Category: ESTA News

The boom in establishing labor unions in the US stores of Starbucks, a global coffee chain, appears to be slowing down.

According to the Chicago media on the 28th, employees of the world’s largest Starbucks store, “Chicago Roastery,” located on Michigan Avenue, downtown Chicago, refused to form a union.

On the 26th, under the supervision of the federal authority’ National Labor Relations Board’ (NLRB), they put the union membership plan to a vote and rejected it with a vote of 90 to 119 in favor.

CBS Broadcasting said that after the first union was formed at a Starbucks store in Buffalo, New York in December 2021, the Labor Union won the vote to establish a union at 355 Starbucks stores across the United States. Quotation: “There are 81 places that have been defeated.”

Starbucks currently operates a total of 16,000 stores in the U.S. and 35,000 stores worldwide.

Three people have died, and three others have been hospitalized after eating milkshakes in Washington State. According to local media on the 21st, the Washington state health authorities said that between February 17 and last month, 3 people died and 3 people were hospitalized among customers who drank milkshakes at a hamburger franchise restaurant in Tacoma, southern Seattle, Washington.

State health officials launched a full-scale investigation after a string of deaths and hospitalizations from customers who ate at the restaurant. Authorities explained that an investigation found listeria bacteria in milkshakes sold by hamburger restaurants. It turned out to be the same bacteria found in hospitalized patients.

Listeria is a type of food poisoning bacteria that is frequently found in contaminated meat or dairy products and can survive even at temperatures as low as -20 degrees Celsius.

State health officials suspect that the ice cream machine was not properly cleaned and harboured listeria, which was transferred to the milkshake. In response, state health officials have asked customers who have visited the store since May 29 to contact a medical institution immediately if they show symptoms of listeria infection. The store stopped using the ice cream machine on the 8th.

According to the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), an average of 1,600 people is infected with listeria each year, and 260 of these people die. Even if you are infected with this bacterium, you can pass without any special symptoms, but in the case of weak immunity or the elderly, symptoms such as fever and diarrhoea appear, and in severe cases, it can lead to severe diseases such as sepsis.

A Georgia court in charge of trialling former President Donald Trump on charges of attempting to overturn the 2020 presidential election set a bail of $200,000 for former President Trump.

Local media Atlanta Journal Constitution (AJC) reported on the 21st that Judge Scott McAfee of Fulton County, Georgia, issued these orders. The order, which was agreed upon by both prosecutors and former President Trump’s attorney, stipulates that former President Trump must not contact and influence witnesses during bail or contact other co-defendants without the intervention of a lawyer.

Nineteen people, including former President Trump and his aides, were indicted on the 14th for exerting pressure to overturn the voting results in Georgia, a contested state during the 2020 presidential election. Former President Trump’s aides and lawyers John Eastman and Kenneth Cheeseboro were each bailed at $100,000, and another attorney, Ray Smith III, was set at bail of $10,000.

During the bail period, they are required to confirm whether the bail conditions have been fulfilled once a month by phone or in the form of a court appearance. Former President Trump and his aides must appear at the prosecutor’s office in Fulton County, Georgia by the 25th and then proceed with the trial process.

Former President Trump is likely to go through the process of being imprisoned in a detention centre after appearing at the prosecution this time, unlike the previous three court proceedings (a process for clarifying the position on whether the prosecution acknowledges the prosecution’s indictment in court) are being discussed.

President Joe Biden obtained more than half of the support and showed a relative advantage in terms of competitiveness in the finals. According to a survey conducted by the Associated Press on the 10th to 14th of 1,165 adults in the United States with the University of Chicago Public Opinion Research Centre (NORC) on the 16th, 63% of respondents said they would never or probably would if former President Trump was elected as a candidate. He said he would not support it.

Only 36% of respondents expressed their support for former President Trump. By political orientation, 74% of Republican supporters supported former President Trump, while 93% of Democratic supporters turned their backs.

US President Biden had relatively few negative answers. If President Biden is elected as a candidate, the answer that he would never or probably would not support it was less than a majority with 45% of the total. 54% said he would support it. By political orientation, 82% of the Democratic Party confirmed their intention to support it. 91% of Republicans were against it. However, for both candidates, the opposition outweighed the approval in terms of candidate suitability.

When asked if they wanted President Biden to be the next presidential candidate, 75% of respondents answered no, and 69% of former President Trump’s aphorisms answered negatively. President Biden was opposed by 55% of the Democratic supporters, while former President Trump was opposed by only 37% within the Republican Party.

The Associated Press said, “The results of this survey show that there is no significant change in divided public opinion even after the unprecedented series of prosecutions of former President Trump.”

The same pattern was evident in the prosecution of former President Trump by federal prosecutors. The investigation was conducted before former President Trump was sued for the fourth time in Georgia. In the survey, 53% of respondents rated former President Trump’s campaign fraud prosecution as appropriate, and 51% pointed out that former President Trump had committed an illegal act. By political party support, 85% of Democratic supporters admitted the prosecution, while only 47% of non-party supporters and 16% of Republican supporters admitted the legitimacy of the prosecution.

Regarding former President Trump’s allegations of election fraud, 70% of the responses said that President Biden won the 2020 presidential election, which was the majority. 98% of the Democratic supporters supported it, and only 41% of Republicans acknowledged the victory of President Biden.

The Biden government entered college student loan relief for 800,000 people.

ABC News reported on the 15th that Americans who took out federal student loans the day before began receiving emails from lenders saying, “Your student loan has been forgiven.”

It is expected that about 800,000 students who are subject to the cancellation of student loans will receive guidance on ‘loan forgiveness’ within a few weeks. Of these, 614,000 people are expected to have their entire remaining loans forgiven, and for the rest, measures will be applied only to some of their loans.

This measure follows the student loan relief measures announced by the Biden government last month.

Targeting Americans who have participated in so-called “income-based repayment (IDR)” plans, the main point of the measure is that the federal government forgives the remaining loans after paying off the loans over 20 or 25 years, depending on the repayment plan.

Initially, the IDR itself was a program with this purpose, but the Ministry of Education and others explained that a system error caused some student loan borrowers to continue repaying their loans even after the repayment deadline.

In a statement, President Joe Biden said, “If a person who borrowed money under the IDR repays it in 20 or 25 years, the remaining balance of the loan can be forgiven, but due to a system error that started before I took office, more than 804,000 people have been affected by the IDR. “I am determined to right this wrong,” he said. “We will look for alternatives to provide student loan relief to as many people as possible,” he said.

Prior to the midterm elections in November of last year, President Biden announced a policy of cancelling student loan-related loans for up to 43 million people, up to $20,000 per person. However, the Supreme Court overruled the policy in June, saying that “the government has no authority to do so.”

The Biden government then announced follow-up measures related to student loan relief for 800,000 people. Regarding this, conservative groups recently filed a lawsuit demanding a ‘stop of implementation’, but it was dismissed the previous day because they did not qualify for the lawsuit, the Congressional media outlet The Hill reported.

President Biden’s student loan relief pledge and implementation are aimed at young voters ahead of the 2024 presidential election. As a super-close confrontation with former President Donald Trump, who is likely to have a rematch, is expected to take place, the need to target young voters who are Democratic-oriented but relatively weak in support has increased.

The defeat of the U.S. national team in the Women’s World Cup was blamed on leftist ideology.

When the U.S. national team, which tried to win the FIFA Women’s World Cup three times in a row, lost in the round of 16, former President Donald Trump criticized the national team, citing leftist ideology as the background.

“The U.S. women’s national soccer team’s shocking and completely unexpected loss to Sweden symbolizes what is happening under corrupt Joe Biden,” former President Trump wrote on his social media account TruthSocial.

“Most of our players have been openly hostile to the United States, and no other country has done anything like it,” he said. “Woke equals failure.” Walk, which means ‘awakening’ or ‘awareness’, originally meant awakening to racial inequality in the black community.

However, former President Trump and the Republican Party are criticizing the work as a ‘leftist agenda’ that imposes a progressive identity throughout society while pursuing excessive political correctness.

Former President Trump’s attack on the women’s World Cup team seems to have played a part in the past.

Former President Trump had a war of words over inviting them to the White House when the US national team won the Women’s World Cup in 2019, when he was in office.

LGBTQ activist and national team captain Megan Rapinoe criticized the Trump administration at the time, saying, “We will not be invited, and we will not go to the White House.” Former President Trump also criticized Rapinoe by directly mentioning him in a social media post that day.

In May 2020, an additional prison sentence was handed down to a former police officer involved in an incident in which a white police officer arrested and killed a black man, George Floyd, by crushing him with his knee.

According to US media including the New York Times (NYT) on the 7th, Judge Peter Cahill of the Hennepin County Court in Minnesota sentenced former Minneapolis police officer Tu Tao to four years and nine months in prison for aiding and abetting murder.

Thao pleaded not guilty, claiming that Derek Chauvin was merely controlling the onlookers at the scene during the nine-and-a-half minutes when former police officer Derek Chauvin held his knee on Floyd’s neck, but the judge did not accept it.

Judge Cahill determined that Thao’s conduct isolated Chauvin and two other officers from the crowd, allowing Chauvin to continue overpowering Floyd. He also concluded that he had even blocked access by first responders, rendering him unable to receive medical attention.

“There is evidence that Thao’s actions are objectively unreasonable from the point of view of a reasonable police officer,” Judge Cahill said.

Tao was sentenced to three and a half years in prison by a federal court in July of last year for allegedly violating Floyd’s constitutional rights and is currently serving his sentence. The state court’s prison sentence against Thao will be executed concurrently with the federal court’s sentence.

Unlike other police officers who abetted the case who admitted guilt and chose to receive a reduced sentence, Thao chose a formal trial, saying, “To admit guilt is to make a false confession and sin.”

With the sentencing of Tao on this day, all first-instance trials related to the police involved in the Floyd case were concluded. Derek Chauvin, the senior officer who had previously choked Floyd by choking him, was found guilty by a Hennepin County jury in April 2021 on all counts of second-degree murder, second-degree manslaughter, and third-degree manslaughter and sentenced to 22 years in prison.

The George Floyd case is an incident in May 2020 in Minneapolis, Minnesota, where Floyd, a black man, was crushed to death while being arrested by the police.

Controversy over the excessive suppression arose, triggering large-scale racist protests and riots across the United States.

Despite successive prosecutions, former President Donald Trump, who received overwhelming support in the race for the Republican Party’s internal presidential election, tied with Democratic President Joe Biden in a virtual bilateral confrontation.

It was investigated that support within the Democratic Party for President Biden, his senior, is also expanding. In the absence of a clear alternative candidate ahead of the 2024 presidential election, supporters of the Democratic Party and the Republican Party are mobilizing in support of President Biden and former President Trump, respectively.

As a result, the 2024 US presidential election is likely to be held as a return match between President Biden and former President Trump.

According to a poll conducted by the New York Times (NYT) and Siena University, 1,329 voters released on the 1^st, respondents who would support President Biden or former President Trump in the 2024 presidential election 43% of each 4% said they would choose another candidate, and 10% did not respond.

Compared to the survey conducted by the NYT and the University of Siena on July 5-7 last year, the approval ratings of President Biden and former President Trump decreased by 1 percentage point for President Biden and increased by 3 percentage points for former President Trump.

In the case of former President Trump, it was found that he maintained his competitiveness in the finals despite being indicted one after another this year on charges of keeping the sex scandal quiet and leaking confidential information. It is analysed that this is due to the overwhelming support of Republican supporters for former President Trump.

In a survey released the day before by the NYT and the University of Siena, 54% of Republican-leaning voters supported former President Trump. President Biden is also gaining solid support in the Democratic Party. 64% of voters with a propensity to support the Democratic Party chose President Biden as their next candidate. Furthermore, when asked whether the Democratic Party should elect the incumbent President Biden as its presidential candidate regardless of competing candidates, 45% of Democratic-leaning voters answered yes. Compared to the survey a year ago (26%), support within the party for President Biden’s re-election has risen significantly.

The New York Times (NYT) cited economic policies such as the Supreme Court’s decision to abolish abortion rights, the Democratic Party’s midterm elections, and slowing inflation as the reasons for this ‘change in voter sentiment’. However, 50% of the answer was that someone other than President Biden should be nominated. Although it has decreased from 64% in July last year, it is still a high figure.

In a situation where conservatives, including the Republican Party, were criticized for a looser refugee policy than the previous Trump administration, they took out a knife for a firm response, but the legislative body raised the hand of human rights groups and President Biden was put in a difficult situation.

On the 25th, California Federal Judge John Tiger ruled against the government in a lawsuit filed by human rights groups against the Biden administration’s refugee policy, which strengthened punishment for illegal immigrants and increased the number of legal immigrants to receive applications through the app.

The court also accepted the government’s request to delay the effect of the ruling for two weeks in preparation for an appeal. Accordingly, in two weeks, the strong refugee policy of the Biden administration is expected to lose its effect. It seems difficult to rule out the possibility that many refugees, who have been suppressed, will flock to the border.

Unlike former President Donald Trump, who has been heavily criticized for putting up a “drug prescription” on the refugee issue, including building a huge barrier on the border with Mexico, President Biden has maintained a relatively prudent stance on the refugee issue. However, public support was not great. He was cited as an item that lost public sentiment as much as economic policy.

Reflecting these concerns, President Biden abolished ‘No. 42’, an immediate deportation policy for illegal immigrants introduced during the Trump administration under the pretext of preventing the spread of the novel coronavirus infection (Corona 19), in May.

Contrary to concerns, the number of illegal immigrants crossing the Mexican border has decreased significantly since the implementation of the policy, which includes strong punishment provisions such as banning entry to the United States for the next five years and enabling criminal punishment if caught illegally entering the country. The number of illegal entrants crossing the Mexican border fell by 42% in June, according to government figures.

The number of illegal entrants arrested last month was 99,545, the lowest figure since the inauguration of the Biden administration. However, in this ruling, Judge Tiger raised the hand of the refugee group, saying that the Biden administration’s policy violated the immigration law that anyone on US soil could seek asylum regardless of their entry route. The government plans to appeal.

At the same time, we plan to file a request for suspension of the validity of this ruling. CNN said, “As the federal court suspends President Biden’s controversial refugee policy, the administration is expected to suffer a blow.”

Police have been alerted to an incident in Westwood where an attempt was made to break into a business pretending to be a firefighter or police officer and attempt a theft.

Over the past few weeks, a suspect has attempted to enter a tennis store in Westwood several times, each time wearing a different disguise. According to the Los Angeles Police Department, the affected store was a tennis supply store located on Gayley Avenue in the Thousand Blocks. According to the business owner, the store’s CCTV camera captured the suspect attempting to enter the store several times in disguise wearing police officer Sheriff’s and fire department officers’ clothes.

The suspect attempted to enter the store at least seven times, and the suspect broke the store lock with a screwdriver, causing the owner to replace the store lock at least five or six times.

To date, the suspect’s identity has not been revealed.