MEANWHILE IN CANADA
Canada's top pension funds boost investments in high-carbon oil sands

By Maiya Keidan and Nia Williams 

© Reuters/Carlos Osorio FILE PHOTO: Border city's industry under threat with looming pipeline closure

TORONTO (Reuters) -Canada's biggest pension managers boosted their investments in the country's major oil sands companies in the first quarter of 2021, raising questions about the funds' recent commitments to greening their portfolios.

The cumulative investment by the country's top five pension funds into the U.S.-listed shares of Canada's top four oil sands producers jumped to $2.4 billion in the first quarter of 2021, up 147% from a year ago, a Reuters analysis of U.S. 13-F filings show. Much of that increase, which bucked a declining trend since 2018, came from rising prices of shares already owned, but the funds also purchased more shares.

The five funds, in order of size, are Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPPIB), Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec (CDPQ), Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan (OTPP), British Columbia Investment Management Corp (BCI) and the Public Sector Pension Investment Board (PSP), which together manage more than C$1.4 trillion ($1.2 trillion) in assets.

Governments, companies and investors around the world have stepped up pledges to drastically reduce climate-warming greenhouse gas emissions. Some large pension managers, including the New York State Pension Fund and Norway's largest pension fund KLP, have exited oil sands companies.

Canadian pensions face pressure to balance a mandate to be environmentally responsible with their fiduciary duty to maximise returns. Canada's oil sands are a high-carbon industry, yet their rising shares prices are tempting for investors.

Some Canadian pension funds say they favour continuing to invest in fossil fuel producers to help those firms transition toward producing cleaner energy.

"We have a big problem with pension funds saying we believe in engagement, not divestment, but there's no sign of this engagement," said Adam Scott, director of pension activist group Shift. "The very act of owning them (oil sands companies) implies the funds do not support transition."

While first-quarter exposures to oil sands firms have risen, annual reports show three of the five pension funds decreased their overall energy exposure in 2020 from 2019. But the 13-F filings present a more up-to-date picture.

For details on Canadian pensions exposure to top oil sands producers:

Compared with same period in 2018, the funds' investments in the four oil sands firms were down 0.9%.

While the Reuters analysis is restricted to four companies - Canadian Natural Resources Ltd, Suncor Energy, Cenovus Energy and Imperial Oil - it provides a glimpse into the funds' investments in northern Alberta's oil sands, the source of the highest emissions-per-barrel oil on the planet, according to a 2020 report from consultancy Rystad Energy.

CDPQ, OTPP and PSP decreased their cumulative exposure to energy to C$22.2 billion in 2020, from C$28.2 billion in 2019, according to annual reports.

But CPPIB, which manages C$497.2 billion in assets, saw exposure to fossil fuel producers rise 51.5% to C$17.6 billion at the end of March 2021, after falling for at least five years. The fund's investments in renewable energy producers rose 16% to C$7.7 billion over the last year by comparison.

CPPIB declined to comment on the 13-F holdings data.

BCI's annual reports do not break out energy investments as a percentage of overall holdings. Spokesman Ben O'Hara-Byrne said numerous factors affect changes in holdings, so percentages should not be used to derive assumptions about BCI's response to environmental, social and governance (ESG) "integration efforts."

A spokeswoman for PSP Investments said many of the investments were held in so-called "passive" portfolios containing a mix of assets based on a stock index designed to match overall market moves.

CDPQ did not comment specifically on its oil sands holdings, but a spokesman said fossil fuels represent a very small share of total assets owned by fund, which is targeting a carbon neutral portfolio by 2050.

OTPP has also committed to a net-zero portfolio by 2050 and will focus on climate-friendly investments that help shift away from fossil fuels, a spokesman said.

Randy Bauslaugh, co-Chair of McCarthy Tétrault's Pension Funds Group, on Wednesday said in a new paper that pensions have a legal responsibility to take into account the risks of climate change.

"Pension fund fiduciaries who fail to consider or manage climate-related financial risks and opportunities, may find themselves personally liable for economic, reputational or organizational loss resulting from that failure," he wrote.

($1 = 1.2049 Canadian dollars)

(Reporting by Maiya Keidan and Nia WilliamsEditing by Denny Thomas and David Gregorio)

Investors, court deliver 'stark warning for Big Oil' on climate

By Gary McWilliams 

© Reuters/Toby Melville FILE PHOTO: FILE PHOTO: The Royal Dutch Shell logo is seen at a Shell petrol station in London

(Reuters) - Shareholders rebuked the top two U.S. oil companies on Wednesday for dragging their feet on fighting climate change, while a Dutch court ruled that Royal Dutch Shell needs to accelerate cuts to greenhouse gas emissions.

"Today was a stark warning for Big Oil," said Bess Joffe, of the Church Commissioners for England, which manages the Church of England's investment fund, with executives "being held to account by investors and lawmakers."

Exxon Mobil lost at least two board seats to an activist hedge fund, shareholders at Chevron endorsed a call to further reduce its emissions and a court deemed Royal Dutch Shell's emissions targets insufficient.

Investor support for climate concerns could force oil and gas companies to rethink how fast they pivot to other forms of energy. BP Plc, which recently pledged to consult with shareholders on its climate targets, could see the next test of the groundswell.

A Dutch court ordered Shell to slash its carbon dioxide emissions by 2030.

DISSIDENTS GET A WIN AT EXXON

Shell said it would appeal, and analysts called the decision not the last word in the case.

"This ruling has negligible chance to survive appeals," said Per Magnus Nysveen, of energy consultancy Rystad Energy.

In a stunning blow to top management at Exxon, shareholders elected two change candidates for its board and approved measures calling for annual reports on climate and grassroots lobbying effort. Activists could yet win a third seat with some votes still to be counted and the full board not yet known.

After the meeting, CEO Darren Woods said Exxon heard shareholders' desire to advance lower-carbon and cost-cutting efforts.

"We are well positioned to respond,” he said.

Chevron shareholders backed a call for the company to cut emissions from the end-use of its fuels with 61% supporting the petition. Another resolution calling for a report on the business impact of achieving net zero emissions by 2050 was backed by 48% of votes cast.

PROTEST VOTES

"The question for oil companies is when and how much" do they reduce oil and gas production in response to investor and social concerns, said Charles Elson, a professor of corporate governance at the University of Delaware.

Investors have registered protests over the slow pace of change, but corporate executives will have to evaluate how to implement what are non-binding resolutions, he said.

The votes signal a new sense of urgency, said Mark Van Baal, who leads a climate advocacy group that placed resolutions calling for emissions cuts at Chevron, ConocoPhillips and Phillips66. All got at least 58% support.

Investors are saying: "we want you to act by decreasing emissions now, not in the distant future," he said.

Graphic: Big Oil's energy transition

 https://graphics.reuters.com/OILMAJORS-SPENDING/azgpodanqvd/chart.png

(Reporting by Gary McWilliams and Jennifer Hiller in Houston; Editing by David Gregorio)

GOLD  MINERS ATTACK INDIGENOUS COMMUNITY IN THE AMAZON

© Reuters/NACHO DOCE FILE PHOTO: Aerial view shows a wildcat gold miner, or garimpeiro, as he uses high-pressure jets of water to dislodge rock material at a wildcat mine, also known as garimpo, at a deforested area of Amazon rainforest near Crepurizao

BRASILIA (Reuters) - Wildcat gold miners illegally prospecting on protected indigenous lands in the Amazon fired on a Munduruku village and burned down the house of one of its leaders on Wednesday, Brazil's main indigenous organization said.

Federal Police said the gold miners then tried to invade the local police post and wreck vehicles and helicopters that are being used in an ongoing operation against the miners, police said in a statement.

Plumes of black smoke could be seen across the Tapajos river rising from the house of Munduruku women's leader Maria Leusa that was set on fire with gasoline and burned to the ground, the indigenous umbrella organization APIB said.

APIB said it suspected the attack on the village was a reprisal for the police operation to protect indigenous lands.

The miners fired shots at the village in the latest of a mounting wave of attacks on indigenous communities in gold prospecting areas in the Amazon. The wildcat miners have been emboldened by Brazil's far-right President Jair Bolsonaro and his support for legalizing wild mining and commercial activities on indigenous lands

.

© Reuters/NACHO DOCE FILE PHOTO: An aerial view show a wildcat gold mine, also known as a garimpo, at a deforested area of the Amazon rainforest near Crepurizao

There were no reports on anyone injured in the incident.

"Once again, indigenous lives are threatened by the illegal miners in the Amazon," APIB said in a statement.

"This routine of terror is happening also in the Yanomami reservation that has been under intense attack since the beginning of the month in Roraima state," APIB said, referring to Brazil's largest indigenous reservation.

The Yanomami reservation on the border with Venezuela has been invaded by more than 20,000 wildcat miners in a gold rush that has accelerated since Bolsonaro became president in 2019.

Federal police said it deployed 130 officers, environmental and indigenous affairs inspectors on Wednesday following orders from Brazil's Supreme Court to protect indigenous communities and stop the illegal mining.

The police said they were forced to disperse the miners when they protested in the town of Jacareacanga, deep in the Amazon jungle in Pará state, and tried to occupy the police base.

(Reporting by Anthony Boadle; Editing by Bill Berkrot)

WAGE THEFT

Kim Kardashian sued by former workers who say they weren’t properly paid or given breaks

National Post Staff

Kim Kardashian is being sued by seven former workers who say they weren’t paid on time or given meal breaks, and that she refused to pay them overtime

.

© Provided by National Post Kim Kardashian attends the 2020 Vanity Fair Oscar Party following the 92nd Oscars at The Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts in Beverly Hills on February 9, 2020.

In the lawsuit, which was filed on Monday and obtained by the Daily Mail , seven members of Kardashian’s gardening and maintenance staff accuse the reality TV star and businesswoman of violations of California labour law.

The former staffers worked at the Kardashian’s mansion in the gated community of Hidden Hills, which is estimated to be worth $72.7 million (US $60 million).

Andrew Ramirez; his brother, Christopher Ramirez, and son Andrew Ramirez Jr.; Aron Cabrea; Rene Ernesto Flores; Jesse Fernandez and Robert Araiza, say that Kardashian withheld 10 per cent of their wages for taxes, but never handed the amount over to the tax authorities.

'Eat the rich': Backlash after Kylie Jenner asks fans to donate to injured makeup artist

“Plaintiffs never received any pay stubs, were not paid on regular periods, were not given their required meal and rest breaks, were not provided a means to record all their hours, were not paid all their hours, were not reimbursed for employment expenses, were not paid all their overtime wages, and were not paid their wages upon termination of employment,” states the lawsuit.


It’s also alleged that one of the employees, who was 16-years-old at the time, had worked longer than the maximum amount of hours allowed for minors under the state’s labour code , which is 48 hours per week.

One of the men also claims that when he approached Kardashian, to inquire “about his rights as an employee,” he was fired.

In April, Forbes reported that Kardashian was “ officially a billionaire ,” saying that her lucrative beauty and shapewear companies, KKW beauty and SKIMS; reality TV and endorsement deals were responsible for the rise in her net worth — which was up from $944 million (US $780 million) in October. That same month, the New York Times reported that SKIMS “defies the pandemic,” after its value rose to $1.93 billion (US $1.6 billion).

A spokesperson for Kardashian told Page Six that the workers had been employed by and paid through a third-party vendor, which the 40-year-old businesswoman had hired to provide services.

“Kim is not party to the agreement made between the vendor and their workers, therefore she is not responsible for how the vendor manages their business,” they said. “Kim has never not paid a vendor for their services and hopes that the issue between these workers and the vendor who hired them can be amicably resolved soon.”

The seven plaintiffs are being represented by Frank Kim of Los-Angeles-based Kim Legal, who is also representing over 500 performers in a lawsuit against Kardashian’s estranged husband Kanye West.

Filed last summer, the lawsuit alleges performers in West’s Sunday Service shows had been mistreated, with one saying he was not permitted meal or restroom breaks, according to Page Six

In a statement to the Daily Mail on Monday, Kim said that “wage theft and other workplace violations” are a widespread problem in Los Angeles, adding: “My firm is currently investigating other potential violations against these defendants, as well as other powerful families and businesses on behalf of everyday workers.”

A 2014 report from the Los Angeles Coalition Against Wage Theft said that low-wage workers in the city lost more than $31.7 million (US $26.2 million) per week as a result of wage theft violations, and that Los Angeles had the “distinction of wage theft capital” of the United States.

More than 600 Amazon workers sign petition demanding the company reduce its warehouse pollution in communities of color

amayo@businessinsider.com (Aleeya Mayo) 4 hrs ago
  

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, who will step down in July. Shannon Stapleton/Reuters

Hundreds of Amazon workers signed a petition calling on the company to reduce emissions to zero by 2023.

They say that emissions from Amazon warehouses disproportionately affect communities of color.

Amazon has previously pledged to go completely carbon neutral by 2040.

More than 600 Amazon workers have signed a petition calling for the company to eliminate its carbon emissions by 2023, saying pollution from the e-commerce giant's warehouses is "disproportionately concentrated in communities of color."

The workers, who are not named publicly, say Amazon must first deploy zero-emissions technologies in communities most affected by pollution from the trucks and other vehicles going in and out of distribution hubs. The group also cites a 2014 study that found people of color are exposed to an average of 38% more toxic air pollution than their white counterparts.

"We want to be proud of where we work," the petition says. "A company that lives up to its statements about racial equity and closes the racial equity gaps in its operations is a critical part of that."

The petition comes as Amazon's annual shareholder meeting takes place Wednesday, including investor proposals regarding reports from the company on packaging waste and on "environmental racism."

This isn't the first time Amazon employees have pushed the company to make changes to better serve the environment. Insider reported that 7,700 employees signed a petition in 2020 calling for the company "to develop a plan to stop using fossil fuels. They also wanted it to stop going after customers in the oil and gas industries," adding that, "Amazon Web Services has an entire unit dedicated to serving this market."

Amazon in 2019 pledged to go completely carbon neutral by 2040 as one of the founding companies of the "climate pledge." Founder Jeff Bezos has also pledged $10 million to fight climate change globally through his Bezos Earth Fund initiative.

But some critics pushed back on this initiative, saying that the company should be combating climate change on a more intimate level, taking aim at Amazon's excessive packaging.

Amazon did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Statistics Canada report says pandemic job losses hit women harder than men

OTTAWA — A new report by Statistics Canada says job losses due to the COVID-19 pandemic have been consistently more severe for women than for men.

 Provided by The Canadian Press

The report says that from March 2020 to February 2021, women accounted for 53.7 per cent of year-over-year employment losses.

The analysis points to a high proportion of women working at small firms in service industries, which it says have been hurt particularly hard during the pandemic.

The report says those differences are the main reasons for the disparity.

The economy lost 207,100 jobs in April as a spike in COVID-19 variant cases led to renewed public health restrictions. The services sector lost 195,400 jobs, while the goods producing sector lost 11,800.

With the April losses, the country was short about 503,100 jobs, or 2.6 per cent below levels in February 2020 before the pandemic.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published May 26, 2021.

The Canadian Press

The bleak Hollywood masterpiece that attacked 'fake news'

(Image credit: Alamy)


By Mark Allison

BBC FILM

25th May 2021

In the summer of 1951, Billy Wilder’s Ace in the Hole was released to harsh reviews. But, seventy years on, its deeply cynical satire is more powerful than ever, writes Mark Allison.

In January 1925, experienced cave explorer Floyd Collins became trapped 55ft (16.7m) underground in Kentucky. William Miller, a reporter from the local Louisville Courier-Journal, was one of the first journalists on the scene, and his coverage of the rescue effort quickly transformed a rural tragedy into a nationwide media sensation. Taking advantage of his small stature, Miller squeezed into the unstable cavern to personally deliver supplies and even pray with the victim. This unrivalled access was the defining feature of his lurid first-hand reports, which were printed and broadcast across the country. "Death holds no terror for Floyd Collins, he told me tonight, more than 115 hours after he was trapped," one such dispatch read. "As I placed a bottle of milk to his lips, he said, 'I believe I would go to heaven.'"

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The Courier-Journal was not shy in framing their reporter at the centre of the story; "CJ MAN LEADS 3 RESCUE ATTEMPTS" ran the front page of one edition. This hair-raising spectacle did not have a happy ending – Collins had already been dead for three days by the time a rescue shaft broke through – but Miller's intrepid reportage nevertheless scored a Pulitzer Prize.


Ace in the Hole tells the story of a deeply unscrupulous journalist (Kirk Douglas, left) reporting on a caving accident (Credit: Alamy)


Since before the invention of the printing press, news proprietors have enjoyed trading in such sensational tales of personal tragedy – often euphemistically described as "human interest". This cutthroat world of scoop journalism was one with which filmmaker Billy Wilder would have been familiar.

By 1951, he was probably Hollywood's most acclaimed writer-director, riding a wave of goodwill following his hugely successful 1950 film Sunset Boulevard. But he had spent his formative years in 1920s Vienna and Berlin as a newspaperman – in a 1980 documentary about him, Portrait of a '60% Perfect Man', he recounted to film journalist Michel Ciment that much of this time was spent doing "dirty work" for scandal sheets. As film critic Molly Haskell tells BBC Culture, the young Wilder "was not above lying about his credentials or insinuating himself where he wasn't wanted. All would be grist for the mill and inspiration for Wildean antiheroes in the darkly funny and excoriating films to come".

It was during production on Sunset Boulevard when Wilder received a script treatment loosely based on the Floyd Collins cave-in, and must have seen something of himself in the cynical newspaper reporter at its centre. With co-writers Lesser Samuels and Walter Newman, Wilder crafted the concept into his most personal project yet. Ace in the Hole was to be a sermon on the director's bleakly cynical world-view; a caustically satirical assault upon journalists and an amoral media industry. In the words of Ed Sikov, author of Wilder biography On Sunset Boulevard, the director "jumped at the chance to make a truly mean movie" – and this polemical fury has only been vindicated in the 70 years since its premiere.

The Wildean antihero of Ace in the Hole is Charles "Chuck" Tatum, a disgraced journalist hungry for a story to restore his reputation, played with ferocious intensity by a young Kirk Douglas. Having lost his desk at no less than 11 East Coast newspapers for his record of libel, adultery, and alcoholism, Tatum wanders into the diminutive offices of the Albuquerque Sun-Bulletin and offers his services. "I know newspapers backward, forward and sideways," he boasts. "I can handle big news and little news. And if there's no news, I’ll go out and bite a dog."


It’s not that the film takes a harsh look at American culture. It’s that Wilder sees American culture for what it is: heartless and superficial – Ed Sikov


After a year stewing restlessly in the "sun-baked Siberia" of Albuquerque, Tatum finally stumbles across the scoop he was looking for – and takes a big bite. The owner of a meagre store alongside a desert road, Leo Minosa, has got himself trapped in a cave while plundering trinkets from a Native American burial site. Tatum assures Leo he'll help get him out, but quickly realises his lucrative potential as a human interest story. In cooperation with the corrupt local sheriff, Tatum applies pressure on the rescue team not to reach Leo the easy way, by shoring up the existing cave walls in a matter of hours, but to instead create a new tunnel by drilling down through solid rock – a process that will take days, and thus give Tatum the time he needs to sell the tragedy to the news-reading masses. Not even Leo’s wife Lorraine, a platinum blonde femme-fatale played with icy relish by Jan Sterling, objects to her husband's life being pointlessly endangered if it might bring business to their ailing convenience store.


His Girl Friday was one of the media satires that preceded Ace in the Hole – but none were quite as cynical (Credit: Alamy)


Tatum's fabricated story of poor Leo Minosa and his despondent wife goes what would now be called "viral", and the nation's press descends upon the desert outpost. The media circus outside the cave quickly grows into a genuine carnival to accommodate thousands of curious tourists, complete with a big wheel and country-western quartet. As Canadian film-maker Guy Maddin noted in a 2014 essay for the Criterion Collection’s Blu-ray/DVD release, hacks like Tatum have always thrived on a public appetite for blood "as sexy and naked as it was in Caesarean times".

While Tatum's colourful reports from the scene of his carefully manufactured tragedy earn him a lucrative byline at a New York paper, his euphoria is cut short when Leo's deteriorating condition suggests the story might not have the good "human interest" ending everyone is hoping for.

The parallels with today

It is easy to draw parallels between the exploitation of Leo Minosa and the countless lives that are tormented and destroyed by the relentless mincer of the modern media machine in pursuit of clicks and ratings. In a 2007 article, media commentator Jack Shafer reflected on the prescience of Ace in the Hole, arguing, "it’s easy to visualise Charles Tatum as a cable network producer deploying camera trucks whenever a child tumbles down a well, a white woman goes missing, a shooter opens fire…" In the digital landscape of 2021, Tatum might be a YouTube or Twitter personality with his own following, cutting out the middleman between his audience and the unfiltered horrors they crave.

Ace in the Hole was not the first film to lampoon the dangerously manipulative power of mass media. Broadway comedy The Front Page had already been adapted for screen twice, in 1931 and 1940 (as His Girl Friday), while Orson Welles' 1941 magnum opus Citizen Kane ferociously picked apart the life and legacy of media mogul William Randolph Hearst. What sets apart Ace in the Hole from its forebears, however, is the utter cynicism of its satire.

I think Billy Wilder's films survive the test of time because of their tartness and acerbity – sentimental films fare less well – Molly Haskell

Wilder doesn't just point the finger at unscrupulous newsmen and corrupt officials who manufacture sordid stories for their own benefit, but casts an accusatory eye at the scores of willing punters who revel in the coverage, like so many today who decry the toxicity of social media platforms while scrolling endlessly on their apps. This thin line between news and entertainment, and the poisonously codependent love affair it breeds between newshounds and their readers, duly encourages further falsity and distortion. As Tatum acknowledges with characteristic self-loathing, his audience is fickle and ignorant – "Tomorrow this'll be yesterday's paper, and they'll wrap fish in it".

Amid our current anxieties around "fake news", when new forms of distortion and manipulation are being reckoned with, Wilder’s attack on underhanded media institutions seems foresighted. But Ace in the Hole was never a prediction of where things were going as much as it is a record of how little they have changed. As Wilder's biographer Ed Sikov tells BBC Culture, he was merely reflecting his own environment. "It’s not that the film takes a harsh look at American culture," he says. "It’s that Wilder sees American culture for what it is: heartless and superficial, a tawdry spectacle made for morons. And he rubs our noses in it."

Ace in the Hole's evisceration of the printed press has since been echoed in satires targeting broadcast media like Nightcrawler (2014) (Credit: Alamy)


Haskell argues that this grim perspective lends Ace in the Hole an enduring power. "I think Billy Wilder's films survive the test of time because of their tartness and acerbity – sentimental films fare less well," she tells BBC Culture. "But Ace in the Hole goes beyond even his bleakest films in its refusal to soft pedal the nastiness of its central character."

Explaining its hostile reception

This misanthropic outlook might resonate with modern viewers, but it was soundly rejected upon release. Ace in the Hole flopped at the box office and was mauled by critics; as Sikov summarises, "few people saw it, and those who did apparently didn’t like it".

Many of the initial reviews in the American press adopted a defensive tone; Bosley Crowther of The New York Times, for example, asserted that, "Mr Wilder has let his imagination so fully take command of his yarn that it presents not only a distortion of journalistic practice but something of a dramatic grotesque". Perhaps such reactions were unsurprising: as Maddin noted, "most critics considered themselves newspapermen and therefore within the target range of the movie’s furious contempt".

Paramount Vice-President Y Frank Freeman even attempted to claw back lost revenue by rereleasing the film under a new title, The Big Carnival, a decision which enraged Wilder. The whole debacle stung the director so badly that for the next decade he focused primarily on adaptations of Broadway plays (including 1953's Stalag 17, 1954's Sabrina and 1955's The Seven Year Itch), and did not bring original material to the screen again until 1960’s The Apartment. His final word on Ace in the Hole, as recounted in On Sunset Boulevard, came years later; "Fuck them all," he was heard crying. "It is the best picture I ever made."

Ace in the Hole shows us that we didn't need Facebook or Fox News to hurt people with stories; the impulse was inside us all along – Elizabeth Cantwell

Wilder must have suspected during production that he would provoke controversy – his first draft of the script included a handwritten note which read; "Do not give out under any circumstances – to anyone!!" In an interview for the 2014 Masters of Cinema Blu-ray release, film scholar Neil Sinyard underlined Wilder’s bravery in pursuing Ace in the Hole within a culture gripped by nationalistic hysteria. At the same time as the House Un-American Affairs Committee was investigating Hollywood and Senator Joseph McCarthy had begun his ruinous anti-Communist crusade, here was Wilder – a foreign-born citizen – delivering a movie within a major studio which argued "the forces of law and order were irredeemably corrupt", as Sinyard put it. Jan Sterling certainly believed this was behind the film’s underperformance. "You know why it was a failure? Columnists came out and said it could have been made by Art Kino [the Soviet Company]. They seemed to feel it was anti-American," she told Sikov.

As for Wilder's evisceration of the printed press and its tragedy-industrial complex, it has since been echoed in the likes of Sidney Lumet's Network (1976) and Dan Gilroy's Nightcrawler (2014), which threw similar scorn at the abuses of television news. The new age of digital journalism, complete with 24-hour rolling news and search engine optimised tabloid headlines, is arguably yet to receive its own consummate cinematic takedown. But as Elizabeth Cantwell, poet and associate editor of Bright Wall/Dark Room, tells BBC Culture, "Ace in the Hole shows us that we didn't need Facebook or Fox News to hurt people with stories; the impulse was inside us all along". Amid this ongoing lineage of malicious sensationalism, Billy Wilder's brutal masterpiece remains a powerful denunciation of a destructive cycle in which all are complicit.

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From protests to 'patriots': Why China is crushing Hong Kong dissent

In 2019, Hong Kong was rocked by mass anti-government protests that turned violent. Now, the city is transformed - and not in the way protesters have hoped.

The Chinese government has clamped down hard, putting in place restrictive rules and arresting scores of activists and opposition politicians.

It passed a stringent national security law last year, and now it has reformed the way Hong Kong is run, ensuring only "patriots" can enter local government.

But why exactly is China so bent on crushing dissent in Hong Kong? And what does this mean for the city's future? The BBC's Tessa Wong explains.

 Tasmanian devils born on Australian mainland after 3,000 years

Tasmanian devils have been born on the Australian mainland for the first time in thousands of years.

Conservationists introduced the species back into a sanctuary north of Sydney in late 2020.

Now, around 3,000 years after the marsupials vanished from the mainland, the first joeys have been born in the wild.

 

Uber recognises union for first time in landmark deal

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Ride-hailing giant Uber has agreed to recognise a trade union for the first time, in a landmark deal that should benefit gig economy workers.

The GMB union will have the power to represent UK drivers in discussions over earnings, pensions, benefits and their health and wellbeing.

Mick Rix, national officer at GMB, said it could be "the first step to a fairer working life for millions of people".

Uber said the move showed its commitment to its 70,000 UK drivers.

"While Uber and GMB may not seem like obvious allies, we've always agreed that drivers must come first, and today we have struck this important deal to improve workers' protections," said Jamie Heywood, regional general manager for Northern and Eastern Europe.

Why is this important?

For years Uber resisted calls to recognise unions, which had criticised the firm for not granting drivers basic rights such as sick pay or a minimum wage.

Uber had argued its drivers were freelancers and not entitled to these benefits. But in March it changed its stance after the Supreme Court ruled that its drivers should be classified as workers - a category entitling them to better pay and conditions.

• Uber 'willing to change' as drivers get minimum wage

Now it provides them with a National Living Wage guarantee, holiday pay and a pension.

And by recognising GMB, the ride-hailing giant has gone a step further, giving a union the right to negotiate on behalf of drivers for the first time.

IMAGE COPYRIGHT

How will this work?

The two sides will meet quarterly to discuss driver issues and concerns while Uber has agreed access rights for GMB representatives at driver hubs.

Under the agreement, GMB and Uber will discuss topics such as Uber's National Living Wage guarantee, pensions and holiday pay.

Drivers won't automatically become members, and to be represented by the union, they will have to sign up.

What do unions think?

GMB called on other operators to follow suit, saying the deal offered a golden opportunity to improve workers' rights.

"This agreement shows gig economy companies don't have to be a Wild West on the untamed frontier of employment rights," said Mr Rix.

TUC general secretary Frances O'Grady said the agreement would give Uber drivers "a real voice at work".

• Uber worker benefits 'will make a difference'

But the organisation that brought the Supreme Court employment case against Uber, the App Drivers & Couriers Union (ADCU), said there was "good reason for workers and their unions to be cautious".

It said Uber was still not providing a minimum wage for all working time and holiday pay in the UK, "despite the recent UK Supreme Court ruling in our favour".

"At this time ADCU is not prepared to enter into a recognition agreement with Uber," it added.

The UK is the only country in which Uber has recognised a union, and its is still being challenged by its drivers in many other markets over whether they should be classed as workers or self-employed.