Automating the War on Noise Pollution

To reduce noise, cities need new sensor technology that can tell the difference between a dog barking, a garbage truck and a revving motorcycle engine.


A sensor deployed by researchers measures noise levels and collects data to train an AI model to automatically recognize the origin of the sound.
Courtesy of SONYC/Charlie Mydlarz

By Linda Poon 
December 2, 2021, 
Linda Poon is a writer for CityLab in Washington, D.C., focused on climate change and urban life. She also writes the CityLab Daily newsletter.@linpoonsays

Any city dweller is no stranger to the frequent revving of motorbikes and car engines, made all the more intolerable after the months of silence during pandemic lockdowns. Some cities have decided to take action.

Paris police set up an anti-noise patrol in 2020 to ticket motorists whose vehicles exceed a certain decibel level, and soon, the city will start piloting the use of noise sensors in two neighborhoods. Called Medusa, each device uses four microphones to detect and measure noise levels, and two cameras to help authorities track down the culprit. No decibel threshold or fines will be set during the three-month trial period, according to French newspaper Liberation, but it’ll test the potentials and limits of automating the war on sound pollution.

Cities like Toronto and Philadelphia are also considering deploying similar tools. By now, research has been mounting about the health effects of continuous noise exposure, including links to high blood pressure and heart disease, and to poor mental health. And for years, many cities have been tackling noise through ordinances and urban design, including various bans on leaf blowers, on construction at certain hours and on cars. Some have even hired “night mayors” to, among other things, address complaints about after-hours noise.

But enforcement, even with the help of simple camera-and-noise radars, has been a challenge. Since 2018, the Canadian city of Edmonton has been piloting the use of four radars attached to light poles at busy intersections in the downtown area. A 2021 report on the second phase of the project completed in 2020, found that officials had to manually sift through the data to take out noise made by, say, sirens. And the recordings didn’t always provide strong enough evidence against the offender in court. It was also costly: The pilot cost taxpayers $192,000, while fines generated a little more than half that amount, according to CTV News Edmonton.


Those obstacles have made noise pollution an increasingly popular target for smart city innovation, with companies and researchers looking to make environmental monitoring systems do more than just measure decibel levels.

A sensor deployed by researchers behind SONYC.
Courtesy of SONYC/Charlie Mydlarz

In one of the noisiest cities in the U.S., a group of researchers at New York University have been studying New York’s sound environment since 2016 in hopes of developing a network of smarter sensors. That is, sensors that use machine learning to help city officials not only better address 311 complaints about noise, but proactively set targeted policies to minimize the activity from which they originate.

“As the current tool to understand noise, 311 is totally flawed because it's a very reactive way of dealing with noise,” says Charlie Mydlarz, a senior audio researcher who’s part of the SONYC (Sounds of NYC) project funded by the National Science Foundation. “There has to be a noise problem for someone to pick up the phone to actually log a noise complaint.” The process is not only slow and limited by staffing resources of the city, he adds, but it’s also not representative of the city’s population, with complaints largely coming from wealthier neighborhoods.


A network of nearly 100 sensors has gathered “hundreds of millions of rows” of anonymized data from around the city — including audio snippets and data on decibel levels that will help the team understand noise patterns, how loud the city is in certain areas and how they vary over time, Mydlarz says. More than 2,800 citizen volunteers recently helped identify and label a subset of the audio snippets, which is used to train a machine learning model to automatically distinguish the nature of the various noises. Mydlarz adds that the samples have been randomized and broken up to preserve privacy, and that it’s unlikely for the sensors to pick up intelligible conversations from where they were placed — usually high off the ground.

Now in its second phase, the team is working with the city’s Department of Environmental Protection to trial a network of roughly 30 low-cost sensors deployed in residential neighborhoods and mounted to the homes of residents who’ve complained to the DEP about chronic noise issues. The sensors can stream real-time data on decibel levels in the neighborhood and source identification of noise disturbance to the department, which will help them better distribute and lead to a more immediate response time.

They can give the city concrete data to propose changes in regulation to, say, construction permits, if they detect a pattern among the noise violations. Mydlarz says their project has already proved useful in the Red Hook community of Brooklyn, where the waterfront has seen an influx of warehouses thanks to the e-commerce boom. Residents say trucks often pass through residential neighborhoods, clogging up streets and generating excessive amounts of noise.

“Our sensors were being used to generate data that then is used to convince the city agencies to reroute trucking away from residential areas,” says Mydlarz. The data illustrated just how loud the trucks are, and on Oct. 29 last year, the community board unanimously supported a resolution asking the city department of transportation to consider such changes.

As for residents, the noise monitoring network comes with an app that also provides context about the noise they’re hearing — if there is a permit for a construction project nearby, for example. The researchers are currently looking for more volunteers so they can deploy more sensors. (Mydlarz says they would ideally like to mount sensors on light poles and other city infrastructure, but are limited by which city agencies they’re able to partner with.)

The hope is to generate more support from both city officials and residents. “What we want to do is to show them the loop,” he adds, “meaning you deploy a sensor, you see the data, the DEP enforces [the noise code], and measure the impact of that enforcement.”

Paris is already deploying a similar strategy. Medusa, the type of sensors that the city will be using, was developed by the local environmental noise monitoring nonprofit Bruitparif. First tested in 2019 near busy bars and construction sites in the suburbs outside Paris, the sensors measure decibel levels several times per second. Images captured on camera combined with the nonprofit’s own technology displays the sound snippets as colored dots representing different noise levels, essentially allowing officials to “see” noise traveling from its source.

Like SONYC, Medusa aims to add crucial information to noise disturbance in hopes of answering a question that’s far more complex than it initially seems: “Where does the dominant noise come from?”

Shaanxi China January 23 1556

Last Updated on Mon, 06 Dec 2021 | Plate Tectonics

The deadliest earthquake and mass-wasting event on record occurred in 1556 in the central Chinese province of shaanxi. Most of the 830,000 deaths from this earthquake resulted from landslides and the collapse of homes built into loess, a deposit of wind-blown dust that covers much of central China. The loess represents the fine-grained soil eroded from the Gobi desert to the north and west and deposited by wind on the great loess plateau of central China. Thus, this disaster was triggered by an earthquake but mass-wasting processes were actually responsible for most of the casualties.

The earthquake that triggered this disaster on the morning of January 23, 1556, leveled a 520-mile-wide area and caused significant damage across 97 counties in the provinces of shaanxi, shanxi, Henan,

Hebei, hubei, shandong, Gansu, Jiangsu, and Anhui. sixty percent of the population was killed in some counties. There were no modern seismic instruments at the time, but seismologists estimate that the earthquake had a magnitude of 8 on the Richter scale, with an epicenter near Mount Hua in Hua County in shaanxi.

The reason for the unusually high death toll in this earthquake is that most people in the region at the time lived in homes carved out of the soft loess, or silty soil. People in the region would carve homes, called Yaodongs, out of the soft loess, benefit from the cool summer temperatures and moderate winter temperatures of the soil, and also have an escape from the sun and blowing dust that characterizes the loess plateau. The shaking from the magnitude 8 earthquake caused huge numbers of these Yaodongs to collapse, trapping the residents inside. Landslides raced down steep loess-covered slopes, and the long shaking caused the yaodongs even in flat areas to collapse.

Time tends to make people forget about risks associated with natural hazards. For events that occur only every couple of hundred years, several generations may pass between catastrophic events, and each generation remembers less about the risks than the previous generation. This character of human nature was unfortunately illustrated by another earthquake in central China, nearly 400 years later. In 1920, a large earthquake in Haiyuan, in the Ningxia Authority of northern Shaanxi Province, caused about 675 major landslides in deposits of loess, killing another 100,000-200,000 people. Further south in 2008, the May 12 magnitude 7.9 earthquake in Sichuan Province similarly initiated massive landslides that killed an estimated 87,587 people.

Climate Policy Watcher


The Warming Effects of the Industrial Revolution

Last Updated on Fri, 03 Dec 2021 | Global Temperatures

Until recently, humans did not significantly affect the much larger forces of climate and atmosphere. Many scientists believe, however, that with the dawn of the industrial age—and the burning of fossil fuels such as coal, natural gas, and oil—humans began to significantly add to the amounts of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, enhancing the planet's natural greenhouse effect and causing higher temperatures.

Climate Change Threatens Society

"Climate change . . . is the single greatest threat that societies face today." —James Gustave Speth, environmentalist and dean of the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies.

James Gustave Speth, "The Single Greatest Threat: The United States and Global Climate Disruption," Harvard International Review, Summer 2005.

The Industrial Revolution began in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in Great Britain when manual labor began to be replaced by machinery fueled by new sources of energy. The first sign of this change was mechanization of England's textile mills, the development of iron-making techniques, and the increasing use of coal rather than wood and water power for heating, industry, and transportation. Around 1850, steam power was invented as a way to use coal energy more efficiently, and soon steam engines were used to power trains, ships, and industrial machinery of all sorts. These inventions spread throughout Europe, the United States, and other regions, bringing enormous changes in society and commerce. Later in the nineteenth century, scientists learned how to generate electricity, and the discovery of oil led to the invention of the internal combustion engine, both technological developments that further changed the way humans lived and worked around the globe.



Around 1850, steam power was invented as a way to use coal energy more efficiently, bringing enormous changes in society and commerce. Here, a worker operates a steam engine in 1854.

By the end of the twentieth century, the world was completely dependent on and rapidly depleting the planet's fossil fuels— resources such as coal, natural gas, and oil that are formed from the decomposed remains of prehistoric plants and animals. As Hillman explains, "Fossil fuels contain the energy stored from the sun that took hundreds of thousands of years to accumulate, yet within the space of a few generations—a mere blink of the planet's life so far—we are burning it."

The result of this rapid burning of fossil resources, many scientists believe, is rising concentrations of greenhouse gases that may be overheating the planet. Scientists have determined, for example, that concentrations of carbon dioxide have been increasing

since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. In 1750, there were 280 ppm of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, but by 2005, the levels of carbon dioxide had risen to 380 ppm, an increase of over one-third. And much of this increase has occurred in recent years, since 1959, as world energy usage has expanded dramatically. The United States is responsible for almost a quarter of the world's greenhouse gas emissions, and China is the second-largest emitter. Other countries with high emissions include members of the European Union, while the lowest emissions come from various nations in Africa.

The major source of human-produced greenhouse emissions— accounting for approximately 65 percent—is the use of fossil fuels to power industry, transportation, home heating, electricity generation, and cooking. However, carbon emissions are also increased when carbon-absorbing forests are cut down to make way for human developments and woodlands, grasslands, and prairies are converted into farmland for agriculture. As geography professor Michael Pidwirny explains, "Rural ecosystems can hold 20 to 100 times more carbon dioxide per unit area than agricultural systems."6 Together, these human activities are believed to account for at least 28 percent of the Earth's total greenhouse emissions, with the balance produced by natural sources.
The scientific study of Global warming

Scientists have long suspected a link between industrialization and global warming, but serious study of the issue did not begin until the second half of the twentieth century. In 1896, Swedish scientist Svante Arrhenius was the first to suggest that the burning of fossil fuels adds carbon dioxide gas to the Earth's atmosphere and could raise the planet's average temperature. At the time and for decades thereafter, however, Arrhenius's discovery of the greenhouse effect was dismissed by the mainstream scientific community, which reasoned that such a major climate change would not likely be produced by humans and could only happen slowly over tens of thousands of years. Most scientists at the time also believed that the vast oceans would absorb most of the carbon dioxide produced by industry.

By the 1950s and 1960s, however, improved instruments for measuring long-wave radiation allowed scientists to prove that Arrhenius's theory was correct. At that time, studies also confirmed that carbon dioxide levels were indeed rising year after year. In 1958, Charles D. Keeling, a scientist with the Scripps Institute of Oceanography in California, conducted the first reliable measurements of atmospheric carbon dioxide at Hawaii's Mauna Loa Observatory and found concentrations of the gas to be 315 ppm and growing.

Charles D. Keeling, a scientist with the Scripps Institute of Oceanography in California, receives the National Medal of Science from President George W. Bush on June 12, 2002. Keeling took the first reliable measurements of atmospheric carbon dioxide and confirmed that carbon dioxide levels were rising every year.

PRO LIFE SENATORS ARE ANTI-VAXXERS
Senate set to vote on bill barring Biden vaccine mandate, likely to pass with Manchin support

Tyler Olson
Mon, December 6, 2021, 7:01 AM·4 min read

The Senate is set to vote this week on a resolution to nullify President Biden's vaccine mandate for private companies, as Republicans and at least one Democrat push back on the administration's rule requiring vaccines or inconvenient testing rules for workers at large businesses.

All 50 Senate Republicans, led by Sen. Mike Braun, R-Ind., backed a challenge to the vaccine mandate last month under the Congressional Review Act (CRA). That law allows Congress to officially disapprove of an executive branch regulation via a resolution passed through each chamber.

Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., said last week he also supports the Braun resolution.

"I do not support any government vaccine mandate on private businesses," Manchin said Thursday after voting against an amendment to a government funding bill that would roll back public and private vaccine mandates. Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, and a handful of other Republicans forced that vote in exchange for expediting passage of the funding bill, but they got no Democrat support.

Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., speaks to reporters outside of his office on Capitol Hill on October 06, 2021 in Washington, DC. Manchin spoke on the debt limit and the infrastructure bill. (Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images) Kevin Dietsch/Getty ImagesMore

Republicans also think Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, D-Ariz., may vote for the Braun resolution. She declined to say whether she will vote for it in an interview with CNN last week. Sen. Steve Daines, R-Mont., is also pushing his Democrat counterpart from Montana, Sen. Jon Tester, to "join[] me in my efforts to block all of Biden's mandates."

The Braun resolution only needs a simple majority to pass the Senate, which means the bill will likely succeed. Rep. Fred Keller, R-Pa., is leading companion legislation in the House of Representatives, which his office said Friday has 206 cosponsors. But House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., said Friday it is unlikely the bill could come for a vote in the House with Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., in charge.

"The challenge is how you bring it up on the floor," he told reporters. "We're not in the majority. We don't control it."

Even if Republicans and potentially a handful of Democrats manage to force a House vote on the CRA resolution, such resolutions are subject to a presidential veto. And it's highly unlikely Biden would sign a bill canceling a rule he ordered his administration to make.

Sen. Mike Lee. R-Utah, said Thursday Republicans will continue pushing back against President Biden's vaccine mandates. Reuters

"It'll come up likely again next week with the Congressional Review Act resolution of disapproval," Lee said Thursday. "That's insufficient, of course. One of the defects with the CRA is that Congressional Review Act resolutions of disapproval are subject to presidential veto. So, the same president who abuses his executive power as this President has with these mandates, is certain to veto."

White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said last week that the White House believes Biden's vaccine mandate for private companies is on solid ground "based on a 50-year-old law that Congress put into place 50 years ago …. We're going to continue to press forward with these requirements."

Psaki also said the administration's mandate should be called "vax or test" as employees who do not get vaccinated can instead wear masks to work every day and submit to regular COVID-19 testing.

Lee said Republicans will continue to force the issue as Biden's vaccine mandates also face numerous challenges in federal courts. He said Republicans plan to bring up amendments defunding vaccine mandates in any future vote-a-rama, which Democrats will face this month if they move their reconciliation spending bill on schedule.

"It'll come back up in any future vote-a- Rama," Lee said. "It's gonna come up again … and it should."

Lee added that some Republicans may again threaten to block a government funding bill and cause a shutdown in February when the current continuing resolution runs out, "in the unfortunate event that the president persists in keeping this in effect, in threatening the American people this way."

But R Street Institute resident senior fellow for governance James Wallner said any votes on future legislative efforts against vaccine mandates are unlikely to have any actual effect.

"Whatever does happen either now or in the new year is going to be choreographed. It's going to be something that's set up in the Senate, almost always with unanimous consent between the two leaders," Wallner said. "I would imagine that you will see, for instance, votes in the Senate that create the illusion that something like a vaccine mandate ban could pass before you'll see an actual policy like that pass."

He added: "They'll set like 60-vote thresholds on them, they'll structure the process. If they can't block the vote entirely, then they'll create a process whereby… the price of getting your vote is that you lose."

Fox News' Brooke Singman and Jason Donner contributed to this report.

‘It’s who they are’: gun-fetish photo a symbol of Republican abasement under Trump



David Smith in Washington

THE GUARDIAN

Mon, December 6, 2021

It is a festive family photo with seven broad smiles and a Christmas tree. But one other detail sets it apart: each member of the Massie family is brandishing a machine gun or military-style rifle.

Related: Outcry after Colorado sheriff’s office tweets photo of Santa getting handgun permit

The photo was tweeted last week by Thomas Massie, a Republican congressman from Kentucky, with the caption: “Merry Christmas! PS: Santa, please bring ammo.”

A few days earlier, a school shooting in Michigan left four teenagers dead and seven people injured after a 15-year-old student allegedly went on a rampage.

Massie’s post earned widespread condemnation but was also seen as indicative of a performative, provocative brand of Republican politics, calculated to go viral, “own the libs” – that is, provoke outrage on the left – and contribute to the outsized influence of supporters of Donald Trump.

“Here his family’s got guns under a Christmas tree just after four kids were killed,” said Elaine Kamarck, a former official in the Clinton administration. “The guy’s abominable but that’s what’s happening to the Republican party. They’re flat-out nuts. There’s a piece of the Republican party that now supports violence.”

Recent examples include Paul Gosar, a congressman from Arizona, posting an animated video that depicted him killing Democratic congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and attacking Joe Biden. All but two Republicans in the House refused to vote to censure him.

Last month, Congresswoman Lauren Boebert made anti-Muslim remarks about Ilhan Omar. Boebert claimed she and a member of staff were taking lift at the US Capitol when she saw an alarmed police officer running toward them. She said she turned to her left and spotted the Minnesota Democrat standing beside them.

“Well, she doesn’t have a backpack. We should be fine,” Boebert recalled saying, to laughter. “And I said, ‘Oh, look, the jihad squad decided to show up for work today.’”

Omar urged House leaders to discipline Boebert. But Kevin McCarthy, the Republican leader, downplayed the incident and defended Boebert, insisting she had apologised both publicly and personally.

Omar responded on CNN on Sunday: “McCarthy is a liar and a coward. He doesn’t have the ability to condemn the kind of bigoted Islamophobia and anti-Muslim rhetoric that are being trafficked by a member of his conference.”

She added: “This is who they are. And we have to be able to stand up to them. And we have to push them to reckon with the fact that their party right now is normalizing anti-Muslim bigotry.”

Such incendiary antics are set to continue on Tuesday when Gosar is joined by Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, Louie Gohmert of Texas and Matt Gaetz of Florida at a press conference to decry the treatment of people arrested in connection with the 6 January attack on the US Capitol. Republican extremists have sought to portray the rioters as patriots.

Each tossing of a verbal grenade commands more airtime than moderate Republicans going about legislative business, ensuring that Trump loyalists continue to dominate national conversation. Taylor Greene, appearing on rightwing ideologue Steve Bannon’s podcast, boasted recently: “We are not the fringe. We are the base of the party.”

Kamarck, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington, pointed to the recent congressional testimony of Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen, who described how the platform’s model rewards those who shout the loudest.

“What we know from the whistleblower at Facebook is that the more dramatic, the more outrageous the picture, the more it grabs you,” Kamarck said. “The more it’s violent, the more clicks it’ll get. That’s what their algorithms are trained to do.”

Massie’s gun fetish post now has more than 80,000 likes on Twitter.

Kamarck said: “This guy wants to solidify a base, get campaign contributions from pro-gun people. This is simply unforgivable. There’s just no way that the majority of Americans agree with this kind of rabid, pro-gun stance, even people who are hunters and pro-gun people.”

With historical trends suggesting Republicans will win back the House next year, McCarthy appears determined to become speaker, meaning he cannot afford to alienate Trump or the most radical members of his caucus.

Kamarck added: “Kevin McCarthy is just the lowest of the low. He has decided that he has to placate a base which is very dangerous, which is violent and calls people to commit violent acts and we’ve never had anybody like that. Kevin McCarthy thinks if he can hold all these crazy people in his caucus, he can be speaker.”

The dangerous shift in Republican ranks was on display recently when Kyle Rittenhouse, who was 17 when he killed two people at an anti-racism protest in Kenosha, Wisconsin, argued that he acted in self-defence and was acquitted on all charges.

Rittenhouse was invited to Trump’s estate in Florida, elevated to heroic status by rightwing media and feted by Republicans. Taylor Greene even sponsored a bill to award him a congressional gold medal.

Related: Ilhan Omar: McCarthy a ‘coward’ for not condemning Islamophobic comments

Larry Jacobs, director of the Center for the Study of Politics and Governance at the University of Minnesota, said: “Within the Republican party, there’s a battle for leverage in terms of winning primaries and influencing primaries. Then you’ve got Donald Trump.

“He’s sitting there as a kind of monarch waiting for his subjects to come and pledge their fealty to him and one way to do it is to be the tough man to promise to take to the barricades to defend the 2020 election results, as Donald Trump sees it.”

He added: “We’re into the kind of outrage culture in the Republican party. There’s almost a competition as to who can be more outrageous, more vicious and threatening. It’s a race to the bottom.

“It’s a completely bonkers political party. This is one of the most dysfunctional and dangerous political parties in the democratic world. You’ve got Hungary, you’ve got Austria. There are places where you’ve had a surge on the right and I would say this is comparable. And maybe even a further extreme, if you look at what elected members of the US Congress are saying and doing.”

‘Santa, please bring ammo.’ KY rep. condemned for posing with guns in Christmas photo



Jeremy Chisenhall
Sun, December 5, 2021

Rep. Thomas Massie went viral on Twitter Saturday when he posted a photo of himself and family members holding firearms around the Christmas tree.

“Merry Christmas!” Massie wrote in the tweet. “Ps. Santa, please bring ammo.”

The Republican congressman’s tweet had nearly 50,000 retweets and nearly 65,000 likes Sunday morning. It drew criticism from both sides of the aisle and others who thought it was disrespectful to the victims of the Oxford High School mass shooting which happened in Michigan Tuesday.

Fellow Kentucky Congressman John Yarmuth reacted to the tweet by tweeting “I promise not everyone in Kentucky is an insensitive a*****e.”

“I’m old enough to remember Republicans screaming that it was insensitive to try to protect people from gun violence after a tragedy,” Yarmuth, a Democrat representing Kentucky’s third district, said. “Now they openly rub the murder of children in our faces like they scored a touchdown. Disgraceful.”

Massie, who represents Kentucky’s fourth district, has been a vocal advocate for the right to carry guns before.

Tom Elfers, the chairman of the Kenton County Democrats, said Massie’s photo was “morally reprehensible and makes a mockery of victims of gun violence across this country and here in the commonwealth.”

“The fact that a sitting U.S. congressman would post something so insensitive when the families of four teenagers are currently grieving the loss of their loved ones, only days after being gunned down in a public school in Michigan, is in poor taste and absolutely shameful,” Elfers said.

The Kenton County Democrats asked that Massie take the photo down and apologize.

Rep. Adam Kinzinger, a Republican who represents Illinois, didn’t like Massie’s photo either.

“I’m pro second amendment, but this isn’t supporting right to keep and bear arms, this is a gun fetish,” he tweeted.

Anthony Scaramucci, who briefly served as White House communications director under Trump, said he’d help anyone who’s running against Massie.

“If you are running against this a*****e please contact me I will give you dough,” Scaramucci tweeted.

Others replied to Massie’s tweet with photos of the victims in the Oxford, Mi., high school shooting which happened on Tuesday. The shooter killed four students and left others injured, according to multiple media reports.

The suspect in the shooting was a 15-year-old student.

British broadcaster Piers Morgan said Massie’s tweet left him uncommonly speechless.

“In the week of another horrific school shooting in America, a U.S. congressman posts this,” Morgan tweeted. “Words, unusually, fail me.”

After receiving backlash, Massie retweeted a tweet from conservative political commentator Candace Owens, defending Massie’s tweet.

“Can somebody explain to me how they worked out that the Michigan school shooting is (Massie’s) fault because he shared a picture of him and his family holding legal fire arms?” Owens asked in the tweet.

CAPITALI$T CRISIS WITH CHINESE CHARACTERISTICS

Trust Firms With Billions at Risk Brace for Evergrande Defaults



Bloomberg News
Mon, December 6, 2021, 2:14 AM·4 min read

(Bloomberg) -- Trust firms that have issued at least $5 billion in high-yield products linked to China Evergrande Group are bracing for a cascade of losses after the cash-strapped developer said it may no longer be able to meet its financial obligations.

At least three firms, including Citic Trust Co., China Foreign Economy and Trade Trust Co. and National Trust, notified clients over the past few days that they risk missing payments on Evergrande products due to the developer’s strained finances and will take legal action to protect investors, people familiar with the matter said, asking not to be named discussing private deliberations. At least five trust companies held emergency meetings over the weekend to discuss how to handle potential disputes with investors, the people said.


The meetings illustrate how a key group of onshore Evergrande creditors are responding to a Friday statement from the developer in which it formally acknowledged for the first time the need to restructure offshore debt. Should Evergrande be declared in formal default on its bonds, a wave of cross defaults could be triggered, giving trusts limited room to negotiate extensions with investors or bridge over payment lapses by dipping into their own pockets, said one of the people.

None of the trust firms were immediately available to comment. Evergrande didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Evergrande counts trust companies, which pool money from wealthy individual investors, as an important source of funding -- accounting for about 40% of borrowings at the end of 2019, when it last disclosed the figures. While the firms have been reducing their exposure to Evergrande and its peers since then, they continue to be massive lenders with at least $12 billion in developer-linked trust payments due just this month.

The risk of contagion into the $3 trillion trust industry will add pressure on policy makers to ease the crunch in the real estate sector, which has already triggered protests by home-buyers and investors in wealth management products sold by Evergrande and another embattled developer Kaisa Group Holdings Ltd.

Evergrande has done business with most of the 68 trust companies in China. It had $1.8 billion in trust loans maturing in the fourth quarter, with another $5 billion due over 2022 and 2023, according to Use Trust, a company that tracks the industry. The data only covers trusts sold to retail investors and not so-called single trusts, which are private placements and make up the bulk of Evergrande’s financing through the products.

If holders of an Evergrande bond declare it in formal default “cross defaults would be automatically triggered for the firm’s other debt instruments, including trusts,” said Daniel Fan, an analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence. “The company would face immense repayment pressure at once.”

Evergrande is planning to include all its offshore public bonds and private debt obligations in a restructuring that may rank among the nation’s biggest ever, people familiar with the matter said. It would include public notes sold by Evergrande and unit Scenery Journey Ltd., according to the people, who asked not to be identified discussing private information. Grace periods for interest payments on two notes from Scenery Journey end Monday and could mark the firm’s first default on public debts.

Chinese authorities, including the central bank and the securities regulator, sought to reassure investors shortly after Evergrande’s statement late on Friday, reiterating that broader risks to the economy can be contained.

Top of mind for regulators is social stability. Evergrande sparked protests earlier this year when it missed payments on 40 billion yuan ($6.2 billion) of wealth management products, sold to retail investors including its own employees. Some investors in its trust products are high-net-worth clients of commercial banks, which means the spillover could extend beyond the already embattled trust sector, people familiar with the matter said.

The government of Guangdong, the southern province where Evergrande is based, summoned founder Hui Ka Yan to express concern over the company’s Friday announcement and said it would dispatch a team to the developer to ensure “normal” operations.

“We expect more government intervention on the operations side to secure home delivery and prioritize supply chain payments and wealth management products,” said Iris Chen, a credit desk analyst, Nomura Securities Co.

Trust firms have this year defaulted on more than $10 billion of developer-linked products, which were till recently seen by wealthy Chinese and institutions as a place to park money. The firms have sought to cut exposure to the sector, reducing their outstanding loans 17% by June from a year earlier, according to the China Trustee Association.

The potential damage is already seeping out. Jiangsu Yanghe Brewery Joint-Stock Co. said late Friday that payment on an Evergrande-linked trust product that a unit bought from Citic Trust is now overdue. The liquor maker held 2.3 billion yuan in outstanding trust products as of early November, with about 648 million yuan linked to Evergrande, according to responses to investor questions on an inquiry platform run by the Shenzhen exchange.

ACTUALLY THE CUSTODIAN RUNS THE BUILDING

“I Don’t Think You Know Who I Am, Boy. I Run This Building.” | Steve Addazio Out At Colorado State After Failed Two Seasons, 2020 Racist Remark To Black Custodian

By Devon POV Mason
-December 4, 2021

Photo: Getty Images

Steve Addazio arrived at Colorado State fresh off of seven subpar seasons as the head coach in Chestnut Hill coaching the Boston College Eagles.

In his first season as leader of the Rams there was controversy. Team members spoke out against alleged racially insensitive remarks, unacceptable practices and incidents of breaking COVID-19 protocols. Following what the school called a thorough investigation, there were no findings substantiating racial harassment claims.

But there was enough smoke to create a firestorm, as Addazio and staff would be placed under the watchful eye of CSU President Joyce McConnell and athletics director Joe Parker.

In October 2020, Addazio reportedly made racially derogatory comments toward a custodian.

He also reportedly threatened the job of the custodian during an altercation. The custodian says he was talked down to and berated and called “boy.”

According to Yahoo.com:

“The custodian told the investigator that prior to the altercation he was cleaning a restroom in CSU’s football facility, and part of the process requires chemicals that need to “dwell” for a certain period of time. During that time, the custodian blocked the bathroom with a cart while cleaning other areas of the office.

Upon returning to the restroom and beginning to clean the sink area, the custodian alleged that Addazio entered and prepared to use the restroom. The custodian said he told Addazio it was closed, to which the coach continued and said, “I guess I’m going to use it.”

The custodian, who asked not to be identified for fear of retaliation when contacted by the Coloradoan, said he replied, “I guess my job doesn’t matter.”

He claims Addazio then turned and said, “What did you say to me, boy?” at which point the custodian again said, “I guess my job doesn’t matter.” The custodian told the investigator that Addazio then followed him out of the restroom and said, “I don’t think you know who I am, boy. I run this building.”

Now any white man with sense knows you can’t go aroung calling young Black men “boy.”

Addazio’s firing, while sort of surprising, is unfortunately part of a pattern that’s long been in place as pertains to Caucasian coaches mistreating Black players.

This situation is a bit different, as the target of Addazio’s racism was a custodian trying to make ends meet. Systemically, there’s no difference between the toxic environment Addazio was creating for his Black athletes and the way he addressed a university worker.

Urban Meyer Played A Huge Role In Addazio Being Hired By CSU

The good ol’ boy network has served Addazio well. His career head coaching record of 61-67 didn’t really have folks beating down his door to hire him after leaving BC.

Urban Meyer’s friendship and influence weighed heavily, as the Jacksonville Jaguars head coach was once a CSU assistant.

Meyer used that influence to help Addazio — who worked for him at Florida — land the job. Meyer is undoubtedly a great coach, but he has a borderline hideous record when it comes to making coaching hires. For that reason alone, the hire should have been more scrutinized.

Especially considering the fallout from Meyer’s decision to support Ohio State coach Zach Smith despite knowing that the guy was beating the heck out of his wife. That entire situation hit the fan in 2019, but Meyer escaped any real culpability.

In retrospect, Meyer hosed the Rams with the Addazio hiring.

Joe Parker Says Custodian Incident Didn’t Influence: Search For New Coach Begins Immediately

AD Parker says the firing of Addazio isn’t based on the October 2020 incident, but you have to believe that the 2020 allegations still played a role in his firing, although nothing came of them.

Addazio’s firing stems from losing 12 of his 16 games.

Addazio went 1-3 in a COVID-19 shortened 2020 season. After beginning the 2021 season 3-3 and pushing highly-ranked Iowa, the wheels came off as the Rams lost their remaining six games. Not what the administration anticipated when the school moved on from Mike Bobo in 2020 after he went 28-35.

After signing a six-year extension in April to play the Rocky Mountain Showdown against archrival Colorado until 2038, Colorado State is now looking for a leader to carry them into the next matchup beginning in 2023.

These games will be played on campus at Fort Collins and Boulder for the first time ever. The game has traditionally been played at the home of the Denver Broncos, Invesco Field at Mile High Stadium.

Now the search for a new coach begins immediately. Addazio was due to receive a $5M buyout but will receive just $3M as he was relieved of his duties. Don’t shed a tear for him. That’s a major come-up for Addazio and a small price for CSU to pay to get rid of a guy who stained the integrity of the institution with racism and disrespect.

Parker says he can control that part of it to an extent:

“That’s the one thing I can control, minimizing the financial impact of it. But it’s not a trivial number by any means and it will be stretched out over what the remainder of Addazio’s employment agreement was. So we’ve got three years to manage and mitigate it.”

Parker says they won’t necessarily be stuck on coaching experience during the search but rather someone who can lead, build and educate.

“I want to really approach this with an open mind and do our best to cast the net far and wide. I want someone who’s going to view themselves as a culture builder and a committed educator.”

The school needs a young, innovative coach who is comfortable dealing with people of color and isn’t stuck in the past.

ZIONIST CULURAL LOOTER GETS OFF SCOT-FREE

Hedge fund founder Steinhardt will return looted antiquities


NEW YORK (AP) — Billionaire hedge fund manager Michael Steinhardt has agreed to turn over $70 million worth of stolen antiquities and will be subject to an unprecedented lifetime ban on acquiring antiquities, the Manhattan district attorney announced Monday.

© Provided by The Canadian Press

In return, Steinhardt, a philanthropist who is chair of the Steinhardt Foundation for Jewish Life and co-founder of Birthright Israel, an organization that sends young Jews on free trips to Israel, will not face criminal charges for acquiring pieces that were illegally smuggled out of 11 countries including Egypt, Greece, Israel, Syria and Turkey, prosecutors said.

“For decades, Michael Steinhardt displayed a rapacious appetite for plundered artifacts without concern for the legality of his actions, the legitimacy of the pieces he bought and sold, or the grievous cultural damage he wrought across the globe,” District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. said in a news release. “His pursuit of ‘new’ additions to showcase and sell knew no geographic or moral boundaries, as reflected in the sprawling underworld of antiquities traffickers, crime bosses, money launderers, and tomb raiders he relied upon to expand his collection."

Steinhardt said in a prepared statement issued by his attorneys that he was "pleased that the District Attorney’s years-long investigation has concluded without any charges, and that items wrongfully taken by others will be returned to their native countries.”

Attorneys Andrew J. Levander and Theodore V. Wells Jr. said that many of the dealers from whom Steinhardt bought the items “made specific representations as to the dealers’ lawful title to the items, and to their alleged provenance.”

According to prosecutors, while complaining about a subpoena requesting documentation for an antiquity in May 2017, Steinhardt pointed to an small chest from Greece and said to an investigator, “You see this piece? There’s no provenance for it. If I see a piece and I like it, then I buy it.”

Many of the pieces Steinhardt acquired were removed from their countries of origin during times of war or civil unrest, prosecutors said.

Steinhardt, who turns 81 on Tuesday, founded the hedge fund Steinhardt Partners in 1967 and closed it in 1995. He came out of retirement in 2004 to head Wisdom Tree Investments.

New York University named its Steinhardt School of Culture, Education and Human Development after Steinhardt in recognition of two $10 million donations.

Manhattan prosecutors began investigating Steinhardt's collection of ancient artifacts in 2017 and raided his office and his Manhattan home in 2018, seizing several artworks that investigators said had been looted.

The items surrendered by Steinhardt include a stag’s head in the form of a ceremonial vessel for libations, dating from to 400 B.C., which prosecutors say appeared without provenance on the international market after rampant looting in Milas, Turkey. The stag's head is valued at $3.5 million, the district attorney said.

There was also the chest for human remains from the Greek Island of Crete, called a larnax and dating from around 1300 B.C., which prosecutors said was purchased from a known antiquities trafficker.

Karen Matthews, The Associated Press

Britain Refuses to Return Sacred Religious Tablets to Ethiopia, Best Offer Is a Loan

Nyam Daniel
Mon, December 6, 2021


The British seized the plaques after defeating Emperor Tewodros II at the Battle of Maqdala in 1868, and they are now locked away in a vault in a British museum. Ethiopia has asked for the tabots to be returned, but the most the museum is willing to do is let Ethiopia borrow them for an extended time.

Ethiopian priests carrying some covered tabots on their heads during Timkat epiphany festival on January 19, 2017 in Lalibela, Ethiopia. (Photo by Eric Lafforgue/Art in All of Us/Corbis via Getty Images)

The museum trustees said that law prohibits them from returning the items, but supporters argue there is a loophole that would allow them to do so.

“We believe that today the British Museum has a unique opportunity to build a lasting and meaningful bridge of friendship between Britain and Ethiopia by handing the tabots back to the Ethiopian Orthodox Church,” a group of supporters wrote in a letter to the museum trustees.

The 11 tabots, or altar tablets, are of huge spiritual significance. The Ethiopian Orthodox Church believes the tabots are the dwelling place of God on Earth or the Ark of Covenant. Priests use the tabots to sanctify and consecrate church buildings. By tradition, they are supposed to be kept in a private place, away from public view. Only priests are allowed to see them.

Eight of the tabots at the British Museum were acquired during the Battle of Maqdala. British soldiers reportedly took the tabots, jewelry and other precious items after Tewodros committed suicide instead of surrendering to British soldiers. More than 500 soldiers were killed in the battle. Some of the other items were returned to Ethiopia last month, but they are still negotiating the return of the tabots.

Supporters argue that since the tabots cannot and have not been exhibited, they should be returned to Ethiopia. Images of the tabots are not even made available on the museum’s website.

The museum argued that the British Museum Act of 1963 blocks them from permanently returning the items. Supporters, however, said the law allows the disposal of objects “unfit to be retained as long as they can be disposed “without detriment to the interests of students,” and the tabots have “no apparent use or relevance to the museum.”

However, the museum is still reluctant to release the items.

“These documents need to be reviewed and addressed with full consideration, and more time is required before this can be looked at by trustees,” The British Museum said in a recent statement to the Guardian.

Ethiopia announced the retrieval of a ceremonial crown, an imperial shield, a set of silver-embossed horn drinking cups, a handwritten prayer book, crosses and a necklace from the 1868 battle last week. Some other European countries have also returned items to countries they have looted.

Germany has returned a stone cross back to Namibia as restitution for its genocide of the Herero and Nama peoples in the early 1900s. German officials have also issued guidelines to public museums on the return of other colonial-era objects. French President Emmanuel Macron recently approved a plan to return some museum objects to France’s former colonies in Africa.

Elon Musk 'is making the rules' in space with rapid expansion of SpaceX's Starlink internet service, agency boss says

Kate Duffy
Mon, December 6, 2021


SpaceX CEO Elon Musk.Pool


Elon Musk is "making the rules" in space, European Space Agency boss told the Financial Times.


The ESA boss urged European countries to stop enabling Musk to dominate the space industry.


Governments in Europe should give equal opportunities to internet providers, he told the FT.

Rapid expansion of SpaceX's Starlink satellite internet service is letting CEO Elon Musk make the rules in the sector, the head of the European Space Agency said.

"You have one person owning half of the active satellites in the world. That's quite amazing. De facto, he is making the rules," Josef Aschbacher, the ESA's director-general, told the Financial Times Sunday. The rest of the world, including Europe, was not responding quick enough, he added.

SpaceX's Starlink, which beams internet from satellites in orbit to user terminals on Earth, now has more than 1,750 working satellites in orbit and serves around 140,000 users in 20 countries, according to a presentation filed by the company to the Federal Communications Commission dated November 10.

There are currently more than 4,000 active satellites in orbit, according to data from CelesTrak, cited in The Independent.

Aschbacher told the FT that the absence of government co-ordination and European countries' support for Starlink's expansion risked preventing European companies from competing in the commercial space industry and launching satellites into low earth orbit, where Starlink dominates.

Germany has applied to the International Telecommunications Union to request permission for Musk's Starlink to launch around 40,000 satellites, the FT reported. The satellite internet service was also given the green light by US regulators to launch more than 30,000 satellites, the paper added.

"Space will be much more restrictive [in terms of] frequencies and orbital slots," Aschbacher told the FT. He said that governments in Europe should support European internet providers by giving them equal opportunities in the market, the paper reported.

He told the FT that the rest of the world "is just not responding quick enough," adding that other competitors and regulators were struggling to catch up with Starlink due to its rapid expansion.

Aschbacher urged European governments to stop enabling Musk to dominate the space industry, the FT reported.

SpaceX didn't immediately respond to a request for comment from Insider made outside of operating hours.

Starlink wants to deploy 200,000 user terminals in India by December 2022, as well as launch in the Philippines, Bloomberg reported.