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  • Taiwan Legislators Vote to Broaden Their Powers, Defying President

    Taiwan Legislators Vote to Broaden Their Powers, Defying President

    (Bloomberg) — Taiwan legislators once again voted to broaden their powers to summon public authorities, defying both protesters and President Lai Ching-te, who is now anticipated to ask the Constitutional Court to evaluate the modifications and suspend their application.

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    Around 1,000 protesters collected outside the legislature throughout the vote. Organizers established chairs, camping tents and air coolers on an intense, hot day in the capital. Legislators voted on numerous legal modifications after having — at Lai’s demand — examined and disputed the modifications because Wednesday.

    The vote sets the phase for more fractious fights in between Lai and the opposition celebrations in the island at the heart of China-US stress. The opposition Kuomintang and its Taiwan Individuals’s Celebration allies state they wish to enhance analysis of the executive and public authorities. Critics argue that the modifications represent a power grab that weakens the separation of powers and are focused on thwarting the president’s program.

    The constitutionality of the legislation is still an unclear argument, according to Liao Dachi, emeritus teacher at Institute of Government of National Sun Yat-sen University. Still, she sees the modifications as efficiently empowering legislators, as the legal branch in Taiwan has actually been substantially weaker in capability compared to the executive branch — the presidency.

    While the DPP made history this year by winning its 3rd succeeding governmental election, it lost control of the legislature, and the vote Friday reveals Lai might have a hard time to enact his program in the face of a hostile parliament. Previously today, he revealed prepare for brand-new defense, healthcare and environment committees to assist press through his policies.

    Still, markets in Taiwan have actually been mainly unfazed by the political fight. That benchmark Taiex stocks gauge is set for a gain of more than 3.4% today, extending its record high.

    The Taiwan dollar is bit altered for the week, last trading at 32.360 versus the greenback.

    Challengers of the modifications today required to the streets once again for a three-day rally to accompany legislators’ evaluation of the legislation. Presentations have actually been serene, and likewise up until now smaller sized in scale compared to demonstrations when legislators initially voted on the modifications in Might.

    The federal government scheduled 500 law enforcement officers to be stationed outside the legislature in case of dispute in between advocates from various celebrations, the semi-official Central News Company reported.

    Civic groups arranging the demonstration state the legal modifications represent overreach by the legislature and democratic backsliding, while DPP lawmaker Puma Shen state they might require business being penetrated to reveal trade tricks.

    The KMT has actually implicated the Lai federal government of performing political battles because his inauguration on Might 20, and lawmaker Hung Mong-kai states the expense would assist hold the president responsible for his policies.

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  • Beyond organized crime shootouts and drug trafficking, Italy’s mafia is a hazard to democracy

    Beyond organized crime shootouts and drug trafficking, Italy’s mafia is a hazard to democracy

    ROME (AP) — Last month, an Italian administrative court verified the dissolution of the city administration of the Puglia city of Neviano, after an examination identified that regional authorities were being unduly affected by the mafia.

    The choice hardly made news in Italy, where town hall administrations, town councils and regional public health companies are routinely liquified since of mafia seepage or collusion, and independent commissioners designated to take control of.

    While the popular picture of the Italian mob was made well-known by Don Corleone and the organized crime shootouts of “The Godfather,” the truth of the mob in Italy today is much more nuanced and gnaws at the heart of its democracy: regional governance.

    From the awarding of huge public works agreements to small-town choices about who handles garbage dumps, car park and beach concessions, city governments are especially susceptible to mafia impact and corruption, according to the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Help, an interagency company.

    Puglia, which will host today’s Group of 7 top, ranks 4th amongst Italian areas in the variety of regional administrations that have actually been liquified since of mafia seepage, with 26 decrees released because 1991, out of a nationwide overall of 326, according to Avviso Pubblico, an Italian association that tracks the decrees.

    That fourth-place ranking likewise represents the fourth-place status of its regional mafia, the Sacra Corona Unita, on the hierarchy of Italy’s mafia clans.

    The SCU is the youngest and tiniest of the the mob groups in the nation, after the ‘ndrangheta in Calabria, the Camorra in Campania and Cosa Nostra in Sicily. And it is the just one whose origins are truly understood: it was established in jail in the early 1980s by Pino Rogoli as a self-governing Puglia-based option to other mobs.

    While at first concentrating on the trafficking of cigarettes and other contraband with Balkan nations, the SCU’s clan-based company changed into drug trafficking and extortion.

    In the 2000s, it started a brand-new stage “of getting rooted in the area, the so-called cover-up and camouflage stage,” stated Marilù Mastrogiovanni, an investigative reporter and journalism teacher at the University of Bari.

    That stage, which is flourishing for clans today, included preventing disastrous acts of violence “so that everybody, from normal people to police, would ignore it,” she stated.

    Now, the focus is on laundering drug revenues through genuine front business, numerous dealing with Puglia’s growing tourist market, while penetrating the regional public administration to guide public agreements its method, stated Carla Durante, head of the Lecce workplace of Italy’s Anti-Mafia Investigative Directorate.

    Europol, the European police, states 60% of the the mob groups it tracks in Europe participate in some sort of corruption, from minor bribery of public authorities to multi-million euro corruption plans.

    “Corruption deteriorates the guideline of law, deteriorates organizations of states and impedes financial advancement,” Europol stated in its newest report, “Severe and The Mob Hazard Evaluation.”

    ___

    This story, supported by the Pulitzer Center for Crisis Reporting, belongs to a continuous Associated Press series covering dangers to democracy in Europe.

  • Ted Cruz pushes bill seeking police escorts for US lawmakers at airports

    Ted Cruz pushes bill seeking police escorts for US lawmakers at airports

    The Texas Republican senator Ted Cruz, who achieved viral infamy in 2021 when he was seen at Houston airport for a flight to Cancún even as his state faced a historic and deadly spell of cold weather, this week moved one step closer to securing police escorts for lawmakers at airports.

    Under an amendment to the Federal Aviation Authority Reauthorization bill introduced by Cruz last month, members of Congress and other prominent officials, and some family and staff members, will be offered security escorts if they are deemed “currently … or previously … the subject of a threat, as determined by such applicable federal protective agency”.

    Last month, Cruz told Politico of “serious security threats facing public officials”, adding: “It’s important that we take reasonable measures to keep everyone safe.”

    There have been prominent cases of lawmakers being accosted at airports but Kevin Murphy, of the Airport Law Enforcement Agencies Network, told Politico Cruz’s amendment would prove “a burden to airport police agencies” he said were not adequately funded.

    Despite such criticism, Cruz’s amendment has survived in the FAA bill, which awaits votes in the Senate and the US House. If passed, it will fund the FAA for four years.

    Melissa Braid, a spokesperson for Senate commerce committee Republicans, among whom Cruz is the ranking member, told the Dallas Morning News: “The airport security amendment was drafted in a bipartisan manner to address the growing number of serious threats against justices, judges, public officials and lawmakers on both sides of the aisle.

    “It passed out of committee unanimously by voice vote and was included in the Senate’s bipartisan FAA Reauthorization bill.

    “With rising security incidents at airports, this amendment ensures that when law enforcement determines a threat exists, reasonable security measures will be taken to keep everybody safe.”

    But given his scrape with viral fame over his flight to Mexico in February 2021 – a trip to join a family vacation that he abandoned after one day, admitting his “obvious mistake” as tweets and memes proliferated – Cruz faced criticism and mockery over his attempt to secure security guards for future airport trips.

    “Cancún Cruz wants to flee Texas in secret,” said Lose Cruz, a Democratic political action committee supporting Colin Allred, an NFL player turned US congressman now challenging Cruz for his Senate seat.

    Matt Angle, founder of the Lone Star Project, an anti-Republican Texas group, said: “Ted Cruz is still chapped over being caught sneaking to Cancún. He can’t get a damn thing done to improve the border or keep kids safe, but Ted figures out how to get private security covered by taxpayers. Self-serving. Soulless. Worthless.”



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  • Crackdown on threats to election officials won’t relent

    Crackdown on threats to election officials won’t relent

    Just as another election season gets into full swing, the Justice Department is vowing not to relent in its crackdown on a wave of threats unleashed against voting administrators and other public officials over the past two election cycles.

    About 20 such prosecutions have been brought since DOJ formed an Election Threats Task Force in June 2021, with many of the defendants receiving substantial prison time, prosecutors said.

    Seven of the cases involve threats to officials in Arizona, where a senior Justice Department official along with the top federal prosecutor and FBI agent in the state gathered Monday to announce another tough sentence that they hope will deter others from trying to intimidate election workers.

    “Death threats are not debate. Death threats do not contribute to the marketplace of ideas. Death threats are not First Amendment protected speech,” DOJ official John Keller told reporters at a press conference in Phoenix. “Death threats and any threats of violence are condemnable criminal acts, and they will be met with the full force of the Department of Justice.”

    “There is no constitutional right to vigilantism,” U.S. Attorney Gary Restaino declared. “Let these cases be a lesson not to take or attempt to take the rule of law into one’s own hands.”

    The prosecutors spoke shortly after U.S. District Judge Steven Logan sentenced an Ohio man, Joshua Russell, 46, to two and a half years in prison after he pleaded guilty to making threats against then-Secretary of State Katie Hobbs in connection with the 2022 election.

    “You have a few short months to see yourself behind bars, or we will see you to the grave. You are a traitor to this nation,” Russell said in one voicemail message for Hobbs, a Democrat who was elected governor in November 2022.

    “You just signed your own death warrant. Get your affairs in order, cause, your days are very short,” Russell said in another message left a week after the November election.

    The sentence imposed by Logan, an appointee of President Barack Obama, was the same one prosecutors had requested. Russell’s attorneys, who said he’d been suffering from substance abuse problems, had asked for probation.

    Even as officials touted their efforts Monday, Keller acknowledged that “the vast majority” of the disturbing and intimidating messages reported to the Justice Department can’t be prosecuted because they don’t appear to meet the Supreme Court’s standards for a so-called “true threat.”

    Restaino attributed many of the threat cases to “election denialists” and to political rhetoric encouraging suspicion about election outcomes and activities. He also said many of the threats have involved claims that an official will be executed for treason.

    Restaino, an appointee of President Joe Biden, made no mention of former President Donald Trump’s continued denial of his loss in the 2020 presidential election or his suggestion that former Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Mark Milley had committed treason and might deserve to be executed.

    Restaino said Arizona, as a battleground state, is a hot spot for such threats.

    Sentences in the cases pursued by the task force have ranged from 30 days to three and a half years, according to the Justice Department.

    One of the cases, against a Nevada man accused of making threatening calls to the secretary of state’s office there one day after the Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021, ended in acquittal. After a three-day trial last May, a jury found Gjergi Juncaj of Las Vegas not guilty of four counts of making threatening phone calls for repeatedly telling officials that they were “going to die.”

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