Attoney General Merrick Garland is set to deliver a statement to the press on Thursday afternoon from the Department of Justice.
Garland has been under pressure to speak about the FBI’s search of former President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home on Monday.
It is not clear if Garland will discuss the matter on Thursday. The Department of Justice did not indicate the subject to be addressed by the attorney general.
It is standard practice for the agency to not publicly reveal details about ongoing investigations.
The search at Trump’s home is believed to be related to classified material that the National Archives and Records Administration believed had been improperly taken by Trump.
Republicans have widely condemned the FBI’s search, accusing it of being politically motivated.
The White House has said President Biden had no knowledge the search was going to take place.
The New York Times earlier Thursday reported that Trump had been subpoenaed this spring for the documents.
Officers also seized multiple mobile phones, an encrypted desktop computer and a Huawei internet dongle, which they allege was used in the scam.
Salopek, 30, did not apply for bail in Downing Center Local Court on Thursday after he was charged on Wednesday with a string of offenses in connection to the alleged fraud. His co-accused of him, Jay McCrea, 39, remains before the courts.
“Our cybercrime investigators [are] continuing to identify victims and piece together the extent of the fraud,” Marden said. A spokesperson for the AFP said the total losses “are in the hundreds of thousands of dollars”. Investigations are ongoing, and further arrests have not been ruled out.
Cybercrime expert Simon Smith said large-scale SIM boxes were “quite alarming”, in that “it’s very easy to get a temporary throw-away SIM or a hundred” and write a few lines of code to generate a swath of phone numbers for the device to target.
Smith said people were easily tricked by SMS scams because there is no way to differentiate between a legitimate number and one used by a scammer.
His only advice is emphatic: “Don’t bloody click on any links.”
Instead, if people receive a text message about a security issue or any other problem, they should contact the bank or other institution separately.
Smith said people “love convenience”, which is what helps scammers. “It’s so much more convenient later on to not have to go chasing your identity and change all your details.”
The AFP said anyone who believes they may be a victim of a phishing scam, or notice any discrepancies in their bank accounts, should contact the bank and report the issue to the AFP’s Report Cyber website.
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According to documents filed with Brazil’s national competition regulator, Microsoft has claimed that Sony has paid “blocking rights” to developers to prevent their games from being added to Xbox Game Pass. As part of the regulator’s review of Microsoft’s proposed acquisition of Activision Blizzard, the company alleged that Sony had “hampered” the growth of its Game Pass subscription service with its business practices.
“Microsoft’s ability to continue expanding Game Pass has been hampered by Sony’s desire to inhibit such growth,” Microsoft claimed in its translated filing (via The Verge) to the Administrative Council for Economic Defense. “Sony pays for ‘blocking rights’ to prevent developers from adding content to Game Pass and other competing subscription services.”
The deal that Microsoft refers to is one that’s common in the industry. Publishing contracts are complex, and with the addition of subscription services such as Game Pass or PS Plus, that adds another layer of complexity to any agreements between studios, publishers, and companies that own platforms such as Xbox and PlayStation. It’s likely not some sinister masterplan by Sony, but business as usual in an industry where timed and console-exclusive deals happen frequently.
Microsoft’s response comes shortly after Sony made its own claim about its users jumping ship to Xbox if Microsoft’s deal to purchase Activision Blizzard, and by extension, the Call of Duty franchise, is completed. Microsoft has disputed that claim, and had also previously indicated that it would continue supporting Call of Duty on PlayStation “beyond the existing agreement” and into the future.
Any existing publishing agreements with PlayStation made by Activision Blizzard, specifically the ones set up for Modern Warfare 2, next year’s Call of Duty: Warzone 2, and a new Call of Duty core release, will still be honored by Microsoft.
The products discussed here were independently chosen by our editors. GameSpot may get a share of the revenue if you buy anything featured on our site.
After moving accommodation five times in five months, Nyangbal and Dunghutti woman Teresa Anderson has had enough.
Key points:
Flooding in the Northern Rivers displaced many Indigenous communities
Elders say a disproportionate number of First Nations people are still homeless almost six months on
They say the many in the community are suffering because of it
The elder’s Cabbage Tree Island home, nestled on a flood plain of cane fields in northern New South Wales, was deemed uninhabitable after the February floods.
She has been homeless since.
“I’ve been moved around five times,” she told the ABC.
“We were at the Ramada[hotel] then we went to Brisbane. Then we had to go outside of town.
“It’s taken a toll on my health. I couldn’t even cope, I couldn’t go to work. It just got me really emotional.”
Teresa in front of her grandmother’s house, which is unsafe for occupancy.(ABC NewsEmma Rennie )
Teresa Anderson was in good health before the floods.
But she believes a series of new health issues have been a direct result of the grief and stress of being displaced.
“YO‘I’m struggling,” she said.
As floods devastated Lismore and surrounding towns earlier this year, a sludge of sewage-contaminated water raged down the Richmond River, destroying every home in the Aboriginal community.
Floodwater damage at Cabbage Tree Island. (ABC News: Rani Hayman)
There are 23 homes on the island — with some housing up to 12 people — and at the time every single resident of the 180-strong community was left homeless.
Today, every house is still uninhabitable.
According to the Jali Local Aboriginal Land Council, today, almost six months after the disaster, about 500 of the 1,296 northern New South Wales residents who are still homeless are First Nations people.
“That tells me clearly that we’re disproportionate again in relation to the numbers of people who are homeless,” Widjabul man and Jali Land Council chief executive Chris Binge told the ABC.
Mr Binge said a disproportionate number of the Indigenous community remains homeless.(ABC News: Rani Hayman)
According to Ms Anderson, Indigenous flood victims have been pushed to the back of the line when it came to finding permanent accommodation.
“They are homeless and staying in tents in front of their homes,” she said.
“It’s hard for us to try to get accommodation like rental houses, because once they know it’s an Aboriginal family, they just say, ‘no, I’m sorry, it’s not available.”
Temporary housing plan
The NSW Department of Communities and Justice, the organization responsible for helping flood victims into emergency accommodation, told the ABC in a statement it did not collect data on Indigenous status.
But it said it had assisted “10,676 people into emergency accommodation across the Northern Rivers” since February.
The federal and state governments have promised $70 million for Aboriginal housing solutions for communities across the Northern Rivers.
There are plans for Cabbage Tree Island residents to move to a temporary housing site at the nearby Wardell Recreation Ground.
But according to Resilience NSW the “persistent wet weather has significantly impacted the progress of earthworks”.
Some residents have been told it could be three months before the project is finished, but Resilience NSW have not provided a specific time frame.
The temporary housing site at the nearby Wardell Recreation Ground, which is still in development. (ABC NewsEmma Rennie)
As members of the Cabbage Tree Island communities wait for news on when and if they’ll be able to return home, there are concerns the health and wellbeing of elders is deteriorating.
Nyangbal woman Delia Rhodes, also from Cabbage Tree Island, said not knowing when or if she’ll be able to return home to the country has severely impacted her mental health.
Delia Rhodes just wants to get back to her community.(ABC NewsEmma Rennie)
“I can understand the wider community has been affected, too,” she said.
“But it’s a slow process for us to get us back into housing, into a permanent home. It’s hard work.
AUSTIN (KXAN) — An OnlyFans and Instagram model from Austin who reportedly stabbed her boyfriend to death in Florida was arrested and charged for murder.
Courtney Clenney, also known as Courtney Tailor, was arrested on Wednesday in Hawaii. She is charged with second-degree murder for the April 3 stabbing of 27-year-old Christian “Toby” Obumseli, according to the Hawai’i Police Department. Obumseli was a Texas Tech University alumnus.
The Miami Police Department described Obumseli’s death as a domestic violence incident that involved a fight and ended with a stabbing, NBC reports.
Clenney’s defense lawyer, Frank Prieto, told KXAN’s sister station in Florida she acted in self-defense.
“Obumseli attacked her and choked her that evening; Courtney had no choice but to meet force with force,” Prieto said in a statement to NBC 6. “Further, we are disappointed that the State Attorney sought an arrest warrant in this matter; we have cooperated with the investigation from the beginning with both the State and the City of Miami Police Department. We have always offered to self-surrender if charges were filed in an effort to begin the legal process of clearing her of the charges.”
Clenney is being held at the East Hawai’i Detention Center and is expected to make a first court appearance Thursday, the department said. She will eventually be extradited to Florida.
There are 33 islands in Kiribati, a small nation in the central Pacific Ocean. Only 20 of these are inhabited.
Key points:
Residents of several small, relatively poor nations have a large number of Australian bank accounts holding hundreds of millions of dollars
The biggest foreign holdings in Australian financial institutions come from the United States and China
The ATO says there are no more accounts linked to ‘residents’ of uninhabited places such as Antarctica
Yet data released by the Australian Taxation Office (ATO) and found that $682 million in Australian bank accounts belonged to foreign tax residents apparently from Kiribati, up from just $14 million in 2019.
Fewer than 120,000 people inhabit Kiribati and, according to Kiribati’s 2019-2020 Household Income and Expenditure Survey (HIES), the median household income was just $12,000 in 2020.
The nation’s residents are also quite young: the median age of the population is 23 and 35 per cent of the population is under 15 years old.
But the 876 Australian bank accounts apparently held by Kiribati residents had an average balance of almost $800,000.
Kiribati is not the only remote area where people, companies or trusts that hold Australian bank accounts apparently reside.
Tuvalu, with a population of 11,792 in 2020, had 212 accounts registered to “residents” holding $194 million in Australia.
That is an average of more than $900,000 per account, when the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per person in Tuvalu is around $7,500 per person.
Equatorial Guinea, in central Africa, had 52 accounts registered’ to residents holding $4 million.
Individuals, trusts or companies from the eleven notorious secrecy jurisdictions of Bermuda, Cayman Islands, British Virgin Islands and Jersey hold $6.3 billion in accounts in Australia. On average each of these accounts holds more than $1 million.
Mark Zirnsak notes ‘red flags’ for money laundering and tax evasion.(Supplied: Uniting Church in Australia)
“The latest data of accounts held in Australia from offshore continue to present red flags for money laundering and tax evasion,” according to the Tax Justice Network’s Mark Zirnsak.
Jurisdictions like ‘Antarctica’ generally reported by mistake, says ATO
The data shows that holdings from uninhabited subantarctic Bouvet Island, Heard Island and McDonald Island have now disappeared, which means there are no Australian bank accounts linked to places with penguins but no people.
The previous year’s data for 2019 showed several million dollars held in uninhabited jurisdictions, such as Antarctica and Bouvet Island.
ATO deputy commissioner Hector Thompson said the information the agency received from Australia’s international exchange partners under the Common Reporting Standard (CRS) had assisted in better data matching that allowed them to catch out tax cheats.
The CRS is the single global standard for the collection, reporting and exchange of financial account information on foreign tax residents.
“[It] helps the Tax Avoidance Taskforce to identify, investigate and ensure that foreign-sourced income and assets held in foreign financial accounts by Australian residents are declared,” Mr Thompson said.
The ATO also uses data analytics to detect data anomalies in the CRS data, such as uninhabited jurisdictions.
“Our compliance activities have confirmed jurisdictions such as Antarctica are generally reported by mistake.
“For example, a customer or front-line employee from a financial institution might select Antarctica instead of Australia from a drop-down box when opening an account.”
He said the ATO requires that such mistakes are verified and corrected by the financial institution.
“Data verification steps taken mean that accounts incorrectly reported for Bouvet Island, Heard Island and McDonald Island have been eliminated in the most recent CRS reporting,” he said.
Labor promise to stop money flowing into tax havens
Labor has promised to introduce a “beneficial ownership register” that would make it harder for the people behind companies to hide who they are and what they get up to.
Since the Panama Papers and various other tax leaks there have been calls for governments around the world, including Australia’s, to introduce a register that gives the public free access to the names of people behind companies, trusts, assets and bank accounts.
Mr Zirnsak welcomed Labor’s commitment to a public beneficial ownership register, saying it may help expose who are the people behind companies holding accounts in Australia.
“The government should also strengthen unexplained wealth laws, to be able to seize money shifted into Australia where there is a high likelihood the money has an illicit source,” Mr Zirnsak said.
“The new government should also act on the recommendations made by the recent parliamentary inquiry into money laundering, to reduce the ability of criminals to shift profits from crime into Australia.”
Not all the financial flows are from tax havens
Not all the money flowing into Australian bank accounts was coming from small nations that have few inhabitants.
US resident companies and individuals held $33 billion across more than 588,000 accounts.
Residents of China held $30 billion across more than a million accounts.(ABC News: Steve Wang)
Residents of China held $30 billion across more than a million accounts. And another $15 billion across more than 341,000 accounts was held by people residing in Hong Kong.
Big amounts were also held by residents of the United Kingdom ($14 billion across almost 630,000 accounts), New Zealand ($13.7 billion across almost 511,000 accounts) and Singapore ($13.55 billion across nearly 233,000 accounts).
Overall, the 2020 data released under the common reporting standard (CRS) scheme — the single global standard for the collection, reporting and exchange of financial account information on foreign tax residents — revealed the amount held by foreign tax residents in Australia totaled $186 billion.
Global authorities’ greater exchange of information helps identify tax evaders
The OECD has recently bolstered efforts to track financial flows, with the automated exchange of information on cross-border financial activities.
Data shows that, in 2020, information on more than 75 million financial accounts worldwide covering total assets of around 9 trillion euros was exchanged automatically by 102 jurisdictions.
The data also shows the Automatic Exchange of Financial Account Information in Tax Matters has also helped identify 112 billion euros of additional revenues (including tax, interest and penalties), thanks to voluntary disclosure programs and similar initiatives, as well as offshore investigations.
At least 3 billion euros of these additional tax revenues have been linked directly to the use of the information exchanged.
Mr Thompson said the ATO works closely with other international jurisdictions to catch tax evaders.
“CRS data is exchanged globally using exchange of information agreements with foreign tax authorities,” he said.
“This includes work with the Joint Chiefs of Global Tax Enforcement (J5) and the Joint International Taskforce on Shared Intelligence and Collaboration (JITSIC).”
Meta is testing additional end-to-end encryption (E2EE) features in Facebook Messenger—and not just because it has been roundly criticized for not enabling these protections by default.
“We’re working hard to protect your personal messages and calls with end-to-end encryption by default on Messenger and Instagram,” Meta says. “Today, we’re announcing our plans to test a new secure storage feature for backups of your end-to-end encrypted chats on Messenger, and more updates and tests to deliver the best experience on Messenger and Instagram.”
The marquee change is the introduction of encrypted backups. Messenger currently stores E2EE messages on a single device; there is no way to access them on another device. (At least in theory.) This can be inconvenient for people who lose their primary device, but if the company had backed up the messages without encrypting them, Messenger users would be at risk.
That isn’t a theoretical problem. Apple uses E2EE for iMessage, but many people choose to back up their message histories via iCloud. That backup isn’t encrypted, so even though the messages rely on E2EE in transit, someone can access those messages via iCloud. Meta avoids that problem with Messenger by restricting E2EE messages to a single device.
Now the company is testing what it calls Secure Storage. This encrypted backup will allow people to recover their messages using the method of their choice—supplying a PIN or entering a generated code—if they lose access to their device. Meta says it will also let Messenger users back up their E2EE messages to “third-party cloud services,” if they prefer.
“For example, for iOS devices you can use iCloud to store a secret key that allows access to your backups,” Meta says. “While this method of protecting your key is secure, it is not protected by Messenger’s end-to-end encryption.” (Which is effectively the company’s way of saying that it’s not responsible if otherwise-secure Messenger chats are accessed via iCloud.)
Meta will start testing Secure Storage on Android and iOS this week. The feature isn’t available via Messenger’s website, desktop apps, or for “chats that aren’t end-to-end encrypted,” though.
The company says it will also “begin testing the ability to unsend messages, reply to Facebook Stories, and offer other ways to access your end-to-end encrypted messages and calls”; test an extension dubbed Code Verify that “automatically verifies the authenticity of the code” on Messenger’s website; and make E2EE messages available to more Instagram users.
But perhaps the most important test will be making E2EE the default for some Messenger users rather than requiring people to enable these protections on a chat-by-chat basis. Meta says:
“This week, we’ll begin testing default end-to-end encrypted chats between some people. If you’re in the test group, some of your most frequent chats may be automatically end-to-end encrypted, which means you won ‘t have to opt in to the feature. You’ll still have access to your message history, but any new messages or calls with that person will be end-to-end encrypted. You can still report messages to us if you think they violate our policies, and we’ll review them and take action as necessary.”
Making the most secure option the default is the best way to encourage people to protect themselves. This has become even more important in a post-gnaws Roe country where law enforcement can—and have—use message histories to build cases against people who’ve had or have sought abortions. (Meta tells wiredwiredthis rollout wasn’t prompted by those concerns.)
Meta says it “will continue to provide updates as we make progress toward the global rollout of default end-to-end encryption for personal messages and calls in 2023.”
Dimity Blundell was 35 weeks pregnant with her son, Finley, when she was suddenly woken up in the middle of the night by her cat.
Warning: This story discusses stillbirths and contains photos and other content that may be distressing to some people.
“I used the bathroom and started bleeding, a lot,” she said.
Dimity, and her husband Michael, rushed to hospital, where doctors told them the news no parents want to hear: “we can’t find a heartbeat.”
Dimity had had a placental abruption, a rare but serious pregnancy complication where the placenta partly or completely separates from the uterus before delivery.
She was taken into an operating theater at 12:16am on February 22 this year.
“I was prepped by 12:17am, knocked out at 12:18am, the surgery started at 12:19am, and Finley was born at 12:20am,” Dimity said.
Finley was declared dead at 1:24am.
‘Is this the worst day of my life?’
Michael and Dimity are taking it “day by day” since their son’s death.(Supplied)
Later that morning, a midwife asked if the grieving couple wanted to meet their son.
Dimity recalled the midwife telling her: “he’s very cute, he really does just look like he’s sleeping.”
Finley spent four days in the loving arms of his parents, and a handful of other family members and friends.
Dimity said she always asks herself, “is the worst day of my life the day he was born, or the day I had to leave him? I think it was the day we had to leave him.”
“Then we came home, and we had a nursery and we had baby things, and then we became the people whose baby died,” she said.
“Everyone else gets to bring their baby home, so why didn’t we?”
Dimity and Michael with baby Finley, who was stillborn in February 2022.(Supplied)
Five-and-a half months on, Dimity and Michael said they were taking each day as it came.
But Dimity said Finley’s death “affects every single aspect” of their lives.
“Everything that you do, it’s just woven into the fabric of who you are,” she said.
Michael said it was hard to describe the pain, that still had not gone away, but said it had “certainly gotten a little easier to deal with, with all the counseling and work we’ve put in.”
“It definitely burns less; I’d say it would be a campfire now rather than a bonfire,” Dimity said.
“Moving forward is weird though, because the further forward you move, the further away you get from your baby.”
‘We are the strength of other people, we are the strength of the Red Nose families’
Bonnie Carter is the ACT representative for the Red Nose Community Advisory Committee.(ABC News: Dave Scasci)
Shortly after Finley’s death, the couple reached out to the charity Red Nose — best known for its annual major fundraiser Red Nose Day, which is today.
Each year, the national charity raises hundreds of thousands of dollars to continue vital research into the causes of stillbirth and sudden infant death and support families impacted by the death of a baby or child.
Through Red Nose’s Canberra branch, Dimity and Michael were able to participate in counselling, and said they discovered a whole community of people who had gone through the same experience as them.
“Once you step into the community, you realize how big it is, and we’re all here for one another,” Michael said.
“The mums and the dads and the siblings of the little people who are with Finley, those people are phenomenal, and they will get you through this,” Dimity said.
“People often tell Michael and I, ‘you’re so strong, you’re so brave’. And I say, ‘No. We are the strength of other people, we are the strength of the Red Nose families.'”
Bonnie Carter and her husband Steve had these tags made for their two little girls, who were stillborn.(ABC News: Adam Kennedy)
Another member of the Red Nose community in Canberra, is bereaved parent Bonnie Carter, who lost her two daughters, Grace and Matilda, in the span of 18 months.
“It was a very raw, unique pain that I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy,” she said.
“There’s some sort of pain you cannot describe in words when a baby dies in the comfort of your belly.”
Bonnie is the ACT representative for the Red Nose Community Advisory Committee and said it was important to talk about stillbirth, as the latest statistics showed 3,000 Australian babies died suddenly and unexpectedly each year.
“By the time you roll into bed tonight, nine Australian families will have lost a baby,” she said.
Dimity and Michael said they found “talking about stillbirth took away the stigma.”
“You’re pregnant and you’re carrying a baby and then it dies, and there’s a lot of stigma around, ‘what did you do?'” Dimity said.
“By talking to Red Nose and hearing the different stories, people have a lot more understanding that it does just happen.”
Funds raised to assist research into stillbirth
Current research from Red Nose shows more than 50 per cent of stillbirths, that occur in the last weeks of an otherwise healthy pregnancy, have no known cause.
But Bonnie said she hoped that ongoing research undertaken at Red Nose could ensure “zero babies pass away, and zero little lives are lost.”
She said, until that time came, counseling and community support allowed bereaved parents and families to open up about their experience.
Bonnie has since welcomed baby daughter Evie, but continues to advocate for parents who have lost a baby through stillbirth or miscarriage.(Supplied)
“You need those other parents to lean on, to talk to, to vent to, to cry to, to laugh with,” she said.
“There is a whole community of families, especially in the Canberra region, who get it, who feel your pain, who understand it, and we’re your backbone. You can lean on us whenever you need to.”
Dimity and Michael said, one day, when they were “further down the path” they wanted to join Bonnie and become involved in the Red Nose charity.
“So that other people don’t have to sit in their hospital beds holding their baby and thinking ‘this doesn’t happen to other people,'” Dimity said.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) announced a set of revamped water strategies on Thursday, warning that the state’s supply is expected to plunge by up to 10 percent by 2040.
In anticipation of these shortfalls, Newsom unveiled a 16-page action document that focuses on “adapting to a hotter, drier future” by adjusting state priorities “based on new data and accelerating climate change.”
Among the strategies are plans for the expansion of water storage and water recycling capacity, as well as the elimination of water waste and the deployment of new technologies.
“The science and the data leads us to now understand that we will lose 10 percent of our water supply by 2040 — if all things are equal, we will lose an additional 10 percent of our supply by 2040,” Newsom said at a press conference in the Bay Area city of Antioch on Thursday.
“As a consequence of that deeper appreciation, that deeper understanding, we have a renewed sense of urgency to address this issue head on,” the governor continued. “But we do so from a multiplicity of perspectives and ways, not just from a scarcity mindset.”
One of these ways, as outlined in the supply strategy document, involves creating a storage space for up to 4 million acre-feet of water. Doing so, according to the document, would allow the state “to capitalize on big storms when they do occur and store water for dry periods.”
Another strategy included in the document involves recycling and reusing at least 800,000 acre-feet of water per year by 2030, which could optimize the use of wastewater currently released into the ocean.
An average California household uses between one-half and one acre-foot of water each year, according to the Water Education Foundation. California has about 13.1 million households, based on US Census data.
The governor’s plans also call for freeing up 500,000 acre-feet of water for new purposes each year by permanently eradicating water waste and using water more efficiently.
Newsom characterized these strategies as “moving away from a scarcity mindset to one more of abundance.”
“How can we take the existing resources and be more resourceful, in terms of advancing policies, and direct our energies to create more water, to capture more water?” I have asked.
Karla Nemeth, director of the California Department of Water Resources, stressed that implementing these plans will require a firm partnership with local municipalities.
The new strategy, she said, “means we have to do absolutely everything.”
Joaquin Esquivel, chairman of the State Water Resources Control Board, echoed these sentiments, adding that “Mother Nature is not providing us the budgets that we all thought that we were going to depend upon.”
“But there is a path forward,” Esquivel said, stressing the importance of creating and investing “in a 21st-century way.”
One such way, according to the strategy document, requires California to “move smarter and faster” to upgrade its water systems. Such modernization effort could generate enough water for more than 8.4 million households.
Additional water could become available by capturing stormwater, diversifying supplies and optimizing high flows during storm events, as well as through desalinating ocean water and salty—or brackish—water in groundwater basins, according to the document.
Thursday’s press conference took place near the site of a forthcoming, $110 million brackish water desalination plant. That facility will be the first such site in the San Francisco Bay Delta, Antioch’s mayor, Lamar Thorpe, said at the press conference.
The plant, Thorpe said, will “provide the city with a reliable source of drinking water for generations to come.”
With the desalination construction site in the background, Newsom urged Californians to adapt to a changing reality, noting that the new strategies include “specific goals with specific timelines and dollar figures.”
And those dollars, he said, will come from last year’s $5.2 billion surplus and this year’s $2.8 billion surplus.
Californian will be using these funds “to update, not just promote” these critical water supply plans — “moving these projects and doing them with urgency,” without “waiting for the voters,” according to Newsom.
“Money’s not the issue. It’s our ability to attract those dollars, by being more aggressive to draw down those dollars because we have a plan,” the governor added.
A Coles supermarket customer has come under fire after criticizing a single mother who attempted to pay for his groceries at the checkout.
Sharing on Facebook, the NSW shopper said he was “embarrassed” by the mum’s gesture and said “I’m dead set over this pay it forward rubbish”.
His controversial “rant” attracted widespread backlash, with hundreds of social media users slamming the “ungrateful” man for his harsh words.
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In his post, the Central Coast shopper urged people who “pay it forward” to “just stop”.
“I’m dead set over this pay it forward rubbish,” he wrote.
“So I was at Coles Woy Woy this morning when a single mum with a pram went to pay for my coffee, milk, banana and frozen chips.
The shopper’s post attracted widespread criticism. Credit: Facebook
“Just stop, I was embarrassed and can afford my own groceries.
“If you want to help, go donate to a charity please stop embarrassing me at the checkout, rant over.”
Hundreds reacted angrily to the man’s post, sparking an intense debate.
“Wow, what a beautiful lady and a lovely gesture. what a shame it was wasted on yourself,” said one.
“She has definitely inspired myself to do something lovey and kind for someone today #keeppayingitforward.”
Another wrote: “I could afford my own fuel too, but one day a lovely old man paid for mine and his.
“And you know what? I was very grateful and paid it forward a few days later. I’m also a single mum and helped someone.”
File image inside a Coles supermarket. Credit: Bloomberg/Bloomberg via Getty Images
A third wrote: “I think anyone that does anything nice these days gets a big smile and virtual hug from me – kindness is catching.
“The more you do the better the world gets. So she picked the wrong person that day but next time she might be that person that’s really is in need and very grateful.
One more added: “Sorry you felt embarrassed. How about feeling appreciated?
“Wonder how it was for that lady to get up the courage to offer you the kindness and you slapped her in the face.
“You should feel ashamed. If you felt embarrassed ask yourself why. That’s your problem, not one else’s.”
But some could understand his hesitation.
“You would be bit miffed wouldn’t you … If you were merrily doing your own thing and you realized people thought you were homeless or something,” a Facebook user said.
Backlash
The incident comes weeks after a woman slammed a social media influencer for sharing his “random act of kindness” towards her.
Influencer Harrison Pawluk went viral with a video that showed him giving a bunch of flowers to the woman as she sat in the street.
Maree – whose surname was withheld – told ABC Radio Melbourne she felt “dehumanized” over the stunt which had racked up 97 million views online.
“He interrupted my quiet time, filmed and uploaded a video without my consent, turning it into something it wasn’t, and I feel like he is making quite a lot of money through it,” she told the ABC.
“It’s the patronizing assumption that women, especially older women, will be thrilled by some random stranger giving them flowers.”
