US lawmakers on Wednesday overwhelmingly passed a resolution calling on the Brazilian government to return a boy who is living with his stepfather in Brazil to his American father.
Of 432 lawmakers in the House of Representatives, 418 voted in favor of the resolution to urge Brazil to return nearly nine-year-old Sean Goldman to the custody of his American father, David Goldman.
“The kidnapping of Sean Goldman and his continued four-and-a-half-year unlawful detention in Rio must be resolved immediately and irrevocably,” Republican Representative Chris Smith told the House before the vote.
A year after David Goldman and Brazilian Bruna Carneiro Ribeiro were wed in 1999, they had a son, Sean. The family lived in New Jersey. In June 2004, Bruna and Sean traveled to Brazil.
“Almost as soon as she arrived in Rio de Janeiro, she advised Sean’s father, David Goldman, that she was permanently staying in Brazil, the marriage was over and that she was not going to allow Sean to return home to New Jersey,” Smith told fellow lawmakers.
Bruna got a Brazilian judge to grant a divorce from Goldman and remarried. After she died in childbirth in August, another Brazilian court granted custody of Sean to his Brazilian stepfather.
But courts in New Jersey had granted David Goldman “full custody of Sean as far back as August 2004,” Smith said, calling on Brazil to respect its legal obligations and return the boy to the US.
“David Goldman should not be blocked from raising his own son, and a child who recently lost his mom belongs with his dad,” he said.
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton raised the Goldman case when she met two weeks ago with her Brazilian counterpart, Celso Amorim, and US lawmakers said on Wednesday they want President Barack Obama to bring up the case with Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who is due to visit Washington this week.
Republican US lawmakers on Friday criticized US President Joe Biden’s administration after sanctioned Chinese telecoms equipment giant Huawei unveiled a laptop this week powered by an Intel artificial intelligence (AI) chip. The US placed Huawei on a trade restriction list in 2019 for contravening Iran sanctions, part of a broader effort to hobble Beijing’s technological advances. Placement on the list means the company’s suppliers have to seek a special, difficult-to-obtain license before shipping to it. One such license, issued by then-US president Donald Trump’s administration, has allowed Intel to ship central processors to Huawei for use in laptops since 2020. China hardliners
A top Vietnamese property tycoon was on Thursday sentenced to death in one of the biggest corruption cases in history, with an estimated US$27 billion in damages. A panel of three hand-picked jurors and two judges rejected all defense arguments by Truong My Lan, chair of major developer Van Thinh Phat, who was found guilty of swindling cash from Saigon Commercial Bank (SCB) over a decade. “The defendant’s actions ... eroded people’s trust in the leadership of the [Communist] Party and state,” read the verdict at the trial in Ho Chi Minh City. After the five-week trial, 85 others were also sentenced on
Conjoined twins Lori and George Schappell, who pursued separate careers, interests and relationships during lives that defied medical expectations, died this month in Pennsylvania, funeral home officials said. They were 62. The twins, listed by Guinness World Records as the oldest living conjoined twins, died on April 7 at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, obituaries posted by Leibensperger Funeral Homes of Hamburg said. The cause of death was not detailed. “When we were born, the doctors didn’t think we’d make 30, but we proved them wrong,” Lori said in an interview when they turned 50, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported. The
RAMPAGE: A Palestinian man was left dead after dozens of Israeli settlers searching for a missing 14-year-old boy stormed a village in the Israeli-occupied West Bank US President Joe Biden on Friday said he expected Iran to attack Israel “sooner, rather than later” and warned Tehran not to proceed. Asked by reporters about his message to Iran, Biden simply said: “Don’t,” underscoring Washington’s commitment to defend Israel. “We are devoted to the defense of Israel. We will support Israel. We will help defend Israel and Iran will not succeed,” he said. Biden said he would not divulge secure information, but said his expectation was that an attack could come “sooner, rather than later.” Israel braced on Friday for an attack by Iran or its proxies as warnings grew of