Crypto Rich Flock To Puerto Rico, World's New Luxury Tax Haven Paradise

BY TYLER DURDEN
THURSDAY, DEC 16, 2021 - 


President Joe Biden says the 1980s Reagan era trickle-down economics doesn't work as he wants to roll back tax cuts for the rich. The impending clampdown has spooked top affluent investors, including crypto investors, who are descending to Puerto Rico to dodge tax hikes.

Puerto Rico passed two important tax bills in 2012 that has transformed the island into a cryptocurrency tax haven paradise. Under Act 22 of its local tax code, the Caribbean island and unincorporated U.S. territory offers full exemption from all local taxes on passive income to new residents. Act 20, provides a 4% corporate tax rate and exemptions on dividends. This is a much better deal than the U.S., where investors pay 20% in long-term capital games and 37% in short-term gains.



The explosion of remote work, expansion of crypto markets, and tax haven have made the Caribbean island attractive for crypto investors.

That was the case for Anthony Emtman, who left Los Angeles behind and bought a condo at the resort in March. The chief executive officer of Ikigai Asset Management is now a part of a burgeoning crypto community along Puerto Rico's north shore, where the tropical weather is just a bonus.

Emtman and his crypto peers take a page out of hedge funds' books and seek residence on the island to reap huge tax savings. - Bloomberg

The rise in crypto markets has made it an easy target for the Biden administration and Democrats to tax the living hell out of the industry. Smart money understands what's coming and wants no parts of it.

Crypto funds Pantera Capital and Redwood City Ventures have moved to the tropical island to escape U.S. taxes. Facebook product manager-turned-whistleblower Frances Haugen recently disclosed that she moved to Puerto Rico to be with her crypto buddies.

Now, "it's not just, 'Move to Puerto Rico to save tax,'" said Giovanni Mendez, a corporate tax attorney. "It's, 'Move to Puerto Rico because everybody is there.'"

Puerto Rico's tax laws were put in place to help its struggling economy a decade ago. Hedge funds have been shifting operations from the Northeast U.S. to the island for at least half a decade or more.

So far this year, Puerto Rico has received more than 1,200 applications — a record — through its Individual Investors Act, which exempts new residents from paying taxes on capital gains, according to the island's Department of Economic Development and Commerce. The number of U.S. mainlanders seeking Puerto Rico's tax breaks has tripled this year.

Another 274 corporations, LLCs, partnerships and other entities were approved for the Exports Services Act, which provides a 4% corporate tax rate and a 100% exemption on dividends. Both fall under Puerto Rico's Act 60, a group of tax breaks that were packaged together in 2019 to attract investment not just from crypto, but finance, tech and other industries. -Bloomberg

Michael Terpin, the founder of BitAngels, moved to the island from Las Vegas in 2016. He's known as the "messiah" for convincing people to move to the island.

Crypto investors are interested in several areas on the island: Bahia, which resides 26 miles east of San Juan, and the Ritz-Carlton Dorado Beach resort.

The wave of new newcomers has lifted property markets in the country. Francisco Diaz Fournier, the founding partner of Luxury Collection Real Estate, said some properties are now selling for more than $20 million.

"Right now we are selling a home in Dorado Beach for $27 million, and another one is going for $29 million," Fournier said.

Blanca Lopez, the founder of Gramercy Real Estate Group, said Bahia prices per square foot have doubled.

"We are seeing prices north of $3,000 per square foot," Lopez said. She said homes in Condado are between $1,400 to $1,500 per square foot, an approximately 35% increase from a year ago.

Meanwhile, inventory is running low for high-end homes.


"We don't have room, at least not in Dorado, Bahia or Condado," said Fournier. "The market is spreading out, so we're seeing spillovers in areas of San Juan where people wouldn't look before."

So far, the tax incentives appear to be working. Crypto investors flock to the island to dodge Biden's proposed tax increases. However, the IRS has a message for net-worth individuals, corporations, and cryptocurrency traders moving to the island: 'We're waiting for you...'

The bad news is the push for statehood would kill its tax system. In the meantime, wealthy crypto investors don't care and seek tax shelter on the tropical island.

Handgun ownership, history of domestic abuse increases risk of committing other violent crimes

DECEMBER 23, 2021
by John Anderer

DAVIS, Calif. — New research finds handgun owners with a prior charge of intimate partner violence (IPV) on their record are more likely to commit further violent crimes such as murder, rape, and robbery

These new findings are based data from the University of California, Davis’ Violence Prevention Research Program (VPRP).

“Compared to handgun purchasers who had no criminal history at the time of purchase, those with an IPV criminal history had significantly increased risk of subsequent arrest for any violent and IPV crimes,” says first study author Liz Tomsich, a researcher at VPRP, in a university release. “A history of both IPV and non-IPV, compared to no criminal history, demonstrated the strongest association with post-purchase arrest.”

According to the CDC, roughly 33 percent of U.S. women and 28 percent of men have experienced physical violence at the hands of a current or former partner. Moreover, one in four women and close to one in seven men are the victims of severe physical intimate partner violence. When the offender has access to a gun, the likelihood of the IPV turning fatal increase five-fold.
Guns continue to reach the hands of people with criminal histories

The team studied a total of 76,311 adults in California who purchased a handgun in 2001, tracking them up until 2013. All these individuals also had at least one arrest, charge, or conviction for assault, battery, intimate partner rape, or violating a domestic violence restraining order before buying their gun in 2001.

Researchers note that a decent portion of these people shouldn’t have been able to buy a gun in the first place, considering their prior arrests.

“There are implications on improving the background check process,” Tomsich adds. “We found 27 of the 53 purchasers with prepurchase convictions entered the cohort despite active or lifetime prohibitions related to their offenses.”

The study also indicates that intimate partner violence (IPV) perpetrators are more likely to commit more IPV crimes than other violent crime offenders (such as a robbery). In total, 12 percent of those with a history of IPV went on to commit another violent crime. Study authors add, however, that such risk factors tend to multiply when applied on a national scale.

“This could still be a significant problem. Once scaled to the population of the United States, violent crime perpetrated by those with a history of IPV may impact a substantial number of people,” Tomsich concludes.

The study is published in the Journal of Interpersonal Violence.

An Atomic Catch 22: Climate Change and the Decline of America's Nuclear Fleet

BY ERIC SCHEUCH |MAY 5, 2020

The nuclear power plant at Three Mile Island in 1979. The plant is now shuttered. Photo: EPA

Just outside of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, lies the shuttered hulk of America’s most infamous nuclear power plant: Three Mile Island. The site of a commercial nuclear accident in 1979, the worst of its kind in American history and an event which helped spark much of the modern anti-nuclear movement, Three Mile Island ceased operations in 2019. The closure came from a mixture of political opposition and simple economics. Nuclear energy in the United States has become deeply unprofitable in the last decade, driven by a combination of aging infrastructure and other electricity sources like renewables and natural gas simply becoming cheaper to build and operate. While some in the environmental community may cheer nuclear’s decline, others are concerned. Love it or hate it, nuclear plays a unique role in the American electric sector, one for which we currently have no market-ready replacement, and its decline will likely make other environmental issues, particularly climate change, harder to solve.

Eric Scheuch is a junior in Columbia College, studying political science and sustainable development. He originally hails from the mountains of New Hampshire.

Since the first American commercial nuclear power plant opened in Pennsylvania in 1958, nuclear energy has played a key role in the U.S. energy sector. Currently providing approximately 19 percent of the country’s electricity generation, nuclear energy is America’s leading zero-carbon energy source, generating more electricity than all renewable sources combined in 2018. Nuclear energy is also an important source of what is known as “baseload power,” or the minimum amount of electricity that is needed by the grid at any given time. Since reactors are very hard to shift up and down in their output and to turn on and off, they make an ideal source of baseload power for the grid — nuclear reactors can, and in some ways must, run at the same level regardless of outside factors. The difficulty with replacing nuclear energy is that we lack a strong, cost-competitive, alternative source of zero-carbon baseload energy. We have cost-competitive sources of zero-carbon energy, like wind and solar, but they tend to be intermittent. We have cost-competitive sources of baseload power like natural gas, but they come with higher carbon emissions than nuclear. Illustrating the critical role of non-intermittent baseload sources to a reliable grid, a recent paper found that having just five percent of electricity sources stay constant, as nuclear does, will halve electricity prices compared to relying fully on wind and solar, even when the latter is paired with battery storage.

We are in an election year. Along with everything else that is at stake, this election may very well be the election that determines if the American nuclear industry lives or dies. The current administration has repeatedly expressed support for the nuclear industry, increasing spending on reactor research and development and attempting to change rules in the Department of Energy to return nuclear energy to market parity. Joe Biden, the presumed Democratic nominee, also supports increased reactor research and development, but is silent on the future of current American reactors.

Such silence is understandable. Many Americans have lived through multiple nuclear accidents, including Chernobyl in 1986, Fukushima in 2011, and, of course, Three Mile Island. In addition to the potential for such large-scale operation accidents, there is the environmental cost of uranium mining and the dangerous state of American nuclear waste storage. The fact remains, however, that given nuclear’s role as a reliable source of zero-carbon baseload power, the decline of American nuclear power may not be something we can afford just yet. The Deep Decarbonization Pathways Project (DDPP), a global climate change policy research consortium, has selected decarbonizing electricity as one of the three main pillars necessary to fight climate change. In order to do so, the DDPP anticipates that the amount of energy generated from nuclear sources will have to grow, not shrink—a daunting prospect, given that existing American reactors are all projected to retire by the 2050s and new reactor construction is prohibitively expensive.

Confronted with the conundrum of no longer profitable nuclear plants, ambitious environmental goals, and the grid’s inherent need for reliable baseload power, governments have implemented many differing policies. Some, like Vermont, have simply allowed their nuclear plants to close, although carbon emissions rose after the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant shut down and was replaced by natural gas plants as a source of baseload power. Others, like New York and Illinois, have offered “zero-emissions credits” as a subsidy to keep their nuclear plants open, in recognition of nuclear’s contributions to both states’ climate goals. At the federal level, policies in support of nuclear energy have focused on subsidies for new reactor construction and research and development into new types of nuclear technology, such as smaller and more cost-effective reactors. It is unclear, however, how effective current federal policy is, given that companies have been bankrupted by the cost of building new reactors and new reactor technology may not be deployable in time to make a meaningful impact on the climate crisis.

If research from the DDPP the National Resources Defense Council, and the U.N. is correct, nuclear power has a critical role to play to decarbonizing electricity generation in the fight against climate change. If nuclear power is to have a viable future in the U.S., however, it will have to contend with several factors. First and foremost is the lack of profitability of current reactors, for which direct subsidies are likely the most effective remedy, since they can be implemented immediately and operate within existing physical and market infrastructure. The second critical issue is the dismal state of American nuclear storage, which was highlighted in 2017, when an explosion caused by kitty litter shut down the country’s largest nuclear storage facility. For an idea as to what a successful nuclear-inclusive future might look like, one need look no further than France, which generates over 70 percent of its energy from nuclear plants and recycles nuclear fuel. This recycling practice was banned by the U.S. over security concerns in 1977, but is practiced at some level in Britain, Japan, India, and Russia. One could easily see some of the millions of dollars the U.S. currently directs into subsidizing new light-water reactor construction, which increasingly looks like a losing proposition, redirected into funding a fuel recycling pilot project. Some combination of these policies could serve as a bridge solution until new reactor technology is market-deployable.

However the United States chooses to deal with the numerous challenges around nuclear power, one thing is clear: the challenge of fighting climate change is far greater, and letting the nuclear industry continue its decline will make meeting that challenge much harder.

LIKE AMAZON, LACKING SAFETY TRAINING 

QVC distribution center fire in North Carolina leaves one employee missing
By Adam Schrader
\
Firefighters with the Rocky Mount Fire Department are seen battling the blaze at a QVC distribution center in North Carolina. 

Photo courtesy Rocky Mount Fire Department/Facebook

Dec. 19 (UPI) -- A massive five-alarm fire that broke out at one of the home shopping television channel QVC's distribution centers left at least one employee reported missing.

First responders were still searching for Kevon Ricks, 21, who went missing after the blaze broke out at the 1.2 million-square-foot facility in Rocky Mount, N.C., around 2:02 a.m. Saturday, according to the Edgecombe County Sheriff's Office.

His aunt Stephanie Randolph wrote in a Facebook post that the family hadn't seen or heard from him since 1:15 a.m. when he was on break.

Ricks had worked at QVC for about three weeks and his possessions including his phone and wallet were still in his car, Randolph told WRAL.

Officials are still working to determine the cause of the fire, and no injuries or deaths have been reported.

"Still no word for all who was wondering about him. So unlike him trust me," Randolph posted Saturday night.

The sheriff's office said that the fire happened inside one of the main warehouses at the site, and it took more than 33 agencies to help contain the blaze.

The fire is being investigated by North Carolina's State Bureau of Investigation, the North Carolina Office of State Fire Marshal, and the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

"There is one individual who is unaccounted for at this time. If you have any information on the fire, or if you have any concerns of employees of QVC that you have not had contact with, then contact the Edgecombe County Sheriff's Office," the agency urged on Facebook.

The Rocky Mount Area Chamber of Commerce said in a statement on Facebook that the fire could affect as many as 2,500 families in the area.

"Our thoughts and prayers are with the employees of QVC and our brave first responders," the chamber posted.

QVC has four other distribution centers in Suffolk, Va.; Lancaster, Pa.; Florence, S.C.; and Ontario, Calif.

Most endangered cat in Americas found living on outskirts of Chilean capital

Elusive Andean cat, thought to exist only in extremely remote rocky outcrops, caught on camera close to Santiago city 

'Incredible': conservationist captures film of rare Andean cat – 

video by Liam Miller/Pudu Media

The age of extinction 
Liam Miller in Santiago
Fri 10 Dec 2021 

Teetering over an arid cliff face above the sprawling Chilean capital, Bernardo Segura reviews the footage from the camera trap and lets out a yell of excitement as the images reveal a flickering striped tail.

On the screen displaying the conservationist’s latest video capture is an Andean cat – the most endangered feline in the Americas. Looking a little like a miniature snow leopard, the 4kg (9lb) male enters the frame and begins spray-marking the shrubs at the base of the cliff, before stealing away through sharp rocks with his banded brown and grey tail aloft.

Segura is excited for many reasons. With a shrinking population of fewer than 1,400 mature Andean cats left, any sighting is good. But this one heralds a signal of hope in a different way for the species and the conservationists battling against the cats’ extinction because it confirms a new population living close to humans – on the very edge of Santiago, a city of eight million people.

“We have never found a population so close to a large city before,” says Segura. “This changes what we know about Andean cats and may offer some solutions to how to protect this and other species in the wider mountain ecosystem, which is highly under-studied. Finding one of the most elusive animals in the world just outside Santiago strikingly illustrates this.

Until now, Andean cats were believed to live only in extremely remote rocky terrain far from cities. But after seeing high numbers of the cats’ favourite prey – rodents from the chinchilla family called mountain vizcachas – around the popular Parque Mahuida nature reserve on the edge of Santiago, Segura trusted a hunch and in February placed camera traps on a terraced precipice above the neighbourhood of La Reina, about 2.5km, or 1.5 miles, from Santiago. In July, he had his first images of an Andean cat. Since then, his camera has taken about 40 more.

Bernardo Segura in the Parque Mahuida nature reserve on the edge of Santiago city. Photograph: Liam Miller/The Guardian

“So far, we have identified at least three individual adults passing continually, suggesting this is the core of their territory and not just a chance encounter,” says Segura, who volunteers for the non-profit organisation Andean Cat Alliance (AGA), a coalition of conservationists who coordinate their efforts across Chile, Argentina, Peru and Bolivia.

Trips to the field are usually complicated … but I can see this site from my own apartment with a long lens

Bernardo Segura, conservationist

“For several of the cats to be living so close to a huge city will open many doors for research,” he adds. “Trips to the field are usually complicated, far away and difficult to reach, but I can see this site from my own apartment with a long lens.

“We can come here every week with a short hike, and build a better picture of their behaviour and distribution. We have excellent internet coverage, so can even do real-time monitoring with remote cameras, which in isolated areas is practically impossible.”

Having easy access to a population will help the AGA tackle key issues in the conservation of Andean cats, including the collection of scat, or faeces, for genetic analysis. This is hard to find in their other known habitats – huge territories that span the higher Andean peaks, and on the northern part of the Patagonian steppe in Argentina. Previous research had identified five highly fragmented populations between the four countries, stretching north to south between Peru and Argentina.

A pair of Andean mountain cats, possibly a mother and cub, captured by the Andean Cat Alliance. There are thought to be five fragmented populations stretching north to south between Peru and Argentina. 

Photograph: Alianza Gato Andino

“A primary aim is to work out if these Andean cat populations are linked or isolated,” says AGA’s general coordinator, Dr Rocío Palacios, a specialist in felines for the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN).

“It’s important to know what we are working to conserve,” she adds. “Because information has only been gathered on Andean cats for the last 20 years, there are a lot of basic aspects that still need to be understood. A genetic understanding of the species can identify if there are isolated populations, which often require enhanced protections.”


Lights, dogs, action! Patagonia project to keep pumas from preying on sheep

Some of the greatest threats to the cats come from extractive industries around the Andes, such as mining, quarrying and fracking, which destroy their habitat and consume massive amounts of water, draining the animals’ sources dry. Segura published a paper in May on another discovery of Andean cats, in Valparaíso, a mountainous coastal region north of Santiago city. In the paper he warns of the threat posed by plans for a large-scale open pit mine called the Vizcachitas mining project, which is being developed in the area.

Nicolás Lagos, AGA’s Chile coordinator, says: “The need for the conservation of these newly discovered populations of the Andean cat around central Chile should be a priority. There are now three mega-mining projects threatening them, so if we don’t move fast, we’ll be witnessing their local extinction.”

Another threat is hunting by farmers indiscriminately eliminating any predators near livestock, while the IUCN also lists the climate crisis as a serious threat to Andean cats – Chile is enduring a decade-long drought, with annual rainfall deficits of 30-70% when modelled against the last 1,000 years.

A screen grab from Segura’s camera trap shows the Andean cat camouflaged against the rocks. Photograph: Bernardo Segura

The Andean cat has also suffered from its low profile, even among experts, says Palacios. “The Andean cat has been a very unknown species for a long time. A lot of our work has focused on pushing for them to be more considered in the global conservation agenda.

“It was a species that was disappearing through our fingers,” she adds. “Even people who know a lot about cats didn’t know about them, but if feels like that is changing.”

Find more age of extinction coverage here, and follow biodiversity reporters Phoebe Weston and Patrick Greenfield on Twitter for all the latest news and features

Progressive Gabriel Boric elected president of Chile, vows unity and democracy

By UPI Staff

President-elect Gabriel Boric speaks to supporters in Santiago, Chile, on Sunday. 

Photo by Elvis Gonzalez/EPA-EFE

Dec. 20 (UPI) -- Chile has elected its youngest president in modern history -- a 35-year-old former student activist who has promised to lead a progressive charge away from decades of rule by dictator Augusto Pinochet and conservative Sebastian Pinera.

Gabriel Boric was declared the winner of the presidential runoff election on Sunday, winning about 56% of the vote over far-right lawmaker Jose Antonio Kast. He will be sworn in on March 11.

Kast won the first round of voting last month by 2 percentage points.

Boric has vowed to unite Chile, tackle poverty and inequality and fight elitism.

"I know that the future of our country will be at stake next year," he said according to The Guardian.

"I will be a president who will take care of democracy and not jeopardize it, a president who listens more than he speaks, who seeks unity, who looks after people's daily needs, and who fights hard against the privileges of the few and who works every day for Chilean families."

Boric also pledged to fight the climate crisis and block a proposed mining project in the world's largest copper-producing nation. He also called for an end to Chile's private pension system.

Boric will succeed Pinera, who in 2018 became the first conservative leader to be elected since the controversial Pinochet left office in 1990.

Leftist millennial vows to remake Chile after historic win

By PATRICIA LUNA and JOSHUA GOODMAN

1 of 19

Chile's President elect Gabriel Boric, of the "I approve Dignity" coalition, celebrates his victory in the presidential run-off election in Santiago, Chile, Sunday, Dec. 19, 2021.

 (AP Photo/Luis Hidalgo)


SANTIAGO, Chile (AP) — Former leftist student leader Gabriel Boric will be under quick pressure from his youthful supporters to fulfill his promises to remake Chile after the millennial politician scored a historic victory in the country’s presidential runoff election.

Boric spent months traversing Chile, vowing to bring a youth-led inclusive government to attack nagging poverty and inequality that he said are the unacceptable underbelly of a free market model imposed decades ago by the dictatorship of Gen. Augusto Pinochet.

The bold promise paid off. With 56% of the votes, Boric on Sunday handily defeated his opponent, far right lawmaker José Antonio Kast, and at age 35 was elected Chile’s youngest modern president.

Amid a crush of supporters in downtown Santiago, Boric vaulted atop a metal barricade to reach the stage where he used the indigenous Mapuche language to initiate a victory speech to thousands of mostly young supporters.

“We are a generation that emerged in public life demanding our rights be respected as rights and not treated like consumer goods or a business,” Boric said. “We know there continues to be justice for the rich, and justice for the poor, and we no longer will permit that the poor keep paying the price of Chile’s inequality.”

In his speech, the bearded, bespectacled president-elect highlighted the progressive positions that launched his improbable campaign, including a promise to fight climate change by blocking a proposed mining project in the world’s largest copper producing nation.

He also called for an end to Chile’s private pension system — the hallmark of the neoliberal economic model imposed by Pinochet.

It’s an ambitious agenda made more challenging by a gridlocked congress and ideological divisions recalling the ghosts of Chile’s past that came to the fore during the bruising campaign.

Kast, who has a history of defending Chile’s past military dictatorship, finished ahead of Boric by two percentage points in the first round of voting last month. But his attempt to portray his rival as a puppet of his Communist Party allies who would upend Latin America’s most stable, advanced economy fell flat in the head-to-head runoff

Still, in a model of democratic civility that broke from the polarizing rhetoric of the campaign, Kast immediately conceded defeat, tweeting a photo of himself on the phone congratulating his opponent on his “grand triumph.” He then later traveled personally to Boric’s campaign headquarters to meet with his rival.

And outgoing President Sebastian Pinera, a conservative billionaire, held a video conference with Boric to offer his government’s full support during the three-month transition. That will follow a runoff that saw 1.2 million more Chileans cast ballots than in the first round and raise turnout to nearly 56%, the highest since voting stopped being mandatory in 2012.

“It’s impossible not to be impressed by the historic turnout, the willingness of Kast to concede and congratulate his opponent even before final results were in, and the generous words of President Pinera,” said Cynthia Arnson, head of the Latin America program at the Wilson Center in Washington. “Chilean democracy won today, for sure.”

In Santiago’s subway, where a fare hike in 2019 triggered a wave of nationwide protests that exposed the shortcomings of Chile’s free market model, young supporters of Boric waved flags emblazoned with the candidate’s name while jumping and shouting as they headed downtown for his victory speech.

“This is a historic day,” said Boris Soto, a teacher. “We’ve defeated not only fascism, and the right wing, but also fear.”

Boric will become Chile’s youngest modern president when he takes office in March and only the second millennial to lead in Latin America, after El Salvador’s Nayib Bukele. Only one other head of state, Giacomo Simoncini of the city-state San Marino in Europe, is younger.

The new government is likely to be closely watched throughout Latin America, where Chile has long been a harbinger of regional trends.

It was the first country in Latin America to break with U.S. dominance during the Cold War and pursue socialism with the election of Salvador Allende in 1970. It then reversed course a few years later when Pinochet’s coup ushered in a period of right-wing military rule that quickly launched a free market experiment throughout the region.

Boric’s goal is to introduce a European-style social democracy that would expand economic and political rights to attack nagging inequality without veering toward the authoritarianism embraced by so much of the left in Latin America, from Cuba to Venezuela. It’s a task made more urgent by the coronavirus pandemic, which sped up the reversal of a decade of economic gains.

Boric was able to prevail by expanding beyond his base in the capital, Santiago, and attracting voters in rural areas. For example, in the northern region of Antofagasta, where he finished third in the first round of voting, he trounced Kast by almost 20 points.

Also key to his victory were Chilean women, a key voting bloc who feared that a Kast victory would roll back years of steady gains. Kast, 55, a devout Roman Catholic and father of nine, has a long record of attacking Chile’s LGBTQ community and advocating more restrictive abortion laws.

Boric, in his victory speech, promised that Chile’s women will be “protagonists” in a government that seeks to “leave behind once and for all the patriarchal inheritance of our society.”

___

Joshua Goodman reported from Miami.

Gabriel Boric vows to ‘fight privileges of the few’ as Chile’s premier

Leftist former student has vowed to unite country and tackle poverty and inequality



01:40 Leftwing millennial to be Chile's new president – video


John Bartlett in Santiago and Sam Jones
Mon 20 Dec 2021

Gabriel Boric has vowed to unite Chile, fight “the privileges of the few” and tackle poverty and inequality after winning a decisive victory over his far-right opponent to become the South American country’s youngest premier.

The 35-year-old leftist former student leader won 56% of the vote in Sunday’s second-round presidential election, cruising past his ultra-conservative opponent, José Antonio Kast, who took 44.2%.

The president-elect, who will be sworn in on 11 March, said the time had come for a radical overhaul of Chilean society and its economy.

“Men and women of Chile, I accept this mandate humbly and with a tremendous sense of responsibility because we are standing on the shoulders of giants,” he said in front of a vast crowd packed into a Santiago boulevard.

“I know that the future of our country will be at stake next year. That is why I want to promise you that I will be a president who will take care of democracy and not jeopardise it, a president who listens more than he speaks, who seeks unity, who looks after people’s daily needs, and who fights hard against the privileges of the few and who works every day for Chilean families.”

Boric said his generation wanted to have its rights respected and not be treated “like consumer goods or a business”, adding the country would no longer allow Chile’s poor to “keep paying the price” of inequality.

He added: “The times ahead will not be easy … Only with social cohesion, re-finding ourselves and sharing common ground will we be able to advance towards truly sustainable development – which reaches every Chilean.”

The new premier said he would be “the president of all Chileans … and serve everyone”.

Boric also highlighted the progressive positions that launched his improbable campaign, including a promise to fight the climate crisis by blocking a proposed mining project in what is the world’s largest copper-producing nation.

He also called for an end to Chile’s private pension system – the hallmark of the neoliberal economic model imposed by Gen Augusto Pinochet.

Boric thanked each candidate in turn – including Kast – and reinforced his commitment to Chile’s constitutional process, a key consideration for many as the country embarks upon this latest chapter in a turbulent period of transition.

The new administration is likely to be closely watched throughout Latin America, where Chile has long been a harbinger of regional trends.

It was the first country in South or Central America to break with US dominance during the cold war and pursue socialism with the election of Salvador Allende in 1970. It then reversed course three years later when Pinochet’s coup ushered in a period of rightwing military rule that quickly launched a free market experiment throughout the region.

Kast won the first round vote on 21 November by two percentage points, but Boric was able to prevail on Sunday by expanding beyond his base in Santiago and attracting voters in rural areas. In the northern region of Antofagasta, where he finished third in the first round of voting, Boric trounced Kast by almost 20 points.

Ghosts and old divisions returned to haunt the bitterly fought campaign, during which Kast – who has a history of defending the military dictatorship – sought unsuccessfully to caricature his rival as a puppet of his Communist party allies who would upend Latin America’s most stable, advanced economy.

However, Kast proved unexpectedly magnanimous in defeat. After tweeting a photo of himself congratulating his opponent on his “grand triumph”, he visited Boric’s campaign headquarters to see the new president. Kast, a father of nine, also said: “Gabriel Boric can count on us.”

Chile’s outgoing president, the conservative billionaire Sebastián Piñera, held a video conference with Boric to offer his government’s full support during the three-month transition.

In Santiago’s subway, where a fare rise in 2019 triggered a wave of nationwide protests that exposed the shortcomings of Chile’s free market model, young supporters of Boric waved flags emblazoned with the candidate’s name while jumping and shouting as they headed downtown for his victory speech.

“This is a historic day,” said Boris Soto, a teacher. “We’ve defeated not only fascism, and the right wing, but also fear.”

On a sweltering day in Chile, voting was marred by public transport difficulties across the country, although the government claimed it had done everything in its power to guarantee voters could reach polling stations.

Turnout for the vote – in which 1.2 million more people cast their ballots than in the first round – was nearly 56%, the highest level since voting ceased to be mandatory nine years ago.

Boric will become Chile’s youngest modern president when he takes office, and only the second millennial to lead in Latin America, after El Salvador’s Nayib Bukele. Only one other head of state, Giacomo Simoncini of the city-state San Marino in Europe, is younger.

“It’s impossible not to be impressed by the historic turnout, the willingness of Kast to concede and congratulate his opponent even before final results were in, and the generous words of President Piñera,” said Cynthia Arnson, the head of the Latin America programme at the Wilson Center in Washington.

“Chilean democracy won today, for sure.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report

Who is Gabriel Boric? The radical student leader who will be Chile’s next president

Boric comes from a cohort that is grimly determined to bury dictator Augusto Pinochet’s bitter legacy once and for all

Gabriel Boric reacts before giving a speech to his supporters 

after the presidential runoff election in Santiago, Chile 

Photograph: Marcelo Hernández/Getty Images

John Bartlett in Santiago
Mon 20 Dec 2021 

Four months ago, 35-year-old Gabriel Boric confounded the polls to claim victory in a presidential primary he had barely been old enough to compete in. But on 11 March next year, he will now be sworn in as Chile’s youngest ever president – having amassed more votes than any presidential candidate in history.

Boric is the driving force behind Chile’s abrupt changing of the guard. He belongs to a radical generation of student leaders who are grimly determined to bury dictator Augusto Pinochet’s bitter legacy once and for all.

“Chile was the birthplace of neoliberalism, and it shall also be its grave!” he shouted from a stage the night of his primary win, his forearm tattoo peeking out from beneath a rolled-up sleeve.

General Pinochet’s brutal dictatorship bestowed Chile with its extreme economic model, and Boric and his influential cohort of student leaders have taken it upon themselves to dispose of it.

“I know that history doesn’t begin with us,” he declared on stage on Sunday night as president-elect before a baying crowd.

“I feel like an inheritor of the long trajectory of those who, from different places, have tirelessly sought social justice.

Boric was born in Punta Arenas in 1986 and is fiercely proud of his home region, Magallanes, below the Patagonian ice fields.

In 2011, as he entered the final year of his law degree, Boric became a leader of education protests across the country, in which thousands of students took over their campuses and faculties across a long, cold winter, spilling out into the streets to demand free, high-quality education for all.

The protests were quelled with a modest compromise, allowing some students to study for free. Several of the movement’s young leaders later ran for office and joined the country’s congress or took up positions in local government.

Boric never completed his degree, instead winning election to Chile’s congress in 2013 and serving two terms as a deputy, becoming one of the first congresspeople to come from beyond Chile’s two traditional coalitions in the process.

But since narrowly losing the presidential first round to José Antonio Kast, a far-right supporter of General Pinochet, he has moderated his programme markedly, appealing to the centrist voters who have now propelled him into La Moneda.

Unlike his firebrand days at the front of the marches, Boric is now neatly groomed, humble and serious – while he often wears a smart blazer covering his tattoos. His girlfriend Irina Karamanos joined him on stage on Sunday night after the results.

He has pledged to decentralise Chile, implement a welfare state, increase public spending and include women, non-binary Chileans and Indigenous peoples like never before. But it is Boric’s ultimate goal of extricating the country from the binds of Pinochet’s dictatorship that will define his legacy.

The next four years will see this process begin, as the 2011 student generation led by Boric, take on an even more important role than before.

Chilean election offers stark choice: 

a leftist or an admirer of Pinochet

The campaign has resurfaced deep divisions and revived bitter memories of the country’s recent past

Gabriel Boric told supporters ‘we will come together again to defeat Pinochetismo.’ Photograph: Rodrigo Garrido/Reuters


John Bartlett in Santiago
Sun 19 Dec 2021 

Chilean voters headed to the polls on Sunday to chose between two presidential candidates offering starkly contrasting visions for the future, in the country’s most divisive elections since it returned to democracy in 1990.

Leftwing candidate Gabriel Boric, a tattooed former student protest leader, has pledged to empower women and Indigenous people and raise taxes and spending in order to create a fairer Chile.

His far-right opponent José Antonio Kast is a staunch defender of the former dictator Augusto Pinochet and has promised to dig ditches along the country’s northern border to slow migrants.

After years of centrist rule, the sharp choice has resurfaced deep divisions in one of Latin America’s most stable democracies, and revived bitter memories of the country’s recent past.

Conservative Chileans are convinced that Boric is a crypto-Communist who would push Chile into a Venezuelan-style economic tailspin. Progressives fear that Kast would overturn fragile social gains and clash with the mostly progressive convention that is rewriting the country’s dictatorship-era constitution.

Both candidates claim that it is their rival who instils fear among voters.


‘Very worrying’: is a far-right radical about to take over in Chile?

“This Sunday we are going to say ‘no’ to intolerant people,” said Kast – who frequently rails against the supposed influence of the “gay lobby” – at his final campaign rally on Thursday. “We will defeat fear… We will win by a wide margin because this is what I have been hearing the length of Chile.”

Across town, Boric told his supporters: “We are a generation that learns from those who were here before us; we united to defeat the dictatorship, to democratise Chile, [and] to have a new constitution. And now we will come together again to defeat the heir to this government and Pinochetismo – and bring hope to Chile.”

“I’m putting my faith in young people,” said Boric voter Cecilia Galaz, 67, as she strode into her polling station in a central neighbourhood in the capital, Santiago.

“We are handing over a corrupt, self-centred world, so we need to change absolutely everything if we are to keep advancing towards the sort of society we want to live in.”

Close by, 37-year-old Fernanda Medina walked out of the polling station having also cast her vote in favour of Boric.

“I’m really excited,” she said brightly, clasping her young daughter’s hand.

“But I fear that disinformation is powerful in rural Chile, and some people are inclined to vote in line with the emotions Kast plays on rather than inform themselves of the candidates’ policies.”

In rural parts of the country, as well as peripheral districts of Santiago, some voters complained of a lack of public transport to take them to polling stations.

Videos circulating on social media showed long lines at bus stops – in bright sunshine and temperatures rising above 30C (86F) – as well as depots full of parked buses.

Transport minister Gloria Hutt gave a televised address to “categorically deny” that the government was holding back the buses. She also said that public transport was running “somewhat better” than on a working day.

Some Chileans have begun offering carpool solutions to neighbours in the hope of allowing everyone the chance to vote.

Acknowledging that the election will be won with the votes of those in the centre, both candidates moderated their platforms in the weeks since the first round.

Kast is backed by the right-leaning candidates whom he defeated in the first round, while Boric has has support from across the left, from the Communist party to moderate former president Michelle Bachelet, who this week said Chileans faced a “fundamental” choice, urging them to back a leader who could lead the country “down the path of progress for all”.

Kast’s policies resonated with voters unnerved by two years of social protests and recent debates about abortion (which remains illegal in most instances) and migration.

But his relationship with Chile’s past has loomed darkly over his campaign.

Kast, whose Germany-born father was recently revealed to have been a member of the Nazi party, has previously said that Pinochet would have voted for him and campaigned prominently against the transition to democracy in the late 1980s.

Boric, on the other hand, represents the progressive generation brought up in democracy – many of whom harbour a visceral hatred of General Pinochet and his enduring legacy.

A reminder of that history came on Thursday when the death of the dictator’s widow, Lucia Hiriart, brought hundreds of people to a Santiago plaza – some of them bearing photos of victims of the military regime.

“This has unexpectedly turned into one of the most closely-fought elections,” Mireya García told Reuters.

García’s brother was one of thousands forcibly disappeared after the army toppled the democratically elected president Salvador Allende in 1973.

“What is at stake is that on the one hand the extreme right is clearly a danger for Chile and on the other hand, there is a candidate who represents the youth,” she said.

Earthquakes Ripple Through 3D Printed Models of Los Angeles

Using stainless steel models, researchers find that high-frequency seismic waves—the most damaging to buildings—are attenuated in the Los Angeles sedimentary basin.

By Katherine Kornei

13 December 2021

To better understand earthquake hazards in the Los Angeles basin, researchers are turning to 3D printed models. 

Credit: iStock.com/eyfoto

Some of the world’s largest cities—including Los Angeles, Mexico City, and Santiago—are located in naturally occurring sedimentary basins. Add in the fact that these cities are prone to earthquakes, and that’s potentially a recipe for disaster: Numerical modeling has suggested that ground shaking is amplified within basins.

But such modeling—an oft-used resource for understanding ground motion in sedimentary basins—is often limited in its spatial resolution and is furthermore constrained by the equations it receives as input. Now, to more thoroughly study how seismic waves travel through a sedimentary basin, researchers have conducted a series of seismic experiments using 3D printed models of the underbelly of Los Angeles. They found that the highest-frequency seismic waves—those that generate sudden changes in acceleration and are therefore the most destructive to buildings—were actually attenuated within the models’ basin. That’s wholly unpredicted by numerical models, the team noted.

Trade-Offs to Consider

“We don’t want to have our model running for 20 years.”

Sedimentary basins are complex geological structures. They start out as depressions that over time become filled in with lower-density material deposited by rivers and landslides. “Imagine a bowl being filled up with stuff,” said Chukwuebuka C. Nweke, a civil engineer who works on natural hazards at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles who was not involved in the research.

But reproducing the small-scale details of a sedimentary basin in a numerical model is challenging, said Nweke, given inherent trade-offs between a model’s spatial resolution and the computational time required to run it. “We don’t want to have our model running for 20 years.”

A Boost in Resolution

For that reason, Sunyoung “Sunny” Park, a seismologist at the University of Chicago, and her colleagues recently began 3D printing models of the Los Angeles basin. Park and her team realized that they could reproduce even relatively small natural variations in density—corresponding to about 10 meters in size in real life—in their 3D printed models. That’s roughly a factor of 10 better than the spatial resolution of a numerical model that’s commonly used to study the Los Angeles basin, said Park.

After experimenting with materials such as rubber and plastic, Park and her colleagues settled on stainless steel as their preferred printing medium. That choice was mainly dictated by steel’s rigidity, said Park. “If it’s rigid, it has a much larger range of material properties.”

“It has all these structures within it.”

The researchers printed their models much in the same way that ink is printed on paper: They laid down successive layers of powdered stainless steel and then used a laser to heat and join (“sinter”) the layers together. By changing the printing parameters—including the speed of the sintering laser and its power—it’s possible to control how much pore space remains, said Park. “That’s how you can print a variable range of densities.”

The models the researchers produced, measuring roughly 20 centimeters long by 4 centimeters wide by 1 centimeter thick, aren’t much to look at from the outside, said Park. But in actuality each one captures a range of geological structures within the 50-kilometer-wide Los Angeles basin at a scale of 1:250,000. “It has all these structures within it,” said Park.

Earthquakes from Lasers

The team members generated extremely tiny earthquakes in their models by bombarding them with megahertz-frequency laser light. The thermal energy of the laser pulses heated the models, resulting in differential stresses that translated into movement, albeit very small: Park and her colleagues recorded ground motion at the top of the models on the order of tenths of nanometers.

The researchers found that higher frequencies of ground motion in their models—corresponding to real-life frequencies above 1 hertz—were generally reduced within basins. Those waves tended to be selectively reflected back at the edges of a basin, the team showed.

That’s a surprise, said Park, because sedimentary basins have long been believed to be amplifiers of ground motion. “[These results] are in some sense opposite of our conventional understanding.”

These results were presented today at AGU’s Fall Meeting 2021.

There’s plenty more to investigate using these models, the researchers suggested. One unexpected finding from the scientists’ experiments was that their laser pulses triggered not only seismic waves but also airborne waves that skimmed over the models’ top surfaces. Because such waves are strongly affected by local topography, logical follow-on work could include adding features like hills and mountains to the models’ surfaces and then measuring how the airborne waves propagate, Park said.

—Katherine Kornei (@KatherineKornei), Science Writer

Citation: Kornei, K. (2021), Earthquakes ripple through 3D printed models of Los Angeles, Eos, 102, https://doi.org/10.1029/2021EO210657.

 Published on 13 December 2021.

Text © 2021. The authors. CC BY-NC-ND 3.0

Low earthquake risk in Canada’s eastern Arctic, says paper

Eilís Quinn, Eye on the Arctic @arctic_eq
 Posted: Monday, August 16, 2021 

A picture of the Ungava field survey in Arctic Quebec that took place in summer 1990. (Courtesy Maurice Lamontagne)

A paper exploring past, present and future earthquake risks in Arctic Canada shows dangers in the northeastern part of the country remain low. 

The paper “Earthquakes in the Eastern Canadian Arctic: Past Occurrences, Present Hazard and Future Risk” was published in Seismological Research Letters by Natural Resources Canada research scientists Maurice Lamontagne and Alison Bent.

Unlike places that are on, or near, geographical fault lines or tectonic plate boundaries where the majority of earthquakes occur, Canada’s eastern Arctic is what’s known as a intraplate region where earthquake activity is low.

“Most earthquakes on a global scale occur at plate boundaries,” Lamontagne said in a telephone interview.  “Plate boundaries are where tectonic plates move in respect to each other. So we can think of California, Japan, British Columbia and Alaska, but the eastern Arctic is not part of such a tectonic context.”

Ten significant earthquake events have been recorded in the region with magnitudes between 5.5 and 7.4, but only five of those events were noticed by people in local communities. None of them caused any damage. 

A map showing dates and locations of earthquake events in Canada’s eastern Arctic. (Courtesy Maurice Lamontagne)

The 1989 Ungava earthquake is the rare earthquake in the eastern Arctic that resulted in a visible fault line at the surface.  

“When an earthquake occurs, it’s the friction on the fault that produces the seismic waves,” Lamontagne said.

“In general, this motion is deep inside the earth’s crust and in eastern Canada, generally it’s from 10 to 25 km under the surface. So when an earthquake occurs, we never see anything at the surface. We feel the vibrations but we don’t actually see movement on the fault.

“But we went to Ungava six months after the earthquake and we were able to see a rupture. So one side of a lake went down and the other side went up along the fault. And that was the first time something like that was seen in eastern North America.” 

Climate impact on seismic activity in Canada’s eastern Arctic?

Climate change is unlikely to have any significant effect on seismic activity in the region, Lamontagne said.

“Climate change does not change the tectonic environment of earthquakes, or increase the likelihood they will occur” he said.

An exception could be in the cases of glaciers that decrease in size because of global warming.

“Very locally there is the potential to have small earthquakes because when you have a glacier sitting on the earth’s crust it’s more or less pushing down the crust,” Lamontagne said. “And when you remove this mass, sometimes the earth’s crust will tend to come back up and that can lead to earthquakes. But in the eastern Arctic, the masses of glaciers is so small we don’t think that it’s going to cause many earthquakes of interest.”

New infrastructure in the Arctic is already built with changing permafrost conditions in mind, however older buildings could be affected, as increasing thaw and freeze of the permafrost layer could make ground less stable and could result in increased damage to infrastructure should an earthquakes occur.

More ground movement could also potentially cause things like landslides, he said.

“In the paper, we say there are  communities that could be affected by this potential for landslides in the future if we get a significant earthquake in the North, and this potential could be slightly greater than what we’ve seen in the past although probably more in the western Arctic than in the eastern Arctic.’

Write to Eilís at eilis.quinn@cbc.ca 

Related stories from around the North: 

Canada: What ancient earthquakes along the Denali fault in Yukon can tell us about what could come in Canada, CBC News