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Court raises sentence for banker who smuggled a Picasso
Blog Updates |
2020/02/02 19:11
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A Spanish court has raised the sentence against a former bank president found guilty of trying to smuggle a painting by Pablo Picasso out of the country.
The Madrid court announced the decision Tuesday to raise the sentence against fined ex-Bankinter head Jaime Botin to three years instead of 18 months. The move came after the prosecution detected an error in the original sentence handed down last month.
The court also raised the amount Botin was fined from 52.4 million euros ($57. 9 million) to 91.7 million euros.
The trial last year heard how a team of Spanish police experts flew to the French island of Corsica in 2015 to retrieve the painting, Picasso’s masterpiece “Head of a Young Woman.” The Spanish government had ruled in 2012 that the painting, which is valued at some 24 million euros ($26.5 million), could not be taken out of the country.
The work was owned by Botin, an uncle of Ana Botin, president of the powerful Santander banking group.
Corsican authorities said they had been tipped off about an attempted smuggling of the prized painting from Spain by boat. They said the oil painting, which comes from the Cubist master’s “pink period” and features a woman with long black hair, was seized when the boat’s captain was unable to produce a proper certificate.
On the boat, authorities found a document in Spanish confirming that the work was of “cultural interest” and was banned from leaving Spain, Picasso’s homeland, without permission.
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Supreme Court allows enforcement of new green card rule
Blog Updates |
2020/01/26 11:06
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A divided Supreme Court on Monday allowed the Trump administration to put in place new rules that could jeopardize permanent resident status for immigrants who use food stamps, Medicaid and housing vouchers.
Under the new policy, immigration officials can deny green cards to legal immigrants over their use of public benefits. The justices' order came by a 5-4 vote and reversed a ruling from the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York that had kept in place a nationwide hold on the policy following lawsuits against it.
The court's four liberal justices, Stephen Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor, voted to prevent the policy from taking effect.
Federal appeals courts in San Francisco and Richmond, Virginia, had previously overturned trial court rulings against the rules. An injunction in Illinois remains in effect but applies only to that state.
The lawsuits will continue, but immigrants applying for permanent residency must now show they wouldn't be public charges, or burdens to the country.
The new policy significantly expands what factors would be considered to make that determination, and if it is decided that immigrants could potentially become public charges later, that legal residency could be denied. Under the old rules, people who used non-cash benefits, including food stamps and Medicaid, were not considered public charges. |
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Cyprus court finds 19 year-old British woman guilty
Blog Updates |
2020/01/01 09:45
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Cyprus' attorney general said Tuesday he couldn't suspend the trial of a 19 year-old British woman found guilty of lying about being gang raped by as many as dozen Israelis because she had leveled “grave accusations” against police investigators that had to be adjudicated in court.
Costas Clerides said the woman's allegation that police coerced her into retracting her rape claim “could not have been left to linger” so he could not move to suspend the trial.
Clerides also said the woman's insistence that she didn't get a fair trial is “essentially a legal-constitutional matter" that a courtof law must rule on.
“Any intervention on the part of the attorney general, either for reasons of public interest or any other reasons, would have constituted nothing more than an obstacle to ascertaining the true facts of the case, as well as interference in the judiciary's work," Clerides said in a statement.
The woman, who hasn't been named was found guilty on Monday on a charge of public mischief and is due to be sentenced Jan. 7. The charge carries a maximum of a year in prison and a fine of 1,700 euros ($1, 907).
She insists that she was raped in a hotel room at a coastal resort town on July 17 and that she was forced to sign the retraction 10 days later while under police questioning. Her lawyers said they would appeal the decision, citing the judge's refusal to consider evidence that she had been raped. |
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Russian court jails 2 terrorism suspects arrested on US tip
Blog Updates |
2019/12/28 17:32
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A St. Petersburg court on Monday ordered the detention of twoRussianmen who were arrested on a tip provided by the U.S. and are suspected of plotting unspecified terrorist attacks in the city during the New Year holidays.
The Dzerzhinsky District Court ruled that the suspects identified as Nikita Semyonov and Georgy Chernyshev should remain in custody pending their trial.
The Federal Security Service (FSB), the main KGB successor agency, said in a statement that the suspects detained on Friday confessed to plotting the attacks. It added that it also seized materials proving their guilt.
The FSB didn’t elaborate on their alleged motives or targets, but Russia’s state television reported that the suspects had recorded a video swearing their allegiance to the Islamic State group.
The FSB said it was acting on a tip provided by its “American partners.”
On Sunday, Russian President Vladimir Putin called U.S. President Donald Trump to thank him “for information transmitted through the special services that helped prevent terrorist attacks in Russia,” according to the Kremlin. |
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