Category: ESTA News

The 7 train will not stop between Main Street Station and 74 Street Station in Manhattan until this fall.

According to the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA), due to the repair work at the 7th subway station, starting at 11:45 pm on the 12th of next month, the 7th subway from the main street station in the direction of Manhattan to the 74th street station will be operated by express.

Accordingly, passengers who are going to get off at 82nd Street Station and 111th Street Station by subway in the direction of Manhattan must get off at 74th Street Station and 103rd Street Station, respectively, and then transfer to a subway in the direction of Flushing.

According to the MTA, platform construction in the Manhattan direction of the two stations will be completed by this fall, followed by platform construction in the Flushing direction by next spring.

The MTA explained that with the goal of improving the subway station environment, constructions such as replacing the stairs at the two stations, flattening the platform and mezzanine floor, installing a wide screen for train operation information, painting murals, replacing lights, and installing CCTVs will be carried out.

According to a recent report by The Lancet, a British medical journal, the number of corona deaths in Hawaii is 147 per 100,000 people, making it the state with the greatest preventive effect in the United States.

Arizona, the state with the highest number of deaths, had 581 deaths per 100,000, about four times more than Hawaii.

The report was prepared based on publicly available data from government agencies between January 1 and July 31, 2020.

Emma Castro, a researcher at the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at Washington State University, who wrote the report, explained that the state of Hawaii had the most efficient performance in several areas, including civic awareness and quarantine administration.

For example, trust in neighbors ranked second, and quarantine administration, such as restrictions on large gatherings and mandatory wearing of masks for a long time, ranked sixth.

Researcher Castro said that he was also able to read the association that wearing a mask helps reduce the infection rate, and pointed out that the mask wearing rate in Hawaii was the first.

The mandatory wearing of masks indoors in the state of Hawaii was lifted entirely on March 25, 2022.

David Igeg’s previous administration continued mask mandates when other states lifted mask guidelines, as well as when the federal government no longer required masks in low- and moderate-risk areas.

On the other hand, Hawaii’s GDP fell to the lowest during the COVID-19 period.

Researcher Boliki analyzed that increased use of masks is associated with higher unemployment rates, and that the lower the frequency of shopping and dining out, the greater the risk of job loss.

According to the report, the states with the highest jobless rates during COVID-19 were New York and Washington, DC, while Hawaii, Wyoming, and New Mexico had the greatest economic difficulties.

Meanwhile, researcher Castro explained that the US has one of the highest per capita death rates from COVID-19 in the world, given its economic size and medical resources.

In addition, the death rate differs by up to four times between states, which means that states with high death rates still have room for improvement.

In addition, it was advised that the response strategies of each state government should be reviewed to establish more efficient quarantine policies in the future.

Even in Beverly Hills, L.A.’s wealthiest area, the homeless problem has become serious recently, raising concerns among business owners.

A long homeless village is formed along San Vicente Boulevard near Orlando Avenue, south of the Beverly Shopping Mall.

Locals who remember the looting of many of the shops on Rodeo Street in the Beverly Hills area during the height of the BLM protests are now raising concerns about the rise of homeless tents moving west from Downtown LA.

A Korean American who lives in a condominium nearby complained that she was upset that Beverly Hills was safer than downtown or Koreatown and that there were no homeless people, so she moved, but there was a homeless tent village nearby.

Recently, homeless people have been showing signs of spreading out of Downtown Skid Row and spreading throughout the city of Los Angeles. In the meantime, the homeless problem has emerged from a local problem centered on Skid Row to a problem facing the entire city of Los Angeles.

According to a survey by the LA Homeless Services Department, last year, the number of homeless cases in LA City totaled 41,000, and the number of homeless cases in LA County totaled 69,000.

LA Mayor Karen Bass is working hard to set up permanent housing for the homeless and remove homeless tents through the “Inside Safe” program introduced last December, but progress is incomplete.

Meanwhile, since the recent pandemic, various crimes such as “smash and grab” theft by people presumed to be homeless in LA have been rampant again, and fundamental measures by the city authorities are required.

The Manhattan District Attorney’s Office, which criminally prosecuted former President Donald Trump, filed a lawsuit against Republican members of the House of Representatives to the effect of not obstructing the prosecution.

The New York Times (NYT) reported on the 11th that Chief Prosecutor Alvin Bragg, who spearheaded the prosecution of former President Trump, filed a 50-page complaint against Jim Jordan (Ohio), chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, and others in the Southern Federal Court of New York on the same day.

Chairman Jordan, a member of the Republican Party, is a person who highlights the problems of prosecution, such as notifying former Manhattan District Attorney Mark Pomerantz, who oversaw the investigation of former President Trump, of the summons to the Judiciary Committee.

In response, Prosecutor Bragg asked the court to block execution of the subpoena issued by Jordan.

He also requested that the Judiciary Committee in the future be prohibited from sending subpoenas to other persons involved in the investigation besides former prosecutor Pomeranz.

In the complaint, Bragg argued that Jordan’s attack on prosecutors was an unconstitutional attack and was “clearly designed to intimidate prosecutors.”

Along with this, he introduced the fact that the prosecution received death threats from supporters of former President Trump and received more than 1,000 complaint calls, criticizing that “Republican lawmakers are participating in this act.”

The NYT evaluated that it was unusual for Prosecutor Bragg to take legal action against Republican members of the House of Representatives.

Prosecutor Bragg became the target of attacks from former President Trump and the Republican side from the course of his investigation.

Former President Trump had criticized Prosecutor Bragg even before the indictment.

After the prosecution, he even expressed his dissatisfaction with primary colors such as ‘human trash’ and ‘beast’.

The Republican Party also started to “protect Trump,” such as asking the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office for investigation materials on former President Trump.

In addition, it recently strengthened its attack on Bragg by announcing a plan to hold a hearing to hold the Manhattan District Attorney accountable for the rise in New York’s crime rate.

Prosecutor Bragg protested through a spokesman, calling the House Judiciary Committee’s offensive a “political show” before filing a complaint with the court.

The Manhattan District Attorney’s Office indicted former President Trump on 34 counts on the 30th of last month, saying that he paid three people and manipulated accounting books to silence a sexual scandal.

Reuters and other U.S. media outlets reported simultaneously that two U.S. Army helicopters during training over the U.S. state of Kentucky collided at around 10 p.m. on the 29th and then crashed.

An Army spokesman said two HH60 transport Blackhawk helicopters belonging to the 101st Airborne Division collided during routine training in Trigg County, Kentucky, near the base at Fort Campbell, Kentucky.

A resident living near the accident site told a local broadcaster that “I heard two loud noises.”

The crashed helicopter caught fire and firefighters were dispatched to extinguish it.

A spokesman for Fort Campbell told The Washington Post (WP) that nine soldiers were killed.

At the time, it was reported that the accident occurred in a hilly area and there was no damage to private houses.

Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshir said on Twitter on the 30th, “I am going to Fort Campbell this morning to support our service members and their families who suffered the tragic events of last night.”

The US Army is currently investigating the cause of the helicopter crash.

On the 28th and 29th of last month, it rained from early dawn in Silicon Valley, California.

The rain that fell over two days was rather loud, but it was spring rain just before April.

In previous years, each drop of rain would have felt like sweet rain, but not this year.

This is because it has been raining every day in California since the end of last year. It rained non-stop for a week, causing flooding, and causing many casualties.

As a result, there were not many days to see the clear skies of California, which is famous for its good weather this winter.

It was the middle of winter, even the residents who had been waiting for the rain to complain, “I hope the rain will stop now.”

As it rained heavily, the temperature naturally dropped. Compared to previous years, a large width of cold continued.

‘Winter storms’, sometimes accompanied by storms, hit the area several times, making the area tense. Even in Silicon Valley, electricity went out to tens of thousands of households.

A resident who has lived in Mountain View, where Google’s headquarters is located, for 40 years said, “I’ve never seen such a bad weather like this winter in 40 years.”

The ‘winter storm’ unfortunately also swept through Silicon Valley.

Big tech companies represented by Apple, Microsoft (MS), Amazon, Google, and Meta have suffered the worst this year.

Even during Corona 19, when concerns about the economic downturn were high, it continued to grow proudly, but now it is experiencing a slowdown in growth.

Apple’s sales from October to December of last year decreased for the first time since the first quarter of 2019 on a quarterly basis, and Meta has been experiencing negative growth for three consecutive quarters since the second quarter of last year.

Microsoft, Amazon, and Google also reported a decrease in net profit year-on-year or lower-than-expected performance.

These companies are undergoing large-scale restructuring as their earnings prospects for this year are also unclear due to concerns about the economic downturn.

Along with Meta and Amazon announcing their second round of layoffs, Microsoft and Google have also started reducing their workforce.

Amazon 27,000, Meta 21,000, Google 12,000, MS 10,000, the number of layoffs alone reaches 70,000.

If you include other tech companies such as Salesforce, Dell Technologies, Twitter, Zoom, and Lyft, the number of layoffs is well over 100,000.

This is an unprecedented level.

Businesses that are not immediately profitable are being exited, such as Amazon indefinitely postponing the second phase of its headquarters and Microsoft suspending virtual reality workspace project services.

Silicon Valley Bank (SVB), which has been a support for startups, also collapsed. SVB is the 16th largest bank in the US that has served as a source of funding for startups for the past 40 years.

However, a bank run (large-scale withdrawal) occurred as the risk management for the rapidly rising standard interest rate was not properly managed, and it was eventually closed.

Fortunately, the US government quickly stepped in to provide full deposit protection and bailed out all the depositors, but it almost led to the bankruptcy of the startup.

In the aftermath of the SVB collapse, another small and medium-sized bank, Signature Bank, was closed, and Credit Suisse, a world-class investment bank (IB), was also sold to UBS, the largest IB in Switzerland, amid rumors of a crisis.

Silicon Valley, a symbol of global technological innovation, could have become the epicenter of the global financial crisis. It was an unprecedented crisis comparable to the Lehman Brothers crisis that triggered the 2008 global financial crisis.

Silicon Valley, which has been leading the global economy by presenting a new paradigm through active investment and technological innovation, is now bowing down to unexpected situations that may explode anywhere and anytime.

An engineer working for a tech company said, “I’ve been working in Silicon Valley for 20 years, but it’s the first time I’ve felt a sense of crisis like these days.”

Spring has arrived, but Silicon Valley’s spring has not yet arrived. Silicon Valley’s ‘winter storm’, which had been raging, has calmed down for a while, but ‘winter’ seems to continue for the time being.

In connection with the tragedy in which seven people, including three students, were killed in a shooting at a private elementary school in Tennessee, circumstances were revealed that the suspect had carefully planned the crime in advance.

It is shocking that it was confirmed that he had prepared the location for the shooting in detail in advance, and even prepared his own position on the crime.

According to the Associated Press, local police are investigating the identity of the suspect who was shot and killed by the police after committing a crime at Covenant School in Nashville, Tennessee on the morning of the 27th as Audrey Hale (28), a transgender woman.

Nashville Police Chief John Drake said the suspect, a graduate of the school, had a map showing how to proceed with the attack based on a preliminary tour of the school building, including the location of the entrance to the school.

“She prepared the suspect to face law enforcement,” she explained.

Armed with two AR-15 style semi-automatic rifles and a handgun, Hale first broke the glass door with her gunfire, then entered the building and committed the crime.

In addition, the police have secured and analyzed texts written in relation to the shooting, including her statement and several notes from Hale.

Regarding the statement, Chief Drake said, “It suggests that several shootings were intended to be committed,” and that “Covenant School was just one of them.”

A motive has yet to be determined, police said, adding that all factors were being investigated, including the possibility that Hale’s gender identity was involved.

With the cooperation of the US and German governments, a cryptocurrency company that has been laundering cryptocurrencies stolen by North Korea and criminal groups so that the judicial authorities cannot trace them has been caught.

The U.S. Department of Justice announced on the 15th that it had cracked down on online cryptocurrency platform ChipMixer, which provided a mixing service necessary to launder more than $3 billion (about 400 billion won) of cryptocurrency from 2017 until recently.

The Ministry of Justice said it had worked with German authorities to seize Chipmixer’s domains, servers, and more than $46 million in cryptocurrency.

In addition, Minh Quoc Nguyen (49) of Hanoi, Vietnam, who operated the chip mixer, was charged with money laundering, unauthorized business, and identity theft, and explained that if the charges are confirmed, he could face up to 40 years in prison.

According to the indictment filed by the Ministry of Justice, Chipmixer provided a mixing service that mixed the bitcoins deposited by customers with the bitcoins of other customers, making it difficult for judicial and regulatory authorities to track transactions.

Chipmixer offered several features to enhance the anonymity of offenders and hid the location of its servers to avoid seizure by law enforcement authorities.

In addition, while providing services to several clients in the United States, it has not registered with the US Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN).

The Ministry of Justice said Chipmixer laundered over $700 million in bitcoin, including cryptocurrencies stolen from blockchain video game company Axie Infinity in 2022 and blockchain technology company Harmony in 2020 by North Korean-linked hacker organizations Lazarus and APT38.

In addition, the General Reconnaissance Administration (GRU), a Russian military intelligence organization, was also one of the customers who entrusted Chipmixer with bitcoin washing.

In addition, customers of ‘Hydra’, the world’s largest darknet market, also visited the chip mixer. The darknet market is a black market on the Internet where drugs and stolen financial information are traded.

“Chipmixers have helped all sorts of criminals escape scrutiny by making it easy to launder vast amounts of cryptocurrencies, especially bitcoin, on an international scale,” said federal prosecutor Jacqueline Romero for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania.

U.S. politicians are confronting each other over responsibility and countermeasures for the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB).

While Republicans who favor ‘small government’ oppose government intervention such as bailouts, Democrats are arguing that the government should act to protect depositors and strengthen financial supervision to prevent similar situations.

According to foreign media such as the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) on the 12th, Republican Nikki Haley, former US ambassador to the United Nations, who declared running for president, made a statement and argued that “taxpayers should never bail out SVB.”

Former Ambassador Haley said, “Individual investors can buy banks and assets. There is no responsibility for American taxpayers to intervene. We must end the era of big government and corporate bailouts.”

Entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, who also entered the race for the Republican primary, said in an interview with CNN that day that SVB made poor management decisions, saying, “I don’t think we should compensate for such bad behavior or management.”

He argued that the government should not insure deposits that exceed the $250,000 limit set by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC).

There were also voices criticizing the regulators.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis of the same party blamed regulators in a Fox News interview, saying, “We have a huge body of federal bureaucrats, but they never show up when we need them to stop this from happening.”

In the Democratic Party, mixed reactions are detected.

Rep. Lo Cana (Democratic) of Northern California, where SVB is headquartered, argued in an interview on CBS’ ‘Face the Nation’ that day that the government should protect all depositors’ deposits in principle.

He stressed that there is a precedent in which the Treasury Department guaranteed all deposits at the Bank of New England in 1991, when Fed Chairman Jerome Powell was at the Treasury Department.

He also argued that the Treasury Department and the FDIC should support liquidity, saying that SVB has sufficient assets, but liquidity has been insufficient due to the Fed’s rapid rate hike.

Democrats Congressman Eric Swalwell (California) and Congressman Rubin Gayego also argued on Twitter that the FDIC must also insure amounts exceeding $250,000.

Meanwhile, Democratic Senator Robert Menendez of the Senate Banking Committee said in an NBC interview that he did not support the bailout.

Some argue that the situation happened because the Republicans eased financial regulations, and that government supervision over banks should be strengthened.

“The collapse of the SVB demonstrates the need for strong regulation to protect the financial system,” Senator Elizabeth Warren, a Democrat, tweeted.

The FDIC, currently designated as SVB’s bankruptcy trustee, is looking for a company to acquire the bank’s assets, and this is being discussed as a best-case scenario.

If the sale of assets does not go smoothly, there is a way for the government to guarantee deposits that exceed the guarantee limit, but the WSJ predicted that such a plan would not be easy in a state where the political world is extremely divided.

The 1.5-mile section of Route 29 (Lee Highway) entering Centerville from Fairfax, Virginia, was officially started with a groundbreaking ceremony on the 8th to widen the 1.5-mile section from 4 lanes to 6 lanes.

The groundbreaking ceremony was attended by Kathy Smith, Sully District Supervisor, and Pat Herity, Springfield Supervisor, along with officials from the Virginia Department of Transportation.

Supervisor Smith said, “This project will greatly benefit the residents of the Sully District on their way home from work in the afternoon. I am pleased that Fairfax County can work with the Virginia Department of Transportation to expand the four-lane to six-lane system.”

The section between Union Mill Road and Buckley’s Gate Drive is where bottlenecks are constantly occurring with the estimated 30,000 vehicles pass each day.

The purpose of this construction is to reduce bottlenecks that occur during the day, including commuting, at the intersection of Clifton Road and Route 29.

The project which is estimated to cost $97 million will be funded by federal, state, and local governments.

Prior to the groundbreaking ceremony, large trees along Route 29 were cut down for construction.

This area is home to Colin Powell Elementary School and is home to many Koreans, and Koreans are welcoming the project.

Mr. Park, who lives in the area, said, “I welcome the start of this construction,” and “On the one hand, I am a little worried about traffic congestion until the construction is finished.”

Hwang Gye-sil, a real estate broker, said, “Centerville is gradually becoming a better area to live in. If Road 29 is expanded from 4 lanes to 6 lanes, accessibility will increase as well, so it will affect real estate prices.”