CLIMATE EMERGENCY

Thousands flee fresh floods in China as typhoon approaches country’s east


Historic floods have claimed at least 51 lives in central China this week, including 12 people trapped in a subway during rush hour.

A man carrying a woman wades through floodwaters in front of a front loader following heavy rainfall in Zhengzhou, Henan province, China July 23, 2021. (Aly Song / Reuters)

Thousands of villagers have been evacuated over makeshift bridges as floods submerged swathes of central China, following a historic deluge which claimed at least 51 lives, while a typhoon threatened to bring more misery as it headed towards the country's east coast.

Millions have been affected by the floods in Henan province, trapping people for days without fresh food or water, pulverising roads as they breached embankments and caking whole areas in thick mud.

In the worst-hit city of Zhengzhou firefighters on Friday continued to pump the muddy water from tunnels including a subway where at least a dozen people drowned inside a train earlier in the week as a year's worth of rainfall dumped down in just three days.

Overnight heavy rain saw floods surge northwards to Xinxiang and its surrounding areas where vast swathes of farmland were inundated and the town cut off as the Wei River burst its banks, thwarting efforts to plug the gaps with trucks.

READ MORE: Death toll from flooding in central China rises after record rains

Destructive floods

Arial footage showed rescuers using temporary bridges on Friday to move hundreds of residents to safety, as tree tops poking above the water were the only sign of land for miles.

"Presently, nearly 9,000 people have been safely transferred," state broadcaster CCTV said, adding authorities were evacuating "the remaining 19,000 people."

Videos shared over social media have provided a raw window into the destructive power of the floods, which tossed cars into piles and sucked pedestrians towards storm drains.

Harrowing footage from passengers trapped inside the subway at rush hour, where waters rose from ankle to neck height, pin-balled across China's Twitter-like Weibo as questions were asked about why the underground network was allowed to operate during an unprecedented storm

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Rescue workers paddle through a flooded street in the city of Zhengzhou in China's Henan province (Noel Celis / AFP)

Typhoon likely to hit on Sunday

Meteorologists are now anxiously watching the progress of Typhoon In-Fa which has already dumped heavy rainfall on Taiwan and the east coast of China and is expected to make landfall from Sunday, in an area home to tens of millions of people.

"After landing, In-fa may circulate in the east China region, bringing long periods of extremely heavy rainfall," the National Meteorological Center said.

During Saturday and Sunday's high tides "coastal areas should guard against the combined impact of wind, rain and tides," it added, warning the public to prepare for a major weather event.

Questions have been asked on how China's bulging cities could be better prepared for freak weather events, which experts say are happening with increased frequency and intensity due to climate change.

Henan province is marked by rivers, dams and reservoirs, many constructed decades ago to manage the flow of floodwater and irrigate the agricultural region.

State media has rebuked suggestions that dams played a part in subverting the normal flow of water.

Stories of remarkable survival and tragedy have emerged as floods retreat from southern parts of Henan, with a baby dug out from a collapsed house while her mother died in the debris.

Locals in Gongyi on Thursday recounted stories of being pulled from flooded homes to safety or scrambling to higher floors unable to flee.

"We couldn't evacuate in time because my elderly disabled grandma couldn't leave the house," one 16-year-old school student surnamed Zhang, who said their house was completely flooded, told AFP. "I was pretty scared I'd drown."

READ MORE: Cities in central China flooded as river banks burst amid rains

Measures to limit climate change a heavy burden on developing countries

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Death toll rises to 44 as typhoon Lekima wreaks havoc in eastern China

Strongest typhoon in 25 years batters Japan

At least 67 die in Japan's Typhoon Hagibis aftermath

Wisdom of Two: Margaret Mills Harper

The Spiritual and Literary Collaboration of George and W. B. Yeats

Georgie Hyde Lees, who married W. B. Yeats in the autumn of 1917, has for many years occupied a secondary or even marginal position in most studies of her famous husband. She has been depicted as a poor choice for romantic partner, political comrade, or literary collaborator. While often thanked in acknowledgments pages and regarded as a minor editor or secretary, she usually receives only footnote status in literary analyses. Most often, she has been cast as an amateur spirit medium or, less generously, as a manipulative perpetrator of an elaborate mystical and sexual hoax out of which arose Yeats's philosophical treatise A Vision and a raft of poetry, plays, and other literary works. Yet George Yeats co-wrote the automatic script and co-created the "system" of cosmic geometry, based on a dialectics of desire. Coming to terms with the "system" is vital to understanding the late work of the poet, yet a thorough critical study of the Yeatses' "incredible experience" has never been written. Harper, one of few scholars who is intimately familiar with the large mass of documents, provides the first such study. She analyzes the thousands of pages of published and unpublished papers, the particularities of their unusual composition, the finished literary works that depend upon them, and historical contexts such as the spiritualist movement, automatism (including its relation to communications technology), sexual politics, and war. Wisdom of Two airs critical and theoretical issues that are vital to understanding the Yeatses' spiritual, literary, and dramatic collaboration.

Amazon.com: Wisdom of Two: The Spiritual and Literary Collaboration of George and W. B. Yeats eBook: Harper, Margaret Mills: Kindle Store

Excerpts from Consciencism

by Dr. Kwame Nkrumah

The eighteenth-century African philosopher from Ghana, Anthony William Amo, who taught in the German Universities of Halle, and Wittenberg, pointed out in his De Humanae Mentis Apatheia that idealism was enmeshed in contradictions. The mind, he said, was conceived by idealism as a pure, active, unextended substance. Ideas, the alleged constituents of physical objects, were held to be only in the mind, and to be incapable of existence outside it. Amo's question here was how the ideas, largely those of physical objects, many of which were ideas of extension, could subsist in the mind; since physical objects were actually extended, if they were really ideas, some ideas must be actually extended. And if all ideas must be in the mind, it became hard to resist the conclusion that the mind itself was extended, in order to be a spatial receptacle for its extended ideas. The contradiction is in the denial of the spatial nature of mind and the compulsion to harbor spatial objects in it. For in idealism it is not only our bodies which are in our minds, instead of our minds being in our bodies; the whole universe, to the extent that we can perceive or be aware of it, is neatly tucked away in our minds.

Kwame Nkrumah - Wikipedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kwame_Nkrumah

• Overview
• Overthrow
• Early life and education
• Return to the Gold Coast
• Ghanaian independence
• Ghana's leader (1957–1966)
• Exile, death, tributes and legacy
• Personal life

In February 1966, while Nkrumah was on a state visit to North Vietnam and China, his government was overthrown in a violent coup d'état led by the national military and police forces, with backing from the civil service. The conspirators, led by Joseph Arthur Ankrah, named themselves the National Liberation Council and ruled as a military government for three years. Nkrumah did not learn of the coup until he arrived in China. After the coup, Nkrumah stayed in Beijing for four days and Premier Zhou Enlaitreated him with c…

Wikipedia · Text under CC-BY-SA license

The Biography Of Dr Kwame Nkrumah: The Father Of African ...

https://ikonversace.com/the-biography-of-dr-kwame-nkrumah-the-father...

2021-07-21 · Kwame Nkrumah, Prime Minister from 1957 to 1960 and President of the Republic of Ghana from 1960 to 1966. He was the leader of the first sub-Saharan African nation to gain its independence from Britain. He went on to become a leading figure in the campaign for a United States of Africa.

CRIMINAL CAPITALI$T

Irish-born entrepreneur Mike Lynch facing extradition to US after ruling

Judge in London rules the software tycoon should be extradited to face fraud charges


Mike Lynch is facing US extradition to face fraud charges related to a 2011 HP deal. Photograph: Chris Ratcliffe/Bloomberg

Software tycoon Mike Lynch should be extradited to the US to face fraud charges stemming from the $11 billion sale of Autonomy to Hewlett-Packard, a London judge ruled.

The US Department of Justice has pursued Mr Lynch over allegations that he dressed Autonomy up for a sale to HP by inflating sales. The Silicon Valley hardware giant acquired the software company in 2011 only to write down the value by $8.8 billion a year later.

Mr Lynch, who personally made more than $800 million from the HP deal, was “the leader of a corporate conspiracy,” the US said. He was arrested in February last year and has been on bail ever since.

The high-profile case has attracted significant political attention with lawmakers highlighting perceived imbalances in the US-UK. extradition treaty. Mr Lynch argues that a “very substantial measure” of the supposed wrongdoing took place in Britain.

The high-profile extradition will now be sent to the home secretary Priti Patel for her final decision on the matter. A Home Office press officer couldn’t immediately comment.

Representatives at Hewlett-Packard and Mr Lynch’s lawyers didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.

Lynch is also waiting for the verdict in a $5 billion London civil trial brought by HP. Judge Michael Snow said he would deliver his ruling without the civil verdict, calling it “of limited significance in the case.”

Judge Snow, the extradition judge, said he “quickly regretted” his initial decision to wait for the civil judgment.

“This is not nine weeks, this is months,” he said. “We will sink into the New Year and it will be two years since the arrest that judgment will be handed down.”

Mr Lynch was released on bail.

- Bloomberg

Malcolm X Series in the Works From Activist Icon’s Daughter Ilyasah Shabazz, Sony’s TriStar (EXCLUSIVE)

Joe Otterson 

© Courtesy of AP; Ilyasah Shabazz

A television series based on the life of Malcolm X is in the works at Sony Pictures Television’s TriStar, Variety has learned exclusively.

The series will be based on the novels “X: A Novel” and “The Awakening of Malcolm X,” both of which were co-written by Malcolm’s daughter, Ilyasah Shabazz. “X: A Novel” was also co-written by Kekla Magoon while “The Awakening of Malcolm X” was also co-written by Tiffany D. Jackson.

“X: A Novel” follows Malcolm’s life from his childhood — including his father being lynched and his mother being institutionalized against her will — up to his imprisonment at age twenty. “The Awakening of Malcolm X” picks up during his time in prison when he decided to join the Nation of Islam, ultimately emerging from incarceration as Malcolm X.

Shabazz will executive produce the series along with State Street Pictures’ Bob Tietel and George Tillman as well as 3 Arts Entertainment’s Jermaine Johnson and Molly Madden. will also produce. Jay Marcus with State Street Pictures will serve as co-executive producer with Ron Baldwin producing. State Street currently has a first-look deal with Sony.

Should the project move forward, it would not be the first time Malcolm X has been portrayed onscreen. Most famously, Denzel Washington played him in the 1992 Spike Lee film “Malcolm X,” for which Washington received an Oscar nomination for best actor. Most recently, Kingsley Ben-Adir played him in the Oscar nominated film “One Night in Miami.”

In addition to writing the two books that will serve as the basis for the series, Shabazz has also written the books “Growing Up X,” the children’s book “Malcolm Little: The Boy Who Grew Up to Become Malcolm X,” and “Betty Before X.” She is a noted educator, activist, and motivational speaker. She is the co-chair of The Malcolm X & Dr. Betty Shabazz Memorial and Educational Center located at the Audubon Ballroom in Harlem, New York, which was the site of her father’s assassination in 1965.

She is repped by Solis Entertainment, 3 Arts Entertainment, and Frankfurt Kurnit Klein + Selz.

This Syrian refugee wants justice after his brother was tortured and killed by Russian mercenaries.

By Sebastian Shukla and Jomana Karadsheh, CNN 

 2 days ago

In the central Syrian desert, an oil field has become a makeshift torture chamber. An unarmed man writhes in the dust, howling in pain. Four men in military fatigues pin him down and smash his hands and feet with a sledgehammer

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© Brice Laine/CNN Abdullah's brother Mohamad was tortured and killed in Syria in 2017. Abdullah only found out what had happened to him months later, after videos surfaced online

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© Brice Laine/CNN Abdullah spoke to CNN from an undisclosed location in order to keep his family, who still live in Syria, safe.

As he cries out for help, they taunt him in Russian, drowning out his agonized screams with laughter. In the background of the video, which was uploaded online, a nationalist Russian military song, "I am Russian special forces," plays.

The victim in this harrowing amateur video is Mohamad, a 31-year-old Syrian construction worker and father of four young children, who disappeared on his way home from a job in neighboring Lebanon in March 2017.

Mohamad's final words were those of the Shahada, a declaration of his Muslim faith.

The men who killed and decapitated Mohamad scrawled graffiti in Cyrillic on his lifeless chest. It said "for VDV and reconnaissance," a reference to the Russian airborne forces.

At least one of the men in the video has been identified by the independent investigative Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta as a mercenary from the shadowy Wagner group -- a private military outfit that has links to the Kremlin-connected oligarch Yevgeny Prigozhin, known as "Putin's chef" for his ties to the Russian President.

The Kremlin denies any connections to Wagner and insists that private military companies are illegal in Russia. Prigozhin has previously denied being connected to Wagner. Neither he nor anyone from his companies would talk to CNN in recent years despite multiple attempts seeking comment, including for this report

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© Myrotvorets As Mohamad writhed in pain, his captors laughed as they tortured him.

"These people risk their lives and by and large this is also a contribution in fighting terrorism ... but this is not the Russian state, not the Russian army," said President Vladimir Putin in 2019.

CNN special report: Putin's private army

Russian forces have been operating in Syria since 2015, and there is substantial evidence to show that Wagner's presence in the country is connected to the Russian military deployment.

Analysts say it's inconceivable that Wagner would exist without Putin's approval. Indeed, its training camp in southern Russia is attached to a Russian special forces base.

Four years after Mohamad's murder, three NGOs from Syria, France and Russia filed a landmark legal case against Wagner for the role it allegedly played in the atrocity, as well as the perpetration of possible war crimes by the men seen in the video.

The lawsuit was filed in March on behalf of Mohamad's brother, Abdullah. It is the first time anyone has tried to hold a member of Wagner accountable for what rights groups say is a growing list of atrocities committed by the mercenaries, whose expanding global footprint has allowed Moscow to advance an off-the-books foreign policy in places like Syria, Ukraine, Libya, the Central African Republic, Sudan and Mozambique

Abdullah, a refugee who fled Syria in 2017, has never spoken publicly about his brother's killing before. He broke his silence in an exclusive interview with CNN, he says, to draw international attention to the tragedy that devastated his family.

To protect family members still living in regime-controlled areas of Syria, Abdullah requested that CNN conceal his full identity and the location of the interview.

"My brother is gone, he will never come back," Abdullah said. "I want the world to hear about my brother's case, so these criminals are held accountable."

Final phone calls to family

In one of Mohamad's last phone calls, in April 2017, he told Abdullah he had been detained by the regime as he crossed back into Syria, after working in Lebanon for about eight months. He said he had been taken to Damascus and forced to join the military, but that he planned to desert.

Ten days later, Mohamad called to say he was being sent to Homs the next day and that he would escape at night.

It was his last call to his family.

"He said, 'Give my best to my father and my mother, ask them to forgive me, I am going to do something, I am going to leave, I don't know if I will be able to get back to you or not,'" Abdullah recalled.

He said his brother had asked him to "take care of my wife," adding: "I am entrusting you with my family."

"It was that kind of talk, it was as if he knew something was going to happen to him," Abdullah explained.

Mohamad never met his youngest daughter.

Video: This Syrian man was tortured and murdered. His brother wants justice (CNN)

With the Syrian civil war raging, and poor internet and phone connections in their remote village, it was hard for Mohamad's family to find out what had happened to him.

It wasn't until a video showing his torture emerged online months later that his loved ones discovered the true horror that had befallen him.

"One day a guy from our town sent me a video clip, he said: 'Watch the video, it could be your brother.' Of course, I recognized my brother -- from his clothes, his voice, his appearance," Abdullah said, his voice pained. "He was being tortured by soldiers, they were not Syrian, we did not understand what they were saying."

Abdullah told other family members about what he had seen in the video, but did not share it with them, fearing what it would do to their elderly parents.

"When I saw that first video, I still had hope he was still alive," he said. "He was being tortured, but he was alive, he was moving. We were hoping he was still alive and in a hospital."

Their father traveled to Damascus, searching for his son at hospitals and jails in the Syrian capital.

"About two months later, the second video emerged, that is when we believed our brother died," the softly spoken 27-year-old, now visibly distraught, told CNN.

"When I watched the second video [which showed Mohamad being beheaded], I stayed in a room ... I did not leave the room for three days. He was not only my older brother. He was my friend. We were always together," Abdullah said.

"My (other) brother developed kind of a psychological illness from the videos."

Landmark legal case

Wagner's forces have been used as the tip of the spear in Syria, but their shadowy presence affords Moscow a degree of deniability.

In February 2018, a US airstrike killed dozens and injured hundreds of Wagner fighters as they were advancing towards an oilfield outside the border town of Deir Ezzor.

Moscow did everything it could to distance itself from the incident, but when bodies of Russian mercenaries started to return home, it became clear it was a Wagner operation.

CNN spoke to a source connected to Wagner who had been to visit the injured fighters as they returned to Moscow. Moreover, in the days following the attack, one independent Russian media outlet went to visit the mother of a fighter who died in Syria, she confirmed that her son was not a Russian regular soldier.

Russia's foreign ministry would only say that these contractors were working independently and went to Syria on their own.

In Syria, the use of mercenaries is based around a company called Evro Polis, which was sanctioned by the US Treasury for being connected to Prigozhin. In February 2018, CNN obtained a copy of a contract between Evro Polis and the Syrian government. The agreement stated that Evro Polis gets to keep 25% of the revenue from the oil fields if they are recaptured from rebel territory. In other words, Wagner does the fighting, Evro Polis keeps the spoils.

Since Wagner's footprint has grown across the Middle East and Africa, a key launchpad has become the Russian military base at Latakia on Syria's Mediterranean coast. CNN and other researchers have monitored the frequency of flights originating from Latakia to other theaters across the region. One document obtained by CNN, details the agreement made between Yevgeny Prigozhin and a Russian airforce 223rd flight detachment to use their planes.

There is growing evidence to suggest that Mohamad's case may be just the tip of the iceberg.

A CNN investigation in June uncovered evidence that Russian mercenaries were committing war crimes and human rights abuses in the Central African Republic (CAR), according to several witnesses and community leaders.

The Russian government denied the allegations and insisted the contractors in CAR are "unarmed and do not take part in hostilities." The CAR government also denied the allegations but said an inquiry would establish the facts.

News of the legal action launched in March -- by the Syrian Center for Media and Freedom of Expression (SCM), the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH), and Memorial Human Rights Center in Russia -- coincided with the 10th anniversary of the Syrian uprising.

"The complaint ... is an unprecedented attempt to fill the impunity gap and bring Russian suspects to account," the advocacy groups said in a statement.

"Syrian activists and victims of the atrocities perpetrated by all parties to the conflict in Syria have been working tirelessly since 2011 to obtain accountability," they said, adding that: "There are limited avenues for victims and their families to obtain justice and redress."

The International Criminal Court has no jurisdiction in Syria, since the country is not a signatory to the Rome Statute, leaving countless victims of the conflict with few options to seek accountability.

In their pursuit of justice, Syrians are increasingly turning to European courts -- especially those in Germany and France -- under the concept of "universal jurisdiction."

It gives a national court jurisdiction over grave crimes against international law, even when they were not committed on the country's territory.

Earlier this year, a German court convicted a former Syrian officer for crimes against humanity, in the first-ever trial of people linked to the regime in Damascus. Another remains on trial.

Clémence Bectarte, a lawyer at FIDH, said they chose to file this case in Russia due to "the unique opportunity because of the strong legal basis to claim jurisdiction in Russia ... this is the natural court for this case."

"We are talking about Russian perpetrators, people who could potentially be arrested in Russia if there was a political and judicial willingness to push the case forward. Universal jurisdiction always has to be considered as a last resort," Bectarte added.

So far there has been no movement on the lawsuit filed by Abdullah in Moscow.

A similar request in 2019 by Novaya Gazeta to Russia's main investigative body -- the Investigative Committee -- to open a probe into its findings in Mohamad's case was dismissed.

Abdullah has never heard of Wagner. He says he just wants to see his brother's executioners held accountable.

"If someone hadn't given them the green light, they wouldn't have done something like that," he said. "We will not be like them and demand [that] what happened to my brother [also] happen to them, [but] the least they deserve is jail."

Abdullah says his brother's death has left him facing a series of challenges, from caring for Mohamad's wife and children to dealing with the trauma of the horrors he saw in those videos.

It has also led him on a long and potentially dangerous quest for justice against a shadowy, faceless enemy. But he believes it is worth the risk.

"I am not worried about myself," he said. "I just want them to be held accountable, even if this costs me my life."

"The Hermeneutical Invasion of Philosophy and Economics"

Review of Austrian Economics, 1989, (3), pp. 45-60. See also "The Logic of Action Two" pp.275-293.

Murray N. Rothbard

Here we must note two variants of the common hermeneutical theme. On the one hand are the candid relativists and nihilists, who assert, with an inconsistently absolutist fervor, that there is no truth. These hold with the notorious dictum of the epistemological anarchist Paul Feyerabend that "anything goes." Anything, be it astronomy or astrology, is of equal validity or, rather, equal invalidity. The one possible virtue of the "anything goes" doctrine is that at least everyone can abandon the scientific or philosophic enterprise and go fishing or get drunk. This virtue, however, is rejected by the mainstream hermeneuticians, because it would put an end to their beloved and interminable "conversation."

In short, the mainstream hermeneuticians do not like the "anything goes" dictum because, instead of being epistemological anarchists, they are epistemological pests. They insist that even though it is impossible to arrive at objective truth or indeed even to understand other theorists or scientists, that we all still have a deep moral obligation to engage in an endless dialogue or, as they call it, "conversation" to try to arrive at some sort of fleeting quasi-truth. To the hermeneutician, truth is the shifting sands of subjective relativism, based on an ephemeral "consensus" of the subjective minds engaging in the endless conversation. But the worst thing is that the hermeneuticians assert that there is no objective way, whether by empirical observation or logical reasoning, to provide any criteria for such a consensus.

Since there are no rational criteria for agreement, any consensus is necessarily arbitrary, based on God-knows-what personal whim, charisma of one or more of the conversationalists, or perhaps sheer power and intimidation. Since there is no criterion, the consensus is subject to instant and rapid change, depending on the arbitrary mind-set of the participants or, of course, a change in the people constituting the eternal conversation.

Exclusive-India watchdog accuses Amazon of concealing facts in deal for Future Group unit

By Aditya Kalra 

© Reuters/FRANCIS MASCARENHAS FILE PHOTO: A man walks past an Amazon logo outside the company's collection point in Mumbai

NEW DELHI (Reuters) -India's antitrust regulator has accused Amazon.com Inc of concealing facts and making false submissions when it sought approval for a 2019 investment in a Future Group unit, a letter to the U.S. e-commerce giant seen by Reuters showed.

The letter complicates Amazon's bitter legal battle with Future Group over the Indian's firm's decision to sell its retail assets to Reliance Industries - a matter that is now before India's Supreme Court.

Amazon has argued that terms agreed upon in its 2019 deal to pay $192 million for a 49% stake in Future's gift voucher unit prevent its parent, Future Group, from selling its Future Retail Ltd business to Reliance.

In the letter dated June 4, the Competition Commission of India (CCI) said Amazon hid factual aspects of the transaction by not revealing its strategic interest in Future Retail when it sought approval for the 2019 deal.

"The representations and conduct of Amazon before the Commission amounts to misrepresentation, making false statement and suppression or/and concealment of material facts," the letter said. It also noted that its review of the submissions made had been prompted by a complaint from Future Group.

In the four-page letter, a so-called 'show cause notice', the CCI asked Amazon why it should not take action and penalise the company for providing false information.

Amazon has yet to respond, according to a source with direct knowledge of the matter who declined to be identified as the letter has not been made public.

Amazon said in a statement to Reuters it had received a letter, was committed to complying with India's laws and would extend its full cooperation to the CCI.

"We are confident that we will be able to address the CCI’s concerns," it said.

Representatives for Future and the CCI did not respond to Reuters requests for comment.

Vaibhav Choukse, a competition law specialist and partner at J. Sagar Associates, said it was rare for the CCI to issue such a notice and that if the CCI was not satisfied by Amazon's response, it could lead to a fine and even a review of the deal.

"The CCI has wide powers which includes directions to re-file the approval application and even revoke the approval under exceptional circumstances," Choukse said.

The CCI's 2019 approval order states its decision "shall stand revoked if, at any time, the information provided" is found to be incorrect.

Shares in Future Retail jumped after Reuters published details of the letter, extending gains to be up nearly 5% in Thursday afternoon trade.

SUBMISSIONS COMPARED

The dispute over Future Retail, which has more than 1,500 supermarket and other outlets, is the most hostile flashpoint between Jeff Bezos' Amazon and Reliance, run by India's richest man Mukesh Ambani, as they try to gain the upper hand in winning over the country's consumers.

Amazon also has a host of other challenges in India, a key growth market where it has committed $6.5 billion in investments, including a separate CCI probe into alleged practices that small businesses say have hurt them.

In addition, it faces the prospect of more regulations that would restrict the sale of private labels and would prohibit the U.S. firm from allowing its affiliates to list products on its website.

The CCI letter compared three sets of submissions Amazon made to it in 2019 with submissions made later to other legal forums, saying they were "contradictory."

In particular, it said Amazon had explained its interest in investing in Future's coupon unit as one that would address gaps in India's payments industry. But the letter stated Amazon had disclosed in other legal forums that the foundation of its relationship with Future Coupon was certain special rights it obtained over Future Retail.

"Amazon has concealed its strategic interest" in Future Retail, the letter said, adding: "Such interest and the purpose of the combination ... was not disclosed to the Commission despite specific requirements."

The CCI also objected to one section of a submission where Amazon had told the regulator it had nothing to do with one particular legal agreement that two Future entities had signed between themselves days ahead of its 2019 deal. But Amazon later claimed before an arbitrator that the agreement was an "integrated part" of the transaction, the letter said.

(Reporting by Aditya Kalra in New Delhi; Additional reporting by Abhirup Roy; Editing by Edwina Gibbs)

CRIMINAL COVID CAPITALI$M

Australia's Lorna Jane activewear fined

 $4m for misleading Covid-19 claims

23 July 2021 - BY REUTERS

“This was dreadful conduct as it involved making serious claims regarding public health when there was no basis for them,” said ACCC Chair Rod Sims in a statement.
Image: 123RF / leungchopan/ File photo


Athleisure clothing chain Lorna Jane Pty Ltd was fined A$5 million ($3.7 million) by an Australian court on Friday after claiming its garments could prevent Covid-19, which a judge labelled as “exploitive, predatory and potentially dangerous”.

The company with 134 stores across Australia, New Zealand, the US and Singapore was sued by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) last year after saying its LJ Shield Activewear range “eliminated”, “stopped the spread” and “protected wearers” against the coronavirus.

The misleading claims, which centred on the “groundbreaking technology” of the company's garments, were made on in-store signs, on its website, on social media website Instagram, in emails to customers and in media releases, the consumer watchdog said.

In a judgment published on Friday, Federal Court judge Darryl Rangiah said the Brisbane-headquartered company had “represented to consumers that it had a reasonable scientific or technological basis” when it had none, and ordered the company to publish corrective notices on top of the fine.

“This was dreadful conduct as it involved making serious claims regarding public health when there was no basis for them,” said ACCC Chair Rod Sims in a statement.

The judge, the ACCC said, had called the conduct “exploitive, predatory and potentially dangerous”.

Lorna Jane said it accepted the court's ruling and acknowledged that it had unintentionally misled customers as a result of being itself misled by a supplier.

“A trusted supplier sold us a product that did not perform as promised,” said CEO Bill Clarkson in a statement.

“They led us to believe the technology behind LJ Shield was being sold elsewhere in Australia, the USA, China, and Taiwan and that it was both antibacterial and antiviral. We believed we were passing on a benefit to our customers.”

In addition to the fine, Lorna Jane was told to publish corrective notices. The company was earlier fined A$40,000 by Australian drug regulator the Therapeutic Goods Administration for the same claims.

MORTALITY AMONG PALEOLITHIC HUMANS

Violence is as important a cause of death as disease for young Hiwi adults, and for infants as well. On page 451, the paper points out that violence and accident cause as many deaths in the Hiwi young adults as occur in most other hunter-gatherers from all causes combined. Hill and colleagues discuss this issue in relation to the possible life history pressures on Paleolithic hunter-gatherers:

If high mortality, warfare, homicide, and accidental trauma are typical of our Paleolithic ancestors, the Hiwi mortality patterns may be more representative of the past than those derived from other modern hunter-gatherers. If so, several observations about the Hiwi are important. First, conspecific violence was a prominent part of the demographic profile, accounting for many deaths in all age and sex categories. Most of the adult killings were due to either competition over women, reprisals by jealous husbands (on both their wives and their wives' lovers), or reprisals for past killings. The criollo-caused killings were motivated by territorial conquest. Moreover, infanticide (especially on females) constituted the highest mortality rate component of all Hiwi conspecific violence. Second, no predation deaths were reported despite attacks by anacondas, Orinoco caimans, and piranhas, and the presence of jaguars in the area. Accidents associated with the active-forager lifestyle were common, but disease was a more important killer, accounting for nearly half of all deaths. This suggests an adaptive landscape in which success in social relations, competitive violence, and disease resistance are paramount. This may partially explain why many of the genes that appear to have been under strong selection in the past 50,000 years affect either disease resistance or cognitive function (Wang et al., 2006), presumably related to success in an atmosphere of frequent violent social competition (Hill et al. 2007:451).

The paper also includes a substantial discussion of the implications of high young adult mortality for intergenerational investments, such as grandmothering. This is an important issue, and Hill and colleagues end their discussion with a suggestion that neither the "grandmothering" nor the "embodied capital" models for the evolution of long life spans is sufficient to explain the human pattern. In their view, the key difference between humans and other primates (notably, chimpanzees) is not life span itself, but the markedly lower mortality rate among young adults. This low mortality rate directly causes the long life span (if you don't die young, you'll live long!). Hill and colleagues favor extrinsic factors such as greater protection of children, nursing the sick, and food sharing as possible causes of reduced mortality rates in humans.