Up to 15 million Americans face a devastating loss of pandemic stimulus 'the day after Christmas'

Denitsa Tsekova
·Reporter
November 13, 2020·

Another fiscal cliff is looming for millions of unemployed Americans.

The Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA) and the Pandemic Emergency Unemployment Compensation (PEUC) programs are set to expire at the end of 2020, leaving around 15 million jobless workers without any unemployment benefits unless Congress steps in.

“You're really seeing a huge black-and-white change from very aggressive help to the unemployed, to almost nothing in a matter of months,” Andrew Stettner, an unemployment insurance expert and senior fellow at the Century Foundation, told Yahoo Money. “It's just a really untimely and very disastrous situation to let these benefits expire the day after Christmas.”

Read more: Here’s what you need to know about unemployment benefits eligibility

The expiration of those benefits, along with the exhausted savings of out-of-work Americans, could significantly reduce consumer spending and slow the economic recovery.

People receive food at the Thessalonica Christian Church during a distribution site on October 17, 2020 in New York City. The Bronx, a borough which has long struggled with poverty and neglect, has been especially impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. 

(Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

‘We pay attention to unemployment insurance when there's a recession’

Currently, 9.4 million workers rely on PUA, which provides unemployment benefits to contractors, self-employed, and other workers — all of which will get their last payment on December 26 or 27.

Another 6 million will lose eligibility for PEUC at the end of the year, according to estimates by Ernie Tedeschi, a managing director and policy economist for Evercore ISI. PEUC provides an additional 13 weeks of benefits once jobless workers exhaust what their state typically provides — approximately 26 weeks of benefits. Currently, 4 million receive PEUC, but more people are relying on it each week that passes by.

“Think about PEUC as being a shadow of the layoffs that we had earlier in the pandemic,” Tedeschi told Yahoo Money. “All the people who got laid off in March and April — coincidentally six months ago — are just now exhausting their state benefits and going over into PEUC.”

Some of the people on PEUC may be able to move to Extended Benefits (EB) a federal program that provides additional 13 weeks but that program is also expiring in many states as their unemployment rates decrease.

The expiration of PUA and PEUC would be the third financial cliff jobless Americans have faced: first, the expiration of the extra $600 in weekly unemployment benefits under the CARES Act in July and second, the expiration of the extra $300 under Lost Wages Assistance (LWA) program in September.

Read more: How long will your unemployment benefits last?

This comes as unemployment claims remain elevated with over 700,000 Americans filing for first-time unemployment benefits last week.

“What usually happens is we pay attention to unemployment insurance when there's a recession,” Michele Evermore, a senior policy analyst at the National Employment Law Project, told Yahoo Money. “Then when it's over, most people go back to their lives and stop paying attention to unemployment.”

‘The recovery loses even more momentum’

While some unemployed Americans survived on accumulated savings over the last few weeks, most of that extra money will be depleted by mid-December if no more stimulus is passed, according to an analysis by Evercore ISI.

Jobless workers more than doubled their liquid savings between March and July, but two-thirds burned through those accumulated savings in August alone, according to a study from the JPMorgan Chase Institute.


“Unemployed workers wisely and prudently saved some of their benefits throughout the year,” Tedeschi said. “These workers will have mostly exhausted whatever savings they had by December.”

They’ve also reined in their spending, recording a 14% drop in August, following a 22% increase when the unemployed received that extra $600 in benefits, the JPMorgan Chase Institute study found.

Read more: Do you have to pay taxes on unemployment benefits?

At the beginning of November, spending was down by 6.4%, after being down just 3.5% in mid-October, according to data from Opportunity Insights and JPMorgan Chase. That trend will likely continue until the end of 2020 and accelerate even more in the beginning of 2021, according to Tedeschi, weighing on the economic recovery.

“It's very possible that when you look at the aggregate, the United States would continue to grow after these programs expire,” Tedeschi said. But “I would expect that it grows at a slower rate and that the recovery loses even more momentum.”

VIDEO https://money.yahoo.com/15-million-americans-face-a-loss-of-pandemic-stimulus-221322561.html

Denitsa is a writer for Yahoo Finance and Cashay, a new personal finance website. Follow her on Twitter @denitsa_tsekova.

Stock market highs, booming housing, and millions unemployed: A tale of two Americas amid the coronavirus pandemic
Dhara Singh and Denitsa Tsekova
September 19, 2020·6 min read

Six months after getting laid off from a Chicago restaurant, Torianna Chess is still jobless and struggling to stretch her unemployment benefits to cover her bills.

“All I have in my savings is enough to cover September’s rent,” Chess, 27, told Yahoo Money. “I'm not really sure about October, November, and the next couple of months.”

More than 2,100 miles west in San Diego, the fortunes are reversed for Maresa Friedman and her husband. Both remain employed and aren’t spending money for travel, work meals, or other everyday perks since the pandemic began.

“I’ve been able to save around $5,000 to 6,000,” she said.

Maresa Friedman and her family. Photo: Courtesy of Maresa Friedman

Welcome to the pandemic economy in America.

As stocks and housing bounce back in big ways, the net worth of many higher earners — whose jobs also remain intact — is booming after initial setbacks in the spring. But for many lower to middle-income Americans, the coronavirus crisis has erased livelihoods, jeopardized housing, and made it harder to achieve financial stability.

“Everyone suffered when the economy shut down, but the recovery looks so different,” said Claudia Sahm, a former principal economist at the Federal Reserve Board of Governors and now director of macroeconomic policy at the Washington Center for Equitable Growth. “For high-income [earners], their stock portfolios are back, better than they were. But there are millions of Americans that still don't have jobs, they don't have the income they had before.”

Thomas Kennerly stopped by his mom's house where he spent some time with his granddaughter (R) Kaiylan (age 4) in Oxon Hill, Maryland on July 16, 2020. (Photo: Michael S. Williamson/The Washington Post via Getty Images)

‘The pain is concentrated at the bottom’

High- and middle-income earners did feel the pain from this recession early on, absorbing wage cuts during the pandemic. Even entrepreneurs such as Friendman had to change gears.

After the pandemic crushed her event-planning business, Friedman transitioned to creating virtual conferences. The pivot succeeded, with her new business bringing in six figures, while her husband kept his job as a vice president at a major bank.

But that wasn’t the case for everyone.

“Big contracts and events dried up overnight. A lot of people lost jobs and contracts,” Friedman said, noting that people she knew worked in tourism or hospitality, two sectors that employ many lower earners who have borne the brunt of job losses.

Jobless claims remain stubbornly high. (David Foster/Yahoo Finance)

In a typical recession, the hardest-hit industries are manufacturing and construction, which shed a lot of relatively high-paid jobs, said Dean Baker, senior economist at the Center for Economic and Policy Research. But in this recession, the service sector has been on the front lines of job losses.

“It's a very, very different story than what we typically see in a recession,” Baker said. “Overwhelmingly, the pain is concentrated at the bottom.”

Read more: Here’s what you need to know about unemployment benefits eligibility

The service industry is also taking a longer time to recover. Chess has been looking for a service job for months, but has had no luck.

“There aren’t any jobs for me currently hiring,” she said. “They're just rehiring people that were working for them before and that weren't working due to the pandemic.”

Extra Unemployment Benefits for States Beginning to Run Out

‘My phone bill is $60 a month’

Homeowners like Friedman are also enjoying an increase in home values, even after the housing market hit pause in April during the state shutdowns.

Housing values increased 4.3% in June, according to the latest S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller home price index, with San Diego — where Friedman lives — rising 5%.

That gain adds to the equity she built up in the last decade. Her townhome, which she shares with her husband and two teenage children, has increased in value from $300,000 to $610,000. With only $72,000 left to pay in her mortgage, she’s accumulated an estimated $530,000 in equity.

“We have tons of equity in the home” Friedman, 36, said, “and people thought we were crazy to live in a townhome.”

Torianna Chess, who lost her job in March, is still jobless and struggling to stretch her unemployment benefits to cover her bills. Photo: Courtesy of Torianna Chess.

Chess also lives in a townhome with her disabled brother and her six-year-old son, but one that she rents for $900 a month. When she was getting the extra $600 a week in unemployment benefits under the CARES Act, she could manage her rent. But since those benefits expired, she only gets $242 a month in unemployment and struggles to pay for everything.

Read more: Rental aid: Here's where you can find help in every state

“My phone bill is $60 a month,” said Chess, who has to deal with both joblessness and housing insecurity.

“There are people who already own their homes and have their jobs and who are in a [better] financial position,” said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, “whereas renters along with low- and middle-income earners are struggling with unemployment and having trouble making rent.”
‘I don’t have stocks’

Following the swoon in March, the stock market has increased by 51% and Americans with investments in retirement or brokerage accounts have reaped the benefits. Those without missed out.

“I think the benefits of the stronger stock market are very concentrated as only half of Americans own any stock, and they are generally boomers and white Americans,” Zandi said. “The vast majority of Americans and minority groups do not benefit.”

Friedman and her husband, a pair of “cash hoarders” as they call themselves, lost 10% in their retirement account that they haven’t yet recovered. But they aren’t concerned.

“I figure over time it will build,” she said. “It’s a short-term thing.”

Chess, who is part of the 45% of Americans and the 98.4% of Black Americans who don’t own stocks, also doesn’t worry about the market.

“It doesn’t help me,” she said, “because I don’t have stocks.”
‘It's likely that wealth inequality has increased’

This so-called K-shaped recovery — where higher earners are bouncing back, but low earners are not — could widen the wealth inequality in the country unless there’s more government stimulus.

“There's going to be a big cleavage opening up,” Sahm said, “or at least that's where we're headed.”

Newly built and ultra slim residential towers continue to grow along the New York City skyline on February 13, 2019 in New York City. (Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

More government intervention could mitigate that, Sahm said. Thanks to stimulus checks and expanded unemployment benefits, personal income grew in the second quarter when the nation’s GDP shrunk. But that support has evaporated with nothing yet to replace it.

That may mean a longer recovery for those at the bottom, like Chess, who said she’ll need at least six months — and a job — to return to where she was before the pandemic hit.

“It really messed up my life,” she said. “It's going to be hard to come back.”

Dhara are Denitsa are reporters Yahoo Money and Cashay. Follow them on Twitter at @Dsinghx and @denitsa_tsekova.

ANTI-RACISM
How Racial Injustice And The Climate Crisis Are Inseparable Emergencies

BY NYLAH BURTON BRITISH VOGUE JUNE 2020


Black, brown, and indigenous people around the world are already bearing the brunt of the environmental crisis, showing how racial and climate justice are intertwined.

For many people, the climate crisis is a modern-day phenomenon. But for black and indigenous people, as well as other colonised people of colour, we know that the roots of the environmental crisis go back much further and are inseparable from racial injustice

The exploitation of our planet’s natural resources has always been closely linked to the exploitation of people of colour. My 72-year-old grandmother, Clara, was a sharecropper in Alabama during the late ’50s. From the age of 11, she was forced to work the same fields her enslaved ancestors had, pricking her finger on the boll of the cotton, sucking the blood out as she fearfully looked down, worried about poisonous snakes striking her heels. She tended to the land, helping white folks extract everything that could be sold. As she grew up, eventually leaving Alabama, she never wanted to touch the land again. It was full of too much pain and too much fear.

Attempting to dismantle the main drivers of climate change, including fossil fuel industries, is impossible if we do not dismantle the systems that uphold white supremacy, built to make a profit off the backs of black, brown and indigenous people. For it is this evil, which stretches back to when colonisation began, that has led humanity to its greatest existential crisis yet.

An everyday reality for people of colour

Climate change is already an everyday reality for people of colour; it’s not something that’s going to happen in the distant future. We’re the ones more likely to be facing severe droughts or floods, or have our homes destroyed by hurricanes and cyclones.

What will it take to convince people that racial justice and climate justice are inseparable? Even if they do not feel it in their bones, as I and so many of my black, brown and indigenous siblings do, why do they not hear it screaming from the newspaper headlines? 

Residents look on as flames burn through the bush in Lake Tabourie, Australia, January 2020.
© Photography Getty Images


The most recent Australian wildfire crisis, from June 2019 to March 2020, caused outrage around the world. But you’re unlikely to have read about how the fires have affected Indigenous Australians. Cyclone Amphan, which led to at least 98 deaths and millions of people across Bangladesh and India being displaced in May, in the middle of the pandemic, also received less attention worldwide with western media continuing to put more value on white lives over those of people of colour.

There are countless other examples of how black, brown and indigenous people are already bearing the brunt of the climate crisis. We’ve seen severe droughts in Southern Africa, leading to food shortages for millions of people. We’ve seen black people in Louisiana’s ‘Cancer Alley’ die as a result of the toxic chemicals released by the large number of industrial plants located in or near their communities.

We’ve seen Indigenous land guardians in the Amazon such as Paulo Paulino Guajajara slaughtered by extractive loggers. We’ve seen the US and Canadian governments give the go-ahead for oil pipelines — harming protesters in the process — to be built through indigenous lands, not caring about the numerous health and food sovereignty risks to the people who live there.

We need to tackle racism to tackle climate change and vice versa

During the Covid-19 pandemic, we’ve also seen black and Hispanic people die at much higher rates in the US, with similar findings for black and minority ethnic communities in the UK. It’s likely that air pollution in the most marginalised neighbourhoods has put poorer communities and people of colour at greater risk of hospitalisation and death from Covid-19.

Environmental racism is undoubtedly a huge issue all over the world. It’s why people living in black communities in the US are three times more likely to die from exposure to pollution than white people. It’s why waste from the US, UK and Australia is sent overseas to countries including Thailand, the Philippines and Malaysia, creating a health hazard for the people living there. It’s why garment workers in countries such as Bangladesh, India and Cambodia are more likely to be exposed to hazardous chemicals, which pollute their waterways.


READ MORE“Racism Is A Global Issue”: Edward Enninful On The Importance Of Cultivating An Anti-Racist Agenda
BY EDWARD ENNINFUL



The global uprising we now see against racism, following the death of George Floyd in the US, is also a global uprising against the forces that put our planet and our existence as humans at risk. We must dismantle every system that oppresses each of us if we are to end the climate crisis and ensure that our communities are resilient and strong.


Quintella Williams feeds her baby whilst she awaits evacuation in New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina, September 2005.

© Photography Getty Images

Institutional racism in the criminal justice system (which sees black people incarcerated at five times the rate of white people) means that black and brown prisoners are disproportionately impacted by the climate crisis, too; during Hurricane Katrina in 2005, incarcerated people in the Orleans Parish Prison were left chest-deep in water, without any of the supplies they needed. Meanwhile, New York City had no evacuation plan for Rikers Island jail during Hurricane Sandy in 2012, despite the fact that the jail was in an evacuation zone.

Citizens of New Orleans photographed on an overpass where they waited for days for evacuation following Hurricane Katrina, August 2005.

© Photography Getty Image

Maybe it’s overwhelming for people to see just how many injustices are linked to the climate crisis. But Earth is our only home. Everything we are, or will be, stems from it. And so much of the injustice that this world contains was created by racism and colonialism, of feeling the need to own or destroy another’s body so that one could take from Earth.

The land has been weeping tears of our blood for a long time. Maybe now, in this global moment of reckoning, we will be able to wash those tears away.

China to open giant telescope to international scientists

Issued on: 15/12/2020 - 

The five-hundred-metre Aperture Spherical radio Telescope (FAST) in southwestern China's Guizhou province is the only significant instrument of its kind Handout National Astronomical Observatories of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (NAOC)/AFP

Pingtang (China) (AFP)

Nestled among the mountains in southwest China, the world's largest radio telescope signals Beijing's ambitions as a global centre for scientific research.

The Five-hundred-metre Aperture Spherical Telescope (FAST) -- the only significant instrument of its kind after the collapse of another telescope in Puerto Rico this month -- is about to open its doors for foreign astronomers to use, hoping to attract the world's top scientific talent.

The world's second-largest radio telescope, at the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico, was destroyed when its suspended 900-tonne receiver platform came loose and plunged 140 metres (450 feet) onto the radio dish below.

Wang Qiming, chief inspector of FAST's operations and development centre, told AFP during a rare visit by the foreign press last week that he had visited Arecibo.

"We drew a lot of inspiration from its structure, which we gradually improved to build our telescope."

The Chinese installation in Pingtang, Guizhou province, is up to three times more sensitive than the US-owned one, and is surrounded by a five-kilometre (three-mile) "radio silence" zone where mobile phones and computers are not allowed.

Work on the FAST began in 2011 and it started full operations in January this year, working mainly to capture the radio signals emitted by celestial bodies, in particular pulsars -- rapidly rotating dead stars.

The 500-metre giant satellite dish is easily the world's largest -- covering the area of 30 football pitches -- and cost 1.1 billion yuan ($175 million) to build, as well as displacing thousands of villagers to make room for it.

China has been rapidly boosting its scientific credentials to become less reliant on foreign technology.

The world's most populous country has so far only won one scientific Nobel Prize -- awarded in 2015 to chemist Tu Youyou.

But in the past two decades, China has built the largest high-speed train network in the world, finalised its Beidou geolocation system -- a competitor of the American GPS -- and is now in the process of bringing lunar samples back to Earth.

China is pouring billions into its military-run space programme and has published a plan to become by 2035 a world leader in artificial intelligence, space, clean energy and robotics.

The data being collected by FAST should allow for a better understanding of the origins of the universe -- and aid in the search for alien life.

- Talent hunt -

Closer to home, China has said it will accept requests in 2021 from foreign scientists wishing to carry out measurements.

"Our scientific committee aims to make FAST increasingly open to the international community," said Wang.

Sun Jinghai, an engineering manager at the site, predicted there would be a lot of take-up.

John Dickey, professor of physics at the University of Tasmania in Australia, said the results so far had been impressive.

"China is certainly a global centre for scientific research, at the same level as North America or Western Europe," he said.

"The community of researchers is as advanced, as creative, and as well organised as in any advanced nation in the world."

Improvements in scientific innovation have been rapid, said Denis Simon, an expert on Chinese science policy, adding that "China was viewed as an innovation laggard" only a few years ago.

"More and more discretion and intellectual freedom have been given to the scientific and engineering community to explore new ideas and take bigger risks in the research environment," he said.

"The risk-averse culture that was once predominant has given way to a more entrepreneurial culture."

This has included education reforms for new generations of scientists and engineers, he said.

A sign of the change in China's mentality is that since 2018, foreign scientists have been able to lead state-funded projects.

"In many ways, the competition between China and the US is about a race for talent -- and this race promises to build momentum as the competition between the two countries heats up," he added.

© 2020 AFP

Rohingya trafficking network sells dreams, delivers violence and extortion

Issued on: 15/12/2020 - 

A months-long AFP investigation uncovered mobile phone images taken by a smuggler aboard a boat - Cox's Bazar (Bangladesh) (AFP)

Auto rickshaws slip easily past barbed-wire checkpoints at the world's biggest refugee camp, their drivers among the smallest players in a complex human trafficking network involving high-seas extortion gangs, corrupt police and drug lords.

Aboard the spluttering rickshaws are small groups of young men, women and children hoping to escape the misery of life with other members of their stateless Rohingya group who are crowded into shanties in Bangladesh.

Nineteen-year-old Enamul Hasan was aboard one of the rickshaws early this year, taken to the coast and then by small boat into a bigger fishing vessel anchored in the Bay of Bengal where he joined hundreds of other Rohingya hoping to reach Malaysia.

"I was told I'd get the opportunity to finish my studies and earn money to get my family out of poverty," Hasan told AFP, recounting the promises of the low-level smuggler in the camp who was his main contact for organising the trip.

Instead, after enduring beatings by crew members and watching others die during more than six weeks at sea, Hasan's boat returned to Bangladesh and he is back in his squalid home.

"I will never forget what I've been through. The traffickers, the brutality of the sailors... I'd never do it again," Hasan said.

AFP spoke to Hasan as part of an in-depth investigation into the people smuggling network that included dozens of interviews with refugees in Bangladesh and Indonesia, where hundreds arrived this year after months at sea.

AFP also interviewed fishermen involved in the trade, police, government officials, community leaders and aid workers.

The investigation revealed a sophisticated and always-evolving operation worth many millions of dollars in which members of the Rohingya community play a key role in trafficking their own people.

Thai-registered fishing boats capable of holding 1,000 people, satellite phones, a mini-armada of smaller supply vessels and corrupt officials across Southeast Asia, as well as in the Bangladeshi camp, are also integral to the network.

"It's a big business that uses humanity as its cover," said Iskandar Dewantara, co-founder of the Geutanyoe Foundation, an Indonesia-based refugee advocacy group.

It can also be brutal.

Hasan provided to AFP footage from a mobile phone he said had belonged to one of the Burmese crew members showing them beating the passengers.

In the video, a trafficker uses what appears to be a whip to repeatedly strike shirtless men huddled together, with rake-thin children and women crowded around them.

The sailor who owned the phone left it when the crew abandoned the boat following a mutiny at sea, according to Hasan.

- Brides -

Muslim Rohingya have for decades endured persecution in Buddhist-majority Myanmar, where they are not recognised as citizens, and smuggling routes out by land and sea have long existed.

Relatively affluent and Muslim Malaysia has been the main destination.

More than 100,000 Rohingya now live on the margins of society in Malaysia, registered as refugees but not allowed to work, forcing the men into illegal construction and other low-paid jobs.

A Myanmar military crackdown in 2017, which UN investigators said amounted to genocide, turbo-charged the exodus, forcing 750,000 Rohingya to flee across the border into Bangladesh’s southeast coastal district of Cox's Bazar.

That is now a sprawling refugee camp of one million people from where the only way out is the dangerous boat journeys.

Spurring the demand are the Rohingya men in Malaysia who pay smugglers to bring over families, or new brides from arranged marriages, according to advocacy groups and women involved.

Malaysian authorities frequently turn back boats, and fears over Covid-19 have amplified their intolerance for more refugees.

However, nearly 500 Rohingya made it to Malaysia in three vessels this year, according to an AFP tally from the landings.

Since June, about 400 Rohingya have also landed in northern Indonesia -- all trying to reach neighbouring Malaysia -- in the biggest wave of arrivals there in five years.

Hundreds more are believed to have died at sea from beatings, starvation or dehydration, while other boats have returned to Bangladesh.

Many of the boat people who arrived in Indonesia were women.

Among them was 18-year-old Janu, who told AFP at a makeshift refugee camp in Lhokseumawe, a coastal town in Indonesia's Aceh province, that her family had arranged for her to marry a Rohingya man working as a labourer in Malaysia.

"I had been waiting in the camp for two years, it was worth the risk," Janu said, hoping that like some others had already done she may now be able to find a way to Malaysia.

- Escape -

Escaping the Bangladesh camp starts with a down payment that can reach the equivalent of $2,000, often paid by a refugee's husband or other relatives in Malaysia using mobile banking applications.

Refugees then get a phone call typically from someone they do not know.

"The call came after a few days and a man instructed us to go to the rickshaw stand in the main food market area of the camp," said 20-year-old Julekha Begum, who married a Rohingya man in Malaysia via a video chat app.

Rickshaw drivers hired by traffickers take refugees to several barbed-wire security checkpoints, where security forces typically wave them through for a bribe.

Then it is a few hours' drive to half a dozen take-off zones identified by AFP that line the coast and where thousands of fishing boats make their way out to sea for nightly expeditions.

The Rohingya wait until small boats that hold about a dozen people fill up before they're taken to much bigger ships far out at sea -- sometimes two-storey fishing vessels capable of holding 1,000 people.

The big boats, usually piloted by crews from Myanmar, are equipped with GPS equipment, mobile communications as well as food and drinking water.

"Many fishing boats nowadays carry people to the deep sea where bigger vessels wait for the victims," said Hemayetul Islam, a refugee camp police battalion commander.

"When we go and check these boats, we see fishing nets and other fishing gear. It is very difficult for us to differentiate between actual fishermen and smugglers."

Once on their way to Malaysia, smaller boats regularly bring food and water to the big vessels.

Rohingya interviewed by AFP said they were told they would arrive in Malaysia -- roughly 4,000 kilometres (2,500 miles away) in a week.

In reality, the trip takes months -- if they make it at all.

Refugees who made it to Indonesia told stories of beatings and torture, near-starvation rations and threats to hold passengers hostage until their relatives paid more money.

They told varying accounts of the main boats sailing near Malaysia and some passengers being unloaded onto smaller ones for their final destination after relatives paid more money in what were essentially ransom demands.

Asmot Ullah, a 21-year-old man who landed in September, said smugglers "usually beat people on the boat if their relatives don't make payments or can't pay more".

Another passenger, Mohammad Nizam, said he was kept off a smaller, Malaysia-bound boat because of a lack of money.

"They were asking for more money than we had agreed earlier, but my parents couldn't afford it," said 25-year-old Nizam.

"If you pay more you will be brought (directly) to Malaysia."

One boatload of up to 1,000 passengers can be worth up to $3 million for the smugglers, according to authorities.

- Fake 'rescue' -

Indonesian fishermen initially claimed they had rescued the first boatload of about 100 Rohingya in June.

However, the purported "rescue" was in fact a coordinated effort by the smugglers to avoid the tighter border controls in Malaysia, authorities and traffickers involved in the operation said.

"They created this public perception that the fishermen had found them after their boat capsized," said Sony Sanjaya, director of the general crime division for Aceh's police.

"But their arrival here wasn't an accident."

Once in Indonesia, the smugglers hope to get the Rohingya into Malaysia via a narrow sea crossing that separates the two countries, according to local authorities.

However, most remain stuck in the Lhokseumawe camp, two former school buildings that local authorities have set aside for the new arrivals.

Three local fishermen were among a handful of alleged traffickers arrested in October in connection with the June landing.

Interviewed by AFP at a lockup in Aceh, the men said they were hired by a Rohingya man living in Indonesia -- who was also arrested -- to rent a boat and later to pick up a vessel filled with refugees.

"I desperately needed money then so I took the job," said father-of-six Faisal.

The fishermen were given location coordinates and instructed to flash packages of popular clove-infused cigarettes so the boat traffickers would recognise them, authorities said.

- Compassion, greed -

Inside the camps in Bangladesh, a complex mix of compassion, desperation and greed appears to drive the people trafficking network, which has links to the illicit drug trade.

The region is a well-known manufacturing hub of yaba, a cheap methamphetamine popular across Southeast Asia.

AFP spoke with a 25-year-old man who said he was born in one of the oldest refugee settlements in Bangladesh and started working for a Rohingya organised crime leader at the age of 14.

He asked only to be identified by his first name, Mohammed.

"I worked for him for two years and managed to get at least 200 Rohingya willing to go to Malaysia and away from the madness of these camps," Mohammed said, adding he was paid the equivalent of $550 a month for finding people.

Mohammed said Bangladeshi security forces eventually shot his boss dead, and after a few years out of the trade he is scouting for another way to get back in.

"If I can't find an opening here, I'll start doing it myself using my own contacts (overseas)," he said, talking about the money he hoped to make.

But other Rohingya involved in the trafficking in Cox's Bazar describe their work as a moral duty.

"If someone wants to get out of this hellish place, as a sensible brother, I think it's my duty to show them the way ou

Exclusive video: Smugglers beat Rohingya on trafficking boat

Issued on: 15/12/2020 -

A video from onboard a boat trafficking Rohingya refugees shows a smuggler beating people with what appears to be a whip - AFP

VIDEO https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20201215-exclusive-video-smugglers-beat-rohingya-on-trafficking-boat

Cox's Bazar (Bangladesh) (AFP)

Smugglers mercilessly beat rake-thin refugees crowded onto a fishing boat, in a video obtained by AFP that shows rarely seen images from the frontlines of the Rohingya trafficking network.

Filmed on a mobile phone by a smuggler who later fled the vessel, the video shows dozens of asylum seekers, including children, sitting in the hull and on the deck as smugglers stand among them.

An argument starts and one of the traffickers, holding a thick rope in one hand, pushes a Rohingya man back and kicks him.

He then uses what appears to be a whip with his other hand to repeatedly lash a group of shirtless men who scramble to avoid the beating.

"They started beating us because we complained about the food," Mohammad Osman, a 16-year-old passenger, said in an interview at a Bangladesh refugee camp conducted as part of a months-long AFP investigation into the people-smuggling network.

"They randomly beat us just because we were asking for more rice and water."

Osman's neighbour, Enamul Hasan, 19, who was also on the ship, said he grabbed the phone after one of the traffickers left it behind when fleeing onto another vessel during what amounted to a mutiny.

The footage was shot several days before the group's Malaysia-bound boat returned to Bangladesh in mid-April, he said. It had departed in February.

Earlier beatings, which were not captured on video, saw some Rohingya die at the hands of the smugglers, Hasan told AFP at the refugee camp.

"They beat us mercilessly -- hitting our heads, tearing at our ears, breaking hands."

Hasan and Osman said 46 people on their vessel died from beatings, starvation and illness, giving breakdowns of men, women and children who perished.

AFP could not independently verify all of the specifics of their accounts, but a third surviving passenger separately retold similar events.

AFP also confirmed that Hasan and Osman were in the video footage. They could be seen huddling among the group of men who were being hit.

- Mutiny -

Hasan described how the crew, ethnic Burmese from Myanmar, eventually fled after some of the passengers began to resist.

The refugees had initially kept pleading to be taken to land as they tried to survive on starvation rations of rice and water, he added.

"But the smugglers told us to shut up and that there was no land for us. They said they'd kill us if we kept talking," Hasan said.

"We realised if this continues, we all would die. We needed to do something. We felt like we were in hell.

"So we attacked the crew since we had nothing to lose. It was a life-or-death situation... we threatened to kill the smugglers if they didn't drop us on land."

The crew responded to the mutiny by threatening to set the boat on fire, according to Hasan.

"They kept saying they'd burn us alive so we became silent again," Hasan said.

"Those two traffickers told us not to rebel, that they would drop us where they could," Hasan said.

"A couple of days later they left us back near Bangladesh and fled."

Over 570,000 Uighurs involved in Xinjiang cotton coerced labour: report

Issued on: 15/12/2020 - 

Xinjiang is a global hub for the crop, producing over 20 percent of the world's cotton 

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Beijing (AFP)

Hundreds of thousands of ethnic minority labourers in China's northwestern Xinjiang region are being forced into picking cotton by hand through a coercive state labour scheme, a report has said.

Rights activists have said the northwestern Xinjiang region is home to a vast network of extrajudicial internment camps that have imprisoned at least one million people, which China has defended as vocational training centres to counter extremism.

A report by Washington-based think tank the Center for Global Policy published Monday -- which referenced online government documents -- said that in 2018 three majority-Uighur regions within Xinjiang sent at least 570,000 people to pick cotton as part of a state-run coercive labour transfer scheme.

Researchers estimate that the total number involved in coerced Xinjiang cotton-picking -- which relies heavily on manual labour -- exceeds that figure by "several hundred thousand".

Xinjiang is a global hub for the crop, producing over 20 percent of the world's cotton, with the report warning of the "potentially drastic consequences" for global supply chains.

Around a fifth of the yarn used in American comes from Xinjiang.

Beijing said that all detainees have "graduated" from the centres, but reports have suggested that many former inmates have been transferred to low-skilled manufacturing factory jobs, often linked to the camps.

But the think tank report said labour transfer scheme participants are heavily surveilled by police, with point-to-point transfers, "military-style management" and ideological training, citing government documents.

"It is clear that labour transfers for cotton-picking involve a very high risk of forced labour," Adrian Zenz, who uncovered the documents, wrote in the report.

"Some minorities may exhibit a degree of consent in relation to this process, and they may benefit financially. However... it is impossible to define where coercion ends and where local consent may begin."

The report also says there is a strong ideological incentive to enforce the scheme, as the boost in rural incomes allows officials to hit state-mandated poverty alleviation targets.

China has strongly denied allegations of forced labour involving Uighurs in Xinjiang, and accused the US of wanting to "suppress Xinjiang companies".

Beijing also says training programmes, work schemes and better education have helped stamp out extremism in the region.

Earlier this month, the US banned imports of cotton produced by the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps, a major paramilitary entity, which covers about a third of the crop produced in the entire region.

Another proposed bill banning all imports from Xinjiang has yet to pass the US Senate.

Several international brands including Adidas, Gap and Nike have been accused of using Uighur forced labour in their textile supply chains, according to a March report by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute.

© 2020 AFP

Asteroid samples leave Japan scientists 'speechless'

Issued on: 15/12/2020 - 

Scientists in Japan said they were speechless at how much asteroid dust was delivered by the Hayabusa-2 probe   Handout JAXA/AFP

Tokyo (AFP)

Scientists in Japan said Tuesday they were left "speechless" when they saw how much asteroid dust was inside a capsule delivered by the Hayabusa-2 space probe in an unprecedented mission.

The Japanese probe collected surface dust and pristine material last year from the asteroid Ryugu, around 300 million kilometres (200 million miles) away, during two daring phases of its six-year mission.

This month it dropped off a capsule containing the samples, which created a fireball as it entered the Earth's atmosphere, and landed in the Australian desert before being transported to Japan.

Scientists at the Japanese space agency JAXA on Tuesday removed the screws to the capsule's inner container, having already found a small amount of asteroid dust in the outer shell.

"When we actually opened it, I was speechless. It was more than we expected and there was so much that I was truly impressed," said JAXA scientist Hirotaka Sawada.

"It wasn't fine particles like powder, but there were plenty of samples that measured several millimetres across."

Scientists hope the material will shed light on the formation of the universe and perhaps offer clues about how life began on Earth.

The scientists have not yet revealed if the material inside is equal to, or perhaps even more, than the 0.1 grams they had said they hoped to discover.

Seiichiro Watanabe, a Hayabusa project scientist and professor at Nagoya University, said he was nonetheless thrilled.

"There are a lot (of samples) and it seems they contain plenty of organic matter," he said.

"So I hope we can find out many things about how organic substances have developed on the parent body of Ryugu."

Half of Hayabusa-2's samples will be shared between JAXA, US space agency NASA and other international organisations.

The rest will be kept for future study as advances are made in analytic technology.

But work is not over for the probe, which will now begin an extended mission targeting two new asteroids.

Press freedom: Journalists end up in jail for reporting on coronavirus crisis

Hundreds of journalists are in prison worldwide for not giving in to government censorship, according to the German chapter of Reporters Without Borders. The findings were published in its annual report on press freedom.




Five countries were responsible for more than half of the jailed journalists recorded by RSF in 2020

At least 387 people working in the media industry around the world had been imprisoned by December 1 of this year, the German office of the press freedom NGO Reporters Without Borders (RSF) announced in its annual report on Monday.

Five countries were responsible for over half of all convictions: China led the pack with 117 jailed journalists, followed by Saudi Arabia (34), Egypt (30), Vietnam (28) and Syria (27).

While the majority of imprisoned press workers were still men, the number of women arrested in 2020 increased by a third to 42.

Dangers of reporting on the COVID pandemic

Since the outbreak of the global coronavirus pandemic early in the year, over 130 members of the press, be they journalists or otherwise, have been arrested for reporting on the crisis. Some 14 of those were still in jail at the time of the report's publication, said the report.


"The high number of imprisoned journalists worldwide throws a harsh spotlight on the current threats to press freedom," said Katja Gloger, the head of the RSF German office.

Gloger condemned the response of far too many governments to protests, grievances or the COVID-19 crisis with repression against the "bringers of bad news."

"Behind every single one of these cases is the fate of a person who faces criminal trials, long imprisonment and often mistreatment because he did not submit to censorship and repression," she added.

Her colleague, Sylvie Ahrens-Urbanek, highlighted one particular example of reprisals for reporting on the coronavirus pandemic — the case of investigative journalist Hopewell Chin'ono from Zimbabwe, who was arrested for reporting on the government's sale of overpriced COVID-19 medication. He was "brutally arrested," said Ahrens-Urbanek, and spent a month and a half in prison. Release on bail was repeatedly refused.
Worsening situation in wake of restrictions

Reporters Without Borders gave particular attention to Belarus, where at least 370 journalists have been arrested in the wake of the contested presidential election on August 9. Although most of those were released after a short period, the crackdown on journalists represents a reduction in press freedom.

Watch video Press freedom falls victim to pandemic

The report also highlighted the detention of the Australian WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, currently in Belmarsh high-security prison in the UK. RSF claimed that the conditions had become much worse following a coronavirus outbreak in the prison and that Assange had been placed in de facto isolation.

The report expressed concern for the health of those imprisoned journalists who have not received proper medical attention during the pandemic and who have been subjected to the psychological effects of increased isolation.

Five journalists were facing death sentences as of December 1, one of whom — Iranian journalist Ruhollah Zam — was executed on December 12. The other four were in the custody of the Houthi rebels in Yemen.

Watch video Murder highlights plight of female reporters in Afghanistan

RSF counted 54 media workers who had been kidnapped in Syria, Iraq and Yemen; some of them have not been heard from in years. Another four journalists disappeared under unexplained circumstances in 2020 — one in Iraq, one in Congo, one in Mozambique and one in Peru.

The NGO began issuing its yearly report in 1995. It includes cases of journalists and other professionals working in the field of journalism. The compilers only include data if it can be carefully confirmed, which sometimes leads to certain countries, such as Turkey, showing lower numbers than reported elsewhere.

EU's rights agency warns on AI threat to rights

Fundamental human rights could be at risk if AI technologies are used without due caution, the EU's rights agency says. It said AI can lead to discriminatory biases and perversions of justice if safeguards are lacking.


Artificial intelligence technologies are being employed more and more across the world

More attention should be paid to the possible negative effects on people's fundamental rights of technologies based on artificial intelligence, the EU's rights agency said in a report issued on Monday.

"AI is not infallible; it is made by people — and humans can make mistakes," said Michael O'Flaherty, director of the Fundamental Rights Agency (FRA), in comments cited on the agency's website.

"The EU needs to clarify how existing rules apply to AI. And organizations need to assess how their technologies can interfere with people's rights both in the development and use of AI," O'Flaherty said.
Neglected rights aspect

The FRA report, entitled "Getting the future right — Artificial intelligence and fundamental rights in the EU," identifies areas where it feels the bloc must create safeguards and mechanisms for holding businesses and public administrations accountable in their use of AI.

It points out the many sectors in which AI is now already widely used, including in decisions on who will receive social benefits, predicting criminality and risk of illness and creating targeted advertising.

The report says that much of the focus in developing AI has been on its "potential to support economic growth" while the aspect of its impact on fundamental rights has been rather neglected.

Facial recognition technology is one use of AI that has aroused considerable controversy

Call for accountability

It is possible that "people are blindly adopting new technologies without assessing their impact before actually using them," David Reichel, one of the experts behind the report, told the AFP news agency.

Reichel told AFP that even when data sets did not include information linked to gender or ethnic origin, there was still "a lot of information than can be linked to protected attributes."

One example used in the report is employing facial recognition technology for law enforcement. It says even small error rates could lead to many innocent people being falsely picked out if the technology were used in places where large numbers are scanned, such as airports or train stations. "A potential bias in error rates could then lead to disproportionately targeting certain groups in society," the report says.

The report calls for more funding into the "potentially discriminatory effects of AI" and for any future legislation on AI to "create effective safeguards."

Above all, it says, the use of AI needs to be more transparent, more accountable and include the possibility of human review.

VIDEO The two faces of automatic facial recognition technology https://p.dw.com/p/3mi0X