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US President Donald Trump has pardoned the convicted Binance co-founder Changpeng Zhao, the White House said Thursday, accusing Trump’s predecessor Joe Biden of launching an unnecessary “war” against the industry. Binance was created in 2017, and swiftly became the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange by volume, turning Zhao into a billionaire.Following an investigation into the firm’s operations, Zhao pleaded guilty to violating US anti-money-laundering laws in late 2023, and served a four-month prison sentence for it in 2024.Zhao’s pardon wipes his criminal record, and could help pave the way for Binance to return to the United States, around two years after it agreed to suspend its American operations in a deal to resolve the Department of Justice’s criminal investigation.  “In their desire to punish the cryptocurrency industry, the Biden Administration pursued Mr. Zhao despite no allegations of fraud or identifiable victims,” the White House said in a statement shared with AFP.The White House said the Biden administration’s decision to prosecute Zhao and to seek a three-year prison sentence for him had “severely damaged the United States’ reputation as a global leader in technology and innovation,” adding that the “war on crypto” was now over. Binance has spent almost a year pursuing a pardon for Zhao, the Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday, noting that Binance has been a “key supporter” of the Trump family’s crypto venture World Liberty Financial. Despite stepping down as chief executive in 2023, Zhao remains the majority shareholder of Binance.The Trump family’s various crypto businesses have netted them a pre-tax profit of around a billion dollars, according to a recent Financial Times investigation.Trump’s pardon of Zhao follows a string of other similarly controversial moves such as his decision to issue a blanket pardon for people convicted of violence in the attack on the US Capitol on January 6, 2021. Trump has also commuted — or reduced — the sentence of the disgraced former Republican lawmaker George Santos, who was convicted of committing wire fraud and identity theft. 

NBA head coach Chauncey Billups of the Portland Trail Blazers and Miami Heat guard Terry Rozier were arrested on Thursday for alleged involvement in illegal gambling, US officials said.Billups, a former Detroit Pistons star and a member of the National Basketball Association Hall of Fame, was arrested in connection with rigged illegal poker games tied to Mafia crime families, FBI Director Kash Patel said.Rozier and a former NBA player and assistant coach, Damon Jones, were among six people arrested in a sports betting case, Patel said at a press conference in New York.US Attorney Joseph Nocella said the 49-year-old Billups was one of more than 30 people indicted for alleged involvement in a “nationwide scheme to rig illegal poker games” that used “high-tech cheating technology.”Rozier and Jones allegedly “participated in one of the most brazen sports corruption schemes since online sports betting became widely legalized in the United States,” Nocella said.He described it as “an insider sports betting conspiracy that exploited confidential information about National Basketball Association athletes and teams.”The defendants were involved in illegal betting on the performance of players on the Charlotte Hornets, the Portland Trail Blazers, the Los Angeles Lakers and Toronto Raptors, Nocella said.He said the NBA has cooperated with the investigation which led to the indictments unsealed on Thursday.New York police commissioner Jessica Tisch cited an example of a March 23, 2023 game in which Rozier was then playing for the Hornets. Rozier let co-conspirators “know that he planned to leave the game early with a supposed injury,” Tisch said.”Using that information, members of the group placed more than $200,000 in wagers” on his expected performance in the game, she said. “Rozier exited the game after just nine minutes, and those bets paid out, generating tens of thousands of dollars in profit.”As for the rigged poker games allegedly involving Billups, the organizers used “custom shuffling machines that could read cards, barcoded decks and hidden cameras built into tables and light fixtures,” Tisch said.”Victims believed that they were sitting at a fair table,” she said. “Instead, they were cheated out of millions.”- NBA player banned for life -Billups retired from the NBA as a player in 2014 and has been the head coach of the Trail Blazers since 2021. He was on the bench for the team’s first game of the season on Wednesday, a loss to the Minnesota Timberwolves.Rozier, 31, was the 16th overall pick by the Boston Celtics in the 2015 draft. He has averaged 13.9 points per game playing for three teams over his 11-year NBA career.Rozier is suffering from a hamstring injury and did not play in the Heat’s opening game of the NBA season on Wednesday.Rozier’s lawyer, James Trusty, said in a statement that prosecutors “appear to be taking the word of spectacularly incredible sources rather than relying on actual evidence of wrongdoing.””Terry was cleared by the NBA and these prosecutors revived that non-case,” Trusty said. “Terry is not a gambler, but he is not afraid of a fight, and he looks forward to winning this fight.”Nocella, the US attorney, said the indictment in the sports gambling case was linked to the arrest last year of a former NBA player, Jontay Porter of the Toronto Raptors, who was banned from the league for life for his role in a betting scandal.Porter was accused of placing bets linked to his performance on the court. He has pleaded guilty to wire fraud conspiracy and is awaiting sentencing.NBA players are forbidden from wagering on NBA games under league rules.Billups’s arrest comes three months after that of former NBA All-Star Gilbert Arenas, who was arrested in July on charges of running illegal high-stakes poker games at his Los Angeles mansion.Arenas has pleaded not guilty.

Republicans sounded the alarm Thursday over potential turmoil at US airports as the government shutdown threatens to drag into November, warning of ruined holiday plans for millions of Americans. With the standoff in its fourth week, President Donald Trump’s Republicans and the opposition Democrats are facing increasing pressure to end a stalemate that has crippled public services.More than 60,000 air traffic controllers and Transportation Security Administration (TSA) officers are working without pay, and the Trump administration joined Republicans in Congress to warn that increasing absenteeism could mean chaos at check-in lines.  “We are rounding into a holiday season, as we all know, and we’re in the middle of the height of the football season. This is peak travel time for the US,” House Speaker Mike Johnson told a news conference.”Hundreds of thousands of Americans are going to travel to football games this weekend, for example, and if the current trajectory continues, many Americans could miss watching their favorite teams and reconnecting with friends and family.”Airport workers calling in sick rather than working without pay — leading to significant delays — was a major factor in Trump bringing an end to the 2019 shutdown, the longest in history at 35 days.In normal times, five percent of flight delays are the result of staffing shortages but that has increased to more than 50 percent, Johnson said.He told reporters that 19,000 flights were delayed from Saturday to Monday and that this rate was “only going to increase” as the shutdown continues.Johnson said airport workers were finishing long shifts and then taking on second jobs as Uber drivers or delivering food.”The longer the shutdown goes on, and as fewer air traffic controllers show up to work, the safety the American people is thrown further into jeopardy,” he warned.- Politically toxic -Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said he had spoken to staff in control towers who were voicing deepening anger over the shutdown — a standoff over health care funding that has led to 1.4 million federal workers going without pay.”I want them coming to their facilities and controlling the airspace, but they’re having to make decisions about how they spend their time, to make sure they put food on their table, feed their kids and support their family members,” he said.After weeks of failed daily votes on a House-passed resolution to reopen the government, Senate Republicans scheduled a vote Thursday to guarantee pay for troops and some federal employees who have been working for nothing. Republicans hope that a blockade on troop pay may be seen by some Democrats as politically-toxic and may be a catalyst to finally break the party’s united stance on the shutdown. But Democrats indicated they intend to reject the bill, arguing that it gives Trump too much sway over who gets paid and who doesn’t, while offering no help for 750,000 workers placed on enforced leave without pay. A trio of shutdown bills — one on troop pay, another to pay airport security workers and air traffic controllers and a third to preserve an under-threat food aid program — could be brought to the Senate floor next week.Democrats say the only path to reopening the government is a Trump-led negotiation over their demands to extend subsidies that make health insurance affordable for millions of Americans — the key sticking point in the standoff.Republican Senate leader John Thune has offered Democrats a vote on preserving the expiring benefits and Trump has insisted he won’t negotiate with Democrats until the shutdown is over.The president is leaving Washington on Friday for a multi-day trip to Asia, his second foreign sojourn since the shutdown began.

Outgoing New York mayor Eric Adams endorsed former state governor Andrew Cuomo in the November mayoral election, The New York Times reported Thursday.Adams, who has been mired by corruption allegations linked to his term in office, dropped out of the race on September 28 but did not initially endorse a rival.Cuomo, a former governor of New York, is trailing the race’s frontrunner, Democratic Socialist Zohran Mamdani, while the Republican candidate Curtis Sliwa is a distant third. The election is on November 4.”I think that it is imperative to really wake up the Black and brown communities that have suffered from gentrification on how important this race is,” Adams told The Times in an interview.”I’m going to walk with the governor in those neighborhoods and get them engaged.”Adams has had a rocky relationship with Cuomo previously, calling the former governor a “snake and a liar” for reportedly pressuring him to quit the race.It is unclear what impact Adams’s endorsement will have on the race.In the last citywide poll before Adams dropped out, commissioned by Fox News and carried out between September 18 and 22, Adams was polling 7 percent.Mamdani leads Cuomo by 11 percentage points in the latest citywide poll, conducted by Patriot Polling between October 18 and 19, with the Democratic Party candidate at 43 percent. Sliwa was at 19 percent.

Republicans sounded the alarm Thursday over potential turmoil at US airports as the government shutdown threatens to drag into November, warning of ruined holiday plans for millions of Americans. With the standoff in its fourth week, President Donald Trump’s Republicans and the opposition Democrats are facing increasing pressure to end a stalemate that has crippled public services.More than 60,000 air traffic controllers and Transportation Security Administration (TSA) officers are working without pay, and the Trump administration joined Republicans in Congress to warn that increasing absenteeism could mean chaos at check-in lines.  “We are rounding into a holiday season, as we all know, and we’re in the middle of the height of the football season. This is peak travel time for the US,” House Speaker Mike Johnson told a news conference.”Hundreds of thousands of Americans are going to travel to football games this weekend, for example, and if the current trajectory continues, many Americans could miss watching their favorite teams and reconnecting with friends and family.”Airport workers calling in sick rather than working without pay — leading to significant delays — was a major factor in Trump bringing an end to the 2019 shutdown, the longest in history at 35 days.In normal times, five percent of flight delays are the result of staffing shortages but that has increased to more than 50 percent, Johnson said.He told reporters that 19,000 flights were delayed from Saturday to Monday and that this rate was “only going to increase” as the shutdown continues.Johnson said airport workers were finishing long shifts and then taking on second jobs driving Uber or delivering food.”The longer the shutdown goes on, and as fewer air traffic controllers show up to work, the safety the American people is thrown further into jeopardy,” he warned.Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said he had spoken to staff in control towers who were voicing deepening anger over the shutdown — a standoff over health care funding that has led to 1.4 million federal workers going without pay.”I want them coming to their facilities and controlling the airspace, but they’re having to make decisions about how they spend their time, to make sure they put food on their table, feed their kids and support their family members,” he said.

An Alabama Death Row inmate convicted of murdering a man over a drug debt by setting him alight is to be executed by nitrogen gas in the southern US state on Thursday.Anthony Boyd, 54, who has steadfastly maintained his innocence, was sentenced to death in 1995 for the murder two years earlier of 32-year-old Gregory Huguley.His execution is scheduled to be carried out at 6:00 pm Central Time (2300 GMT) at a state prison in the town of Atmore.Prosecutors said at his trial that Boyd and three other men abducted Huguley at gunpoint because he allegedly failed to pay for $200 of cocaine.Huguley was driven to a baseball field, bound with duct tape, doused with gasoline and set on fire.Boyd was convicted largely on the testimony of a co-defendant, Quintay Cox, who was spared the death penalty.There have been 39 executions in the United States this year, the most since 2013, when 39 inmates were also put to death.Florida has carried out the most executions with 14, followed by Texas with five and South Carolina and Alabama with four.Thirty-three of this year’s executions have been carried out by lethal injection, two by firing squad and four by nitrogen hypoxia, which involves pumping nitrogen gas into a face mask, causing the prisoner to suffocate.The use of nitrogen gas as a method of capital punishment has been denounced by United Nations experts as cruel and inhumane.The death penalty has been abolished in 23 of the 50 US states, while three others — California, Oregon and Pennsylvania — have moratoriums in place.President Donald Trump is a proponent of capital punishment and, on his first day in office, called for an expansion of its use “for the vilest crimes.”

Portland Trail Blazers head coach Chauncey Billups and Miami Heat guard Terry Rozier have been arrested in connection with a probe into illegal gambling, US media reported Thursday.ABC News, citing law enforcement sources, said the arrest of the 49-year-old Billups was linked to an illegal poker operation tied to the Mafia.Rozier was arrested in a separate but related betting case, the television network said.CBS News said FBI Director Kash Patel was scheduled to make an announcement concerning the arrests in New York at 10:00 am (1400 GMT).A former star player for the Detroit Pistons, Billups retired from the league in 2014 and has been the coach of the Trailblazers for five years.ABC said Billups would make a first court appearance in Oregon later Thursday.Rozier, 31, has been in the NBA for 11 years and was the 16th overall pick by the Boston Celtics in the 2015 draft.He did not play in the Heat’s opening game of the NBA season on Wednesday.An NBA player, Jontay Porter of the Toronto Raptors, was banned from the league for life last year for his role in a betting scandal.

US President Donald Trump is set to embark on a major trip to Asia this week with all eyes on an expected meeting with Chinese leader Xi Jinping that has huge implications for the global economy.Trump said on Wednesday he was making a “big trip” to Malaysia, Japan and South Korea, his first visit to the region since he returned to the White House in a blaze of tariffs and geopolitical brinkmanship.Much of the trip remains shrouded in uncertainty. The White House has given almost no details, and Trump has warned that his anticipated sit-down with Xi in South Korea may not even happen amid ongoing tensions.But Trump has made it clear he hopes to seal a “good” deal with China and end a bitter trade war between the world’s two largest economies that has caused global shockwaves.The host nations are meanwhile set to roll out the red carpet to ensure they stay on the right side of the unpredictable 79-year-old, and win the best deals they can on tariffs and security assistance. – Malaysia and Japan – His first stop is expected to be Malaysia for the October 26-28 summit of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) — a grouping Trump skipped several times in his first term.Trump is set to ink a trade deal with Malaysia — but more importantly to oversee the signing of a peace accord between Thailand and Cambodia, as he continues his quest for a Nobel Peace Prize.”President Trump is keen to see the more positive results of the peace negotiations between Thailand and Cambodia,” Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said on Wednesday.The US leader may also meet Brazilian counterpart Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva on the sidelines of the summit to improve ties after months of bad blood, officials from both countries told AFP.Trump’s next stop is expected to be Tokyo where he will be able to meet conservative Sanae Takaichi, named this week as Japan’s first woman prime minister.Japan has escaped the worst of the tariffs Trump slapped on countries around the world to end what he calls unfair trade balances that are “ripping off the United States.” At the same time, Trump wants Japan to halt Russian energy imports and has also urged Tokyo to follow Western allies in increasing defense spending.- Xi in South Korea? -But the climax of the trip is expected to be in South Korea, where Trump is due to arrive on October 29 for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit — and potentially meet Xi.The first meeting between the two leaders since Trump’s return to office could smooth over the trade war between Washington and Beijing — but Beijing’s rare earth curbs have also infuriated Trump.Trump initially threatened to cancel the meeting and imposed fresh tariffs, before saying he would go ahead after all. But he added on Tuesday that still “maybe it won’t happen.”He said on Wednesday that he hoped to make a deal with Xi on “everything” and also hoped the Chinese leader could have a “big influence” on getting Russia’s Vladimir Putin to end the Ukraine war.Analysts warned not to expect any breakthroughs.”The meeting will be a data point along an existing continuum rather than an inflection point in the relationship,” said Ryan Hass, a senior fellow at Brookings Institution.South Korea, seeking its own trade deal, is reportedly considering the rare step of awarding Trump the Grand Order of Mugunghwa — the country’s highest decoration — during his visit. North Korea will also be on the agenda. The country fired multiple ballistic missiles on Wednesday, just days before Trump was due to visit.Trump has said he hopes to meet North Korean leader Kim Jong Un following several meetings during the US president’s first term, but there has been no confirmation of reports that the White House was looking at a new meeting this time.burs-dk/sla/lb

In a rare moment of agreement, the three candidates vying to be mayor of New York City all denounced on Wednesday a federal immigration raid that targeted street vendors.The Department of Homeland Security said federal  agents detained nine “illegal aliens” on Tuesday on suspicion of various crimes, including selling counterfeit goods. In the second and final debate of the mayoral race, Democratic frontrunner Zohran Mamdani slammed the department’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) unit as “a reckless entity that cares little for the law and even less for the people that they’re supposed to serve.”His adversaries, Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat running as an independent, and Republican Curtis Sliwa, both argued that any crackdowns on counterfeit sales should be conducted by the city’s police, not federal agents.Cuomo, 67, said such work is “a basic policing function” for local officials.Sliwa, 71, agreed, saying “the feds should not have stepped into this situation.”Cuomo added that if he had been the city’s mayor, he would have called US President Donald Trump — who initiated the crackdowns across the country — to tell him he was out of bounds.Trump, a native New Yorker who has never won an election in his own state, has frequently sounded off on the mayoral race in the nation’s largest city, calling Mamdani a “communist.”On Tuesday, Trump told reporters the next mayor will have to “go through the White House.”New Yorkers responded to the federal immigration raid with protests on Tuesday and Wednesday evening.”It’s really important to show solidarity for our neighbors who are being targeted by what is increasingly an authoritarian and corrupt state,” Emma Ehrlich, a 37-year-old protester, told AFP.”We value immigrants, whether they’re documented or undocumented. They contribute so much to this city,” she added.New York State Attorney General Letitia James, a staunch opponent of Trump’s, called on the public to provide information, photos and videos about ICE activities in the city.The New York City Council and religious leaders plan to hold a press conference Thursday, calling on the president not to send National Guard troops as he has done in other major Democratic cities, including Portland, Chicago, Washington, Memphis and Los Angeles. Voting in New York’s mayoral race begins Saturday.

The agency overseeing Donald Trump’s aggressive immigration crackdown is spending tens of millions of dollars on guns, ammunition, body armor and surveillance technology, according to procurement records reviewed by AFP.Spending across the categories is vastly higher than under both the Biden presidency and the first Trump administration.ICE — the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency — has been tasked with deporting an unprecedented number of unauthorized migrants from the United States.Data gleaned from federal contracts shows an agency that critics say is transforming itself into a paramilitary force, aided by a budget that now equals or surpasses the military spending of many smaller nations.Since Trump took office on January 20, ICE has placed more than $70 million of purchase orders in the “small arms, ordnance, and ordnance accessories manufacturing” category.By contrast, from January 20 to October 20, 2024, it spent $9.7 million on small arms and accessories in total.This September alone, ICE placed orders for $10 million of firearms and magazines from Quantico Tactical Incorporated, and another $9 million on long guns and accessories from automatic weapons manufacturer Geissele Automatics.The agency also bought more than $10 million worth of body armor, holsters and related equipment in the same month.This extensive purchase of hardware and munitions is happening in tandem with a spending spree on monitoring and surveillance software, records show.In September, ICE spent $3.75 million on software and related services from facial recognition company Clearview AI.In the nine months since the start of the second Trump administration, it has bought products from Magnet Forensics and Cellebrite, both of which make software to extract data from mobile devices, and Penlink, which provides access to location data from hundreds of millions of mobile phones.This is in addition to a $30 million contract with Palantir to build “Immigration OS,” billed as an all-in-one platform to target unauthorized migrants and identify which are in the process of voluntary return to their country of origin.Over the same time period, the agency also reactivated a $2 million contract with Paragon, an Israeli spyware provider.The contract had been placed under review by the Biden administration, after a 2023 executive order prohibiting the purchase of spyware that could pose national security risks to the United States.- 24/7 monitoring -Beyond the contracts that have already been signed, the agency is soliciting proposals for projects that will bolster its social media surveillance.A request for proposals (RFP) published in early October sought responses from contractors capable of creating a social media monitoring center staffed with almost 30 analysts for an around-the-clock operation to “obtain real-time and mission critical person-specific information” from information shared online.Though surveillance operations play an important role in law enforcement activities, rights advocates have long raised concerns over the scope of information collected in the social media age.Large-scale surveillance of social media threatens the right to free expression, said Cooper Quintin, a Senior Staff Technologist at the Electronic Frontier Foundation digital rights group.”If people know that ICE is on social media… looking for anybody who demonstrates any sort of allegiance to their [home] country, that’s going to chill people’s willingness to say anything publicly,” Quintin told AFP.The possibility of buying data through third parties also means that agencies can surveil vast numbers of people without obtaining any warrant, he said.ICE did not respond when contacted with a request for comment from AFP.- Soaring budget -ICE’s recent purchases have been made possible by a flood of money allocated to the agency in the most recent Congressional budget.The Republican budget passed in July gave ICE an operating budget of $75 billion over four years, or $18.8 billion per year on average.This is almost double the agency’s operating budget of $9.6 billion in the previous 2024 fiscal year.Though other government departments are operating at reduced capacity during the government shutdown, ICE and its parent agency, the Department of Homeland Security, have been mostly unaffected.But a spokesperson from the agency confirmed to US media that the Office of Detention Oversight — the division that oversees standards at detention facilities — had been shut down.