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4 Americans Kidnapped In Northern Mexico, Officials Say

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MEXICO CITY, The FBI reports that four Americans have been kidnapped in the Mexican border city of Matamoros. As they drove through the city, the abductors opened fire on the Americans’ car.

On Friday, the foursome drove into Matamoros from Brownsville, Texas, in a white minivan bearing North Carolina plates.

An official statement released by the FBI’s San Antonio Field Office on Sunday said that the vehicle was fired upon shortly after crossing into Mexico.

“All four Americans were placed in a vehicle and taken away from the scene by armed men,” the office said. The FBI has announced a reward of $50,000 for information leading to the safe return of the victims and the perpetrators’ capture.

Warring factions of the Gulf drug cartel call Matamoros home, and on Friday, the violence escalated to the point where the U.S. Consulate issued a warning, and local authorities advised residents to seek cover. There appeared to be no obvious link between the kidnappings and the violence on Friday.

Tamaulipas state police reported fatalities and injuries on Friday but did not provide a precise number. The state police have stated that no law enforcement or military personnel were involved in the shootings on Friday.

mexico

Two unidentified civilians were involved in armed incidents, the state police said on Friday via social media.

Two unidentified civilians were involved in armed incidents, the state police said on Friday via social media. “Verification of the exact death toll is still underway.”

In Matamoros and other large border cities in Tamaulipas Mexico, victims of violence are often uncounted because cartels have a history of taking their bodies with them. Due to fears for their safety, local media outlets often choose not to report such events.

Online video-sharing platforms On Friday, cameras captured armed men putting two bodies into a truck in broad daylight in Mexico.

The State Department advises U.S. citizens to avoid traveling to the state of Tamaulipas. Brownsville is a border city, so many Texans and other Americans cross over to see relatives, get medical care, or do their shopping. In addition, it would serve as a gateway for people heading further into Mexico.

For many years, spring breakers visiting South Padre Island, Texas, often extended their trip by spending a night in Matamoros. However, the region’s rising crime rate over the past decade to fifteen has scared away a lot of potential customers.

The van the victims were riding in on Friday, according to the FBI, had license plates from North Carolina, but authorities have released no other information about the victims or their backgrounds.

SOURCE – (AP)

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Facebook Securities Fraud Case Dropped By US Supreme Court

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REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo

(VOR News) – On Friday, the United States Supreme Court refrained from issuing a rule on Facebook’s permissibility of shareholders advancing a securities fraud claim.

The litigation alleges that Facebook, a subsidiary of Meta, misled investors about the improper utilization of user data from the social media site.

At their hearing on November 6, the justices denied Facebook’s appeal against a lower court’s ruling that allowed a class action lawsuit initiated by Amalgamated Bank in 2018 to proceed.

On November 6, the Supreme Court stated that the issue should not have been addressed and, therefore, opted not to resolve the fundamental legal question at hand. The intervention ensures that the lower court’s verdict remains in force.

The court issued a one-line order for dismissal without providing a rationale. This month, the Supreme Court addressed two cases concerning the ability of private litigants to hold companies accountable for purported securities fraud. One such instance was the dispute involving Facebook.

The alternative case for chip manufacturer NVIDIA, renowned for its specialization in artificial intelligence, was discussed on November 13th. The Supreme Court rendered a verdict in the NVIDIA case on November 13th.

The plaintiffs in the lawsuit against Facebook claimed that the company had inappropriately withheld information from investors concerning a 2015 data breach involving the British political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica.

The incident impacted over 30 million Facebook users.

Facebook faced allegations of misleading investors, constituting a violation of the Securities Exchange Act, a federal statute established in 1934 that requires publicly traded companies to disclose the risks they encounter.

In 2018, media claims indicated that Cambridge Analytica had improperly utilized Facebook user data during Donald Trump’s successful 2016 presidential campaign, resulting in a fall in Facebook’s stock market price.

The investors have submitted a claim for unspecified monetary damages to partially offset the value of the stock they previously possessed.

The inquiry at hand was whether the company had contravened the law by declining to disclose details regarding the prior data breach in later business-risk disclosures while characterizing such scenarios as merely hypothetical.

Andy Stone, a representative, expressed his discontent with the Supreme Court’s decision to refrain from clarifying this specific legislative provision.

Stone asserted, “The plaintiff’s allegations are unfounded, and we will persist in our defense as the district court reviews this case.”

Facebook asserted that it was not obligated to disclose that the risk it had previously cautioned about had already materialized, as “a reasonable investor” would interpret risk disclosures as forward-looking statements.

President Joe Biden’s administration expressed its support for shareholders in this instance.

Initially dismissed by United States District Judge Edward Davila, the 9th United States Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco reinstated the action.

The decision compelled Facebook to appeal to the Supreme Court.

As Alan Morrison, a law professor at George Washington University, states, the plaintiffs are anticipated to pursue discovery, a process entailing the sharing of information between the litigating parties, following the Supreme Court’s dismissal of the appeal.

Morrison also indicated that Facebook “may refile their motion to dismiss under a slightly altered standard, partially to achieve delay.”

After the Cambridge Analytica data breach, the United States government commenced inquiries into privacy protocols, alongside other lawsuits and a congressional inquiry. In 2019, the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) initiated enforcement action against Facebook.

The company ultimately resolved the complaint for $100 million. Consequently, Facebook was obligated to remit a distinct penalty of $5 billion to the Federal Trade Commission of the United States.

The Securities and Exchange Commission, the federal agency overseeing fraudulent activities in the securities sector, has had its authority curtailed by prior Supreme Court rulings.

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Pam Bondi to Be Appointed US Attorney General

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Pam Bondi
Photo via Reuters

(VOR News) – President-elect Donald Trump selected Pam Bondi, a former Florida Attorney General and ally, to succeed Matt Gaetz on Thursday after the latter withdrew from consideration.

Gaetz’s drug use and sexual intercourse with a 17-year-old girl were the subject of an investigation by the House Ethics Committee. He denies any wrongdoing.

During Trump’s first administration, Pam Bondi, 59, served on the Opioids and Drug Abuse Commission. He served as police chief of the third-most populous state from 2011 to 2019.

She was also a member of Trump’s defense team at his first impeachment hearing, where he was charged with using military assistance to get Ukraine to look into the wrongdoing of his opponent, now President Joe Biden. The Senate cleared Trump on all charges.

The right-wing America First Policy Institute, which has collaborated with Trump’s campaign to create government concepts, most recently had Pam Bondi as its legal branch leader.

Unlike Pam Bondi, Gaetz lacks the experience necessary to serve as attorney general and will likely encounter resistance from Senate Democrats and some Republicans.

According to Jones Walker defense attorney David Weinstein, a former federal prosecutor in Florida, “She is unequivocally qualified for the position on paper.” Throughout her life, she battled in court. Her resume stood out from the previous nominee.

In a tweet announcing his intention to nominate Bondi, Trump praised her skills as a prosecutor and her firm stance against crime as Florida’s first female attorney general. Trump said that even though Bondi was elected on November 5th, while numerous state and federal criminal investigations were underway, he pledged to keep federal prosecutions from being politicized.

According to Trump, “The biased Department of Justice has been weaponized against me and other Republicans for an excessive duration.” That is not true anymore.

Discussion about Pam Bondi

In 2013, the Trump Foundation may have broken federal law by giving $25,000 to a political action committee that supported Pam Bondi. Bondi thought about looking into the for-profit Trump University.

Pam Bondi disputed that her decision to end her legal actions against Trump University following the 2016 disclosure of Trump’s $25,000 gift had anything to do with her decision to withdraw from those actions. According to her, all pertinent material was made public by her office.

The Trump team attributed the erroneous money disclosure to a “series of unfortunate coincidences and errors.” New York state fraud investigations resulted in the dissolution of both Trump University and the Trump Foundation.

After misleading Trump University students, he settled for $25 million and was fined $2 million for misusing charitable funds.

Following Special Counsel Jack Smith’s acquisition of two indictments against him for his interference in the 2020 election and his possession of secret materials after leaving office, Trump has voiced his displeasure with the present leadership of the Justice Department and pledged retaliation.

Bondi remains loyal

She and several other lawyers claimed that Smith’s appointment was illegal in an amicus brief they prepared in support of Trump in the secret information litigation. The Justice Department filed an appeal after U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, a Trump nominee, rejected the case.

According to a long-standing rule against charging a sitting president, Smith and other top Justice Department officials are examining how both Trump criminal cases were resolved.

Trump was incensed with the obstructionism of the Justice Department during his first administration. Bill Barr specifically refuted Trump’s baseless claims that he lost the 2020 election due to fraud, and Attorney General Jeff Sessions permitted an investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election.

Trump’s objectives for the Justice Department have been delineated through his public remarks and interviews with former department lawyers and Mark Paoletta, a conservative lawyer who develops the department’s policy.

Federal prosecutors may give illegal immigration cases priority.

Cities might have to cooperate with federal immigration enforcement to obtain a portion of the department’s $291 million justice assistance award.

The Civil Rights Division will probably refocus its attention from legal challenges to diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives in the public and commercial sectors to police accountability to religious freedom.

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PayPal’s Technical Challenges Are Affecting Thousands

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PayPal

(VOR News)—PayPal is software that enables the sending and receiving of monetary orders and transactions.

According to the corporation, which has taken responsibility for the incident mentioned before, PayPal is apparently experiencing problems in every region of the world in which it conducts business.

In addition, PayPal noted on its service status website that it was experiencing “a system issue” which may affect a variety of PayPal Products, such as the ability to withdraw money from an account and the ability to complete an express checkout. This issue may even hurt the ability to complete an express checkout.

This problem may also affect other PayPal products.

Given the presence of this vulnerability, there are additional PayPal products that could be affected by it.

One of the remarks was, “Our technical teams are actively working towards resolving the issue,” as stated in the distributed email. This was one of the comments that individuals made. Several assertions were made, and this was one of them all.

Several customers from various regions of the world have stated that they are unable to access their accounts or that they are having difficulty making payments.

These clients have informed us that they are experiencing difficulties obtaining their orders by communicating their concerns. As an additional point of interest, several customers have reported that they are currently having trouble processing payments. This should be taken into consideration.

Up until the moment the clock struck twelve twelve Central European Time (GMT), the platform outage monitor known as Downdetector had already received more than seven thousand alerts from users. When the clock reached twelve o’clock, this was the situation.

As indicated by a dashboard that provides an overview of the current state of the organization’s services, the crisis started at roughly 10:53 UTC.

PayPal gathered information

The business asserts that its bitcoin services and the peer-to-peer payment platform Venmo were among the services impacted by the outage. Venmo is a form of cryptocurrency that enables users to send and receive payments from one another.

This information suggests that these services were among those impacted by the circumstances.

Some consumers have voiced their frustration on social media over being unable to access their accounts.

Users’ discontentment has been communicated through posts on various social media platforms recently.

Users of X, once known as Twitter, have submitted screenshots of a notification that flashed when they attempted to log into the platform.

Notification after logging in.

The message was flashed on the screen whenever they attempted to log in by entering their credentials. Those fortunate enough to receive the notification were strongly recommended to “please check your entries and try again.”

Since its beginning in 1998, PayPal has developed into a global financial institution associated with a significance level significant enough to be considered noteworthy. This evolution took place virtually immediately following PayPal’s establishment.

Investors were informed that the total number of active accounts across all of the company’s companies increased to $432 million for the month ending September 30th.

This information was provided to investors. Following the conclusion of the month, this information was made available to the public.

During the month of October, investors were provided with this information for their consideration. The material in question was made available to those individuals who were interested in investing.

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