How Indigenous voters want political leaders to hold residential school staff to account

Thu., September 9, 2021

Danielle Morrison, a second-year law associate in Manitoba who has residential school survivors in her family, says the federal government should hold the Catholic Church accountable for its actions. (Sam Samson/CBC - image credit)

When Jolene Mayer thinks of the future for reconciliation, she sees a clock.

"We're running out of time," said Mayer, who is Métis and lives in The Pas, Man.

Mayer's great-grandmother went to a residential school in Saskatchewan. She says the people who abused her kin, along with thousands of other children, have yet to be brought to justice.

"These people now, if they're still alive — the nuns, the priests, the ministers — they're in their 80s, 90s and we're gonna lose them. They don't deserve a free walk into heaven."

Submitted by Jolene Mayer

Mayer said she sees the effects of intergenerational trauma in northern Manitoba take shape in addictions and mental health crises.

That's why she wants to know how the next federal government will hold residential school operators and staff to account and bring some possible closure to her community.

"We need to act now," she said.

CBC News reached out to the major federal political parties campaigning in Manitoba for the Sept. 20 election. Each was asked how it would bring to justice those responsible for residential schools within 21 days of coming to power. Here are their answers, in alphabetical order of party name.

Conservative Party of Canada

The Conservative Party referred to its platform, called Canada's Recovery Plan. In it, the party lays out different points, including developing a plan to implement the Truth and Reconciliation Commission's "calls to action," specifically numbers 71 to 76. They directly address residential school burial sites, including calling for governments to release records, fund the work to uncover graves and ensure all work is led by Indigenous communities.

Green Party of Canada

The Green Party said it would provide funding for healing centres and for the work to identify missing children and unmarked graves. The party said it would call on Pope Francis to apologize on behalf of the Roman Catholic Church for its role in operating the schools and look for ways the federal government could hold different religious institutions accountable. The Green Party said it would also formally recognize the high rates of Indigenous youth in foster and custody systems, and would support providing access to Jordan's Principle to non-status First Nations children who live off reserve.

Liberal Party of Canada

The Liberal Party reaffirmed its promise to appoint a special interlocutor who would partner with Indigenous communities to uncover unmarked graves, stating it would "quickly establish" the position if re-elected. The party said it would also provide support for communities doing the work, fund the TRC with dedicated support for unmarked graves and endeavour to build a monument in Ottawa to honour residential school survivors and the children who never came home. The Liberals also mentioned the work they've done since 2016, including urging the Pope to apologize.

New Democratic Party

The NDP said it would commit to fully funding the search for gravesites at former residential schools. It would also fund the maintenance and protection of the graves in whatever manner the communities would like. The NDP also said it would appoint a special prosecutor to "pursue those who inflicted great harm on Indigenous children" in residential schools. The party would also require churches and governments to hand over records that would identify any remains or those who are responsible for the harm done.

People's Party of Canada

The PPC sent a link to its platform portion regarding First Nations, Métis and Inuit people. There is no mention of reconciliation or residential schools — the platform briefly describes how it might collaborate with different communities on living conditions, natural resources and the economy.

'Hold the Catholic Church accountable'

Justice can look different for different people, said Danielle Morrison, a second-year law associate at the Headingley, Man., office of Winnipeg-based law firm Cochrane Saxberg LLP.

Morrison, who is from Anishinaabeg of Naongashiing in Treaty 3, in northwestern Ontario, works in child protection, Indigenous and corporate law.

"A great starting point is to hold the Catholic Church accountable," she said.

She noted the Pope's lack of apology for the Catholic Church's role in residential schools, records that have yet to be released from local churches and the millions of dollars that were supposed to go to residential school survivors but were instead spent on legal fees.

Lisa Maree Williams/Getty Images

Morrison said the federal government should compel churches to release records. Another idea she's heard from different community members is to petition Ottawa to remove the church's charitable status.

"To be frank, the best way to hit them is hitting where it hurts, and that's their bank," she said.

"If they can't take charitable donations, then they're not able to spend that money in the ways that they have been. Maybe it'll help them think twice about where they should have been spending money in the first place — fulfilling those promises that they made in the residential settlement agreement."

Morrison's father was a residential school survivor. He died around the time she started working with other survivors to file compensation claims — an experience she said was integral to her becoming a lawyer. She said she hopes the next federal government will put action behind its words of support for First Nations who are uncovering unmarked graves.

"These are our lives. It has been my life since I was born, and I find it really frustrating that while we're still trying to pick up the pieces, political leaders are now making it into a campaign," Morrison said.

"I hope that the leaders, when they're commenting and answering these questions about how they're going to hold the Catholic Church and hold the government accountable — all these atrocities of the past that still have lingering impacts today — I hope that they think. I hope that they come up with some very meaningful answers."

Hope for healing through supports, not jail time

For others, justice doesn't involve Canada's justice system at all.

"I don't think we're a punitive people," said Wayne Mason, executive director of Wa-Say Healing Centre in Winnipeg.

"If they believe that they did something wrong, then they should try and make amends. It doesn't mean throwing them in jail or anything like that. We will be just as bad as them if we did that.... They can make amends by helping us to do things in a good way."

Trevor Brine/CBC

Mason is from Fisher River Cree Nation in Manitoba and a member of the turtle clan. He's been given the spirit names Running Buffalo, Brown Buffalo Warrior and Standing Strong Earth Man.

Wa-Say helps residential school survivors reconnect with their Indigenous identities before helping them heal from their experiences as children.

"We have ceremonies here, right in this room. Pipe ceremonies, naming ceremonies. We get their clans, their colours," Mason said. "It helps them to feel good about themselves. Once they feel good and want to know about their history, we help them understand what happened over the years."

In part, making amends means continuing funding for programs like Wa-Say, Mason said. It also means supporting the work of Indigenous-led programs by letting them be Indigenous-led, with no government influence.

"We know who we are. We know what we need to do. We just need to have people on the other side to understand that and agree to that," he said.

"I'm hoping that with the new government — whether it's Liberal, Conservative, NDP or whoever — I hope that those agreements and plans to work together continue."

Still, Mason said reconciliation is multi-faceted and that acknowledgement from the Catholic Church and an apology from the Pope could help some people move forward.

"Hopefully someday he will," Mason said. "That will help that healing."

Tree planting efforts aren’t replacing burned U.S. forests — not even close

Adria Malcolm, Andrew Hay and Andrea Januta
Thu., September 9, 2021

As fires devastate U.S. forests, researchers work to grow super-resilient saplings

DEER LAKE MESA, N.M. (Reuters) - Experimental pine seedlings poke from the rocky New Mexico earth, the only living evergreens on a hillside torched by one of the U.S. West’s drought-driven wildfires.

These climate-smart sprouts about 30 miles (48 km) east of Taos are part of a push to increase the dramatically lagging replanting of U.S. forests after fires.

To condition trees for life in the Southwest, now suffering its worst drought in 500 years, biologist Owen Burney takes the scraggly seedlings to the point of death and back several times by starving them of water in the nursery.

Burney wishes he had funding to mass produce the seedlings and expand his tree nursery, the largest in the U.S. Southwest. With wildfires growing to monstrous 

 proportions the nursery's output of 300,000 seedlings a year does not come close to replacing torched trees.

“People get excited about reforestation, and they talk about it, but talk is cheap without action,” says Burney, who heads New Mexico State University’s forestry research center in Mora. “That’s what we’re trying to create, the action of an effective reforestation pipeline.”

Reforestation supporters say planting trees helps fight climate change, protects watersheds and creates jobs -- arguments that help generate both global enthusiasm and U.S. bipartisan support 

  https://www.fs.usda.gov/features/trillion-trees. 

Lawmakers are seeking extra federal funding for such efforts. Some public-private partnerships committed to growing trees have been launched.

Still, evidence suggests replanting campaigns cannot keep up with blazes.

Even with efforts in New Mexico, California  and Oregon

https://www.americanforests.org/our-work/restoring-californias-forests

https://www.orparksforever.org/homepage-box/wildfire-tree-replanting

 there is not enough seed collection or nursery capacity

https://usfs.maps.arcgis.com/apps/Cascade/index.html?appid=88825ecd8e4a40f9aefdb24147b821e9

 

according to nearly two dozen land managers, biologists and conservationists Reuters spoke to since June.

Federal replanting remains underfunded and poorly coordinated with the private sector. State, tribal and private landholders struggle to find sufficient seedlings, they said.

Wildfire is a natural part of a forest’s lifecycle, but climate-fueled fires are so ferocious they incinerate entire stands together with seeds that start regrowth.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-wildfires-climatechange-idUKKCN26C30W 

That destruction also poses problems for the 180 million Americans who rely on national forests to filter drinking water 

and the 2.5 million employed in forest industry jobs.

 https://www.reuters.com/business/environment/us-west-faces-little-known-effect-raging-wildfires-contaminated-water-2021-07-01 

SYSTEM OVERWHELMED

Most U.S. wildfires burn on U.S. Forest Service land. The agency replants around 6% of its land that needs replanting after wildfires.

“Our systems just haven’t kept up,” said David Lytle, the service’s director of forest and rangeland management and vegetation ecology. “The change to these larger, more severe wildfires has dramatically ramped up our reforestation needs.”

Tree-planting fervor peaked in 2020 when the World Economic Forum launched its One Trillion Trees initiative, or 1t.org, to grow, restore and conserve 1 trillion trees globally. Former President Donald Trump backed the plan. U.S. corporations and foundations pledged 50 billion trees.

Yet visit any Western national forest outside the Pacific Northwest, which still has timber harvests that require trees to be replanted, and there are no major planting efforts, says Collin Haffey of The Nature Conservancy (TNC).

“It seems to be an afterthought of forest management,” said Haffey, the group’s conservation coordinator in New Mexico.

According to Lytle, the problem is not tactics or expertise, but funding. The U.S. Forest Service spends over half its budget fighting and preventing fires. Last year, Congress granted it $7.4 billion in discretionary appropriations. Meanwhile, the amount available for post-fire replanting has not grown since the 1980s. The agency says it does not have enough money or resources to fully reforest burn areas.

To boost replanting, lawmakers have included legislation -- called the Repairing Existing Public Land by Adding Necessary Trees (REPLANT) Act -- within the infrastructure bill Congress is considering. It would help the service plant 1.2 billion trees on 4.1 million acres of national forests hit by fire, pests and disease over the next 10 years by removing a $30 million annual funding cap to roughly quadruple spending.

With limited public money, Wes Swaffar of 1t.org tries to channel private funds into replanting. That can mean teaming companies seeking zero net carbon emissions with projects that sequester carbon.

“I’m so frustrated by the fact that I have to do this job in the first place,” Swaffar said. “I have to play this interconnector role between the public and private sectors, because neither one is able to do it by themselves.”

A small success story is growing 85 miles (137 km) southwest of Burney’s test site. With some money from the public-private Rio Grande Water Fund, around 4,000 acres of burned-out forest near Los Alamos are being replanted to mimic “tree islands” left after moderate fires. Developed by the TNC, the project has 400 moisture-rich sites, some at higher, cooler elevations to help seedlings survive future, higher temperatures.

“If we’re trying to do anything related to climate change, carbon sequestration, then trees need to be in the ground,” said Burney, who is seeking $40 million to create a New Mexico reforestation center and help lift state annual seedling output to 5 million.

(Reporting by Adria Malcolm at Deer Lake Mesa, New Mexico, Andrea Januta in New York and Andrew Hay in Taos, New Mexico; Editing by Katy Daigle and Lisa Shumaker)

California may require menstrual products in public schools

Thu., September 9, 2021, 5:31 p.m.·2 min read

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — California public schools and colleges would have to stock their restrooms with free menstrual products under legislation sent Thursday to Gov. Gavin Newsom as women’s rights advocates push nationwide for affordable access to pads, tampons and other items.

The bill by Democratic Assemblywoman Cristina Garcia builds on her 2017 law requiring low-income schools in disadvantaged areas to provide students with free menstrual products.

Several other states were considering or have required free menstrual products in public schools, according to advocacy group Women’s Voices for the Earth. Purdue University in Indiana decided last year to offer free feminine hygiene products in campus bathrooms.

Garcia also had prompted California to follow the lead of at least 10 states by exempting menstrual products from sales taxes, which she said cost women a collective $20 million a year as other health items like erectile dysfunction medication were exempt.

The advocacy group says more than half the states still tax menstrual products as a “luxury” item. Worldwide, many countries have eliminated such taxes, including Britain, Australia, Canada and India.

The new California legislation expands the 2017 law to grades 6 to 12, community colleges and the California State University and University of California systems, starting in the 2022-23 school year. It encourages private schools and colleges to follow suit.

There were no registered opponents and few opposition votes.

“Often periods arrive at inconvenient times. They can surprise us during an important midterm, while playing with our children at a park, sitting in a lobby waiting to interview for a job, shopping at the grocery store, or even standing on the Assembly floor presenting an important piece of legislation," Garcia said in a statement.

Convenient access, she said, "would alleviate the anxiety of trying to find a product when out in public.”

She said her measure was inspired by Scotland, which last year declared access to menstrual products to be a human right and required public places to provide them free of charge.

Ideally, Garcia said, menstrual products would be as common in restrooms as toilet paper and paper towels.

Don Thompson, The Associated Press

SHOULD HAVE DONE THIS JAN. 21

Federal mandate takes vaccine decision off employers' hands

Thu., September 9, 2021



Larger U.S. businesses now won't have to decide whether to require their employees to get vaccinated against COVID-19. Doing so is now federal policy.

President Joe Biden announced sweeping new orders Thursday that will require employers with more than 100 workers to mandate immunizations or offer weekly testing. The new rules could affect as many as 100 million Americans, although it's not clear how many of those people are currently unvaccinated.

Large swaths of the private sector have already stepped in to mandate shots for at least some of their employees. But Biden said Thursday that "many of us are frustrated with the nearly 80 million Americans who are not fully vaccinated.”

The U.S. is still struggling to curb the surging delta variant of the coronavirus, which is killing thousands each week and jeopardizing the nation’s economic recovery.

Per Biden's order, the millions who work as employees of the executive branch and contractors who do business with the federal government won't have the option to get tested instead of taking the vaccine. The order also requires large companies to provide paid time off for vaccination.

The Associated Press reached out to a wide range of companies on Thursday. Many didn’t have immediate responses while others noted that they already require vaccinations. Walmart, the nation’s largest private employer, was one of the first major companies to mandate vaccines for some of its workers. Walmart said in late July that it was requiring that all workers at its headquarters in Bentonville, Arkansas, as well as its managers who travel within the U.S.; be vaccinated against COVID-19 by Oct. 4.

But the vaccine mandate excluded frontline workers such as cashiers, who according to the company have a lower vaccination rate than management.

CVS Health said in late August it will require certain employees who interact with patients to be fully vaccinated for COVID-19 by the end of October. That includes nurses, care managers and pharmacists.

Airlines, meanwhile, have tried to reassure customers about the safety of flying during a pandemic, and have pushed steps such as mandatory masking before they were required by the government.

United Airlines announced last month that it would require employees to be vaccinated. The airline said Wednesday that workers who don’t comply will be placed on leave Oct. 2 and will be terminated unless they can demonstrate a medical or religious reason for not getting vaccinated. The airline says more than half its workers who weren’t vaccinated have gotten the shots since the company announced the requirement.

Other airlines have encouraged workers to get the shots but haven’t required it, although Delta Air Lines plans to hit unvaccinated workers on its health plan with a $200 monthly surcharge starting in November. Delta’s chief health officer said the prospect of that fee has led about 20% of the airline’s unvaccinated workers to get shots.

The tech industry has largely been at the forefront of vaccine requirements, making the sector in general a likely supporter of Biden’s policy on the issue. In late July, Google became one of the first major U.S. employers to decide all its workers needed to be vaccinated before returning to the office. Facebook quickly adopted a similar policy a few hours after Google took its hard stand on vaccines.

Google left it an open question whether the minority of employees who will still be allowed to work remotely will be required to get vaccinated to remain on its payroll. The Mountain View, California, company employs more than 130,000 workers worldwide, with a significant number based in the U.S. The heaviest concentrations are in the San Francisco Bay area and New York.

Apple, which employs both tech workers in its offices and tens of thousands of workers in its retail stores throughout the world, has been encouraging people to get vaccinated without announcing a formal mandate. The Cupertino, California, company didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment about Biden’s vaccine order.

General Motors stopped short of endorsing Biden’s requirements, but said in a statement that it supports vaccines.

“We are strongly encouraging our employees to get vaccinated given the broad availability of safe and highly efficacious vaccines, which data consistently show is the best way to protect yourself and those around you,” the automaker said.

Half of American workers are in favor of vaccine requirements at their workplaces, according to a poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. Such mandates have already been gaining traction following the Food and Drug Administration’s full approval of Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine. Vaccines from Moderna and Johnson & Johnson are available under emergency authorization, but haven't been formally approved.

About 59% of remote workers said they favor vaccine requirements in their own workplaces, compared with 47% of those who are currently working in person. About one-quarter of workers — in person and remote — said they are opposed.

More than 177 million Americans are fully vaccinated against the coronavirus, but confirmed cases of the virus have shot up in recent weeks. They've now reached an average of about 140,000 cases per day. On average, about 1,000 Americans dying from the virus daily, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Some businesses and workers are likely to challenge the orders in court, but many more companies will “appreciate having the cover,” said Dorit Reiss, a professor at the University of California Hastings College of the Law who has studied vaccine mandates for nearly a decade.

“It helps them increase vaccine rates and they can blame the government,” she said. “Vaccine mandates work because for most people, even if they have a position against it, it’s not strong enough to sacrifice their jobs.”

Those who don’t work for federal contractors and are afraid of the vaccine can choose weekly testing instead, but Reiss said many people who are simply hesitant are more likely to get immunized.

“The testing is sufficiently burdensome that most of them would prefer just to be vaccinated,” she said.

__

Associated Press Writers Anne D'Innocenzio, Michael Liedtke, David Koenig, Tom Krisher, Matt O'Brien, Alex Veiga and Zeke Miller contributed to this story.

Barbara Ortutay, The Associated Press

DUTY TO ACCOMODATE

COVID-19 vaccine mandates: Unions divided over 'complex problem' for organized labor

Max Zahn
·Reporter
Thu., September 9, 2021

In this Jan. 14, 2021, file photo, police officer Jennifer Leeman is receives a COVID-19 vaccine at Englewood Health in Englewood, N.J.. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig, File)

President Joe Biden on Thursday announced wide-ranging COVID-19 rules for employers that include a mandate that all businesses with 100 or more employees test unvaccinated workers at least once a week. In all, the rule will affect 80 million private sector workers, the administration says.

The move comes amid a string of deals between major companies and unions over vaccine mandates that shows the labor movement is increasingly willing to support such precautions but also eager to shape their implementation.

In light of the Biden administration's new rules, the relationship between labor advocates and bosses takes on heightened significance as the Delta variant continues to drive a wave of infections and some major companies beckon employees back to in-person work.

Meanwhile, some unions, including a host of labor groups that represent first responders, remain opposed to vaccine mandates, exposing a divide in organized labor over how to balance its bedrock commitment to a safe workplace with the anti-vaccination sentiment felt among a segment of workers.
'One of the most complex problems that unions have faced'

Tensions between workers and their employers over vaccination will likely become a fixture of the U.S. workplace in the coming months. A majority of companies plan to impose a vaccine mandate, according to a survey conducted last month by consulting and insurance firm Willis Towers Watson of 1,000 firms that employ a total of almost 10 million workers.

“​​This is one of the most complex problems that unions have faced possibly in my lifetime,” says Susan Schurman, a professor of labor studies and employment relations at the Rutgers University School of Management and Labor Relations. “Because there is so much diversity among their members in terms of how they are thinking about this.”

Tyson Foods (TSN) offered about 120,000 employees additional paid time off if they comply with its new COVID-19 vaccine mandate. A coalition of unions representing roughly 43,000 Disney World (DIS) employees agreed to a mandate with the company, though it excludes workers with a relevant medical condition or religious beliefs. And in Washington, a union working on behalf of 47,000 state employees reached a tentative deal on a vaccine mandate that will afford workers an extra personal day.

In each case, the terms of a mandate were set after talks between a company and union representatives.

Employers retain wide latitude in the choice to put a vaccine mandate in place for employees, but unions can bargain over the terms, including potential incentives, penalties, or exemptions, Schurman said.

The labor movement's shift toward acceptance of vaccine mandates has been led by the nation's largest teachers unions — the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), which represent a combined 4.7 million members. Both organizations announced their support for vaccine mandates last month, and have boasted survey results that show up to 90% of educators are already vaccinated.

Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers during a town hall with 2020 presidential candidate Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and members of the American Federation of Federation of Teachers, in Philadelphia, PA, on May 13, 2019. (Photo by Bastiaan Slabbers/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

AFT President Randi Weingarten said negotiation of the terms of vaccine mandates falls to the union's 3,500 locals, which work with school districts on issues like how to assess and apply medical exemptions.

"We’re going to work with our employers who do vaccine requirements, including mandates, and make sure they’re implemented fairly," Weingarten told Yahoo Finance. "That’s what virtually everyone who’s had to deal with a vaccine mandate has done."

Similar support for vaccine mandates has come from the International Union of Painters and Allied Trades, a building trades union that represents 140,000 members; and Unite Here, a hospitality and service union that advocates for 300,000 workers.

“Today, as vaccine mandates by employers spread to more and more workplaces, Unite Here is supporting these measures to ensure safer workplaces and is working toward ensuring that these policies are enacted fairly," Unite Here President D. Taylor told Yahoo Finance in a statement.

'We have the right to bargain any change to our jobs'

But some unions have opted for outright opposition to vaccine mandates, as wary members face a choice between taking the vaccine or keeping their jobs.

Hospital workers with Service Employee International Union 1199 held a rally in July opposing a mandate imposed by New York-Presbyterian Hospital in Manhattan. In August, then-Governor Andrew Cuomo set a vaccine mandate for all health care workers in the state.

A statement made by SEIU1199 last month acknowledged that "COVID vaccines are safe, effective and the best way to protect ourselves and our families." But, the union notes, "We have the right to bargain any change to our jobs."

Meanwhile, firefighter and police unions in a host of cities from Chicago to Newark have come out in opposition to mandates from city officials. As of May, when the most recent numbers became available, 25% of Chicago police had been vaccinated. In Newark, on Wednesday, dozens of police and firefighters rallied outside city hall to protest the city's vaccine mandate, Patch reported.

AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler, who leads the nation’s largest labor coalition representing 56 unions and 12.5 million workers, captured the largely amenable albeit divided approach from labor in remarks at an event held by the Christian Science Monitor in Washington D.C. late last month.

“This is a whole new frontier and we think everyone should be vaccinated,” Shuler said. But she later added: “I’ll be honest with you, our unions are in different places.”

Valerie Braman, a lecturer at the Penn State School of Labor and Employment Relations, says differences of opinion over vaccines within organized labor mirror those that have divided the American public.

"Workers are not a monolith," she says. "The labor movement is not a monolith."

Unions face additional pressure to accept vaccine mandates from President Joe Biden. Widely perceived as a labor ally, Biden emphasized the importance of unions at a meeting with labor leaders at the White House on Wednesday. A day later, he is set to announce stricter vaccine mandates in an effort to push for further action from businesses and public institutions, the New York Times reported.

Despite the divide among labor groups, many unions will be relieved if employers impose vaccine mandates, said Shurman, of Rutgers University.

"Unions will be in a position of saying, 'OK, we’re going to do what we can do,'" she says. "Which is bargain."

Kakao Empire Loses $16 Billion as Korea Steps Up Tech Crackdown

Youkyung Lee
Thu., September 9, 2021,




(Bloomberg) -- Kakao Corp. and its listed subsidiaries have lost more than $16 billion in market value this month as South Korea ramps up its own version of tech crackdowns.

Kakao itself has shed nearly $10 billion as foreign and local institutional investors dumped the stock after prominent lawmakers called the nation’s biggest messaging and social media service a “a symbol of greed.”

Shares of the company -- whose empire also includes online shopping, payments, ride-hailing and other services -- dropped about 17% over the past two sessions before rebounding on Friday. Kakao had surged more than sixfold since a pandemic low in March last year to a record high in June, boosted by the stay-at-home demand and the listing of its subsidiaries.

As in China, where a regulatory crackdown on tech giants has wiped out more than $1 trillion in market value from some of the largest names, one area of focus has been on fintech in Korea. Seoul regulators are making efforts to protect consumers buying financial products online.

Kakao’s recently listed units KakaoBank Corp. and Kakao Games Corp. tumbled this week as well, and investors are concerned over the potential impact on the valuation for the upcoming initial public offering of Kakao Pay Corp. Meanwhile, platform rival Naver Corp. has taken a $4.5 billion hit to its market capitalization so far this month.

Still, sell-side anlaysts remain optimistic on the long-term growth outlook for Korea’s internet stocks. Some say the selloff should be short term while the introduction of new consumer protection measures will benefit the overall industry in the long run.

“Korea is more mature in terms of regulations than China, and the regulatory environment remains incrementally dovish,” Ro Seungjoo, an analyst at CLSA, wrote in a research note, maintaining a buy rating on Kakao. “The selloff leads to classic buying opportunities in our view.”

NOT JUST THE SACKLERS
Endo latest company to settle with New York over opioids

Thu., September 9, 2021, 

NEW YORK (AP) — The state of New York and two large counties agreed Thursday a $50 million deal to end their lawsuits with drugmaker Endo International, in the latest of a progression of settlements of government claims over the opioid addiction and overdose crisis.

Under the deal announced Thursday night, the Dublin-based drugmaker and its subsidiary Par are to pay $22.3 million to the state attorney general's office and $13.85 million to both Suffolk and Nassau counties.

Endo, which also settled claims recently with a group of local and county governments in Tennessee, admits no wrongdoing.

“This agreement ensures funding will be made available for critical abatement programs in a more expedited fashion,” Jayne Conroy, the lead lawyer for Suffolk County and co-lead counsel in a series of lawsuits across the country over opioids.

Conroy said a trial, which has been going on for about two months in New York, will continue against the remaining defendants, which include Teva Pharmaceuticals and Allergan Finance and their affiliates.

The plaintiffs say that companies improperly marketed opioids, downplaying the addiction risks, and that big shipments were not flagged as suspicious.

Johnson & Johnson settled just before the trial began, and the nation's three largest drug distributions companies — AmerisourceBergen, Cardinal Health and McKesson — have all since settled.

Those four companies have since announced a tentative $26 billion nationwide settlement deal that would take months to finalize.

Last week, a federal bankruptcy judge gave conditional approval to a plan to allow OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma to settle some 3,000 claims it faces.

Opioids, including prescription painkillers and illicit drugs such as heroin and illegally produced fentanyl, have been linked to more than 500,000 deaths in the U.S. over the last two decades.

As settlements are reached, it means companies are starting to fund drug treatment and education programs.

Other trials are queued up across the U.S., including a federal trial next month over claims against pharmacies.

The Associated Press

CRIMINAL CAPITALI$M

DOJ: San Francisco trash company to pay $36M for bribery

Thu., September 9, 2021

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — The trash disposal companies that serve San Francisco have agreed to pay a $36 million criminal penalty for their role in a wide-ranging federal public corruption probe involving the city's former public works director.

The three subsidiaries of Recology Inc. admitted to conspiring to bribe the former director and agreed to cooperate in investigations for three years in exchange for the government deferring prosecution, acting U.S. Attorney Stephanie M. Hinds announced Thursday. A judge must sign off on the agreement.

Prosecutors say the companies, which have a monopoly in San Francisco, conspired to bribe Mohammed Nuru from 2014 through January 2020, when the then-director of the Department of Public Works was arrested and charged with fraud.

Recology funneled more than $900,000 to Nuru, including money to a non-profit controlled by Nuru and $60,000 a year for an annual and lavish public works holiday party, prosecutors said. As director and waste regulator, Nuru could influence contract rates favorable to Recology.

Separately, Recology earlier this year agreed refund customers $100 million after the city attorney's office found the company had improperly raised trash disposal prices over four years. By law, the company will continue to have the exclusive right to dispose of waste in San Francisco.

The federal investigation has ensnared several City Hall officials and insiders, including the former head of the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission.

The Associated Press

Harvard’s $42 Billion Fund to Stop Investing in Fossil Fuels

Kevin Crowley and Stephen Stapczynski
Thu., September 9, 2021


(Bloomberg) -- Harvard University will stop investing in fossil fuels and instead use its giant $42 billion endowment to support the green economy, joining a growing wave of investors moving away from pollutive industries.

Harvard Management Co., which runs the endowment, has no investments in companies that explore for or develop fossil fuels and “does not intend to make such investments in the future,” President Larry Bacow said Thursday in a letter posted on the university’s website.

The move comes after years of sustained activism from students calling for fossil-fuel divestment, and amid increasingly urgent demands from investors that financial institutions withdraw their support of businesses that are contributing to man-made climate change.

The Ivy League college, the richest in the U.S., will be following in the footsteps of peers such as the University of California and the U.K.’s Cambridge University, which have committed to divesting their endowments from the fossil fuel industry.

Harvard vowed last year to work with its investment managers to create a path to “net zero” greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. However that wasn’t fast enough for a students group, which filed a complaint in March with the Massachusetts attorney general in an attempt to force the university to sell its estimated $838 million fossil fuel holdings, according to the Harvard Crimson.

“Given the need to decarbonize the economy and our responsibility as fiduciaries to make long-term investment decisions that support our teaching and research mission, we do not believe such investments are prudent,” Bacow said Thursday. Harvard has legacy investments in private equity funds with fossil fuel exposure but these are less than 2% of the endowment and “are in runoff mode,” he said.

The university will also be joining a growing group of institutional investors and governments that are responding to pressure to accelerate decarbonization efforts. China, Japan and South Korea all committed to net-zero goals last year. Beijing didn’t finance any coal projects via its Belt and Road Initiative in the first half, the first time that’s happened since it was launched in 2013, the International Institute of Green Finance said in a report.

The asset management industry is increasingly looking for ways to speed moves toward carbon neutrality. Pacific Investment Management Co. and Fidelity International are among funds devising standards for so-called net-zero investing. BlackRock Inc. Chief Executive Officer Larry Fink said last year that his firm will take steps to tackle climate change across the thousands of companies it invests in.

Despite the growing importance of climate change in investment decisions, the 10 largest U.S. public pension funds still have a lot of money invested in the biggest corporate polluters, however. Analysts at Bloomberg Intelligence recently put the figure at about $40 billion, meaning 9% of the funds’ combined equity holdings are devoted to 20 high-carbon emitting companies.

Harvard Management said in 2017 it would it take into consideration the environmental impact of some its investments, but that move wasn’t seen as enough by the students. Harvard’s endowment was valued at $41.9 billion as of June 2020, making it one of the largest among private U.S. universities.

Oil Drilling Bans Advance in House With Climate Change Assault

Jennifer A. Dlouhy
Thu., September 9, 2021



(Bloomberg) -- A House committee on Thursday advanced sweeping legislation to combat climate change, with plans to block oil drilling in most U.S. offshore waters, thwart potential mining in the western part of the country and invest billions of dollars in conservation.

The $31.7 billion measure, approved 24-13 by the House Natural Resources Committee, would also slap new fees on oil and mining companies while funding drought relief, conservation and other programs. It is now set to be folded into a broader multi-trillion-dollar social reform and climate change bill taking shape in the House.

The approval comes amid “a once-in-a-generation opportunity to advance a bold, ambitious investment in the people of the United States,” said committee Chairman Raul Grijalva, a Democrat from Arizona. The legislation “will confront the damage being done by climate change, put our country on a more sustainable and equitable economic and environmental path, and create millions of jobs.”

Republicans made clear they didn’t share that view. Over the course of two days -- and more than 17 hours -- of panel debate and votes on the measure, they took turns lambasting it as a “delusional” package of Democratic “pet projects” and “green pork.”

The Democrats’ package is “partisan government overreach” that will “hamstring the economy, cripple domestic energy production and make the U.S. dependent on foreign adversaries,”said Bruce Westerman of Arkansas, the panel’s top Republican.

Democrats turned back more than two dozen amendments from Republicans seeking to eliminate proposed limitations on drilling and mining, with sometimes heated exchanges that presaged further clashes when the plan is debated by the full House and moves to the evenly divided Senate.

Provisions that drew GOP scorn included the measure’s ban on the sale of new drilling rights in Pacific and Atlantic waters as well as the eastern Gulf of Mexico. Central and western Gulf tracts could still be leased.

The bill also would reverse a mandate to sell drilling rights in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge’s coastal plain and void nine leases issued in that northeast Alaska region earlier this year. Congress previously required two auctions of refuge leases by Dec. 22, 2024 to help pay for the 2017 tax cuts.

Congressional leaders need unanimous support from Senate Democrats to pass the bill, but the oil leasing provisions could draw opposition from some of them, including Joe Manchin of West Virginia, who has highlighted past support for Arctic refuge oil development as evidence of his bipartisan bona fides.

Some of the planned spending has drawn broader support. The bill’s proposed funding for environmental analysis and conservation would benefit existing government programs “that need to be funded, bolstered and prioritized in this fight against climate change,” said Athan Manuel, director of the Sierra Club’s Lands Protection Program.

The bill also would:

repeal a 2014 measure that authorized the transfer of roughly 2,400 acres of land for the Resolution Copper mining project in Arizona involving Rio Tinto Plc and BHP Group Ltd.rule out new uranium mining claims on more than 1 million acres around the Grand Canyonimpose fees on mining on federal land, including royalties of as much as 8% and a new seven-cent-per-ton fee on displaced materialincrease rental rates for onshore oil and gas leases, shorten the duration of them, impose a new $4-per-acre “conservation of resources fee” on the tracts, require companies to pay a royalty on vented or flared methane and boost overall royalty rates from 12.5% to 20%create annual fees of as much as $10,000 per mile on offshore pipelines -- including the Gulf of Mexico’s existing 8,600-mile network of themspend $25 million each to conserve endangered and threatened butterflies, desert fish and freshwater musselsdedicate at least $1.7 billion to establish a Civilian Climate Corps that would put Americans to work building clean energy infrastructure, capping inactive wells and conserving land.