WEAPON OF ECOCIDE
Syngenta, Chevron Could Face Billions in Claims Over Weed Killer

Jef Feeley
Mon, September 13, 2021


(Bloomberg) -- Yet another popular weed killer used by American farmers for decades is becoming a costly liability for the companies behind the chemical.

Over the past seven months, new lawsuits have been filed almost every day claiming farmers or field workers contracted Parkinson’s disease from their exposure to Paraquat, a highly toxic herbicide developed by Syngenta AG and sold in the U.S. by Chevron Corp.

The surge in complaints comes as another company, Bayer AG, has set aside as much as $16 billion to resolve thousands of current cases and prepare for future suits tied to Roundup, the best-selling U.S. weed killer. While it’s still early days in the Paraquat litigation, personal-injury lawyers are blanketing radio, television and social media with ads seeking new clients who could demand billions of dollars in compensation.

“Even if there aren’t the kind of Roundup-level number of cases, I can see these companies offering several billion dollars just to make it go away,” Richard Ausness, a University of Kentucky law professor who specializes in product-liability cases, said of the Paraquat lawsuits. “Parkinson’s disease has a long, expensive tail that will drive up the cost of settling these cases.”

Syngenta has already started settling. The company disclosed in August that it agreed on June 1 to pay $187.5 million to resolve an undisclosed number of cases “solely for the purpose of bringing to an end these claims.”

What Bloomberg Intelligence Says

“Syngenta’s statement that it settled certain cases for $187 million in June could mean top-end exposure totals billions of dollars.”
-- Holly Froum, Litigation Analyst. Click here to see report.

Paraquat has been used on many U.S. crops since the 1960s, but it’s banned in more than 30 other countries over alleged ties to Parkinson’s, a brain disorder that leads to shaking, stiffness and balance problems. In the U.S., the chemical must be sprayed by a licensed applicator.

At the start of 2021, only a handful of lawsuits over Paraquat were making their way through state and federal courts in the U.S. Since February, there have been more than 400 new complaints filed in federal courts alone.

Thousands more are possible after a court panel in June consolidated all federal cases under a judge in Illinois, and the success of the Roundup litigation created an incentive for plaintiffs’ lawyers to find more Paraquat clients. Attorney Michael Miller, who sued Chevron and Syngenta, said there may eventually be as many as 35,000 cases.

Disputing Claims

The companies have steadfastly disputed the claims Paraquat causes the nervous-system disorder.“There is no credible evidence Paraquat, which has been widely used for more than 55 years, causes Parkinson’s disease,” said Saswato Das, a spokesman for Switzerland-based Syngenta. “No peer-reviewed study, including the largest study which involved 38,000 farmers, has ever concluded Paraquat causes Parkinson’s disease.”

Syngenta was acquired in 2017 for $43 billion by China National Chemical Corp., which combined it with other seed and fertilizer businesses. ChemChina disclosed in July it was seeking to raise $10 billion (65 billion yuan) in a Shanghai listing of shares that represent a 20% stake in Syngenta.

Chevron spokesman Tyler Kruzich said in an email the company didn’t believe it caused the plaintiffs’ injuries and “will vigorously defend against the allegations.”

The number of Paraquat lawsuits isn’t likely to be anywhere near as many as the claims against Bayer and Roundup, which is widely used by American farmers, landscapers and home gardeners. The global market for glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup, may reach $13.3 billion in 2027, according to estimates from researcher Reports and Data.

Paraquat’s market share is much smaller -- estimated by 360 Research Reports at about $100 million last year -- because it can only be used under a license. It’s mostly sprayed on corn, soybean and cotton fields, Syngenta says on its website.

Paraquat Pot

Paraquat also has been used in the long war on drugs. From about 1975 to 1978, the U.S. sought to reduce the flow of marijuana from Mexico, the biggest supplier at the time, by encouraging defoliation techniques the American military used during the Vietnam War. The U.S. spent about $30 million a year to aid Mexico’s spraying of Paraquat on the illegal crops, according to the American Journal of Public Health. A few years later, government agencies proposed spraying Paraquat on pot farms in California and Florida.

The litigation against Roundup “has set a massive precedent,” Garry Mabon, an analyst and founding partner at Scotland-based researcher AgbioInvestor, said in an email. But a key difference between the chemicals is that Paraquat is well understood as being a possible carcinogen, while the key ingredient in Roundup isn’t, he said. “As such, the weight of evidence would seem to be against Paraquat in any litigation.”

The lawsuits were assigned to U.S. District Judge Nancy Rosenstengel in East St. Louis, Illinois, because the state’s farmers are among the biggest Paraquat users and Rosenstengel already had 20 cases before her. The first trial of those cases is set for late next year. Suits also are being filed in state courts, including California and Illinois, according to Miller, the plaintiffs’ attorney.

Rosenstengel, appointed by President Barak Obama in 2014, will manage pre-trial information exchanges and test trials. It’s her first time overseeing a so-called multi-district litigation. “Its my job to bring this case in for a landing, whether that be trials or settlement,” Rosenstengel said at the initial status hearing in June. She didn’t respond to requests for additional comment.

The case is In Re: Paraquat Products Liability Litigation v. Syngenta Crop Protection, LLC, 21-md-3004, U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Illinois (East St. Louis)

Dem Plan Would Cut Taxes for Most, Hit Top Earners Hardest: Analysis


Yuval Rosenberg
Tue, September 14, 2021

The tax changes proposed by House Democrats this week would lower taxes for most Americans, at least in the near term, while hitting top-earning households with sizable increases, according to estimates released Tuesday by the bipartisan congressional Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT).

The Democratic plan, which is being debated again this week by the House Ways and Means Committee, calls for restoring a top marginal individual income tax rate of 39.6%, up from the current 37%. It also includes a host of other changes to individual, capital gains and corporate taxes that, combined, would raise more than $2 trillion for the U.S. Treasury over the next 10 years, according to the JCT.

The congressional tax scorekeeper estimated that households making less than $200,000 a year would see lower tax bills through at least 2025, largely as the result of the expanded child tax credit, while those making at least $1 million a year would face a 10.6% increase in federal taxes in 2023 and a 12.1% increase by 2025. The average federal tax rate for those top-earners would climb from 30.2% now to 37.3% in 2023 and 38.1% by 2027.

The JCT estimates don’t include Democrats’ proposed increase in the estate tax, meaning that the tax hit on wealthy households would be even higher.

“We are taking a significant step toward leveling the playing field,” House Ways and Means Committee Chair Richard Neal (D-MA) said Tuesday. “No one likes raising taxes, but thanks to the strength of our economy, we can afford to do this.”

A problem for President Biden? The JCT estimates show that households making between $200,000 and $500,000 a year face an average tax increase of 0.3% in 2023. They also show that if lawmakers allow temporary changes to the tax code to expire as scheduled, including the expansion of the child credit, households making between $30,000 a year and $200,000 a year would see their taxes go up slightly, on average, by 2027. Households making $30,000 to $40,000 a year would see their average tax bill rise by 0.1% while those earning between $100,000 and $200,000 would face a 1.5% average increase.

The House budget plan would extend the credit for four years and many Democrats want to make the new child tax credit permanent, but others have expressed concerns about doing so. Most notably, Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) is pushing for a new requirement that parents work in order to be eligible for the credit. “Tax credits are based around people that have tax liabilities. I’m even willing to go as long as they have a W-2 and showing they’re working,” he told Insider.

With the long-term fate of the credit unclear, the JCT estimates factoring in its expiration after four years opened the door for Republicans to claim that the plan violates President Biden’s pledge not to raise taxes on people making less than $400,000 a year.

“You’ll hear today that President Biden doesn’t break his pledge on taxing Americans making less than $400,000, but that’s false as well,” said Rep. Kevin Brady of Texas, the top Republican on the Ways and Means Committee.

Republicans oppose the tax plan and have warned that it will hurt the middle class as well as businesses large and small. Brady on Tuesday argued, as many economists do, that the corporate tax increase would be felt by individuals, too: “As you know, businesses don’t pay taxes, they collect them. And those burdens land on their workers, lands on their customers, lands on the retirees whose retirement depends on their success, and it lands on the communities that they live in.”

Warren Asks Fed to Break Up Wells Fargo After Regulatory Hit

Hannah Levitt
Tue, September 14, 2021


(Bloomberg) -- U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren urged the Federal Reserve to force Wells Fargo & Co. to separate its traditional banking and Wall Street businesses, after the lender was handed fresh regulatory action and a $250 million fine this month.

In a letter to Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, Warren called on the Fed to revoke Wells Fargo’s status as a financial holding company in order to effect a separation. The Fed should order the company to develop a plan to ensure its customers are protected through the transition, the Massachusetts Democrat said.

“Every single day that Wells Fargo continues to maintain these depository accounts is a day that millions of customers remain at risk of additional negligence and willful fraud,” Warren wrote. “The only way these consumers and their bank accounts can be kept safe is through another institution—one whose business model is not dependent on swindling customers for every last penny they can get. The Fed has the power to put consumers first, and it must use it.”

The New York Times earlier reported the contents of the letter. A representative for the Fed confirmed it received the letter and said it planned to respond.

Wells Fargo was fined this month over its lack of progress addressing long-standing problems, the first such sanction under Chief Executive Officer Charlie Scharf. The penalty adds to the more than $5 billion in fines and legal settlements the bank paid over the last five years tied to a series of scandals that began with fake accounts in its branch network.

The latest order, from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, cited deficiencies in Wells Fargo’s home-lending loss mitigation practices -- the steps firms take to avoid foreclosure -- that have prevented the bank from being able to “fully and timely remediate harmed customers.”

“Meeting our own expectations for risk management and controls — as well as our regulators’ — remains Wells Fargo’s top priority,” the bank said Tuesday in a statement. “We are a different bank today than we were five years ago because we’ve made significant progress.”

Fresh Questions

Warren cited the Bank Holding Company Act, which requires that banks are well capitalized and well managed. If a financial holding company falls short of these, the Fed is required to give a notice for the institution to correct its deficiencies.

Should the bank fail to remedy those within 180 days, the Fed can ask the company to divest control of any subsidiary depository institution -- or the bank can choose to cease to engage in activity that isn’t permissible for a bank holding company.

The latest sanctioning raises fresh questions about whether the bank meets the Act’s requirements that it be well managed, and whether the board and Scharf are capable of effectively running the lender, Warren said.

Progress Signs

Despite the regulatory hit, Wells Fargo has made progress under Scharf. A Consumer Financial Protection Bureau order tied to the firm’s sales practices levied in 2016 expired this month while in January, the bank was freed from a 2015 regulatory order over violations of anti-money-laundering rules. The Fed also confidentially accepted a plan for overhauling risk management and governance at the bank, Bloomberg reported earlier this year.

More broadly, Warren has also been pushing for executives of companies that don’t follow the rules to face personal consequences, she said in an interview with Bloomberg News.

“I am pushing hard for more personal liability,” Warren said. “These executives want to drag in the big bucks for running these companies, then they should be responsible when they preside over big companies that are breaking the law and cheating American consumers.”

Ex-Wells Fargo execs square off with U.S. regulator in trial over phony account scandal

Jody Godoy and Chris Prentice
Mon, September 13, 2021,

FILE PHOTO: A Wells Fargo logo is seen in New York City


By Jody Godoy and Chris Prentice

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The civil trial of three former Wells Fargo & Co employees over their alleged roles in a scandal involving phony accounts kicked off on Monday, a rare public confrontation between a top U.S. banking regulator and former high-level bank executives.

The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) is squaring off against executives it says are partly culpable for the San Francisco lender's misconduct before an in-house OCC judge in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, in a hearing expected to last at least two weeks.

The long-running scandal over Wells Fargo's pressurized sales culture that led staff to open millions of unauthorized or fraudulent customer accounts has cost the bank billions of dollars in civil and criminal penalties and has badly damaged its reputation.

The OCC alleges that Wells Fargo's former risk officer, Claudia Russ Anderson, former chief auditor David Julian and former executive audit director Paul McLinko failed to adequately perform their duties and responsibilities, contributing to Wells Fargo's "systemic sales practices misconduct" from 2002 to 2016.

The proceedings mark a significant step for a regulator that has been criticized in the past for being too soft on the banks and executives it oversees, said regulatory experts.

"It's an attempt at personal accountability for big-bank executives we have not seen in a long time, including in the aftermath of the 2008 crisis," said Jeremy Kress, an assistant business professor at the University of Michigan.

In testimony on Monday, OCC official Greg Coleman laid out the OCC's view that the three former Wells Fargo executives were responsible for the misconduct because they were the bank's key "lines of defense" against bad behavior and other risks.

Wells Fargo's "incentive sales program was implemented without risk-management controls, without proactive monitoring and it essentially incented the bank employees to open fraudulent accounts, to provide misleading information to customers, resulting in significant harm," said Coleman, OCC's senior deputy comptroller for large bank supervision and the first witness to testify.

The regulator brought https://www.reuters.com/article/us-wells-fargo-regulator-charges/u-s-bank-regulator-charges-ex-wells-fargo-executives-for-role-in-sales-scandal-idUSKBN1ZM2M2 civil charges last year against the trio, as well as other former Wells Fargo executives, and has demanded they pay nearly $19 million combined to settle the matter. The OCC is also seeking to bar Russ Anderson from the banking industry over the allegations.

Attorneys for the trio did not respond to requests for comment.

Matthew Martens, an attorney representing Julian, said during the hearing that the trio's attorneys had been blocked from gathering background information on OCC examiners and from calling OCC witnesses.

"We were stopped from calling four OCC examiners who would have provided testimony that we believe would be evidence of bias, incompetence" and credibility issues, he said.

A spokesperson for Wells Fargo declined to comment beyond a January 2020 statement in which CEO and President Charlie Scharf said the OCC's actions were consistent with holding the firm and individuals accountable for "inexcusable" sales practices issues.

Investor group sets tough climate blueprint for Big Oil

 

FILE PHOTO: A 3D printed windmill and oil pump jack are seen in front of displayed BP (British Petroleum) logo in this illustration picture


Ron Bousso and Simon Jessop
Wed, September 15, 2021

LONDON (Reuters) - Investors managing more than $10 trillion on Wednesday published an ambitious blueprint for energy companies seeking to tackle climate change, including sharp cuts to greenhouse gas emissions and a winding down of oil and gas production.

The unprecedented initiative - dubbed the Net Zero Standard for Oil and Gas - details 10 required standards to help money managers compare companies' strategies and understand whether they are aligned with United Nations-backed efforts to reduce global carbon emissions to net zero by 2050.

Oil and gas companies such as BP and Royal Dutch Shell have published targets and strategies aimed at battling climate change, but the huge variation in scope, definitions and ambition makes analysis and comparison exceedingly difficult for investors.

At the same time, pressure has grown on portfolio managers and banks to ensure that their investments chime with the 2015 Paris accords to limit global warming to no more than 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.

With the next round of global climate talks taking place in November, concern is growing that too many plans are flaky and unlikely to provide material help by reducing absolute emissions at the rate needed to limit global warming.

"We need to have a level playing field now on disclosure because it's not possible to compare and contrast across the sector," said Adam Matthews, who is head of responsible investment at the Church of England Pensions Board and chaired the investor-company process to develop the new initiative.

Other investors to back the plan include Amundi, Europe's biggest asset manager, along with Britain's Legal & General Investment Management, HSBC Global Asset Management and state-backed Canadian investor Caisse des Depots among others.

Given the fossil fuel industry is responsible for the lion's share of global emissions, the investor group said it is introducing a minimum set of standards to ensure that energy companies' plans are "credible".

NET ZERO TARGETS

Among these is a requirement to reach net zero carbon emissions by 2050, meeting emissions-reduction targets along the way while aligning capital expenditure and production plans with the net zero target.

The standards also demand commitments to disclose and independently verify strategies.

Shell, Italian company Eni and Norway's Equinor have all set targets to become net zero emissions by 2050, meaning that any emissions they produce will be offset by carbon capture technologies or other solutions, such as reforestation.

Other companies, including BP and TotalEnergies, aim to reduce emissions from part of their operations to net zero by 2025.

The investor group behind the new plan acknowledges that winding down oil and gas production "can be a very legitimate strategy", Matthews said.

Although it has not set a deadline for companies to adhere to the standards, investors are willing to vote against transition plans and the appointment of certain directors if they feel company boards are not doing enough, Matthews said.

The new standard will be piloted by leading energy companies including BP, Shell, Eni, Repsol and TotalEnergies ahead of wider adoption by the sector, the investor group said.

This group said its plan had been developed by the Institutional Investors Group on Climate Change with support from the Transition Pathway Initiative and in consultation with Climate Action 100+, non-governmental organisations with specific expertise in the sector as well as oil and gas companies themselves.

For a factbox on Big Oil's climate targets, click

(Reporting by Ron Bousso and Simon Jessop; Editing by David Goodman)

ANOTHER READY MADE FOR CONSPIRACY THEORY

Greece probes crash that killed witness in Netanyahu trial

DEREK GATOPOULOS and LAURIE KELLMAN
Tue, September 14, 2021, 

ATHENS, Greece (AP) — Authorities in Greece on Tuesday opened an investigation into the crash of a private plane from Israel that killed a prosecution witness in the corruption trial of former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Haim Geron, a former senior official at Israel's ministry of communications, and his wife Esther, were killed in the crash late Monday off the island of Samos. The Israeli Foreign Ministry identified the victims, both 69, adding that consular officials and the ministry were working with the family to return the bodies.

Geron was one of more than 300 witnesses that prosecutors listed for Netanyahu’s trial on corruption charges. He is on trial for allegedly accepting expensive gifts from wealthy associates. Netanyahu, now the opposition leader in Israel’s parliament, has denied all the accusations and mocked the size of the witness list.

Greece's Air Accident Investigation and Aviation Board is investigating the causes of the crash, officials said Tuesday.

The single-engine Cessna 182 took off from Haifa, Israel, and crashed near Samos Airport.

“Shortly before landing, communication with the control tower on Samos was lost and the Civil Aviation Authority informed the search and rescue center about the loss of communication,” the authority said in a statement.

The bodies of the two Israeli occupants were recovered by the coast guard several hours later with the help of divers. Fishing boats as well as vessels from the European Union's border protection agency, Frontex, joined Greek coast guard vessels in the recovery effort.

Witnesses on the island interviewed by local news media said the crash occurred as the plane made an unsuccessful approach to land at Aristarchos International Airport.

As Israel's longest-serving prime minister, Netanyahu spent a total of 15 years in office, but recent years were marred by the corruption allegations and a string of deadlocked elections. The trial resumed Monday after a three-month break.

___ Laurie Kellman reported from Jerusalem.

Greece Israel Plane

A coast guard vessel arrives with two bodies at Pythagorio port, on the eastern Aegean island of Samos, Greece, late Monday, Sept. 13, 2021. Authorities in Greece Tuesday opened an investigation into the crash of a private plane from Israel that killed a prosecution witness in the corruption trial of former Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Haim Geron, a former senior official at Israel's ministry of communications, and his wife Esther were killed in the crash late Monday off the island of Samos. 

(AP Photo/Michael Svarnias)

CRIMINAL CAPITALI$M
Corrupt Oil Trader Turns On Colleagues in Massive Africa Bribe Case


Christian Berthelsen, Javier Blas and Bob Van Voris
Mon, September 13, 2021, 10:01 PM·9 min read

(Bloomberg) -- When Anthony Stimler left Glencore Plc in August 2019, he had two big secrets: For a dozen years, he’d paid millions in bribes to African officials and intermediaries. And he was now helping a U.S. Justice Department investigation into the company and numerous former colleagues.

Corruption isn’t exactly unheard of in the extraction and trading of commodities, especially in the developing world. But details of Stimler’s cooperation deal, obtained from the U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan and which haven’t been reported before, offer a rare opportunity to see how it works — the scale, scope and almost routine nature of such transactions.

One aspect is the role of intermediaries, often favored by governments in the region. The so-called briefcase companies act as conduits for traders’ bribes to officials, taking a cut and directing state business back to the traders. Glencore was a dominant player in Nigeria, Chad, the Republic of Congo and Equatorial Guinea, and says it no longer uses intermediaries as part of a revamped and cleaned-up operation.

“An issue that comes up with trader corruption is agents and intermediaries in the mix,” said Alexandra Gillies, an adviser at the Natural Resource Governance Institute, which seeks to stamp out corruption in emerging market resources. “Clearly it’s the top modus operandi for how these schemes work.”

Glencore of Baar, Switzerland, is one of a handful of firms that dominate global trading of oil, fuel, metals, minerals and food, middlemen who buy from producers and sell to refiners who turn the goods into finished products. It traces its roots to a company co-founded in 1974 by Marc Rich, a legendary trader and financier who fled the U.S. in 1983 to evade prosecution for trading with Iran during the American hostage crisis. It had $142 billion in 2020 revenue.

Before getting caught, Stimler spent years in the game, beginning as early as 2007. And while it sounds like a hard-core business, he offers a mild-mannered profile. Affable and polite, he’s known in his London Jewish community by the Yiddish nickname “Hershy” and served on the board of Camp Simcha, which helps sick children. He took a two-year break in the middle of his tenure to care for his own child, who suffered from leukemia (and subsequently recovered).

His confession in July to foreign bribery and money laundering charges, the first ever by a Glencore trader, makes clear that he knew just what he’d been doing — and that he didn’t act alone. A lawyer for Stimler declined to comment for this article, as did Glencore. Stimler is out on bail in the U.K. and awaiting sentencing at a later date.

“When I made requests for payments to intermediaries, I was aware that other Glencore traders who worked with me were doing the same thing by directing our intermediaries to make bribe payments to government officials,” Stimler told a federal judge in New York, according to a transcript of his guilty plea. “I intended that a proportion of the payment to intermediaries operating in Nigeria were to be passed on to Nigerian state-owned oil company officials. The purpose of the payment was to influence those officials’ decisions regarding the Nigerian government’s allocations of crude oil cargo.

“Your honor, I knew what I was doing was wrong and unlawful,” he continued. “I’m extremely remorseful for my conduct.”

It was conduct that was, nonetheless, handsomely rewarded.

Over a two-decade career that began in 1998, Stimler, now 49, rose through the ranks of the storied Swiss trading house, becoming head of its West African oil trading desk. He presided over a robust expansion of its crude flows and a nearly-doubling of his desk’s annual profits to nearly $200 million in 2017, according to people familiar with internal data.

In that same year, 2017, prosecutors from the Justice Department’s kleptocracy team filed a case in Houston to seize nearly $145 million worth of assets — including an $80 million, 215-foot yacht called the Galactica Star, a $50 million Billionaire’s Row apartment in New York and homes in California — that it said were purchased for the benefit of Nigeria’s oil minister, Diezani Alison-Madueke, with embezzled funds.

Prosecutors said two associates of the minister set up companies shortly after she took office and were awarded contracts to sell large allotments of oil on global markets. The pair were awarded dozens of crude cargoes worth about $1.5 billion, according to the prosecutors. Nigeria received little of the proceeds of those sales, which prosecutors say were diverted for Madueke and her associates.

One of the primary trading houses that stepped up to buy those cargoes, according to prosecutors: Glencore.

They say that over the course of 2013 and 2014, Glencore bought 15 cargoes totaling 7 million barrels from the men, paying more than $800 million. Of that, they contend, roughly a third — $272 million — was diverted into an account at a Nigerian bank used for the purchases for Madueke.

In assembling the case, prosecutors amassed evidence including bank records, emails and witness testimony. At least one recorded conversation showed that the minister worried about the scale of the graft. She chastised one of the associates that such high-profile purchases would attract the attention of authorities.

She was right.

A court filing in Stimler’s case makes reference to a “Foreign Official 1,” a high-ranking Nigerian from 2010 to 2015, who had demanded and received bribery payments. According to people familiar with the matter, Madueke is Foreign Official 1.

 Lawyers for Madueke didn’t respond to requests for comment.

As prosecutors in the Houston case were going through the effort to seize the homes and yacht, Glencore received a Justice Department subpoena in July 2018 for documents related to Glencore’s business in Nigeria, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Venezuela dating back to 2007, according to a company disclosure at the time.

Just over a year later, Stimler left Glencore, a move wrongly viewed at the time as part of an executive shake-up following the departure of Alex Beard, Glencore’s longtime head of oil trading and mentor to Stimler, according to a person familiar with them. It was around that time that Stimler began cooperating with prosecutors.

Now Glencore and some of its executives face the prospect of steep fines and prison in a far-reaching investigation of tactics in numerous countries and commodity markets. U.S. authorities pursue such cases because, though they involve events in other countries, the payoffs were made in dollars that pass through the banking system in New York. Other major countries are also increasingly targeting commodity trading. U.S. authorities have gotten increasingly aggressive in enforcing laws against foreign bribery, imposing billions of dollars of fines against companies. Under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, prosecutors can calculate fines based on how much a company sought to benefit from paying bribes, and then double the amount in imposing the penalty.

Read More: Former Glencore Director Says He Flew the World With Bag of Cash

Glencore says it’s a changed company and is cooperating with prosecutors. It reserved a $216 million charge in the first half of the year for costs related to a specific element of several investigations it is facing.

Gary Nagle, Glencore’s new chief executive, told reporters on a conference call in August that the company has adopted new compliance rules intended to eliminate illicit conduct, and that every person mentioned in Stimler’s case has been disciplined or left the firm. The company is also reducing its business in high-risk jurisdictions, and no longer works with middlemen.

“We don’t have any intermediaries in our oil business,” Nagle said. “It’s a different business model to what we used five to 10 years ago. We don’t plan to use them again in our oil business.”

Glencore makes billions of dollars every year buying and selling commodities — above the money it makes digging metals, pumping crude or harvesting crops. In 2020, the company enjoyed its best trading ever, making $3.3 billion in earnings before interest and taxes, up 41% from the previous year despite the impact of Covid-19 on the global economy.

Stimler’s guilty plea and the deal he cut with prosecutors will rattle fellow colleagues – and the company itself – as the Justice Department investigation continues.

The cooperation agreement requires him to disclose his and all his colleagues’ activities relevant to the case, and agree to testify before a grand jury for the investigation and even serve as a government witness should any cases go to trial. He appeared by videoconference from the U.K. during his plea hearing, during which he told Judge Kevin Castel of Manhattan federal court that he’d been assisting the Justice Department for more than two years.

Stimler has implicated seven others, including at least four Glencore traders, in making bribe payments, and authorities say the scheme started before him. One person named was a top African oil trader at Glencore dating back to the 1990s, Stimler’s superior during his early rise there, according to people familiar with the matter; another worked with him on the West African oil trading during the latter part of the scheme, the people said.

While Stimler began bribing in 2007, often using coded language in emails, the payments appear to have accelerated during Madueke’s time in office, according to the court documents. Stimler agreed in late 2013 to pay more than triple the usual fees to an intermediary company that would be passed on as bribes for favorable grades and loading dates of Nigerian oil, his guilty plea says. Three months later, he and a colleague made another $500,000 payment to be eligible for additional Nigerian cargoes. Stimler “requested and received approval” for a Glencore subsidiary to make the payment, prosecutors said, without specifying who granted it.

Later that fall, he received another request, saying Foreign Official 1 was seeking $300,000 per month from customers of Nigeria’s national oil company, in connection with an upcoming election. Stimler authorized the payment, according to prosecutors.

Madueke left office in 2015 and has been living in London. She has been charged with corruption by Nigerian authorities but has so far successfully evaded extradition, and she is under investigation by U.K. authorities as well. The yacht, the Galactica Star, has since been auctioned off. Its new owner is a shell company called Paxford Ltd., and it has been renamed Illusion. It was last seen docked on the coast of Sardinia, according to Bloomberg ship tracking data.

In May, Nigeria’s national oil company released its new list of trading partners for the coming year, coveted contracts to buy its oil and sell it refined gasoline. Glencore was not among them.

World Faces Growing Risk of Food Shortages Due to Climate Change


Áine Quinn
Mon, September 13, 2021

(Bloomberg) -- Food supplies will struggle to keep pace with the world’s growing population as climate change sends temperatures soaring and droughts intensify, according to a report from Chatham House.

Yields of staple crops could decline by almost a third by 2050 unless emissions are drastically reduced in the next decade, while farmers will need to grow nearly 50% more food to meet global demand, the think tank said. The Chatham House report was drawn up for heads of state before next month’s pivotal United Nations COP26 climate summit in Glasgow.

Food prices are already near a decade high, fueled by supply chain disruptions during the pandemic and extreme weather. Wheat prices surged over the summer due to crop losses in some of the biggest exporters. The Chatham House report suggests climate challenges could keep that trend intact.

“We can expect all basic food staples to significantly increase in price,” the report’s lead author Daniel Quiggin said in an interview. “We would also expect there to be shortages in some reaches of the world.”

Thе proportion of cropland affected by drought will more than triple to 32% a year, the report said. It also predicts nearly 50-50 odds of a loss of 10% or more of the corn crop across the top four producing countries during the 2040s.

Major crops from wheat to soy and rice “are likely to see big yield declines” due to drought, and shorter growing periods, Quiggin said. Severe climate impacts will be “locked in” by 2040 if countries do not reduce emissions, according to the report.

This Texas-based company wants to revive the extinct woolly mammoth. Well, sorta


BEN LAMM,  GEORGE CHURCH


James Hartley
Mon, September 13, 2021

Woolly mammoths, the elephant-like prehistoric beasts that, as their name would suggest, were giant and hairy, went extinct around 10,000 years ago. A Texas-based tech entrepreneur wants to change that. Sort of.

Ben Lamm, the tech entrepreneur whose ambitions might give sci-fi dystopian authors nightmares, hopes to venture down a path “Jurassic Park” (the book, not the movie) author Michael Crichton contemplated in the best-seller 31 years ago. But Lamm’s mission isn’t to open a theme park full of dangerous, extinct predators and a couple of friendly herbivores.

Instead, he hopes to use the reintroduction of extinct species into the world as a way to combat climate change and advance “thoughtful disruptive conservation,” according to a news release.

Lamm wants to “rebuild ecosystems, heal our Earth and preserve its future through the repopulation of extinct animals,” he said in the news release in which he announced the launch of his bioscience and genetics company, Colossal. He hopes Colossal will lead to rapid advancement in the area of “species de-extinction.”

Colossal marks the sixth company Lamm created. Austin-based Hypergiant, a tech company, which is working on artificial intelligence for the likes of NASA, was his fifth.

With this latest venture, Lamm is using $15 million raised by Colossal to work with Harvard Medical School professor George Church to combine the genetics of an elephant with a mammoth “that is genetically engineered with traits to help it survive in the Arctic,” according to the release.

The animals created, if Lamm and Church are successful, won’t be true woolly mammoths. Their genetic code will be different because of the use of elephant genes. But Lamm thinks the success of this mission could open the door for his company to revive other extinct animals, as well as save the more than 1 million animals, plants and fungi the United Nations in 2019 said are at risk of extinction.

When those species go extinct, the ecosystems in which they live begin to collapse and impact the health of humans and our blue marble. Lamm believes that restoring the woolly mammoth could lead to the revitalization of the Arctic grasslands, an area in North America and North Eurasia that contributes to carbon sequestering, methane suppression and light reflection, according to the release.

He hopes that reviving this ecosystem could help combat climate change.

And Church, a core faculty member at the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard, agrees. He said in the news release that the company has the potential to impact ecological conservation and other climate change issues.

While Colossal is fronting the money, the research into this venture would be the responsibility of Church and his lab at Harvard. The technology that exists isn’t ready to create a (sorta) woolly mammoth, but Colossal thinks his research could “create technology leaps in multiplexed genetic engineering, synthetic biology, and other emerging areas,” according to the release.

“Technologies discovered in pursuit of this grand vision – a living, walking proxy of a woolly mammoth – could create very significant opportunities in conservation and beyond, not least of which include inspiring public interest in STEM, prompting timely discussions in bioethics, and raising awareness of the vital importance of biodiversity,” Church said in the release.

GENERATION INTERNATIONALIST

Raducanu: US Open champion celebrated in China for her heritage

Sun, September 12, 2021

Social media users in China can't get enough of Emma Raducanu

Social media users in China are celebrating British tennis star Emma Raducanu - not just for her historic US Open win, but her Chinese heritage.

Raducanu was born in Canada to a Romanian father and Chinese mother, before moving to London aged two.

Many on Chinese site Weibo praised the 18-year-old, calling her a "Dongbei girl" - a reference to her mother's ancestral home.

A video of her thanking her fans in Mandarin also went viral.

"She speaks just like a 'Dong Bei (north-east Chinese) girl'. How amazing!" a Weibo comment read.

Raducanu has previously spoken openly about her mixed heritage in previous interviews, something Chinese netizens have taken pride in.

"She said she visits China regularly, and that one of her idols is Li Na. I'm so moved," a Weibo user wrote, referencing a celebrated former Chinese tennis player.

Others likened her in looks to a Taiwanese pop star. "We must support the Rainie Yang of the tennis court," another person said.

But some users chose to keep some distance: "She's British - why are all of you now trying to claim her as your own?"

In interviews, Raducanu has paid tribute to her mum and that side of the family.

"They are so mentally resilient - it's like nothing can bring them down. I would say I take a big part of my inspiration from her. My mum has worked very hard," she said, adding that she learned about discipline and respect for other people from her.

The teenager, who visits her mother's ancestral home of Shenyang during the holidays, has also said that she loves nothing more than binge-watching Taiwanese television shows.

On Saturday, Raducanu beat Canadian teen Leylah Fernandez in straight-sets at the US Open to become the first British woman in 44 years to win a Grand Slam final.

Teen tennis sensations Leylah Fernandez and Emma Raducanu are both of mixed heritage

Given how Fernandez is also of mixed heritage - her father is Ecuadorian and mother Filipino - social media users in the Philippines were equally intrigued and expressed their pride.

One said on Facebook: "Nice to see the Philippines finally get someone in the tennis world to cheer for."

While she has confessed in an interview to not knowing much about the Filipino culture, she said she loves Filipino cuisine.

"I don't know much about the Filipino culture but I do know that my Lolo (grandfather) - he cooks amazing, so when I get back to Canada in Toronto when I visit, he's gonna make really nice food, especially Filipino dishes because I do miss it," she said in a post-game interview.

Her father and coach Jorge, a former footballer, also told reporters: "I truly appreciate the Filipino community backing up Leylah. She's got Filipino blood in her. It's so beautiful."
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Young tennis players have been inspired by Emma Raducanu's US Open win.

Stanford professors urge

 U.S. to end program looking 

for Chinese spies in academia

Jane Lanhee Lee

Mon, September 13, 2021

(Reuters) -A group of Stanford University professors has asked the Justice Department to stop looking for Chinese spies at U.S. universities, joining an effort by human rights groups to end a Trump administration program they said caused racial profiling and was terrorizing some scientists.

The "China Initiative," launched in late 2018, aimed to prevent U.S. technology theft by China but has since "deviated significantly from its claimed mission," according to a Sept. 8 letter https://sites.google.com/view/winds-of-freedom signed by 177 Stanford faculty members and made public by them on Monday.

"(I)t is harming the United States' research and technology competitiveness and it is fueling biases that, in turn, raise concerns about racial profiling," the letter said.

That letter is now being supported by about 140 University of California, Berkeley professors who have signed on since late last week, according to Randy Schekman, Berkeley professor and Nobel prize winner for physiology or medicine.

Asked about criticism of the China Initiative, Justice Department spokesperson Wyn Hornbuckle said the government was "dedicated to countering unlawful (Chinese) government efforts to undermine America's national security and harm our economy," while acknowledging the threat of hate crimes against Asia Americans. "We take seriously concerns about discrimination," he said.

The Justice Department has published details of at least 27 cases related to the initiative, with results including some guilty pleas, some cases dropped and some ongoing.

Professors at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University were among those charged, as were five Chinese scientists who were visiting scholars last year - although those charges were dropped in July.

On Thursday, a federal judge in Tennessee acquitted https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.tned.93460/gov.uscourts.tned.93460.141.0.pdf a professor accused of hiding Chinese ties in his NASA research grant application, saying prosecutors failed to provide evidence he intended to defraud the government.

"I think what the FBI's done in most cases is to scare people - investigating people and interrogating them. And it's harmful to the country," said Peter Michelson, Stanford's senior associate dean for the natural sciences and an organizer of the letter.

Another organizer, Stanford physicist Steven Kivelson, said he became involved because he saw his colleagues of Chinese origin suffered from the hostile environment they were subjected to due to the initiative.

Former U.S. Energy Secretary and Nobel prize winner Steven Chu, a professor at Stanford, said that rather than help protect U.S. advantages in technology and understanding, the program risked undermining America's lead in science.

"We were the brain gain for half a century," he told Reuters in an interview. "You really want to throw this away?"

(Reporting By Jane Lanhee Lee; Editing by Peter Henderson, Daniel Wallis and Steve Orlofsky)