bill Cosby was marched out of court in shackles on Tuesday after a judge branded him a “predator” and sentenced him to between three and 10 years in prison for sexual assault, capping the downfall of the once-beloved comedian known as “America’s Dad.”
Cosby, 81, was found guilty in April of three counts of aggravated indecent assault for the drugging and sexual assault of his one-time friend Andrea Constand, a former Temple University administrator, at his Philadelphia home in 2004.
He is the first celebrity to be convicted of sexual abuse since the start of the #MeToo movement, the national reckoning with misconduct that has brought down dozens of powerful men in entertainment, politics and other fields.
The Importance of Adding Culture to the Board Agenda
On October 3, 2017, the National Association of Corporate Directors (NACD) published the NACD Blue Ribbon Commission Report on Culture as a Corporate Asset, affirmatively advocating that corporate culture be a part of board room agendas and not just left to management as a soft human resource issue. A company’s culture can have a direct influence on its reputation and, often, performance. In the wake of corporate scandals ranging from sexual misconduct by top executives to incentive plans that entice employees to behave in their own self-interest, leading to CEO shake-ups, government investigations, falling stock prices and consumer backlash, a board should consider culture as part of its company’s risk profile as seriously as it considers its company’s financial and competitive challenges.
The report by NACD, the world’s largest association of corporate directors, brings to the forefront what many management leaders already know — corporate culture matters. The absence of a healthy corporate culture can be a significant liability. Culture is linked to business strategy, selection and turnover of management, reputation and employees and customer satisfaction. In 2015, researchers from Columbia Business School and the Duke Fuqua School of Business released a report after surveying more than 1,400 North American CEOs and CFOs about corporate culture. Overwhelmingly, the respondents agreed that “leadership needs to spend more time to develop the culture.” But what are the actionable steps that leadership, both directors and executives, can take to tackle this key issue?
The island of bureaucrats and soldiers: How Russia is turning Crimea into a military base by changing its economy and society
The occupiers widely advertised the Kerch Bridge they opened in Ma y2018 as a symbol of political, administrative and economic “unification” with Russia. The problem is that the peninsula’s economy will not be rescued by such projects — its biggest troubles are caused primarily by Moscow’s policy, not infrastructure issues or international sanctions.
The developments in Crimea after 2014 show that the occupiers are returning it into the 18-19th centuries when it was nothing more than a southern military outpost of the empire.
This is bad news for the Crimeans – anything that does not serve Russia’s military or administrative needs will inevitably stagnate and gradually decline. Nothing short of external interference will be able to change this.
The great depression
Argument preview: Justices face nondelegation challenge to federal sex-offender registration law
Over 12 years ago, Congress enacted the Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act. One provision of SORNA created a requirement that a convicted sex offender register with every jurisdiction in which he resides, works or studies, as well as in the jurisdiction in which he was convicted. Another part of SORNA, its criminal enforcement provision, made it a crime for a convicted sex offender subject to the registration requirement to fail to register or to keep his registration information updated if he travels across state lines. But what about sex offenders convicted before SORNA’s enactment? SORNA did not itselfspecify whether pre-SORNA offenders were required to register. It instead authorized the attorney general of the United States to “specify the applicability” of SORNA’s registration requirement to “sex offenders convicted before” the date of SORNA’s enactment, and “to prescribe rules for the registration of any such sex offenders and for other categories of sex offenders who are unable to comply” with the registration requirement.
In subsequent years, defendants charged under SORNA contended that the act and its enforcement scheme violated a panoply of constitutional rules. One of these cases reached the Supreme Court in 2012 in United States v. Reynolds. By issuing an interim rule, the attorney general had made SORNA’s registration requirements applicable to pre-SORNA offenders, and Billy Joe Reynolds claimed this interim rule was invalid. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit rejected Reynolds’ argument because that court had earlier held that SORNA by its own terms required pre-SORNA offenders to register; the validity of the interim rule, it reasoned, was thus irrelevant to Reynolds. At the Supreme Court, Reynolds challenged that logic, contending that SORNA did not of its own force apply to pre-SORNA offenders and that a valid interim rule was therefore necessary to subject him to the registration requirement and its enforcement provision.
Bartholomew ‘hopes’ for independent Ukrainian Church
Fener Greek Orthodox Patriarch Dimitri Bartholomew said on Sept. 23 that he hoped for an independent Ukrainian Church soon “despite the current opposition.”
“I hope that despite the current opposition, the Ukrainian Church gets its independence status, which is their right, soon,” Bartholomew said in a speech he made following the Sunday church service held at the Saint Fokas Orthodox Church in Istanbul’s Ortaköy neighborhood.
Bartholomew said that the Istanbul-based Patriarchate granted independence status initially to the Russian Church in the 16th century and then lastly to the Orthodox churches of the Czech Republic and Slovakia in 1998, state-run Anadolu Agency reported.
Everyone who appeals to a court should be guaranteed the right to justice - Ukrainian President during the swear-in ceremony of new judges of the Constitutional Court
President Petro Poroshenko took part in a special plenary session of the Constitutional Court of Ukraine, during which two newly elected judges of the Constitutional Court, Iryna Zavgorodnia and Oleg Pervomayskyi, took the oath.
"We all strive for the Constitution of Ukraine to be effective. The laws passed by the Parliament must comply with the Basic Law. The decisions of the courts applying these Laws should also protect the rights and freedoms of citizens in accordance with the Constitution and in accordance with the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms. Everyone who appeals to a court must have the right to justice. It is in this the purpose of those efforts and reforms that we are doing together," Petro Poroshenko emphasized.
Washington to blacklist 12 Russian companies in new round of sanctions
The US Department of Commerce has imposed restrictions on 12 Russian corporations that are allegedly acting contrary to the national security or foreign policy interests of the US.
The document, set to be published on Wednesday, does not specify a date for the commencement of sanctions against the entities. It states that American corporations are banned from exporting dual-use goods to the sanctioned companies.
Surprise—Ukrainians Are Bullish on Trump
Kiev, Ukraine
President Trump’s kowtowing to Russian President Vladimir Putin in Helsinki alarmed the world in July. Few countries had more reason for concern than Ukraine, which has defended itself in a low-intensity war with Russia for nearly four years. Yet despite the U.S. president’s baffling fondness for Mr. Putin, Ukrainians say Mr. Trump’s policies are surprisingly supportive of Kiev and hostile toward Moscow. In some ways they believe Mr. Trump has been much better than his predecessor.
Putin’s war is transforming Ukraine
LVIV, Ukraine
When they first arrived in Lviv, a university rector told me, the students who came from Donetsk walked around in packs, speaking loudly in Russian. They didn’t want to speak Ukrainian, as most inhabitants of this city do; they didn’t want to integrate. Lviv is in western Ukraine, near the Polish border. Donetsk, hundreds of miles to the east, has been occupied by Russian-backed “separatists” since the Russian invasion in 2014. The new students were “internally displaced persons” — refugees in their own country.
But that first year ended, and the second year was different. By the third year, the rector told me, the students from western Ukraine and the students from eastern Ukraine were nearly indistinguishable — and they aren’t alone. Four years have now passed since the invasion, and the 1.5 million Ukrainians displaced by the war are coping better than might be expected. Most of those who are of working age have jobs. The majority say they trust their neighbors.
Trans-Atlantic Mergers Are on the Rise. What Do They Really Achieve?
Fashion trends come in waves. Apparently, so do law firm management strategies.
After a busy decade of trans-Atlantic mergers, including 10 combinations of U.S. and U.K. firms between 2000 and 2011, there was a distinct slowdown. Only one major trans-Atlantic merger was completed between January 2011 and February 2017. Then word of the Eversheds Sutherland merger broke. Soon after, rumors began emerging that Womble Carlyle and Bond Dickinson were to merge. Then came news of the Bryan Cave and Berwin Leighton Paisner combination. Beyond those three examples, others have been whispered about, both privately and publicly, as is the case of the rumored merger between Allen & Overy and O’Melveny & Myers. Clearly, something is in the air.
Why are so many seniors filing for bankruptcy?
The number of older Americans filing for consumer bankruptcy has never been higher. According to a study by the Consumer Bankruptcy Project, that rate at which Americans 65 and over file for bankruptcy has more than doubled, and there’s been a five-fold increase in the percentage of older adults in the bankruptcy system.
“For an increasing number of older Americans, their golden years are fraught with economic risks, the result of which is often bankruptcy,” according to the report’s authors.
Individuals 65 and over reported filing for bankruptcy because of credit card interest rates and fees, medical problems, a decline in income, and aggressive debt collection practices. Nearly seven out of ten respondents “very much” or “somewhat” agreed that financial struggles, namely a decline in income, was the reason for their bankruptcies, and senior citizens are increasingly exposed to these kinds of risks.
Why Companies Are Creating Their Own Coworking Spaces
Nestled in the Silicon Sentier district of Paris, the Villa Bonne Nouvelle (“House of Good News”), or VBN, initially appears to be another new coworking space. But what sets it apart is that only half of its 60 occupants are freelancers. The remainder work for Orange (née French Telecom), which launched VBN in 2014 to teach its programmers and engineers how to work with and learn from people outside of the company.
The experiment succeeded: Teams temporarily stationed there worked better and faster than colleagues elsewhere, and they reported greater satisfaction and engagement (along with bouts of depression upon returning to the office). Even the HR executives managing the space were surprised by their bonhomie. More villas are now in the works.
Italy to Complete Implementation of the Market Abuse Regulation
Italy has published in the Italian Official Gazette Legislative Decree no. 107 of August 10, 2018, amending the Italian legislative provisions (Legislative Decree no. 58/1998) to transpose the Market Abuse Regulation no. 596/2014 (MAR). The decree will enter into force September 29, 2018 — marking Italy’s completion of the implementation process of MAR. The process began in March 2017 with the amendments to the Commissione Nazionale per le Società e la Borsa(CONSOB) Issuers Regulation.
Notably, the decree’s provisions provided clarity on:
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