#election commissioner sought reply

[best24news]

Rewari News: चुनावी रिहर्सल में शामिल नहीं हुए 40 कर्मचारी, चुनाव आयुक्त ने मांगा जबाब

Rewari News: चुनावी रिहर्सल में शामिल नहीं हुए 40 कर्मचारी, चुनाव आयुक्त ने मांगा जबाब

रेवाडी: रेवाड़ी जिले में होने वाले 9 और 12 नवंबर को मतदान के लिए 2 दिन पहले हुए रिहर्सल में 40 कर्मचारी अनुपस्थित पाए गए। डीसी एवं जिला निर्वाचन अधिकारी पंचायत अशोक कुमार गर्ग ने ऐसे अनुपस्थित रहने वाले कर्मचारियों के खिलाफ अनुशासनात्मक कार्रवाई करने के निर्देश दिए हैं। Kosli Crime: जेब में मिला सुसाईड नोट, खुला राज सुधीर ने की क्यो की आत्महत्या? मांगा गया जवाब मांगा: डीसी अशोक कुमार गर्ग ने बताया…

[cityofmorgantown]

Tom Bloom Is The Most Delicate Snowflake

Last week, news broke that the ACLU had officially warned various state politicians about their social media behavior. One of those politicians was Monongalia County’s Tom Bloom. The County Commissioner has made a habit of blocking critical constituents on Facebook. The ACLU is balking at his doing precisely that because, while it is acceptable to ban people for obscenity and threats and other misbehavior, doing so simply because one of your constituents disagrees with you is a no go. 

The U.S. Supreme Court has referred to social media as a “modern public square.” When a government official cuts off access to a public square because of a constituent’s viewpoint, they are depriving that person of their rights under both the federal and state constitutions, said ACLU-WV Legal Director Loree Stark, who issued the notices.

“It’s unacceptable for public officials to deny their constituents access because of a differing viewpoint,” Stark said. “And it is just as unconstitutional to bar a constituent from engaging on an official social media account because they disagree with you as it is to ban someone from a town hall event.”

The more specific issue is that Bloom is using his personal Facebook page to engage in local political activity. He has a campaign page that he could use instead, but he prefers not to for whatever reason. But Bloom chooses to use his personal Facebook account to advocate politically, which in turn makes his personal page fair game for his critics. 

But Bloom, being Bloom, and having been caught redhanded, has persistently refused to acknowledge what he was doing, repeatedly insisting that the only people he banned were trolls operating under fake names, political activists who did not live in Monongalia County, and people who threatened both him and his family. He has now posted twice on the subject, once here when the complaint was first made public, and a second time today (although, oddly, he deleted that one after he got pushback from constituents who noted he was not actually allowed to simply ban people who had disagreed with him, because doing so was a First Amendment issue). 

Bloom used the pages of the Dominion Post to insist that he only posts about issues of local relevant interest on his personal page:

Bloom is active on Facebook, regularly posting to his own page as well as community forums.

“Today I posted about a five-car accident because I heard about it on the radio. Those are the kinds of things that I post. I try to put out information to help the community,” Bloom said. “If there are two goals that I have worked hard to achieve in my years of public service, they are accessibility and transparency, and I intend to keep my commitment to these goals.”

Bloom said he finds the timing of the claims interesting and speculated that he may have been included as a result of his recent public comments questioning how funds were used by the Appalachian Stewardship Foundation — a group formed when the Sierra Club, Trout Unlimited and the National Parks Conservation Association brought a legal challenge to the air quality permit being sought by Longview Power.

Of course, Bloom knows damned well that the ACLU’s rebuke had nothing to do with his critical comments about the Sierra Club, Trout Unlimited, or the National Parks Conservation Association. That is because Bloom knows who it was that he banned on Facebook*. Yes, he banned some of the same cowardly trolls anybody who has been on local Facebook groups have endured; he also banned folks who do not live in Monongalia County (although this was not a universal rule, but rather one he chose to create whenever particular critics got under his skin). But he also banned his critics. 

How do I know? Because I am one of the people he banned. Not because I have a fake account (I don’t), not because I don’t live in the county (I absolutely do), and not because I threatened or harrassed him (I most certainly never did either). 

He specifically banned me because I regularly asked him to explain why it was that he was always trying to mislead people via his Facebook feed. Bloom came up in local politics when he only had to make sure that good old boy outlets (like the Dominion Post and WAJR) were pleased with him. As long as he fed them stories they liked, they returned the favor by keeping their attention elsewhere. But Bloom’s addiction to social media has opened him up to mountains of criticism given his ongoing commitment to flying completely off the handle whenever anything happens anywhere in the county. 

And he has never evolved to the point where he was willing to accept the idea that other people might be interested not only in what he said but in the wild inconsistencies buried within his claims. Bloom has never found a topic he is willing to honestly engage on, and has always gone out of his way to bury the truth in a maze of misdirection, misinformation, and misleading public statements. So this website teed off on him. 

This page has relentlessly criticized Bloom’s dishonest behavior, whether than meant discussing his angry dissembling about who his friends are, his ongoing attempts to mislead people about Morgantown’s User Fee, his absurd desire to waste hundreds of thousands of tax dollars on a website, his ridiculous demand that he be allowed to skip work whenever he felt like it without using his allotted vacation days, and all manner of other egregious misbehavior. 

Bloom hates that. 

He always will. He believes he is owed worshipful coverage. He is a good old boy (although not local) politician who believes that his only responsibility is to take care of entrenched political interests throughout the county. He is too old now to change and has shown no interest in more honestly engaging in political discourse about local issues. His loyalties are where they are and nothing is going to change that. He is what he is. 

But nobody has to accept that.

That, of course, is a bummer, but if he is really so annoyed about having to endure constituents who disagree with him, nobody is forcing him to be a County Commissioner. That is work he chose to do voluntarily. And if he wants to remain a County Commissioner? Well, nobody is forcing him to use his personal page for political activity. He has a political page that he could use instead. But he lacks the discipline and wherewithal to do so. Which is how he ended up here, on the wrong side of a First Amendment that he very clearly despises, all while insisting that his goals are “accessibility” and “transparency,” two laughably ridiculous claims. 

So it goes though in our local politics. Bloom is following in the footsteps of other local politicos who have done the same thing, all insisting that they are owed our performed ignorance of their dishonest shenanigans, all insisting that to hold them responsible for the things they voluntarily say and claim is a bridge too far.  

(*Incidentally, Tom Bloom could have figured out this mystery immediately if he had done literally ten seconds of Facebook research. I’m right here replying to an open call for elected officials who ban their constituents.)

[dailynews9]

Insulating EC appointment from exec : SC seeks govt reply

Insulating EC appointment from exec : SC seeks govt reply

New Delhi : The Court sought the Union govern ment’s response to a PIL , re questing the court to frame gul delines for a mechanism to se lect election commissioners to honour the constitutional man date to make the EC independ ent in letter and spirit . Appearing for NGO ” Associ ation for Democratic Reforms ” advocate Prashant Bhushan told a bench of Justices Ajay Rastogi and BV Nagarathna…

[fastworldnews1]

ECP wants PTI's Azam Swati to appear in person

The Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) has issued a show-cause notice to Federal Minister for Railways and PTI leader Azam Swati.The ECP has asked Swati to appear before the commission in person on October 26 and respond to the show-cause notice.

A bench, comprising ECP members Nisar Ahmed Durrani and Shah Mohammad Jatoi heard the allegations against Swati on Thursday in Islamabad. Swati's lawyer was replaced by a junior lawyer in the commission and he shared that lawyer Chaudhry Faisal was busy in the Supreme Court.

Jatoi asked the junior lawyer why he had not taken a briefing over the case from the senior lawyer, while Durrani pointed out that only giving power of attorney won't solve the problem.

Swati had lashed out at the ECP, accusing it of taking money from companies that make electronic voting machines during a meeting of the Senate Standing Committee on Parliamentary Affairs on September 10 and another held the night prior at President House.

Swati had alleged that the ECP is destroying the country's democracy and that it is involved in rigging.

Members of the ECP had walked out of the meeting of the Senate Standing Committee on Parliamentary Affairs on Azam Swati's allegations.

Earlier, three weeks ago, the ECP had given federal ministers Fawad Chaudhry and Swati more time to submit their replies regarding allegations they levelled against the commission and the chief election commissioner (CEC).

Sources privy to the matter said that the ECP had sought replies from the federal ministers in three weeks.

They said that action against the ministers will be taken under the Election Act in case of non-compliance with the orders and their behaviour may be considered contempt if proof backing the allegations is not provided.

The ECP had served notices to Chaudhry and Swati on September 16, seeking explanations within a week from both the ministers for accusations against CEC Sikander Sultan Raja and the commission.

However, both the ministers, on September 23, had requested an extension from the ECP to submit their replies.

Chaudhry had said that the ECP has "become the headquarters for Opposition parties" and the chief election commissioner is "acting as their mouthpiece", during a press conference on the same day Swati made his allegations.

https://ift.tt/2Z9gLkq

[timespakistan]

Govt expresses displeasure over ECP's reply to PM Imran Khan Federal Ministers talking to media in Islamabad after the ECP’s press release. ISLAMABAD: The federal ministers on Friday expressed their disapproval of the way the Election Commission of Pakistan’s (ECP) released a press release to respond to Prime Minister Imran Khan, adding that the government is “unhappy” with the way the commission dealt with the matter. According to an article by Geo.tv,   the Minister for Science and Technology Fawad Chaudhry,  along with Federal Information Minister Shibli Faraz and Senator-elect Barrister Ali Zafar, was speaking to the media after the ECP fired back on PM Imran’s allegation of corruption in Senate elections. The science and technology minister clarified that the prime minister and the PTI respect the Election Commission and all the institutions of Pakistan. “There is no [truth] to the rumour that PTI will be protesting in front of the ECP tomorrow. ECP is revered by us and will remain so,” said Chaudhry. The minister, however, stated that the institutions show their “independence through their actions and not through press releases”. “It is irresponsible to issue a press release on Prime Minister’s stance,” said the minister. The lawmaker from Jhelum clarified that PM Imran Khan, in his statement, said that the responsibility to make elections free and fair was not fulfilled in the Senate elections held on Wednesday. “This is not a thing to be upset about, but measures need to be taken.” He stated that PM Imran meant that the government and the ECP should work together to “develop a mechanism that will stop rigging” and ensure free and fair elections. “I want to assure the chief election commissioner (CEC) and members that we want to see you strong,” said Chaudhry. ‘Shocked’ over ECP asking PTI for evidence The minister said he is “shocked” over the ECP which said that the PTI should come forward with “evidence.” He said that the evidence was there in the form of “videos of vote-buying, Sindh Information Minister Nasir Shah’s audio, and Maryam Nawaz’s speech.” The minister hoped that the ECP will “reviews its stance and not rely on press releases”. He added that he rather expected the ECP to “prove its independence through its actions”. “From Daska elections till Senate elections you have to realise that there have been shortcomings and it cannot be said that all that has happened is correct,” said Chaudhry, adding that if the ECP requires the government’s help, then it is “available 24/7”. Vote of confidence against PM The federal minister also spoke about the vote of confidence sought by PM Imran Khan on Saturday’s session. “As far as a vote of confidence is concerned, our 177 members have arrived in Islamabad,” said Chaudhry, adding that the parliamentary party meeting held today will be attended by the members as well. He repeated that this was not the “first challenge for PM Imran Khan”. “He has been taking Pakistan out of challenges all his life, be it sports, health or politics. Tomorrow, PTI and its allies will give a vote of confidence to PM Imran Khan,” said Chaudhry. Before Fawad Chaudhry, Information Minister Shibli Faraz stated that the PM spoke about the “most important issue” facing the country in his speech which was “free and fair elections”. “Elections are the foundation of democracy. And when the foundation is correct, then the building will also be fine,” said Faraz. He also spoke about the Opposition, alleging that it introduced the money culture and eroded the moral fabric of the country. He blamed the main Opposition parties, the PPP and PML-N, for it. https://timespakistan.com/govt-expresses-displeasure-over-ecps-reply-to-pm-imran-khan/12667/

[prakask]

CAT stays suspension of IAS officer who searched PM’s chopper

The Central Administrative Tribunal (CAT) on Thursday stayed the Election Commission’s move to suspend an IAS officer who, as a poll observer, had searched the helicopter of Prime Minister Narendra Modi in Odisha’s Sambalpur during a campaign rally last week. Shortly after the CAT passed the interim order, the EC revoked Mohammed Mohsin’s suspension, but barred him from election duty and recommended disciplinary action against him to the Karnataka government. The revocation of Mohsin’s suspension, the ban on poll duty and the recommendation for disciplinary action against him, the EC order states, is based on the findings of a 32-page report submitted by Deputy Election Commissioner Dharmendra Sharma. The  Bengaluru bench of CAT said, “It cannot be said that SPG Protectees are eligible for anything and everything” and that “election officials have checked private vehicles of (Karnataka) Chief Minister Shri Kumaraswamy more than once and no action followed… the Chief Minister of Odisha’s vehicles were also checked.” The Tribunal said in its order, “There was a news report that heavy packages were taken away from the Hon’ble Prime Minister’s cavalcade into another vehicle and sped away in another vehicle in Karnataka.” The Tribunal has also sought replies from the EC within three weeks. Reacting to the development, a senior EC official said, “The stay order has been passed without hearing the Commission’s side. Since it has been now sought, we will present our version to them.” Mohsin, a 1996-batch IAS officer from the Karnataka cadre, said: “I have gone strictly by the rules. I have not done anything wrong. Whatever are the rules will have to be followed”. Asked if he feared retribution for his action, he said: “I have an unblemished record in my 22 years of service. I have always followed what the law says.” Read the full article

[monicasharmalove]

DD, AIR respond to Election Commission's queries on PM Modi's address

Current Affairs

After the Election Commission (EC) wrote to Doordarshan and All India Radio (AIR) to gather more information on the feed of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s address on India successfully testing an anti-satellite missile on Wednesday, the state-owned brodcasters have sent their replies. The EC hopes to conclude its examination of the matter by Friday. However, the EC officials said no explanation had been sought from the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) on the matter.

They also said the PMO did not approach the EC before Modi’s address to the nation.

“We are hopeful that we will be able to complete the examination of the matter soon. We are hoping to complete it by Friday. AIR and Doordarshan have responded. We are examining their response,” Deputy Election Commissioner Sandeep Saxena said. When asked whether there was any intimation or permission sought by the PMO, he replied in the negative. “This issue requires analysis of what really happened. We have collected various facts related to the matter. There are three aspects, the model code of conduct (MCC), the law, and the media. We have written to AIR and Doordarshan to ask what was the source of the feed, and we are going into the entirety of the matter to see whether there was violation of the MCC,” Saxena said at a media briefing on Thursday. Senior Deputy Election Commissioner Umesh Sinha was also present.

After the PM’s announcement on ‘Mission Shakti’, the EC had formed a committee of officers to investigate the speech with regards to the MCC. Saxena heads that panel.Saxena was also asked whether pending the EC’s decision, the PM was allowed to speak on Mission Shakti in his political rallies, as he did in Meerut on Thursday, to which the official replied that clarity will only be given once the panel had made its decision, and each supposed breach of MCC was a separate matter.

[dpr-lahore-division]

With the compliments of, The Directorate General Public Relations,

Government of the Punjab, Lahore Ph.: 99201390.

No.1418/QU/Akram

HANDOUT (A)

ACE RETRIEVES 9870.3 KANAL LAND FROM SQUATTERS

LAHORE, September 08:

On the directions of Chief Minister Punjab Sardar Usman Buzdar, the Anti Corruption Establishment (ACE) department has retrieved 9870.3 Kanal state lands from illegal occupants amounting in the region of Rs3 billion, 10 crore and 23 lakh rupees in the month of August. It directly deposited one crore and 31 lakh rupees in government coffers while another amount of Rs69 crore was deposited through concerned departments.

The industries department and ACE imposed fines worth 37 lakh and 29 thousand rupees to 332 pumps during a joint inspection of 669 petrol pumps as measurement scales of 48 per cent pumps were found tempered.

In August, 199 out of 542 complaints received through ACE Application were resolved while the action is underway on 343 complaints. The ACE arrested 22 government employees for taking the bribe and gave decisions on 1981 complaints against 3790 received in the month of August. It disposed of 395 inquiries and announced verdicts on 121 cases. It arrested 147 accused and submitted challan of 97 last month. The ACE also arrested 10 courts and proclaimed offenders.  

In this regard, the CM has stated that a policy of zero-tolerance will continue against corruption and the corrupt mafia will be eradicated in the province. The government will go to every extent to curb the illegal occupants, he asserted.

****

No.1419/QU/Akram

HANDOUT (A)

CHAIRMAN FIEDMC CALLS ON CM PUNJAB

LAHORE, September 08:

Chairman Faisalabad Industrial Estate Development and Management Company (FIEDMC) Mian Kashif Ashfaq called on Chief Minister Punjab Sardar Usman Buzdar at his office. Ch Asim Nazir MNA, Saeed Ahmad Saeedi MPA and central vice president of PTI Ch. Muhammad Ashfaq were also present.  

The CM stated the development work of Allama Iqbal Industrial City will be accelerated and companies will be provided one-window facility as it is a flagship CPEC project. The government will solve investors' problems on a priority basis as Punjab has been developed as the role model province with regard to investment and it is leading in ease of doing business, he added. Meanwhile, more development work will be done in TT Singh and special funds will be provided for public welfare, he added.

Mian Kashif apprised CM about development work and investment of foreign companies in AIIC. 40 big companies have purchased around 1500 acre land for setting up industries, he added.

****

No.1420/QU/Akram

HANDOUT (A)

CM TAKES NOTICE OF MURDER OF THE GIRL STUDENT

LAHORE, September 08:

Chief Minister Punjab Sardar Usman Buzdar has sought a report from RPO Gujranwala about the murder of a female student in Majra village of Gujrat. He has directed to provide justice to the bereaved family and strict legal action be taken against the arrested accused. He also extended sympathies to the bereaved heirs.

****

No.1421/QU/Mujahid

HANDOUT (A)

NEW IGP CALLS ON CM PUNJAB

LAHORE, September 09:

New IG Police Inam Ghani called on Chief Minister Punjab Sardar Usman Buzdar at his office here on Wednesday.

The CM extended good wishes to him and issued directions for further improving the law & order situation in the province. He directed that indiscriminate action be initiated against the criminals and no pressures should be accepted. The police will have to be transformed as a neutral entity in toto, he said. The supremacy of the merit and the law should be ensured at any cost and no pressure be tolerated for any wrongdoing, he stressed. The CM added that protection of life and property of the people is the prime responsibility of the police and it will have to work diligently for further improving the law & order. The police should actively redress the grievances of the common man in police stations and come up to the public expectations with regard to maintenance of peace in the society, he added.

The IG police said that every possible step will be taken for improving the police system and every job will be done in accordance with the requirements of justice and merit.

****

No.1422/QU/Mujahid

HANDOUT (A)

CM AND SENIOR MINISTER CONDOLES DEATH OF MOTHER OF CHIEF WHIP SYED ABBAS ALI SHAH

LAHORE, September 09:

Chief Minister Punjab Sardar Usman Buzdar and Senior Minister Abdul Aleem Khan have expressed a deep sense of sorrow over the death of the mother of Syed Abbas Ali Shah, PTI’s MPA and chief whip in Punjab assembly. Both have extended sympathies to Syed Abbas Ali Shah and other members of the bereaved family and prayed that may Allah Almighty rest the departed soul in eternal peace and grant courage to the heirs to bear the loss with equanimity.

****

No. 1423/QU/Mujahid

HANDOUT (A)

CM INAUGURATES ALMONRY IN SHAH JAMAL

LAHORE, September 09:

         Chief Minister Punjab Sardar Usman Buzdar inaugurated an almonry in Shah Jamal here on Wednesday. He took food along with others. The labourers panegyrize food quality. The CM announced to open 11 more almonries in Lahore adding that in-principle decision has been made to start almonries outside shelter homes for the hoi polloi. The government is fulfilling its responsibilities by providing boarding and lodging facilities to the impecunious strata, he stressed. 48 thousand people have been provided food in 7 almonries in Lahore and the scope of this facility will be extended to other cities as well. Punjab Panagah Authority will be set up soon and the dream of a welfare state will be materialized, he announced. Looking after the needy is a great virtue but past governments never took any practical step for the welfare of the indigent strata. The hapless, abandoned and the poor need special attention of the society and the PTI government has taken care of the penurious stratum, he added.

Replying to the media, the CM stated the new IG police has been given instructions about law & order and supremacy of law will be fully ensured. IGs were transferred in the past too and it is not an unusual situation but an administrative matter. To another question, he replied that improvement will be introduced in the police soon. The police were being provided with all kinds of facilities including the provision of executive allowance and procurement of 550 vehicles. Similarly, 45 new police stations have been constructed and land has been given for 101 other police stations. 10 thousand constables were also being recruited, he added. Replying to a new question, CM stated that no one should have any problem with anybody in the province. We will take every step according to the law and my doors are open to everybody and anyone can meet me. I also listen to the problems of elected representatives and solve them, he said. DC Lahore gave a briefing about the establishment of almonries.

Provincial Minister Mian Mahmood ur Rasheed, ACS (U), Secretary Social Welfare, Commissioner Lahore and others were also present.

****

[fastworldnews1]

ECP imposes Rs50,000 fine on Federal Minister Faisal Vawda

The Election Commission of Pakistan on Tuesday imposed a fine of Rs50,000 on Federal Minister Faisal Vawda on seeking adjournments again and again in the disqualification case, directing him to appear in-person on the next hearing.

The ECP was hearing the petition seeking the federal minister's disqualification due to his dual nationality.

Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Sikandar Sultan Raja, who was presiding over the proceedings, said the case has already been delayed and reprimanded the counsel representing Vawda.

When the hearing resumed today, assistant counsel Hasnain Ali Chohan sought an adjournment due to Vawda’s lawyer, Muhammad bin Mohsin’s, engagement in a Lahore court.

Member ECP Irshad Qaiser asked him, "In which capacity have you appeared, you don't even have the power of attorney".

Another ECP member Altaf Ibrahim Qureshi said that the lawyer has not attached any evidence in this regard and the minister's attorney should have managed his time with the court.

On this, petitioner Qadir Mandokhel responded to Hasnain Ali Chohan and said, "You are the minister's coordinator in Karachi".

CEC Sultan Raja said the minister was supposed to respond to questions regarding his dual nationality in the hearing today.

"If the defendant failed to respond on the next haring, the ECP will itself approach the US Consulate for details," the CEC said and adjourned the hearing till February 24.

No one is above the law On the previous hearing, the CEC had said that no matter how influential someone was, they will decide the cases on merit.

The petitioner’s counsel had said if Faisal Vawda was a big man and he could not be asked questions, the returning officer should be asked to explain why he accepted the nomination papers despite possessing dual citizenship.

To this, the CEC remarked that no matter how big someone was, it had no effect on the Election Commission, the commission would decide on merit, no one would be affected. He added that Vawda had written N/A in the dual citizenship box while submitting nomination papers.

He then inquired whether Faisal Vawda did not have dual citizenship at that time. Vawda’s lawyer said that Faisal Vawda did not have dual citizenship at that time, to which the Chief Election Commissioner asked whether he had dual citizenship before. On what date he renounced dual citizenship.

The lawyer replied that he would have to take guidance in this regard. To this, Member of Election Commission Altaf Ibrahim had expressed his anger and said that it was a delaying tactic that “you will tell with guidance”.

Lawyer Muhammad bin Mohsin also said that Faisal Wawda had dual citizenship and there was no dispute over it. The Chief Election Commissioner said that he had admitted that Vawda had dual citizenship and asked when Faisal Vawda gave up his dual citizenship.

https://ift.tt/3p5v152

[nilnews4]

CS replies to House panel summons

CS replies to House panel summons

Chief Secretary Ashwani Kumar has given a detailed submission to the Assembly Committee on Privileges defending his decision to float an advertisement for the appointment of the State Election Commissioner.

Although the Chief Secretary was summoned by the committee for the second time on Monday, Mr. Kumar preferred to give a written reply to all the clarifications sought by committee members.

[bountyofbeads]

Jeffrey Epstein’s Charity Was an Image Boost Built on Deception https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/26/business/jeffrey-epstein-charity.html

Jeffrey Epstein’s Charity: An Image Boost Built on Deception

Losing tax-exempt status freed his foundation from disclosure requirements, allowing Mr. Epstein to exaggerate his giving — like in a wildly overstated Wikipedia entry.

By Steve Eder and Matthew Goldstein | Published Nov. 26, 2019, 12:41 PM ET | New York Times | Posted Nov. 26, 2019

Jeffrey Epstein’s foundation looked for all the world like a charitable powerhouse: On its websites and in its press releases, the foundation was described as a patron of hospitals, universities and film festivals, run by a global philanthropist.

The organization — known by various names, but usually called the J. Epstein Virgin Islands Foundation — wasn’t officially a charity for much of its existence, having lost its tax-exempt status in 2008.

But it worked to his advantage, helping improve the reputation of Mr. Epstein, a convicted sex offender.

A review of tax documents, government records and information provided by federal officials shows that the foundation lost its tax-exempt status for an unknown reason in the same year Mr. Epstein pleaded guilty to soliciting prostitution from a minor.

In the years between that case and his suicide in August as he faced federal sex-trafficking charges, Mr. Epstein was unshackled from the rigorous financial disclosures that charities are supposed to file every year with the government — allowing him to exaggerate his philanthropy as he sought to rebuild his reputation.

The foundation’s portrayals of its giving ranged from simple embellishment to staggering overstatement.

One of Mr. Epstein’s websites said the foundation had “helped to underwrite” the Tribeca Film Festival, when in fact it had donated $28,000 to a related organization that offers grants to filmmakers and educational programming to students in New York City. The foundation sent out news releases touting donations to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to restore Mark Rothko murals and  teach coding to 5-year-olds, claims that officials at the school later called inaccurate. It also issued a statement in 2013 saying researchers at Mount Sinai Hospital had made a major advance in breast cancer research with the backing of Mr. Epstein, although the health system’s own release makes no mention of him.

But the most glaring exaggeration appeared on Wikipedia. A user name apparently connected to Mr. Epstein edited the page for the foundation and put its annual outlay at $200 million a year — just under the amount the Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg  contributed to charity in 2018.

In reality, the foundation was worth a small fraction of that amount, according to documents obtained by The New York Times through a public records lawsuit in the Virgin Islands.

Eighteen years of financial statements show that just under $20 million flowed into the foundation since it was founded in 2000. Roughly $16.6 million was spent on donations and grants; most of the rest paid unspecified “general and administrative” expenses and $1.5 million in interest for what appears to be an undisclosed debt.

The documents, which were filed with the Virgin Islands Division of Corporations and Trademarks, do not offer details about where the money came from or ended up. That information would be contained in the public document, Form 990, that charities are required to file each year with the Internal Revenue Service. But there is just one publicly available Form 990 from the foundation — a single-page filing in 2002 — and it does not include any information on grants or donations.

Mr. Epstein’s websites portrayed the foundation as an organization with high standards and high aspirations for changing the world. A page from one site described a multistage grant process that asked applicants to describe how their project was innovative, the “pressing need” it would address and an explanation of how they would evaluate their results.

The page, from 2010, also said it was “vital to understand” that the foundation and another run by Mr. Epstein were not “piggy banks.”

But that is the term that Martin Sheil, a retired supervisory special agent with the criminal investigations division of the I.R.S., used to describe the foundation. Its lack of disclosures, he said, “could be an overt act of concealment.”

It is not clear if such misrepresentations amounted to a crime. False statements meant to fraudulently solicit donations are illegal and generally prosecuted by state attorneys general.

The New York State attorney general’s office began inquiring in 2015 whether the foundation, which said on one of its sites that it had offices in Manhattan and the Virgin Islands, needed to register as a charity in New York. Mr. Epstein’s longtime lawyer, Darren Indyke, replied that the site was inaccurate and that the foundation was operated out of an office in St. Thomas.

Mr. Indyke, who is one of two executors of Mr. Epstein’s $577 million estate, did not respond to messages seeking comment.

Before regulators closed their inquiry, Mr. Indyke provided them with a copy of a letter the foundation received from the I.R.S. in 2000 verifying its status as a charitable tax-exempt organization. But he never disclosed that the agency had dropped the foundation from its official roll of tax-exempt organizations.

The foundation was set up as part of Mr. Epstein’s participation in a lucrative program in the Virgin Islands that offered big tax breaks to his businesses — Financial Trust and Southern Trust — in return for a philanthropic commitment to charities in the territory. One of Mr. Epstein’s sales pitches to his wealthy clients was offering tax advantage strategies that sometimes included charitable giving.

Reports from the agency that approved the tax incentive show the foundation made more than $1.8 million in donations to charities, educational scholarships and symposiums there. In an emailed statement, the Virgin Islands Economic Development Authority said the foundation was established “primarily for the purpose of making charitable contributions to the Virgin Islands community.”

But public records show it also carried out some unusual transactions.

In 2017, the foundation, also known as Enhanced Education, cut a check for $160,000 to pay fines Mr. Epstein incurred for permit violations at his private islands. Its funds also backed the causes of political officials in the Virgin Islands, including up to $30,000 to support a computer giveaway by an elected official. The foundation also contributed tens of thousands of dollars to other groups, including the territory’s chamber of commerce.

Federal investigators have taken an interest in the foundation. In August, the F.B.I. contacted the Virgin Islands Department of Planning and Natural Resources about the payment to resolve the permit violations. Agents asked whether the department had a policy prohibiting a charitable foundation from paying the penalty, said Jamal Nielsen, a spokesman for the department. He said the contribution did not violate any department rules.

The F.B.I. in New York declined to comment, citing an “ongoing investigation.”

It’s not clear how the foundation lost its tax-exempt status. It could have given it up, or it may have been taken away after an I.R.S. investigation. Eric L. Smith, a spokesman for the I.R.S., said the agency could not comment, citing federal privacy laws.

The I.R.S. can also revoke tax-exempt status if a foundation fails to file a Form 990 for three consecutive years, although that rule took effect in 2010. Steven T. Miller, a former acting I.R.S. commissioner and now the national director of tax at Alliantgroup, said Form 990s “are vital both for regulators and the general public to understand the finances of a given entity.”

The scant filings by Mr. Epstein’s foundation, he said, showed a “lack of transparency.”

And over the years, Mr. Epstein operated at least three other charities, including one based in the Virgin Islands. (Mr. Indyke, his lawyer, long served as an officer for Mr. Epstein’s charities and other businesses.)

Two of Mr. Epstein’s foundations relied on wealthy business titans to provide millions in seed capital. His C.O.U.Q. foundation received about $21 million in stock and cash from charities of Leslie H. Wexner, the billionaire retail magnate whose company owns Victoria’s Secret. Mr. Epstein’s Gratitude America foundation received a $10 million donation in 2015 from a company tied to the private equity billionaire Leon D. Black.

Mr. Epstein’s other foundations complied with federal disclosure rules, making his namesake foundation the outlier.

“It doesn’t pass the smell test,” said Mr. Sheil, the retired I.R.S. special agent.

After his 2008 conviction, Mr. Epstein took great pains to burnish his reputation — and the foundation played a key role.

In 2013, a Wikipedia user named Turvill made a number of changes to the page for the foundation. The changes included saying the foundation had given more than $200 million to a long list of notable scientists since its inception, then raised its claim further by describing that sum as its approximate annual outlay.

The user name’s connection to Mr. Epstein is evident from information he disclosed in New Mexico as a result of his 2008 conviction. He provided a list of online user names, including those used by third-party reputation management services he hired. On that list was a Wikipedia handle, Turville, that does not appear anywhere on the website. But the similar name Turvill does — and that user had a particular focus on editing articles about Mr. Epstein.

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REFRESHER ON EPSTEIN'S FINANCES

Jeffrey Epstein Raked In $200 Million After Legal and Financial Crises

By Matthew Goldstein and Steve Eder | Published Oct. 3, 2019 Updated Nov. 26, 2019, 1:41 PM ET | New York Times|

Posted November 26, 2019 |

Jeffrey Epstein’s biggest client had deserted him, his money management firm had lost more than $150 million during the financial crisis, and he was a registered sex offender. But after he started a new company with a wildly speculative business plan in 2012, Mr. Epstein had no problem pulling in cash.

His start-up, Southern Trust, reported more than $200 million in revenues over the next five years, according to a review of previously unreported financial statements filed in the Virgin Islands.

Despite a name that calls to mind a financial services firm, the fledgling company with a handful of employees said it was developing a DNA data-mining service. Southern Trust was trying to gauge customers’ predisposition to cancer by “basically organizing mathematical algorithms,” Mr. Epstein told Virgin Islands officials as he sought a lucrative tax break in 2012.

Mr. Epstein’s business revival is documented in financial statements and other filings obtained by The New York Times. The documents — from Southern Trust and his earlier firm, Financial Trust — offer a glimpse of Mr. Epstein’s mysterious finances. They show that Financial Trust peaked at the end of 2004, when it reported $563 million in assets and net income of $108 million. And they demonstrate how Mr. Epstein rebuilt his business in his later years, with Southern Trust reporting $175 million in retained earnings — leftover profits that can be reinvested — in 2017, the last year for which statements were available.

But the documents do not say who was paying vast sums of money to Mr. Epstein’s new venture just a few years after his 2008 guilty plea to soliciting a minor for prostitution. Nor do they offer an explanation for why customers would hand over money to a man who had apparently switched from financial services to DNA research.

They do, however, offer a reason for that sudden change in focus. In 2012, Mr. Epstein asked the Virgin Islands Economic Development Authority to note that Financial Trust no longer managed money, so it would not have to register with federal securities regulators as required under the Dodd-Frank Act. Later that year, Financial Trust was replaced by Southern Trust, which Mr. Epstein told territorial officials would still maintain a “financial arm.”

The single-page unaudited financial statements for both companies — obtained through a public-records lawsuit against the territory’s Division of Corporations and Trademarks — are littered with curious line items.

Jeffrey Epstein’s Financial Rebound

The financial crisis and the loss of a key client dealt a blow to Mr. Epstein’s money-management business, Financial Trust. His next venture, Southern Trust, proved lucrative. By the end of 2017, it had $391 million in assets and annual revenue of $43 million.

At Financial Trust, a company with fewer than a dozen employees, investment expenses varied widely, from $1.3 million in 2000 to $16 million in 2004 to $42 million in 2005. In 2006 — the year Mr. Epstein was charged in Florida — Financial Trust pushed $117 million into an unnamed subsidiary whose purpose was undisclosed. The subsidiary was apparently transferred to Southern Trust in 2013, and by the end of 2017 the subsidiary accounted for more than half of the company’s $391 million in assets. The filings also disclose that Southern Trust received a $30.5 million loan that same year, but don’t say who provided it.

One thing the financial statements make clear: Mr. Epstein paid himself handsomely. He pocketed $400 million in dividends and other payments from the companies starting in 1999 — the first full year after he moved his operations to the Virgin Islands from New York.

The opacity of Mr. Epstein’s financial dealings has been a perplexing issue since he was arrested in July on federal charges of sex trafficking with underage girls. Although the criminal case against him closed after he committed suicide in federal custody in August, Mr. Epstein’s finances remain an important matter for women who are suing his estate claiming they were among his victims.

Two days before he killed himself, Mr. Epstein signed a will that placed his estate — estimated in court records at more than $500 million — into a trust, potentially an attempt to shield it from public scrutiny. The will lists Darren K. Indyke and Richard D. Kahn, two longtime associates, as executors.

The financial statements and accompanying documents reviewed by The Times were signed at various times by Mr. Indyke, a lawyer who incorporated dozens of Mr. Epstein’s companies, and Mr. Kahn, a New York accountant. Mr. Indyke served as president of Financial Trust for two years, which included the period that Mr. Epstein was serving a prison sentence in Florida after his 2008 guilty plea.

Neither Mr. Indyke nor Mr. Kahn responded to repeated requests for comments. Lawyers for the men also did not respond to messages.

For many years, Mr. Epstein’s businesses in the Virgin Islands operated out of an office suite at a marina complex on St. Thomas. After Mr. Epstein’s death, a man at the office told a visitor through an intercom that no one at Southern Trust was available to talk.

Documents obtained from the Virgin Islands Economic Development Authority show how officials rarely pressed Mr. Epstein on his dealings, even as they granted lucrative exemptions that allowed him to pay as little as 10 percent of the effective tax rate in corporate income tax. The tax breaks are granted to companies that agree to minimum hiring requirements and commit to investing at least $100,000 in an industry that advances the territory’s “economic well-being.” Currently 71 companies, including Southern Trust, receive the incentive.

By the end of 2017, Southern Trust reported having $175 million in leftover profits.

The development authority did not respond to messages seeking comment.

Government watchdogs and others have long criticized the territory’s history of light regulatory oversight. “Rich people have tried to make it their residence and do business there,” said Jack Blum, a Washington lawyer who has led corruption investigations for several Senate committees. “The idea was to keep it all out of the hands of the I.R.S.”

Mr. Epstein set up shop in the Virgin Islands in 1998, calling himself a “financial doctor” who had decided to settle there after “vacationing up and down the world,” according to a transcript of a hearing the next year as he sought tax incentives that were ultimately granted. During his extensive remarks — an official interrupted Mr. Epstein’s soliloquy at one point to remind him he had only 15 minutes to make a presentation — he discussed working at Bear Stearns and opined about that “electronic mail” was rendering the fax machine obsolete.

He also boasted about managing money for Leslie H. Wexner, the longtime chief executive of the company that runs Victoria’s Secret, who recently said Mr. Epstein had misappropriated large sums of money from him.

The end of their association is evident in the income statements of Financial Trust. The company reported fee income — money charged to clients for services, rather than gains from investments — of $66 million in 2006. In 2007, the year that Mr. Wexner said he had cut ties with Mr. Epstein, Financial Trust’s fee income was just shy of $4 million. In 2008, it was $100,000.

Financial Trust reported fee income of $100,000 for the next three years, then none in 2012 — the year Southern Trust was founded.

In 2013, its first full year in existence, Southern Trust reported fee income of $51 million.

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[thisdaynews]

What Beto O’Rourke’s Dad Taught Him About Losing

New Post has been published on https://thebiafrastar.com/what-beto-orourkes-dad-taught-him-about-losing/

What Beto O’Rourke’s Dad Taught Him About Losing

EL PASO, Texas—In 1998, in the closing days of the race for county judge here, Pat O’Rourke sensed a shift in the electorate. “I know we’re in the game,” he told theEl Paso Timesas he drew within 7 percentage points of the front-runner in the race for his old job. “You can feel it on the street corners.” His son felt it, too, watching his father’s commanding performance in a debate that year. He was “so thoughtful and forthright,” Beto O’Rourke told me at his home on a recent July morning. “I just remember listening to him, just thinking, ‘God, this guy, it’s got to be obvious to anybody watching this that he should be county judge.’”

But in political campaigns—as Pat O’Rourke surely knew by then and his son is now acutely aware—there is often a disconnect between how a candidate feels a campaignshouldbe going and how it is actually going.

Story Continued Below

Pat O’Rourke lost that race by nearly 17 points. At the time, he had been out of public office for more than a decade. He had abandoned the Democratic Party, lost a congressional race and, after publicly aligning himself with then-Gov. George W. Bush, was running as a Republican in a heavily Democratic swath of West Texas.

“He was on the wrong side there,” says Bill Uhlig, a friend of Pat O’Rourke’s from childhood. “He had lost his appeal, I think.” Pablo Sergent, another longtime friend of Pat’s, told me, “He didn’t have the aura anymore.”

Beto O’Rourke, who helped his father on his 1998 campaign, appeared to inherit that aura during his near-miss U.S. Senate run in Texas and through the opening days of his presidential campaign.

Then Beto, too, saw his prospects fade. He is now polling at about 3 percent nationally and raised a dispiriting $3.6 million from April through June, less money in three months than he raised in the first day of his campaign in March.

Speaking to reporters at the opening of a campaign field office in El Paso in July, O’Rourke said, “It’s a really small minority of Americans who’ve made up their mind.” With months before the Iowa caucuses, he said, there remains “a lot of time to meet and get in front of a lot of people.”

But O’Rourke has also started laboring to recast his campaign, inviting Democratic voters to remember him not as the “born to be in it”Vanity Fairspectacle he had been in March, but as the long shot he has always been every time he sought a new political office in Texas. Asked by a reporter at the field office openingwhat image he hoped to project in the second round of presidential debates, O’Rourke invoked two decades-old sports victories still celebrated in El Paso—a baseball state championship in 1949 and the Texas Western College Miners’ defeat of the Kentucky Wildcats in the NCAA men’s basketball championship in 1966, the inspiration for the movieGlory Road.

“Look, I want to reflect what we’re seeing here in El Paso,” O’Rourke said. “There’s a strength, and a courage and a confidence in this community, though we’ve often been counted out or forgotten. … This is a community that’s produced come-from-behind, long-shot teams, whether it was the ’49 Bowie Bears or the ’66 Texas Western College Miners. So, I want that part of this community to come through on that debate stage—that strength, that confidence, that ability to win even when we are counted down.”

Beto O’Rourke’s prominence in the Democratic Party came so suddenly that he began contemplating a presidential campaign only late last year. He is still assembling an organization months after most of his competitors had apparatuses in place.

“This isn’t something that I’ve always wanted to do or have organized my life around, very obviously,” he told me, sitting barefoot in his living room before another flight to Iowa. “And also, I take some great comfort in the wisdom of people.”

In his first campaign for City Council, in 2005, O’Rourke said he told himself that he would “give it all I’ve got,” and then, “If people want me to represent them, great. If they don’t, great.”

O’Rourke’s father lost two races for a local community college board before he was elected county commissioner in 1978, then judge—the county’s top administrative post—in 1982. Then he lost three more times—for Congress, county tax assessor and judge again.

His father, Beto O’Rourke said, “just placed a priority on being with people where they were, and trying to make sure there was no interference, and it was just really him … just never met a stranger, never blew anybody off.”

If he can replicate that approach to politics in his presidential campaign, he said, then whatever the outcome, “I’m great with it, I really am.”

***

The record of parents as templates—or as object lessons for what not to do—for future presidents and failed aspirants to the White House is sufficiently rich to constitute a whole genre of political psychology: Donald and Fred Trump; Bill Clinton and his mother, Virginia Kelley, and her husband, Roger Clinton; John and Roberta McCain; the Kennedy clan in all its permutations; Barack Obama and his absent father of the same name; not to mention the two presidents, George W. Bush and John Quincy Adams, whose fathers preceded them in the office.

In El Paso, a one-time garment-making hub on the border with Juárez, Mexico, Pat O’Rourke was such a fixture in local politics that from the time Beto first ran for city council, four years after his father’s death, he had been squarely cast in his reflection.

Yet even as a Democrat, Pat O’Rourke had been more conservative than his son. And he was more temperamental. Where Beto O’Rourke curses joyfully—“I’m so fucking proud of you guys,” he told supporters during his Senate campaign concession speech last year; El Paso is “the greatest fucking city,” he said at a campaign event in July—his father turned to profanity in frustration at the press or, on one occasion while in office, at a park security guard. The headline-making incident resulted in a disorderly conduct complaint that was dismissed.

Where O’Rourke apologized for his past arrest for DUI, his father abstained from alcohol entirely each year from New Year’s Day to St Patrick’s Day. Then, as Uhlig put it, “he would go out and just get blitzed.”

Beto and Pat were both business-minded, Beto with Stanton Street, the web design and local news company he started before Pat’s death, and Pat with rental properties and manufacturing ventures in Mexico (projects included golf club heads and wheelchairs for obese people, according to friends and a former business partner).

When Pat O’Rourke crossed the country on his bicycle in 2000, the frequent dispatches he filed for Stanton Street were widely read in El Paso—written in a sparse style instantly recognizable to readers of Beto’s online journal, published as he traveled the Southwest in a pickup truck in January 2019 ruminating on his future.

Nearly two decades later, O’Rourke is still asked repeatedly about Pat.

“Sorry,” Beto O’Rourke said twice, wiping his eyes as he strained to answer a question about his father on a stage at the Texas Tribune Festival in Austin last year.

At a town hall in Des Moines, Iowa, in May, CNN’s Dana Bash asked O’Rourke what his father would think of the candidate he had become.

“You know, I’d like to think that he would be proud,” O’Rourke replied. His dad, he said, “found total joy in serving others. And, to whatever degree I can emulate that and find that joy … I hope that I’m living up to the expectation that he set for me.”

Beto O’Rourke was born in 1972, the year his father turned 30 and first ran unsuccessfully for a seat on the El Paso Community College Board of Trustees. A poster from Pat’s second failed effort, in 1976, now hangs by a side door near the kitchenat Beto’s home in El Paso’s Sunset Heights neighborhood.

A more optimistic template for Beto’s presidential campaign would come two years later in Pat’s run for county commissioner. Declining to endorse Pat in the primary in terms besetting Beto’s campaign today, theEl Paso Timesdismissed Pat for failing to match the paper’s preferred candidate’s “experience, force of personality or degree and specificity of plans,” even as it praised him as “articulate, energetic, young and personable, with a record of effective civic involvement.”

After Pat advanced through the primary, the newspaper praised his “eagerness” and “fresh ideas.” He prevailed in the runoff election, drafting Beto into the life of a politician’s child. Beto’s father ferried him to meetings and events in the back of his 4×4.

“I was painfully shy growing up, and it may have been a byproduct of my father’s gregariousness and the fact that he was in public life and in politics,” O’Rourke said at a small forum in El Paso in January, before he had decided to run for president. “And I can’t tell you how many election night parties, city council meetings, chamber of commerce events that [O’Rourke’s sister] Charlotte and I were dragged to. And my dad would say, ‘Hey, go say hello to Commissioner [Miguel] Solis. Go introduce yourself. Tell him you’re Pat’s kid.’ How many times we were at the Cincinnati Bar & Grill or Jaxon’s Restaurant at the bar with my dad as he’s having beers with people, and we were brought along.”

O’Rourke said, “Maybe that was his form of child care, of executing his parental responsibilities. But I was convinced at a very early age I wanted no part of public life. It was just too painful.”

Instead, Beto O’Rourke retreated into himself, reading voraciously, listening to music and joining a computer hacking group while his father built a reputation as an efficient administrator and a fierce advocate for a region that, far from the state’s power centers, had in many ways fallen behind.

As county judge in 1986, Pat O’Rourke drew national attention to the issue of immigration—now a centerpiece of Beto’s presidential campaign—when he sent the Reagan administration a $10 million bill for county hospital costs and other expenses incurred providing for undocumented immigrants.

Sitting on the hood of a car overlooking downtown El Paso and the U.S.-Mexico border that year, Pat O’Rourke—his hair scragglier than Beto’s, his voice as deep—described El Paso to Bill Moyers for CBS as “the natural land passage to economic opportunity.”

The interview, preserved on videotape in black and white, represents one of the clearest ideological through-lines from Pat, a fiscal conservative, to Beto, a center-left Democrat who has put immigration at the center of his campaign. Pointing across the Rio Grande to Juárez, Pat O’Rourke said, “If I were living over there and my child needed help from dehydration or from any disease, and I saw that hospital down there that could provide that help … I would take my child and I would walk across that 6-inch river—6 inches deep—and I’d save my child’s life. I’d do the same thing those people are doing.”

He called for the United States to shift much of its foreign policy focus from Europe to Central and South America. Reagan’s request for aid to the contras in Nicaragua, he said, “made me sick.”

“We can send a greater signal right here in El Paso and Juárez and Northern Mexico to all of Central and South America than we can by sending $100 million into Nicaragua to fight a war we don’t understand,” he said.

Shortly after Beto won a seat in Congress in 2012, he told the newspaperEl Paso Inc.that he first became interested in politics “because it was what my dad did.”

But it could also be excruciating for a school-age child. A sample of headlines: “Sheriff calls O’Rourke a ‘jerk,’” “O’Rourke: Able administrator or rude personality?” And, of course, “Rubbergate.”

In 1983, sheriff’s deputies installing a two-way radio inside Pat O’Rourke’s Jeep-like, Toyota FJ 40 Land Cruiserdiscovered a condom containing a white powdery substance in the glove compartment. Suspecting it was a plant, a sheriff’s captain ordered the substance destroyed. The captain was acquitted of tampering with evidence following a trial, and O’Rourke, who was out of town at the time, said he did not know how it got into his vehicle.

He said he would take a lie detector test, then scolded the now-defunctEl Paso Herald-Postwhen the newspaper offered to sponsor one. “You guys have dragged this through the papers enough,” the newspaper quoted O’Rourke as saying. “You (expletive deleted)s have done enough. No, I’m not going to take it. (Expletive deleted), no.”

Later, when the newspaper asked Pat O’Rourke if he had ever tried cocaine, he replied, “My god, yes, I’ve tried it.” But with a sinus condition and his family health history, he said, “Coke’s not my deal; it cannot be my deal.” He added that heroin—the more likely substance found in the vehicle—is “not a working man’s drug.”

“You just don’t shoot heroin or snort heroin or smoke heroin and go to work five days, six days a week. You just can’t do it. It’s just not real world.”

Pat O’Rourke’s friends found his explanation credible. But the publicity surrounding the incident was politically damaging, and he said he worried about the impact on his family. He had acknowledged to theHerald-Post, midway through his first term, that he was “too abrasive, and I can be too arrogant, and I enjoy a good laugh.”

However, he said, “I’m extremely competent administratively.”

Beto O’Rourke, considering his father’s self-assessment, told me at his house in July that his dad understated himself. He was “brilliant,” he said, but also demanding, both in public office and at home.

“He … just had very high expectations for all of us, you know, just really wanted us to achieve at a very high level and wanted to see examples of that in our athletics, in our academics, in whatever we were doing,” O’Rourke said. No father was prouder of his children than Pat O’Rourke was when they succeeded.

But Charlotte, Beto’s sister, said it was also easy to upset her father, and she recalls him yelling at Beto.

“Beto was a normal high school boy,” she told me.“He needed Beto to be perfect.”

Beto O’Rourke remembers his father saying, when he chose not to seek reelection in 1986, that he was “out, done with politics.” But when Beto returned to El Paso from New York in 1998, after a brief stay in the East Coast after his graduation from Columbia University, Pat was running again. Beto helped.

The two men, after several years apart, were now on a more even plane, Beto says, and he admired his father’s devotion to the city.

“He loved El Paso and wanted to do everything he could to make it the best possible place and ensure that the community could fulfill its potential,” he said. “And that was really exceptional at the time because we were really written off by most of the rest of the country, and really by a lot of people in El Paso as kind of a second-rate, mediocre place.”

In contrast, Beto O’Rourke said, was “this fierce pride that he felt, which is like, ‘You would be so fucking lucky to have a business here and be able to be in one of the most beautiful places on the planet and work with the most amazing people you’ll meet anywhere.’”

With Beto back in El Paso, Pat helped his son start Stanton Street. He assisted with financial issues, and he pressed Beto with questions about how many cold calls he had made in a day.

One night, after Beto had moved back to his parents’ home from a family-owned apartment, he and his father shared leftovers and a bottle of wine in the backyard over a wide-ranging discussion “about life, what are we doing, how’s the family doing.”

“I never in my adult life felt as close to him as I did that night,” Beto said. “Whatever had come between us, certainly that was repaired.”

The next morning, July 3, 2001, Pat O’Rourke was killed when he was struck by a car and thrown from the recumbent bicycle he was riding just outside El Paso, across the New Mexico state line. He was 58. The front page of theEl Paso Timesthe next day carried the image of a police officer on the roadway holding up the mangled bicycle by its back end. The paper later quoted from the eulogy Beto O’Rourke gave for his father at a funeral mass in front of hundreds of mourners. “He died young, but he lived life to the fullest,” he said, according to theTimes. “He found a real joy in living.”

Eliot Shapleigh, a former Texas state senator and longtime friend of the family, told me Pat O’Rourke “thought the world” of his son.

He said, “I think it took Beto a while to think the world of his dad.”

***

Before deciding to run for president,Beto O’Rourke worried about the effect of a campaign on his three children, Ulysses, Molly and Henry. O’Rourke’s prolonged absences during the Senate race last year had taxed his family. At one point duringRunning with Beto, the documentary chronicling O’Rourke’s Senate campaign against Ted Cruz, his oldest son, Ulysses, who was 11 at the time, said he wished his dad was there to take him to school.

“I’m ready for it to be over,” Ulysses said.

But O’Rourke decided to run another campaign, he now says,becauseof his children—what he called, in a July fundraising appeal to supporters, “the very real knowledge that they’re counting on me and on all of us.”

At their home in El Paso, Henry, 8, Molly, 11, and Ulysses, who is now 12, are uncommonly quick to shake a visitor’s hand. Doak Sergent, Pat’s godson and a longtime friend of Beto, told me recently that when he sees Beto with Ulysses, “He has this thing where he says, ‘Give a firm handshake, look him in the eye.’ Basic codes of conduct, basic mores that we all hope our children adhere to. But it’s almost like I can here Pat saying that to him.”

But Beto, Sergent said, “just has more composure. … Sometimes Pat’s passions maybe ran away [from him], temper being one of them. And while Beto is very passionate, he’s also measured.”

On a campaign trip to Iowa over the Fourth of July holiday, O’Rourke brought the family and rented an RV (Molly, during the Senate race, had asked for a “house car.”). Inside a supporter’s home in Ames, Ulysses commandeered the iPhone used for livestreaming O’Rourke’s events from one of the candidate’s advisers, filming his father speaking while Molly and Henry sat on the living room floor.

Then two younger children sang from the soundtrack ofThe Greatest Showmanon the drive to a house party at a wooded home in St. Ansgar, in northern Iowa, where O’Rourke introduced them to supporters on a deck and then released them to play in a creek running through the yard.

The next morning, at a Fourth of July parade, O’Rourke carried Henry on his shoulders while Molly walked ahead, handing Airheads candy to parade-goers. And on July 3, the anniversary of his father’s death, O’Rourke took his family to a carnival in Clear Lake.

That night, after a hard rain cleared, Henry won a stuffed tiger for shooting basketballs, and the family shared a funnel cake.

But it was still a campaign event. I asked O’Rourke whether his children liked being a part of it, given his own mixed feelings about it as a child.

“Ulysses, real quick,” O’Rourke said, beckoning him over. “He wants to know if you’re having a good time. This is a reporter. You can be honest. Do you enjoy traveling?”

Ulysses said he did.

Asked what he liked most, the boy said, “Seeing my dad.”

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[lordsrivenkateswaraswamy]

The ad was used in a Republic Day hoarding but made headlines only six months later because of a printer whose dues weren’t paid on time.

Chandigarh: Punjab’s Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) is facing heat after news broke last week that the Hoshiarpur district administration used a photograph of Mukesh Kumar, one of the convicts in the 2012 gangrape and murder of a physiotherapy student in Delhi, in a voter awareness advertisement.

 I have learnt that the advertisement was on a hoarding installed at the venue of a Republic Day function inside the district administration complex.

That was more than six months ago, but the mistake was exposed just now because the printer whose payment was pending with the district administration approached a local journalist with the story, said people familiar with the matter.

Punjab CEO Karuna Raju told me that the error was made by a contractual employee who downloaded some photographs from the internet for the advertisement without recognising Kumar.

“The officials committed a blunder by downloading an unknown photograph from an unknown source and using it in Systematic Voters’ Education and Electoral Participation (SVEEP) activities. It has sent a wrong message,” said Raju, adding that it appeared that the advertisement was sent for printing by officials without checking the proof.

Kumar is currently lodged in Tihar Jail along with four others and is facing a death sentence.

Asha Devi, the mother of the 23-year-old whose rape had led to unprecedented protests across the country, told HuffPost India that she was shocked at the way election officials in Punjab ‘glorified’ a rape convict.

“We are struggling for the last seven years to get justice,” she said, adding that the Election Commission has sent the “wrong message across the world”.

The Indian Express reported on Monday that the Election Commission had issued a notice to the Punjab CEO, and had asked for a report within a day.

The Delhi Commission for Women (DCW) has also sought a reply from Raju after Asha Devi lodged a complaint with DCW along with a picture of the hoarding. The Commission has sought the names of the officials responsible and demanded strict action in the matter.

After receiving flak, the Hoshiarpur district administration has now asked the concerned computer operator to reveal the source from where the picture was downloaded.

CEO Raju said that as per rules, the officials should have used photographs of voters from the area.

“As a common practice, we use three photographs including a common voter, a woman voter and the third from the LGBT community.  The officials should have chosen the actual voters from their own area,” said Raju, who has sought a detailed report from the Hoshiarpur Deputy Commissioner.#MohnishAhluwaliaNotes

[consource]

The Gaspee Affair and the Constitutional Origins of the American Revolution

By Sebastian van Bastelaer, ConSource Program Manager

           On this date in 1772, angry colonists (some of them associated with the Sons of Liberty) ambushed and burned the HMS Gaspee off the coast of Rhode Island. Considered a key incident in the years preceding the American Revolution, the so-called Gaspee Affair demonstrated the Americans’ disdain for British imperial navigation policies. Lieutenant William Dudingston, the captain of the Gaspee, was rewarded for his vigorous enforcement of these policies with a musket ball in the groin. Though the incident did not lead to outright rebellion, it is often cited (along with the Boston Tea Party) as an example of the colonists’ willingness to break the law to protest British trade policy.[i] One historian wrote, that perhaps the fire directed at Dudingston “was really an earlier ‘shot heard ‘round the world.’”[ii]

           The Gaspee Affair, however, does more than reemphasize the refractory nature of the Sons of Liberty and their supporters. The political and constitutional debates that had been simmering in the Thirteen Colonies since the end of the Seven Years’ War helped impel the colonists to set the sloop ablaze in June 1772. Those debates, and unified resistance to British coercion, only intensified as colonial administrators sought to bring the perpetrators to justice. Battles over jurisdiction and the contradictory nature of the American political system under British rule intensified and were brought to the forefront thanks to the actions of these Rhode Islanders—these disputes would reverberate over the next several decades as the colonists began to pursue independence and define themselves as a nation.

           In March 1772, the Gaspee arrived off the coast of Rhode Island. The tiny colony, which was known for its nonconformity, had historically countenanced smuggling into and out of its ports, in violation of British navigational policy. Lieutenant Dudingston scrutinized and harassed many boats in Narraganset Bay, drawing the ire of merchants and leaders accustomed to laxity. The Providence Gazette called Dudingston “haughty, insolent and intolerable,” describing the arbitrary punishments he had inflicted upon Rhode Islanders.[iii] Deputy governor Darius Sessions complained to Wanton that the ship had “much disturbed our Navigation. She suffers no vessel to pass, not even packet boats, or others of an inferior kind, without a strict examination, and where any sort of unwillingness is discovered, they are compelled to submit, by an armed force.”[iv]

Dudingston disregarded protocol and failed to present his commission to the elected governor, Joseph Wanton, upon arrival, widening the rift between the Rhode Islanders and their new naval overseers. Wanton and Dudingston exchanged a series of thorny letters underscoring the conflict of authority. After the ornery captain condescended, “I have done nothing but what was my duty, and their [the colonists’] complaint can only be founded on their ignorance of that,” Wanton accused him of failing to “give me that satisfaction I had a right to expect.”[v] Admiral John Montagu, Dudingston’s superior officer, chided Wanton for his impertinence, and ominously warned that if any Rhode Islanders attempted to aid smugglers or obstruct the Gaspee’s operations, he would “hang them as pirates.”[vi] In a fiery response, the governor maintained that Dudingston had never presented his commission; thus, “it was altogether out of my power to know, whether he came hither to protect us from pirates, or was a pirate himself.”[vii]

On the evening June 11, the Gaspee pursued a boat called Hannah, which the British suspected of smuggling. The British vessel accidentally found itself aground in a narrow river, approximately five miles from the town of Providence. As eyewitness Ephraim Bowen later recounted, “About the time of the shutting up of the shops after sunset, a man passed along the Main street beating a drum and informing the inhabitants of the fact, that the Gaspee was aground on Namquit Point, and would not float off until 3 o’clock the next morning, and inviting those persons who felt a disposition to go and destroy that troublesome vessel.”[viii] Around midnight, a passel of colonists set out in rowboats with the oars muffled to reduce noise. As the boats approached, the British sentinels called out, but received no immediate reply. Dudingston climbed to a high point and demanded that the strangers identify themselves. After several such orders, a man named Abraham Whipple allegedly replied, “I am the sheriff of the county of Kent, G-d d—n you. I have got a warrant to apprehend you, G-d d—n you; so surrender, G-d d—n you.”[ix] Unable to train the ship’s guns on the invaders, Dudingston prepared his men to use muskets to defend the Gaspee. As monitored the situation, however, a shot rang out, striking Dudingston—in the adroitly crafted language of the time—“five inches below his navel.”[x] The crew surrendered the ship, which was summarily set ablaze.

Immediately after the news arrived, both the colonists and the British prepared for a fight over the legitimacy and proper punishment of the incident. A legal quandary quickly arose. One historian argued: “the difficulties centered around the question: what laws, English or American, might constitutionally, that is to say, legally or justifiably impinge upon the colonists.”[xi] The British government were resolved to punish the perpetrators as pirates and traitors, and opted to establish a powerful Royal Commission in Newport to investigate; naval historian Sam Willis remarked that “This was the first time that British politicians in London had acted to punish any of the numerous examples of violence that had taken place against British maritime authority in North America.”[xii] This unprecedented act provoked outrage. Wanton, though a Loyalist, contended that the “‘admiralty hath no jurisdiction” because the Gaspee was thirty miles from sea.[xiii] Willis continued,  “The constitutional principle behind the inquiry – that the British were going to extradite the offenders – was widely despised in America.”[xiv] In fact, this common complaint regarding extradition even appeared in the Declaration of Independence, which accused King George III “For transporting us beyond seas, to be tried for pretended offenses,” rather than trying accused criminals in the colonies.[xv]

Strident complaints against the Commission came from throughout New England. Pamphleteers and printers, styling themselves “Friends of Freedom,” “refused even the least acknowledgment of the jurisdiction of the court of inquiry.”[xvi] In the Providence Gazette, one author urged the royal commissioners not “to make any Concession in Submission whereby a Precedent shall be introduced and established which may be fatal to the Freedom of their own Constitution and the Liberties of America.”[xvii] John Allen, a minister in Boston, delivered a sermon entitled An Oration upon the Beauties of Liberty, or the Essential Rights of the Americans. He argued, “it is not rebellion to oppose any King, Ministry, or Governor that destroys by any violence or authority whatever, the Rights of the People… FINALLY. Let all lovers of Liberty, truth and justice now unite as one man in recovering and finally establishing the Liberties of America: That the American Parliament may enjoy every power and privilege the English Parliament enjoy.’”[xviii] His powerful speech, which was reprinted seven times and “became the most widely read sermon and the most popular public address in the years before independence,” asserted that two legislatures could not both control the same area.[xix] William R. Leslie praised the speech, saying, “only here is there to be found a complete resolution of the basic conflict of laws and jurisdictions inherent in the Gaspee affair.”[xx]

Condemnations of the government’s actions in the Gaspee incident’s aftermath were not limited to the northeastern colonies. Essays and articles reappeared all over the continent; news of the ship’s demise appeared in nearly one-third of the newspapers in the Thirteen Colonies within six weeks of the incident.[xxi] Virginia called for committees of correspondence to be formed; these bodies, which were vital in organizing resistance to British policies before and during the War for American Independence, had soon appeared in ten colonies.[xxii]

In the end, the Royal Commission was unable to find sufficient evidence to charge any of the conspirators. Their final report lamented that there was “no probability of our procuring any further light on the subject determines our inquiry.”[xxiii] The commissioners thus evaded an even bigger showdown over the conflicting jurisdictions governing the Gaspee case, one which could have accelerated the march towards revolution. Yet the expressive actions of the arsonists, as well as the sentiments articulated by writers and orators, provide a keen insight into the evolution of American political thought as the colonies hurtled toward war. Many of the constitutional theories voiced during the crisis would continue to mature throughout the 1770s and 1780s as disputes festered over the constitutional relationship between colonists and the imperial government. These ideas would then continue to grow and develop as the newly independent nation questioned the proper nature of the central government in the United States. As Leslie concluded, “they who discussed the Gaspee affair should be given much credit for seeing so clearly the realities of sharp conflicts of laws and jurisdictions. Their discussions produced constitutional formulae which were a very long step toward the creation of a federal system… The Gaspee affair, therefore, has a most important place in the conceptual development of the American constitutional system.”[xxiv]

Sources:

The Documentary History of the Destruction of the Gaspee. Edited by William R. Staples. Providence, RI: Knowles, Vose and Anthony, 1845.

Jefferson, Thomas. The Declaration of Independence.” 1776.

Leslie, William R. “The Gaspee Affair: A Study of Its Constitutional Significance.” Mississippi Valley Historical Review Vol. 39, No. 2, September 1952, 233-256.

Willis, Sam. The Struggle for Sea Power: A Naval History of the American Revolution. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2016.

York, Neil L.“The Uses of Law and the Gaspee Affair” Rhode Island History, Vol. 50 No. 1, 1992, 3-21.

[i] Neil L. York, “The Uses of Law and the Gaspee Affair” (Rhode Island History, Vol. 50 No. 1, 1992, 3-21), 3.

[ii] William R. Leslie, “The Gaspee Affair: A Study of Its Constitutional Significance” (Mississippi Valley Historical Review Vol. 39, No. 2, September 1952, 233-256), 233.

[iii] Sam Willis, The Struggle for Sea Power: A Naval History of the American Revolution (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2016), 30.

[iv] “Letter from Deputy General Darius Sessions to Governor Joseph Wanton, March 21, 1772,” found in The Documentary History of the Destruction of the Gaspee (edited by William R. Staples, Providence, RI: Knowles, Vose and Anthony, 1845), 3.

[v] “Letter from Lieutenant Dudingston to Governor Wanton, March 23, 1772,” found in Documentary History, 4; “Letter from Governor Wanton to Lieutenant Dudingston, March 23, 1772,” found in Documentary History, 4.

[vi] “Letter from Admiral Montagu to Governor Wanton, April 6, 1772,” found in Documentary History, 5.

[vii] “Letter from Governor Wanton to Admiral Montagu, May 8, 1772,” found in Documentary History., 5.

[viii] “Ephraim Bowen’s Account,” found in Documentary History, 8.

[ix] Ibid., 8.

[x] Leslie, “The Gaspee Affair,” 236.

[xi] Ibid., 234.

[xii] Willis, The Struggle for Sea Power, 34.

[xiii] Cited in Leslie, “The Gaspee Affair,” 237.

[xiv] Willis, The Struggle for Sea Power, 34.

[xv] Thomas Jefferson, “The Declaration of Independence” (1776).

[xvi] Leslie, “The Gaspee Affair,” 252-253.

[xvii] Cited in York, “The Use of Law,” 9.

[xviii] Leslie, “The Gaspee Affair,” 251.

[xix] Willis, The Struggle for Sea Power, 35.

[xx] Leslie, “The Gaspee Affair,” 251.

[xxi] Willis, The Struggle for Sea Power, 35.

[xxii] York, “The Use of Law,” 10.

[xxiii] “Report of the Royal Commission, Newport, June 22, 1773,” found in Documentary History, 54.

[xxiv] Leslie, “The Gaspee Affair,” 256.

[postolo]

SC seeks Election Commission’s reply on plea by 21 opposition leaders for verification of 50 pc VVPAT slips

Supreme Court: The Supreme Court has agreed to hear the plea of 21 opposition leaders, led by Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu, seeking that VVPAT slips of at least 50 per cent of voting machines in each assembly constituency be checked randomly in the Lok Sabha elections. The leaders from six national and 15 regional parties, claiming to represent 70-75 per cent of the population, have also sought the setting aside of the Election Commission of India (EC) guideline on random verification of one assembly seat.

The 3-judge bench of Ranjan Gogoi, CJ and Deepak Dupta and Sanjiv Khanna, JJ said that notice be issued to the EC, and the Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) should depute an officer to assist the court in the matter.

The parties include the Congress, Nationalist Congress Party, Aam Aadmi Party, CPI (Marxist), CPI, Trinamool Congress, Samajwadi Party, Bahujan Samaj Party, Rashtriya Lok Dal, Loktantrik Janata Dal and the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK). The petition has sought quashing of the EC guideline which provides that random verification of Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) slips shall be conducted in one polling stations in case of assembly election and in each assembly segment in case of Lok Sabha election. It also sought a further direction to the election commission for random verification of at least 50 per cent electronic voting machines (EVM) using the VVPAT per assembly segment/ assembly constituency.

The Court will next hear the matter on March 25, 2019.

(Source: PTI)

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[todaynewsstories]

Brexit rebels deny plot to oust Prime Minister Theresa May | News | DW

Hardline Brexiteers lined up on Wednesday to pledge their support for the British prime minister after reports of a dinner the night before when about 50 of them openly discussed a change of leadership.

Backtracking at various speeds after the weekly prime minister’s questions in parliament, the Brexiteers also appeared to distance themselves from former foreign secretary Boris Johnson’s comparison of May’s Brexit plan to a “suicide vest” on Britain’s constitution.

Former Brexit Secretary David Davis said “I disagree with her on one issue.” He added: “She should stay in place because we need stability and we need decent government.”

Environment Secretary and Brexiteer Michael Gove claimed in a radio interview on Wednesday not to have attended the dinner and urged Conservatives to get behind May, who he said was “doing a brilliant job” negotiating Brexit. When asked if there should be a leadership challenge, he replied “no.”

May’s spokesman said she would fight any attempt to oust her and would pursue what he described as the only credible plan for Brexit, the one agreed at the Chequers country house in July. This outline of a proposal to Brussels sparked the resignations of her Brexit Secretary David Davis and Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson.

Under party rules, a leadership election would be held if 48 of the 315 Conservative members of parliament wrote demanding a vote of no confidence in parliament. If May survived such a vote, another one could not be held for a year.

Who’s who in Brexit?

Britain’s embattled skipper: Theresa May

May became prime minister after David Cameron resigned from the post in the wake of the Brexit referendum vote in June 2016. Despite her position, she has struggled to define what kind of Brexit her government wants. Hardliners within her Conservative party want her to push for a clean break. Others want Britain to stay close to the bloc. The EU itself has rejected many of May’s Brexit demands.

Who’s who in Brexit?

Britain’s reluctant rebel: Jeremy Corbyn

The leader of the British Labour Party has no formal role in the Brexit talks, but he is influential as the head of the main opposition party. Labour has tried to pressure the Conservative government, which has a thin majority in Parliament, to seek a “softer” Brexit. But Corbyn’s own advocacy has been lukewarm. The long-time leftist voted for the UK to leave the European Community (EC) in 1975.

Who’s who in Brexit?

Britain’s boisterous Brexiteer: Boris Johnson

Boris Johnson’s turbulent two years as UK foreign secretary came to an abrupt end with his resignation on July 9. The conservative had been a key face for the Leave campaign during the 2016 referendum campaign. Johnson disapproves of the “soft Brexit” sought by PM May, arguing that a complete break from the EU might be preferable. He became the second Cabinet member within 24 hours to quit…

Who’s who in Brexit?

Britain’s cheery ex-delegate: David Davis

David Davis headed Britain’s Department for Exiting the EU and was the country’s chief negotiator in the talks before he quit on July 8, less than 24 hours before Downing Street announced Boris Johnson’s departure. Davis had long opposed Britain’s EU membership and was picked for the role for this reason. Davis was involved in several negotiating rounds with his EU counterpart, Michel Barnier.

Who’s who in Brexit?

Britain’s legal envoy: Dominic Raab

Theresa May appointed euroskeptic Dominic Raab the morning after Brexit Secretary David Davis resigned. Raab, a staunchly pro-Brexit lawmaker, was formerly Davis’ chief of staff. He previously worked for a Palestinian negotiator in the Oslo peace process and as an international lawyer in Brussels advising on European Union and World Trade Organization law.

Who’s who in Brexit?

Britain’s turnabout diplomat: Jeremy Hunt

Jeremy Hunt was Britain’s Health Secretary until he replaced Boris Johnson as foreign secretary in early July 2018. The 51-year-old supported Britain remaining in the European Union during the 2016 referendum, but said in late 2017 that he had changed his mind in response to the “the arrogance of the EU Commission” during Brexit talks. He has vowed to help get Britain a “great Brexit deal.”

Who’s who in Brexit?

Britain’s firebrand: Nigel Farage

Nigel Farage was the leader of the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) until July 2016. Under his stewardship, the party helped pressure former Prime Minister David Cameron into calling the EU referendum. He was also a prominent activist in the Leave campaign in the lead-up to the vote. Farage still has some influence over Brexit talks due to his popularity with pro-Leave voters.

Who’s who in Brexit?

Europe’s honchos: Jean-Claude Juncker and Donald Tusk

EU Commission President Juncker (left) and EU Council President Tusk (right) share two of the bloc’s highest posts. Juncker heads the EU’s executive. Tusk represents the governments of the 27 EU countries — the “EU 27.” Both help formulate the EU’s position in Brexit negotiations. What Tusk says is particularly noteworthy: His EU 27 masters — not the EU commission — must agree to any Brexit deal.

Who’s who in Brexit?

Europe’s steely diplomat: Michel Barnier

The former French foreign minister and European commissioner has become a household name across the EU since his appointment as the bloc’s chief Brexit negotiator in October 2016. Despite his prominence, Barnier has limited room to maneuver. He is tasked with following the EU 27’s strict guidelines and must regularly report back to them during the negotiations.

Who’s who in Brexit?

Ireland’s uneasy watchman: Leo Varadkar

The Irish PM has been one of the most important EU 27 leaders in Brexit talks. Britain has said it will leave the EU’s customs union and single market. That could force the Republic of Ireland, an EU member, to put up customs checks along the border with Northern Ireland, a British province. But Varadkar’s government has repeatedly said the return of a “hard” border is unacceptable.

Who’s who in Brexit?

Europe’s power-brokers: the EU 27

The leaders of the EU 27 governments have primarily set the EU’s negotiating position. They have agreed to the negotiating guidelines for chief negotiator Barnier and have helped craft the common EU position for Tusk and Juncker to stick to. The individual EU 27 governments can also influence the shape of any Brexit outcome because they must unanimously agree to a final deal.

Author: Alexander Pearson

Irish border question

A major sticking point in the negotiations is how to agree for a British withdrawal from Europe without reinstalling a hard border between the UK province of Northern Ireland with the Republic to the south.

On Wednesday, the main Brexit group in parliament, known as the European Research Group (ERG), announced its proposal for dealing with the issue. Customs declarations could be made ahead of travel, and goods could be inspected before they were shipped, the ERG suggested.

Read more: Is the Brexit hard-liner European Research Group running the UK?

Similar proposals have been rejected by the UK government in the past. “We have been working on the issue of the Northern Irish border for two years,” May’s spokesman said on Wednesday. “We have looked at a significant number of potential solutions and we believe that the plan put forward by Chequers is the only credible and negotiable one.”

The Irish border

The deputy leader of Northern Ireland’s Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) which props up the minority Conservative government in Westminster claimed that infrastructure would not be needed on the Northern Irish border — with or without a deal with the EU.

The DUP’s Nigel Dodds told reporters on Wednesday that he believed another solution would be found for the border: “Any plan that will eventually be discussed in parliament at the outcome of the negotiations will probably in all certainty be not the plans that have currently been put forward.”

May and Chancellor Angela Merkel at the EU summit in Brussels in June

Next round in Salzburg

The next stage in negotiations is expected to come after an informal meeting of EU leaders in Salzburg next week when May will present her case. On Wednesday she told MPs that if there was no deal, the payment of the €40-billion-plus ‘divorce’ bill could be withheld: “Without a deal, the position changes,” May said.

There have been press reports of a special EU summit in November when leaders could formally agree to the terms of the British exit.

The UK is due to leave the EU, with or without a deal, on March 29 next year.

jm/rc (Reuters, AP)

Each evening at 1830 UTC, DW’s editors send out a selection of the day’s hard news and quality feature journalism. You can sign up to receive it directly here.

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