'Fat Leonard', a fugitive now facing extradition, was behind one of US military's biggest scandals - CNA

WASHINGTON: The extradition of convicted defence contractor Leonard “Fat Leonard” Francis to the United States as part of the Venezuelan prisoner swap on Wednesday (Dec 20) is the latest twist in a decade-long salacious saga and bribery scheme that swept up dozens of American Navy officers.

One of the biggest bribery investigations in US military history led to the conviction and sentencing of nearly two dozen Navy officials, defence contractors and others on various fraud and corruption charges. It was punctuated by Francis' daring escape last year, when he fled from house arrest at his San Diego home to South America.

An enigmatic figure, Francis owned and operated his family’s ship servicing business, Singapore-based Glenn Defense Marine Asia or GDMA, which supplied food, water and fuel to vessels.

The Malaysian defence contractor was a key contact for US Navy ships at ports across Asia for more than two decades. During that time he wooed naval officers with Kobe beef, expensive cigars, concert tickets and wild sex parties at luxury hotels from Thailand to the Philippines.

In exchange, the officers, including the first active-duty admiral to be convicted of a federal crime, concealed the scheme in which Francis would overcharge for supplying ships or charge for fake services at ports he controlled in Southeast Asia.

The officers passed him classified information and even went so far as redirecting military vessels to ports that were lucrative for his Singapore-based ship servicing company.

In a federal sting, Francis was lured to San Diego on false pretenses and arrested at a hotel in September 2013.

He pleaded guilty in 2015, admitting that he had offered more than US$500,000 in cash bribes to Navy officials, defence contractors and others. Prosecutors say he bilked the Navy out of at least US$35 million.

As part of his plea deal, he cooperated with the investigation leading to the Navy convictions. He faced up to 25 years in prison.

While awaiting sentencing, Francis was hospitalised and treated for renal cancer and other medical issues. After leaving the hospital, he was allowed to stay out of jail at a rental home, on house arrest with a GPS ankle monitor and security guards.

But three weeks before his scheduled sentencing in September 2022, he snipped off his monitor and made a brazen escape, setting off an international search. Officials said he fled to Mexico, made his way to Cuba and eventually got to Venezuela.

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2023-12-21 02:49:00Z
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Commentary: Better COVID-19 booster vaccines are needed if we want people to take them - CNA

BETTER BOOSTER VACCINES ARE POSSIBLE

The 2023 boosters don’t have the original strain – they are monovalent and aimed at the Omicron sub-variant XBB.1.5, which was dominant earlier in the year. Many scientists say this is a big improvement.

A study published last month in Nature showed that repeat exposures to Omicron through infection or Omicron-only booster shots can start to override the immune imprinting that has our immune systems stuck on the extinct original version of this virus.

Peking University researcher Yunlong (Richard) Cao, who headed the study, said exposure to Omicron generates what are called naive B cells, and over time these become tuned to fight Omicron. After two exposures, the body is better able to fight off future exposures to Omicron. 

As a caveat, he said, this study involved subjects in China who were very rarely exposed to the virus before Omicron, and who got a different kind of vaccine called an inactivated virus. Similar studies that followed people who got mRNA shots saw no overriding of the imprinting. 

Cao said the mRNA vaccines are more immunogenic than the ones used in China, which can make them more powerful but might render the imprinting effect stronger too. It might take people in the US and elsewhere more exposures to Omicron-only boosters or infections to retune their immune systems toward the new version of the virus – though the virus will continue to evolve as well.

The take-home message, he said, is that booster shots can have long-term impacts – and that we need to start thinking about how to battle this disease in the long term. We have multiple approved vaccines to explore and new ideas are coming from research labs all the time. We’re not ready to settle into a yearly boosting schedule with mRNA shots.

If people are sick and tired of anything, it’s getting COVID-19. If we had a new shot that kept us COVID-19-free for at least a year, more people would be willing to get it. 

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2023-12-20 22:00:00Z
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Trump cases thrust Supreme Court into US election fray - CNA

WHAT'S NEXT FOR COLORADO CASE?

The Colorado Supreme Court, in a 4-3 ruling, said Trump is "disqualified from holding the office of President under Section Three of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution".

Section Three of the 14th Amendment ratified in 1868 after the Civil War, bars anyone from holding public office if they engaged in "insurrection or rebellion" after once pledging to support and defend the Constitution.

The ruling, if it withstands Supreme Court review, would bar Trump from appearing on the ballot in the primary to be held in Colorado on Mar 5 to select the Republican Party's nominee for the November 2024 election.

Colorado's highest court issued a stay, or freeze, of its bombshell ruling until Jan 4 pending an expected appeal by Trump's lawyers to the Supreme Court.

Steven Schwinn, a professor of constitutional law at the University of Illinois Chicago, said he expects the Supreme Court to intervene in a case he described as "uncharted territory."

"The court needs to make a ruling so that Colorado and other states can decide whether they're going to list Donald Trump on the ballot or not," Schwinn said.

"The court's going to have to act quickly on this and I expect that it will act quickly on this," he said.

Derek Muller, a law professor at the University of Notre Dame, noted that it is the first time that the 14th Amendment has been used to exclude a presidential candidate from the ballot.

Granting the Colorado case for review would force the Supreme Court to "step into the thorniest of political thickets," Muller wrote on the Election Law Blog.

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2023-12-20 21:24:44Z
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CNA Explains: Beijing vs Manila in the South China Sea - what's the endgame? - CNA

Each episode has been accompanied by a war of words. The Philippines has described China’s “unprovoked acts of coercion” as violating international law, damaging maritime assets and putting lives of Filipino crew at risk.

Beijing has said it’s applying “law enforcement activities” to deal with violations of "indisputable" Chinese sovereignty. This claim relies on what it calls "historic rights" to the South China Sea.

So does the South China Sea belong to China?

Depends on who you ask.

Back in 2009, China unveiled to the United Nations its “nine-dash” line laying claim to over 80 per cent of the South China Sea.

In addition to the Philippines, Southeast Asian countries Vietnam, Malaysia and Brunei also claim parts of the vast ocean, which serves as a crucial maritime route for over US$3 trillion in annual global trade, and as a key source of both fishing and gas reserves.

After a 2012 standoff between the Philippines and China in Scarborough Shoal, Manila took the matter to arbitration in The Hague the next year. 

The Philippines wants China to abide by the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea or UNCLOS, which sets a country's exclusive economic zone or EEZ at 200 nautical miles from a national landmass.

A historic 2016 arbitral tribunal ruling subsequently found that China’s claim had “no legal basis". Beijing squarely rejected this as “null and void”.

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2023-12-20 06:28:46Z
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Companies, including Ikea, warn of possible product shortages and delays due to Red Sea attacks - The Straits Times

STOCKHOLM – Global shipping rates rose sharply and companies scrambled to avoid disruption to shipments after attacks on vessels in the Red Sea stymied traffic through the key Suez Canal trade artery.

Recent attacks by Iran-aligned Yemeni Houthi militant group on vessels forced leading shipping companies such as Maersk to reroute around the Cape of Good Hope to avoid the Suez Canal, the shortest shipping route between Europe and Asia.

The attacks have stirred memories of 2021 when container ship Ever Given ran aground in the canal, blocking dozens of container ships for six days.

The current disruption has caused container shipping costs to rise sharply, but those rates are still far below peak pandemic levels.

Electrolux, the world’s largest appliance company, has set up a task force to find alternative routes or identify priority deliveries, while Inter Ikea has warned of potential product shortages.

As at Dec 19, the price to ship a container from China to the Mediterranean was US$2,413 (S$3,207), having surged 44 per cent in December because of the disruptions, after hitting a low of $1,371 earlier in 2023, said Mr Eytan Buchman, chief marketing officer at Freightos, a booking and payments platform for international freight.

However, that rate still falls far short of the pandemic era high in January 2022 of US$14,158, when shipments of goods were delayed by months due to lack of available container vessels.

With worldwide economic demand softening, particularly in China, ship owners have not been able to fill ships with containers.

Electrolux said late on Dec 18 that it expects any effect on deliveries will be limited.

The Swedish group has worked with shipping companies such as Maersk and CMA.

In a statement on Dec 19, global home furnishing brand Inter Ikea said it is looking at alternative transportation options to the canal, a key route for the budget furniture maker.

“The situation in the Suez Canal will result in delays and may cause availability constraints for certain Ikea products,” it said.

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2023-12-20 05:06:00Z
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Chinese rescuers brave freezing cold to find earthquake survivors - CNA

Earthquakes are common in provinces such as Gansu, lying on the northeastern boundary of the tectonically active Qinghai-Tibetan plateau. China's deadliest quake in recent decades was in 2008 when a magnitude-8.0 temblor struck Sichuan, killing nearly 70,000 people.

The freezing cold would not be the only concern weighing on rescuers and working groups assessing the situation.

The Gansu Provincial Seismological Bureau said through comprehensive analysis, strong aftershocks of magnitude 5 were still possible around the area in the coming days, based on the characteristics of the Monday quake, historical seismic activity and other factors.

The aftershocks will be closely tracked to issue early warnings, official news agency Xinhua cited the bureau's deputy director as saying.

By early Wednesday, there were two aftershocks of magnitude 4.0 and above, and eight magnitude 3.0 and above, China Earthquake Networks Center said.

The quake in Gansu's Jishishan county was logged at a depth of 10km, which experts consider shallow. Earthquakes with shallow focal points can easily cause considerable damage to the ground, Xinhua reported citing a senior engineer with the China Seismological Network Center.

Rice, flour and oil supply in Gansu's Jishishan were sufficient at stable market prices, state grain reserves and food processing institutions said, having organised warehouses to deliver emergency supplies to the quake-stricken area.

Within 50km of the epicentre on the side of neighbouring Qinghai province, the earthquake affected 22 towns and villages, but of that, two villages suffered the worst damage.

Qinghai's Minhe county earlier recorded 20 missing people from two villages, where a mudslide swept through half-burying many buildings in brown silt. Search and rescue operations and efforts to resettle residents continued as state media footage showed bulldozers removing thick mud.

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2023-12-20 04:00:56Z
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Govt bans Israeli-owned ships from docking in Malaysia - New Straits Times

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Govt bans Israeli-owned ships from docking in Malaysia  New Straits TimesView Full coverage on Google News
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2023-12-20 03:25:21Z
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