Day: October 2, 2023

NEW YORK (AP) — With control over some of his most prized real estate holdings in jeopardy, former President Donald Trump says he will make a rare, voluntary trip to court in New York on Monday for the start of a civil trial in a lawsuit that already has resulted in a judge ruling that he committed fraud in his business dealings.

“I’m going to Court tomorrow morning to fight for my name and reputation,” Trump wrote Sunday night on his Truth Social platform.

Trump lashed out in his post at New York Attorney General Letitia James, who is suing him, and Judge Arthur Engoron, who is presiding over the non-jury trial and made the fraud ruling last week.

“THIS WHOLE CASE IS SHAM!!!” Trump wrote. “See you in Court — Monday morning.”

The trial is the culmination of a yearslong investigation by James, who accused Trump and his company of habitually lying about his wealth in financial statements.

Last week, Engoron resolved the lawsuit’s top claim before the trial even began, ruling that Trump routinely deceived banks, insurers and others by exaggerating the value of assets on paperwork used in making deals and securing loans.

The former president and a who’s who of people in his orbit — his two eldest sons, Trump Organization executives and former lawyer-turned-foe Michael Cohen are all listed among dozens of potential witnesses.

Trump isn’t expected to testify for several weeks. His trip to court Monday will mark a remarkable departure from his past practice.

Trump didn’t come to court as either a witness or a spectator when his company and one of its top executives was convicted of tax fraud last year. He didn’t show, either, for a trial earlier this year in which a jury found him liable for sexually assaulting the writer E. Jean Carroll in a department store dressing room.

In some ways, though, this new trial comes with higher stakes.

James, a Democrat, is seeking $250 million in penalties and a ban on doing business in New York.

Engoron’s ruling of last week, if upheld on appeal, would also shift control of some of his companies to a court-appointed receiver and could force him to give up prized New York properties such as Trump Tower, a Wall Street office building, golf courses and a suburban estate.

Trump called it a “a corporate death penalty.”

“I have a Deranged, Trump Hating Judge, who RAILROADED this FAKE CASE through a NYS Court at a speed never before seen,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform.

In his post Sunday night, Trump wrote that Engoron is “unfair, unhinged, and vicious in his PURSUIT of me.”

Engoron will decide on six remaining claims in James’ lawsuit, including allegations of conspiracy, falsifying business records and insurance fraud.

James’ lawsuit accused Trump and his company of a long list of fibs in the financial statements he gave to banks. In a recent court filing, James’ office alleged Trump exaggerated his wealth by as much as $3.6 billion.

Among the allegations were that Trump claimed his Trump Tower apartment in Manhattan — a three-story penthouse replete with gold-plated fixtures — was nearly three times its actual size and worth an astounding $327 million. No apartment in New York City has ever sold for close to that amount, James said.

Trump valued Mar-a-Lago as high as $739 million — more than 10 times a more reasonable estimate of its worth, James claimed. Trump’s figure for the private club and residence was based on the idea that the property, now a private club, could be developed for residential use, but deed terms prohibit that, James said.

Trump has denied wrongdoing, arguing in sworn testimony for the case that it didn’t matter what he put on his financial statements because they have a disclaimer that says they shouldn’t be trusted.

He and his lawyers have also argued that no one was harmed by anything in the financial statements. Banks he borrowed money from were fully repaid. Business partners made money. And Trump’s own company flourished.

James’ lawsuit is one of several legal headaches for Trump as he campaigns for a return to the White House in next year’s election. He has been indicted four times since March, accused of plotting to overturn his 2020 election loss, hoarding classified documents and falsifying business records related to hush money paid on his behalf.

The trial could last into December, Engoron said.

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Associated Press writer Jill Colvin contributed to this report.

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This article originally appeared on Haaretz, and was reprinted here with permission. Sign up here to get Haaretz’s free Daily Brief newsletter delivered to your inbox.

The government has slashed more than 70 percent of the funding it has been giving to organizations that provide mental health support since the coronavirus pandemic erupted in 2020.

Due to the pandemic’s impact on mental health, the Health Ministry started giving these organizations additional funding. But with the pandemic over, it says, there is no longer any need for the extra funding.

Yet data from one such organization, Eran – Emotional First Aid, indicates that the number of appeals for assistance remains higher than it was before the coronavirus crisis. Eran says it has helped some 300,000 people just over the last year.

The funding cuts will hurt roughly 15 organizations. These include Eran, which provides telephone and online assistance; Natal – Israel Trauma and Resiliency Center, which specializes in trauma caused by war or terror attacks; and the Israeli Center for Cult Victims.

Eran’s government funding, for instance, has fallen from 5.5 million shekels in 2020 to just 1.6 million shekels ($420,000) this year, even less than the years preceding the coronavirus. In 2018 and 2019, Eran received over 2 million shekels from the state.

The Health Ministry’s baseline budget for psychological support organizations comes to 3.7 million shekels. In 2020, it added 9.5 million shekels due to the pandemic. The extra funding shrank in subsequent years, but remained substantial – 6 million shekels in 2021 and 3 million shekels in 2022. This year, there is no extra funding, so the budget has remained at 3.7 million shekels.

But Eran says the number of people seeking mental health assistance remains higher than it was before the coronavirus. In 2019, some 200,000 people contacted the organization. In the first half of this year, the figure was 130,000.

Eran runs a network of 1,650 volunteers who provide psychological support via 18 telephone hotlines and an online help site. Five of those hotlines, which serve nighttime callers, are located in the United States and Australia and staffed by Israelis living there, since due to the time difference, Israel’s nighttime hours overlap with normal work hours in those countries.

But given the increase in calls, the organization says it needs around 400 additional volunteers plus more hotlines, which will cost money. In particular, it says, the budget cut endangers the training sessions it had planned for volunteers to help them provide assistance effectively.

The Health Ministry said it “doesn’t support the organizations, but activities that provide psychological first aid. The amount of support the ministry provides for this issue, minus the coronavirus addition, has remained unchanged. However, over the years, additional organizations have entered this field, and the total is divided among them based on the standard criteria for this purpose.”

Eran claims that its operations “are a key and essential part of the mental health field and provide service to all Israelis without exception. However, even though in practice the organization is a genuine national agency, with many decades of activity during which Eran has provided service 24/7 every day of the year for every type of mental distress, both via its hotline and online,” its state funding still comes through an end-of-the-year grant whose size can vary.

“The increase in the scope of its operations, even relative to the years before the coronavirus, in comparison with the funding reduction … merely underscores the need” for the organization to be funded “the way all other essential emergency services are,” it added.

The post Israeli government cuts support to mental health organizations by 70% appeared first on The Forward.

Taiwan prosecutors said on Monday they are investigating accusations that people tried to interfere in the island’s submarine program and that details about it were leaked, in what would be a serious breach of security.

Taiwan unveiled its first domestically developed submarine on Thursday, a major step in a project aimed at strengthening the island’s defence and deterrence against the Chinese navy, though it won’t enter service for two years.

Huang Shu-kuang, who is leading the program, told local media last week that lawmakers, whom he did not name, had made it difficult for the program to purchase critical equipment, and that a contractor who had failed to obtain a bid forwarded information to China.

Taiwan’s Supreme Prosecutors Office, in a short statement, said Huang’s accusations had attracted “great attention” given the national security and defence implications.

It said it had instructed prosecutors to “investigate the case as soon as possible in order to safeguard national security”.

It did not give details or names.

Taiwan, which China views as its own territory, has made the indigenous submarine program a key part of an ambitious project to modernise its armed forces as Beijing stages almost daily military exercises to assert its sovereignty claims.

The submarine program has drawn on expertise and technology from several countries – a breakthrough for diplomatically isolated Taiwan.

BEIJING (Reuters) – The Chinese military released an animated short film on National Day showing pieces of a scroll painting torn in two more than 300 years ago being reunited, in a show of the mainland’s determination to bring self-ruled Taiwan into the fold.

The pieces of the “The Dwelling in the Fuchun Mountains”, one of China’s best-known ancient paintings, are kept separately in museums in China and Taiwan, the democratically governed island that Beijing claims as one its provinces, and which it reserves the right to take over by force.

On National Day on Sunday, the People’s Liberation Army’s Eastern Theatre Command, known for belligerent videos of exercises around Taiwan, released an animated short film called “Dreams Come True on Fuchun River”, appealing to the shared cultural roots of people on both sides of the Taiwan Strait.

The film featured two elves, representing the two pieces of the painting by Yuan dynasty master Huang Gongwang, which was torn apart in the 17th century by one of its owners.

At the end of the movie, the two characters came together, magically making the painting whole again.

The shorter piece of the scroll, known as “The Remaining Mountain”, about 51 cm long, is at the Zhejiang Provincial Museum in Hangzhou city. Taiwan’s National Palace Museum has kept the 640-cm long “Master Wuyong Scroll” since the 1950s.

The two pieces were reunited in 2011 when China lent its fragment to the Taiwanese museum for two months during a period of warmer relations as Taiwan pursued a policy of economic rapprochement with China.

But in recent years, as relations have cooled, China has ramped up military activities around Taiwan, including drills over the past month that Beijing said were targeted at combating separatist forces.

At the same time, China is drafting ambitious plans to “integrate” the economies of its Fujian province and Taiwan, on both sides of the Taiwan Strait, offering Taiwan firms a chance to take part in a joint development plan, which Taiwan’s government has spurned.

While China is keen to woo Taiwan with promises of economic gains, the threat of taking Taiwan by force is unrelenting.

During the journey by the two elves in the film, the Eastern Theatre Command inserted shots of aircraft carrier formations and J-20 fighter jets, reminding viewers of its battlefield capabilities.

A film based on U.S. pop star Beyonce’s hit “Renaissance World Tour” is set to be distributed globally by a unit of AMC Entertainment (AMC.N), the company said, as cinema chains look to fill content gaps stemming from Hollywood strikes.

Beyonce’s film is a theatrical production of the singer-songwriter’s global tour this summer, spanning 57 concerts across 40 cities in North America and 14 across Europe.

The film follows a similar release by pop superstar Taylor Swift, whose Eras Tour concert film will be distributed in cinemas in North America starting Oct. 13.

The concert films provide cinema chains such as AMC, Cinemark and Cineplex, with high-profile titles to help fill gaps caused by a prolonged strike by actors and writers in Hollywood.

“Renaissance: A Film By Beyonce” is set to play in the United States, Canada, and Mexico beginning Friday, Dec. 1, 2023, AMC said, adding that additional global cities would be announced at a later date.

AMC’s rival Cinemark (CNK.N) also announced that it will play the concert film in its U.S. theaters. Both cinema chains said their standard showtime tickets in the U.S. will start at $22.

Entertainment website Variety first reported Beyonce’s talks to release “Renaissance” through AMC.

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba on Monday welcomed the news of the meeting in what he called the bloc’s “future borders.”

North Korea-linked APT group Lazarus impersonated Meta’s recruiters in an attack against a Spanish company in the Aerospace industry.

ESET researchers linked the North Korea-linked Lazarus APT Group to a cyber attack targeting an unnamed Spanish aerospace firm. The cyberspies impersonated Meta’s recruiters to lure employees with trojanized coding challenges.

The state-sponsored hackers deployed several tools, including a previously undocumented backdoor dubbed LightlessCan. The researchers identified four different attack chains, delivering three types of payloads via DLL side-loading.

Threat actors sent two coding challenges to employees of the targeted organization tricking them into opening the malicious executable file.

“The fake recruiter contacted the victim via LinkedIn Messaging, a feature within the LinkedIn professional social networking platform, and sent two coding challenges required as part of a hiring process, which the victim downloaded and executed on a company device.” reads the analysis published by ESET. “The first challenge is a very basic project that displays the text “Hello, World!”, the second one prints a Fibonacci sequence – a series of numbers in which each number is the sum of the two preceding ones.”

ESET believes that this attack is part of a long-running cyber espionage campaign tracked as Operation DreamJob.

The LightlessCan implant is more sophisticated and stealth than its predecessor, BlindingCan. In 2020, US CISA published an alert related to the North Korean malware BLINDINGCAN used in attacks on the US defense and aerospace sectors. LightlessCan mimics the functionalities of a wide range of native Windows commands to avoid detection.

The malware authors implemented another mechanism to make sure the payload can only be decrypted on the intended victim’s machine to prevent the analysis by researchers.

The malicious executables, Quiz1.exe and Quiz2.exe, employed in the attack on the Spanish firm were delivered via the Quiz1.iso and Quiz2.iso images. Both images were hosted on a third-party cloud storage platform and both executables are very simple command-line applications asking for input.

The challenge for the targeted developer consists of understanding the logic of the program and rewriting it in the C++ programming language.

After the output of the two programs is printed, both executables start installing additional payloads from the ISO images onto the target’s system.

The attack chain leads to the deployment of an HTTP(S) downloader, named NickelLoader, to the victim’s computer. Then the downloader is used to deploy additional malicious payloads into the memory of the victim’s system, including the LightlessCan RAT and miniBlindingCan that is a simplified version of the BlindingCan RAT.

LightlessCan was designed to support for up to 68 distinct commands, but the current version, 1.0 analyzed by ESET only supports 43 of those commands.

“The remaining commands are present but have a formal implementation in the form of placeholders, lacking actual functionality. The project behind the RAT is definitely based on the BlindingCan source code, as the order of the shared commands is preserved significantly, even though there may be differences in their indexing.” continues the report.

ESET’s analysis concludes that the most worrying aspect of the attack is the use of the LightlessCan RAT which exhibits a high level of sophistication in its design and operation.

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Pierluigi Paganini

(SecurityAffairs – hacking, Lazarus)

The post North Korea-linked Lazarus targeted a Spanish aerospace company appeared first on Security Affairs.