HEALTH CARE The Modern Medicine Group has opened at Cedar and Herndon avenues in Fresno. Dr. Harman Virk is taking…
The Business Journal 3/29/2024
Read the March 29th, 2024 edition of The Business Journal!
Public Notices 3/29/2024
Trustee (1) T.S. No.: 229-019624 Title Order No. 91228911 APN: 510-050-50 Property Address: 4491 W SHAW AVENUE #101, FRESNO CA…
Executive Profile: Tracy Spraetz
Tracy Spraetz Co-Owner, Vice President Resort Life Carts What we do: Resort Life Carts is a street-legal cart company (also…
Green Day will headline United Nations-backed global climate concert in San Francisco
(AP) — Green Day will headline a United Nations Human Rights-backed global climate concert on Tuesday at the famed Fillmore in San Francisco.
The intimate event, which is co-hosted by the Recording Academy, aims to bring attention to the inequalities exacerbated by climate change.
Ultra Q, an alternative rock band fronted by Green Day singer Billie Joe Armstrong’s son Jakob Danger, will open.
Proceeds from the concert will go to United Nations Human Rights climate justice initiatives and a MusiCares climate fund to benefit musicians affected by climate change.
The Right Here, Right Now Global Climate Alliance will honor Green Day for their “commitment to social justice and environmental causes,” according to a press release.
“As world renowned artists and activists, Green Day continues to leverage its major influence and platform to bring awareness to the impact of climate change on the people and the environment,” Volker Türk, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, said in a statement.
“The United Nations was founded in San Francisco almost 80 years ago to safeguard human rights and dignity from crisis and tragedy. It is only fitting that we are back in San Francisco,” he said.
“Music is one of humanity’s greatest resources. It moves the world,” Harvey Mason jr., CEO of the Recording Academy, added. “And we are grateful for Green Day’s longstanding dedication to promoting social justice.”
Tickets will become available for purchase on Friday at 12 p.m. PDT via Ticketmaster.
Facebook News tab will soon be unavailable as Meta scales back news and political content
Meta will be sunsetting Facebook News in early April for users in the U.S. and Australia as the platform further deemphasizes news and politics. The feature was shut down in the U.K., France and Germany last year.
Launched in 2019, the News tab curated headlines from national and international news organizations, as well as smaller, local publications.
Meta says users will still be able to view links to news articles, and news organizations will still be able to post and promote their stories and websites, as any other individual or organization can on Facebook.
The change comes as Meta tries to scale back news and political content on its platforms following years of criticism about how it handles misinformation and whether it contributes to political polarization.
“This change does not impact posts from accounts people choose to follow; it impacts what the system recommends, and people can control if they want more,” said Dani Lever, a Meta spokesperson. “This announcement expands on years of work on how we approach and treat political content based on what people have told us they wanted.”
Meta said the change to the News tab does not affect its fact-checking network and review of misinformation.
But misinformation remains a challenge for the company, especially as the U.S. presidential election and other races get underway.
“Facebook didn’t envision itself as a political platform. It was run by tech people. And then suddenly it started scaling and they found themselves immersed in politics, and they themselves became the headline,” said Sarah Kreps, director of the Tech Policy Institute in the Cornell Brooks School of Public Policy who studies tech policy and how new technologies evolve over time. “I think with many big elections coming up this year, it’s not surprising that Facebook is taking yet another step away from politics so that they can just not, inadvertently, themselves become a political headline.”
Rick Edmonds, media analyst for Poynter, said the dissolution of the News tab is not surprising for news organizations that have been seeing diminishing Facebook traffic to their websites for several years, spurring organizations to focus on other ways to attract an audience, such as search and newsletters.
“I would say if you’ve been watching, you could see this coming, but it’s one more very hurtful thing to the business of news,” Edmonds said.
News makes up less than 3% of what users worldwide see in their Facebook feeds, Meta said, adding that the number of people using Facebook News in Australia and the U.S. dropped by over 80% last year.
However, according to a 2023 Pew Research study, half of U.S. adults get news at least sometimes from social media. And one platform outpaces the rest: Facebook.
Three in 10 U.S. adults say they regularly get news from Facebook, according to Pew, and 16% of U.S. adults say they regularly get news from Instagram, also owned by Meta.
Instagram users recently expressed dissatisfaction with the app’s choice to stop “proactively” recommending political content posted on accounts that users don’t follow. While the option to turn off the filter was always available in user settings, many people were not aware Meta made the change.
Venezuelans are increasingly stuck in Mexico, explaining drop in illegal crossings to US
Venezuelan migrants often have a quick answer when asked to name the most difficult stretch of their eight-country journey to the U.S. border, and it’s not the dayslong jungle trek through Colombia and Panama with its venomous vipers, giant spiders and scorpions. It’s Mexico.
“In the jungle, you have to prepare for animals. In Mexico, you have to prepare for humans,” Daniel Ventura, 37, said after three days walking through the Darien Gap and four months waiting in Mexico to enter the U.S. legally using the government’s online appointment system, called CBP One. He and his family of six were headed to Fort Atkinson, Wisconsin, where he has a relative.
Mexico’s crackdown on immigration in recent months — at the urging of the Biden administration — has hit Venezuelans especially hard. The development highlights how much the U.S. depends on Mexico to control migration, which has reached unprecedented levels and is a top issue for voters as President Joe Biden seeks reelection.
Arrests of migrants for illegally crossing the U.S.-Mexico border have dropped so this year after a record high in December. The biggest decline was among Venezuelans, whose arrests plummeted to 3,184 in February and 4,422 in January from 49,717 in December.
While two months do not make a trend and illegal crossings remain high by historical standards, Mexico’s strategy to keep migrants closer to its border with Guatemala than the U.S. is at least temporary relief for the Biden administration.
Large numbers of Venezuelans began reaching the U.S. in 2021, first by flying to Mexico and then on foot and by bus after Mexico imposed visa restrictions. In September, Venezuelans briefly replaced Mexicans as the largest nationality crossing the border.
Mexico’s efforts have included forcing migrants from trains, flying and busing them to the southern part of the country, and flying some home to Venezuela.
Last week, Mexico said it would give about $110 a month for six months to each Venezuelan it deports, hoping they won’t come back. Mexican President Andres Manuel López Obrador extended the offer Tuesday to Ecuadorians and Colombians.
“If you support people in their places of origin, the migratory flow reduces considerably, but that requires resources and that is what the United States government has not wanted to do,” said López Obrador, who is barred by term limits from running in June elections.
Migrants say they must pay corrupt officials at Mexico’s frequent government checkpoints to avoid being sent back to southern cities. Each setback is costly and frustrating.
“In the end, it is a business because wherever you get to, they want to take the last of what you have,” said Yessica Gutierrez, 30, who left Venezuela in January in a group of 15 family members that includes young children. They avoided some checkpoints by hiking through brush.
The group is now waiting in Mexico City to get an appointment so they can legally cross the U.S.-Mexico border. To use the CBP One app, applicants must be in central or northern Mexico. So Gutierrez’s group sleeps in two donated tents across the street from a migrant shelter and check the app daily.
More than 500,000 migrants have used the app to enter the U.S. at land crossings with Mexico since its introduction in January 2023. They can stay in the U.S. for two years under a presidential authority called parole, which entitles them to work.
“I would rather cross the jungle 10 times than pass through Mexico once,” said Jose Alberto Uzcategui, who left a construction job in the Venezuelan city of Trujillo with his wife and sons, ages 5 and 7, in a family group of 11. They are biding time in Mexico City until they have enough money for a phone so they can use CBP One.
Venezuelans account for the vast majority of 73,166 migrants who crossed the Darien Gap in January and February, which is on pace to pass last year’s record of more than 500,000, according to the Panamanian government, suggesting Venezuelans are still fleeing a country that has lost more than 7 million people amid political turmoil and economic decline. Mexican authorities stopped Venezuelan migrants more than 56,000 times in February, about twice as much as the previous two months, according to government figures.
“The underlying question here is: Where are the Venezuelans? They’re in Mexico, but where are they?” said Stephanie Brewer, who covers Mexico for the Washington Office on Latin America, a group that monitors human rights abuses.
Mexico deported only about 429 Venezuelans during the first two months of 2024, meaning nearly all are waiting in Mexico.
Many fear that venturing north of Mexico City will get them fleeced or returned to southern Mexico. The U.S. admits 1,450 people a day through CBP One with appointments that are granted two weeks out.
Even if they evade Mexican authorities, migrants feel threatened by gangs who kidnap, extort and commit other violent crimes.
“You have to go town by town because the cartels need to put food on their plates,” said Maria Victoria Colmenares, 27, who waited seven months in Mexico City for a CBP One appointment, supporting her family by working as a waitress while her husband worked at a car wash.
“It’s worth the wait because it brings a reward,” said Colmenares, who took a taxi from the Tijuana airport to the border crossing with San Diego, hours before her Tuesday appointment.
Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott has touted his own efforts to explain the recent reduction in illegal crossings in his state, where at least 95% of Border Patrol arrests of Venezuelans occur. Those have included installing razor wire, putting a floating barrier in the Rio Grande and making plans to build a new base for members of the National Guard.
U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas has mostly credited Mexico for the drop in border arrests.
Some Venezuelans still come north despite the perils.
Marbelis Torrealba, 35, arrived in Matamoros, across the border from Brownsville, Texas, with her sister and niece this week, carrying ashes of her daughter who drowned in a boat that capsized in Nicaragua. She said they were robbed by Mexican officials and gangs and returned several times to southern Mexico.
A shelter arranged for them to enter the U.S. legally on emergency humanitarian grounds, but she was prepared to cross illegally.
“I already experienced the worst: Seeing your child die in front of you and not being able to do anything.”
___
Spagat reported from Tijuana, Mexico, and Gonzalez reported from Matamoros. Associated Press reporter Rebecca Santana in Washington, D.C., also contributed.
Orlando city commissioner charged with spending 96-year-old woman’s money on a home, personal items
An Orlando city commissioner was arrested Thursday on charges of elderly exploitation, identity fraud and mortgage fraud following accusations that she had spent a constituent’s money on herself after getting power of attorney over the 96-year-old woman.
Regina Hill, 63, pleaded not guilty to seven felony counts following her arrest by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement. She didn’t say anything to reporters after bonding out of jail a short time later.
Hill got to know the elderly woman three years ago when she helped clean up the woman’s home, which was in deplorable condition. But within a month, the city commissioner had obtained power of attorney over the victim, the FDLE said in a news release.
Hill allegedly purchased a home with the victim as the co-signer, without the victim’s knowledge or consent, for a cost of more than $400,000. She moved into a second home that the victim owned, and spent more than $15,000 of the victim’s money on renovations without the victim knowing, the law enforcement agency said.
After gaining access to the woman’s personal checking, savings, and credit card accounts, Hill spent over $100,000 of the victim’s money on herself, the FDLE said.
Among the items Hill purchased were home renovations, expensive perfumes, clothing, a facelift and a hotel room in Miami, according to court papers that were filed as part of an injunction issued by a judge against the city commissioner last week.
If convicted, Hill faces a maximum sentence of 180 years in prison.
Fallen crypto mogul Sam Bankman-Fried sentenced to 25 years in prison
Crypto entrepreneur Sam Bankman-Fried was sentenced Thursday to 25 years in prison for a massive fraud on hundreds of thousands of customers that unraveled with the collapse of FTX, once one of the world’s most popular platforms for exchanging digital currency.
Though he described Bankman-Fried as “extremely smart,” U.S. District Judge Lewis A. Kaplan delivered a blistering analysis of Bankman-Fried and his crimes before announcing a sentence that was half of what prosecutors sought and less than a quarter of the 105 years recommended by the court’s probation officers.
“There is absolutely no doubt that Mr. Bankman-Fried’s name right now is pretty much mud around the world,” Kaplan said of the 32-year-old California man who seemed atop the cryptocurrency universe before his businesses collapsed in November 2022, leaving customers, investors and lenders short over $11 billion, which the judge ordered him to forfeit.
He was convicted in November of fraud and conspiracy — a dramatic fall from a crest of success that included a Super Bowl advertisement, testimony before Congress and celebrity endorsements from stars like quarterback Tom Brady, basketball point guard Stephen Curry and comedian Larry David.
Kaplan imposed the sentence in the same Manhattan courtroom where, four months previously, Bankman-Fried testified that he had intended to revolutionize the emerging cryptocurrency market with his innovative and altruistic ideas, not steal.
The judge said Bankman-Fried repeatedly committed perjury on the witness stand in testimony that was “often evasive, hair-splitting, dodging questions.”
Kaplan said the sentence reflected the risk that Bankman-Fried “will be in position to do something very bad in the future. And it’s not a trivial risk at all.” He added that the sentence was fashioned “for the purpose of disabling him to the extent that can appropriately be done for a significant period of time.”
Kaplan said he would advise the Federal Bureau of Prisons to send Bankman-Fried to a medium-security prison near San Francisco because his notoriety, his association with vast wealth, his autism and social awkwardness are likely to make him especially vulnerable at a high-security facility.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Nicolas Roos had recommended a prison sentence of 40 to 50 years, saying it was the only way to ensure “the defendant doesn’t do it again.”
Prosecutors said tens of thousands of people and companies worldwide lost billions of dollars since 2017 when Bankman-Fried looted FTX customer accounts that he promised were safe. They said he also sent fabricated documents to lenders, made tens of millions of illegal political donations and bribed Chinese officials.
The billions of dollars he stole were used to make risky investments, charitable donations, political donations to candidates of both major parties and to support a lavish lifestyle that included private jets and the purchase of expensive real estate in the Caribbean, prosecutors said.
Kaplan agreed with prosecutors Thursday that Bankman-Fried should not be credited because some investors and customers might get some of their money back. He noted that customers lost about $8 billion, investors lost $1.7 billion and lenders were shorted by $1.3 billion.
When he spoke, Bankman-Fried stood and apologized in a rambling statement: “A lot of people feel really let down. And they were very let down. And I’m sorry about that. I’m sorry about what happened at every stage.”
He added, “My useful life is probably over. It’s been over for a while now, from before my arrest.”
Wearing his khaki-colored prison uniform and chained at the ankles, Bankman-Fried seemed to briefly get emotional as he spoke for about 20 minutes, expressing regret about “a lot of mistakes” but casting some blame onto others. His trademark messy and bushy hair had returned from the trimmer look he displayed at trial.
Kaplan later criticized those remarks, saying he expressed “never a word of remorse for the commission of terrible crimes.”
As his misty-eyed client looked on, defense attorney Marc Mukasey said the portrayal of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology graduate as an “arrogant greedy swindler who thought he would get away with fleecing the hard-earned money of hard-working people” was wrong.
“Sam was not a ruthless financial serial killer who set out every morning to hurt people,” Mukasey told Kaplan in court after urging in court papers that any prison sentence be in the single digits. “Sam Bankman-Fried doesn’t make decisions with malice in his heart. He makes decisions with math in his head.”
The judge later criticized Bankman-Fried’s calculations, saying he was indeed “a math nerd, who looked at decisions in terms of math, expected value.”
He cited trial testimony in which Bankman-Fried’s former girlfriend and fellow executive Caroline Ellison said Bankman-Fried once told her that his willingness to embrace risk was such that he’d be happy to flip a coin if it came up tails and the world was destroyed — as long as if it came up heads, the world would be twice as good.
The judge said Bankman-Fried utilized that risk-taking nature at his companies, “betting on expected value” and weighing the risk of getting caught with the probability of large gains.
“That was the game,” Kaplan said. “It’s his nature.”
Bankman-Fried’s attorneys, friends and family had urged leniency, saying he was unlikely to re-offend again. They also said FTX’s investors have largely recovered their funds — a claim disputed by bankruptcy lawyers, FTX and its creditors.
“Mr. Bankman-Fried continues to live a life of delusion,” wrote John Ray, the CEO of FTX who has been cleaning up the bankrupt company. “The ‘business’ he left on November 11, 2022 was neither solvent nor safe.”
Bankman-Fried’s parents, both Stanford Law School professors, did not speak as they left the courthouse Thursday, but later issued a statement: “We are heartbroken and will continue to fight for our son.”
Bankman-Fried was once worth billions of dollars on paper as the co-founder and CEO of FTX, which was the second-largest cryptocurrency exchange in the world at one time.
FTX let investors buy dozens of virtual currencies, from Bitcoin to more obscure ones like Shiba Inu Coin. Flush with billions of dollars of investors’ cash, Bankman-Fried took out a Super Bowl advertisement to promote his business and bought the naming rights to an arena in Miami.
But the collapse of cryptocurrency prices in 2022 took its toll on FTX, ultimately leading to its downfall. FTX’s hedge fund affiliate, Alameda Research, had bought billions of dollars of various crypto investments that lost considerable amounts of value in 2022. Bankman-Fried tried to plug the holes in Alameda’s balance sheet with FTX customer funds.
Three people from Bankman-Fried’s inner circle pleaded guilty to related crimes and testified at his trial.
Besides Ellison, two onetime friends of Bankman-Fried — Gary Wang and Nishad Singh — testified they felt they were directed by Bankman-Fried to commit fraud.
Massachusetts joins with NCAA, sports teams to tackle gambling among young people
Top Massachusetts officials joined with NCAA President and former Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker on Thursday to announce a new initiative aimed at tackling the public health harms associated with sports gambling among young people.
Baker said those harms extend not just to young people making bets, but to student athletes coming under enormous pressure from bettors hoping to cash in on their individual performances.
Baker said he spoke to hundreds of college athletes before officially stepping into the role of president about a year ago, and he said they talked about the tremendous pressure they feel from classmates and bettors about their individual performance.
“The message I kept getting from them, is there’s so much of this going on, it’s very hard for us to just stay away from it,” he said.
Baker said student athletes pointed to classmates who wanted to talk to them about “how’s so-and-so doing? Is he or she going to be able to play this weekend? What do you think your chances are?”
“It was the exact same conversations I was having with my classmates and schoolmates in the ’70s. But back then it was just chatter in the cafeteria or the dining hall,” added Baker, who played basketball at Harvard University. “Now it’s currency.”
Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Campbell said that since the state made sports betting legal in 2022, a bill signed by Baker, Massachusetts has essentially become a participant in the market.
The creates a burden on the state to make sports betting as safe as possible, she said.
“Think about it. We’re putting an addictive product — gambling — on a very addictive device, your smartphone,” she said. “We’ve gone from sports gambling being illegal nearly everywhere to being legal in dozens of states throughout the country in just a matter of a few years.”
In Massachusetts, it is illegal for anyone under 21 to wager on sports or in casinos.
Because young people are going to be influenced more by the teams they support than by state government officials, Campbell said it’s critical to create a public/private partnership like the new initiative she unveiled Thursday, the Youth Sports Betting Safety Coalition.
Campbell said members of the coalition include the Boston Red Sox, the Boston Celtics, the Boston Bruins, the New England Patriots, the New England Revolution and the NCAA. The goal is to craft a sports betting education, training, and safety curriculum for young people 12 to 20, she said.
NCAA data found 58% of 18- to 22-year-olds have engaged in at least one sports betting activity, while the Massachusetts Department of Public Health found about half of middle school students are estimated to have engaged some form of gambling, Campbell said.
Baker said the NCAA is pushing states with legal sports gambling to bar “prop bets” — short for proposition bets — which allow gamblers to wager on the statistics a player will accumulate during a game rather than the final score.
Baker also said the NCAA’s survey of students found that they were betting at essentially the same rate whether it was legal for them or not. It also found that one out of three student athletes has been harassed by bettors and one of 10 students has a gambling problem.
“It’s basically a 50-state issue even if it’s only legal in 38. And if you think kids under the age of 21 aren’t doing this, you’re kidding yourselves,” he said at the news conference at Boston’s TD Garden.
He said the ugliness and brutality of some of the messages on social media platforms of some of the athletes in the NCAA tournaments is disturbing.
Last year the NCAA considered a threat by a bettor serious enough to a team that they gave them 24/7 police protections until they left the tournament, he said.
“For student athletes in particular, this is an enormously challenging issue, and for a lot of the ones that are really in the bright lights, as many here will be tonight, this is just one more thing I think all of us would like to see taken off the table,” he said.