List of All Articles with Tag 'pp'

A federal appeals court upheld the child pornography conviction of former reality TV star Josh Duggar, rejecting his arguments for a new trial, court documents show.

The Donald Trump-appointed judge overseeing the criminal case into his handling of classified documents has sided with the former president once again – dealing mutliple blows to special counsel Jack Smith. Judge Aileen Cannon, who was appointed to the bench during Mr Trump’s final days in office, on Monday struck down two of Mr Smith’s court filings and gave him a dressing down over his use of grand juries in the case. In the ruled filed in south Florida, the judge rejected the Justice Department’s request for sealed filings in order to preserve the “grand jury secrecy” in the case where Mr Trump is currently facing 40 charges. “The Special Counsel states in conclusory terms that the supplement should be sealed from public view ‘to comport with grand jury secrecy,’ but the motion for leave and the supplement plainly fail to satisfy the burden of establishing a sufficient legal or factual basis to warrant sealing the motion and supplement,” she wrote in the brief. Judge Cannon ordered that two such sealed filings be struck from the record altogether. These filings related to a motion brought by Mr Smith’s office arguing that Stanley Woodward – the attorney for Mr Trump’s aide and codefendant Walt Nauta – has potential conflicts of interest as he represents other individuals who could be called to give testimony in the case. In Monday’s brief, Judge Cannon also questioned what she described as the “legal propriety” of Mr Smith’s office using an out-of-state grand jury to investigate the case. Prosecutors were ordered to file a response which “shall address the legal propriety of using an out-of-district grand jury proceeding to continue to investigate and/or to seek post-indictment hearings on matters pertinent to the instant indicted matter in this district”. Most of the classified documents case is being handled out of Judge Cannon’s district in South Florida – where Mr Trump’s Mar-a-Lago sits. However, some grand jury work in the case was also carried out in Washington DC. Judge Cannon took issue with this and questioned why a grand jury heard evidence in DC after Mr Trump had already been indicted by a grand jury in Florida. She has demanded that Mr Smith’s office respond to the court filing by 22 August with an explanation. Her latest briefs have raised fresh questions about the judge’s handling of the case – given she was appointed by Mr Trump and has repeatedly handed him favourable, and questionable, rulings. Former US attorney Andrew Weissmann described the judge’s filing as “off base”. “Judge Cannon clearly shows her ignorance (bias? both?); the obstruction crimes that were investigated are charges that could have been brought in [Florida] or in DC and thus could be investigated in either district,” he wrote on Twitter. “And there was conduct that is alleged to have occurred outside [Florida].” Last year, Judge Cannon, who was randomly assigned to preside over the case following Mr Trump’s indictment in June, previously sided with Mr Trump’s request to appoint an independent special master to review the documents in the classified papers case before they could be handed to the DOJ. The decision was branded “deeply flawed” by Mr Trump’s own former attorney general Bill Barr and was later thrown out by an appeals court. Mr Trump was initially indicted on 37 federal charges in early June over his alleged mishandling of classified documents, becoming the first current or former US president ever charged with a federal crime. He pleaded not guilty to the charges at his arraignment in a Miami federal courthouse. His longtime aide Mr Nauta was also charged in the case as his co-defendant. In a superseding indictment filed in late July, Mr Trump was hit with three new charges and a third defendant – Mar-a-Lago property manager Carlos De Oliveira – was added to the federal criminal case. Prosecutors now allege that Mr Trump even went as far as to plot with two employees to delete security footage from Mar-a-Lago in his quest to hide the classified documents – and what exactly he was doing with them. Now, with the additional charges, Mr Trump has a total of 40 federal counts over his handling of classified documents. Last week, he was also charged in a separate federal case over his role in the January 6 Capitol riot and his efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election. This comes after he was hit with state charges in New York in April over hush money payments to cover up affairs in the lead-up to the 2016 election. Read More Trump judge demands court hearing as Jack Smith and ex-president spar over protective order – latest Former Republican official in Georgia subpoenaed over Trump efforts to change election result Special counsel accuses Trump of wanting to try Jan 6 case in media after bid to use evidence during 2024 run Justice Department stands with Ukraine in war crimes investigations, Attorney General Garland says Mitch McConnell heckled with chants of ‘retire’ after freezing episode Trucking giant Yellow Corp. declares bankruptcy after years of financial struggles

PSG are exploring their options to sell Neymar, with Chelsea, Barcelona and the Saudi Pro League all rumoured destinations.

In a recent interview, KSI expressed his perspective, asserting that Paul's performance is deteriorating

Israeli security forces say they demolished the West Bank home of a Palestinian man accused of carrying out a deadly shooting attack earlier this year

The ocean is home to all manner of mysteries, from “alien” shape-shifters to ancient shipwrecks. And so, when Richard Branson and a team of scientists took a submersible down to the bottom of Belize’s iconic Giant Blue Hole, they were braced for some truly extraordinary sights. The Blue Hole is the largest sinkhole in the world, measuring 300m (984 feet) across and around 125m (410 feet) deep but, until Branson’s expedition in 2018 its depths had not been fully explored. The British billionaire was joined on his groundbreaking journey by Fabien Cousteau – the grandson of pioneering underwater explorer Jacques Cousteau – and oceanographer Erika Bergman. Sign up for our free Indy100 weekly newsletter Their mission was to create a 3D map of the hole’s interior but, when they reached the bottom, they were met by some disturbing discoveries. To be fair, they got off to a good start. The first thing they encountered as they edged down the hole was a wall of giant stalactites, which were “breathtakingly beautiful,” according to Branson. Then, at around 300 feet, they pierced a thick layer of toxic hydrogen sulphide, plunging them into darkness and cutting out the oxygen from the water around them. In an interview with CNN, Bergman explained that once you pierce that layer, which forms naturally over centuries, “you lose all of that Caribbean sunlight and it just turns completely black.” Elsewhere, Branson described it as “extremely eerie,” saying: “We didn’t expect to see any creatures below. But when we got to the bottom we could see crabs, conches and other creatures that had fallen into the hole, arrived on the bottom and then ran out of oxygen and died.” As the team continued to travel further down into the abyss, they were faced with the remains of a tragedy. In an interview with Business Insider back in July 2020, Bergman revealed that they found the bodies of two people who have “been lost in the Blue Hole”. “We found the resting place of a couple [of] folks,” she said. “And we just sort of very respectfully let the Belize government know where we found them.” She added that “everyone decided that we would just not attempt any recovery”, noting: “It's very dark and peaceful down there, [so we] just kind of let them stay.” As they reached the bottom, the team found something else unexpected, and very much unwelcome: human rubbish. It came in the form of a 2-litre Coke bottle and a lost GoPro containing some holiday snaps, according to Business Insider. “As for the mythical monsters of the deep? Well, the real monsters facing the ocean are climate change – and plastic,” Branson lamented following the discovery. “Sadly, we saw plastic bottles at the bottom of the hole, which is a real scourge of the ocean.” The business magnate said the expedition had offered “one of the starkest reminders of the danger of climate change [he had] ever seen.” He pointed out: “The Blue Hole is made of a complex system of caves that once formed on dry land. It is proof of how oceans can rise quickly and catastrophically. “Sea levels were once hundreds of feet lower. 10,000 years ago the sea level rose by about 300 feet when a lot of ice melted around the world. At 300 feet down you could see the change in the rock where it used to be land and turned into sea.” He added in his blog: “Hopefully by this trip taking place we have raised even more awareness of the need to protect the ocean and tackle climate change now – before it is too late.” He stressed that he didn’t want his grandchildren to “grow up in a world without corals, without the wonders of the ocean”. Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.

By Nandita Bose President Joe Biden's top labor adviser, Celeste Drake, has stepped down, according to a source

Over the past year, inflation in the United States has tumbled from 9% all the way to 3%, softening most of the price pressures that have gripped the nation for more than two years

Charles Oliveira has admitted that he ‘bluffed’ about having an injury in a bid to change the time and place of his title fight with Islam Makhachev. Oliveira will challenge Makhachev for the UFC lightweight belt in Abu Dhabi in October, 12 months after the pair clashed for the title in the same venue: the Etihad Arena. In their first fight, Makhachev submitted former champion Oliveira to win the vacant gold, and now the Brazilian will try to avenge that loss to the Russian. However, it looked at one point like Oliveira might not be fit to compete in October, leading some fans to wonder whether Makhachev would defend his title in Abu Dhabi at all. But now Oliveira has revealed that he was not injured – or, at least, not as badly as he had suggested. “What changed is that I just learned how to play. Now I’m playing,” the 33-year-old said on The MMA Hour on Monday (7 August). “What I knew was that the UFC was planning to maybe have a fight in Brazil in November, so I was trying to push it to November. “I was just playing with them. Obviously it didn’t work, so now I’m fighting in October, but that’s what I was doing: I was bluffing.” Oliveira bounced back from his loss to Makhachev by knocking out Beneil Dariush this June. “Do Bronx” previously held the lightweight title from May 2021 until May 2022, before being stripped of the gold. Oliveira was stripped of the title after narrowly missing weight, the day before his scheduled defence against Justin Gaethje. The Brazilian went on to submit Gaethje and set up his first fight with Makhachev. Click here to subscribe to The Independent’s Sport YouTube channel for all the latest sports videos. Read More Don’t sneer at the boxing crossovers – they’re lucrative, successful and here to stay ‘Boo if you’re a virgin’: Jake Paul mocks crowd after beating Nate Diaz Dillian Whyte vows to prove his innocence after doping test ‘adverse finding’

The leaders of South America’s Amazon nations will gather in Brazil this week as President Luiz Inacio Lula

By Asif Shahzad ISLAMABAD (Reuters) -Pakistan's jailed former Prime Minister Imran Khan appealed against his conviction and three-year sentence on

All 'Stranger Things' stars were preteens when the show started, and some of them have grown significantly taller over the years