Corruption is Everywhere > Khan's conviction and sentence suspended in Pakistan; 1000+ Emails connect Joe and Hunter's firm when Joe was VP

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If there is a major country that can rival Ukraine for corruption it would be Pakistan.

Pakistani court suspends former PM Khan’s graft conviction and jail sentence

A Pakistani court on Tuesday suspended the corruption conviction and three-year

prison sentence of former prime minister Imran Khan, his lawyer said.

Issued on: 29/08/2023 - 11:00; 1 min

In this photo taken on July 26, 2023, Pakistan's former prime minister Imran Khan leaves

the Supreme Court in Islamabad. © Aamir Qureshi, AFP

By: FRANCE 24

The Islamabad High Court also granted bail for Khan, but it’s not immediately clear if he will be released since he also faces several other charges. 

Khan's lawyer Shoaib Shaheen said the court issued a brief verbal order and a written ruling will be issued later.

The ruling comes weeks after Khan was convicted and sentenced to three years in prison by another court that found him guilty of concealing assets after selling state gifts he received while in office.

Khan was imprisoned on August 5 after being sentenced to three years in jail for unlawfully selling state gifts during his tenure as prime minister from 2018 to 2022.

As a result of the conviction, Pakistan's Election Commission also barred Khan from contesting elections for five years.

The cricketer-turned-politician was ousted from power through a no-confidence vote in parliament last year.

The ruling came a day after a court in the western province of Balochistan quashed a sedition case against Khan.

The case was registered in the southwestern city of Quetta in March, the capital of the province, based on an allegation that one of Khan's speeches was seditious.

Balochistan High Court said on Monday that prosecutors had failed to obtain the required consent from the federal or provincial government to lodge sedition charges.

The charges are "without lawful authority and are of no legal effect", the court ruled, throwing out the case.

Khan lost power after falling out with Pakistan's influential military, and his attempts to rally popular support have stirred political turmoil in a country already struggling with one of its worst economic crises.

A general election was expected in November, though it is likely to be delayed until at least early next year.

Aside from the graft and sedition cases, Khan is also facing charges ranging from terrorism and encouraging assaults on state institutions – after his supporters attacked military and government installations in May – as well as abetment to murder following the slaying of a Supreme Court lawyer in June.

(FRANCE 24 with AFP, AP and Reuters)

Hunter Biden’s firm, Joe’s VP office exchanged more than 1,000 emails: records

By Victor Nava, NYPost

August 30, 2023 10:47pm  UpdatedB

House Oversight panel demands files on Hunter Biden’s use of Air Force Two: ‘Must be accountability’

Hunter Biden’s Rosemont Seneca Partners investment firm traded more than 1,000 emails with Joe Biden’s office during his time as vice president — and hundreds remain hidden because of executive privilege asserted by the White House, documents released by the National Archives show. 

The 861 emails that reference Rosemont Seneca were sent or received by the Office of the Vice President between January 2011 and December 2013, according to America First Legal, which obtained the messages from the National Archives and Records Administration and released them on Wednesday. 

The White House refused to allow the release of 200 emails referencing Hunter Biden’s firm, citing executive privilege.  

“Release would disclose confidential advice between the President and his advisors, or between such advisors,” NARA informed America First Legal in response to its records request. 

Hunter Biden’s firm sent or received some 1,000 emails from then Vice President Joe Biden’s office. AP

Hunter Biden and his business associates frequently used their direct line of communications with the Office of the Vice President to leverage access to the Obama White House, the trove of emails show. 

White House guest lists, seating assignments, and biographies of guests for various official events, including the 2012 United Kingdom State Dinner, the 2013 Turkey State Luncheon and the 2014 France State Dinner, were shared with Rosemont Seneca employees. 

One email contains an invitation forwarded to the White House for then-Vice President Joe Biden to attend an event at the UCLA Burkle Center for International Relations, and another invites then-second lady Jill Biden to participate in a World Food Program campaign. 

Invitations from the White House for several events that Hunter Biden presumably attended or had requested tickets for guests for are also shown in NARA’s document dump. 

In one frantic December 2013 email, lobbyist Doug Davenport begs Hunter Biden’s former business partner Eric Schwerin for tickets, on short notice, to the White House Christmas tour, indicating that Rosemont Seneca’s level of access to the Executive Mansion was well-known. 

“Hey guys……I am in a bad spot,” Davenport’s email begins. “I have a guy from Apple who is dying to take his 4 colleagues on a REGULAR WH Tour…see the tree, etc…..this Friday.”

“I know it is WAY short notice, but I would owe you my life if you could tell me any way possible to get my hands on some public tour tix for this Friday? Or am I just way out of line???” he adds. 

Schwerin then directs a Rosemont Seneca employee to “check with our friends over there” and informs Davenport that the only way the request would be possible would be to get them to “the front of the line.”

Hunter Biden’s former business partner Eric Schwerin was frequently in contact with the vice president’s office, the emails show. Twitter

Rosemont Seneca then contacts Joe Biden’s office and is able to secure Davenport’s last-minute request as a “Big favor for Hunter,” the email shows. 

“These records provide even more evidence that no daylight existed between Hunter Biden’s foreign business dealings and the Office of the Vice President during the Obama Administration,” Gene Hamilton, America First Legal vice president and general counsel, said in a statement. 

“The evidence accumulating against the Biden family’s malfeasance is staggering. We will continue to put the pieces of this puzzle together and expose the truth to the American people,” he added. 

America First Legal, a group founded by Stephen Miller, a former senior adviser to President Donald Trump, received the documents from the National Archives in response to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit for records from Joe Biden’s time as vice president.

Is America's #1 crime family in the White House?

Climate Change > California's Great Drought is over, for now - Thanks Hilary (Not Clinton)

California is now practically drought-free, but we keep wasting

so much rainwater

A driver whose car stalled out on flooded Avenue 48 asks for help from a passerby during Tropical Storm Hilary.

 

(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)

BY GRACE TOOHEYSTAFF WRITER 

AUG. 29, 2023 3 AM PTShow more sharing options

Almost all of California is finally drought-free, after Tropical Storm Hilary’s rare summer drenching added to this winter’s record-setting rainfall totals.

But despite all that drought-busting precipitation, California continues to capture only a percentage of that water. Much of the abundance in rain from Hilary ended up running off into the ocean — not captured or stored for future use, when California will inevitably face its next drought.

“We’re not even coming close to capturing all the runoff,” said Mark Gold, the director of Water Scarcity Solutions for the Natural Resources Defense Council. He still called Hilary’s rainfall “an unexpected boon” for Southern California’s local water supplies, but said too much of the storm’s water washed away — the latest reminder of the state’s urgent challenge to better capture rainwater to help refill vital groundwater resources.

“The potential is really there for us to do even better,” Gold said. “We can definitely do a lot more than what we’re doing.”

CALIFORNIA

L.A. promised to stop wasting so much stormwater. But progress has been painfully slow

Feb. 21, 2023

Following the torrent of winter storms from a parade of atmospheric rivers, much of California pulled out of drought conditions after three of the state’s driest years on record. And Hilary continued to build on that trend — pulling one of the state’s driest regions out of such dire conditions.

“Most of that lingering drought ... has been essentially removed from the Mojave Desert,” said David Simeral, a climatologist at the Desert Research Institute, who mapped the latest U.S. Drought Monitor update. While much of the state moved out of drought conditions after strong winter and spring atmospheric river storms, Simeral said the Mojave didn’t benefit as much from those rainmakers.

But after Hilary dumped 2 to 6 inches across the Mojave, “it was enough to be able to remove the remaining areas of drought,” he said. The Mojave had been in drought conditions since August 2020.

Only California’s most northwestern and southeastern corners remain under moderate drought or in abnormally dry conditions — just 6% of the state, according to the drought monitor.

State and local officials have been actively working to improve methods to capture stormwater, but it’s simply not been fast enough to keep up with growing water demands in a more extreme climate — while balancing flood control. Los Angeles County recently shared its latest water plan, which includes lofty goals to greatly increase yearly groundwater recharge.

But when fast, strong storms like Hilary currently hit, the local infrastructure isn’t able to capture a majority of the deluge.

“What that means is that there’s larger amounts of rainwater rolling down the hill, rolling down to the street ... our systems are getting flooded and overwhelmed pretty quickly,” said Art Castro, a watershed manager for the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power. He said that happened during Tropical Storm Hilary at the Tujunga Spreading Grounds — one of the county’s larger spreading grounds, which employ earthen bowls to capture runoff and encourage the rain to percolate into the earth, recharging important aquifers.

When the basins are full, the water will just “bypass the system,” Castro said, running off into the Pacific.

Still, the city was able to capture more than 10,000 acre-feet of water from Hilary’s rainfall, as of preliminary numbers last week, with more expected as water continues to be diverted from regional dams, Castro said. That’s about 3.2 billion gallons, enough to provide a year’s worth of water to 40,000 households, he said.

However that 10,000 acre-feet only makes up about 7% of the water the city has captured since October, Castro said.

“In a perfect world, we should have captured a lot more than 10,000 acre-feet because of Hilary,” Castro said. “But because of the limitations of our infrastructure ... we weren’t able to maximize that potential.”

CLIMATE & ENVIRONMENT

Tracking California’s water supplies

July 8, 2022

And maximizing that water is increasingly important for L.A., as drained aquifers cannot just bounce back after one good water year.

“What we need to do is either capture a lot of the wet season, or develop more stormwater recapture projects that can take advantage of an average year,” Castro said. That will likely require “back-engineering” of L.A.’s water system, he said, as much of it was designed with older rain models in mind, when storms weren’t as intense.

County-operated spreading grounds, of which there more than two dozen, captured approximately 8,600 acre-feet of stormwater during Hilary’s storms, about 2.8 billion gallons, according to L.A. County Public Works spokesperson Steven Frasher. But in this above-average rainfall year, that amounts to less than 2% of the county’s stormwater captured since October.

On a statewide level, Hilary also didn’t have a major effect on water supplies.

Statewide

Statewide reservoir storage capacity is 130% of average for this month.

Historical average

78% full

78% full

Data as of Aug. 28

California Department of Water Resources

Sean Greene

LOS ANGELES TIMES

“This was a very fast moving storm and, really, it was largely a Southern California event,” said Jeanine Jones, the interstate resources manager for the California Department of Water Resources. “It caused a lot of flash flooding in places that aren’t designed to handle a lot of water, like Death Valley and some of the desert areas, but from a water supply perspective, it’s not really very significant.”

Most of the state’s reservoirs, and its largest, are located in northern California, which meant they were largely unaffected by the southern tropical storm, Jones said. And, perhaps more importantly, most of those reservoirs already sit at some of the highest levels in years, many measuring well above 100% of historical averages, state data show.

“We got a lot of water all at once in a really short time, but it wasn’t the kind of storm that does much for water supply,” Jones said.

The ground can only absorb so much moisture so fast from such quick, intense storms, like Hilary, Jones said.

“The groundwater takes time to recharge,” Jones said. “Most of that water is going to run out to the ocean or run into a desert playa.”

But in the short term, officials are hopeful the rainfall from the unusual tropical storm will help with one thing: wildfires.

“It should help some in terms of adding some soil moisture and helping the plants to not be so dried out,” Simeral said, which creates less fuel for flames.

Forecasters typically expect September to begin the peak of Southern California’s fire season, but the recently added moisture could help delay that, said Rose Schoenfeld, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Oxnard.

“Hopefully this extra precipitation will push that back even further,” she said.