Author: chicagoinquirer

by Luc Cohen, Jonathan Stempel NEW YORK -Federal prosecutors on Thursday charged New York City Mayor Eric Adams with accepting illegal campaign contributions and luxury travel from Turkish nationals seeking to influence him, capping an investigation that has sent the largest U.S. city’s government into turmoil. In a 57-page indictment, prosecutors laid out an alleged scheme stretching back to 2014 that helped to underwrite Adams’ 2021 mayoral campaign and showered him with free rooms at opulent hotels and meals at high-end restaurants. In return, Adams pressured city officials to allow the country’s new 36-story consulate to open despite safety concerns,…

by Jasper Ward WASHINGTON – Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani was disbarred in the U.S. capital on Thursday by a Washington, D.C., Court of Appeals, months after he lost his law license in New York over baseless claims he made alleging the 2020 presidential election was stolen. Giuliani has been a member of the D.C. bar since 1976. His law license was suspended in 2021 and a District of Columbia attorney ethics committee recommended in July that his license be revoked. He also lost his New York law license in July. Giuliani, who in the 1980s served as…

by Dietrich Knauth NEW YORK – A Roman Catholic diocese in Long Island, New York announced a new bankruptcy settlement on Thursday that would pay more than $323 million to about 530 sex abuse survivors who alleged they were abused by priests when they were children. The Roman Catholic Diocese of Rockville Centre, which serves about 1.2 million Catholics in Nassau and Suffolk counties, said earlier this year that it did not think a bankruptcy settlement would be possible, after abuse survivors rejected the diocese’s previous $200 million settlement offer. U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Martin Glenn in Manhattan, who is overseeing…

Los Angeles Clippers star forward Kawhi Leonard will not participate in drills at training camp next week as he recovers from knee inflammation that plagued him during last season’s playoffs. Leonard played just two games in Los Angeles’ first-round series with the Dallas Mavericks, who prevailed 4-2 and eventually went on to reach the NBA Finals. The Athletic reported Tuesday that Leonard then underwent a knee procedure during the offseason. Even though the swelling in Leonard’s knee has gone down “significantly,” according to Clippers president Lawrence Frank, the team is still unsure if the 33-year-old will be good to go…

by Jake Offenhartz, Larry Neumeister and Anthony Izaguirre NEW YORK — New York City Mayor Eric Adams has been indicted by a grand jury on federal criminal charges, according to two people familiar with the matter. The indictment detailing the charges against Adams, a Democrat, was still sealed late Wednesday, according to the people, who spoke with The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly. The U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan declined to comment. The indictment was first reported by The New York Times. “I always knew that If I stood…

WASHINGTON – Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee in November’s presidential election, on Tuesday said she backed ending a procedural tool that currently requires a supermajority in the Senate to pass legislation to protect the right to an abortion nationally. Since a 2022 Supreme Court decision overturned the Roe v. Wade ruling on abortion, about a dozen U.S. states have passed laws banning or severely limiting abortion rights, which has become a key issue in the 2024 election. Harris wants Congress to pass a national law codifying access to a safe abortion. The support of 60 senators is required to pass…

by Timothy Aeppel CHICAGO – Drew Greenblatt loves that the Federal Reserve has cut interest rates. But the half-point reduction, the first in what is expected to be a series of cuts, won’t help him win what he calls the “trench warfare” he’s fighting with one of his big customers. That buyer moved work out of China during the COVID-19 pandemic – placing about $800,000 in orders at Greenblatt’s small U.S. factory last year. Greenblatt bought robots and hired more workers to meet the new demand. Then orders stopped earlier this year. “When I asked why, they said they’d gone…

by David Shepardson, Nora Eckert and Abhirup Roy WASHINGTON/DETROIT -The Biden administration’s proposed ban on Chinese connected-car technology could prove its strongest weapon yet to fend off an onslaught of cheap Chinese electric vehicles that has upended the global auto industry. The ban on hardware and software, announced Monday by the U.S. Commerce Department, is the administration’s latest salvo after imposing 100% tariffs on Chinese EVs and denying a $7,500 consumer EV subsidy to any vehicle with made-in-China components. Unlike those measures, the connected-car tech prohibition would apply even to cars built by Chinese firms outside China – such as…

by Jaspreet Kalra MUMBAI – India is in talks with countries in Africa and South America to help them build a digital payments system using its homegrown Unified Payments Interface (UPI) as a blueprint and expects two launches by early 2027, a senior official said on Tuesday. The overseas arm of the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) is in talks with “several countries” and is closing in on an agreement with one of them, said Ritesh Shukla, CEO of NPCI International Payments Ltd (NIPL). The NPCI, a quasi-regulator under the central bank, is a public non-profit organisation for retail…

by Elisha Bala-Gbogbo and Camillus Eboh ABUJA -Nigeria’s central bank unexpectedly raised its benchmark lending rate by 50 basis points to 27.25% on Tuesday in a unanimous decision to tame persistent inflationary pressures, bank governor Olayemi Cardoso said. The move wrongfooted analysts who had expected rates to stay on hold and indicates the bank is prioritizing inflation control over economic growth amid the worst cost-of-living crisis in a generation. It is the fifth rate hike this year, after increases of 50 basis points (bps) in July, 150 bps in May, 200 bps in March and 400 bps in February which…