- Disney Investor Blackwells Capital Sues The Company As Shareholder Vote Nears Close; Media Giant Calls Allegations “Baseless” And “Desperate” Deadline
- Disney CEO Bob Iger, Nelson Peltz enter final days of proxy fight — here’s what to know Yahoo Finance
- Exclusive | Disney, Trian Blitz Shareholders for Votes in Last Stretch of Proxy Fight The Wall Street Journal
- Blackwells, in proxy fight with Disney, sues Disney over disclosure in hedge fund relationship Reuters
- Bob Iger’s Invincible Era Is Over Hollywood Reporter
Tag Archives: baseless
Emanuela Orlandi: Pope slams claims against John Paul II as baseless – Euronews
- Emanuela Orlandi: Pope slams claims against John Paul II as baseless Euronews
- Pope Francis attacks ‘insinuations’ that John Paul II prowled for underage girls The Guardian
- Pope Francis defends Pope John Paul II from ‘insinuations’ after investigation reopens for ‘Vatican girl’ Emanuela Orlandi WLS-TV
- Missing Vatican girl: Pope slams ‘insinuations’ against John Paul II as baseless euronews
- Pope Francis Denies Claims That John Paul II Prowled For Underage Girls Like Missing Teen Emanuela Orlandi The Daily Beast
- View Full Coverage on Google News
Gautam Adani slams short-seller Hindenburg’s claims as ‘baseless’ and ‘malicious’
New Delhi
CNN
—
India’s Adani Group on Wednesday denounced allegations of fraud made by US-based short seller Hindenburg Research as “baseless” and a “malicious combination of selective misinformation.”
Hindenburg Research published an investigation on billionaire Gautam Adani’s sprawling conglomerate on Tuesday, accusing it of “brazen stock manipulation and accounting fraud scheme over the course of decades.”
Hindenburg said it has taken a short position in companies in the Adani Group “through U.S.-traded bonds and non-Indian-traded derivative instruments.” Short sellers aim to make money by betting that the stock price of the companies they target will fall.
Adani’s business empire contains seven listed companies — in sectors ranging from ports to power stations — and shares in most of them fell by between 3% and more than 8% on Wednesday.
The plunge had an immediate impact on the billionaire’s net worth. According to Bloomberg’s Billionaires Index, Adani lost nearly $6 billion on Wednesday. He is currently worth $113 billion.
In its investigation, which Hindenburg said took two years to compile, the research firm questioned the “sky-high valuations” of Adani firms and said their “substantial debt” puts the entire group “on a precarious financial footing.”
The research firm concluded its report with 88 questions for the Adani Group. These range from asking for details on Adani’s offshore entities, to why it has “such a convoluted, interlinked corporate structure.”
CNN has not verified the claims in the report, and India’s stock market regulator did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Shares of Adani’s companies have surged in the last few years, making him Asia’s richest man.
In a statement released a few hours after Hindenburg published its report, the Adani Group’s chief financial officer Jugeshinder Singh said that Hindenburg did not make “any attempt to contact us or verify the factual matrix,” adding that the allegations made by the short seller are “stale, baseless and discredited.”
The conglomerate has faced scrutiny from Indian authorities in the past. In 2021, shares in Adani’s companies tumbled after The Economic Times newspaper said that foreign funds that hold stakes worth billions of dollars were frozen by the country’s National Securities Depository. The Adani Group called that report “blatantly erroneous.”
Nate Anderson, who founded Hindenburg Research, has made a name for himself in the past few years by targeting companies that he thinks are overvalued and have suspect financials. Anderson is best known for going after electric truck company Nikola in 2020, calling it an “intricate fraud,” and causing the firm’s stock to plunge sharply. In 2022, Nikola’s founder was convicted by a US jury of fraud in a case alleging he lied to investors about the company’s technology.
But some have accused Hindenburg of trying to push stocks lower with its research reports in order to make a profit.
Its report on the Adani Group comes at a sensitive time. Later this week, Adani Enterprises, the conglomerate’s flagship company, is aiming to raise 200 billion rupees ($2.5 billion) by issuing new shares.
Singh said that the “timing of the report’s publication clearly betrays a brazen, mala fide intention to undermine the Adani Group’s reputation with the principal objective of damaging the upcoming follow-on public offering.”
The conglomerate is also considering taking five new businesses to the stock market in the next two to five years.
A college dropout and a self-made industrialist, Adani is the world’s fourth richest man, ahead of Bill Gates and Warren Buffet, according to Bloomberg’s Billionaires Index. He is also seen as a close ally of India’s current prime minister, Narendra Modi.
The 60-year-old tycoon founded the Adani group over 30 years ago. It now has established businesses in industries ranging from logistics to mining, and is aggressively growing in diverse sectors such as media, data centers, airports, and cement.
But this is not the first time analysts have expressed fear that the rapid expansion of his business comes with a huge risk. Adani’s juggernaut has been fueled by a $30 billion borrowing binge, making his business one of the most indebted in the country.
Last year, CreditSights, a research firm owned by Fitch Group, published a report about Adani Group titled “Deeply Overleveraged” in which it expressed strong concerns about its debt-funded growth plans.
Adani Group responded to CreditSights with a 15-page report, saying that the “leverage ratios” of its companies “continue to be healthy and are in line with the industry benchmarks in the respective sectors” and that they “have consistently de-levered” in the last nine years.
Prince Andrew’s lawyers say sex abuse case is baseless and papers weren’t properly served
Los Angeles attorney Andrew Brettler, who appeared virtually during a pre-trial teleconference in New York on behalf of Andrew on Monday, said the prince’s legal team would challenge the validity of the lawsuit.
Brettler referenced a settlement that Andrew’s lawyers said Giuffre had previously entered, precluding her from pursuing litigation against anyone connected to convicted pedophileJeffrey Epstein.
“We believe, however, that this is a baseless, non-viable and potentially unlawful lawsuit that plaintiff has filed against the Duke. There has been a settlement agreement that the plaintiff has entered into in a prior action that releases the Duke and others from any and all potential liability,” Brettler said.
Giuffre accuses Andrew of having sex with her when she was a minor, and filed a civil lawsuit against the prince in New York in August. Andrew has denied similar allegations from Giuffre in the past.
But the case can’t proceed until judicial authorities determine that legal papers have been legally served to the prince. Brettler said Monday that the Duke of York’s legal team had been in contact with the High Court in the United Kingdom which they say must weigh in on the service — or formal notification — of the lawsuit.
Giuffre’s lawyers say this has been done. In an affidavit filed in the Southern District of New York on Friday, a process server hired by Giuffre’s legal team to give formal notice of the lawsuit to Andrew said he left the papers with the Metropolitan Police security detail at the main gates of the prince’s home, the Royal Lodge in Windsor, on August 27.
“We’ve proceeded to serve Prince Andrew in several ways pursuant to Article 10 of the Hague Convention,” an attorney for Giuffre, David Boies, said during Monday’s hearing.
Federal Judge Lewis Kaplan and attorneys for Giuffre agreed it was premature to discuss the previous settlement agreement with Epstein, which is currently sealed in another civil action in the Southern District of New York.
“I think we are making this more complicated that it already is,” the judge said in court Monday.
Kaplan ordered a schedule for the parties to file procedural motions that will play out before he makes a decision on the service of the lawsuit and whether that settlement agreement should be shared with the Prince’s counsel. An in-person hearing in New York is scheduled for October 13.
CNN reached out to attorneys for both parties for comment.
Giuffre says she was trafficked by Epstein and forced to have sex with his friends, including Prince Andrew, the Queen’s second son, when she was a minor. While Andrew has denied the claims, he has been seen in photos with Giuffre and Ghislaine Maxwell, a British socialite and former girlfriend of Epstein who is currently charged with conspiracy and sex trafficking amongst other charges.
US authorities have previously accused Andrew of not cooperating with attempts to interview him as part of the investigation into the alleged sex trafficking ring Epstein and Maxwell are suspected of operating.
The Prince stepped back from royal duties in the wake of a 2019 interview he gave the BBC in which he was widely considered to have damaged his own credibility. He now rarely appears in public.
Judge sanctions Sidney Powell and others who brought baseless lawsuit to overturn Biden victory
A federal judge on Wednesday imposed sanctions against one-time Trump campaign lawyer Sidney Powell and other attorneys who filed a lawsuit in Michigan seeking to overturn President Biden’s victory in the 2020 election.
Judge Linda Parker said the attorneys who filed the case failed to do their due diligence to investigate alleged claims of voter fraud before filing the case the night before Thanksgiving.
“This lawsuit represents a historic and profound abuse of the judicial process,” Parker wrote. “It is one thing to take on the charge of vindicating rights associated with an allegedly fraudulent election. It is another to take on the charge of deceiving a federal court and the American people into believing that rights were infringed, without regard to whether any laws or rights were in fact violated. This is what happened here.”
Parker ordered the attorneys to pay the state of Michigan and city of Detroit’s legal fees and complete continuing legal education. Parker also ordered the court’s clerk to give a copy of the decision to the Michigan Attorney Grievance Commission and the appropriate disciplinary authority where each attorney is admitted to practice to refer “the matter for investigation and possible suspension or disbarment.”
“The attorneys who filed the instant lawsuit abused the well-established rules applicable to the litigation process by proffering claims not backed by law; proffering claims not backed by evidence (but instead, speculation, conjecture, and unwarranted suspicion); proffering factual allegations and claims without engaging in the required prefiling inquiry; and dragging out these proceedings even after they acknowledged that it was too late to attain the relief sought,” Parker wrote.
“And this case was never about fraud—it was about undermining the People’s faith in our democracy and debasing the judicial process to do so,” Parker added.
The original complaint contained a litany of false claims, including that Dominion Voting Systems was founded to help Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. Dominion’s CEO wrote an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal last November and asserted that the company “has no ties to Hugo Chávez, the late dictator of Venezuela” and “has never been involved in Venezuelan elections.”
Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel and lawyers for Detroit asked Parker to impose sanctions against the attorneys who filed the case earlier this year.
“I’m pleased to see that the Court has ensured there is accountability for the attorneys who perpetuated meritless arguments in court,” Nessel said in a statement Wednesday. “It has remained abundantly clear from the outset that this lawsuit aimed to do nothing more than undermine our democratic process.”
The lawsuit filed by Powell and others in November asked Parker to order Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer and other state officials to de-certify the election results. Parker denied the request in December and said the case was asking the court to “ignore the will of millions of voters.”
Mr. Biden won Michigan by more than 150,000 votes in November.
During a hearing in July, Powell said she practiced law to the highest standards and defended filing the case. The Trump campaign distanced itself from Powell after she held a news conference in November claiming millions of votes had been switched by electronic systems.
Other attorneys who were sanctioned and face potential disbarment include Lin Wood, Emily Newman, Julia Haller, Brandon Johnson, Scott Hagerstrom, Howard Kleinhendler, Gregory Rohl and Stefanie Lynn Junttila.
Russian space officials try to blame NASA astronaut for Soyuz air leak in 2018 with baseless accusations: report
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — NASA’s head of human spaceflight says the agency stands behind its astronauts following claims that a U.S. crewmember at the International Space Station sabotaged a Russian Soyuz spacecraft in 2018, causing an air leak at the orbiting laboratory.
On Friday afternoon (Aug. 13), during a media teleconference about recent delays with Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft, NASA’s human spaceflight chief Kathy Lueders told reporters that the personal attacks against NASA astronaut and Expedition 56 flight engineer Serena Auñón-Chancellor were baseless.
“Serena is an extremely well-respected crew member who has served her country and made invaluable contributions to the agency,” Lueders told reporters. “And I stand behind Serena — we stand behind Serena and her professional conduct and I did not find this accusation credible.”
Related: Space Station commander: It’s ‘absolutely a shame’ to suggest astronauts caused air leak
Lueders expressed those same sentiments on Twitter Friday afternoon, with NASA’s administrator, Senator Bill Nelson agreeing.:
“I wholeheartedly agree with Kathy’s statement,” Nelson tweeted. “I fully support Serena and I will always stand behind our astronauts.”
Russian accusations
NASA leadership’s statements on Friday follow on the heels of accusations from an unnamed “high-ranking” official with Russia’s space agency made in the Russian news agency TASS. The agency claims that in 2018, Auñón-Chancellor had an emotional breakdown in space and then damaged a Russian Soyuz spacecraft that was docked at the station so that she could return to Earth early.
The article, published on Thursday (Aug. 12), responds to criticism from U.S. media in regards to the near-disastrous incident involving Russia’s Nauka science module and the International Space Station (ISS) earlier this month.
Related: Space station situation with Russia’s Nauka module misfire was more serious than stated
In the TASS article, Russian journalist Mikhail Kotov interviews an anonymous official at Russia’s space agency, Roscosmos.
The article is particularly troublesome because it not only names Auñón-Chancellor — the only female astronaut on station at the time — specifically, but it also reveals a medical condition she suffered on-orbit. (Typically NASA keeps all astronaut medical records and conditions private.)
Auñón-Chancellor was treated upon her return to Earth for a deep vein thrombosis, also known as a blood clot, in the jugular vein of her neck. But Kotov implies that dealing with such a condition in space could spur her to want to leave the ISS prematurely, and therefore sabotage the spacecraft that brought her to the orbital outpost in an effort to return home ahead of schedule.
Leaky Soyuz
On Aug. 29, 2018, ISS controllers at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston noticed a slight pressure drop aboard the orbiting outpost. They notified the crew the next day, and the crew was able to trace the leak to a small hole in Russia’s Soyuz MS-09 spacecraft, which had docked to the space station in June with Auñón-Chancellor, European Space Agency astronaut Alexander Gerst and Russian cosmonaut Sergey Prokopyev.
Prokopyev, the commander of the Soyuz at the time, solved the problem by patching the 2-millimeter (0.08 inches) hole using epoxy and gauze. NASA officials stressed that the crew was never in any danger.
Russian space officials decided to investigate the leak, determined to find out its cause. Shortly thereafter, Dmitry Rogozin — the head of Roscosmos — announced that the breach in the Soyuz wall was a drill hole. And according to Rogozin, the person who made the hole apparently had “a faltering hand,” citing nearby scuff marks that likely resulted when the drill slipped.
Russian officials went one step further insinuating that the unsteady hand was likely due to the culprit drilling in microgravity, meaning one of the crew was to blame — not the Russian engineers involved in the assembly and testing of the Soyuz spacecraft before launch down on Earth.
NASA officials knew the precise locations of the U.S. astronauts before the leak occurred and at the moment it began, thanks to space station surveillance. The video footage indicated that none of the U.S. astronauts on the station were near the Russian segment where the Soyuz vehicle was docked. But the Russians didn’t buy it. They were convinced that one of the crew sabotaged the Soyuz.
The recent TASS article takes those claims one step further and insists that NASA video of the ISS could have been tampered with and that Russian officials were denied the chance to examine Russian tools and administer polygraphs, or lie detector tests, to the astronauts.
But the TASS article seems to dismiss the most likely cause of the hole: human error on the ground. The problem most likely happened on Earth, before launch. This was something that Roscosmos was looking into but the agency has never definitively disclosed the results.
Most likely a technician accidentally damaged the Soyuz spacecraft and then tried to cover up the error with a makeshift patch. That patch could have then become dislodged during flight or its time on-orbit after repeated exposure to extreme temperature differences as the station orbits the Earth.
Looking ahead
Relations between the two space agencies have grown more strained over recent years, but NASA leadership is hopeful for a continued orbital partnership.
Prior to the launch attempt of Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft on July 30, Nelson told Space.com that he applauded the long-standing relationship between the two agencies. “Terrestrially, we have enormous tensions with Russia, but in space we have cooperation.”
Nelson also said that he expects Russia will continue to work with NASA to maintain the ISS and that he hopes to announce sometime soon that a cosmonaut will fly on an upcoming SpaceX Crew Dragon flight, something the agency has been trying to arrange for quite some time.
Perhaps cosmonauts will make their U.S. commercial spaceflight debut with the SpaceX Crew-4 mission, currently slated to launch in2022, Nelson has said, but nothing is confirmed yet.
Follow Amy Thompson on Twitter @astrogingersnap. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom or Facebook.
US and Canada hit back at China’s ‘baseless’ sanctions as Xinjiang row deepens | Uighurs
The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, has warned that China’s tit-for-tat sanctions against two Americans in the growing dispute over Beijing’s treatment of Uighurs were “baseless” and would only shine a harsh spotlight on the “genocide” in Xinjiang.
“Beijing’s attempts to intimidate and silence those speaking out for human rights and fundamental freedoms only contribute to the growing international scrutiny of the ongoing genocide and crimes against humanity in Xinjiang,” Blinken said in a statement on Saturday.
He spoke out after China announced sanctions against two Americans, a Canadian and a rights advocacy body, in response to sanctions imposed this week by the two countries over Beijing’s treatment of the Uighur minority.
Blinken called the sanctions on the two members of the US Commission on International Religious Freedom “baseless”.
At least one million Uighurs and people from other mostly Muslim groups have been held in camps in China’s Xinjiang region, according to rights groups, who accuse authorities of forcibly sterilising women and imposing forced labor.
The EU, Britain, Canada and the US have sanctioned several members of Xinjiang’s political and economic hierarchy in coordinated action over the allegations, prompting retaliation from Beijing in the form of sanctions on individuals from the EU and Britain.
“We stand in solidarity with Canada, the UK, the EU, and other partners and allies around the world in calling on the PRC to end the human rights violations and abuses against predominantly Muslim Uighurs and members of other ethnic and religious minority groups in Xinjiang and to release those arbitrarily detained,” Blinken said.
Blinken’s statement came after Canada’s prime minister, Justin Trudeau, denounced Beijing and vowed to defend human rights.
Trudeau called the Chinese sanctions “unacceptable actions”.
“We will continue to defend human rights around the world with our international partners,” Trudeau said on Twitter.
China sanctioned Canadian opposition lawmaker Michael Chong, vice-chair of a parliamentary sub-committee on international human rights, which this month presented a report concluding that atrocities in Xinjiang constitute crimes against humanity and genocide.
Beijing also said it will take measures against the chair and vice-chair of the US Commission on International Religious Freedom, Gayle Manchin and Tony Perkins.
The individuals under Beijing’s sanctions are banned from entering the Chinese mainland, Hong Kong and Macau, and Chinese citizens and institutions are prohibited from doing business with the three individuals or having any exchanges with the subcommittee.
“The Chinese government is firmly determined to safeguard its national sovereignty, security and development interests, and urges the relevant parties to clearly understand the situation and redress their mistakes,” the Chinese foreign ministry said.
“They must stop political manipulation on Xinjiang-related issues, stop interfering in China’s internal affairs in any form and refrain from going farther down the wrong path. Otherwise they will get their fingers burnt.”
China’s previous sanctions on US individuals who it says have seriously undermined China’s sovereignty and interests on Xinjiang-related issues remain in effect.
Chong, who is a member of the opposition Conservative party in Canada, said he would “wear (the sanctions) as a badge of honour”.
“This demonstrates that parliamentarians are being effective in drawing attention to the genocide of the Uighur people that is taking place in western China,” Chong said in a telephone interview.
Chong urged the Trudeau government to “officially recognise the Uighur genocide,” and said the sanctions would have no practical effect because he had no plans to travel to China.
Trump requests mail-in ballot ahead of local Florida election despite baseless fraud claims
Pictures available through Getty Images show Trump was in New York City on Tuesday.
CNN has reached out to representatives for Trump for comment.
The request marks just the latest instance of Trump voting through the same process he repeatedly sought to discredit throughout the 2020 election without evidence. Trump and then-first lady Melania Trump also requested mail-in ballots for Florida’s primary election in August.
In the closing months of his failed reelection bid, Trump claimed that mail-in voting was rife with fraud and an easy target for foreign election interference. Those attacks often took a partisan tinge as Trump had said he believed his party would be hurt by mail-in voting.
“With Universal Mail-In Voting (not Absentee Voting, which is good), 2020 will be the most INACCURATE & FRAUDULENT Election in history. It will be a great embarrassment to the USA,” Trump tweeted in July. “Delay the Election until people can properly, securely and safely vote???”
In reality, there is no evidence that mail-in voting leads to fraud. While rare instances of voter fraud from mail-in ballots do occur, it is nowhere near a widespread problem in the US election system. Mail ballot fraud is exceedingly rare in part because states have systems and processes in place to prevent forgery, theft and voter fraud.
Despite his public rhetoric, Trump has maintained that Florida’s voting system is secure, tweeting last year: “Whether you call it Vote by Mail or Absentee Voting, in Florida the election system is Safe and Secure, Tried and True. Florida’s Voting system has been cleaned up (we defeated Democrats attempts at change), so in Florida I encourage all to request a Ballot & Vote by Mail!”
Asked about the apparent contradiction at the time, Trump seemed to imply that Republican-run states with existing mail-in voting programs were secure but that Democratic-led states establishing or expanding mail-in voting during the pandemic were not.
“So Florida’s got a great Republican governor and it had a great Republican governor (before that) … and over a long period of time they’ve been able to get the absentee ballots done extremely professionally. Florida’s different from other states,” Trump said then, before criticizing vote-by-mail efforts in Nevada and New York, which were led by Democratic governors.