Archives for May 2021

TACOMA, Wash. (AP) — A suspended Nigerian government official accused of stealing $350,000 from Washington state as part of a massive pandemic-related fraud also sought to bilk the Internal Revenue Service of nearly $1.6 million, federal prosecutors said Friday.

Abidemi Rufai, 42, was arrested May 14 as he tried to travel from New York to Nigeria. He is accused of using stolen identities to take more than $350,000 from the Washington state Employment Security Department as it tried to rush unemployment benefits to people who lost work during the pandemic last year.

The state paid likely paid out more than $647 million in such fraudulent claims, though $370 million was recovered, officials said last month.

Federal prosecutors in western Washington have been seeking to make sure Rufai remains in custody pending trial, saying he poses a severe flight risk, is facile with fake identities, and that he’s unlikely to ever be extradited if he makes it back to Nigeria.

On Friday, they filed a letter with U.S. District Judge Benjamin Settle to bolster that argument. It said that in the last few days, IRS criminal investigators have revealed that they have been investigating an email account associated with Rufai for years.

According to the IRS, the email account was used to file 652 fraudulent tax returns, seeking $1.6 million in refunds, from 2016 to 2019.

“The IRS rejected many of the filings, but accepted returns seeking approximately $900,000,” the letter said. “The IRS is calculating the amount of refunds actually paid out on these returns.”

An attorney representing Rufai, Lance Hester, told The Seattle Times he was not yet familiar enough with the allegations against his client to comment.

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CANBERRA, Australia (AP) — Australia considers the incarceration of a Chinese Australian writer who has been tried in Beijing for alleged espionage a case of arbitrary detention, the foreign minister said.

Yang Hengjun faced a closed trial on Thursday. The court deferred its verdict to a later date.

“Given our enduring concerns about this case, including the lack of detail as to the charges and the investigation made available to Dr. Yang and to Australia, we consider this to be an instance of arbitrary detention of an Australian citizen,” Foreign Minister Marise Payne said in a statement Friday.

Australia first warned its citizens of the risk of arbitrary detention if they visited China in a travel advisory in July last year. The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade advised that Chinese “authorities have detained foreigners because they’re ‘endangering national security,’ ” adding that Australians may also be at risk.

The Chinese Embassy in Australia dismissed the warning as “ridiculous” and “disinformation.”

Australian Embassy officials visited Yang in detention on Friday and gave assurances that Australia stood by him and his family “at this very difficult time,” Payne said. It was the 20th consular visit since Yang was taken into custody on arrival in China in January 2019.

Ambassador Graham Fletcher was denied entry to the court on Thursday.

Payne said Australian officials’ presence at the court entrance reinforced her government’s support for Yang and “our deep concerns with what continues to be a closed and opaque process.”

Chinese authorities have not released any details of the charges against Yang, a novelist who reportedly formerly worked for China’s Ministry of State Security as an intelligence agent.

Yang has denied the accusation against him, and while a conviction is virtually certain, it isn’t clear when the verdict will be handed down. The espionage charge carries penalties ranging from three years in prison to the death penalty.

China’s Foreign Ministry said China was following international practice in barring observers from attending a case involving state secrets.

The trial comes at a time of deteriorating relations between the two countries, brought on by Chinese retaliation against Australian legislation against covert foreign interference in its domestic politics, the exclusion of telecommunications giant Huawei from Australia’s 5G phone network, and calls for an independent investigation into the origins of the COVID-19 outbreak that was first detected in China in late 2019.

Beijing has essentially suspended all but the most routine contacts between the sides, while state media and the Foreign Ministry routinely attack Australia as adopting anti-Chinese policies at the behest of the United States, China’s main geopolitical rival.

Australian journalists Michael Smith of the Australian Financial Review and Bill Birtles of the Australian Broadcasting Corp. fled China in September after sheltering in Australian diplomatic compounds following demands for questioning by Chinese authorities. They were allowed to depart China under a deal brokered between the two governments, leaving Australian media without a physical presence in the country.

Before their departure, Chinese police questioned both journalists about Australian citizen Cheng Lei, a business news anchor for CGNT, China’s English-language state media channel, who had been detained a month earlier.

China says Cheng has been lawfully detained on suspicion of violating Chinese national security laws.

China has blocked Australian exports, including beef, wine, coal, lobsters, wood and barley.

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BOSTON (AP) — Alex Verdugo hit a three-run homer in the fifth inning, J.D. Martinez drove in two runs with a double and the Boston Red Sox beat the Miami Marlins 5-2 Friday night in a game that was called after 5 1/2 innings because of rain.

A drizzle at the onset grew into a downpour, with puddles forming throughout the infield despite the grounds crew’s efforts.

“As players we knew. We saw the field. We were out there. We knew that there was no way we were going to keep going with this game. It just was getting dangerous,” Verdugo said.

With a delay clearly on the way, Verdugo said the Red Sox wanted to be the ones who broke the tie — just in case the game couldn’t continue in those conditions.

“I don’t know how the infielders were actually able to throw the ball, either. It felt like every ball I would get was just waterlogged,” Verdugo said. “I was kind of lucky I was in the outfield. The infield started getting muddy and pretty bad.”

Adam Ottavino slogged through a soggy top of the sixth before umpires suspended play. After a delay of 1 hour, 25 minutes, the game was called, with Ottavino awarded his second save.

It was the second straight game the Red Sox have had to sit through a delay. Boston’s home game Wednesday night against Atlanta was also interrupted because of rain, and the delay lasted almost three hours before the Red Sox finished off a 9-5 win over the Atlanta Braves early Thursday.

With the weekend series the only visit to Boston for the Marlins this season, the clubs tried to squeeze in the opener despite the ominous forecast for Friday night and another Saturday that wasn’t any better.

Martín Pérez (3-2) pitched five innings and got the win, holding Miami to two runs on five hits and struck out four.

“Every pitch was hard in these conditions to throw the ball,” Pérez said.

Rookie Cody Poteet (2-1) took his first loss. Poteet pitched 4 1/3 innings, allowing five runs on four hits and two walks. Poteet also struck out six.

Jorge Alfaro hit a two-run homer for the Marlins in the second. Martinez hit a two-run double to tie it in the third, then Verdugo broke the tie in the fifth with a shot that cleared the Marlins’ bullpen.

FIRST LOSS

After picking up a pair of victories and one no-decision in three career starts, Poteet ended up taking his first loss despite starting strong on Friday. Poteet got Kiké Hernández looking to start the game and had four strikeouts after two innings.

“I thought he looked good early. It seemed like his command tonight was not as good as we’ve seen it,” Miami manager Don Mattingly said. “He was kind of grinding some counts, things like that. ”

DOUBLE DEVERS

The interleague series features two members of the Devers family going head-to-head. Boston third baseman Rafael Devers faced his younger cousin, José Devers, a rookie infielder with the Marlins, for the first time in their careers.

OPEN UP!

The game was the last before Massachusetts lifted COVID-19 restrictions and capacity limits. Rochelle Walensky, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, was scheduled to throw out the ceremonial first pitch before Saturday’s game — weather permitting.

WELCOME BACK

Former Boston catcher Sandy León, who played five seasons for the Red Sox and helped the club win the 2018 World Series with, received a warm welcome back from fans when the video monitors showed some highlights of his Red Sox years, then a live shot of him in the Marlins’ dugout after the first inning.

TRAINER’S ROOM

Marlins: OF Starling Marté was reinstated from the injured list after missing 34 games with a broken rib and started in center field. Marté hit a one-out double to center with one out in the first in his first at-bat since April 18. … The Marlins also placed SS Miguel Rojas on the 10-day IL with a dislocated left index finger and optioned 1B Lewin Diaz to Triple-A Jacksonville.

Red Sox: Recalled RHP Colten Brewer from Triple-A Worcester. Brewer, who hasn’t pitched in the majors this season, made four relief appearances for the WooSox, allowing four runs on four hits over four innings.

UP NEXT:

Marlins: LHP Trevor Rogers (6-2, 1.75 ERA) leads Miami in victories. Rogers held Philadelphia to one run over five innings Monday but did not figure in the decision of the Marlins’ 9-6 win.

Red Sox: RHP Nathan Eovaldi (5-2, 4.39) returns for his first start since his streak of 68 straight innings without a homer ended when the Phillies’ Rhys Hoskins went deep last Saturday in Philadelphia.

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More AP MLB: https://apnews.com/hub/MLB and https://twitter.com/AP_Sports

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WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden is proposing a $6 trillion budget for next year that’s piled high with new safety net programs for the poor and middle class, but his generosity depends on taxing corporations and the wealthy to keep the nation’s spiking debt from spiraling totally out of control.

Biden inherited record pandemic-stoked spending and won a major victory on COVID-19 relief earlier this year. Friday’s rollout adds his recently announced infrastructure and social spending initiatives and fleshes out his earlier plans to sharply increase spending for annual Cabinet budgets.

This year’s projected deficit would set a new record of $3.7 trillion that would drop to $1.8 trillion next year — still almost double pre-pandemic levels. The national debt will soon breach $30 trillion after more than $5 trillion in already approved COVID-19 relief. As a result, the government must borrow roughly 50 cents of every dollar it spends this year and next.

With the deficit largely unchecked, Biden would use proposed tax hikes on businesses and high-earning people to power huge new social programs like universal prekindergarten, large subsidies for child care and guaranteed paid leave.

“The best way to grow our economy is not from the top down, but from the bottom up and the middle out,” Biden said in his budget message. “Our prosperity comes from the people who get up every day, work hard, raise their family, pay their taxes, serve their Nation, and volunteer in their communities.”

The budget incorporates the administration’s eight-year, $2.3 trillion infrastructure proposal and its $1.8 trillion American Families Plan and adds details on his $1.5 trillion request for annual operating expenditures for the Pentagon and domestic agencies.

Acting White House budget chief Shalanda Young said the Biden plan “does exactly what the president told the country he would do. Grow the economy, create jobs and do so responsibly by requiring the wealthiest Americans and big corporations to pay their fair share.”

Biden’s budget is sure to give Republicans fresh ammunition for their criticisms of the new Democratic administration as bent on a “tax and spend” agenda that would damage the economy and impose a crushing debt burden on younger Americans. Republicans also say he’s shorting the military.

“It is insanely expensive. It dramatically increases nondefense spending and taxes” and would weaken the Pentagon, said South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, top Republican on the Budget Committee and a generally pragmatic GOP voice on spending bills. “There will be serious discussions about government funding. But the Biden budget isn’t serious and it won’t be a part of those discussions.”

Veteran GOP Sen. Richard Shelby, whose help is needed to pass annual agency budget bills, blasted Biden’s plan as “a blueprint for the higher taxes, excessive spending” that also “shortchanges our national security.”

Biden is a veteran of a long-gone Washington that fought bitterly in the 1980s and 1990s to wrestle the deficit under control. But there hasn’t been any real effort to stem the flow of red ink since a tea party-driven moment in 2011 that produced unpopular automatic spending cuts that were largely reversed over the ensuing decade.

Huge deficits have yet to drive up interest rates as many fiscal hawks have feared, however, and genuine anti-deficit sentiment is difficult to find in either political party.

The unusual timing of the budget rollout — the Friday afternoon before Memorial Day weekend — indicates that the White House isn’t eager to trumpet the bad deficit news.

Under Biden’s plan, the debt held by the public would quickly match the size of the economy and soon eclipse record levels of debt relative to gross domestic product that have stood since World War II. That’s despite more than $3 trillion in proposed tax increases over the decade, including an increase in the corporate tax rate from 21% to 28%, increased capital gains rates on top earners and returning the top personal income tax bracket to 39.6%.

Like all presidential budgets, Biden’s plan is simply a proposal. It’s up to Congress to implement it through tax and spending legislation and annual agency budget bills. With Democrats in control of Capitol Hill, albeit barely, the president has the ability to implement many of his tax and spending plans, though his hopes for awarding greater increases to domestic agencies than to the Pentagon are sure to hit a GOP roadblock.

Some Democrats are already balking at Biden’s full menu of tax increases, imperiling his ability to pay for his ambitious social spending. And his plan to increase spending on domestic agencies by 16% while limiting defense to a 1.7% rise is politically impossible in the 50-50 Senate.

A top Senate ally, Appropriations Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., called Thursday for bipartisan talks to start the annual appropriations bills. There’s incentive for both GOP defense hawks and liberal Democrats like Leahy to bargain since the alternative is a long-term freeze at current spending levels.

The Biden plan comes as the White House is seeking an agreement with Senate Republicans over infrastructure spending. But winning gains that would even begin to meet his social spending goals would require him to rely solely on support from his narrow Democratic majorities in Congress.

Biden’s spending proposals include numerous new programs to strengthen the “caring economy” with large programs aimed at child and elder care: $437 billion over 10 years to provide free preschool to all 3- and 4-year-olds and two years of free community college to all Americans. Also, $225 billion would subsidize child care to allow many to pay a maximum of 7% of their income for all children under age 5.

Another $225 billion over the next decade would create a national family and medical leave program, while $200 billion would make recently enacted subsidy increases under the Obama health care law permanent.

Tax hikes, Biden claims, would pay for his initiatives over the next 15 years, including $2 trillion from corporations from curbing overseas tax preferences and raising rates to 28%. Unrealized capital gains would be taxed at death, a problem for some Democrats, and the Biden plan would significantly stiffen IRS enforcement, which the budget claims would raise $700 billion over a decade otherwise lost to cheating and dodging.

Rep. Richard Neal, the top Democratic House tax writer, praised Biden’s new spending and tax cuts but was silent on his tax hikes, saying he’ll “consider the administration’s proposals carefully.”

Biden’s budget calls for a roughly 10% bump in foreign affairs funding from 2021, with top increases for climate change, global health and humanitarian aid. Biden’s $58.5 billion request would support the administration’s return to international groups, like the World Health Organization and others, from which former President Donald Trump had withdrawn.

Last year’s $3.1 trillion budget deficit under Trump more than doubled the previous record, as the coronavirus pandemic shrank revenues and sent spending soaring.

Council of Economic Advisers Chair Cecelia Rouse told reporters Friday that the economy is likely to outperform the administration’s official prediction, forged in February, of 5.2% economic growth this year.

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