TallGuyJohninBKK

The OP article talks about the Chinese guy being arrested in the Din Daeng area of central Bangkok... So presumably, the 5 convicted and now imprisoned Immigration officers were operating within the Chaengwattana IO jurisdiction. PS - as is too common with Thai news reports here... zero mention of whether these 5 will remain in custody, or have been or will be released on bail pending potential appeals.

Things have sort of washed clear on the TurboTax ITIN problem I cited above in recent days... TurboTax reps, in their support forum, have basically acknowledged their online system for the current 2023 returns cycle had an error that caused the system to say perfectly valid ITIN numbers were invalid. They've now recognized the error, and say they are in the process of correcting it. My wife's valid ITIN, which TT last week judged invalid, is now accepted as valid again.

"Worldwide, there were more than 11,000 reported deaths from COVID between mid-December 2023 and mid-January 2024, and more than half of those deaths occurred in the U.S. In that same time frame, nearly one million cases were reported to the World Health Organization globally (although reduced testing and reporting means this is likely a vast undercount)." And those numbers above are not real worldwide totals, but instead as the WHO has cautioned, tallies from just a few dozen countries (including the U.S.) that are still regularly tracking and publicly reporting that kind of data. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/rampant-covid-poses-new-challenges-in-the-fifth-year-of-the-pandemic/ "Overall, the updated Covid-19 vaccines provided 54% protection against symptomatic infection among immunocompetent adults who were recently vaccinated compared with those who did not receive an updated vaccine, according to the report published Thursday by the CDC." https://www.cnn.com/2024/02/01/health/updated-covid-vaccine-effectiveness-jn1/index.html

TRENTON, N.J. (AP) — A federal appeals court shot down claims Monday that New Jersey residents’ refusal to wear face masks at school board meetings during the COVID-19 outbreak constituted protected speech under the First Amendment. The 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals issued a ruling in two related cases stemming from lawsuits against officials in Freehold and Cranford, New Jersey. ... “A question shadowing suits such as these is whether there is a First Amendment right to refuse to wear a protective mask as required by valid health and safety orders put in place during a recognized public health emergency. Like all courts to address this issue, we conclude there is not,” the court said. (more) https://apnews.com/article/covid-mask-free-speech-lawsuits-new-jersey-108abf877288999f34d1c604b731d34c

And yet here you are voluntarily choosing to read news articles in the forum's COVID subforum... Hmmm...

"All of the COVID interventions have been politicized and with huge amounts of misinformation and disinformation that spreads faster than viruses. And misinformation, disinformation and politicization kill." --Maria Van Kerkhove, interim director of the WHO’s Department of Epidemic and Pandemic Preparedness and Prevention https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/rampant-covid-poses-new-challenges-in-the-fifth-year-of-the-pandemic/

Updated COVID-19 vaccines effective against variants, new data show ... "Overall, VE was 54% (95% CI, 46%-60%) among people who had recently received an updated COVID-19 vaccine. The researchers found that VE for people aged 18 to 49 years was 57% (95% CI, 48%-65%) and for people aged 50 years and older was 46% (95% CI, 31%-58%). Additionally, VE was 58% (95% CI, 48%-65%) among people tested for COVID-19 between 7 to 59 days after receiving an updated vaccine. It was 49% (95% CI, 36%-58%) among people tested for COVID-19 between 60 to 119 days after receiving an updated vaccine. (more) https://www.healio.com/news/infectious-disease/20240201/updated-covid19-vaccines-effective-against-variants-new-data-show

(CNN) — A shot of the latest Covid-19 vaccine can help cut the chances of getting a symptomatic infection by half, early data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention suggests. ... Overall, the updated Covid-19 vaccines provided 54% protection against symptomatic infection among immunocompetent adults who were recently vaccinated compared with those who did not receive an updated vaccine, according to the report published ... by the CDC. ... Generally, the goal of the US Covid-19 vaccination program is to prevent severe disease, but measuring vaccine effectiveness against symptomatic infection offers an extra early look at how well the vaccines are working. ... During the week ending January 13, there were nearly 31,000 Covid-19 hospitalizations and more than 1,800 deaths, according to CDC data. (more) https://www.cnn.com/2024/02/01/health/updated-covid-vaccine-effectiveness-jn1/index.html

Biden health officials press pharmacies on Paxlovid affordability The Biden administration is pressing pharmacies to ensure that patients with COVID-19 are not being charged thousands of dollars for Paxlovid. Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Xavier Becerra met virtually this week with CEOs from Walgreens, CVS, Walmart and Kroger, as well as trade group leaders, to discuss the importance of pharmacist education and clear, accurate communication to patients about the costs of the COVID-19 treatment. ... The Biden administration negotiated with Pfizer on ways to ensure the drug is affordable. Individuals on Medicare and Medicaid will be able to access Paxlovid for free through the end of 2024 through a patient assistance program, and uninsured individuals can receive Paxlovid for free through 2028. (more) https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/4454284-biden-health-paxlovid-covid-19/

“We’re still in a pandemic,” says a lead COVID official with the World Health Organization Throughout the past four years, Maria Van Kerkhove, now interim director of the WHO’s Department of Epidemic and Pandemic Preparedness and Prevention, has helped lead the agency’s response to COVID. Scientific American spoke with Van Kerkhove about entering the fifth year of a pandemic that many want to ignore despite its permanent impact on lives around the world. How would you describe the overall state of COVID at this point in the pandemic? COVID’s not in the news every day, but it’s still a global health risk. If we look at wastewater estimates, the actual circulation [of SARS-CoV-2] is somewhere between two and 20 times higher than what’s actually being reported by countries. The virus is rampant. We’re still in a pandemic. There’s a lot of complacency at the individual level, and more concerning to me is that at the government level. Lack of access to lifesaving tools such as diagnostics, therapeutics and vaccines is still a problem. Demand for vaccination is very low around the world. The misinformation and disinformation that’s out there is hampering the ability to mount an effective response. So we feel there’s a lot more work to do... (more) https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/rampant-covid-poses-new-challenges-in-the-fifth-year-of-the-pandemic/

Ratios of excess natural-cause deaths to reported COVID-19 deaths across US counties from March 2020 through August 2022. In panel A, darker counties represent counties with higher ratios of excess natural-cause mortality to reported COVID-19 mortality. A new study provides the most compelling data yet to suggest that excess mortality rates from chronic illnesses and other natural causes were actually driven by COVID-19 infections, disproving high-profile claims that have attributed these deaths to other factors such as COVID vaccinations and shelter-in-place policies. Nearly 1,170,000 people have died from COVID-19 in the United States, according to official federal counts, but multiple excess mortality studies suggest that these totals are vastly undercounted. ... Now, a new study led by Boston University School of Public Health (BUSPH) and the University of Pennsylvania (UPenn) provides the first concrete data showing that many of these excess deaths were indeed uncounted COVID-19 deaths. ... Importantly, these findings also disprove political assertions or public beliefs that have attributed mortality during the pandemic to COVID-19 vaccinations or shelter-in-place policies. (more) https://medicalxpress.com/news/2024-02-analysis-reveals-excess-deaths-attributed.html The study: Excess natural-cause mortality in US counties and its association with reported COVID-19 deaths Significance Official COVID-19 mortality statistics have not fully captured deaths attributable to SARS-CoV-2 infection in the United States. While some excess deaths were likely related to pandemic health care interruptions and socioeconomic disruptions, temporal correlations between reported COVID-19 deaths and excess deaths reported to non-COVID-19 natural causes suggest that many of those excess deaths were unrecognized COVID-19 deaths. ... Increases in reported COVID-19 deaths correlated temporally with increases in excess deaths reported to non-COVID-19 natural causes in the same and/or prior month. This suggests that many excess deaths reported to non-COVID-19 natural causes during the first 30 mo of the pandemic in the United States were unrecognized COVID-19 deaths. https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2313661121

Tens of thousands of Americans are hospitalized with COVID-19 every week. Thousands die from it every month. And yet, an antiviral treatment proven to lessen the chances of severe outcomes is going underused. The drug, Paxlovid, is lauded by experts as a powerful tool that can prevent hospitalization and death from COVID-19. But the high price and doctors’ hesitation to prescribe the pills mean the five-day treatment isn’t getting to everyone who would benefit from it. “When you read in your local newspaper that in this hospital, they’ve got this many COVID patients, most of those are preventable hospitalizations,” said Dr. Amesh Adalja, a senior scholar at Johns Hopkins University who sees Paxlovid as a useful tool to treat COVID-19. (more) https://apnews.com/article/paxlovid-cost-covid19-f03f3732e14fbbcb0fe33220db67c9f1

That's ONE reason cited by the special counsel, among many different reasons depending on the particular records, for not bringing charges against Biden, not the sole or primary reason by any means. It's just the reason the right-wing anti-Biden folks choose to fixate on. Others (as sourced and explained in posts above) include: Biden cooperated with investigators and voluntarily returned the records when the issue arose, whereas Trump did none of that and fought tooth and nail to stymie and obstruct the investigation. Some of the materials Biden kept he'd have a good legal argument were his personal property (the handwritten notebooks). The circumstances of the handling of some of the records leave doubts that Biden's actions were willful, etc etc.

Fact check: Seven of Trump’s false or unsupported claims on the documents investigation... Unsupported claim: Trump declassified everything "Facts First: Trump and his team have not provided any proof that Trump actually conducted some sort of broad declassification of the documents that ended up at Mar-a-Lago – and, so far, his lawyers notably have not argued in their court filings that Trump did so. Eighteen former top Trump administration officials, including two former White House chiefs of staff who spoke on the record, told CNN in August that they never heard of a standing Trump declassification order when they were serving in the administration and that they now believe the claim is false.... ... It’s important to note that the laws under which the Justice Department said it was investigating possible crimes – statutes about the willful retention of national defense information, obstruction of a federal investigation, and the concealment or removal of government records – do not require documents to be classified for a crime to have been committed." https://www.cnn.com/2023/06/08/politics/fact-check-trump-claims-documents-investigation/index.html

When a person has been in public service for decades and amassed large quantities of documents kept thru the years that were variously moved from place to place over time, potentially losing track of some of them is neither a sign of senility, nor is it criminal... as the special counsel obviously found in deciding that Biden would not face any charges.

Not really: First, the special counsel report notes that Biden was legally entitled to keep classified documents at his home during his years both as vice president and president (page 4). So then... "The best case for charges would rely on Mr. Biden's possession of the Afghanistan documents in his Virginia home in February 2017. when he was a private citizen and when he told his ghostwriter he had just found classified material. Several defenses are likely to create reasonable doubt as to such charges. For example, Mr. Biden could have found the classified Afghanistan documents at his Virginia home in 2017 and then forgotten about them soon after. This could convince some reasonable jurors that he did not retain them willfully. ... Notably, the classified Afghanistan documents did not come up again in Mr. Biden's dozens of hours of recorded conversations with the ghostwriter, or in his book. And the place where the Afghanistan documents were eventually found in Mr. Biden's Delaware garage-in a badly damaged box surrounded by household detritus-suggests the documents might have been forgotten." pages 4-5 https://www.justice.gov/storage/report-from-special-counsel-robert-k-hur-february-2024.pdf

If the legal issues pertaining to Biden's handling of classified or potentially classified materials were as clear-cut and pervasive as the Trumpists here claim, then Biden probably would have been charged. But as the 388-page special counsel's report lays out in great detail, in each instance of the different types of documents involved and Biden's conduct involving them, there are issues of legal doubt about their status and questions about whether Biden's conduct was willful or unintentional. In one example cited by the special counsel, Biden kept at his home handwritten notebooks of his time as vice president that contained some classified information, and he did so consciously, according to the special counsel's report. However, the special counsel noted that they probably could not prevail in a legal case on those materials because.... "During our interview of him, Mr. Biden was emphatic, declaring that his notebooks are "my property" and that "every president before me has done the exact same thing," that is, kept handwritten classified materials after leaving office. Ho also cited the diaries that President Reagan kept in his private home after leaving office, noting that they included classified information." ... "During criminal litigation involving a former Reagan administration official in 1989 and 1990, the Department of Justice stated in public court filings that the "currently classified" diaries were Mr. Reagan's "personal records." ... Most jurors would likely find evidence of this precedent and Mr. Biden's claimed reliance on it, which we expect would be admitted at trial, to be compelling evidence that Mr. Biden did not act willfully." Page 9: https://www.justice.gov/storage/report-from-special-counsel-robert-k-hur-february-2024.pdf So as I summarized above, in varying ways and circumstances on the various documents and Biden conduct involved, not a case that the special counsel felt they likely could prevail on in court, which is why they chose not to file charges.

Holder rips ‘inconsistent’ special counsel report on Biden classified documents report "Former Attorney General Eric Holder went after a recently released special counsel report on President Biden’s retention of classified documents Friday. “Special Counsel Hur report on Biden classified documents issues contains way too many gratuitous remarks and is flatly inconsistent with longstanding [Department of Justice] traditions,” Holder said Friday in a post on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter. Holder, who was attorney general in the Obama administration, said if the report had been “subject to a normal [Department of Justice] review these remarks would undoubtedly have been excised.” https://thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/4458372-holder-biden-special-counsel-report/

Not even remotely the same in terms of magnitude and circumstances, as Hur's report made very clear on page 11: " It is not our role to assess the criminal charges pending against Mr. Trump, but several material distinctions between Mr. Trump's case and Mr. Biden's are clear. Unlike the evidence involving Mr. Biden, the allegations set forth in the indictment of Mr. Trump, if proven, would present serious aggravating facts. "Most notably, after being given multiple chances to return classified documents and avoid prosecution, Mr. Trump allegedly did the opposite. According to the indictment, he not only refused to return the documents for many months, but he also obstructed justice by enlisting others to destroy evidence and then to lie about it. In contrast, Mr. Biden turned in classified documents to the National Archives and the Department of Justice, consented to the search of multiple locations including his homes, sat for a voluntary interview. and in other ways cooperated with the investigation." https://www.justice.gov/storage/report-from-special-counsel-robert-k-hur-february-2024.pdf In short, night and day different, as has been clear to everyone except Trump partisans since the outset.

That's a strange and scary story, Jim... Hope you have better luck in ultimately sorting out the wrongdoing and recovering those funds. I had a somewhat similar, smaller, but still alarming episode lately with one of my major U.S. firm brokerage accounts. In two separate instances toward the end of last year, I had -+ $100 debits withdrawn from one of my retirement accounts via charges to its associated debit card. In my case, I've never ever even used that debit card and it's never been seen or handled by anyone else in the world other than myself. In the first case, the brokerage reversed the charge on their own the same day it was debited before I even became aware of it. In the second and separate case a few weeks later, another charge occurred on the same card, I became aware of that, filed a protest with the brokerage, and eventually was reimbursed. In the first case, the brokerage ultimately informed me that the debiting party had manually keyed in the wrong debit card number (my card's number) by mistake in processing a transaction. In the second instance, it was just outright fraud by some entity a foreign country that I've never had anything to do with in any way. But it was alarming to discover that anyone out there in the world can just guess at my debit card number and be able to process a charge against my account with no protection. (Subsequent to all that, I "locked" my debit cards associated with that brokerage).

Curious how the chosen headline for this particular thread -- Biden's own DOJ says he is an 'elderly man with a poor memory': Classified document case -- managed to miss and omit the pretty important "no prosecution" outcome cited in the main article news report headlines from many/most major news sources, such as: Special counsel won't charge Biden in classified docs probe, despite evidence he 'willfully retained' materials https://abcnews.go.com/US/white-house-finishes-review-special-counsels-report-biden/story?id=107047339 Special counsel will not charge Biden in classified documents case https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2024/02/08/biden-classified-documents-investigation-special-counsel/ Biden will not face charges over classified papers, says 'memory is fine' https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-congress-receives-report-bidens-handling-classified-documents-source-2024-02-08/ Special counsel finds Biden "willfully" disclosed classified documents, but no criminal charges warranted https://www.cbsnews.com/news/biden-special-counsel-report-handling-classified-documents/ Special counsel finds Biden ‘willfully’ retained classified documents, no charges filed https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/4456524-special-counsel-biden-classified-documents-probe-no-charges/ Even Fox News of all sources: No charges for Biden after Special Counsel probe into improper handling of classified documents https://www.foxnews.com/politics/no-charges-biden-classified-records-special-counsel-robert-hur

From the Special Counsel's report: "After telling the Special Counsel's Office what he had done, the ghostwriter turned over his computer and external hard drive and consented to their search. Based on the FBI's analysis. it appears the FBI recovered all deleted audio files relating to the memoir, though portions of a few of the files appear to be missing, which is possible when forensic tools are used to recover deleted files. The ghostwriter kept, and did not delete or attempt to delete, his near-verbatim transcripts of the recordings and produced those transcripts to us, including for each of the incomplete recovered files. We considered whether to charge the ghostwriter with obstruction of justice, but we believe the evidence would be insufficient to obtain a conviction and therefore declined to prosecute him." Page 13 https://www.justice.gov/storage/report-from-special-counsel-robert-k-hur-february-2024.pdf

Meanwhile, a bit of background on Special Counsel Hur and his political leanings, including having clerked for two prominent hard right-wing judges/justices and ultimately becoming a previous Trump appointee: "After law school, Hur was a law clerk for Judge Alex Kozinski of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit from 2001 to 2002, then for Chief Justice William Rehnquist of the Supreme Court of the United States from 2002 to 2003." "On November 1, 2017, Hur was nominated by President Donald Trump to be the next United States Attorney for the District of Maryland.[6] ... He was sworn in on April 9, 2018.[9]" "Hur has made donations to the campaigns of a number of Republican political candidates.[16]" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_K._Hur https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/justice-department/robert-hur-special-counsel-biden-classified-documents-rcna65561 "is a former federal prosecutor who has worked with many Republicans throughout his law enforcement career. ... "After he graduated from Stanford Law School in 2001, he clerked for federal Appeals Judge Alex Kozinski, who was nominated by President Ronald Reagan. After that, he was a law clerk from 2002 to 2003 to then-Chief Justice William Rehnquist, a staunch conservative who was nominated to the court by President Richard Nixon and nominated for promotion to chief justice by Reagan." .......... According to federal campaign filings, Hur has donated to at least three Republican political campaigns. He donated $500 to former U.S. Attorney Christina Nolan, a Republican, in January 2022, when she was in the GOP Senate primary in Vermont, which she went on to lose. According to OpenSecrets, Hur also donated $200 to Maryland GOP Gov. Larry Hogan in 2017 and $201 to GOP Sen. John McCain of Arizona during his presidential campaign in 2008." From all of the above, one certainly could make a reasonable argument that Hur hardly could be called politically neutral or impartial.

Mentally unfit? The other day, my Thai wife of 10+ years needed my birth year to fill out a form for the Thai government, but she couldn't remember the right year.... just as she's always had trouble remembering that in our years together... even though I've probably told her dozens of times. So she proceeded to guess (wrongly) through a bunch of more than 10 different years before I finally stopped her. Is my wife senile or mentally impaired? No, not in the least, and she holds down and does well at a senior, high-paying job. But some things, for whatever reason, she just doesn't remember well.... especially years... seemingly a bit like Biden. I'm now in my early 60s... and during my work life, I probably held down more than a half dozen different professional jobs of varying durations in years, now going back 15+ years ago for the most recent one... If you asked me today to give you the starting and ending years of all those jobs, I probably could get a few year dates right, but others I couldn't be precise about now all these years later. The point being, remembering or not remembering the years that something occurred, especially many years later, isn't a sign that someone is senile or mentally impaired. It certainly isn't in my wife's case or in mine. And it may well likewise also not be in the couple of Biden memory examples cited by the Special Counsel. Memory (especially of distant details) is not synonymous with cognition or mental capacity.

The Special Counsel did a pretty thorough job of pointing out the stark differences between Biden and Trump's handling of their documents issues, as follows on page 11: "It is not our role to assess the criminal charges pending against Mr. Trump, but several material distinctions between Mr. Trump's case and Mr. Biden's are clear. Unlike the evidence involving Mr. Biden, the allegations set forth in the indictment of Mr. Trump, if proven, would present serious aggravating facts. Most notably, after being given multiple chances to return classified documents and avoid prosecution, Mr. Trump allegedly did the opposite. According to the indictment, he not only refused to return the documents for many months, but he also obstructed justice by enlisting others to destroy evidence and then to lie about it. In contrast, Mr. Biden turned in classified documents to the National Archives and the Department of Justice, consented to the search of multiple locations including his homes, sat for a voluntary interview. and in other ways cooperated with the investigation." https://www.justice.gov/storage/report-from-special-counsel-robert-k-hur-february-2024.pdf