TORONTO – The two Canadians detained in China in what Western officials had called a blatant display of “hostage diplomacy” have been released from prison and are on their way to Canada, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Friday.
The release of former diplomat Michael Kovrig and businessman Michael Spavor – known here as “the two Michaels” – came hours after Meng Wanzhou, the chief financial officer of Huawei Technologies, reached a deal with the U.S. Justice Department in a criminal case allowing her to return to China.
The two men were detained several days after Canada arrested Meng on a U.S. extradition request.
“For the 1,000 days, they have shown strength, perseverance, resilience and grace,” Trudeau said in a news conference, “and we are all inspired by them.”
NEW YORK – Meng Wanzhou, a top Huawei Technologies executive detained for nearly three years in Canada, can return home to China after striking a deal with U.S. Justice Department officials in which she acknowledged helping to conceal the companys direct dealings in Iran, which violated U.S. sanctions.
While Meng admitted illegal conduct to satisfy the terms of the agreement, she did not have to plead guilty as part of the deferred prosecution agreement.
Her criminal case and detention have had major geopolitical implications, further souring relations between Beijing and both Washington and Ottawa.
Western officials decried China’s subsequent arrest of two Canadian nationals in December 2018 as a flagrant display of “hostage diplomacy.”
Meng left Vancouver on a flight for China on Friday afternoon, according to a person familiar with the matter. And hours later, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced that the two Canadians had been released from prison and were on their way home, accompanied by Dominic Barton, Canada’s ambassador to China.
Meng, Huawei’s chief financial officer, made a virtual appearance in a Brooklyn courtroom Friday afternoon to formalize the agreement, conceding to a statement of facts that laid out her involvement in misleading a financial institution regarding Huawei’s relationship with Skycom, which functioned as an arm of Huawei in Iran.
The bank has been identified in other court proceedings as HSBC, which started as a smaller institution in China but has grown to operate globally.
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Through Skycom, Huawei conducted transactions in U.S. currency with HSBC in the amount of more than $100 million between 2010 and 2014, according to prosecutors. A portion of that amount, at least $7.5 million, supported Huawei’s business dealings in Iran, officials said.
Federal prosecutors say that Skycom was controlled by Huawei. Meng, in signing the agreement, admitted to being involved in efforts to cover up the true relationship, effectively tricking banks into clearing transactions in violation of U.S. sanctions on Tehran.
“Meng’s admissions confirm the crux of the government’s allegations in the prosecution of this financial fraud,” Nicole Boeckmann, acting U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York, said in a statement.
Meng’s attorney, Reid Weingarten, did not return calls for comment after the hearing.
In court, Assistant U.S. Attorney David Kessler said the Justice Department would move to dismiss the charges against Meng when the deferral period ends on Dec. 21, 2022, provided she is not charged with a crime before then.
Meng, through an interpreter, told U.S. District Judge Ann Donnelly she understood the terms of the deal and agreed to it.
Meng, the daughter of Huawei founder Ren Zhengfei, was arrested in Vancouver, B.C., in December 2018 and later charged with bank and wire fraud. The Justice Department alleged that Huawei and Meng tricked HSBC into clearing millions of dollars in transactions with Skycom in violation of U.S. sanctions prohibiting business dealings with Iran.
China has cast the charges against Meng as political, part of a U.S. plot designed to stunt the country’s rise. Then-President Donald Trump told Reuters he would intervene in the case if it would help broker a trade deal with China. After being released from jail on $8 million bond, Meng was allowed to stay at one of her two mansions in Vancouver, wearing a GPS monitor and under surveillance by a court-appointed security company.
The case is one of several points of contention between the United States and Huawei, one of China’s largest tech companies and the world’s largest manufacturer of telecommunications equipment. The Trump administration placed Huawei on an export blacklist in 2019. That move and a subsequent tightening of the restrictions stopped Huawei from buying many types of high-tech semiconductors, hurting the Chinese company’s ability to manufacture.
U.S. officials have also called Huawei’s aggressive push into the global 5G telecommunications equipment market a national security threat, warning that Chinese authorities could tap into the gear to spy on or disrupt communications. Huawei and China have rejected that concern, but the United States has essentially banned the use of Huawei network equipment domestically and pressured allies not to use it.
Meng’s arrest thrust Canada into the middle of the tense U.S.-China standoff and created a foreign policy nightmare for Trudeau at a time when he hoped to deepen economic ties with Beijing. China later detained former Canadian diplomat Michael Kovrig and businessman Michael Spavor, and banned imports of some Canadian crops, including canola.
The “two Michaels,” as they are known in Canada, faced separate, secret trials in March on vague charges of spying and stealing state secrets. A Chinese court found Spavor guilty in August and sentenced him to 11 years in prison. A verdict for Kovrig has not yet been announced.
Trudeau, who won a third term this week with a minority government after a snap election, has been roundly criticized for his handling of the dispute.
His chief opponent, Conservative Party leader Erin O’Toole, attacked Trudeau’s China policy at a leaders debate during the campaign, saying he had “let the Michaels down.”
Other prominent Canadians, including several former foreign ministers, urged Trudeau to let Meng go, hoping that would spur China to release the two Canadians. Trudeau had resisted those calls, saying that releasing her would endanger other Canadians around the world.
Meng’s attorneys had been fighting her extradition from Canada to the United States. On Friday, the Justice Department withdrew its extradition request and a judge in Vancouver dismissed the pending proceeding.
WASHINGTON – A Republican-commissioned review of nearly 2.1 million ballots cast last year in Arizona confirmed the accuracy of the official results and President Joe Bidens win in Maricopa County, according to a final report released Friday, striking a blow to former president Donald Trumps efforts to undermine confidence in the 2020 election.
The report, which was prepared by private contractors and submitted to Republican leaders of the state Senate, went even further than an earlier draft that confirmed Biden’s victory.
In a letter describing the findings, Senate President Karen Fann, a Republican – who commissioned the process – stressed the importance of the ballot count showing Biden’s winning margin and noted that it “matches Maricopa County’s official machine count.”
“This is the most important and encouraging finding of the audit,” she wrote, adding: “This finding therefore addresses the sharpest concerns about the integrity of the certified results in the 2020 general election.”
The final report echoed that in a passage that had not appeared in the earlier draft, emphasizing that finding over sections of the report that suggested some ballots could have been improperly counted.
“The paper ballots are the best evidence of voter intent and there is no reliable evidence that the paper ballots were altered to any material degree,” the report stated.
Still, the conclusion of the recount, which was commissioned earlier this year, is unlikely to quiet Trump’s false claims that the election was rigged and his attempts to pressure Republicans across the country to pursue their own 2020 recounts.
The former president reacted with fury to coverage of the Arizona report’s findings, asserting without evidence Friday that the ballot review uncovered “a major criminal event” and calling for Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich, a Republican, to investigate. He fired off a series of false statements about the Arizona recount throughout Friday evening, including one demanding that the state “immediately decertify their 2020 Presidential Election Results.”
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That idea was quickly shot down by Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey, a Republican, who noted that the report did not call for the election to be decertified and that there was no lawful way to do so.
“The outcome stands and the 2020 election in Arizona is over,” he wrote in a series of tweets.
Still, Brnovich, who has announced he is running for the U.S. Senate, indicated a willingness to potentially pursue a case, a sign of Trump’s ongoing power in the party.
“I will take all necessary actions that are supported by the evidence and where I have legal authority. Arizonans deserve to have their votes accurately counted and protected,” the attorney general said in a statement before the release of the final report.
In her letter to Brnovich, Fann said that the ballot review found “less-than-perfect adherence to Arizona’s standards and best practices.”
Fann said the recount’s findings – including a claim that thousands of votes could have been improperly counted or cast – reflected “why people questioned the ballots and the election,” adding that the report and additional material would be turned over to the attorney general for further review.
The release of the report Friday capped a costly and drawn-out recount that kept alivefalse claims that fraud tainted the election in the state’s most populous county. The process was pilloried by election experts who warned that the methods used by the firm hired to run the review were sloppy and biased and cost almost $6 million – most of it given by groups that cast doubt on the election results.
In the end, the final report concluded that 45,469 more ballots were cast for Biden in Maricopa County than for Trump – widening Biden’s margin by 360 more votes than the certified results.
The report found the count to have “no substantial differences” from the county’s certified tallies.
The finding punctures unsubstantiated claims made by Trump and his allies that vote tabulating machines had miscounted paper ballots or been hacked to flip thousands of Trump votes to Biden.
Still, the report also suggested that some ballots could have been improperly accepted and counted by the county, a notion strongly disputed by election experts.
The findings were unveiled at a more than three-hour public presentation that was held on the floor of the Arizona Senate. Democrats were not allowed to attend, and no public comment or questions were permitted. The hearing featuring the contractors involved in the recount included a lengthy presentation on a “forensic analysis” of the county’s tabulating machines and election software and vague insinuations of improprieties that at one point drew a cheer from Trump supporters in the Senate gallery.
Online, election experts picked apart the allegations as irresponsible and unproven innuendo, and Maricopa County officials challenged the claims in a furious series of tweets.
“These ‘auditors’ threw out wild, damaging, false claims in the middle of their audit and Senate leadership provided them the platform to present their opinions, suspicions, and faulty conclusions unquestioned and unchallenged,” Maricopa County Board of Supervisors Chairman Jack Sellers, a Republican, said in statement. “Today’s hearing was irresponsible and dangerous.”
Fann said Friday – as she has repeatedly stated in the past – that the goal was not to revisit Biden’s win but instead to look for ways to improve the state’s election laws. “This has never been about overturning an election. This has never been about decertification,” she said.
But Trump on Friday sought to turn attention away from the document’s finding that the vote count was accurate, falsely claiming that the review vindicated his baseless allegation that the election was stolen.
In a statement, the former president said that the recount “conclusively shows there were enough fraudulent votes, mystery votes, and fake votes to change the outcome of the election 4 or 5 times over.”
In fact, the report does not assert that any ballots were cast or counted due to fraud – only that further investigation may be warranted. It cautions in multiple places that its own findings may include errors and that there could be reasonable and lawful explanations for them.
And the final version of the report included new language that had not been in an earlier draft noting that many of the ballots flagged as possibly problematic by the contractors were cast by registered Republicans, as well as registered Democrats.
“If you actually read the report, they give themselves a million outs with these numbers,” said Elizabeth Howard, senior counsel at the Brennan Center for Justice and a former election administrator in Virginia. “They’re desperately trying to suggest that what are routine procedures are suspicious, because they don’t have election administration experience or knowledge.”
The report also includes in its recommendations for improving Arizona election law measures that are already standard practice in the state. For instance, it recommends a paper backup for all votes cast by machine – even though Arizona voters already cast their votes on paper ballots.
Biden’s win in Maricopa County, home to Phoenix, helped him earn a narrow victory in Arizona and become the first Democrat to win the state since 1996. The state’s results were upheld by state and federal courts.
The state Senate’s ballot review began in April over the objections of the Republican-led county leadership. Lawmakers used a subpoena to obtain Maricopa County’s ballots and tabulating machines, which were handed over to private contractors for review.
The findings were unveiled at a more than three-hour public presentation that was held on the floor of the Arizona Senate. Democrats were not allowed to attend, and no public comment or questions were permitted.
Fann said Friday – as she has repeatedly stated publicly in the past – that the goal was not to revisit Biden’s win but instead to look for ways to improve the state’s election laws. “This has never been about overturning an election. This has never been about decertification,” she said.
But she also said that the report and supporting materials would be turned over to Brnovich for further review and insisted that the report contained some findings that reflected “why people questioned the ballots and the election.”
The Florida-based firm that led the review, Cyber Ninjas, had never before been involved in administering an election or recount, and its chief executive, Doug Logan, publicly embraced Trump’s false claims of fraud before getting the job.
After his firm was selected to conduct the review, Logan did not deny his potential bias and said that it is “the most skeptical person” who makes the best auditor, “not the person who thinks it is impossible to find anything.”
Democratic lawmakers on the House Oversight Committee, which is investigating the Arizona recount, sent Logan a letter Thursday requesting his testimony at an Oct. 7 hearing.
Election experts criticized the processLogan’s firm ran as opaque, insecure and frequently changing, and said the recount followed few best practices established over decades for conducting unbiased and accurate election audits.
In May, all of Maricopa’s seven elected officials – including five Republicans – joined to demand the Senate put an end to the review, calling it a “con” and a “sham.”
“Our democracy is imperiled,” they wrote in a letter to Fann.
The Justice Department also warned in the spring that the recount risked violating federal law, which requires that ballots be securely maintained for 22 months following a federal election.
After the leak of the draft report late Thursday, Maricopa County Board of Supervisors Chairman Jack Sellers, a Republican, said in a statement that the findings mean “the tabulation equipment counted the ballots as they were designed to do, and the results reflect the will of the voters. That should be the end of the story. Everything else is just noise.”
He added: “Board members told the truth in the face of angry phone calls and emails fueled by a coordinated campaign to shake Americans’ faith in the power of their vote. Will they accept the truth now?”
Election experts said that the potential issues with ballots described by Cyber Ninjas in its report were based on flawed analysis and weak evidence.
For example, the report claims that more than 23,000 mail ballots were submitted by voters who moved before the election – a group Trump described Friday as “phantom voters.”
But the report itself included important caveats about the finding, noting that there are “potential ways” that the ballots were cast that “would not violate the law.” What’s more, Cyber Ninjas acknowledged that the ballots were identified by comparing voter registration rolls to information maintained by a commercially available address validation tool, adding that “some error is expected.”
Chris Sautter, a political strategist who teaches election law at American University and has participated in dozens of election recounts, said such databases are not typically accurate enough to be used to confirm addresses for voter registration purposes. “These commercial data companies have a long history of producing flawed lists, which have resulted in the disenfranchisement of eligible voters,” he said.
A lengthy and highly technical presentation delivered Friday about the cybersecurity of county voting machines drew applause from Trump fans in the state Senate gallery, but was quickly discounted by experts online as irresponsible and unproven innuendo.
Election experts said the Arizona experience should serve as a warning sign to other Republican legislators who have in recent weeks responded to pressure from Trump and agreed to embark on their own reviews of the 2020 election, including in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Texas.
“It is a huge defeat for Donald Trump,” Ben Ginsberg, a longtime Republican campaign attorney, told reporters Friday. “This was a swing and a miss at what he thought was a sure thing, and they missed by a mile. That should have repercussions down the road.”
He added: “This was an audit in which they absolutely cooked the procedures, they took funding from sources that should delegitimize, automatically, the finding. This was Donald Trump’s best chance to prove his cases of elections being rigged and fraudulent, and they failed.”
Russ Kick, a writer, editor and self-described “rogue transparency activist” who pried loose government records, using Freedom of Information Act requests to obtain overlooked documents and peek behind the curtain of official secrecy, died Sept. 12 at his home in Tucson, Ariz. He was 52.
His sister, Ruth Kick, did not give a cause but said he had been in poor health for more than a decade.
Kick’s interests extended from “undeleting,” as he sometimes called his document gathering, to classic literature, erotica, food and ancient meditation practices. “I can’t focus completely on any one thing for too long,” he wrote in an online biography. “My personal brand is a mess.”
Driven in part by a distrust of authority and an obsession with trivia, he wrote news articles for the Village Voice and edited myth-busting books such as “You Are Being Lied To” (2001) and “Everything You Know Is Wrong” (2002), which brought together the voices of scholars and journalists – including Howard Zinn and Noam Chomsky – to correct “media distortion, historical whitewashes and cultural myths.”
He also edited literary anthologies and “The Graphic Canon” series, for which he enlisted artists such as Robert Crumb and Will Eisner to reinterpret literary classics as comics and visual art. By turns bawdy and poignant, the series marked a kaleidoscopic alternative to the giant, doorstop literary anthologies published by W.W. Norton. “Work that might normally put you to sleep will leave you awe-struck,” artist and author Annie Weatherwax wrote in 2012, reviewing the first volume for the New York Times.
Kick’s work on the book series marked a temporary departure from some of his abiding interests: crusading against government secrecy and holding powerful people and institutions accountable. “I’m certainly not a journalist in the normal sense of the word,” he once told the Times. “I’m more of an information archaeologist. I’m trying to get the stuff that’s either been purposely buried or just covered over by time.”
Working largely on his own, without institutional support, Kick filed FOIA requests to obtain documents related to U.S. biological and chemical warfare programs, U.S. Border Patrol facilities, animal experimentation and a host of other issues. “Oftentimes it was those mundane requests that would be a critical resource years down the line,” said Michael Morisy, the co-founder and chief executive of MuckRock, a nonprofit news site where Kick had worked the past two years.
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In an email interview, he added that Kick was “omnipresent” in the FOIA community, “the person you’d turn to every time there was a question about document arcana or the ins-and-outs of obscure filings.” Kick was also known as one of the first to regularly publish original documents in full, rather than to simply share quotes or transcriptions, according to Washington Post FOIA director Nate Jones.
“He influenced this generation of FOIA requesters by showing the power of posting the records unvarnished and letting them speak for themselves . . . His sites were completely dedicated only to that,” Jones said. “I suspect the hosting fees were quite high, yet nonetheless he was a declassified document posting machine.”
Kick started publishing documents in earnest in 2002, on a website he called the Memory Hole. Its name was a kind of reverse homage to the incinerator used to destroy embarrassing government files in George Orwell’s “1984.” (In later years, he created the websites Memory Hole 2 and AltGov2 to share his work.)
Among his first major releases was an unredacted internal report from the Justice Department, documenting harsh criticism of its diversity efforts. When the report was first published on the department’s website in 2003, half of its 186 pages were blacked out. Kick simply downloaded the file, opened it in Adobe Acrobat and used the “TouchUp Object” tool to highlight and delete the black bars.
“It was that simple,” he told the Times. “I was kind of surprised, but we are talking about a government bureaucracy, so I wasn’t that surprised.”
Six months later, Kick made headlines by publishing Pentagon photographs of the coffins of troops killed in Iraq and of service members caring for the remains of their fallen comrades, which he obtained through a FOIA request. The Defense Department had previously barred the publication of such photos and called their release a mistake.
Their publication on the Memory Hole, and later in newspapers and TV networks including CNN, ignited a national debate over access to wartime images, the privacy of military families and the human cost of war. “I’ve always thought that war should not be sanitized and airbrushed,” Kick told NPR, explaining his decision to publish. “I think people should see what the real results of war are.”
In a phone interview, BuzzFeed News investigative reporter Jason Leopold said the publication of the Iraq War photos inspired his own use of FOIA requests, often for documents that he had never previously thought to request. “I remember thinking to myself, ‘I want to duplicate that. I want to get documents,’ ” he said. “Russ went after records that we as journalists never went after, because we felt we would never get them.”
Russell Charles Kick III was born July 20, 1969, in Tuscaloosa, where his father was studying for a PhD in business and computer science at the University of Alabama. His mother was a homemaker, and his father later taught at Tennessee Technological University in Cookeville, where Kick graduated from high school.
Both parents had grown up in strict Catholic families before rebelling against organized religion – his father wrote a spiritual text called “The Key to Self-Discovery” – and encouraged their children to read widely, from Isaac Asimov novels to books about Eastern philosophy. “Most parents worry that their kids are going to grow up and join some cult,” his sister Ruth said. “My mom worried we were going to join the Catholic Church.”
Kick graduated from Tennessee Tech with a bachelor’s degree in psychology, then studied for a master’s degree in public policy at Vanderbilt University in Nashville before dropping out to focus on writing. “I started reading, writing, and over-collecting books at an early age and just rolled with it,” he later wrote. “I’ve always been interested in important things that are suppressed, ignored, or simply forgotten, so those became my themes.”
In 2017, he revealed that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials had asked for official permission to destroy old documents about the deaths and sexual assaults of detained immigrants in their custody. Organizations including Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington sued the National Archives and Records Administration to block ICE’s plan to destroy the records. A federal judge ruled in March that the agency could not destroy the files.
“I do get angry when it’s obvious somebody is lying to us, or keeping something from us,” Kick had told the Los Angeles Times in 2004. “I take it personally.”
His marriage to Kimberly Gannon ended in divorce. In addition to his sister, of Oro Valley, Ariz., survivors include his mother, Jane Woody Kick, of Tucson.
David Cuillier, a University of Arizona professor who studies government transparency and public-records access, said Kick’s records requests “demonstrated that anyone could use FOIA to show the public what the government is up to.”
“His work has inspired other average people and journalists to push for government transparency,” he added in an email. “That has made the country stronger – in holding government accountable. What he did wasn’t easy, especially on his own time without institutional support. But it made a difference.”
CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. – A week after one of the most dreadful defensive performances in program history, Virginia coach Bronco Mendenhall had placed a premium on preventing momentum-titling long gains heading into Friday nights showdown against undefeated Wake Forest.
The Cavaliers’ defense failed mightily again in that regard, and an offense that had been scoring in bunches took far too long to join the fray, sending mistake-prone Virginia to a 37-17 loss in its ACC home opener in front of an announced crowd of 38,699 at Scott Stadium.
The Cavaliers (2-2) surrendered points on Wake Forest’s first seven possessions and 473 yards of total offense overall less than a week after North Carolina battered them for 699, the most since Mendenhall took over in 2016. Wake Forest’s onslaught included five plays of at least 20 yards and four covering at least 29 yards.
Virginia never drew closer than two scores during the second half following a touchdown, its first of the game, on the opening series of the third quarter. That 17-yard scoring throw from quarterback Brennan Armstrong to tight end Jelani Woods came with 12:37 left and trimmed the deficit to 20-10.
But the Demon Deacons (4-0) countered with a nine-play, 83-yard drive ending in quarterback Sam Hartman’s 12-yard touchdown pass to tight end Blake Whiteheart on a trick play.
It began with running back Christian Beal-Smith receiving the direct snap and flipping the ball to Hartman. The defense then lost track of Whiteheart, who was open in the end zone without a defender in the vicinity.
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Virginia cut into the lead on Armstrong’s 22-yard scoring pass to wide receiver Dontayvion Wicks, but the Demon Deacons scored the next 10 points to all but secure the outcome. The touchdown in that stretch came on third and goal from the 12 when Hartman found wide receiver A.T. Perry on a 12-yard out, beating cornerback Fentrell Cypress III.
Kicker Nick Sciba’s 35-yard field goal with 12:56 to play in the fourth quarter provided Wake Forest with a 37-17 lead.
Armstrong finished with 407 yards on 33-for-59 passing with two touchdowns and one interception. The Cavaliers amassed 506 yards of total offense, the vast majority of which were cosmetic, and rushed for 99 yards, including minus-1 in the first half, with starting tailback Wayne Taulapapa in the concussion protocol.
The Cavaliers, who committed 11 penalties and allowed six sacks, stumbled into a double-digit deficit early in the first half and labored to make up ground heading into the locker room, reaching the red zone twice but managing only three points on the way to trailing 20-3.
The only points of the first half for Virginia came courtesy of kicker Justin Duenkel’s 21-yard field with 12:07 left in the second quarter. The Cavaliers had marched to the Wake Forest 6, where the drive stalled when Armstrong ran for 2 yards on 3rd-and-4.
The decision to kick the field goal proved somewhat curious given Virginia had gone for it on 4th-and-goal from the 5 midway through the first quarter. Armstrong threw into the middle of the end zone on the play, with the pass intended for Wicks, but the ball fell incomplete.
Virginia’s defense surrendered the longest play of the game early in the second quarter, failing to fill the proper running lanes and yielding Justice Ellison’s 63-yard burst. Boundary cornerback Anthony Johnson caught Ellison from behind at the 12 to save the touchdown but only briefly.
Five plays later, the Demon Deacons expanded the lead to 17-3 on Ellison’s 1-yard run with 9:25 to go until halftime.
Another defensive error led to Wake Forest adding the final points of the half with 1:31 to play. On 2nd-and-goal from the 5, Hartman threw to the front of the end zone, with the ball sailing into the chest of Cavaliers nickelback De’Vante Cross.
But the senior was unable to secure the interception, and on fourth down, Sciba converted a 23-yard field goal, leading to a smattering of boos from unimpressed Cavaliers fans as players jogged toward the locker room.
Blown assignments along Virginia’s front seven and in the secondary allowed the Demon Deacons to roll to a 10-0 lead during the first quarter.
The first points came on Hartman’s 39-yard touchdown pass to wide receiver Taylor Morin. The redshirt freshman went uncovered on the left side of the field, and Hartman (17 for 29, 270 yards, three touchdowns, no interceptions), with ample time to survey the field, delivered the scoring throw less than three minutes into the game.
After the Cavaliers turned the ball over on downs at the Wake Forest 5, the Demon Deacons needed six plays and a penalty to cross midfield. They got to the Virginia 28 on a 20-yard completion from Hartman to Whiteheart on another defensive miscommunication that left the middle of the field deserted.
But the Cavaliers forced an incomplete pass on 3rd-and-10, and Wake Forest settled for Sciba’s 46-yard field goal with 2:34 remaining in the opening quarter.
Covid-19 related deaths in Southeast Asia nearly halved on Friday, while there was only a slight increase in new infections, collated data showed.
Asean countries reported 61,840 new cases on Friday, slightly higher than Thursday’s 61,465, while deaths were down to 690 from 1,292 the previous day.
The number of Covid-19 cases crossed 11.77 million and the death toll rose to 257,306.
Laos this week received 30,000 doses of Sputnik Light Covid-19 vaccine as part of humanitarian assistance from the Russian government in response to a request from the Laos government. Laos had first received a shipment of Russia’s original Sputnik V Covid-19 vaccine from Russia in January this year. The Sputnik Light vaccine requires only one dose compared to the Sputnik V which requires two shots at an interval of 42 to 180 days.
Meanwhile, Vietnam has pushed back a plan to reopen the resort island of Phu Quoc to foreign tourists until November 20 from the original schedule of October 31, after failing to meet targets for inoculating residents due to insufficient vaccine supplies. The plan aims to open the island for six months of the test run period with up to three chartered planes per week allowed to land. Up to 5,000 tourists were expected to visit the island during this period.
Roads have been closed and flights canceled as volcanic eruption on Spains La Palma island entered the sixth day on Friday.
Lava issued from the Cumbre Vieja volcano has destroyed over 350 homes and covered over 165 hectares to a depth of up to 15 meters. Over 6,000 people from the island’s population of just over 80,000 have been evacuated.
The volcano emits between 6,140 and 11,500 tons of Sulphur dioxide (SO2) every day, according to the Vulcanology Institute of the Canary Islands (INVOLCAN). It also estimates that the eruption could last for 24 to 84 days.
Photo taken on Sept. 23, 2021, shows the scene of volcanic eruption of Cumbre Vieja volcano in La Palma, Spain.(Xinhua/Meng Dingbo)
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People watch the scene of volcanic eruption of Cumbre Vieja volcano in La Palma, Spain, Sept. 23, 2021.(Xinhua/Meng Dingbo)
Photo taken on Sept. 22, 2021, shows the scene of volcanic eruption of Cumbre Vieja volcano in La Palma, Spain.(Photo by Gustavo Valiente/Xinhua)
People watch the scene of volcanic eruption of Cumbre Vieja volcano in La Palma, Spain, Sept. 23, 2021.(Xinhua/Meng Dingbo)
Police officers stop people from approaching the Cumbre Vieja volcano in La Palma, Spain, on Sept. 22, 2021.(Photo by Gustavo Valiente/Xinhua)
Photo taken on Sept. 22, 2021, shows the scene of volcanic eruption of Cumbre Vieja volcano in La Palma, Spain.(Photo by Gustavo Valiente/Xinhua)
NEW YORK – Meng Wanzhou, a top Huawei Technologies executive detained for nearly three years in Canada, can return home to China after striking a deal with U.S. Justice Department officials in which she acknowledged helping to conceal the companys direct dealings in Iran, which violated U.S. sanctions.
While Meng admitted illegal conduct to satisfy the terms of the agreement, she did not have to plead guilty as part of the deferred prosecution agreement.
Her criminal case and detention have had major geopolitical implications, further souring relations between Beijing and both Washington and Ottawa.
Western officials decried China’s subsequent arrest of two Canadian nationals in December 2018 as a flagrant display of “hostage diplomacy.”
Meng, Huawei’s chief financial officer, made a virtual appearance in a Brooklyn courtroom Friday afternoon to formalize the agreement, conceding to a statement of facts that laid out her involvement in misleading a financial institution regarding Huawei’s relationship with Skycom, which functioned as an arm of Huawei in Iran.
The bank has been identified in other court proceedings as HSBC, which started as a smaller institution in China but has grown to operate globally.
Through Skycom, Huawei conducted transactions in U.S. currency with HSBC in the amount of more than $100 million between 2010 and 2014, according to prosecutors. A portion of that amount, at least $7.5 million, supported Huawei’s business dealings in Iran, officials said.
Federal prosecutors say that Skycom was operated by Huawei and that its transactions violated U.S.-imposed sanctions on Tehran. Meng, in signing the agreement, admitted to being involved in efforts to cover up the true relationship.
“Meng’s admissions confirm the crux of the government’s allegations in the prosecution of this financial fraud,” Nicole Boeckmann, acting U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York, said in a statement.
Meng’s attorney, Reid Weingarten, did not return calls for comment after the hearing.
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In court, Assistant U.S. Attorney David Kessler said the Justice Department would move to dismiss the charges against Meng when the deferral period ends on Dec. 21, 2022, provided she is not charged with a crime before then.
Meng, through an interpreter, told U.S. District Judge Ann Donnelly she understood the terms of the deal and agreed to it.
Meng, the daughter of Huawei founder Ren Zhengfei, was arrested in Vancouver, B.C., in December 2018 and later charged with bank and wire fraud. The Justice Department alleged that Huawei and Meng tricked HSBC into clearing millions of dollars in transactions with Skycom in violation of U.S. sanctions prohibiting business dealings with Iran.
China has cast the charges against Meng as political, part of a U.S. plot designed to stunt the country’s rise. Then-President Donald Trump told Reuters he would intervene in the case if it would help broker a trade deal with China. After being released from jail on $8 million bond, Meng was allowed to stay at one of her two mansions in Vancouver, wearing a GPS monitor and under surveillance by a court-appointed security company.
The case is one of several points of contention between the United States and Huawei, one of China’s largest tech companies and the world’s largest manufacturer of telecommunications equipment. The Trump administration placed Huawei on an export blacklist in 2019. That move and a subsequent tightening of the restrictions stopped Huawei from buying many types of high-tech semiconductors, hurting the Chinese company’s ability to manufacture.
U.S. officials have also called Huawei’s aggressive push into the global 5G telecommunications equipment market a national security threat, warning that Chinese authorities could tap into the gear to spy on or disrupt communications. Huawei and China have rejected that concern, but the United States has essentially banned the use of Huawei network equipment domestically and pressured allies not to use it.
Meng’s arrest thrust Canada into the middle of the tense U.S.-China standoff and created a foreign policy nightmare for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau at a time when he hoped to deepen economic ties with Beijing. China later detained two Canadians, former diplomat Michael Kovrig and businessman Michael Spavor, and banned imports of some Canadian crops, including canola.
The “two Michaels,” as they are known in Canada, faced separate, secret trials in March on vague charges of spying and stealing state secrets. A Chinese court found Spavor guilty in August and sentenced him to 11 years in prison. A verdict for Kovrig has not yet been announced.
Trudeau, who won a third term this week with a minority government after a snap election, has been roundly criticized for his handling of the dispute.
His chief opponent, Conservative Party leader Erin O’Toole, attacked Trudeau’s China policy at a leaders debate during the campaign, saying he had “let the Michaels down.”
Other prominent Canadians, including several former foreign ministers, urged Trudeau to let Meng go, hoping that would spur China to release the two Canadians. Trudeau had resisted those calls, saying that releasing her would endanger other Canadians around the world.
Meng’s attorneys had been fighting her extradition from Canada to the United States. On Friday, the Justice Department withdrew its extradition request and a judge in Vancouver dismissed the pending proceeding.
The Thoracic Society of Thailand under Royal Patronage, together with the Interstitial Lung Disease and Lung Disease from Occupational and Environmental Diseases (ILD assembly), organized a ‘Fill Up The Air’ live seminar on the ILDs Facebook page to improve awareness and understanding of Fibrotic-ILD (Fibrotic-Interstitial Lung Disease), a rare disease that has become more difficult to detect as a result of COVID-19 during screening, diagnosis and treatment. COVID-19 patients with severely damaged lungs may find their symptoms develop into pulmonary fibrosis which has a high risk of death if not treated early.
Assoc. Prof. Nitipatana Chierakul, President of Thoracic Society of Thailand under Royal Patronage, said, “Fibrotic-ILD is a rare disease that causes tissue inflammation in the lungs. There have been challenges in screening and diagnosis because symptoms are similar to other lung and respiratory diseases. Medical professionals are more familiar with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) in men, congestive heart failure in women, tuberculosis, lung cancer and heart disease. However, the coronavirus outbreak presents even more challenges for doctors and patients because of COVID-19-like symptoms, such as shortness of breath, a dry cough and lung inflammation. But for doctors to make a more accurate diagnosis there needs to be a better understanding of the disease and its symptoms by patients. Tell-tale signs of pulmonary fibrosis include consistent coughing or shortness of breath over an extended period, for example more than two months, especially in non-smokers. Doctors should be looking more carefully at any anomalies or abnormality in lung X-rays, and listen for abnormal breathing sounds at the base of both lungs. They should listen carefully for sounds similar to Velcro being pulled apart, and numb fingers when exercising.
During Covid-19 pulmonary fibrosis patients have been additional impacted as they have been unable to attend hospital or had appointments cancelled or postponed, affecting their treatment whether it is access to medication, physical therapy sessions, or receiving oxygen therapy. At times they’ve received pills only by mail, and there has been a shortage of oxygen. The pressure on the healthcare system has also resulted in some patients being diagnosed too late as lung X-rays and biopsy tests take longer to arrange and this has an impact on diagnosis.
Additionally, the lungs are the main organ that COVID-19 will attack, and around 30-50% of all patients develop pneumonia that requires medical attention. Of these, after recovery, one in ten thousand or less may develop pulmonary fibrosis similar to Fibrotic-ILD, which can cause chronic problems. It interferes with the patient’s daily life and is a burden on the family and society.
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Assoc. Prof. Kamon Kawkitinarong, President of the Subcommittee on Interstitial Lung Diseases and Lung Diseases from Work and Environment, said: “Pulmonary fibrosis is a rare disease but is more common in Western countries where the prevalence of the disease is 90-100 people per 100,000 people, but in Thailand no official data is available. However, data from the IPF Registry Project shows there are 131 patients. Inflammation of the lungs is caused by breathing in both organic and inorganic pollutants, as well as internal factors. For example, autoimmune dysfunction may cause inflammation in the lungs. Physical examination history, along with high-resolution computed tomography (HRCT), can be used by doctors to evaluate patient condition. Pulmonary fibrosis has the potential to increase in severity. Invasive type, or PF-ILD (Progressive Phenotype ILD), causes fibrosis or scars around the alveoli and bronchioles. This makes it harder for oxygen to pass through the lungs and bloodstream. The patient will be short of breath and lacking oxygen, the organs will not function fully. Lung scars will not heal back to normal lung tissue condition, meaning that after being diagnosed with pulmonary fibrosis, patients need to visit the doctor regularly to closely monitor the spread of the disease.
The COVID-19 outbreak has affected access to treatment so an official LINE account called ‘Clear Lung’ (O2LUNG) has been set up to help people self-monitor. Patients can record abnormal symptoms and send them to the doctor without having to come to the hospital, while doctors can also publish useful information.”
Assoc. Prof. Chanchai Sittipunt, Vice President of Thoracic Society of Thailand under Royal Patronage, said, “Invasive pulmonary fibrosis is more severe than many cancers. Patients will continue to suffer loss of lung function, increased breathing difficulty and ultimately death when their lungs fail to function or they have a respiratory failure. When comparing the 5-year survival rate of various cancers, around 20% of lung cancer patients survive, 35% of idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis patients survive, 60% of colon cancer patients, 85% of breast cancer 85%, and 87£+% of prostate cancer patients are able to survive. Delayed treatment can significantly increase the mortality rate. For example, if treatment is delayed by one year there is a mortality rate of 8%. However, when delayed for up to two years this rises to 18%, and up to four years sees it rise to 27%. Delaying treatment longer than four years has a mortality rate of 32%.
Currently, there is targeted therapy anti-fibrotic drug approved to cover all three conditions: idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis; pulmonary fibrosis from scleroderma; and invasive pulmonary fibrosis. These can slow the progression of the disease, reduce acute exacerbations, and reduce the number of deaths. Other types of treatment, such as oxygen therapy pulmonary rehabilitation, are used to help patients improve their quality of life. The best way to prevent pulmonary fibrosis is to wear a mask or protective gear if you are at risk and avoid infecting the lungs.”
Mr Anuwat Noreewong, a 78-year-old pulmonary fibrosis patient said, “Pulmonary fibrosis is characterized by extreme fatigue, frequent choking, and persistent coughing that can be so severe it leaves me unable to speak. The disease too a long time to diagnose and the symptoms got worse as the cause could not be found due to symptoms being similar to other diseases. It took me many years to get proper treatment. I am fortunate that my daughter did some research on the Internet and found an expert like doctor Amornpun Wongkarnjana and that’s why I’ve survived. I want to encourage people to be more aware of the disease and recognise the symptoms by themselves, especially during this time of COVID-19. If they believe they suffer from any of these common symptoms they should consult a doctor.”
Capitan Outlasts Mehdi Zatout To Win By Unanimous Decision And Retain ONE Bantamweight Kickboxing World Title
Joshua Pacio Finishes Yosuke Saruta In First Round To Win Epic Trilogy And Retain ONE Strawweight World Title
24 September 2021 – Singapore: ONE Championship™ (ONE) electrified the Singapore Indoor Stadium with ONE: REVOLUTION, which aired live on Friday, 24 September. The event featured a completely stacked card of mixed martial arts, Muay Thai, and kickboxing matches, headlined by three World Title bouts.
In the main event, #3-ranked lightweight Ok Rae Yoon stunned longtime titleholder Christian Lee to capture the ONE Lightweight World Championship.
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Ok came out in his usual counterpunching style. Conversely, Lee was fast, sharp, and powerful to start the bout, connecting with a plethora of right hands while scoring on takedowns. Ok weathered the early storm from the young Singaporean-American, and he got stronger as the bout wore on.
In the third round, Ok rocked Lee, sending him reeling across the Circle. A counter right hand from Lee dropped the South Korean, and toward the end of the frame, “The Warrior” took Ok’s back and locked in a rear-naked choke under the chin.
Kickboxing World Champion Capitan Petchyindee Academy narrowly edged out challenger Mehdi Zatout to capture a close victory on points after five intense rounds.
The South Korean survived that submission attempt and turned it into a war for the final two rounds, with both men having their moments. In the end, all three judges scored the bout in favor of Ok to win by unanimous decision, as the new ONE Lightweight World Champion hoisted the belt up on his shoulders.
Mixed Martial Arts – Lightweight: Ok Rae Yoon def. Christian Lee via Unanimous Decision
In the co-main event, reigning ONE Bantamweight Kickboxing World Champion Capitan Petchyindee Academy narrowly edged out challenger Mehdi Zatout to capture a close victory on points after five intense rounds. Capitan was sharp and aggressive, but Zatout was more than willing to engage. The two strikers tagged each other with explosive kicks and punches all throughout the fight. Capitan hurt Zatout at various junctures, which no doubt earned him credit on the scorecards. In the end, all three judges saw the bout in favor of Capitan to win by unanimous decision and retain the belt.
In the first of three World Title contests, reigning ONE Strawweight World Champion Joshua Pacio overwhelmed #1-ranked contender Yosuke Saruta with a barrage of punches to author an exhilarating first-round knockout, winning the trilogy match. The longtime rivals chose to trade strikes at the center of the Circle from the sound of the opening bell, with the Japanese fighter pushing the pace and the Filipino standout opting to counter. After Pacio hurt Saruta with a left hand, he swarmed his opponent to swiftly complete the finish and retain the gold.
Mixed Martial Arts – Lightweight: Ok Rae Yoon def. Christian Lee via Unanimous Decision
Kim Jae Woong scored the biggest win of his career, stopping former two-division ONE World Champion Martin Nguyen in the first round with a concussive right hand. The two featherweight contenders met at the center of the Circle to start the contest, trading fierce combinations. Nguyen came forward aggressively, but Kim found a home for his counter right, stunning his opponent on multiple occasions. A final right hand ended the fight at the 3:15 mark. With the victory, Kim earned a crack at ONE Featherweight World Champion Thanh Le.
Russian star Anatoly Malykhin maintained his unblemished mixed martial arts record with a scintillating finish of highly regarded wrestler Amir Aliakbari. Malykhin pressured Aliakbari early, dropping and hurting the Iranian with punches in the first round. The hard-hitting Russian then closed the show with another thunderous shot to the jaw that ended matters instantly. With the victory, Malykhin earned a shot at ONE Heavyweight World Champion Arjan Bhullar.
Mixed Martial Arts – Strawweight: Joshua Pacio def. Yosuke Saruta via TKO at 3:38 of Round 1
Teenage sensation Victoria Lee moved to 3-0 as a professional mixed martial artist, earning a TKO victory behind a dominant performance over promotional newcomer Victoria Souza. The two atomweights traded strikes to open the first round, but it wasn’t long until the action hit the ground, and Lee once again shined. In the second round, the 17-year-old unleashed a barrage of elbows from top position to force the stoppage.
In the headline bout of the ONE: REVOLUTION Lead Card, Team Lakay stalwart Lito Adiwang blasted fellow strawweight Hexigetu with a blitzkrieg of kicks and pummeled his opponent for three rounds to win a unanimous decision. The Filipino firecracker’s thrilling performance set the tone for an action-packed main card.
Kickboxing contender Taiki Naito overcame a knockdown in the first round to battle back and take a split-decision victory over former ONE World Champion Petchdam Petchyindee Academy in their ONE Super Series flyweight Muay Thai contest.
Seventeen-time BJJ World Champion Marcus “Buchecha” Almeida scored a first-round submission in his professional mixed martial arts debut, tapping out Anderson “Braddock” Silva via north-south choke to announce his arrival in the world’s largest martial arts organization.
Petchtanong Petchfergus made a triumphant return to the Circle, dominating former ONE World Title challenger Zhang Chenglong to win a unanimous decision in a kickboxing bout.
With Demetrious Johnson in his corner, American James Yang sizzled in his professional mixed martial arts debut, defeating Roel Rosauro via technical knockout in the second round of a one-sided performance.
Kickboxing – Bantamweight: Capitan Petchyindee Academy def. Mehdi Zatout via Unanimous Decision
Official Results for ONE: REVOLUTION Mixed Martial Arts – Lightweight: Ok Rae Yoon def. Christian Lee via Unanimous Decision Kickboxing – Bantamweight: Capitan Petchyindee Academy def. Mehdi Zatout via Unanimous Decision Mixed Martial Arts – Strawweight: Joshua Pacio def. Yosuke Saruta via TKO at 3:38 of Round 1 Mixed Martial Arts – Featherweight: Kim Jae Woong def. Martin Nguyen via KO at 3:15 of Round 1 Mixed Martial Arts – Heavyweight: Anatoly Malykhin def. Amir Aliakbari via KO at 2:57 of Round 1 Mixed Martial Arts – Atomweight: Victoria Lee def. Victoria Souza via TKO at 3:58 of Round 2 Mixed Martial Arts – Strawweight: Lito Adiwang def. Hexigetu via Unanimous Decision Muay Thai – Flyweight: Taiki Naito def. Petchdam Petchyindee Academy via Split Decision Mixed Martial Arts – Heavyweight: Marcus Almeida def. Anderson Silva via Submission (North-south Choke) at 2:55 of Round 1 Kickboxing – Bantamweight: Petchtanong Petchfergus def. Zhang Chenglong via Unanimous Decision Mixed Martial Arts – Featherweight: James Yang def. Roel Rosauro via TKO at 2:00 of Round 2
Photo taken on Sept. 23, 2021, shows the scene of volcanic eruption of Cumbre Vieja volcano in La Palma, Spain.(Xinhua/Meng Dingbo)
People watch the scene of volcanic eruption of Cumbre Vieja volcano in La Palma, Spain, Sept. 23, 2021.(Xinhua/Meng Dingbo)
Photo taken on Sept. 22, 2021, shows the scene of volcanic eruption of Cumbre Vieja volcano in La Palma, Spain.(Photo by Gustavo Valiente/Xinhua)
People watch the scene of volcanic eruption of Cumbre Vieja volcano in La Palma, Spain, Sept. 23, 2021.(Xinhua/Meng Dingbo)
Police officers stop people from approaching the Cumbre Vieja volcano in La Palma, Spain, on Sept. 22, 2021.(Photo by Gustavo Valiente/Xinhua)
Photo taken on Sept. 22, 2021, shows the scene of volcanic eruption of Cumbre Vieja volcano in La Palma, Spain.(Photo by Gustavo Valiente/Xinhua)
Kickboxing World Champion Capitan Petchyindee Academy narrowly edged out challenger Mehdi Zatout to capture a close victory on points after five intense rounds.
Mixed Martial Arts – Lightweight: Ok Rae Yoon def. Christian Lee via Unanimous Decision
Mixed Martial Arts – Lightweight: Ok Rae Yoon def. Christian Lee via Unanimous Decision
Mixed Martial Arts – Strawweight: Joshua Pacio def. Yosuke Saruta via TKO at 3:38 of Round 1
Kickboxing – Bantamweight: Capitan Petchyindee Academy def. Mehdi Zatout via Unanimous Decision
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