US allows UN Gaza ceasefire resolution to pass – National & International News – MON 25Mar2024

Last minute court win for Trump over massive NY bond.

US allows UN Gaza ceasefire resolution to pass.

Moscow attack: Four beaten suspects in court after nearly 140 killed.

NATIONAL NEWS

Last minute court win for Trump over massive NY bond

Today was to be the deadline for Donald Trump, his family members and the Trump Organization to put up a $464 million bond while they appeal a fraud judgment imposed in a New York court last month. Without the bond, the state of New York would have been able to begin seizing Trump assets to collect on the judgment, including Trump’s valuable real estate properties. Trump and his team had not succeeded as of last week in securing a bond, having been turned down by over 30 securities firms. Trump’s attorneys called on a New York appeals court last week to lower the amount of the bond, saying that securing the full amount was a “practical impossibility”.

The appeals court issued a decision today lowering the appeal bond to $175 million and giving Trump another 10 days to get the funds together. Trump is also expected to get at least a $3 billion windfall due to a merger between his social media company and an acquisitions firm owned by Republican billionaire megadonor Jeff Yass. However, under the terms of the merger, under which shares of Trump’s media company will be publicly traded for the first time, Trump cannot liquidate his shares for 6 months.

Yass may be behind Trump’s recent change of heart about the social media platform TikTok. During his presidency, Trump tried and failed to force the sale of the video-sharing platform by its Chinese parent company ByteDance. After the House of Representatives passed a bill to either ban TikTok or force its sale last week, Trump came out forcefully against the bill. Trump claimed that doing away with TikTok would only empower Facebook, which Trump called an “enemy of the people”. Yass has a 15% stake in ByteDance.

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INTERNATIONAL NEWS

US allows UN Gaza ceasefire resolution to pass

For the first time since Oct. 7, the US did not use its UN Security Council veto to block a meaningful ceasefire resolution for Gaza. All 14 of the other UNSC members voted in favor of the resolution, with the US being the sole abstention. After China and Russia blocked a sham resolution authored by the US last week, the 10 elected (non-permanent) members of the UNSC put together a new resolution over the weekend. These 10 nations were Algeria, Guyana, Japan, Malta, Mozambique, Republic of Korea, Sierra Leone, Slovenia, and Switzerland.

Unlike the resolution proposed by the US, UNSCR 2728 does not link the demand for a ceasefire with the release of all hostages by both Israel and Hamas. It calls for both, but does not make one dependent upon the other as the US resolution did. It also demands an immediate ceasefire by both Israel and Hamas to last the Islamic holy month of Ramadan. Ramadan began on March 10 and ends April 9. It then calls for a “lasting sustainable ceasefire”. The text originally called for a “permanent” ceasefire, but the US lobbied over the weekend to change it from “permanent” to “lasting”. Even after demanding this change, the US did not vote in favor of the resolution.

Following the US abstention, Israel canceled a delegation that was to travel to Washington to discuss Israel’s planned invasion of Rafah. UNSCR 2728 does not mention Rafah or the planned invasion, which much of the world has cautioned against due to the inevitable humanitarian toll.

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Moscow concert attack: Four beaten suspects in court after nearly 140 killed

On Friday, four gunmen attacked a crowd gathered for a rock concert outside Moscow, killing at least 139 people. The gunmen also set off explosives which caused the concert venue to be engulfed in flames. Over the weekend, Russian security forces snagged four suspects, all of them apparently from Tajikistan. The four men appeared in a Moscow court today, after obviously having been badly beaten. One of the suspects was brought in with a wheelchair and had apparently lost an eye. Videos of their brutal interrogation found their way to the internet this weekend, a leak apparently contrived to show “strength” after Russia’s deadliest terror attack in the last two decades.

Hours after the attack occurred, ISIS-Khorasan (known as ISIS-K) had claimed responsibility for the attack. They even published videos of the attack on one of their semi-official propaganda channels. However, Russia is claiming that the attackers were also supported by Ukraine. Russian officials claim that the men were apprehended while fleeing south, where, officials alleged, Ukraine had made arrangements for them to safely cross the border.

Ukrainian authorities have denied any Ukrainian involvement, as has the US and other Western nations.

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