It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Saturday, October 02, 2021
CRIMINAL CAPITALI$M
Wells Fargo must face shareholder fraud claims over its recovery from scandals
Jonathan Stempel Thu, September 30, 2021 FILE PHOTO: A Wells Fargo logo is seen in New York City
NEW YORK (Reuters) -A federal judge on Thursday rejected Wells Fargo & Co's bid to dismiss a lawsuit claiming it defrauded shareholders about its ability to rebound from five years of scandals over its treatment of customers.
The fourth-largest U.S. bank has operated since 2018 under consent orders from the Federal Reserve and two other U.S. financial regulators to improve governance and oversight, with the Fed also capping Wells Fargo's assets.
Shareholders said bank officials falsely claimed in TV interviews, analyst calls and congressional testimony that the bank was mending its ways, when regulators actually viewed its progress as "deficient" and "unacceptable."
U.S. District Judge Gregory Woods in Manhattan said the shareholders plausibly alleged that some statements by various bank officials, including former Chief Executive Tim Sloan, were "deliberately or recklessly false or misleading."
According to shareholders, San Francisco-based Wells Fargo lost more than $54 billion of market value as the truth was gradually revealed over a two-year period ending in March 2020.
Woods also dismissed claims against current Chief Executive Charles Scharf, saying he was not culpable for the challenged claims.
The scandals prompted Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway Inc to shed nearly all of its 10% stake in the bank.
"We will continue to vigorously defend the litigation and strongly disagree with the claims," Wells Fargo said in an email.
Sloan's lawyer Josh Cohen said in an email on Friday that his client's statements were truthful, and that Sloan "worked tirelessly to bring Wells Fargo into compliance with consent orders and regulatory demands."
The decision is a setback for Wells Fargo's rebound from revelations including that it opened about 3.5 million accounts without customer permission, and charged hundreds of thousands of borrowers for auto insurance they did not need.
Wells Fargo has paid more than $5 billion in fines, and the Fed's $1.95 trillion asset cap restricts the bank's growth.
Sloan stepped down abruptly as chief executive after 2-1/2 years in March 2019. One year later, Wells Fargo canceled a $15 million bonus for him.
In his 61-page decision, Woods did not decide whether bank officials intended to defraud shareholders.
But he said it would have been "nearly impossible" for Sloan to be unaware of the regulators' criticisms.
"Based on the facts on the ground, Mr. Sloan knew or, more importantly, should have known that he was misrepresenting material facts related to the corporation," Woods wrote.
The shareholders are led by the state of Rhode Island, and pension funds in Louisiana, Mississippi and Sweden.
Their lawyer Steven Toll said he was pleased they can sue over the "vast majority of the alleged fraudulent statements."
The case is In re Wells Fargo & Co Securities Litigation, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York, No. 20-04494.
(Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York; editing by Jonathan Oatis, Aurora Ellis and Cynthia Osterman)
India coal crisis brews as power demand surges, record global prices bite
Sudarshan Varadhan and Gavin Maguire Fri, October 1, 2021
CHENNAI (Reuters) - Indian utilities are scrambling to secure coal supplies as inventories hit critical lows after a surge in power demand from industries and sluggish imports due to record global prices push power plants to the brink.
Over half of India's 135 coal-fired power plants have fuel stocks of less than three days, government data shows, far short of federal guidelines recommending supplies of at least two weeks.
Prices of power-generation fuels are surging globally as electricity demand rebounds with industrial growth, tightening supplies of coal and liquefied natural gas.
India is competing against buyers such as China, the world's largest coal consumer, which is under pressure to ramp up imports amid a severe power crunch.
Rising oil, gas, coal and power prices are feeding inflationary pressures worldwide and slowing the economic recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic.
"The supply crunch is expected to persist, with the non-power sector facing the heat as imports remain the only option to meet demand but at rising costs," ratings agency S&P's unit CRISIL said in a report this week, adding it expected Asian coal prices to continue to increase.
"Coal inventory at (Indian) thermal plants will improve only gradually by next March."
Indian power producers locked in long-term agreements with distribution utilities cannot pass on higher input costs unless a clause to pass on such expenses is written into the contract.
Traders and officials at utilities said buying by power plants dependent of imported coal had been muted due to high prices.
India's average weekly coal imports during August through late September - when global coal prices rallied over 40% to all-time highs - dropped by over 30% from the average for the first seven months of the year, according to data compiled by Kplr.
Websites of major coal importing state utilities did not show any new tenders seeking new cargoes this month.
Coal prices from major exporters have scaled all-time highs recently, with Australia's Newcastle prices rising roughly 50% and Indonesian export prices up 30% in the last three months.
The September Indonesia coal price benchmark was as much as seven times higher than similar quality fuel sold by Coal India to Indian utilities, according to Reuters calculations.
"Traders who bought coal from Coal India in the spot auctions are making a killing. They are selling at 50-100% premiums," said a senior official in charge of sourcing coal at a large Indian utility operator.
State-run Coal India said this week higher global prices of coal and freight rates have pushed utilities dependent on imported coal to curtail power production, resulting in higher dependence on domestic coal-fired plants.
India is the world's second largest importer of coal despite having the fourth largest reserves. Utilities make up about three-fourths of its overall consumption, with Coal India accounting for over 80% of the country's production.
INDUSTRIAL POWER DEMAND SURGE
India's power plants are also grappling with surging demand from industries as economic activity rebounds from the latest wave of COVID-19 pandemic.
Power consumption in industrialised states including Maharashtra, Gujarat and Tamil Nadu grew between 13.9% and 21% in the three months ended September, a Reuters analysis of data from federal grid regulator POSOCO showed.
The three states account for nearly a third of India's annual electricity consumption. Industries and offices account for half the country's annual electricity consumption. During the last two quarters of the fiscal year ending March 2021, the residential and agricultural sectors were key drivers of power consumption after the first wave of coronavirus.
"This year we have seen a tremendous growth in industrial demand," said Shahmeena Husain, Managing Director of Gujarat's electricity regulator told Reuters.
While there have not been any large scale power outages in India, deficits have increased nearly four-fold from the negligible levels recorded last year, POSOCO data showed.
The shortages have so far been mostly restricted to northern states such as Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Kashmir, the data showed.
"Domestic consumption increased by about 10% in the last two years because of work from home and air conditioning," a senior Tamil Nadu government official told Reuters.
"Following opening up of industries after the second wave, industries are king," the official said.
(Reporting by Sudarshan Varadhan; Editing by Florence Tan, Lincoln Feast, Kirsten Donovan)
CRIMINAL CAPITALI$M
Pharmacy chains face first trial in U.S. opioid litigation, judge urges settlement
Oct 1 (Reuters) - Four large pharmacy chains are set to face their first trial over the deadly U.S. opioid epidemic, creating new pressure to reach settlements with state and local governments who accuse them of contributing to the public health crisis.
The Ohio counties of Lake and Trumbull allege that oversight failures at pharmacies run by Walgreens Boots Alliance Inc , CVS Health Corp, Walmart Inc and Giant Eagle Inc led to excessive amounts of opioid pills in their communities.
Lawyers for the counties and companies are set to deliver opening statements on Monday to a federal jury in Cleveland, where thousands of similar lawsuits against pharmaceutical companies, drug distributors and pharmacies are pending.
More than 3,300 cases have been brought largely by state and local governments seeking to hold the companies responsible for an opioid abuse epidemic that U.S. government data shows led to nearly 500,000 overdose deaths from 1999 to 2019.
Should a jury find the companies liable, U.S. District Judge Dan Polster will later determine how much they must pay to abate, or address, the epidemic in the communities.
Lawyers for the local governments have said the pharmacy chains are among their next targets for settlement.
Polster, who oversees most of the opioid lawsuits, on Tuesday renewed his long-running push https://www.reuters.com/article/us-opioids-litigation-judge/judges-unorthodox-approach-has-huge-opioid-settlement-within-reach-idUSKBN1WX1AT for a global settlement by the companies. "Use this trial as an opportunity to engage in the kind of meaningful discussions that have not happened over the last couple of years, all right?" he said.
At trial, the two counties are expected to argue the pharmacies created a public nuisance by failing to identify red flags and ensure prescriptions were valid, causing an oversupply of pills, overdoses and deaths.
"The national chain pharmacies in our case refused to give their pharmacists the necessary tools and opportunities to follow the law and stop the diversion and improper sale of opiates," said Mark Lanier, the counties' lawyer.
The companies deny wrongdoing, saying criminals were more likely to obtain opioids illegally from other sources, including pill mills, crooked doctors and drug traffickers.
"Opioid prescriptions are written by doctors, not pharmacists," CVS said in a statement. "Our pharmacies fill legitimate prescriptions written by licensed doctors."
Walgreens said it took "great pride in the judgment of our pharmacy professionals," and Giant Eagle said regulators who inspected its pharmacies in the two counties found it complied with the law. Walmart did not respond to requests for comment.
The trial comes after the three largest U.S. distributors that supply pharmacies - McKesson Corp, Cardinal Health Inc and AmerisourceBergen Corp - and the drugmaker Johnson & Johnson in July proposed paying up to $26 billion to settle cases against them.
A bankruptcy judge in August approved a settlement by OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma LP and its wealthy Sackler family owners that the company values at more than $10 billion.
The pharmacy chains in the Ohio case have only settled one case nationally. Ahead of a trial in New York, they and Rite Aid Corp agreed pay $26 million to settle with two counties.
Rite Aid settled pre-trial in Ohio and agreed to pay Trumbull at least $1.5 million. Lake County has not disclosed its recovery. (Reporting by Nate Raymond in Boston; Editing by Noeleen Walder and Bill Berkrot)
US Special ops troops ‘hunkered down’ in California airport hangar after nighttime ninja attack
BY CHAD GARLAND• STARS AND STRIPES • SEPTEMBER 30, 2021 An MH-47G Chinook assigned to the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment refuels at Naval Air Station North Island, Calif., in 2019. Soldiers who may have been members of the 160th SOAR were attacked Sept. 18, 2021, by a sword-wielding man dressed as a ninja while they were training at Inyokern Airport, about 100 miles north of Los Angeles. (Daniel Snider/U.S. Air Force)
A sword-wielding man dressed as a ninja attacked several special operations soldiers who were training at a California airport, reportedly forcing them to shelter in a hangar and inflicting wounds that required stitches.
The bizarre assault took place at Inyokern Airport, an airfield in the Mojave Desert about 100 miles north of Los Angeles, sometime after 1 a.m. on Sept. 18, according to what appears to be a military incident report shared on Instagram and Reddit.
Records from the Ridgecrest Police Department seem to confirm some details in the document posted to social media in a photo late Wednesday that said two soldiers had to receive stitches before returning to duty.
After confirming that the incident described in the document leaked on social media did occur, U.S. Army Special Operations Aviation Command spokesman Maj. Jeff Slinker said officials did not have any further information to add.
The soldiers’ names were redacted in the photo shared on social media — but one was identified as a staff sergeant and the other as a captain. The details suggest that they are members of the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment, an elite helicopter unit known as the Night Stalkers.
The staff sergeant was sitting outside the administration building at the airport hangar smoking a cigarette when he was approached by “an unknown person wearing full ninja garb,” the photographed document states.
A screenshot of what appears to be a military incident report shared on Reddit describes an attack on a group of soldiers Sept. 18, 2021, in California by a sword-wielding man dressed as a ninja. (Reddit)
It is unclear from the records whether the man was an actual practitioner of ninjutsu.
“Do you know who I am?” the ninja asked, to which the soldier replied no, according to the document.
“Do you know where my family is?” the black-clad man then asked. The staff sergeant again answered no.
“The person in ninja garb began to slash at (the soldier), striking his phone and his knee and leg,” the record states.
The staff sergeant took off running across the parking lot to escape the attacker, and then he jumped a fence and entered the administrative building, where he and the captain locked doors and called 911.
Meanwhile, the man dressed as a ninja was “kicking and punching doors and windows” before leaving to grab a large block of asphalt, which he heaved through the window of the administration building.
The captain was struck by the chunk of asphalt, said the document on social media.
The first assistance call was recorded about 1:20 a.m., the Ridgecrest Police Department log shows. A man “with a sword” was in a parking lot, and there was at least one victim, the log states.
About 30 minutes later came a second call via 911: “26 spec op military members doing training at the airport,” the log states. “Hunkered down in a hangar wondering where help is.”
The ninja fled and was arrested elsewhere, according to the document shared on social media.
It indicates that the soldiers were with F Co., 2nd Battalion, 160th SOAR, which had been tasked with support at Fort Irwin’s National Training Center.
The incident report photo was shared Wednesday on the Instagram meme page Daddy SOARbucks before appearing on Reddit.
The Daddy SOARbucks page posted several more memes mocking the company and the battalion over the incident.
The regiment did not immediately respond to a query seeking confirmation of the information shared on social media. It was unclear which law enforcement agency responded to the calls.
A 19th-century artist's astronomical drawings are stunningly accurate.
Compare them to NASA images today.
Morgan McFall-Johnsen
The Orion nebula, as Etienne Léopold Trouvelot drew it (left), and as NASA telescopes captured it (right). E. L. Trouvelot, from The New York Public Library; NASA/JPL-Caltech/STScI
He worked for the Harvard College observatory, using a telescope with a grid etched into the glass eyepiece and sketching his astronomical observations on grid paper.
Trouvelot published 15 of his sketches as pastels. They're some of the best-preserved astronomical drawings of the 19th century.
Some illustrations are incredibly accurate, documenting moon craters and solar flares with scientific precision. Others are more creative and abstract, projecting Trouvelot's artistic expression onto the cosmos.
Today, sophisticated observatories and space telescopes snap images of the same celestial phenomena that Trouvelot captured more than 150 years ago. Here's how the 19th-century drawings compare to contemporary photos.
Etienne Léopold Trouvelot spent hours peering at planets, star clusters, and solar eruptions through a telescope with a grid etched into its glass eyepiece.
Three sketches of craters on the moon, produced in 1872 by Etienne Léopold Trouvelot. SSPL/Getty Images
Born in France in 1827, Trouvelot is most famous for bringing gypsy moths with him to the US. The invasive insect would go on to spread across North America, devouring more than 300 species of trees and shrubs.
In 1896, workers attempted to eradicate gypsy moth larvae from a large elm tree near Etienne Trouvelot's home in Malden, Massachusetts. Library of Congress
But Trouvelot was also an artist, and he got a job sketching astronomical observations at Harvard College's observatory. He drew what he saw through the gridded telescope.
People look at a drawing by Etienne Leopold Trouvelot called "Total Eclipse of the Sun" (1882) on July 1, 2019, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Thomas Urbain/AFP/Getty Images
Over time, he turned many of those sketches into pastels and published 15 of them in The Trouvelot Astronomical Drawings Manual. This one shows sunspots.
These are dark patches of reduced temperatures that temporarily appear on the sun's surface.
More than 150 years later, photographic observatories on Earth and sophisticated telescopes in space are capturing the subjects of Trouvelot's drawings.
It looks different than today's photos, but that's probably because the Great Red Spot has been shrinking and getting more circular since astronomers began observing it about 150 years ago.
Looking beyond our solar system, Trouvelot spotted the Orion nebula - a dense cloud of gas that constantly forms new stars, 1,500 light-years from Earth.
NASA's Spitzer and Hubble Space Telescopes have captured Orion in three different light spectra, revealing gas layers of the stellar nursery.
A composite image from NASA's Spitzer and Hubble Space Telescopes shows the Orion nebula in visible, ultraviolet, and infrared light. NASA/JPL-Caltech/STScI
This image is color-coded for different molecules. The yellow smudge at the center is home to four massive stars, which heat and ionize hydrogen and sulfur gas in the surrounding cloud of green. The red and orange represent clouds filled with carbon-rich organic molecules.
Trouvelot also turned his telescope to the Hercules constellation to capture the cosmic glow of its dense star cluster.
This triangular gleam appears on the horizon when dust orbiting the sun reflects its light towards the night side of Earth.
The zodiacal light in Skull Valley, Utah on March 1, 2021. NASA/JPL-Caltech
Trouvelot captured other celestial phenomenon that didn't require a telescope as well - like this comet that surprised the world in the summer of 1881.
Today, comets passing close to Earth are heavily documented by amateur and professional photographers.
Comet Neowise streaks past an Orthodox church over the Turets, Belarus, early Tuesday, July 14, 2020. Sergei Grits/AP Photo
Trouvelot also sketched the paths of dozens of meteors - small space rocks that burn up in Earth's atmosphere as our planet passes through a field of space debris.
In the drawing above, he was likely sketching the Leonids during their peak in mid-November. The shower comes from debris left in Earth's orbit by the Tempel-Tuttle comet.
That drawing resembles long-exposure images that capture the dozens, or even hundreds, of shooting stars that streak across the skies every hour during meteor showers.
The Geminids meteor shower over the Mexican volcano Popocatepetl in the Mexican state of Puebla in the early hours of December 14, 2004. Daniel Aguilar/Reuters
Trouvelot also took an interest in eclipses. He sketched this partial lunar eclipse, when Earth's shadow blocked much of the sun's light from hitting the moon, in October 1874.
High school students in Texas hold protest after transgender student allegedly denied access to women's locker room
Luke Gentile
ATexas high school saw dozens of students fill its halls on Wednesday to protest what they said was the school's decision to deny a transgender girl use of the girls' facilities, according to videos and pictures posted to social media.
Students at Temple High School were protesting in support of a 16-year-old student, a biological boy who identifies as a girl, who claimed faculty denied her use of the female locker room because it was for "actual girls," according to the teenager's Sept. 22 post on Instagram.
The protest occurred during the third class period, said Temple Independent School District spokeswoman Christine Parks.
The protest remained peaceful, but "additional security and Temple PD were on campus to help ensure the safety of staff and students," Parks said.
"Students have the right to peaceful protests," she said. "However, if such activities result in student behaviors such as skipping class or leaving a classroom without permission, then these Student Code of Conduct violations will result in consequences as outlined in the Code of Conduct."
The school returned to regular activity, according to a report, and the administration met with the student and her parents to examine the district's "Enrollment of Transgender Students guidelines."
